Toward an Antidote

[Steven Coyle]

Does Wisdom of the Infinite detail the relationship between psychology and causality? Without that link, causality could appear devoid of any true spiritual substance.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Even a deluded person, when he thinks or speaks or proposes some plan of activity, is not so deluded that his plan does not have some redeeming feature.

That's exactly why I find some of your posts worthwhile to read. They are spirited and at times even seem inspired, the 'redeeming' feature - as you say. But the same spirit can be, like so much of life, highly alcoholic. Wonderful on its own accord, terrible for philosophy. Unless you think this age needs yet some more oracular practices.

Each age introduces it own medicine. And the current age surely doesn't seem in need for more intellect, knowledge or shamanic exercising. The goal post is way lower: it needs sanity first - which means mainly sobering up, not as much a collection of 'sane' ideas.

I know that you and others (and they) have a very specific orientation and view of all these issues and problems: sexuality, lust, fucking, penetration, passion, sensuousness, craving, inner instability....and all of the negations that are part of a certain brand of yoga and ascetic practice. I know that. It is obvious. I know too that 'birds of a feather flock together' and people sometimes come together to share their agreements, to bolster their agreements in company. You come into a pattern of thinking and 1) you get convinced, 2) you are influenced to accept certain tenets and you adopt them---when it is just as possible to adopt other sets, under different influences.

Perhaps you see what you expect to see. I can only wonder what exactly those 'issues' and 'problems' would be or the attempt to 'practice asceticism'. Although in some cases I can see the value of that last practise. But the main orientation should be of discarding that which doesn't interest you anymore [interest over a loan?]. Asceticism is not as much about the fight uphill - that would be the 'romantic' exception - it is and should be only about the free fall down hill or from another perspective: the view from the hill.

"Not knowing what the disease is, or even that there's a disease, is the disease in this context."

There is nothing at all easy about being alive. There is nothing at all easy about this juncture of history. There is nothing easy about unravelling what it means to be alive. All of our more recent history (post war) has been about identifying the problem, naming the sickness, and proposing the cure.

A dis-ease is to me not exactly the same as a sickness. Disease describes more of a cause, a situation - like dukkha - and sickness describes more a possible symptom, a state of being or feeling. It's a subtle difference but I try to choose my words wisely.

But yes, we all know "it isn't easy" but how many know why exactly that is? And I'm not even talking about a cure. Most people will probably prefer the disease they know and hold dear anyway. Seen like that, there's nothing really there to cure from.

Just look and see all the strange things people have done in the face of the task/problem that confronts us.

Which is that problem in your view? Ignorance? Unhappiness? And about what then?

[David Quinn]

Dan and Dave and Kevin are making a case, and they are set on making it BIG, very BIG. This is important stuff and this is one of the most important sites in cyberspace right now!

All the more reason to make sure they get it right.

David, the problem I have with Wisdom is that it allows no discussion. For instance, one could very well ask, where did Causality itself come from? To which you have pre-replied: that is an incorrect question. I believe you are glossing over the fundamental issue that I keep trying to raise.

It is an incorrect question because it misidentifies what causality is. It mistakenly turns the process of causality as a whole into an object created within the process of causality.

As soon as you ask where causality came from, you are immediately postulating the possible existence of causes which are external to the causal process, which is irrational.

To put it simply, I believe causality is a local thing. By local, I am speaking in terms of space and time. Einstein's General Relativity equations have indeed been empirically verified - they are in fact the most accurate equations science has, more precise than even Schroedinger's equation, at least as experiment has shown so far. What they tell us is that space and time are curved. What science doesn't know is which of several models of curvature that fit the equations is the correct one.

You want to make it a local thing because you need room to stick your God in.

You are asserting that C&E holds everywhere. You have not proven it. In fact, you cannot prove it.

I have, but obviously you're not paying any attention to the proof! As soon as a thing exists, wherever it may be, whether it be in the quantum realm, in the furthest reaches of time and space, or in another dimension, it will necessarily be dependent on causes - whether they be internally, as regards to its own constituent parts, or externally on the rest of the Totality.

In purely logical terms, an object, "A", necessarily depends for its existence on what is not it, "not-A". There can't be one without the other.

Just as we do not abandon Newton's laws for macroscopic phenomena, I do not need to abandon causality altogether - that would be a fatal philosophical error. Yet there may be countless Universes, each causally mutually independent.

There could well be countless universes, all of them parts of the Totality. However, they wouldn't be causally independent of one another. For example, the existence of a particular universe is dependent on none of the others suddenly changing into a form that could obliterate it.

You make the mistake of dismissing modern science too quickly. Specifically, nonlocality seems to bear out your assertion that Reality is an infinite web of causality. Do not shoot yourself in the foot, David!

We can see the infinite web of causality in everything that we look at it. We don't need science to inform us of it.

Science can help stimulate the mind into thinking about causality, so that is a good thing. But it is a poor state of affairs if we have to rely on that kind of stimulation.

I think you are unable to grasp the fact that an uncaused cause is logically consistent with a local C&E - or any construct of causality, really. This is an achilles heel in your Weltanschauung. There are others, but not necessarily related to causality, IMO.

Your desire to postulate an uncaused case doesn't help your God theory. To say that the universe started with an uncaused cause is to say that it popped into existence out of nothing whatsoever, without any cause at all, not even caused by a creator God.

As soon as you introduce the idea of a God creating the universe, you are immediately asserting that the universe was indeed caused by something external to it, and you are firmly back in the realm of beginningless causality once again.

I regard my belief in a present Creator being - separate from a First Cause (uncaused) - as consistent with anything that can be truthfully said or known about Reality or any concept of a Universe or Totality. It is - as it must be - consistent with any claims made about Cause and Effect, either observed or simply postulated.

From a logical perspective, introducing a creator God doesn't solve anything. All it does is shift the "problem" of beginninglessness from the universe onto your God. Nothing has essentially changed.

-

[David Quinn]

The causal processes inside our bodies merge seamlessly with the causal processes in the outer environment to form one vast sea of causation. In a very real sense, "we" are not even there.

The same is true for every kind of boundary you care to imagine. None of it is real in the face of causation. If you want to open your mind to the majesty of the Infinite, then you need to understand this point thoroughly. Study it as though your life depended upon it - which, in a deeper sense, it does. Give yourself over to it, absorb your whole consciousness in it, allow it to permanently alter your mind. It is literally the key to the Kingdom of Heaven. Don't throw it away!

My mind doesn't seem to be altered, as I did not "see" these boundaries in the first place.

At the very least, you see a boundary between the universe and God, one that seems very important to you.

-

[Dave Toast]

Yet there may be countless Universes, each causally mutually independent. Our own seems to have a beginning, where space AND time began at one point. If time itself had an origin - admittedly not an easy concept to grasp - then necessarily, so did causality.

While we're speculating, during your studies, did you ever come across Hawking and Hartle's No Boundary Proposal, real time, imaginary time, causality and laws of physics preserved, etc.?

Understanding C&E the way David has it has no consequence. It is in this way inconsequential. It is even folly to discuss it. This is purely the result of accepting that C&E must apply everywhere, at all times, without exception, and always has.

What else has applied everywhere, at all times, without exception, and always has, in your experience?

[Trevor Salyzyn]

brokenhead,

You cannot consider the causal relationship without time. In fact, the causal relationship may be time. Balfour makes this argument in The End of Time. He claims that there is no such thing as time, independent of events, which necesarily are part of a chain of cause and effect. There certainly is no absolute time, as there are no absolute causes nor effects.

From this, isn't my argument of a discrepancy of meaning proven? When I refer to causality, I am always referring to a logical relationship. By requiring time to be a factor, you are talking about a process that can be explored empirically (the billiard ball model, if you will). If you conflate these two different notions of causality, there can be no consistency in argument.

[brokenhead]

While we're speculating, during your studies, did you ever come across Hawking and Hartle's No Boundary Proposal, real time, imaginary time, causality and laws of physics preserved, etc.?

Yes, he seems to say as much in A Brief History of Time. He likens the question "What happened before the Big Bang?" to asking "What lies ten feet north of the North Pole?" He clearly states the time itself - real time, as imaginary time is a mathematical device using imaginary numbers along with the reals resulting in a complex number - had a beginning.

What else has applied everywhere, at all times, without exception, and always has, in your experience?

Nothing! That is the whole point! If one insists that C&E is the sole example, then I claim it is inconsequential for that very reason. Saying causality applies here, and also applies there, means absolutely nothing if it in fact always applies everywhere. You will notice that Hawking insists on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics holding in various scenarios of universe history. This is because the universe is by definition a closed system. It doesn't hold in everyday life: life itself is in defiance of the 2nd law, at least for a while. I tried having this discussion with Kevin and he doesn't seem to agree that this is proof that life is quite unlike other physical properties and is unique unto itself.

[brokenhead]

As soon as you ask where causality came from, you are immediately postulating the possible existence of causes which are external to the causal process, which is irrational.

This is patently not true. The existence of a first cause - uncaused itself - is in no way external to the causal process, as it is a cause with effects. Therefore, such a postulation is not irrational in the slightest.

You want to make it [causality] a local thing because you need room to stick your God in.

I'm not sure I agree with that, pithy though it is. I think everything human beings can say about Reality or anything in it is local. I do not know anyone who is as old as the universe, or is gargantuanly large or is microscopic. You are asserting something that you have no way of knowing (i.e., that the Totality is infinite, either in spatial extent of temporally) and no real way of demonstrating, let alone proving.

I think everybody yearns for something absolute. You have yourself created a God, that which you call Totality and identify as God. You are motivated to accept that causality must apply everywhere, at all times, and always has. This motivation is no different from that which makes people want room to "stick God into."

I don't claim to know God, although I say I have a personal relationship with God. I have had numerous personal relationships with people I didn't really know, even if I believed I did know them at one point. I have learned to accept that having a relationship is just the process of getting to know another.

You can make a God who is also a person out to be a crutch with no proof or validation or necessity. It doesn't affect me one iota, because it is a living concept which I find I require to function optimally in a living world. I have to be as honest and open-minded about it as I know how to be.

There could well be countless universes, all of them parts of the Totality. However, they wouldn't be causally independent of one another. For example, the existence of a particular universe is dependent on none of the others suddenly changing into a form that could obliterate it.

You have used this reasoning elsewhere as well. It is faulty. This is circular reasoning. You are in effect saying they cannot be independent because they are dependent. However, you admit here the possibility of countless universes. That is a good first step.

[brokenhead]

brokenhead,

You cannot consider the causal relationship without time. In fact, the causal relationship may be time. Balfour makes this argument in The End of Time. He claims that there is no such thing as time, independent of events, which necesarily are part of a chain of cause and effect. There certainly is no absolute time, as there are no absolute causes nor effects.

From this, isn't my argument of a discrepancy of meaning proven? When I refer to causality, I am always referring to a logical relationship. By requiring time to be a factor, you are talking about a process that can be explored empirically (the billiard ball model, if you will). If you conflate these two different notions of causality, there can be no consistency in argument.

This is only a conflation if you want a philosophy that is not grounded in reality. The consistency is not in having an ironclad argument (A=A). It is in the hard-won details of examining empirical evidence and being willing to throw out the part of your assertions that contradict this evidence. It's as if you were hiding. "I'm not speaking scientifically, I am speaking logically." You have to do both. Science with out logic is useless; logic without science is meaningless.

[brokenhead]

From a logical perspective, introducing a creator God doesn't solve anything. All it does is shift the "problem" of beginninglessness from the universe onto your God. Nothing has essentially changed.

We are just discovering how intimately related consciousness and physical events are.

All I am doing is proposing that Consciousness is primal, beginningless and endless. Everything, including causality, is dependent on this First (uncaused) cause.

[Dave Toast]

BH: Yet there may be countless Universes, each causally mutually independent. Our own seems to have a beginning, where space AND time began at one point. If time itself had an origin - admittedly not an easy concept to grasp - then necessarily, so did causality.

DT: While we're speculating, during your studies, did you ever come across Hawking and Hartle's No Boundary Proposal, real time, imaginary time, causality and laws of physics preserved, etc.?

BH: Yes, he seems to say as much in A Brief History of Time. He likens the question "What happened before the Big Bang?" to asking "What lies ten feet north of the North Pole?" He clearly states the time itself - real time, as imaginary time is a mathematical device using imaginary numbers along with the reals resulting in a complex number - had a beginning.

Yes real time has a beginning but that beginning is wholly determined by the laws of physics and the state of the singularity in real time, and that is wholly determined by the laws of physics and the state of the singularity in the (imaginary) 2nd dimension of time. Thus the universe is a self-contained system where causality breaks down in real time but is preserved in imaginary time, due to its lack of boundaries in spacetime. Hence no need to appeal to outside agency for the cause of the universe.

And imaginary time isn't named as such because it is somehow not real, like real time is real. It is essential to the "jewel of physics", quantum electrodynamics. To the same extent that it is just a mathematical device which models a second dimension of time, Euclidian geometry is just a mathematical device that describes space.

[Dave Toast]

BH, I'm putting this in a separate post because it's a different subject.

DT: What else has applied everywhere, at all times, without exception, and always has, in your experience?

BH: Nothing!

Are you sure? (note the italics)

[brokenhead]

And imaginary time isn't named as such because it is somehow not real, like real time is real. It is essential to the "jewel of physics", quantum electrodynamics. To the same extent that it is just a mathematical device which models a second dimension of time, Euclidian geometry is just a mathematical device that describes space.

Yes, I'm very familiar with complex algebra. Both imaginary time and real time are named for the imaginary and real numbers. Imaginary time would be a real coefficient t1 times the square root of negative one. Real time would be just another real number t2 times one. You have to keep in mind, that while doing the math, the imaginary component of the complex number is retained. The solution to the differential equations is therefore also complex. But when the solution is obtained, the imaginary part of the complex solution is simply discarded. What remains is a real number which corresponds to a measurable physical quantity. If the imaginary part of the complex number were thrown out before the calculation, the resulting real number would be at odds with the empirical observation.

[brokenhead]

BH, I'm putting this in a separate post because it's a different subject.

DT: What else has applied everywhere, at all times, without exception, and always has, in your experience?

BH: Nothing!

Are you sure? (note the italics)

In my experience at all times? (Note the italics.) Nothing!

[Dave Toast]

Not even perception?

[Dave Toast]

And imaginary time isn't named as such because it is somehow not real, like real time is real. It is essential to the "jewel of physics", quantum electrodynamics. To the same extent that it is just a mathematical device which models a second dimension of time, Euclidian geometry is just a mathematical device that describes space.

Yes, I'm very familiar with complex algebra. Both imaginary time and real time are named for the imaginary and real numbers. Imaginary time would be a real coefficient t1 times the square root of negative one. Real time would be just another real number t2 times one. You have to keep in mind, that while doing the math, the imaginary component of the complex number is retained. The solution to the differential equations is therefore also complex. But when the solution is obtained, the imaginary part of the complex solution is simply discarded. What remains is a real number which corresponds to a measurable physical quantity. If the imaginary part of the complex number were thrown out before the calculation, the resulting real number would be at odds with the empirical observation.

So imaginary time exists in the same way as imaginary numbers exist. And, more pertinently, the No Boundary Proposal entails a closed-system which is fully determined. Hence causality is preserved without the need to appeal to outside agency.

[Alex Jacob]

Diebert wrote:

"That's exactly why I find some of your posts worthwhile to read. They are spirited and at times even seem inspired, the 'redeeming' feature - as you say. But the same spirit can be, like so much of life, highly alcoholic. Wonderful on its own accord, terrible for philosophy. Unless you think this age needs yet some more oracular practices."

Of course I know what you mean. My approach and my tactics can also irritate. I could take the game of psychological compensation too far. But the least you could have done (*sniff*) is to have acknowledged the almost mandala-like clip of Maybelle Carter and the Carter Sisters playing Wildwood Flower.

Well, that's all I'm going to say about it, I'll just leave you (and the forum) with this, in the hope it might get through. ;-)

If you want my opinion, I think for 'philosophy' to happen the person, the individual, me and you and all the rest, really have to appear. Philosophy, strictly according to my view, simply sucks if it remains in an abstract, over-verbal, blah-blah realm. But, some people are wired differently. They do not care about the real individual (that is, the real person behind our screen names, the real person with real issues, real conflicts, real problems, all of that) and so can go on and on talking 'out their asses' about exalted subjects. For me, Nietzsche changed my outlook forever. My converse, my discourse, will always therefor be essentially personal, and (when I can) as revealing as a song: but a truthful song, if songs can be truthful, that takes a risk and reveals something about me.

I submit that we all know---you and me and the next guy---when we are really talking to the other person or when it is just a sort of sham. The conversation with the individual, between the individual, is the only one that matters to me...obviously because my whole reason for communicating is not predicated in some abstract zone, some weird philosophico-religious dream-time. (With 'enlightenment' or 'the abstract' as the goal).

That, of course, is one of the big problems from starting from the position of 'enlightenment' and 'the absolute': it couches all conversations in the shadow of irreality. People who don't really like 'reality' don't really want to 'make it real'. In no sense is this directed to you. It's just what you inspired with your comments, above.

"Each age introduces it own medicine. And the current age surely doesn't seem in need for more intellect, knowledge or shamanic exercising. The goal post is way lower: it needs sanity first - which means mainly sobering up, not as much a collection of 'sane' ideas."

(You are, of course, implying that I am 'drunk'. That I don't want to 'be sober'. That I don't or cannot 'philosophise'. You are part of an inside game. I am on the outside of your game but in no sense at all could it ever be said (truthfully) that I don't share or admire some of the same values. Similarly, Dan and David refer to my (supposed) 'aestheticism' is a manifestation of a similar disorder). (They have to take a shot or two back at me, for all the terrible things I say).

And hold on. You said earlier that you didn't accept some of the QRS recipes for 'the greater world'. But now it seems you are speaking about what you think 'our age' needs. If you want my opinion I will sort of whisper it to you: I personally think the game is sort of lost. The forces that move around us are so much more powerful than us, and the kind of appetite and longing and desire that moves through the mass is just...unreal in magnitude. It seems to me that it is only exploding more and more out of control. Frankly, I have more of less given up hoping or wishing for anything in particular for the 'masses'.

"But yes, we all know "it isn't easy" but how many know why exactly that is? And I'm not even talking about a cure. Most people will probably prefer the disease they know and hold dear anyway. Seen like that, there's nothing really there to cure from."

Again, you are talking about 'them'. It is I guess a good way to highlight 'us'.

I am curious how you fit in to all this...

[David Quinn]

That, of course, is one of the big problems from starting from the position of 'enlightenment' and 'the absolute': it couches all conversations in the shadow of irreality. People who don't really like 'reality' don't really want to 'make it real'.

If you see philosophical concepts, such as "enlightenment" and "absolute", as abstract, unreal and shadowy, it is only because you have made them so. You're not seeing the personal dimension to them.

I have to say your posts are starting to sound very arrogant. For example, to dismiss everyone who happens to find these philosophic terms useful as charlatans who lead shadowy, unreal lives is very presumptuous. I don't know where you get the gall to make such a claim.

For me, Nietzsche changed my outlook forever. My converse, my discourse, will always therefor be essentially personal, and (when I can) as revealing as a song: but a truthful song, if songs can be truthful, that takes a risk and reveals something about me.

Despite all you have written on the forum, I barely know anything personal about you, other than that you like to preen and engage self-consciously in postmodernist profundity, that you read too much, and that you don't like the thought of understanding anything. What exactly have you risked?

-

[David Quinn]

As soon as you ask where causality came from, you are immediately postulating the possible existence of causes which are external to the causal process, which is irrational.

This is patently not true. The existence of a first cause - uncaused itself - is in no way external to the causal process, as it is a cause with effects. Therefore, such a postulation is not irrational in the slightest.

The attempt to posit God as the creator or cause of this uncaused first cause is irrational.

It is a case of wanting the first cause to be both caused and uncaused at the same time.

You want to make it [causality] a local thing because you need room to stick your God in.

I'm not sure I agree with that, pithy though it is. I think everything human beings can say about Reality or anything in it is local. I do not know anyone who is as old as the universe, or is gargantuanly large or is microscopic. You are asserting something that you have no way of knowing (i.e., that the Totality is infinite, either in spatial extent of temporally) and no real way of demonstrating, let alone proving.

As Lao Tzu says, one can understand the ways of heaven without even looking outside the window. If you understand the fundamental nature of reality locally, in the here and now, then you automatically understand the fundamental nature of reality everywhere.

Fundamental nature never changes. If you think it can, then it means that you haven't yet grasped what fundamental nature is and why it can never change.

I think everybody yearns for something absolute. You have yourself created a God, that which you call Totality and identify as God. You are motivated to accept that causality must apply everywhere, at all times, and always has. This motivation is no different from that which makes people want room to "stick God into."

The difference is one of logic vs belief.

I don't claim to know God, although I say I have a personal relationship with God. I have had numerous personal relationships with people I didn't really know, even if I believed I did know them at one point. I have learned to accept that having a relationship is just the process of getting to know another.

If you don't know what God is, then how do you know you are actually having a relationship with God and not indulging in a fantasy of your own making? The short answer is, you don't.

Knowledge of God is the very first step towards having a God-relationship, and one can only begin to do that by uncovering the universal principles which express the nature of God.

You can make a God who is also a person out to be a crutch with no proof or validation or necessity. It doesn't affect me one iota, because it is a living concept which I find I require to function optimally in a living world. I have to be as honest and open-minded about it as I know how to be.

Psychologically, you need such a figure in your life. That is the honest reality.

There could well be countless universes, all of them parts of the Totality. However, they wouldn't be causally independent of one another. For example, the existence of a particular universe is dependent on none of the others suddenly changing into a form that could obliterate it.

You have used this reasoning elsewhere as well. It is faulty. This is circular reasoning. You are in effect saying they cannot be independent because they are dependent.

No, I'm saying that it is impossible for them to be causally independent because, logically speaking, each universe has the potential to causally influence the others. This potentiality alone is enough to prove without any shadow of doubt that they are causally dependent. It doesn't matter if they go on to eventually influence one another or not. Their potential for influence is enough to clinch the matter.

However, you admit here the possibility of countless universes. That is a good first step.

Do you seriously imagine that I have not deeply thought about all these things before?

-

[David Quinn]

From a logical perspective, introducing a creator God doesn't solve anything. All it does is shift the "problem" of beginninglessness from the universe onto your God. Nothing has essentially changed.

We are just discovering how intimately related consciousness and physical events are.

All I am doing is proposing that Consciousness is primal, beginningless and endless. Everything, including causality, is dependent on this First (uncaused) cause.

Does this mean Consciousness is eternal and has no beginning in time?

-

[Jamesh]

A line from "Hawking and Hartle's No Boundary Proposal" (that reads like a mere kids essay to me)

These showed that general relativity predicted singularities, whenever more than a certain amount of mass was present in a region

Of course it would, because the nature of that is no different to the nature of anything else. A sufficient degree of pressure against any thing will cause it to explode. For something to "explode" means that "The sum of external pressure relative to the degree of compression that a thing can withstand, reached a point wherein the outward pushing pressure of the compressed thing, the nucleus, at a certain point was greater than the pressure of the expansionary shell".

At this "certain point", just as an active volcano erupts due to internal pressures, so to does everything else over time. The nature of reality as a process is one flowing between structure and non-structure, though in the realm of things there is no absolute case of either. Absoluteness is the content of things, not the form of things. Absoluteness is nothing other than causal, while things are just effects. Effects are always impure relativities. They are always dualistic entities that require linear conceptualisations. Causes are not linear.

Now the "certain point" would not arise without some intrinsic inequality within the nature of nature. That point is simply a result of this fact "what is, is greater in power-value than what was". Fundamental inequality arises because the Now is relative to the Past. It's very degree of nowness is its relative "greaterness" compared to what was once that very same Now. The now is what it is, one can even step outside of any observation or awareness of personal nowness, and know that form change will always occur.

Effects or things are outcomes. Their form is always a thing of the past, a thing that once was. The form itself never exists in the nowness. The brain calculates causal differentiation, it does not see real things. We, our awareness, exists in the past, but the point is that this past is the same thing as the present now - but what it is not is the strongest now, that is the nowness that has the infinite power of being what it is eternally.

Nowness is the only non-relative thing. It is even more intrinsic than the idea of "cause". Cause consists of differentiation or duality (recognition of set forms), power or form change (recognition of changing forms) and past and present time (recognition of realities flow).

On one level the totality is the only perfectly "solid" thing. At no point is it not causally active. There can be no point "within" it that is disconnected, no spaces of nothingness. At the same time, its very solidness stems from its non-dependant existence. By this I mean that it has no intrinsic form, other than being now > now-now which greater than > now-now-now and so on ad infinitum.

Because "now" is greater in power than "now -now", this actually make "now - now", then "now - now - now" gradually physically more defined than the greater power.

With age there is automatically form. No big bang is need for the totality.

The above scenario implies some sort of ever increasing circle of the Totality or inflationary theory. In such a scenario one would think that there would be perfect symmetry as the present now would always encircle the past now.

Perfect symmetry however cannot occur because of the different natures of the present now and past nows. The present now is not bounded in the sense of being blocked from inaction. It's only boundedness is the limitation of it not being able to be other than what past nows determine it to be. The Past now, however, is dualistically bounded

Well an inflationary universe is not how it really is, though that is how it may seem to be. The problem with the word inflationary is that it implies that a scale can be applied, some yardstick of measurement can be used. No. While now time is always becoming greater than what it was, past time is always becoming less than what it was (this is the relationship between gravity and mass), but there is no start of finish to this, no ultimate point of measurement, nor does time have any physical presence to measure, it only ever has relationships to measure.

So what causes these relationships, these differentiations of causes, what causes geometry? The answer to this is impossible to describe because it is impossible to conceptualise.

A pointer however is the nature of pressure upon things. The present now is unbounded, it is holistic and is "of all directions at once". One of these directions it is active in, is reverse causality. It could not bind the past unless it exerted pressure or resistance upon the past. Geometrically speaking it encircles the past, just as a solid sphere becomes denser and denser towards the centre. The outside always maintains the form of the inside. It would seem to be gravity that compresses the inside, but not so. Every point of the totality past and present still exists, it is only that the nowness of the past, is bound by the total nowness flow that has since manifested. All this boundedness creates an opposite pressure, which is referred to as repulsive gravity.

The Geometrical circularisation of the past by the now, causes pressure on the past. Explosions (sub-atomic, atomic or galaxy wide) occur whenever the degree of past now-boundedness becomes greater than the degree of the power of the present now.

Splitting the atom is really a case of releasing the past into the present. Now this explosion of past time only needs to occur once for this one-off event to cause further differentiation at lower levels. It would become a flaw in the structure of the totality and from such a flaw, further cracks would appear to eventually become an infinite array of differing causal balances.

Mind you it is actually impossible for this not to have occurred at least "once". Just like the term inflationary though, the term "once" relates to something that is not measurable in that sense, there can be no "fundamental once" in a realm of eternity (but it is still useful to say this to link it to big bang theories). If however, the word "once" is defined as an event not occurring every where at all times, then it can be legitimately applied. For instance, in any a stable atom, the repulsive gravity releases are miniscule, they occur mostly at a level below photons of whatever, the structure is maintained and explosions of the past are contained by internal pressures. Not so however when something like enriched uranium is bombarded and broken down, then the past is released to a greater degree, segments of the past that explode become divided from the relative position of nowness they once had, but are rapidly bound again by this very time shift (also known as "movement") that causes pressure equalisation.

[You sure are a weirdo, Jamesh!]

[brokenhead]

Not even perception?

This culd be a semantic difference, but I have experienced deep (non REM) sleep, and remain totally unaware of any perception during it, if any.

[brokenhead]

From a logical perspective, introducing a creator God doesn't solve anything. All it does is shift the "problem" of beginninglessness from the universe onto your God. Nothing has essentially changed.

We are just discovering how intimately related consciousness and physical events are.

All I am doing is proposing that Consciousness is primal, beginningless and endless. Everything, including causality, is dependent on this First (uncaused) cause.

Does this mean Consciousness is eternal and has no beginning in time?

-

Yes that's exactly what I mean.

[brokenhead]

If you don't know what God is, then how do you know you are actually having a relationship with God and not indulging in a fantasy of your own making? The short answer is, you don't.

The short answer it may be. The correct one, it definitely is not.

Knowledge of God is the very first step towards having a God-relationship, and one can only begin to do that by uncovering the universal principles which express the nature of God.

You missed my point. Knowledge of another person, whether divine or human, is not the first step in having a relationship. You are mistaken. You are keen to point out above "AS above, so below." What is true in the mortal realm is true in the divine: getting to know God is the nature of the relationship; knowing God is not any kind of prerequisite at all.

Psychologically, you need such a figure in your life. That is the honest reality.

Thank you for being honest about someone else's reality. You do not know me, you are not a psychologist or trained in psychology. Perhaps you should stick with analyzing your own psyche.

No, I'm saying that it is impossible for them to be causally independent because, logically speaking, each universe has the potential to causally influence the others.

It is difficult for me to believe that such an obviously intelligent person could maintain something of this nature. This "potential" simply does not exist in the scenario of independent universes. They are causally independent!

Do you seriously imagine that I have not deeply thought about all these things before?

Do you seriously imagine that no one else has???

[brokenhead]

brokenhead: However, you admit here the possibility of countless universes. That is a good first step.
David Quinn: Do you seriously imagine that I have not deeply thought about all these things before?

You know, don't you, David, that I was needling you here? I don't believe either of us are quite done thinking, do you? I for one am usually suspicious of anyone who seems to think he has no more to learn, so rather than be suspicious of myself - because I do have a tendency to believe I have it all figured out at times- I deliberately tear down my assumptions if I feel they are getting the best of me.