And if the many perceptions/experiences create an energy field which is permanent and influences humans down through the generations, akin to Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance theories, then that might explain the consistency of human experiences and perceptions.
And since the human mind appears to be hardwired for such perceptions/habits then in the same way that we have certain human habits and physiological responses, because of what we are, then so too, this world exists as it is because of who and what we are and does so in ways which resonate with all humans, perhaps to lesser and greater degrees for some exceptions or some circumstances.
Out of body and what are called Near Death Experiences, frequently describe experiences which are outside of, or beyond time, or without a time factor. This suggests that time is a factor of our human minds as they are expressed through our material brains. Time is a useful tool in our material world but perhaps unnecessary in worlds beyond it.
Thank you, Roslyn -- I like your perspective, and I'm glad to be in touch with you. The ideas you've brought up are original and compelling, and they don't yet rise to the level of a testable theory. I'd say the same for my ideas in this substack article and for Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance . I hope we can combine and frame our visions and collectively move toward expanding science.
There is a saying, science advances one death at a time as the old guard exit and new minds can replace them.
Having read a lot of science and medical history it seems to me that change in both of those fields is often sourced in - AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME - and perhaps the slow and sluggish impetus to change is not a bad thing given the potential for harm in both science and medicine.
The rocketing pace of change in the past half century is not a good thing, even if some see it as clever and impressive. We humans have changed very little mentally, emotionally and psychologically in thousands of years and in many ways are like children let loose in a gun shop where we have some idea what these 'weapons' can do but little idea about how to use them sensibly and carefully, and indeed, do not have the 'strength' to handle them as carefully as needed.
I agree that "the rocketing pace of change" is faster than our culture can keep up. For me, personally, I find it thrilling to participate in a historic moment when the shape of the planet and our human relation to it are transforming. I first wrote about this 3 years ago when I was hit by a car, flat on my back in the hospital, and felt it was time to write my truth without reservation. https://experimentalfrontiers.scienceblog.com/2021/08/19/what-happened-to-atlantis-what-will-happen-to-us/
The biggest danger, in my opinion, is that there are a few corrupt people who have secret access to advanced technology and are using it to try to take over all of us. Weather warfare, fires, attacks on farms and food processing facilities, pandemics...
I am not sure rocketing pace of change is ever a good thing for and in itself. Yes, there can be dramatic transformative moments in this material world but they are moments and not decades of rocketing and often not understood and not even regulated changes. We still know so little but have a capacity to interfere so much.
We see this particularly in medicine where mechanical processes are introduced to human bodies with no understanding of negative effects and indeed, no concern or care about such things.
There was a time when science-medicine held the view that it took two generations to know the full effects of a treatment, particularly a radical treatment where the first generation grew up to live a relatively normal life in terms of health and gave birth to children who did the same. If we take 70 years as an average longevity, that says, 140 years are needed before we can properly know what effects result from the treatment.
But now that modern science-medicine is money and power driven, such caution does not exist. Any study of IVF and vaccines would say we have another century and more to go for the former and close to a century for the latter but the rocketing pace of use of these artificial medical treatments continues apace.
You said: Weather warfare, fires, attacks on farms and food processing facilities, pandemics...
All of this has been going on for close to a century, increasingly in the past 50 years, and it is driven by power and profit and the fact that science long ago sold its soul to Government and corporations. The damage is done regardless of whether or not, some exist, as you believe, who wish to manipulate such things in order to dominate humanity and the world.
I have found, through reading and observation, that there is more than enough, greed, stupidity, arrogance, ignorance, self-serving incompetence to create any kind of chaos and destruction without the slightest plan. Conspiracy theories may well have substance but I doubt they are the real cause of most of the horrors humans create and inflict.
"Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, dass ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als bekehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, dass ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und dass die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist."
This translates to:
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Yes, and I did paraphrase and should have said so. I read a lot of science history and while I am sure there remains in the scientific system people with such perceptive insights, I am not sure the system respects such thinking.
The conversations between Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung would perhaps not happen today. I could be wrong. I am an amateur in terms of the field of science. An observer not a participant.
But perhaps such relationships and forms of questioning are returning as you stand as an example.
Such concepts or theories cannot be testable under the materialist reductionist mechanistic mindset of modern medicine. Such a nuts and bolts approach is valuable but it is limited. Science as a system of enquiry needs to broaden its approach. The mechanistic mindset is absolutely brilliant for making machines and techo toys, but next to useless and even more dangerous when applied to the natural world.
Having said that, I expect as energy/frequency/sound/light is explored, particularly in medicine, there will come greater insights. Although the pace will be slow because as long as science and medicine remain profit and power driven and in the hands of Governments and corporations, there is little which will be researched or tested unless it is believed that great profits await.
And science and medicine need to return to the empirical approach, generally cast aside because it is slow and we live in an age of quick fix, quick money and fast change when money can be made. Humans gathered enormous resources from observation over thousands of years, if indeed, not millions, and modern science, at least in the last couple of centuries, has chosen to look with disdain on such wisdom and indeed the wisdom of the past.
If I still needed convincing about quantum entanglement, the timing of this article is an uncanny reinforcement! I was wrestling with alternative notions of time just a couple of days ago and thought of you. Consciousness as the observer makes the most sense in explaining quantum time. Yet, it doesn't quite set my mind at ease for an understanding of the purpose of the universe.
The discoveries of quantum science are making it increasingly difficult to defend the Big Bang theory of linear time. Following the second law of thermodynamics with its ever-rising entropy means we would logically end with a dead universe stabilized at zero energy to do anything useful, most of all to sustain life. Even if time reverses, symmetrically or asymmetrically, from the apogee of the universe's expansion, a Big Crunch at the end of the reversal assumes finite time and, therefore, a finite universe.
The Vedic concept of cyclical time, which I have long been partial to over linear time, doesn't quite turn the trick either. While it captures eternal time and an eternal universe with no finite end, the concept has its limits. If each cycle of Yugas is a predicted rinse and repeat of the previous, does it not make existence a stale affair? Perhaps not to an individual who may have no awareness of having lived through the previous such Yuga. But what about the individual's consciousness, which is said to be a part of the collective eternal consciousness or Brahman? Pushing this to the extreme, even if creations go through an experiential existence that excites, momentarily, will the creator not suffer from boredom?
The Buddhist view of time improvises over repeating Yugic cycles of circular time. It holds time to be a non-conceptualizable feature of the universe captured only by the cause-effect relationship between karmic action and consequence. This is perhaps as close as metaphysics can get to Newtonian physics of action-reaction and the observer effect of quantum physics. However, it does not answer the persistent-insistent question: what is the purpose of the universe? The perfection of Nirvana's voidness leaves the question up in the air since it requires one to accept the universe is an out of nothing back to nothing and nothing thereafter phenomenon. Existence is meaningful only by becoming non-existent. A gigantic mind-bender.
The theory of block time seems to straddle finite linear time and eternal time. The simultaneous coexistence of past, present and future (a la Schrodinger) is alluring in a number of ways. For example, it makes time travel possible into both the future and the past. Although you don't say so explicitly, your statement about observation causing the past to move forward to create a future implies it. Did you mean 'the' future or 'a' future? If it is the predetermined future, it afflicts the universe with 'sameness' which even the fourth dimension of time does little to dispel. Despite its elegance, block time harks back to oriental fatalism, long derided as a defeatist approach to life lacking in human agency. Why bother about the rightness of wrongness of any human action if none of it can alter the future?
No discussion of time can be isolated from the purpose of the universe. That the universe may have come about randomly without purpose is a stretch too far. Its adherence to certain fundamental laws still in the process of discovery suggest method and reason. We cannot define the laws without understanding the reasoning behind them.
We intuitively feel that the future is open, and that we have a role in creating it. This is free will, and I won't give it up. As Isaac Bashevis Singer says, "We have to believe in free will. We have no choice."
The realization that intention has a role in shaping quantum probabilities is the opening in physical theory where free will is allowed to enter.
Not asking you to as I feel the same. A predetermined future unalterable by any human action or event in the present will make existence an exceedingly dull affair. The intelligence which created such a complex universe will not have been so lacking in imagination.
I wonder if we live a story, written before birth, and, like a play, we have a set, cast, storyline which allows free-will to be used as a director or actor would interpret, but in essence, the story stands as the manifestation of individual or entity/system.
There is much which happens in life where we do not get to choose anything but how we respond to it and what we do with it. Our free will is active, to lesser and greater degrees depending upon individual nature and circumstance, on that count.
A read a study years ago about the mental health and contentment of older people, where it revealed that what happens to people is not the reason why they are happy or sad, contented or discontented, traumatised or not, but how they think about their experiences and whether or not they gain meaning and purpose from the experiences.
This would no doubt explain why other studies reveal better general health and emotional and psychological health in those with religious commitment and faith.
We humans seem hardwired to find meaning and purpose and indeed, any study of the natural world would say that meaning and purpose are inherent. All of which makes a random universe a tad irrational.
Careful not to conflate the First Law of Thermodynamics with the Second. The first is about conservation of ENERGY; the second is about increase of ENTROPY.
I've always thought of the Yugas not as literal replays of circular time but rather characterizations of different historical stages which tend to occur in a certain sequence. History is a spiral, not a circle.
"Block time" is the denial of a "now". As I said, it's a perversion of science to tell us that our experience is an illusion. Science owes us an explanation for our experience, not a dismissal.
All discussions of the Yuga cycle that I have come across are moot on the subject. The sequence of the four Yugas and the duration of each are identical. So also is their characterization. Some points of speculation from my subjective interpretation:
a) One Yuga cycle of four Yugas has a duration of 4.3 million years. A Kalpa, consisting of 1,000 such cycles, adds up to 4.3 billion years. Radiometric age-dating by modern science estimates the earth to be 4.5 billion years. Too close to be a coincidence? It depends on what happens at the end of a Kalpa.
b) If these numbers are viewed in spatial terms, one inference could be the earth is destroyed and a new Kalpa megacycle begins on another planet. The new Kalpa on Planet Tabula Rasa will obviously be quite different from the one on Planet Earth, influenced by its size, ecology, life support capabilities and life forms. Alternatively, each habitable planet has its own Yuga cycle and many such planets already exist.
c) There are two rather different views on what distinguishes one Yuga from another. The first, based on morality or moral principles, is the more common. It begins with Satya Yuga (Age of Truth), Treta Yuga (Age of 2/3rds Truth, 1/3rd Untruth), Dwapara Yuga (Age of ½ Truth, ½ Untruth) and Kali Yuga (Age of Deceit). A descent from virtue to vice, in other words. The second, based on human capabilities, is more appealing. The Satya Yuga begins as the Age of Spirit when the human intellect (or consciousness) is at its highest potential, aware of everything in and out of itself, in commune with the universe...an age of love and harmony where people are like demi-gods with powers such as telekinesis, teleportation and so on. The Yugas that follow mark a rising erosion of these capabilities and a final plunge into the Age of Materialism when all such capabilities are lost. From the spiritual to the material, so to speak. (https://www.ananda.org/blog/age-energy-intro-yugas/)
d) In either case, the sequence is from order to chaos to a complete reset beginning all over again. Since we are currently in the last or worst of these Yugas, I wonder if it is beyond our reach to understand the universe until the earth, or its new surrogate, reboots.
e) Last, there are intriguing parallels between the Yuga cycle's theory of time and the seculae of human generational theory, as articulated famously by William Strauss and Neil Howe.
I'm grateful for your deep knowledge of the Puranas and the Gita. I take all this to heart, and want to know about it. But my orientation is primarily scientific, and I'm looking to understand the Yugas in terms that connect with astronomers' and geologists' accounts of the earth's past.
That said, I'm aware that the evidence for the Big Bang is dependent on some Big Assumptions, and that there are contradictions of the standard Big Bang model in present astronomical observations. Putting together ancient wisdom with modern science to create a better picture of history is one of the deepest and most rewarding challenges that I know of.
In terms of this statement - the sequence is from order to chaos to a complete reset beginning all over again.
Which is what happens again and again in the natural world and indeed in the human body and mind.
I wonder if both religion and science should be interpreted metaphorically instead of simply literally. As Carl Jung said, symbol is the lost language of the soul and symbol and metaphor have a powerful impact on human minds.
As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
In the last few centuries the rational mind has been set in place to dominate the intuitive and yet the best minds work in balance between left and right function. Some of the greatest discoveries have been sourced in right brain function and then made manifest and functional by the application of left brain function. One example which springs to mind is the inventor of the sewing machine who was stumped in his design of the machine in terms of where to put the hole in the needle, until he had a dream which explained in symbol how it should be done.
How could the Yugas be seen as metaphor and what aspects of life in this world could be akin to those metaphors?
All ancient religious texts are part morals illustrated by metaphorical anecdotes and part history of particular geographical locations, characters and events. The specificity of the latter distracts from the near universality of the former. I believe this is the main source of religious friction and religion-induced conflict.
Are moral lessons, therefore, lost because of their metaphorical presentation? Does the specificity of history make it more appealing to the rational mind? Perhaps both.
Can science get metaphorical? It depends on whose science we are talking about.
The ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, Greece, Egypt, China, Incas and Mayas clearly had far more scientific knowledge than modern science is willing to credit them with – on astronomy, higher mathematics, gravity, magnetism, metallurgy, architecture, medicine and even atomic physics. However, this knowledge is more often than not inferred from scattered remaining physical evidence of the uses to which it was put, e.g., the pyramids, ziggurats, Sumerian tablets, Nazca lines, Baghdad battery, vimana and so forth. The knowledge itself is either unavailable or buried in the abstract language of ancient texts, overlaid with millennia-old superstition and embellishment, making them mean all things to all men, believer and skeptic alike. If this were not so, our present civilization will have reproduced it a very long time ago.
I think modern science as a discipline should be as precise as it can get. It is a product of the rational mind and its findings should be reproducible with as much exactitude as is possible. Interpreting or illustrating these findings metaphorically can be useful in teaching, communicating with non-scientists and building bridges with other disciplines. In the present context, perhaps this means seeking common ground between physics and metaphysics.
I was struck by Asimov's "In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis" when I first read it over 40 years ago. It still stands out among his copious writings as an analysis that helped clear the fog of confusion in my mind over a number of seeming contradictions between religion and science. Of course, it didn't have all the answers I sought. And I have even more questions today than then. The ignorance of the presumption of knowledge!
(Josh, apologies for grabbing your soccer ball and running away with it to the cricket field. Rest assured this is my last pennyworth on this stimulating thread.)
You said: All ancient religious texts are part morals illustrated by metaphorical anecdotes and part history of particular geographical locations, characters and events.
There are no doubt traces of history but not much of substance. This is not surprising since all of these texts were written by mere mortals, males, who had their own agendas and power dynamics.
I still believe that even that which some might call history is meant as metaphor.
You said: The specificity of the latter distracts from the near universality of the former. I believe this is the main source of religious friction and religion-induced conflict.
I do not think there is much specificity in the latter. But, I do think that the patriarchal age, which no doubt followed a forgotten matriarchal age, led to literality because of left brain function dominance and indeed, preference.
You said: Can science get metaphorical? It depends on whose science we are talking about.
Science, as a system of enquiry, by its nature cannot embrace metaphor. Science can only know what it can measure. That does not mean understand, it just means gain some knowledge from its measurements which often prove useful in terms of effects which can then be utilised if not exploited.
Since much of the natural world and most certainly metaphor, cannot be measured, it seems impossible for the scientific system of enquiry to incorporate them.
However, great scientific minds in centuries past managed to remain open to metaphor, symbol, intuition and that which could not be measured and therefor able to gain or intuit insights which could be measured.
You said: The ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, Greece, Egypt, China, Incas and Mayas clearly had far more scientific knowledge than modern science is willing to credit them with – on astronomy, higher mathematics, gravity, magnetism, metallurgy, architecture, medicine and even atomic physics.
Yes they did but the materialist patriarchal mindset of modern science, in the past few centuries, created an erroneous belief that humans today were smarter than in the past. They rather drank the KoolAid in terms of modern scientific achievement and got drunk on ego.
You said: I think modern science as a discipline should be as precise as it can get. It is a product of the rational mind and its findings should be reproducible with as much exactitude as is possible.
I agree. The scientific system of enquiry as it stands is useful. It just needs to be regulated and discouraged from its role as a cult fundamentalist religion as an option to real religion.
You said: Interpreting or illustrating these findings metaphorically can be useful in teaching, communicating with non-scientists and building bridges with other disciplines. In the present context, perhaps this means seeking common ground between physics and metaphysics.
Yes, I agree but more important is for scientists even within their mechanistic world, to understand the limitations of the system they are using. And interestingly, there are movements to find common ground between physics and metaphysics as well as those aspects of humanity and this world which cannot be measured.
You said: I was struck by Asimov's "In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis" when I first read it over 40 years ago. It still stands out among his copious writings as an analysis that helped clear the fog of confusion in my mind over a number of seeming contradictions between religion and science.
I am not up with what Asimov said, but have studied a lot of religion and scientific history and it long ago seemed to me that where science went wrong was in setting itself up as a foil or counter to religion. Indeed, to the worst of religion and the most fundamentalist.
As psychology would say, that which we condemn in others is that which we deny in ourselves and what we deny is repressed and buried in the unconscious where not only does it not die, it becomes more powerful and will force itself into expression unconsciously.
This is why, I believe, science has become something of a fundamentalist religion, cultlike, which has been termed Scientism. That which science sought to destroy became the same power at work in the scientific system of enquiry today.
There is a very interesting book written by Olivier Clerc, on science-medicine in this regard.
From what I can see, the same comparisons he makes with allopathic medicine can be made for science, which is of course the foundation of modern or conventional medicine. The parent gives birth to the child and the child absorbs the beliefs of the parent.
"History is a spiral, not a circle." If the fundamental model for time is a spiral, does that mean time is fundamentally 3-D? The future may remember us as flat- timers the way we see flat-earthers.
I did read at some point research showing that thought could influence the past as well as the future but recall no more than that.
Perhaps time is all of the things you talk about and part of the task in this material world is to explore time and its capacities for manifestation.
And if in an eternal NOW beyond this material world, past, present and future are one, as some suggest, who or what influences who, what or when?
Astrology, while decried by science, despite being admired and used by some great scientific minds in centuries past, offers insights into forces at work.
Thanks Josh. This is the kind of stuff I may ponder on my routing bike rides. My head is not spinning, but I know that I am an organism with a certain perception of time, and a certain perception of self, which perceptions are widely shared, but not truly demonstrable.
And if the many perceptions/experiences create an energy field which is permanent and influences humans down through the generations, akin to Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance theories, then that might explain the consistency of human experiences and perceptions.
And since the human mind appears to be hardwired for such perceptions/habits then in the same way that we have certain human habits and physiological responses, because of what we are, then so too, this world exists as it is because of who and what we are and does so in ways which resonate with all humans, perhaps to lesser and greater degrees for some exceptions or some circumstances.
Out of body and what are called Near Death Experiences, frequently describe experiences which are outside of, or beyond time, or without a time factor. This suggests that time is a factor of our human minds as they are expressed through our material brains. Time is a useful tool in our material world but perhaps unnecessary in worlds beyond it.
Thank you, Roslyn -- I like your perspective, and I'm glad to be in touch with you. The ideas you've brought up are original and compelling, and they don't yet rise to the level of a testable theory. I'd say the same for my ideas in this substack article and for Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance . I hope we can combine and frame our visions and collectively move toward expanding science.
There is a saying, science advances one death at a time as the old guard exit and new minds can replace them.
Having read a lot of science and medical history it seems to me that change in both of those fields is often sourced in - AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME - and perhaps the slow and sluggish impetus to change is not a bad thing given the potential for harm in both science and medicine.
The rocketing pace of change in the past half century is not a good thing, even if some see it as clever and impressive. We humans have changed very little mentally, emotionally and psychologically in thousands of years and in many ways are like children let loose in a gun shop where we have some idea what these 'weapons' can do but little idea about how to use them sensibly and carefully, and indeed, do not have the 'strength' to handle them as carefully as needed.
Roslyn -
I agree that "the rocketing pace of change" is faster than our culture can keep up. For me, personally, I find it thrilling to participate in a historic moment when the shape of the planet and our human relation to it are transforming. I first wrote about this 3 years ago when I was hit by a car, flat on my back in the hospital, and felt it was time to write my truth without reservation. https://experimentalfrontiers.scienceblog.com/2021/08/19/what-happened-to-atlantis-what-will-happen-to-us/
The biggest danger, in my opinion, is that there are a few corrupt people who have secret access to advanced technology and are using it to try to take over all of us. Weather warfare, fires, attacks on farms and food processing facilities, pandemics...
https://mitteldorf.substack.com/p/assaults-on-humanity
- Josh
I am not sure rocketing pace of change is ever a good thing for and in itself. Yes, there can be dramatic transformative moments in this material world but they are moments and not decades of rocketing and often not understood and not even regulated changes. We still know so little but have a capacity to interfere so much.
We see this particularly in medicine where mechanical processes are introduced to human bodies with no understanding of negative effects and indeed, no concern or care about such things.
There was a time when science-medicine held the view that it took two generations to know the full effects of a treatment, particularly a radical treatment where the first generation grew up to live a relatively normal life in terms of health and gave birth to children who did the same. If we take 70 years as an average longevity, that says, 140 years are needed before we can properly know what effects result from the treatment.
But now that modern science-medicine is money and power driven, such caution does not exist. Any study of IVF and vaccines would say we have another century and more to go for the former and close to a century for the latter but the rocketing pace of use of these artificial medical treatments continues apace.
You said: Weather warfare, fires, attacks on farms and food processing facilities, pandemics...
All of this has been going on for close to a century, increasingly in the past 50 years, and it is driven by power and profit and the fact that science long ago sold its soul to Government and corporations. The damage is done regardless of whether or not, some exist, as you believe, who wish to manipulate such things in order to dominate humanity and the world.
I have found, through reading and observation, that there is more than enough, greed, stupidity, arrogance, ignorance, self-serving incompetence to create any kind of chaos and destruction without the slightest plan. Conspiracy theories may well have substance but I doubt they are the real cause of most of the horrors humans create and inflict.
I will read your other articles.
The saying is attributed to Max Planck himself.
"Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, dass ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als bekehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, dass ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und dass die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist."
This translates to:
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Yes, and I did paraphrase and should have said so. I read a lot of science history and while I am sure there remains in the scientific system people with such perceptive insights, I am not sure the system respects such thinking.
The conversations between Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung would perhaps not happen today. I could be wrong. I am an amateur in terms of the field of science. An observer not a participant.
But perhaps such relationships and forms of questioning are returning as you stand as an example.
Such concepts or theories cannot be testable under the materialist reductionist mechanistic mindset of modern medicine. Such a nuts and bolts approach is valuable but it is limited. Science as a system of enquiry needs to broaden its approach. The mechanistic mindset is absolutely brilliant for making machines and techo toys, but next to useless and even more dangerous when applied to the natural world.
Having said that, I expect as energy/frequency/sound/light is explored, particularly in medicine, there will come greater insights. Although the pace will be slow because as long as science and medicine remain profit and power driven and in the hands of Governments and corporations, there is little which will be researched or tested unless it is believed that great profits await.
And science and medicine need to return to the empirical approach, generally cast aside because it is slow and we live in an age of quick fix, quick money and fast change when money can be made. Humans gathered enormous resources from observation over thousands of years, if indeed, not millions, and modern science, at least in the last couple of centuries, has chosen to look with disdain on such wisdom and indeed the wisdom of the past.
Agree. See my recent comment in response to Josh.
I regard the last topic as the largest question: How is it that collectively our ideas of reality create reality?
If all life is a dream, is it your dream or mine?
__And why should our two worlds agree?
An answer avails if we’re both The Divine,
__At our source, I am you and you’re me.
Though it seems that we’re separate (I trust you’ll concur
__It’s a stretch to conceive “one great soul”)
Still, we sense there are times when our boundaries blur
__Our designs coalesce as one whole.
If I still needed convincing about quantum entanglement, the timing of this article is an uncanny reinforcement! I was wrestling with alternative notions of time just a couple of days ago and thought of you. Consciousness as the observer makes the most sense in explaining quantum time. Yet, it doesn't quite set my mind at ease for an understanding of the purpose of the universe.
The discoveries of quantum science are making it increasingly difficult to defend the Big Bang theory of linear time. Following the second law of thermodynamics with its ever-rising entropy means we would logically end with a dead universe stabilized at zero energy to do anything useful, most of all to sustain life. Even if time reverses, symmetrically or asymmetrically, from the apogee of the universe's expansion, a Big Crunch at the end of the reversal assumes finite time and, therefore, a finite universe.
The Vedic concept of cyclical time, which I have long been partial to over linear time, doesn't quite turn the trick either. While it captures eternal time and an eternal universe with no finite end, the concept has its limits. If each cycle of Yugas is a predicted rinse and repeat of the previous, does it not make existence a stale affair? Perhaps not to an individual who may have no awareness of having lived through the previous such Yuga. But what about the individual's consciousness, which is said to be a part of the collective eternal consciousness or Brahman? Pushing this to the extreme, even if creations go through an experiential existence that excites, momentarily, will the creator not suffer from boredom?
The Buddhist view of time improvises over repeating Yugic cycles of circular time. It holds time to be a non-conceptualizable feature of the universe captured only by the cause-effect relationship between karmic action and consequence. This is perhaps as close as metaphysics can get to Newtonian physics of action-reaction and the observer effect of quantum physics. However, it does not answer the persistent-insistent question: what is the purpose of the universe? The perfection of Nirvana's voidness leaves the question up in the air since it requires one to accept the universe is an out of nothing back to nothing and nothing thereafter phenomenon. Existence is meaningful only by becoming non-existent. A gigantic mind-bender.
The theory of block time seems to straddle finite linear time and eternal time. The simultaneous coexistence of past, present and future (a la Schrodinger) is alluring in a number of ways. For example, it makes time travel possible into both the future and the past. Although you don't say so explicitly, your statement about observation causing the past to move forward to create a future implies it. Did you mean 'the' future or 'a' future? If it is the predetermined future, it afflicts the universe with 'sameness' which even the fourth dimension of time does little to dispel. Despite its elegance, block time harks back to oriental fatalism, long derided as a defeatist approach to life lacking in human agency. Why bother about the rightness of wrongness of any human action if none of it can alter the future?
No discussion of time can be isolated from the purpose of the universe. That the universe may have come about randomly without purpose is a stretch too far. Its adherence to certain fundamental laws still in the process of discovery suggest method and reason. We cannot define the laws without understanding the reasoning behind them.
We intuitively feel that the future is open, and that we have a role in creating it. This is free will, and I won't give it up. As Isaac Bashevis Singer says, "We have to believe in free will. We have no choice."
The realization that intention has a role in shaping quantum probabilities is the opening in physical theory where free will is allowed to enter.
Not asking you to as I feel the same. A predetermined future unalterable by any human action or event in the present will make existence an exceedingly dull affair. The intelligence which created such a complex universe will not have been so lacking in imagination.
I wonder if we live a story, written before birth, and, like a play, we have a set, cast, storyline which allows free-will to be used as a director or actor would interpret, but in essence, the story stands as the manifestation of individual or entity/system.
There is much which happens in life where we do not get to choose anything but how we respond to it and what we do with it. Our free will is active, to lesser and greater degrees depending upon individual nature and circumstance, on that count.
A read a study years ago about the mental health and contentment of older people, where it revealed that what happens to people is not the reason why they are happy or sad, contented or discontented, traumatised or not, but how they think about their experiences and whether or not they gain meaning and purpose from the experiences.
This would no doubt explain why other studies reveal better general health and emotional and psychological health in those with religious commitment and faith.
We humans seem hardwired to find meaning and purpose and indeed, any study of the natural world would say that meaning and purpose are inherent. All of which makes a random universe a tad irrational.
Careful not to conflate the First Law of Thermodynamics with the Second. The first is about conservation of ENERGY; the second is about increase of ENTROPY.
Mea culpa. Corrected now.
I've always thought of the Yugas not as literal replays of circular time but rather characterizations of different historical stages which tend to occur in a certain sequence. History is a spiral, not a circle.
"Block time" is the denial of a "now". As I said, it's a perversion of science to tell us that our experience is an illusion. Science owes us an explanation for our experience, not a dismissal.
All discussions of the Yuga cycle that I have come across are moot on the subject. The sequence of the four Yugas and the duration of each are identical. So also is their characterization. Some points of speculation from my subjective interpretation:
a) One Yuga cycle of four Yugas has a duration of 4.3 million years. A Kalpa, consisting of 1,000 such cycles, adds up to 4.3 billion years. Radiometric age-dating by modern science estimates the earth to be 4.5 billion years. Too close to be a coincidence? It depends on what happens at the end of a Kalpa.
b) If these numbers are viewed in spatial terms, one inference could be the earth is destroyed and a new Kalpa megacycle begins on another planet. The new Kalpa on Planet Tabula Rasa will obviously be quite different from the one on Planet Earth, influenced by its size, ecology, life support capabilities and life forms. Alternatively, each habitable planet has its own Yuga cycle and many such planets already exist.
c) There are two rather different views on what distinguishes one Yuga from another. The first, based on morality or moral principles, is the more common. It begins with Satya Yuga (Age of Truth), Treta Yuga (Age of 2/3rds Truth, 1/3rd Untruth), Dwapara Yuga (Age of ½ Truth, ½ Untruth) and Kali Yuga (Age of Deceit). A descent from virtue to vice, in other words. The second, based on human capabilities, is more appealing. The Satya Yuga begins as the Age of Spirit when the human intellect (or consciousness) is at its highest potential, aware of everything in and out of itself, in commune with the universe...an age of love and harmony where people are like demi-gods with powers such as telekinesis, teleportation and so on. The Yugas that follow mark a rising erosion of these capabilities and a final plunge into the Age of Materialism when all such capabilities are lost. From the spiritual to the material, so to speak. (https://www.ananda.org/blog/age-energy-intro-yugas/)
d) In either case, the sequence is from order to chaos to a complete reset beginning all over again. Since we are currently in the last or worst of these Yugas, I wonder if it is beyond our reach to understand the universe until the earth, or its new surrogate, reboots.
e) Last, there are intriguing parallels between the Yuga cycle's theory of time and the seculae of human generational theory, as articulated famously by William Strauss and Neil Howe.
Ramani -
I'm grateful for your deep knowledge of the Puranas and the Gita. I take all this to heart, and want to know about it. But my orientation is primarily scientific, and I'm looking to understand the Yugas in terms that connect with astronomers' and geologists' accounts of the earth's past.
That said, I'm aware that the evidence for the Big Bang is dependent on some Big Assumptions, and that there are contradictions of the standard Big Bang model in present astronomical observations. Putting together ancient wisdom with modern science to create a better picture of history is one of the deepest and most rewarding challenges that I know of.
- Josh
In terms of this statement - the sequence is from order to chaos to a complete reset beginning all over again.
Which is what happens again and again in the natural world and indeed in the human body and mind.
I wonder if both religion and science should be interpreted metaphorically instead of simply literally. As Carl Jung said, symbol is the lost language of the soul and symbol and metaphor have a powerful impact on human minds.
As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
In the last few centuries the rational mind has been set in place to dominate the intuitive and yet the best minds work in balance between left and right function. Some of the greatest discoveries have been sourced in right brain function and then made manifest and functional by the application of left brain function. One example which springs to mind is the inventor of the sewing machine who was stumped in his design of the machine in terms of where to put the hole in the needle, until he had a dream which explained in symbol how it should be done.
How could the Yugas be seen as metaphor and what aspects of life in this world could be akin to those metaphors?
All ancient religious texts are part morals illustrated by metaphorical anecdotes and part history of particular geographical locations, characters and events. The specificity of the latter distracts from the near universality of the former. I believe this is the main source of religious friction and religion-induced conflict.
Are moral lessons, therefore, lost because of their metaphorical presentation? Does the specificity of history make it more appealing to the rational mind? Perhaps both.
Can science get metaphorical? It depends on whose science we are talking about.
The ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, Greece, Egypt, China, Incas and Mayas clearly had far more scientific knowledge than modern science is willing to credit them with – on astronomy, higher mathematics, gravity, magnetism, metallurgy, architecture, medicine and even atomic physics. However, this knowledge is more often than not inferred from scattered remaining physical evidence of the uses to which it was put, e.g., the pyramids, ziggurats, Sumerian tablets, Nazca lines, Baghdad battery, vimana and so forth. The knowledge itself is either unavailable or buried in the abstract language of ancient texts, overlaid with millennia-old superstition and embellishment, making them mean all things to all men, believer and skeptic alike. If this were not so, our present civilization will have reproduced it a very long time ago.
I think modern science as a discipline should be as precise as it can get. It is a product of the rational mind and its findings should be reproducible with as much exactitude as is possible. Interpreting or illustrating these findings metaphorically can be useful in teaching, communicating with non-scientists and building bridges with other disciplines. In the present context, perhaps this means seeking common ground between physics and metaphysics.
I was struck by Asimov's "In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis" when I first read it over 40 years ago. It still stands out among his copious writings as an analysis that helped clear the fog of confusion in my mind over a number of seeming contradictions between religion and science. Of course, it didn't have all the answers I sought. And I have even more questions today than then. The ignorance of the presumption of knowledge!
(Josh, apologies for grabbing your soccer ball and running away with it to the cricket field. Rest assured this is my last pennyworth on this stimulating thread.)
You said: All ancient religious texts are part morals illustrated by metaphorical anecdotes and part history of particular geographical locations, characters and events.
There are no doubt traces of history but not much of substance. This is not surprising since all of these texts were written by mere mortals, males, who had their own agendas and power dynamics.
I still believe that even that which some might call history is meant as metaphor.
You said: The specificity of the latter distracts from the near universality of the former. I believe this is the main source of religious friction and religion-induced conflict.
I do not think there is much specificity in the latter. But, I do think that the patriarchal age, which no doubt followed a forgotten matriarchal age, led to literality because of left brain function dominance and indeed, preference.
You said: Can science get metaphorical? It depends on whose science we are talking about.
Science, as a system of enquiry, by its nature cannot embrace metaphor. Science can only know what it can measure. That does not mean understand, it just means gain some knowledge from its measurements which often prove useful in terms of effects which can then be utilised if not exploited.
Since much of the natural world and most certainly metaphor, cannot be measured, it seems impossible for the scientific system of enquiry to incorporate them.
However, great scientific minds in centuries past managed to remain open to metaphor, symbol, intuition and that which could not be measured and therefor able to gain or intuit insights which could be measured.
You said: The ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, Greece, Egypt, China, Incas and Mayas clearly had far more scientific knowledge than modern science is willing to credit them with – on astronomy, higher mathematics, gravity, magnetism, metallurgy, architecture, medicine and even atomic physics.
Yes they did but the materialist patriarchal mindset of modern science, in the past few centuries, created an erroneous belief that humans today were smarter than in the past. They rather drank the KoolAid in terms of modern scientific achievement and got drunk on ego.
You said: I think modern science as a discipline should be as precise as it can get. It is a product of the rational mind and its findings should be reproducible with as much exactitude as is possible.
I agree. The scientific system of enquiry as it stands is useful. It just needs to be regulated and discouraged from its role as a cult fundamentalist religion as an option to real religion.
You said: Interpreting or illustrating these findings metaphorically can be useful in teaching, communicating with non-scientists and building bridges with other disciplines. In the present context, perhaps this means seeking common ground between physics and metaphysics.
Yes, I agree but more important is for scientists even within their mechanistic world, to understand the limitations of the system they are using. And interestingly, there are movements to find common ground between physics and metaphysics as well as those aspects of humanity and this world which cannot be measured.
You said: I was struck by Asimov's "In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis" when I first read it over 40 years ago. It still stands out among his copious writings as an analysis that helped clear the fog of confusion in my mind over a number of seeming contradictions between religion and science.
I am not up with what Asimov said, but have studied a lot of religion and scientific history and it long ago seemed to me that where science went wrong was in setting itself up as a foil or counter to religion. Indeed, to the worst of religion and the most fundamentalist.
As psychology would say, that which we condemn in others is that which we deny in ourselves and what we deny is repressed and buried in the unconscious where not only does it not die, it becomes more powerful and will force itself into expression unconsciously.
This is why, I believe, science has become something of a fundamentalist religion, cultlike, which has been termed Scientism. That which science sought to destroy became the same power at work in the scientific system of enquiry today.
There is a very interesting book written by Olivier Clerc, on science-medicine in this regard.
https://www.abebooks.com/9781932181142/Modern-Medicine-New-World-Religion-1932181148/plp
From what I can see, the same comparisons he makes with allopathic medicine can be made for science, which is of course the foundation of modern or conventional medicine. The parent gives birth to the child and the child absorbs the beliefs of the parent.
"History is a spiral, not a circle." If the fundamental model for time is a spiral, does that mean time is fundamentally 3-D? The future may remember us as flat- timers the way we see flat-earthers.
Love that as statement and mental image.
If you have not read it you might find Cosmos and Psyche, by Richard Tarnas interesting.
I did read at some point research showing that thought could influence the past as well as the future but recall no more than that.
Perhaps time is all of the things you talk about and part of the task in this material world is to explore time and its capacities for manifestation.
And if in an eternal NOW beyond this material world, past, present and future are one, as some suggest, who or what influences who, what or when?
Astrology, while decried by science, despite being admired and used by some great scientific minds in centuries past, offers insights into forces at work.
Thanks Josh. This is the kind of stuff I may ponder on my routing bike rides. My head is not spinning, but I know that I am an organism with a certain perception of time, and a certain perception of self, which perceptions are widely shared, but not truly demonstrable.
Tommy Roe was "Dizzy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arpidGq8SlA