Skybird
02-10-06, 05:24 AM
After all my fighting against Islam, Bush, buggy software in general and starforce in special, now something conciliatory and contemplative. Let'S see how many people are willing and able to follow me into the depths of my inner dungeon of abstract philosophizing :lol: :-j The following I wrote two weekends ago, while beeing bored.
In vino veritas, they say - if that is true, while some religions prohibit alcohol, there may be some magic to be found in a reasonably small glass of delicious red whine, like I just had one. There is a phase of transition between being sober and reaching the state of where your mind is seriously lulled, when you feel that your mind is somewhat lifted, where it has passed beyond a barrier that ordinary-day-thinking and pragmatic logic and common sense usually erect. Your thinking gets wings for some minutes, and develops a life of it’s own. But – it lasts not for long.
Imagine: TIME. What is it? Einstein said, space and time are relative, and they are a continuum. What is a continuum, then? A continuum in my understanding is a set of mental rules, or thinking patterns, that decide that certain variables shall be considered to belong together, without being able to exist as separate qualities outside this imagined matrix that forms them into a pair of mutually dependent qualities or quantities of something. In other words: I consider a continuum to be theoretical construct that helps a way of thinking and making assumptions about the universe we seem to experience as being “there”, outside of “ourselves”, our bodies, our egos.
What if time has no physical existence as a quality that related to the changing events of processes, in one causal direction from cause towards effect? What if time “t” is only a function of mind “m”: f(m)=t ? This would mean that we ourselves are the source of time, that time is a state of mind, and it would explain why we perceive time intervals of – physically – identical length as being of different lengths nevertheless, in our subjective interpretation. Remember the time when you were a small kid, how endlessly long days have seemed to be, and how time seemed to have rushed by faster and faster the older you became. Everything was long-lasting, was big, was far away when you were small and young, today everything is much shorter living, smaller, close-by. But even age is no general rule. Consider yourself in two different situations, let’s say a situation of positive expectation, and fear or pain. Waiting for your lover is one thing – waiting for the dentist being done with that hole in your tooth is something different. An equal time interval of five minutes appears to be of different length to you, depending on what mood you are in, and the intensiveness of your experience also varies. Time can pass quickly, or painfully slow. Time is a function of your mind, isn’t it?
Our mind changes through various stages of our development, from our baby times over our childhood to the hot intensity of perception when we are juveniles and young adults, time seems to run faster and faster. But when we have become adults and have left the first half of our lifes behind, when he have arrived in our social role and maybe found peace of mind and some security (may it be caused by our way of thinking of things, or by material “facts”), eventually a relaxation in our minds is able to counter this constant acceleration. This brings back rest and a more comfortable speedframe into our usual living – we stop chasing life, but learn to enjoy it and be happy with what it has offered us so far. Eventually means: if life was not pushing us around too hard. If life has pushed us into a constant panic and state of emergency, or existential fear, we seem to be living by hectic exclusively, and our existence wastes it’s precious lifetime like a racing car wastes expensive gas on the autobahn. When they ran out of their fuel, both come to a complete halt. But the car can be refuelled – the decisive difference.
By using the concept of time our mind describes our interaction with the dimension of space. Giving a length in an “expression of range”, a hundred meters for example, does not make sense to us, is of no meaning to us that we could imagine. We experience a given quantity of “space” by transiting through it, which consumes time. In a way we translate the expression “1km” into “takes me two minutes to get there.”
Think of astronomy. There we deal with distances and dimensions of space that we cannot imagine. What do we do in astronomy? We translate distance into times. We say it takes us so and so long to reach that galaxy, that solar system, that pulsar. And our science followed that need of our mind, it introduced the concept of “lightyears”. The term, if you think of it, combines the dimensions of space (distance) and time.
But if we perceive a “distance” out there, a space, a cosmos and universe, and in our thinking habit that we call space-time-continuum it is linked to the dimension of time, and if time is no fixed physical variable, but a function of our mind, so that we create and decide how much or how little, how fast or how slow “time” is, by that determining the nature and quality of distance/space – what is space then anything different than a construction of our own thinking? Determined by the nature of what we call our mind? Is space out there – a space inside us? Does the German word “Weltraum” (space) maybe mean “Innenraum” (inner space) instead?
An inner space we can explore, it is within our reach. If our inner space includes what we call outer space, space trekking then maybe should be replaced with mind trekking.
When I am alone in a clear night, and look up at the stars, or when I think about certain scientific expression and relations and values of fixed variables, then I sometimes have the strong conviction that all this cannot be by pure chance alone. That it has a hidden meaning that is waiting to be understood by me, by us. Who can look at the stars and despite the enormous abyss both in time and space that is separating them from us – every look into the universe is a look into it’s past, shows us only how it has been, not how it actually is – who can do so and do not feel a strange, but certain link, or connection between our life, and them? Our bodies cannot reach them, but with our minds we reach for them nevertheless, through time and space. Is the universe of matter maybe just a universe of mind? “Every thing and item has Buddha-nature”, say Buddhists, and Christioan mystics say: “God is all and everywhere”. But by the act of perception and observation, by the act of mental interpretation of what we perceive and creating relations between observations and calling this scientific laws, theories, paradigms – our thinking and reflection are constructing the meaning of things, they are linking them, our interpretation is the source of their meaning. Or in other words: WE are the meaning, the link between all what exists, the sense of life we struggle so hard to find. What other meaning of life can there be than – to live?
If we are really 6 billion different individuals on this planet, each of these constructing with his mind his own universe with a dimension of space – does this mean that there are six billion different universes, then? Or is our usual assumption that our minds are individual, a folly, maybe? Is there only one mind – OURS? Six billion faces of one and the same being?
What does us make standing apart from space/cosmos, then? In a way it appears to me that our concept of space sciences is seriously flawed. We think it is a scientific research to the outside, to the “new West”, conquering the new frontier, overcoming the distance/the space that separates us from that frontier. I feel that this way of thinking is wrong. It gives answers to questions – at the price of even more questions. With each knowledge we gain – we understand that our lacking understanding has grown. We are not closer to final answers, but we are aware of even more questions instead. Doing like this hasn’t given us peace of mind, or the certainty of knowledge, we are not more happy and not more peaceful than before. It is knowledge of only very limited use, it does not give us answers to the real important questions: who am I? where do I go? How much time do I have left? Why am I here? This is what we want to know, and hope the answers would give us peace of mind, not if the dark side of the moon has this or that mineral in a crater. That is entertaining to find out, but only pleases our curiosity. It is nothing substantial. Do we need not so much space travelling in usual understanding but more a discovery of “inner spaces”, research being done in regard to our own minds? Many old cultures thought so. And an old wise saying teaches us: if you want to change the world, change the mental attitude in which you see it. Is all that space out there – in reality not inside ourselves? Inside our minds? How can we ever hope to cover the abyss between the stars and galaxies and supergalaxies with such unimaginable distances separating them, if we think in concepts of linear flight from A to B ? Isn’t that absurd? What if the key to spaceflight and reaching far away places – lies in ourselves, what if the travel is more an inner, a mental means of transportation, transporting not so much our material body, but our minds? Is there a limit to what our mind can do, can achieve? I think the only limit to our mind is our imagination. A big imagination therefore is a divine gift. Einstein even said: imagination is more important than knowledge. It can lead to where with limited means a true expression of something infinite, unlimited can be achieved. This is a form of beauty, imo. It seems to happen in mathematics. I am not very competent in the field of mathematics, but I envy those who are. It’s a divine language they speak. Maybe some of you know David Zindell’s wonderful science fiction novel “Neverness”. I always found his fantasy of the pilots conducting space flight by “falling through the infinite expressions of that storm of numbers (Zahlensturm), following the paths of equations and variables” most fascinating, and very poetic.
Is that ocean of suns and stars, those galaxies amongst myriads of galaxies, grouped in myriads of supergalaxies, is it even made for us humans? Is it real or only an artificial structure we put on our myriads of perceptions to give the order, structure, a future that we can control and be certain of? Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to assume that these dimensions are such that they are beyond reach of humans, so that we cannot reach there as long as we stay human? Depending on a material body, being handicapped by our concept of what our mind is – an intellectual machine only? We define “human” as having this body, being this biological species with all it’s material characteristics. I’m sure this species is not made to reach for the stars. It must overcome itself, it must leave the state of being human behind, it must transcend itself. If matter is no longer limiting mind, then distance and space loose their importance, because matter only is a frozen state of time, one moment in time that had coagulated temporarily, to word it like this. It does not stay like that forever, it is transformed, from matter to matter, eventually from matter to energy, and vice versa.
Which brings us to the concept of energy. In a poet’s understanding, energy is light. Light itself is invisible as long as it does not hit matter, but by light’s presence: matter (coagulated time) becomes visible. Without light(energy), matter and therefore: time, would mean nothing. Without time/matter being transformed into energy/light, there would be no light. Both things are two different “Aggregatszustände” of one and the same thing that finds expression through both. It expresses itself in the dichotomy of matter and light, both are expressions of the one and true nature behind them. Without light/energy, there wouldn’t be a cosmos we could experience with out senses, with our minds. The cosmos IS light/energy, and so are we.
Is light maybe an expression of the one cosmic quality some religions that try to stay away from personalized, theistic idols refer to as God, cosmic mind, divine spirit? In such religions the positive principle, for easier use I refer to it as “God” exclusively in the following, always is described as the side of light, not darkness. Darkness is of evil, they think. But truth is, there is no region in space that is a complete empty void. There is matter or energy all around, radiation, gas, particle clouds, matter, waves. Where we perceive an absence of light/energy/God, we only admit our inability to see their presence. That way, an evil itself (understood as the absence of light/energy/God) does not exist. Evil is: our lacking knowledge of the omnipresence of light/energy/God. Our lacking faith that they are there, this is our sin. Sin means: not to know. It means lacking insight, it means: just to believe something, maybe this, or that – it doesn’t mean anything. Knowing is not believing. Knowing is an empirically justified confidence that is based on direct, immediate experience of such an intense quality that it is beyond any doubt. You cannot believe in “God”. You can only know of “God”. But even if you do not see the light, it nevertheless is there. You cannot be in an empty void. You cannot be outside God. What you call “evil” – is only your lacking knowledge, your lacking insight. “Sin” means only a state of mind that still is handicapped by this kind of lacking knowledge.
Light reveals to our eyes the universe of matter, in a wider understanding energy reveals to us the complex facets and different states of matter that it can reveal itself in, that’s why we not only use optical telescopes, but radiotelescopes and particle-detectors and who-knows-what as well. By discovering the universe, we discover ourselves. But since we think that time is passing while these energies reach our detectors from far away, it a the past only that we see. When observing the universe, we reach for it not only through space, but also through time. What was it with time? Haven’t we said that time is a function of our mind? So…? Our conclusions…?
Whatever we do, in what ever a way we look at it – we are always pointed back to ourselves. And it is here where we need to search for answers. We must not try to get here or there – we are already there, for “here” and “there” is inside our mind, so is all time, past, present and future. It’s all a giant show, an entertaining riddle that is created to help our mind to realize itself. Self-knowledge is the first and primary goal of all science, and all religion, both are just two ways to towards the same goal, and they must not be exclusive to each other. The universe is an empty mirror, it only shows the one who is looking into it. If we look with an anxious expression on our face, then we see somebody who looks tensed, and dangerous, and we feel we need to defend, and the other looks even more dangerous. Go figure what could happen if we look into that mirror – and smile. In this universe, there is no limitation, no beginning and no ending. Universe is mind, and mind simply IS, wothout cause, without need, without meaning, nowhere it comes from, nowhere it does to. One could say, it just plays with itself.
-----
If you think I’m queer, than what would you think of that excentric British scientist, who – some years ago – published a book in which he seriously argued on basis of the quantum theory, that the discovery of a certain basic quantum matrix means nothing else than that theoretically the rise of the dead at the end of time is no absurdity, but a certainty for sure. Unfortunately I do not remember his name, but his was boosted with self-confidence. Crazy, these Brits :-j
In vino veritas, they say - if that is true, while some religions prohibit alcohol, there may be some magic to be found in a reasonably small glass of delicious red whine, like I just had one. There is a phase of transition between being sober and reaching the state of where your mind is seriously lulled, when you feel that your mind is somewhat lifted, where it has passed beyond a barrier that ordinary-day-thinking and pragmatic logic and common sense usually erect. Your thinking gets wings for some minutes, and develops a life of it’s own. But – it lasts not for long.
Imagine: TIME. What is it? Einstein said, space and time are relative, and they are a continuum. What is a continuum, then? A continuum in my understanding is a set of mental rules, or thinking patterns, that decide that certain variables shall be considered to belong together, without being able to exist as separate qualities outside this imagined matrix that forms them into a pair of mutually dependent qualities or quantities of something. In other words: I consider a continuum to be theoretical construct that helps a way of thinking and making assumptions about the universe we seem to experience as being “there”, outside of “ourselves”, our bodies, our egos.
What if time has no physical existence as a quality that related to the changing events of processes, in one causal direction from cause towards effect? What if time “t” is only a function of mind “m”: f(m)=t ? This would mean that we ourselves are the source of time, that time is a state of mind, and it would explain why we perceive time intervals of – physically – identical length as being of different lengths nevertheless, in our subjective interpretation. Remember the time when you were a small kid, how endlessly long days have seemed to be, and how time seemed to have rushed by faster and faster the older you became. Everything was long-lasting, was big, was far away when you were small and young, today everything is much shorter living, smaller, close-by. But even age is no general rule. Consider yourself in two different situations, let’s say a situation of positive expectation, and fear or pain. Waiting for your lover is one thing – waiting for the dentist being done with that hole in your tooth is something different. An equal time interval of five minutes appears to be of different length to you, depending on what mood you are in, and the intensiveness of your experience also varies. Time can pass quickly, or painfully slow. Time is a function of your mind, isn’t it?
Our mind changes through various stages of our development, from our baby times over our childhood to the hot intensity of perception when we are juveniles and young adults, time seems to run faster and faster. But when we have become adults and have left the first half of our lifes behind, when he have arrived in our social role and maybe found peace of mind and some security (may it be caused by our way of thinking of things, or by material “facts”), eventually a relaxation in our minds is able to counter this constant acceleration. This brings back rest and a more comfortable speedframe into our usual living – we stop chasing life, but learn to enjoy it and be happy with what it has offered us so far. Eventually means: if life was not pushing us around too hard. If life has pushed us into a constant panic and state of emergency, or existential fear, we seem to be living by hectic exclusively, and our existence wastes it’s precious lifetime like a racing car wastes expensive gas on the autobahn. When they ran out of their fuel, both come to a complete halt. But the car can be refuelled – the decisive difference.
By using the concept of time our mind describes our interaction with the dimension of space. Giving a length in an “expression of range”, a hundred meters for example, does not make sense to us, is of no meaning to us that we could imagine. We experience a given quantity of “space” by transiting through it, which consumes time. In a way we translate the expression “1km” into “takes me two minutes to get there.”
Think of astronomy. There we deal with distances and dimensions of space that we cannot imagine. What do we do in astronomy? We translate distance into times. We say it takes us so and so long to reach that galaxy, that solar system, that pulsar. And our science followed that need of our mind, it introduced the concept of “lightyears”. The term, if you think of it, combines the dimensions of space (distance) and time.
But if we perceive a “distance” out there, a space, a cosmos and universe, and in our thinking habit that we call space-time-continuum it is linked to the dimension of time, and if time is no fixed physical variable, but a function of our mind, so that we create and decide how much or how little, how fast or how slow “time” is, by that determining the nature and quality of distance/space – what is space then anything different than a construction of our own thinking? Determined by the nature of what we call our mind? Is space out there – a space inside us? Does the German word “Weltraum” (space) maybe mean “Innenraum” (inner space) instead?
An inner space we can explore, it is within our reach. If our inner space includes what we call outer space, space trekking then maybe should be replaced with mind trekking.
When I am alone in a clear night, and look up at the stars, or when I think about certain scientific expression and relations and values of fixed variables, then I sometimes have the strong conviction that all this cannot be by pure chance alone. That it has a hidden meaning that is waiting to be understood by me, by us. Who can look at the stars and despite the enormous abyss both in time and space that is separating them from us – every look into the universe is a look into it’s past, shows us only how it has been, not how it actually is – who can do so and do not feel a strange, but certain link, or connection between our life, and them? Our bodies cannot reach them, but with our minds we reach for them nevertheless, through time and space. Is the universe of matter maybe just a universe of mind? “Every thing and item has Buddha-nature”, say Buddhists, and Christioan mystics say: “God is all and everywhere”. But by the act of perception and observation, by the act of mental interpretation of what we perceive and creating relations between observations and calling this scientific laws, theories, paradigms – our thinking and reflection are constructing the meaning of things, they are linking them, our interpretation is the source of their meaning. Or in other words: WE are the meaning, the link between all what exists, the sense of life we struggle so hard to find. What other meaning of life can there be than – to live?
If we are really 6 billion different individuals on this planet, each of these constructing with his mind his own universe with a dimension of space – does this mean that there are six billion different universes, then? Or is our usual assumption that our minds are individual, a folly, maybe? Is there only one mind – OURS? Six billion faces of one and the same being?
What does us make standing apart from space/cosmos, then? In a way it appears to me that our concept of space sciences is seriously flawed. We think it is a scientific research to the outside, to the “new West”, conquering the new frontier, overcoming the distance/the space that separates us from that frontier. I feel that this way of thinking is wrong. It gives answers to questions – at the price of even more questions. With each knowledge we gain – we understand that our lacking understanding has grown. We are not closer to final answers, but we are aware of even more questions instead. Doing like this hasn’t given us peace of mind, or the certainty of knowledge, we are not more happy and not more peaceful than before. It is knowledge of only very limited use, it does not give us answers to the real important questions: who am I? where do I go? How much time do I have left? Why am I here? This is what we want to know, and hope the answers would give us peace of mind, not if the dark side of the moon has this or that mineral in a crater. That is entertaining to find out, but only pleases our curiosity. It is nothing substantial. Do we need not so much space travelling in usual understanding but more a discovery of “inner spaces”, research being done in regard to our own minds? Many old cultures thought so. And an old wise saying teaches us: if you want to change the world, change the mental attitude in which you see it. Is all that space out there – in reality not inside ourselves? Inside our minds? How can we ever hope to cover the abyss between the stars and galaxies and supergalaxies with such unimaginable distances separating them, if we think in concepts of linear flight from A to B ? Isn’t that absurd? What if the key to spaceflight and reaching far away places – lies in ourselves, what if the travel is more an inner, a mental means of transportation, transporting not so much our material body, but our minds? Is there a limit to what our mind can do, can achieve? I think the only limit to our mind is our imagination. A big imagination therefore is a divine gift. Einstein even said: imagination is more important than knowledge. It can lead to where with limited means a true expression of something infinite, unlimited can be achieved. This is a form of beauty, imo. It seems to happen in mathematics. I am not very competent in the field of mathematics, but I envy those who are. It’s a divine language they speak. Maybe some of you know David Zindell’s wonderful science fiction novel “Neverness”. I always found his fantasy of the pilots conducting space flight by “falling through the infinite expressions of that storm of numbers (Zahlensturm), following the paths of equations and variables” most fascinating, and very poetic.
Is that ocean of suns and stars, those galaxies amongst myriads of galaxies, grouped in myriads of supergalaxies, is it even made for us humans? Is it real or only an artificial structure we put on our myriads of perceptions to give the order, structure, a future that we can control and be certain of? Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to assume that these dimensions are such that they are beyond reach of humans, so that we cannot reach there as long as we stay human? Depending on a material body, being handicapped by our concept of what our mind is – an intellectual machine only? We define “human” as having this body, being this biological species with all it’s material characteristics. I’m sure this species is not made to reach for the stars. It must overcome itself, it must leave the state of being human behind, it must transcend itself. If matter is no longer limiting mind, then distance and space loose their importance, because matter only is a frozen state of time, one moment in time that had coagulated temporarily, to word it like this. It does not stay like that forever, it is transformed, from matter to matter, eventually from matter to energy, and vice versa.
Which brings us to the concept of energy. In a poet’s understanding, energy is light. Light itself is invisible as long as it does not hit matter, but by light’s presence: matter (coagulated time) becomes visible. Without light(energy), matter and therefore: time, would mean nothing. Without time/matter being transformed into energy/light, there would be no light. Both things are two different “Aggregatszustände” of one and the same thing that finds expression through both. It expresses itself in the dichotomy of matter and light, both are expressions of the one and true nature behind them. Without light/energy, there wouldn’t be a cosmos we could experience with out senses, with our minds. The cosmos IS light/energy, and so are we.
Is light maybe an expression of the one cosmic quality some religions that try to stay away from personalized, theistic idols refer to as God, cosmic mind, divine spirit? In such religions the positive principle, for easier use I refer to it as “God” exclusively in the following, always is described as the side of light, not darkness. Darkness is of evil, they think. But truth is, there is no region in space that is a complete empty void. There is matter or energy all around, radiation, gas, particle clouds, matter, waves. Where we perceive an absence of light/energy/God, we only admit our inability to see their presence. That way, an evil itself (understood as the absence of light/energy/God) does not exist. Evil is: our lacking knowledge of the omnipresence of light/energy/God. Our lacking faith that they are there, this is our sin. Sin means: not to know. It means lacking insight, it means: just to believe something, maybe this, or that – it doesn’t mean anything. Knowing is not believing. Knowing is an empirically justified confidence that is based on direct, immediate experience of such an intense quality that it is beyond any doubt. You cannot believe in “God”. You can only know of “God”. But even if you do not see the light, it nevertheless is there. You cannot be in an empty void. You cannot be outside God. What you call “evil” – is only your lacking knowledge, your lacking insight. “Sin” means only a state of mind that still is handicapped by this kind of lacking knowledge.
Light reveals to our eyes the universe of matter, in a wider understanding energy reveals to us the complex facets and different states of matter that it can reveal itself in, that’s why we not only use optical telescopes, but radiotelescopes and particle-detectors and who-knows-what as well. By discovering the universe, we discover ourselves. But since we think that time is passing while these energies reach our detectors from far away, it a the past only that we see. When observing the universe, we reach for it not only through space, but also through time. What was it with time? Haven’t we said that time is a function of our mind? So…? Our conclusions…?
Whatever we do, in what ever a way we look at it – we are always pointed back to ourselves. And it is here where we need to search for answers. We must not try to get here or there – we are already there, for “here” and “there” is inside our mind, so is all time, past, present and future. It’s all a giant show, an entertaining riddle that is created to help our mind to realize itself. Self-knowledge is the first and primary goal of all science, and all religion, both are just two ways to towards the same goal, and they must not be exclusive to each other. The universe is an empty mirror, it only shows the one who is looking into it. If we look with an anxious expression on our face, then we see somebody who looks tensed, and dangerous, and we feel we need to defend, and the other looks even more dangerous. Go figure what could happen if we look into that mirror – and smile. In this universe, there is no limitation, no beginning and no ending. Universe is mind, and mind simply IS, wothout cause, without need, without meaning, nowhere it comes from, nowhere it does to. One could say, it just plays with itself.
-----
If you think I’m queer, than what would you think of that excentric British scientist, who – some years ago – published a book in which he seriously argued on basis of the quantum theory, that the discovery of a certain basic quantum matrix means nothing else than that theoretically the rise of the dead at the end of time is no absurdity, but a certainty for sure. Unfortunately I do not remember his name, but his was boosted with self-confidence. Crazy, these Brits :-j