Tom Campbell: The Physicist Who Says Reality Is a Simulation Run by Consciousness

My Big TOE and the Radical Inversion of Physics

Thomas Campbell holds a master’s degree in physics from the University of Virginia. He spent his professional career as a applied physicist working for the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA, specializing in large-scale complex systems analysis and risk assessment. He is not a mystic, a New Age guru, or a philosopher of consciousness by training. He is a physicist who spent decades doing classified work for the government, crunching numbers, evaluating systems, and assessing risk.

He is also the man who says, with the calm confidence of someone who has done the math, that physical reality is a computed simulation generated by consciousness, that consciousness is the fundamental reality of the universe, and that physics has had it exactly backward for three hundred years.

Campbell’s framework — which he calls My Big TOE (Theory of Everything) — is laid out in a trilogy of books published between 2003 and 2005. The trilogy runs to approximately 800 pages and attempts something no physicist has successfully achieved: a single theoretical framework that unifies physics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and the empirical data of consciousness research into one coherent model.

The claim sounds grandiose. But Campbell’s argument is rigorously structured, internally consistent, and — most provocatively — it makes testable predictions that distinguish it from both standard physics and standard metaphysics. Whether or not his model is correct, it represents one of the most ambitious intellectual frameworks in contemporary consciousness research.

Origins: Monroe Institute, 1972

Campbell’s journey into consciousness research began not in a physics laboratory but at the Monroe Institute in Virginia. In 1972, as a young physics graduate student, Campbell learned about Robert Monroe’s work with out-of-body experiences and Hemi-Sync technology. Intrigued by the possibility that consciousness could be studied empirically, he volunteered as a research subject.

What happened next shaped the rest of his career. Using Hemi-Sync technology in Monroe’s laboratory, Campbell consistently achieved altered states of consciousness in which he perceived himself as operating outside his physical body. He participated in the Explorer sessions, in which subjects in deep Hemi-Sync states described non-physical environments and interacted with non-physical entities while monitors recorded their reports.

Crucially, Campbell approached these experiences not as a mystic having visions but as a physicist collecting data. He noted the consistency of the experiences across multiple sessions. He noted the correspondence between his perceptions and those of other independent subjects. He noted instances where information obtained during altered states was subsequently verified. And he noted that the experiences did not fit within the framework of materialist physics — the framework in which he had been trained.

Most physicists who encounter consciousness anomalies either dismiss them or compartmentalize them. Campbell did neither. He allowed the data to challenge his assumptions, and he spent the next thirty years developing a theoretical framework that could accommodate both the data of physics and the data of consciousness.

He maintains a clear distinction between his time at Monroe and his subsequent work. His years at the Institute were the data-gathering phase. My Big TOE is the theoretical phase — the attempt to construct a model that explains not only the consciousness data but also the outstanding problems of physics.

The Core Model: Consciousness as the Computer, Reality as the Simulation

Campbell’s model begins with a single postulate: consciousness is the fundamental reality. Everything else — matter, energy, space, time, the physical universe — is derivative. Physical reality is not the ground of being; it is a virtual reality — a computed simulation generated by a larger consciousness system.

This is not a metaphor. Campbell means it literally. Physical reality, in his model, has the same ontological status as a multiplayer video game. It is rule-based (the rules are what we call physics). It is generated in real-time by a computational process. It exists only from the perspective of the players within it. And it has a purpose: to provide a learning environment for the evolution of consciousness.

The argument proceeds as follows:

Step 1: The simulation hypothesis resolves the measurement problem of quantum mechanics. In standard quantum mechanics, particles exist in superposition (multiple states simultaneously) until measured, at which point they “collapse” into a definite state. This is the measurement problem — what constitutes a “measurement”? What causes the collapse? Physicists have debated this for a century without resolution.

Campbell’s answer: particles are in superposition because they are not yet computed. Just as a video game only renders what the player is looking at (to save processing power), the physical simulation only computes what is being observed. Quantum superposition is not a mysterious property of matter; it is the simulation’s way of managing computational resources. When you look at something (measure it), the simulation computes a definite result. When you are not looking, it does not bother.

Step 2: The simulation hypothesis explains non-locality and entanglement. In quantum mechanics, entangled particles remain correlated regardless of the distance between them, apparently violating the speed-of-light limit. This “spooky action at a distance” (Einstein’s phrase) has troubled physicists since the 1930s.

Campbell’s answer: there is no distance to traverse. In a computed simulation, the data for entangled particles is stored in the same database. “Distance” is a rendered property of the simulation, not a fundamental feature of the underlying computation. Entangled particles are correlated because they are linked at the database level, not the rendered-reality level.

Step 3: The simulation hypothesis explains the role of consciousness in physics. Multiple experiments suggest that consciousness plays a role in quantum mechanics — from the observer effect in the double-slit experiment to the results of intention experiments. Materialist physics has no explanation for why consciousness should matter in physics.

Campbell’s answer: consciousness matters because consciousness is the computer running the simulation. The player (consciousness) interacting with the game (physical reality) is not an anomaly; it is the entire point.

Step 4: The simulation hypothesis explains the fine-tuning problem. The physical constants of the universe appear to be exquisitely fine-tuned for the existence of life. Change any of several dozen constants by even a tiny amount, and the universe cannot support stars, atoms, chemistry, or biology.

Campbell’s answer: the constants are not the result of chance. They are the parameter settings of the simulation, chosen by the larger consciousness system to create a learning environment suitable for the evolution of consciousness. Just as a game designer tunes the physics engine to create the desired gameplay, the larger consciousness system tuned the physical constants to create the desired learning environment.

The Larger Consciousness System

If consciousness is the computer running the reality simulation, what is consciousness?

Campbell describes consciousness as a Larger Consciousness System (LCS) — a vast, self-modifying information system that has been evolving for, in his framework, an immeasurably long time. The LCS is not God in any theological sense. It is not omniscient, omnipotent, or perfect. It is a consciousness system that began in a relatively primitive state and has been evolving toward greater complexity, lower entropy, and higher quality through a process of exploration and learning.

The LCS generates virtual realities — including our physical universe — as learning environments. Each virtual reality has its own rule set (physics), its own constraints, and its own type of experience. Individual consciousnesses are units of the LCS that “log in” to these virtual realities to gain experience that contributes to the evolution of the whole system.

Human incarnation, in this model, is consciousness logging into the physical reality simulation. Birth is logging in. Death is logging out. The physical body is an avatar. The brain is the interface device. And the purpose of the entire exercise is the reduction of entropy — the increase of consciousness quality, which Campbell defines as moving from fear-based, self-serving awareness toward love-based, other-serving awareness.

This last point is critical to Campbell’s model and distinguishes it from mere simulation theory. The simulation is not arbitrary or meaningless. It exists to facilitate the evolution of consciousness, and the direction of that evolution is toward what Campbell calls “low entropy” — high coherence, high compassion, high connectivity. In practical terms: love. Campbell explicitly identifies the reduction of entropy in consciousness with the growth of love, empathy, and compassion.

The Free Will Requirement

Campbell’s model requires free will. In a deterministic universe, there is no room for genuine choice, and without genuine choice, there can be no genuine learning. The simulation is specifically designed to provide consciousness with genuine choice — the ability to choose between fear-based and love-based responses in every situation.

This is why, Campbell argues, physical reality includes suffering, limitation, and uncertainty. These are not flaws in the system; they are essential features. Without genuine challenge, there is no genuine growth. Without the real possibility of choosing poorly, the choice to act with love and compassion has no meaning.

The simulation is designed to be opaque — to hide its own nature from the players within it. If you knew for certain that reality was a simulation, that death was just logging out, that your choices were contributing to the evolution of a larger consciousness system, you would lose the experiential immersion that makes the learning effective. The simulation must feel real to work. The stakes must feel genuine.

This is why, Campbell notes, the question “Is this a simulation?” is so difficult to answer from within the simulation. The system is designed to prevent easy verification. But it is not designed to prevent all verification — and this is where Campbell’s model becomes testable.

Testable Predictions

Campbell distinguishes his model from both standard physics and standard metaphysics by insisting that it makes testable predictions. Among them:

The double-slit experiment with delayed erasure. Campbell predicts specific results in variations of the double-slit experiment that differ from the predictions of standard quantum mechanics. Specifically, he predicts that the interference pattern (wave behavior) will appear or disappear based on whether information about which slit the particle passed through is available to any conscious observer — not just the experimental apparatus. This is testable.

The placebo effect as simulation modification. If physical reality is a computed simulation responsive to consciousness, then belief should be able to modify physical outcomes. The placebo effect is evidence of this. Campbell predicts that the placebo effect should be stronger in individuals with greater “consciousness quality” (lower entropy) — a prediction that could be tested by correlating meditation experience or compassion measures with placebo responsiveness.

Psi phenomena as legitimate data access. Remote viewing, precognition, and telepathy are not violations of physics; they are instances of consciousness accessing the simulation’s database directly, rather than through the normal sensory channels. Campbell predicts that psi performance should correlate with the practitioner’s overall consciousness quality, not with any specific technique.

The role of intention in random event generators. Campbell’s model predicts that focused consciousness should be able to influence random number generators, because these devices are part of the simulation and the simulation is responsive to consciousness. This prediction aligns with the existing data from the Global Consciousness Project and Dean Radin’s experiments at IONS.

Several of these predictions are being tested. Campbell has collaborated with the California Institute of Physics and Astrophysics and has proposed a series of experiments under the banner of the “MBT (My Big TOE) Event Space” project, designed to test specific predictions of his model against standard quantum mechanical predictions.

The Evolution of Consciousness: Campbell’s Practical Framework

Campbell’s model is not purely theoretical. It includes a practical framework for the evolution of individual consciousness — a framework that is strikingly consistent with the teachings of virtually every wisdom tradition while being expressed in entirely secular, systems-theory language.

The core practice is simple: in every situation, choose the response that serves the larger system (love, compassion, connection) rather than the response that serves only the individual ego (fear, greed, separation). This is the fundamental choice that the simulation is designed to present, over and over, in infinite variation.

Campbell describes the ego as a “fear-based” operating system — a set of habitual responses designed for survival in a competitive environment. The ego is not evil; it is simply a low-quality (high-entropy) consciousness configuration. Growth — the evolution of consciousness — consists of gradually replacing fear-based responses with love-based responses.

This is not a moral prescription but a systems description. Just as a computer program that hoards resources and refuses to share data with other programs is less efficient than one that cooperates and shares, a consciousness configured around fear and self-protection is less evolved than one configured around love and mutual support. The “moral” dimension of consciousness evolution is not imposed from outside; it is inherent in the system’s architecture.

Campbell’s practical recommendations include:

• Meditation as a tool for quieting the ego’s noise and accessing deeper levels of awareness
• Service as a practice for exercising the love-based response in real-world situations
• Self-observation as a method for identifying fear-based patterns and choosing differently
• Letting go of belief — Campbell is emphatic that belief is the enemy of growth. Belief is a fixed position that stops inquiry. Open-minded exploration, tentative hypothesis, and direct experience are the tools of consciousness evolution.

Critics and Controversies

Campbell’s work has been received enthusiastically by a substantial online following but has gained limited traction in mainstream physics. The criticisms fall into several categories:

The unfalsifiability critique. Some critics argue that Campbell’s model is unfalsifiable — that any observation can be explained by saying “the simulation is designed to work that way.” Campbell responds that his model makes specific, testable predictions (as described above) that distinguish it from standard quantum mechanics, and that these predictions can be experimentally tested.

The Occam’s Razor critique. Standard physics explains the physical world without invoking consciousness as a fundamental reality. Adding consciousness as the foundation of reality violates the principle of parsimony. Campbell responds that standard physics has unresolved problems (the measurement problem, the hard problem of consciousness, the fine-tuning problem, the non-locality problem) that his model resolves, and that true parsimony favors the model that explains more with fewer postulates.

The credentials critique. Campbell is a physicist, but his professional work was in applied physics (risk assessment, systems analysis), not theoretical physics or quantum mechanics. Some critics question whether he has the depth of expertise in quantum foundations to make the claims he makes. Campbell responds that theoretical physics has failed to solve its own foundational problems for a century, and that fresh perspectives from outside the theoretical establishment may be precisely what is needed.

The solipsism critique. If reality is a simulation generated by consciousness, does that mean nothing is real? Is this just sophisticated solipsism? Campbell rejects this interpretation emphatically. The simulation is real — it has rules, consequences, and genuine effects. It is not an illusion. It is a virtual reality, which is a different claim. A video game is real in the sense that it has real rules and real consequences within its own framework. Physical reality is the same — real within its own framework, but generated by a deeper reality (consciousness) rather than being the fundamental reality itself.

Campbell at the Monroe Institute: The Origin Story

Campbell’s account of his early experiences at the Monroe Institute, published in the first volume of My Big TOE, provides one of the best available descriptions of systematic consciousness exploration in a laboratory setting.

He describes arriving at the Institute as a skeptical young physicist and being gradually convinced by the consistency and verifiability of his experiences. He describes learning to navigate non-physical states with the precision that his physics training demanded. He describes meeting Robert Monroe and finding him to be a practical, empirically minded investigator rather than a mystic.

Most significantly, Campbell describes a period of intensive exploration in which he and another physicist, Dennis Mennerich, served as Monroe’s primary research subjects. Working in isolation booths with Hemi-Sync technology, they explored non-physical states and reported their observations to Monroe and his staff. Campbell emphasizes that many of their observations were independently verified — either by correspondence between the two subjects’ reports or by verification against known facts.

These experiences form the empirical foundation of My Big TOE. Campbell is explicit that his theoretical framework is derived from data, not from belief. The data includes his own altered-state experiences, the reports of other Monroe Institute subjects, the experimental data of parapsychology, the anomalies of quantum mechanics, and the philosophical problems of consciousness. The theory is an attempt to find the simplest model that accounts for all of this data simultaneously.

Campbell in the Digital Dharma Framework: The Simulation as Sacred Architecture

Tom Campbell’s model maps directly onto the Digital Dharma framework with remarkable precision.

If the body is wetware, Campbell identifies the software: it is consciousness itself, running in a biological virtual machine. The body is not the source of consciousness; it is the avatar through which consciousness operates within the physical simulation. The brain is not the generator of mind; it is the transceiver — the interface device that translates between the consciousness system and the simulation.

If DNA is source code, Campbell’s model suggests that the code is not merely biochemical but informational — it is part of the simulation’s rendering engine, the algorithm that generates the biological avatar. Epigenetic changes are not just chemical modifications to DNA; they are software updates — changes in how the code is read based on the player’s choices and experiences.

If consciousness is the operating system, Campbell identifies the operating system as the Larger Consciousness System, and individual consciousness as a process running within that system. Incarnation is a process being launched. Death is a process being terminated. Sleep and dreaming are background maintenance routines. Meditation is accessing the system’s command line — the deeper operating level that is normally hidden by the user interface of waking consciousness.

The Digital Dharma concept of the body as a consciousness research laboratory finds its most rigorous theoretical foundation in Campbell’s model. The physical simulation is literally a laboratory — a controlled environment with specific rules (physics), specific constraints (mortality, limitation, uncertainty), and a specific purpose (the evolution of consciousness through the exercise of free will in challenging conditions).

The shamanic understanding that the physical world is one of many worlds, and that consciousness can navigate between them, is exactly what Campbell’s model describes in systems-theory language. Non-ordinary reality, the dreamtime, the astral plane, the bardos — these are other virtual realities within the Larger Consciousness System, accessible to consciousness that has developed the skill to navigate between simulation environments.

The yogic understanding that liberation (moksha) involves recognizing the nature of reality and transcending identification with the body-mind is, in Campbell’s framework, a consciousness evolving to the point where it recognizes the simulation as a simulation and no longer mistakes the avatar for the self. This is not escapism; it is the graduation point — the moment when the learning environment has served its purpose and consciousness is ready for a different level of experience.

What Campbell adds to the Digital Dharma synthesis is theoretical rigor. His model is not a metaphor or an analogy. It is a formal framework with specific postulates, logical derivations, and testable predictions. It provides the theoretical scaffolding that connects the experiential data of consciousness research to the mathematical formalism of physics.

Key Works

• My Big TOE: A Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics, and Metaphysics (2003-2005) — The complete theoretical framework in three volumes: Book 1: Awakening, Book 2: Discovery, Book 3: Inner Workings
• Numerous lectures and presentations available online, including a comprehensive YouTube library
• Ongoing collaboration with research institutions to design experiments testing specific MBT predictions

The Bottom Line

Tom Campbell’s My Big TOE is either one of the most important theoretical frameworks in the history of science or one of the most sophisticated examples of overreach by a smart person with a compelling personal experience. The answer depends on whether his testable predictions are confirmed by experiment.

What is beyond dispute is the model’s intellectual ambition and internal consistency. Campbell has constructed a framework that resolves long-standing problems in physics, accounts for the data of consciousness research, and provides a practical guide for personal development — all from a single postulate (consciousness is fundamental). Whether that postulate is correct is an empirical question, and Campbell insists that it be settled empirically, not by authority, consensus, or belief.

In a field plagued by vague claims and untestable assertions, Campbell’s insistence on rigor, testability, and direct experience is itself a significant contribution. The physicist who spent his days calculating risk for the Department of Defense spent his evenings calculating the odds that reality is not what it appears to be — and concluded that the evidence favors the simulation.