I got to thinking about the "Planes and Levels" thing and here seems to be a basic thread that we can follow which leads out of the cosmic causes through this life and back to a cosmic cause for a new life etc. Seems worth tossing out for consideration.

Let's start with the initial instant of our awareness of this universe, and call it the instant of Cause. Following Egyptian usage, I personally see the instant of cause to be the opposition of the locally defined and the globally defined natures of everything, which can be found in a dichotomous view of emptiness. One aspect is too small to define, just a vanishingly tiny state, while the other is too vast to fill, an all-engulfing state, yet both are one. By opposing these two aspects, we can build a lot of logical structures, and eventually we get to the level at which these states relate to one another just as reality relates to itself, and it looks like extended matter emerging. This is sufficient to give rise to the manifestation of "Creativity" in the sense of an "Uncaused Cause" that we call God.

The dynamic aspect of this emergence relates the static terms on various levels of abstraction, eventually giving rise to reflexive systems, and from them, potentially oscillatory systems of states which become autonomous. And this gives rise to sentient beings. At the same time, the organization of the universe also retains the collective aspects, giving rise to God-In-The-World, more commonly called "the Cosmic Consciousness".

The whole collection of possibilities filters itself by virtue of the most probable and stable states remaining and the rest fading away. There are many ways to view this stuff, so we have multiple viewpoints, yet all reflect the same core reality, as does the Cosmic Consciousness. This gives lots of individual sentiencies scattered here and there, plus one background global awareness.

The sentient actors live and develop values, and attitudes that carry those values into practice. The choices for life are defined by the ways in which the primal emptiness was manipulated to form an underlying potential world structure. We choose this or that opportunity by making an emotional identification with that state, an attachment. These are the ties that bind us to the material world. We could stop being here, but t do that would mean abandoning our attachments. (To test this, decide to go "elsewhere" and stop breathing. Notice that it is uncomfortable - that's the pressure of attachments urgng you to stay attached. - Now start again, please.)

At death we have a choice. When the individual actors die there are no material attachments, but the attitudes of the actors remain as a dynamic by which their future choices might be defined. For those who retain their attachments, they go back and get reborn and develop new attitudes. For those who no longer cling to their attachments, they leave the world of prior experience and enter a state inwhich they can view their options differently, whcih means that they discover nearly an infinity of potential alternative worlds in which to live. This places the actor's awareness at the point of oneness with God's awareness.

Those who no longer cling to the world of prior experience then abandon their attachments. This frees them to experience a vast number of alternative potentialities. When one of those potentialities seems to be interesting, then they form new attachments and cling to that set of initial definitions. This sends them to the point of creation of a new universe, a new instant of Cause. The Cosmic Consciousness is already embodied these options, so it is consistent theroughout, even though not manifesting.

While this is only a suggestion, I'd like to point out that this type of cycle explains an origination, evolution of awareness, and creation of the next universe down line. That gives endless creations, each of us acting, as Cayce put it, as Co-Creators with God. The role of attitude in choosing options for life is the essential determiner of experience. Cause and effect are sufficient to explain how it works. And all the other rich array of spiritual phenomena are added on by way of interactions which we elect while alive.

This kind of model, here presented as a skeleton only, should be more or less valid for everyone, although most people will see it slightly differently. What it implies is that we can build a universe tht operates quite well without the need for an eternal hell nor an eternal heaven. Both are unnecessary. Instead, we have an afterlife in which we remain in the abstract context of prior experiences. These may feel like heaven or hell, as all meditators can attest, but there is no need for a specific place for either extreme. Having neither heaven nor hell, we can get rid of the notion of Divine punishment or reward. All we have is a place to work out our differences, and to design a better way to live. And the responsibility is totally our own.

Hmmm - looks a lot like Buddhism. ;-)

dave

Hi, Dave very interesting indeed and right up my type of thinking; perhaps we should clearly separate the physical universe from the non - physical. Newton’s second law of thermodynamic and the relentless dissipation of energy hold our universe in the relentless grip of entropy.

Therefore, our universe must end up in infinite entropy, empty and darkness. We hear the cry why is there decay sickness pain etc, well it is due to entropy that has to exist in a physical universe for energy to move and allow us to move. Everything decays in our universe, cars rust houses get old, life ages and dies and the cycle order to chaos continues until the death of all things including the universe. So if we return to reincarnate we must die, die until we escape into the spiritual worlds. I am speaking from a physics point of view and not metaphysical point of view.

Have the forum members tried to conceive of the frightening concept of absolute nothingness, no time, no energy, no anythiing, not even an infinite pinprick just Absolute -Absolute non-existence. But relax there is something and how the how- come,there is something remains ultimate question in all philosophy.

That is why we ""Must"" progress beyond the physical into the non-physical non-time ever hanging of now in the Spiritual non-material. White composite light of God 8-).

Love to all

Alan (by me)

Actually, Alan, entropy is what I suggest as the driving motivation for this kind of sequence. - And I haven't filled in the blanks nor tucked in all the corners in my proposal. Consider, please-

For two ideas, A and B, in a non-additive space, the information at A has 50% chance of occurring in some random event. Because the space is non-additive, there is no increase of entropy because states do not change. But in an additive space, there is a chance that the two ideas will merge to form a third idea C, synergic to the two beginners. Then there is more than a 50% chance that any random interaction will encounter the information at A, because it now occurs in more than a single location. This alters the entropy. By making the information at A and at B more likely, the entropy of state for information A declines (the combined state is more probable, which is why it is stable) while the entropy of the entire system increases (the system increases in complexity).

So we begin in voidness with total emptiness, which is also total potentiality, and we have a dichotomous presentation of the structure of space - vanishingly tiny or endlessly vast. There we have two abstract states, and since they are abstract, they add with replacement. Then, following the same tendency for additivity, this spews out an innate logical structure that extends from the initial twist of space to a potentially infinite number of relationships of twisted space. The logic of the elements of the structure is, at some points, the same as the logic of everyday interactions. Being isomorphic with reality, in various slightly different forms of isomorphism (think of the fibers of a pencil of states emergent as the product of an interated complexion - or iterated power set, if you like that term better),  this is sufficient to give the experiences we associate with reality. Reduction of physics to geometry has been quite successful, Einstein handling gravitation and major curvatures of space, and a couple months back, physicist A Garrett Lisi demonstrated that the sub-atomic zoo can be reduced to vector transitions within the exceptional and simply Lie group E8. He has the physics world alll a-twitter over his ideas, but they actually are a follow up to Kaluza and Klein's earlier work in the 1920s, and all without invoking strings or branes.

So That's the initial idea. The world must start itself and be as it is because no matter where or when, its nature is to occur by sheer probability. Thus, what St Thomas Aquinas called the "Uncaused Cause" can be equally well termed Thermodynamics.

What I'm suggesting is that this gives rise to two general systems, one being the core evolution of God-Mind-Manifest, embodied in the interaction stuff of the primordial instant, and potentially endless dynamics in potential state space. The other is that each fiber of the bundle of states surrounding the core state (the "progress vector" is the core state and most probable fiber, and is Lie congruent forward) is a personal viewpoint in information space, and thus is potentially an available state for a localized viewpoint, what we call an individual actor, to occur. So that gives individual people and a Cosmic Consciousness - verifiable through meditation at the level called sarvastarka samadhi.

On the dissolution of the aggregates by which the individual actors are supported, their dynamic returns to be part of the global dynamic, thus preserving the experience of life and transferring it to the collective, so the Cosmic Consciousness (I guess you could call it the Holy Spirit, although the term carries a lot of social frieght) essentially is using individual experiences for global awareness. That's you and me, the fingers and toes of God.

At death the material definitions recycle, and the dynamic of the actor has a choice - one way is to return to the world through attachments - like a craving for apple pie, or obedience to the Bodhisattvic Vow. The other is to reject this world and seek to transcend it, which means going into the point of creation, nirvastarka samadhi, from which a return to any potential state will be through selection of a new viewpoint which means that the individual now is at the point of bringing together the dichotomous aspects of void space by twisting them together anew, and thus creating an entirely new universe.

What I'm suggesting here is not that my logic is the ideal nor that this is correct in some absolute manner. What I'm suggesting is that by looking at ideas of this general sort, of which there are thousands of other ways to describe the same process, we get a look at the possibility of a universe that propagates itself through the agency of individual choice - emphasizing that the individual is ultimately God.  

If we consider that we have about 3.5 billions of people here, many of whom would like a nicer world, we have a good reason to expect that this world, a fraction of the universe of experience,  could give off 3.5 billion new universes. If the universe were a plant, that would be kind of like the dandelion in creating thousands of seeds and sending them off in all directions. Except here we have the potential for literally billions of seed universes.

As for heat death of any universe, the jury is still out on the nature of the cosmos - the Friedman-Lemaitre "Big Bang" model is only one theory. Personally, I'm not a Big Bang Ganger, but I obviously prefer a form of multiple creative instants. Because an iterated complexion on dyadic geometry is sufficient geometry to define far more than our own universe, there is at least one way to predict formation of cosmic structures such as galaxies, using that approach, so this is a testable theory, with good geometric foundation.  

Field testing of these ideas has been limited to demonstration that the iterated complexion model is a precise gauge model of creative thought. (Published 1987.)

Anyhow - I'm curious about how people see this approach. It might be worth development.

dave

Dave this is profound, in summary are you proposing that under some exceptional circumstances entropy can be reversed, become less like dropping a broken watch and finding it has somehow reassembled itself. The dichotomy of vast absolute infinite entropy in vastness of infinite void (infinite entropy), separated in the beginning from “absolute non entropy”, infinite everything, exploding or merging into or somehow combining to create all existence with the infinite entropic void.  This goes beyond current physics, but my mind is open. I agree with you and believe there must be infinite universes, each with different fundamental laws living and dying differently, as flowers live and die and indeed us, in our universe. The big bang demands the impossible, in my mind of a reversal of entropy a rewinding and perhaps this is where God comes in.

You know I have long thought of "what are we really"?, here I mean our universe and all that it contains. What is the ultimate fundamental beyond the quark? If it is a particle, it can be divided. But I think that the atom smashes go far enough with their peering into the infinitesimal world, they will not find any particle at all. All they are going to find, in my view, is a smudge on the canvas of in reality indeed a “meme” painted into the canvas of awareness of what we call god. Thus, the universe is a thought in the absolute mind. You know Dave I think we (the whole universe) is one beautiful thought in the mind of the God principal.

Dave I hope I am making some sense here!

Regards

Alan

Hi Dave. I'm as you know no scientist but it strikes me that Fancisco Varela and Hubert Maturana developed a theory of autopoiesis. Which if I have it right effectively posits a theory for the means by which nature and life is in effect wired to produce ever higher levels of organisation - in opposition to the tendency of things to proceed towards chaos.

Here's some stuff on it from Google: http://dialog.net:85/homepage/autopoiesis.html Stick in the guys names and lots comes up. You are probably familiar with them as Varela ended up collaborating with leading Buddhist thinkers of the 70s. Varela died of cancer.

It's an approach which if I remember correctly seems to fit pretty well with the thinking outlined in the 'What the Bleep' movie - about the overlap between spiritual thought and particle physics.  :) No idea if this all meshes with the Dave Theory of everything..

Hi Alan - My physics are pretty mainstream here - entropy is formally defined as the negative logarithm of probability of an event. Thus, when an event tends to be 100%, tntropy goes toward zero. That's total stability. This is entropy of state. It is a relative posture within the global system. The entire system has its own collective entropy based on the probability of is configuration, hence, as complexity increases, so does entropy, more or less, which is the way most of us learned it from Boltzman and Planck.

Of course, for a mixed bag or marbles, the case of being all black or all white, as opposed to a half and half mixture, is a more complex state in terms of the probability of finding it. For example, for N elements, there will be (2^N)-1 non-null options. (It's minus one because of degrees of freedom, as in Student's statistics. The observer is a null.) One of them is all black, one is all white, out of the total number, but lots and lots are mixed and the average is going to be one of them, hence the lowest entropy.

The point I'm trying to make is not that I am somehow "right" - instead, I'm looking for ways in which we can become Cayce's "Co-Creators".

Vajra - Thanks for the tip on autopoiesis. My seminal readings, back in the late '60s, since I came out of a social psych BA, were from Deutsch's "Nerves of Government" and the like,  Karl Marx's conflict theories in many revised forms, as well as behavioral material, and of course the mainstream Hindu writings with ideas like Indra's Net. The system I'm proposing is essentially an idealism, in the sense that the "stuff" of the universe, as I see it, is made up of abstract relationships that manifest solely as ideas, by which I mean patterns of information in flux, as opposed to the more anthropic image of a thinker.

The target is twofold. First, this is proposed as an answer to the universal prayer, "May there always be Me." Second, this gives a mechanism by which a plethora of universes can be hatched, each from its predecessor. In other words, we are not alone, but instead, we are the carriers of the cosmic seed by which new universes arise.

Varela et al were essentially working from systems theory. When I finally got into the field to work this idea over in realistic terms, I decided to cast it into finite terms of available information. Then I sampled the development of information in the sciences and demonstrated that the growth fit predictions pretty well. In fact, for a single well-integrated organization, theory explains about 99% of the variance. For the social sciences that's so good it's scary! (If you can find it it's: Armentrout, D (1987). An Attributive Systems Model of the Generation of Knowledge. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms) - Incidently, my master's advisor rejected this as a topic, and forced me into an inconsequential review of definitions in phenomenological sociology. I had to go on to a PhD to get the rest of the study, and then I spent almost 8 years with the math. -  So on that level, I've pretty well demonstrated the autopoietic nature of knowledge in a social setting. All I'm doing now is to suggest that the universe in which society exists, in its own right, is the result of a similar prior process, and that is similarly the result of a prior instance etc - infinite regression, but able to start itself from emptiness because of the "Uncaused Cause nature of God" - at all levels a demonstration of Bergson's "elan vital".

Using Bruce's metaphor, our disks attach to both prior disks and to subsequent ones. I suggest that this carries the entire universe along.

So in these ideas I'm setting out one of the very many ways to the same conclusions. My logic might be shaky in spots, depending on personal taste, but I think that this basic process, that our universe is the progeny of prior universes, and the progenitor of others, is a possibility we might be interested in. To that end I've suggested on of the many ways to look at this idea. Hopefully someone else will find a much better expression of it now. ;-)

dave

Dave You  posted

""That's total stability. This is entropy of state. It is a relative posture within the global system. The entire system has its own collective entropy based on the probability of is configuration, hence, as complexity increases, so does entropy, more or less, which is the way most of us learned it from Boltzman and Planck"".  

Hay Dave my physics not as advanced as yours, however, “That’s Total Stability” Well that’s simply death of a system, it cannot move. when it reaches that state. I have never observed total stability, so as entropy increases complexity increases. We assume that’s complexity, but my view is complexity of a system or an individual are “intrinsic efforts to delay the inevitable chaos and death. Evolution says by some sort of natural mindless adaptation in as it organism becomes more complex to survive. Yes to avoid the ultimate fate that entropy poses to all material things. Thus the universe is finite and must eventually pass away as in Revelations

Reversal of Entropy, Entropy going down, well in infinite time anything that can happen will happen. The miracles of Jesus is a reversal of entropy chaos back to order. The original state of the universe as an infinite singularity is ultimate non (zero) entropy and from the moment God said let there be light it has being run down to a heat death with brief complexities arising and disappearing in the vast panorama of the totality of all existence. Thus we must shrug off the physical, cloth ourselves in the non-physical, spiritual with the infinite source. Of course, a universe without sentient beings to observe it is a failed. universe, is it not?

I have read very little of Edgar Caysey, as I was skeptical because he was so often found to be incorrect. For instant the Lindbergh baby< he said they would find the baby in a city somewhere when the baby was finally found right t by the Lindbergh home. Also California and Japan falling into the sea. I am not trying to get off the point but if we are to use his beliefs as truths, we must trust them as so.

Humanity with help of advanced medical science are all aims at keeping the status quo of our human body, keep the system as harmonious as possibly for as long as possible, but gloom! entropy always wins in the end , we die, the universe dies. In the book of Acts, somewhere, it says we seek him in which we live and move and have and sustain or being. To sustain our being forever like the Apostle Paul, one of the greatest minds in all history said, we must put off the mortal and cloth ourselvesin the immortal light of God.

WE ARE CO CREATORS WITH GOD AS HE GAVE US DOMANE OVER THE EARTH


Regards



Alan

"This old fart is 67 today 23Dec. so I am getting to the front of the que" 8-)

Dave a poetic version that fits somewhere in our dialogue (i think)



I am the encompasser and enfold all things within the substance of my being. Resonating with profound unfathomable vibrations, creation trembles at the passing of my presence.

I am the stalker of the soul, the defeater of death. I am supreme and take the abstract, and convert it into concrete matter.

I dwell in the breath of my life, which is composite bright light, looking with delight upon the beauty of the garden of my creation, sparkling out of the darkness of infinite universes.

I am well pleased with my endeavours and set the clock of time to run for eternity.

I am the winder of the whatch of creation. my name is "AM"

Composed By Alan McDougall (27/6/2007)

Dave,

I expressed myself incorrectly, when I said in reply to your thread "that this goes beyond correct physics"

I meant it goes against the postulating of the majority of physicists in that most now believe in the big bang , with a zero point entropy infinite singularity exploded bringing, time, matter, every space with.  there was no primordial void the void or space was created in the big bang. In addition, this was what I meant when I asked the forum to try to conceive of absolute nothingness, no void or space, no time, absolute non existence.

Dave I know it was not necessary for me the go into the theory of the big bang with you, I can read that you would be fully informed on  it, but I explained it here for those on the forum that might not know about.

Regards

Alan

Dave

I see entropy reversal or rewinding thus in my layman terms


Reversing time the Earth de-form into clouds of stellar materials
produced from exploded stars which themselves de-explode and then de-
coalesce toward becoming a dense uniform opaque plasma. As time
accelerates backwards space itself collapses inward, as if it is being
vacuumed away, moving all the material in the universe ever nearer,
with all finally crashing into a beginning point. As the universe
crashes inward it seems obvious that we must be closing in on some
sort of birth. We seem to be moving backward toward what must
inevitably be a distinct creation event, where the somethingness of
matter arises from a primordial nothing.

But at this moment an act of omnificent magic, a fortunate accident,
or something completely inexplicable, considering the universe is
expanding it appears evident that somehow all that we know, has been,
and everything that shall follow in the wake of the present, came to
be all at once at one moment of time in our past. It seems evident
that somehow something impossibly erupted to create a beginning, even
if all the laws of nature as they are known today in science forbid
such an event. The first law states that energy is neither created nor
destroyed. Furthermore, every ounce of logic be it intuitive or
mathematical, demands that something cannot be created out of
absolutely nothing. A zillion zeros still add up to zero. And
logically, if something comes from nothing, then it wasn't really
nothing to begin with then was it? And yet the universe is here, and
all is expanding away from one single place and one single time,
before which there is no possibility of time as we perceive time.

Every bone in a reasonable person's body screams that this sudden
creation event could not have happened by itself. A universe cannot
just pop into existence. The existence of a universe and our own
existence require a cause. With trhe belief in an eternal infinity God there is no need to go into infinte regression

And so we ask, does this impossibility of
'something coming from nothing' mean that the universe absolutely had
to have been created? Did a powerful being of some kind (usually
assumed to be named God) create the first moment of our universe? It
is almost a relief to consider this possibility in the face of such a
paradoxical dilemma, except we actually know that this solution only
suspends and relocates the mystery. All the same questions we ask
about how the universe came to be, must then be diverted to this being
called God. The inference of some seems to be that God is so powerful
that God is beyond needing an explanation, yet realistically the same
old questions apply. How long has this being existed? How did God
begin from nothing? If it has existed forever, then how can it just
exist? Why does God exist rather than nothing at all?
Is the above not a reasonable assumption? We must put aside infinite regression and believe in the Ever Existing One

Regards

aLAN 8-) 8-)

Of course you're God. Works fine for me.

About entropy -
Entropy has been romanticized, which is the "Heat Death" image. That's why this looks so screwy.  In fact, entropy is just an expression for the odds against something. Formal definition for the entropy of a state X is:   H(X) = -log (prob X)  - that is, the negative of the logarithm of the probability of the state called X.

If the probability of X is 100%, then the probability is unity, and the log of one is zero, hence when a thing tends toward total probability, its entropy tends toward zero. This is called "entropy of state" and is a relative condition - like the entropy of a street light being turned on or off, when compared to another light down the street, a 50-50 proposition. If off, then its probability of being found on is zero and then its entropy is infinite, if on, its probability of being on is 100% and entropy is zero in that example. (This is a one-sample go-no-go statement, not a time-distribution of probability states, in which case the entropy would be 2 bits or .3010 hartleys.) This "entropy of state" concept is not the "decrease of system entropy" that the Heat Death people are talking about.

The "Heat Death" idea of entropy is that having been wound up, everything runs down. This is the measure called "system entropy" and is a direct expression of the entire internal structure of the system. Statistically, entropy changes according to the changes of structure, not temperature. Temperature reflects structure, since it involves the motions of the molecules etc of a system using Planck's Gibbsian distribution,  that relate average agitation level to a presumed zero state. We don't need that.

What I'm suggesting is that any syatem tends to become more complex because of structural factors, and that this is where we get the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (This has been commonly accepted since Boltzman.) Now, I work in the "why it happens" department, like "why does it become more complex" - and the "why" is because the attributions of the various gizmos that interact can generalize themselves. As they do, these attributes become more probable than they were before, because they now are being distributed more widely. A "thing" is merelty the sum of its attributes, hence "things" get more likely. This is the motor of the cosmos. It implies an indefinite and finite expansion. (Interestingly, this model provides for Cosmic Inflation as with the Friedman-Lemaitre BB Theory, and predicts formation of galaxies as well, more like Hoyle's continuous generation idea.) Even if the accretions of matter in the present collection of galaxies etc distribute themselves wide and thin, their attributes still combine to form new structures. More interestingly, since a statistical curve never really ends, the existence of any specific object is actually distributed across all time and space. Thus, the "Heat Death" idea is open to question as new physics arises.

About being God-
I'm intersted in where God comes from. If you are the I AM, then where was your original home? It's a legitimate question.

I propose two answers to that - one is that it is the nature of God to be self-created out of nothing. Thus, as we journey out to the Hubble limit at the ends of the universe, we discover the levels of formation of the universe, going back through them in reverse order, until we reach nothing at all. Nothing at all has no size, no shape, no color, no taste. It is pure vacuity, which is also pure potentiality to be filled with virtually everything. So as God, I'd say that your ultimate roots are in emptiness.

The second answer is that you are here and now as God because it is the nature of God to twist space (because that makes it more probable, since it forms a combination by which the attributes of the spatial dichotomy now propagate by being present in more places at once) and after doing that for a while we have a universe made out of emptiness twisted around itself in ways the ultimately reflect a dynamic (the twisting) and a relational metric (the stuff that was twisted). We experience all that as a probabilistic universe.   - This is a universe with no "matter" in the sense of an irreducible obdurate mass. Instead, what we actually have is probability waves. The late physicist Archibald Wheeler, near the end of his life, had become convinced that reality could be reduced easily to nothing but information, hence patterns of probability.  So the second answer is that you are God because that is the most probable state for you to acquire, since everything is God and a manifestation of God, you don't even have the option to be other than God.

And finally, autopoiesis -
So my suggestion is that we live in a world that has two definitions. One, it arises as the outcome of prior states, and second, it is locally self created. The notion of prior states implies an infinite sequence of self-creations. This is more easily thought of as a single instance self-creation spread over all space and time, a statistically valid way to view it. This instance is granular in nature, a sort of cosmic quantum state because we are discrete in nature, hence lumpy and granular - and our cosmos is one of the granules. It will lead to either form a path back into itself, or forward into a new universe. My suggestion is that this leads to a perpetual act of creation, so that universes beget universes ad infinitum.


I recall the tale of an old rishi who was wandering through the Himalyas. As he stopped by a stream he heard a great racket and fuss from nearby. A pilgrim was sitting by the water chanting, "Aham Siva. Sivo 'ham." meaning "I am Siva, Siva is me." *(Siva is the Hindu image of God as Creator-Destroyer, similar to Christian God-the-Father.) The rishi put up with it for a while and finally went down to the water and started to wash his bowl and things. As he did he screamed at the top of his lungs, "My pot. My bowl. My pot. My bowl. ... "  The pilgrim was abruptly shocked into silence at this annoyance. He called out to the rishi, "Hey! Cool it, Dude! Nobody denies that those are your pot and your bowl." The rishi smiled, "And nobody denies that you are Siva."

PUL
dave

Hi Dave,

I think I get what you’re saying here.

To me the black void is the same as the zero point field and neither is ‘nothingness’ meaning nothing exists. I think you’re saying this as well when you say it is full of potentiality. I would say that it is full of conscious unmanifest awareness and is the source of all manifestation. Or in other words the void is a level of consciousness where no thought, no belief, no self exists; however it is quite possible that it is from where we came...our source or God.  I’m not so sure entropy could be a basis for this theory. Twisting is an interesting thought. Perhaps it could work like the opposite of a black hole where it spews out manifest life.

K

Dave,

A profound and detailed answere, I just like to add that if we understand God as an eternal infinite being, ""there is one thing that it can never know, how it came to exist?"" You are one deep thinker Dave, I have more than met my equal in you and i like to learn.. However I am not a psysicist but an mechanical engineer with a life time of interest in cosmology, astromony and an insatiable thirst for knowlede of every kind.. I  have my own ten inch Newtonial telescope and studied variable stars when I was more active.

I admire Ricard Feynman and feel to much attention has been given to Stephen Harwing who is really a cosmologist.

I have read the works of most of the great psysicts and scientists over the years but make no claim to understand every angle of their though processes.


Your postulation as self creating cosmos still has the problem of infinite regression,

Your thread was deep and profound and I need more thought before giving some sort of an adequate reply. Enjoy  the holidays,

God bless all

Alan

Dave,

You posted “I would like to know where god comes from?". I used the term "AM” using this term in isolation indicates that god is source of everything. I put the below in my terms to simplify what I mean. (Of course just like the rest of we mere puny finite mortals i can really onle guess).

Stephen Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose extended equations for general relativity to include space and time. Not only space, but also time has a beginning - now of creation, of our universe. Studies in particle physics have shown that our dimension of time is really only half a dimension, since time can only move forward (forget the time travel movies - this is scientifically impossible). If, source, god absolute, omega point immoveable rock, uncaused cause, ultimate awareness, refer to it in anyway you like existed in only one dimension of “time”, then it would have had to have been created at one point. It was not created, but has to have existed from eternity past to eternity future. It must be infinite and exist outside of the illusion of what we call time existing in the "Ever Changing Moment" observing "everywhen" and "everything at once". It is obviously then not it is not  in one place or one time, but everywhere at once Atheist say our universe was spewed out by a super universe. but we have the same problem there with infinite regression Atheism is a religion just like any other religion as if requires faith and belief in it as an ultimate truth I don’t object to anyone being an atheist we all have a right to believe anything we like  

Regards

Alan

Happy Belated Birthday, Alan !

It seems like our thoughts and wishes that are in harmony with universal forces keep us and our planet from entropy.  With enough of our thoughts in harmony with this AM energy, any material dross that we drop off can be recycled into another go-round in hopes of picking up on the universal force (PUL?--a vibrational range we call love?)
Voids would only exist where some forms could not sustain energies in harmony with universal force. Since  'nature' abhors emptiness' the voids would exist only until they could be refilled from still-active areas.

So thanks, you all, from keeping us from entropy!

Merry Christmas,
Bets

PS  What I'm trying to say is that I think I understand what you're saying, except I don't get why you deal with the void the way you have. The Void to me has no potentiality except to be filled. Blink, isn't the void's darkness the clue to its non-creative state of non-being?
Thought-filled/formed form carries the most potential energy/light, and our thinking and loving mind insures that our Earth is in this category, so I don't understand your poem, Alan.
On various scales the primordial soup, being the cast-off decay that is still viable, still contains light and potentiality. Dave says we reform new galaxies with it.
Bringing this dance down to human scale we call the energy PUL. We can wring PUL out of and into the most meager of circumstances before matters meet their point of no return and dissolve into the void.

I hope what I've suggested fits with what you're describing.

Hi guys-
Alan - OK, I understand where you come from. We share some details. My background was about 12 years in electronics, maintaining a semiconductor plant and doing test engineering, before I went into social science. (And my Dobson needs realignment and a decent equatorial driver.) My best wishes for Christmas and for your own birthday.

To get rid of the necessity for an infinite regression, consider an abstract universe adrift in the void. The entire universe is surrounded on all sides by nothing - which has no dimension, so it acts like an infinitesimal layer of nothingness beyond which is nothing else. This boundary layer occurs at all the edges of the universe. As we move toward the Hubble limit, no matter what radius we follow, we find that we are moving backwards through the stages of propagation of our reality, and backwards toward its initiation. This can occur in time, or in space. I simply suggest that God is everywhere immanent and effective, so that wherever there is emptiness, there you also find God emergent. Maybe this is a cop out, but if we now plot this along one dimension of time, stretching to the infinite past and future, we find that there is just one great "becoming", always happening. This wasn't exactly the way I had started out to envision it all, but if there is ever an emergence from emptiness, than there must always be the same creation at every instant in which we encounter emptiness. That implies that our world is only one of many - an infinite number of parallel universes -  which is what was fascinating to me. Moreover, when we learn to meditate and reach nirvastarka samadhi, essentially returning to the instant of creation (even though this "instant" is spread out over all possible time and space) I suggest that we become part of the creative activity, and that we give forth our own versions of the next universe.

Hi Lights- Yeah, Roger Penrose proposed a "twistor space" paradigm (which I interpret to be essentially a collective vector transform (functor) over Dirac's spinor space), and then left it up to the geometry to act like people and things.  He and Stephan Hawking seem to have the impression that our universe is "the ultimate free lunch" - and I fully agree. Interestingly, if we allow Penrose to twist space into knots with specific properties that can interact with other specific properties, and if we express a global transform to collect and add the various properties as they emerge, then that same model implies that there will be structures of various sizes - from atoms to pebbles to galaxies - and all of it emergent in the same manner.

I've been toying with a contrarian view of galaxies as emergent systems, rather than collapsing collections of stars in orbits. The model of a single value of angular momentum and a single value of radial exit velocity makes a very convincing fit to the distribution of stars. This is implicit with a perpetual creation model - unless you prefer Fred Hoyle's idea of spontaneousl generationof a few hydrogens per minute in every few cubic meters. One benefit is that I now have a different set of requirements for "dark matter" - it's just leftovers from creation. (Of course imight be 100% wrong, too.)

Hi Bets- It alllooks like a big circle tome too. You might be interested in Garrett Lisi's geometrical model of the particle zoo inwhich he has reduced everything to circulations within the exceptional simple Lie group E8. It all seems to work by twisting one gizmo into another whoosis, and that twists into a frammis that interacts with a gazorby to create a new particle etc -  One of the thngs this does is select the stuff of the universe to perpetuate itself sui generis.

However, as each of the things gets transformed, it adds properties, and that adds complexity to the total information content of the universe, hence increases entropy.  But the increases demonstrate that rather than everything running down and piddling out, the combinatoric process increases the activity of the universe, so not only do we recycle, we have a built-in garbage muncher.

May all our garbage turn to love, joy and oneness in this season of rebirth.
PUL
dave

Hi Bets,

Yes the void is darkness, but it is dark light that is teaming with pure awareness.  Babies and children that have NDE find themselves in this darkness and describe it as the ‘darkness that knows’ and this fits my NDE at age 7.  It is like being cuddled within a warm, wonderful, peaceful womb.  According to the research that has been done, people of all ages that have NDE have described three types of light.  

(From Atwater’s ‘Big Book’ of NDE)
“Symbolically, Primary Light is considered to be God Light; Dark Light is Mother Light; and Bright Light is Father Light.”  

The dark light I was surrounded with during my NDE at age 7 was a shimmering purple blackness.  In truth it felt like heaven or something similarly wonderful.

I might add that this NDE terrified me, but it wasn’t the darkness that terrified me.  On the outer edges of the darkness I could see several pairs of bright, piercing eyes watching me.  In my child mind I had no idea what these eyes were and they frightened me. I now as an adult know they were there to watch over me.

Love, Kathy

Dave how about this angle.

In an earlier essay entitled Existential/Dialectical Principles, the author wrote: 8-) "An infinite whole cannot possess finite qualities in and of itself. It may contain or encompass finite aspects within itself, but when taken as a totality, no finite qualities can be assigned to it. As a result, the only form which existence can take (in the ultimate sense) is the form of pure potential. Potential, unrealized, is infinite by nature - it is all possibilities with no defined outcomes. This unlimited potential, by necessity, brings about the constant change in form and structure we observe around us. This occurs due to the fact that the infinite must produce finite manifestations (such as our universe and its myriad forms), for if it were not so, there would be no true potential. Potential must be capable of actualizing, or it is not potential at all. If the ultimate sense of existence does not consist of pure potential, it consists of nothing at all, which constitutes non-existence, a violation of the second existential principle [establishing that non-existence cannot, by definition, exist]. Therefore, existence in the ultimate sense is not physical (for 'potential' is the opposite of 'actual'), but physicality must necessarily flow from it. This can be somewhat difficult to understand at first glance, but with due contemplation, the meaning becomes clear. The nature of existence is, by necessity, such that the infinite will always produce finite (physical) manifestations which are subject to the overriding principle of physicality, which can best be described as 'constant change.' This principle is most fundamental because if the finite (physical) were not subject to change, it would posess a quality of infinity and could no longer be called finite at all

From the internet,
Regards,

Alan

8-)

Dave,

“Primordial nothingness”

I find this theorized a state an impossible a concept beyond comprehension. It is a terrible, brain twisting minding bending concept that if you think  about for too long and too deeply you can go, psychotic Really! It as impossible to think deeply as infinity. Try thinking of a road that goes on without end. “Forever”. Your mind will in an attempt to escape the impossible will erect some sort of end barrier, but the problem remains where does the barrier end as it must and so on and so on adifinitum

Now in my view there was” never ever a state of nothing”, there has always been something and this something is what we call “existence”. The Void in our universe is not nothing but is “Space that can bend and zeeths with energy. The void you suggest seems to be some sort of a non-energetic emptiness but it is still a something.

The state of absolute nothingness is impossibility. You cannot get something from nothing; there is no absolute free lunch.

Near death experience’s, myself included often go into a dark Void. This appears to be something like the Catholic idea of Limbo.

Regards

Alan

hello friends and neighbors, nice thread Dave started, above my intellect and so i find it a good challenge to add my 2 cents, which is what these boards are for to my pov.

I have found personally speaking it is useless to reflect on the infinite, such as the idea when did time begin? if something is infinite we cannot conceive that it had a beginning and so we do a circular thing in our heads, most frustrating. however, I regard all such meditations as useful at the same time, as it represents the human condition of wanting to bust free ignorance and to gain true knowledge. I end up saying the same thing as the others on this thread in whom i find my companionship and resonate with most all of you, most of the time. (ok, so I'm addicted)

I think if i may include my cheerleader aspect here and my efforts to be trying to reflect an entire profound thread by drawing all together, I would be generating some PUL as divine jester of the universe, I am that, I am. I really like that phrase from the bible to express what god is, and that we are all connected to that idea I am that...I am.  it expresses a free type of thought in other words, and we would all be free to be ourselves, within PUL.

so I'll shut up and go into the wonderful warm void which accepts death and rebirth as two sides of the same coin. every day some of my cells die, and new ones pop up to take their place. I suspect this is the universe in the larger sense also. I suspect nothing really dies, it just becomes more of itself. I suspect eternity means exactly that, eternal. the now moment might be all that we possess while living in C1.

I found the awareness we sometimes speak of, is related to the mind at attention.
the point of attention appears, in my world, to be creating of personal reality, which effects all others ultimately. the point of attention is also what must be obtained when performing a retrieval, with the PUL energy as the glue stuff.

It appears we are all god when we operate from god consciousness, from all that is. we appear to be self creators, in the act of becoming, always and ever, there is no absolute quality to the act of becoming. we do this by shedding belief systems which tend to separate us one from the other. although i don't quite mean to shed a belief system so much as I might say we enhance our beliefs as in order to throw something away, there must be a replacement.
our belief systems just are. we frequently defend them. here on this thread you are not doing that defensive thing. i am so happy!!!!  haha! have to laugh. there is nothing to defend, for grace will defend us when we align ourselves with PUL energy, of live and let live.

to sum up, I have no idea what planet I came from. probably the same one as Monroe, but it is my sincere hope that all who come to believe in their immortality will then lay down the gun and step into a nonduality state of being so i don't have to be cleaning up the blood all the time. love, love is the only thing I can see.

I notice that we seem to be coming to a sort of tentative agreement about the suggestion I was making. God. Maybe if we can get more than two or three of us looking at it there might be a way to cast it into simpler terms and actually examine the premises involved.  

Eternity and infinity have been interesting problems for a long time. Cantor studied infinity and transfinite numbers, and attacked the notion in a manner that I attribute to Georg Hegel. Hegel's transcendental phenomenology simply took the notion that things come together to promote their collective nature, starting with the trivial, and winding up with his version of the Platonic Good.  Hegel's "Philosophical Propadeutics" makes good reading in that regard. Obviously I'm working with Hegelian ideas.

We can actually manipulate Cantor's trans-infinite cardinals, but it gets awkward to divide aleph-null (his first order infinity) by aleph-null and claim that we get unity, and then have to offer a reasonable proof. But if we look at two transfinite sets as one-to-one surjective, we can do it by nominal correlation. I don't want to go there, and I can see why Cantor got so wound up and frustrated when he did.

Alan's remarks about potentiality are to the point.  I don't believe that there has ever been "nothing" in the sense of total negation of both manifest and potential states. This is like "Barth's Dichotomy" - there are two kinds of people in the world, those who divide the world into two kinds, and those who don't. ;-) Alan evidently hasgrasped  the idea that I've been tinkering with, that potentiality is pervasive, and greatest where there is the least manifestation, as this means that the contingent aspects are least. So in my estimation, we can have "nothing that is too small to identify" or we can have "nothing that is so large you can't fill it", which is a dichotomy. That can be built upon, as it is a logically valid term, even if "nothing" happenes to not be valid.

Manifesting, which means actually showing up in the world, is tricky, because we believe in obdurate matter as having some kind of property of solidity that seems to be more than probability patterns in interaction. My suggestion is that what we are made of is, in good accord with Schroedinger's equation, is patterns of potential waves. In other words, nothing. Just twisted emptiness. If true, then our nature is based on emptiness defining itself with respect to itself, and doing so by virtue of the dichotomy of its basic nature.

In specific, if I have a pattern of probability waves that seem to relate to one another in the form of a particle with momentum, then that's all it takes for me to think of them as "matter". And if that's what the entire world is made of, then we can't tell the difference anyway.

The "two slit experiment" is interesting in this light. (If you want a refresher, try this site: www.altair.org/TwoSlit.html I've done this with a pocket laser and old scrap of film.) The usual interpretation is that there is a "quantum wave qualityof matter" that interferes. I suggest that since everything is simply waves of probability in the first place, there is no matter. What we have is sets of waves of probability passing through the apparatus. These interfere just as do water waves.

A probability wave is just a wave with a tendency toward something, or a tendency that is being expressed in the form of a wave. Like 100 screaming teeny boppers descending on a store selling the latest hit tunes. The wave has nothign to do with the carriers. Since we're dealing with combinations, each new addition brings at least a one bit of entropy yes-no decision. The bunch of these sort of hang out as a wave form. The probability is then for the wave to be detected by showing on a screen.

When there is only one slit open, interference is visible at the edges of the slit, but the wave mostly passes through unaffected, hence no interference pattern. Nota bene: there is no wave-versus-particle problem in this interpretation. It simply makes sense.

Huygens' principle tells us that a wave front looks like a line of wave generators, so that every point is a source. This is because each point along the wavefront is interacting with the next point, and does so in every direction at once, so that the wave spreads by virtue of interaction with context. Forwards is the only direction that doesn't cancel out. This sets up the two slit experiment as a way to look at one or more points along the Huygens wavefront.

If we go backwards in time to the origin, or sideways to the Hubble limit of today's universe, in both cases we encounter the same evolving wavefront. Thus, if we step back and look at this across all of time we see a single perpetual and universal creation everywhere ongoing, and spanning time and space as we think of them. Time and space are simply ways to put measures on this dynamic.

NOW - please - I'm willing to talk about this indefintely, but that misses the point. The point I wish to make is that we can find at least one way in which to see our reality as one point amidst a fantastic array of universes, all of which arise spontaneously, because the "making it arise" property of God, or "elan vital"  if you like Bergson, or the basic nature of love, creative joy and awareness in motion, seem to be immanent. This works because we are of the nature of God, which is how the voidness gains a dynamic. And, in addition, our specific situation seems to allow us to go on to carry the God-spark within us into the next phase of experience, so that we can give rise to a new universe.

I suggest that these considerations bear directly upon afterlife experiences.

dave

The mechanics of the idea are one aspect, but the idea of successive universal instantiations seems to me to be more interesting.

Thank you, Blink,

Guess I wasn't hanging onto this thread as fully as I'd hoped.   :-?

Bets

Hi Dave and other viewers of this thread,

I feel it necessary for those who are having shown interest in Dave’s provocative (stimulating) thread to simplify what we have being dialoguing about.

What is this process we call entropy? Here is a very easy explanation of its effect, think of an infinity-sealed room divided into two equal dimensioned separate compartments. Room one contains an enormous quantity of energy at a thousand degree Celsius. The other room is a total vacuum at absolute zero or total high entropy... There is a door separating the two rooms. A fan is placed betwwen the rooms, inside the cold vacuum room. The door is opened and the obvious happens, enegy flows from the hot high energy, low entropy room, into the higher colder entropy room, “moving the fan” while the flow of energy continues, until the temperature, equals between the two rooms. Both rooms having now the same state of entropy. no future use of the energy is possible. if this is a closed system, although all the energy is still all there but “The fan stops forever”... For now, entropy always moves from a hot state into a colder state. It is obvious one cannot warm up a room by taking energy from a colder room. The two rooms in the above example will equalize at five thousand degrees Celsius. The energy is all still there but cant be used. If we buy the big bang theory all the almost infinite energy in this titanic explosion that created our universe is still "here" "Energy cannot be created or lost only converted",  The universe is now unimaginable cold, just a tad above absolute zero. Why? when energy moves from a high temperature dense energetic state it expands, just like the gas in your fridge and cools down. Einstein saw this as an obstacle in his General theory and added a corrective formula to make it work as in his time the universe was not thought to expand as Erwin Hubble later found out

It is debated whether our universe is a closed system like the above, really simplified model. On the other hand, an open system where energy can drain off from the second room, into an infinitely VAST cold void forever. and the universe dies and decays in a cold dark heat death. The jury as Dave said is still out on this possible bleak outcome. “Proton decay”

Of course, the physics of this is much more complex but I feel my explanation suffices for the forum.

How does all this relate to the afterlife experience? Well because of the flow of entropy or physical bodies” die”. The other approaches that Dave has put forward, if I read him right he is concerned with the "how and "why" of existence, the source of what we call god, dimensions of reality such as multiple universes, parallel universes, different universes with different fundamental constants, planes, levels and realms of reality beyond physical life, and where the exist in the reality of the great ALL that I call “AM”

Regards

Alan.

     I            

Hey Bets, I’m not Blink… she’s the beautiful poetic one that makes our hearts sing!

Thanks Alan.  Now I get where entropy comes in.

I have a bunch of work I need to get caught up on and I'll try to post a few thoughts later.  This is fascinating stuff.  Thanks Dave!

K

I'd like to point out the other interpretation of probabilistic mechanics - and I can do this without the notion of entropy or thermodynamics ...  except that it can also be described in those terms etc...

Take two ideas, like your SO's name and your SO's phone number, or any other two ideas. Call them A and B. To write A, your SO's name, in yopur address book does not use it up - you can still write the name in other places, like the bathroom walls, kitchen ceiling, or on checks randomly gathered at the bank.

Putting information B, the phone number, in your book does not use it up either. You can still add that to the scribble in your bathroom - "For a good time call (111) 555-1212. Ask for Godzilla." or whatever pleases you.

To manipulate information in a manner that does not get it used up is called "an operation with replacement", meaning that as fast as you use the information, it is available to be used elsewhere as well.

Let's start with the information lying about on slips of paper. Now count the ways of getting information A. If we exclude the rest of the world and simply stick to the place you have your address book, then there is some probability that you will accidently discover this information, by chance alone. There is an equal chance of discovering information B.

Now, take both information A, your SO's name, and information B, thir phone number, and write them in your book. Two things occur:

(1) You have now increased the number of instances of the information, which means that it is now more probable that as you blunder about, the chances of encountering that information have increased. Because the information is now more probable than it was before, we say that the state of forming combinations leads to a reality that is more probable than the state prior to forming the combinations.  

(2) The joined information, A + B now has properties that the initial bits of information did not have. That is called synergy. It means that something new has been added. Like putting a basket of parts together from one of those boxes marked 'Some Assembly Required" - and a few hours later having a bicycle, or  a manure spreader.

We now come to a division of the ways of looking at things - In the traditional perspective, we look at the mixing of the parts as being an aspect of the initial basket of stuff. We ignore synergies. That way, we wind up with the same number of parts as we had when we began, and we have Boltzmann's statistics, and the usual description of entropy.

However, let's look at the properties of the parts, rather than at the parts themselves. For convenience, let's call every term that we can discover by a separate name, and give it a separate and distinct identity. In that way, color is distinct property. Size is a distinct property. Mass is a distinct property. And, after we have analyzed things as well as possible, we have a basket of properties, the attributes by which a thing is known. And, since all relationships occur by joining attributes, when we add a new gizmo to an old gadget, we create a few new properties by synergy.  Synergy is simply creation of new attributes of the collective by joining properties of the parts that go into it.

Now, when we are counting the properties of some collective that is evolving, if it can add its parts together, it gives back more properties than went into it.  "Name A" differs from "Number B", and "Name and Number A+B" differs from both of them.

So in this approach to stability of cumulative aggregates, the most stable state is that inw hich the maximum number of combinations has occurred, because that distributes the information as much as possible, creating a maximum number of new ways to obtain it. Having increased the number of presentations, the attrutes of the aggregate have increased their probability, which is essentially the same as their dynamic stability.

So here we have another way to view statistical thermodynmic processes. The first way is equal numbers in varied arrangements. The second way is increasing numbers in every possible arrangement. (And, of course, that means that every change leads to a whole bunch of additional changes that can be made - it's a never ending forward going sequence of creation.) It is this second way to view things that I suggest as a cosmogenetic process.  :P

My support for this is that this process can be modelled as an iterated complexion, and it  (experimentally!)  fits nearly perfectly with the generation of knowledge in society. I suggest that it also fits what we view as the material world, but that the material world is actually made of information, and not material, so that combinations with replacement always occur.  8-)

Of course, not all possible properties of everything will be present everywhere at the same time. Some properties of the world remain hidden due to the way we live and look at them.

As I write this I feel a bit like one of Harry Potter's inept friends trying to wave my wand and get a little universe hovering in the air - except that it keeps going Pffft! and making a puff of smoke as it vanishes. However, maybe I'm gaining a bit on the problem of expression. ;-)

dave

very cosmic you guys! sooooooooo....would it be that entropy is like the universe fills a void? I mean naturally and automatic. or it could be like a vacuum, the black holes they found in space could be a vacuum sucking in wave particles. this could be like entropy?

this reminds me of maximum velocity too. also Dave seems to remind me of the 100th monkey thing. as well Leadbeater is tripping me into etheric stuff, by using a mirror to explain that the etheric mirror, of which a human has an etheric body, (one of his 7 bodies) and upon the etheric universal layer, or plane, every image is recordable and theres always room for more images, this is like holographic images too.

Leadbeater explains what I already knew, as concerning mediums, spirit would use the mediums etheric substance to produce a form in the air, usually just the head of the previous incarnation body. this was "draining" although more etheric substance would rush in to fill the missing etheric particles, the original etheric substance going out was still a taxing thing for the medium, unless there were higher evolved beings would help the medium get replenished. etheric stuff was considered like unto vitality for the physical body.

in addition, a trail of etheric stuff was often seen by the sitters emmitting from the mediums body into the form suspended overhead.

I like the probability talk, then theres possibility talk. this is Seth stuff. Dave seems to say matter is not real, which we can see that matter is energy which is in movement, even as the heart is in movement. ACIM says matter, this world is an illusion of reality. maybe the world is in a state of entropy.
I like to do takes on an Italian guy, Cozzolini, we are in a projection, it is a movie set, not only that, all of us as a wave decided we wanted to be in the movie. considering the alternatives, why not?
so I think about this etheric web thing, which can receive impressions upon it, to be a recording in a way. this is why we can tune into the past or future and catch glimpses of our universe this way. also why some of us can walk right into the past for a time span where the scenes are so very vivid, that flipping back to ground level one is a bit shocking. but I am a believer in the Philadelphia experiment, just glad I wasn't there to see it in person.

what else came up for me in reading this thread is about objective consciousness and subjective consciousness. I've read and starting to understand the first 3 dimensions of life here is where we learn to apply objective consciousness, (setting goals, and soul intentions, burning karma, etc) and that therefore there are cerain rules of subjectivity operating, where we are subject to the factors we believe in, such as gravity.

like a person would joke and say "can't walk on water yet." I mean that would be a case of not being subject to physics laws, truly, it would be one who did not believe physical was real. which ACIM is saying, it's alluding to realness, it alludes to solid. it alludes to absolute qualities.
then we have the paranormal which alludes to quite a different reality, and the objective oriented person who rises into new, I'll say the 4rth and 5th dimensional planes of consciousness, as I've been having reflections on that, as well, the personal mystic journey of this board operating from the 5th dimensional plane, if not now, for all of us here, we do have factors operating from the 5th. I just call them guides or helpers for the time being.

well thanks guys, me head is exploding! I love it. my guides said I would.

Greetings, --Dave,

Are you saying that your system illustrates the idea that as matters are reconstituted, they can recombine to  form whatever our thoughts are centerring on? For example, so that hydrogen released from a decayed hydrogen bomb could reconsititute into water ?

How would something less material be reconstituted? Would there be a difference between what can be reconstituted from a scream as compared to what comes from a loving murmer? Or are they both just water and carbon, etc?

Or is that off track and it all breaks down to Yes or No, like basic computers, before it can be reused.

Bets

hi all, just re-read Dave's first post here. quote:  Having neither heaven nor hell, we can get rid of the notion of Divine punishment or reward. All we have is a place to work out our differences, and to design a better way to live. And the responsibility is totally our own.
____

yes, well, I've been trying to say that for years and u just did it for me  :)


Bets, I find you interesting because the question is never clear to me  and I've never heard anyone ask the questions that you do, which makes me feel challenged..so i'll take a stab at it, and maybe Dave will answer.

I think your question is a lot like this: the answer is always found inside the question, or riding on the tail of the question would be the answer. and the answer can only fit the pattern of receptive acquience (spelling?) that the sentient being has constructed, sort of like a homing device mind, where the pigeons come to roost. ah, bad analogy.

I don't think Dave was inferring that a human scream or a loving murmer can be reduced down to just water and carbon, but he does get a little dry now and then to us poets..
the mystery of the universe will not let science destroy it's nature me thinks...

Dave, you're going to have some fun now with this thread aren't you? :)

Hi Bets,

Yes you are correct, any dark void or other has  emormous potential to be filed.  There is, and there never was, a state of nothingness a total impossibity in the existing reality around us. "Let there be light"

Love

Alan

What I am suggesting has nothing to do with "matter" as we usually think of it. Actually, nobody even knows what "matter" is. The best current opinion is Einstein who equated mass properties with geometry, so that the Moon thinks it;'s going in a straight line, while the Earth's gravity curves space so that it stays in orbit, and the controversial disassembly of subatomic particles into Lie symmetry groups on the exceptional simple Lie manifold E8 by E Garrett Lisi a couple months back. In other words, we can reduce reality to geometry.

The only way we can identify mass is that it curves space. What we see is not the mass, but the behavior of space and other things in it. In exactly the same way, if what we call reality were nothing but a Divine Delusion that we are made of matter, when actually we are made of thoughts, so long as the thoughts interact the way that matter would, we can't tell the difference.

Given a world in which everything is made of some kind of abstract stuff, I'll call it information, and by dragging Claude Shannon's work into the discussion, I call it entropy.  But in the end it's just dream stuff. That's why, as well as how, we dream up the reality in which we pass the time between embodiments, and in my estimation the only things that make life seem different is that other people share the dream while we are here.

In that kind of world, extended matter, that by which the nuts and bolts of the world get defined, when it adds together does so without replacement. The nature of extended matter is a constant in the Universe, or at least when we get to the energy-momentum 4-vector. So we cannot disassemble water to burn the hydrogen without adding energy.

The potential world out of which extended matter emerges has other properties. Those parts of potential state space that are not extended materially add with replacement. Thus information about reality and knowledge of its nature, increase without bound, but reality itself is limited by the limited number of extended traits. Thus we can take one idea and expand upon it, ultimately demonstrating all the ways to add parts together etc.

I am proposing that reality is no more than a dream, and that the extended parts are simply parts of the dream that preceeded us, and thus are parts of the dream upon which we depend for our existence. That way we can't change them. Given that idea, it isn't too hard to think of ways that this universe could propagate itself. And, by looking at all time as one instant common to all existences everywhere and everywhen, what we see is a universal propagation of boundless reality emergent from the location of the "Uncaused Cause".

Then for Little Susie to decide to drop out of this world means that she will find some other potential pathway to real-ize. That is, to make real. So she carries the spark of creativity onward. In that sense, Susie is acting in the person of God, but also as herself. Thus, in this model we have to allow ourselves to be secretly God - But we can't be directly aware of that, or we'd have to stop being individual people.

There was a young fellow named Bright,
Whose speed was much faster than light.
He took off one day,
In his relative way,
And returned on the previous night.

Oh well - at least it isn't quite as dry, eh Alysia?

Bets- a decayed hydrogen bomb cotains mostly uranium, plus some trigger materials, an aluminum tamper (or equivalent), a small fission bomb to set it off, and some lithium deuteride, all wrapped in polyfoam. The largest part of the yield is from uranium 239 being forced into fission, a bit of whih carries fusion along too. If we were to take one apart and stuff it into a trash can we'd have a nice little power generator for a few decades. The hydrogen is not as yet accessible as a power source, but that will come. We're developing ultraviolet lasers, which will soon be in the x-ray range, at which time a sufficiently hot pulse will be avialable to compress it, either directly or more probably by ablation of a surface coating over a tiny pill. Give it another 50 years for that one. It's going to arrive with a few new weapons, unfortunately.

In my estimation, one of the untapped ideas is to use thorium plus a small percentage of uranium in a reactor. This type of reactor can't go into runaway and meltdown, is very stable, and produces very little plutonium.  It's a new technology with fewer economic gains, but would allow every city to have a local generating facility that was safe. That's one answer to CO2 emission. Availability is about ten years to implementation if anyone is interested.

Alan - I think you've got the idea I was working on. It means that we must reconsider our nature, since the implication is that we are wholly spiritual in nature, and that the appearance of obdurate matter is more of an accident. As spiritual beings, emanated by a spiritual Source, we then are not different from God, while at the same time, we are not exactly the same either. Fiat lux, indeed!

dave

Dave,


I am confident that I grasp what you have proposed in this thread. I said that entropy always wins, yes it causes our physical bodies to disassemble, but the illusionary matter or energy of our body continues to exist "forever" out there in the great “somewhere” and “somewhen”.

I said in one of my replies to you that the particle smashers will ultimately not find the ultimate fundamental particle, but a “meme” or thought on the great fabric of the awareness of the infinite one we call God. Thus, we are all thought creations or "thoughts" in the mind of God.

However, we are not God, but somewhat like him in our finite awareness. We remain finite and in that sense are as far removed from this awesome source of existence,  as the lowly virus.

You see, Dave, we have being saying the same things in our different manner, in that we are not matter, it is an illusion and that in your words we are really “information” in the divine mind and in my words “thoughts” in this same source.

Spiritually we exist forever as separate awareness’s from God but have access to the awesome infinite mind, somewhat like we now do within the internet, but of course infinitely superior.

Eternity, forever and infinity all qualities that can only apply to God and do not relate to something like linear time etc etc..

Alan

Dave Quote: What I am suggesting has nothing to do with "matter" as we usually think of it. Actually, nobody even knows what "matter" is. The best current opinion is Einstein who equated mass properties with geometry, so that the Moon thinks it;'s going in a straight line, while the Earth's gravity curves space so that it stays in orbit, and the controversial disassembly of subatomic particles into Lie symmetry groups on the exceptional simple Lie manifold E8 by E Garrett Lisi a couple months back. In other words, we can reduce reality to geometry.
____
about geometry, I think you're right. my daughter had a vivid dream of dancing with an alien guide, who then gave her a box of geometric shaped, colored stones.
we didn't know the significance, but if the universe is based on geometry, it is an orderly universe as opposed to chaos.
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dave said:
The only way we can identify mass is that it curves space. What we see is not the mass, but the behavior of space and other things in it. In exactly the same way, if what we call reality were nothing but a Divine Delusion that we are made of matter, when actually we are made of thoughts, so long as the thoughts interact the way that matter would, we can't tell the difference.
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in the same way, if we died suddenly, we might not know the difference between life in a physical body and life in a nonphysical body because for a while, everything seems normal.
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Dave said
Given a world in which everything is made of some kind of abstract stuff, I'll call it information, and by dragging Claude Shannon's work into the discussion, I call it entropy.  But in the end it's just dream stuff. That's why, as well as how, we dream up the reality in which we pass the time between embodiments, and in my estimation the only things that make life seem different is that other people share the dream while we are here.
_____
I agree we dream while awake or while asleep. yet I think there is a plan, and each have an outline or intentions they wish to perform or fulfill. we don't always accomplish what we wish 100%, but I always say no life is wasted from the overview. am just rambling, its late! love chatting with you Dave.
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I am proposing that reality is no more than a dream, and that the extended parts are simply parts of the dream that preceeded us, and thus are parts of the dream upon which we depend for our existence. That way we can't change them. Given that idea, it isn't too hard to think of ways that this universe could propagate itself. And, by looking at all time as one instant common to all existences everywhere and everywhen, what we see is a universal propagation of boundless reality emergent from the location of the "Uncaused Cause".
___
I am proposing that reality is a finger thrust into the pie, and when we get home we get to eat the whole thing by ourself. I want cherry. I believe when a step up in frequency of higher thought occurs that Dave is right on again, there is a boundless quality to the universe, hate to keep talking as if everything is food, but everything becomes food for thought, so it's like being a kid in a candy store with a few cents to spend, is one life, when this "the skys the limit" type of speed up occurs. has to do with extending PUL, the boomarang thing. I have discovered there is a prana feed in of higher thought which produces energy in the cellular structure. in that way, prana is food.
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Then for Little Susie to decide to drop out of this world means that she will find some other potential pathway to real-ize. That is, to make real. So she carries the spark of creativity onward. In that sense, Susie is acting in the person of God, but also as herself. Thus, in this model we have to allow ourselves to be secretly God - But we can't be directly aware of that, or we'd have to stop being individual people.
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omygod..puns...right again...the other day I coined something I'd like to write on "I don't believe its possible to be completely honest in this world and still remain physical."
look at what Monroe wrote: ...there is nothing here for me now and so my departure is scheduled." thats a partial quote, will have to print the rest for you when I get back home. what Monroe is expressing is similar to what Dave expresses, that to become too aware, that you are god, or to become aware of your creative abilities, leaves no battles with fear to surrmount. Since there are only two emotions, love or fear (ACIM) there remains only Love, as fear is an illusion. god has no fear because god is love and love has no opposite. which leads us to a nonduality state of mind, which leads to no fear...which leads to stability, maybe entropy..still thinking about that one.
_______

There was a young fellow named Bright,
Whose speed was much faster than light.
He took off one day,
In his relative way,
And returned on the previous night.

Oh well - at least it isn't quite as dry, eh Alysia?
___

oh yes, this was not dry Dave. thanks! errr...is this me?



In my estimation, one of the untapped ideas is to use thorium plus a small percentage of uranium in a reactor. This type of reactor can't go into runaway and meltdown, is very stable, and produces very little plutonium.  It's a new technology with fewer economic gains, but would allow every city to have a local generating facility that was safe. That's one answer to CO2 emission. Availability is about ten years to implementation if anyone is interested.
___
do u have a patent Dave? this is good idea actually.
___

Alan - I think you've got the idea I was working on. It means that we must reconsider our nature, since the implication is that we are wholly spiritual in nature, and that the appearance of obdurate matter is more of an accident. As spiritual beings, emanated by a spiritual Source, we then are not different from God, while at the same time, we are not exactly the same either. Fiat lux, indeed!
___
what is obdurate mean? yet I do disagree that we incarnated accidently, I do think we can get caught up in physical in an addictive sense of "trying to do better." I believe we each have between 700 to 1200 lives approximate, general sense, of simultaneous proportion, until full enlightenment and more choice is attained.

nice chatting...love, alysia

dave

[/quote]

Hi Aysia
"obdurate" means ... Hmmm, it means that the dictionary is upstairs. Oh well - I'll fake it.

That which is fixed, stubborn, immovable, solid and constant without change is obdurate. The ideal fireplug is obdurate, a neighborhood anchor, a place of solace for canines, and an important consideration for my house insurance.

Reincarnation seems to be imposed by our nature through the attachments that we carry into spirit at death. Aside from that, the specifics seem to be stage props so that we can act out our lives. Most of them occur without our efforts on their behalf, so I'd call them accidental. As for reincarnation itself, I've heard too many complaints to think of it as voluntary.

A man said that he had been offered a wonderful healing bath by "Helpers". He wass up to his neck enjoying it when he realized that there was no floor, and the bottom of the bath was just a chute that led to a new life. He had harsh words for the "Helpers" who had fooled him.

Or a person who was just resting and enjoying the spirit world when something like a big suction thing came by and scooped him up.

Or the guy who simply was resigned to his fate as he went off to rebirth, "Oh well, I guess it's that time again."

And then there was the angelic woman who said that she had been leaning over the edge to look at the Earth because it was so beautiful, and she lost her balance and fell into birth.

It seems that most of us would be happier as spiritual beings.

dave

thanks Dave. for the new word. we had this question on the other board I go to, "if you could live your life over, would u do it the same way?" or would you want to?

brief sidenote: when in the spirit world getting ready for another dive, things look really great Dave!  :) some of us are really eager. maybe even overconfident.

well, would you live your life over the same way? some would answer, oh yes, I had a great childhood, etc. I'd do it over in a new york minute.

ok, I woudn't want the same first 50 years. no way. but I'd agree to do it over if it brought me to the peace of mind i have now, if the first 50 was the price of it.
the sense of knowing is that mistakes don't need repeating and that greater choice in life circumstances increases with evolvement.

I like fooling around with guides...I was probably one of them that put that guy in a chute just before I followed him in...

Hi  Here is what Kabbla says about existence, creatin etc

Kabbalah & Mysticism
KABBALAH AND HASIDISM | KABBALAH IN SAFED | GOD’S WITHDRAWAL


God’s Withdrawal
Isaac Luria’s theory of creation.
By Louis Jacobs
This selection from Louis Jacobs’ Jewish Ethics, Philosophy and Mysticism includes a translation from Hayyim Vital’s Etz Hayyim (Treatise 1, Part 2) with a commentary by Jacobs. The passages from Etz Hayyim are in bold, and Jacob’s commentary follows. It is reprinted with permission of the author.



Know that before there was any emanation and before any creatures were created a simple higher light filled everything. There was no empty space in the form of a vacuum but all was filled with that simple infinite light. This infinite light had nothing in it of beginning or end but was all one simple, equally distributed light. This is known as “the light of Ein Sof.”

These extremely difficult meditations are those of Isaac Luria but were written down by his disciple Hayyim Vital. Vital wrote a number of books expounding his master’s theories and they are the major source of books on the Lurianic kabbalah. The Zohar holds that the world was created by means of ten emanations, the Ten Sefirot. The Lurianic kabbalah considers what happened even before these were caused to be emanated. This is more than an effort to explain the ancient puzzle of how creation came to be. By this teaching, Luria wants to explain the continuing relation between the Infinite and the finite, and to lay the groundwork for explaining how evil came into the good God’s creation. Ein Sof (without limit) is the kabbalistic name for God as He is in Himself, i.e. apart from His self‑revelation to His creatures.


Two things have to be said before reading this passage. First, reading although the kabbalists use terms like “before” and “after” in describing Ein Sof’s creative activity, they really think of these processes as occurring outside time altogether. (It is, of course, impossible for us to grasp this idea of existence outside of time, but for the kabbalists, as for some of the philosophers, time itself is a creation.)



Secondly, all the illustrations of a vacuum, an empty space, a line and the like are seen by the kabbalists as inadequate pointers to spiritual realities. They never tire of warning their readers not to take them literally as if there really is, for instance, a space in God. God is outside time and space. Similarly, terms like above and below are only figurative. Unless this is appreciated the whole subject becomes incredibly crude.



There arose in His simple will the will to create worlds and produce emanations in order to realize His perfect acts, His names and His attributes. This was the purpose for which the worlds were created.

In the “simple light of Ein Sof” there emerged a will to create. (Note the way in which it is avoided saying that Ein Sof willed directly, because this is considered as touching on a mystery too deep for human understanding.)



Ein Sof then concentrated His being in the middle point, which was at the very center, and He withdrew that light, removing it in every direction away from that center point.

In the Lurianic kabbalah, creation is only possible by God withdrawing Himself. The logic is simple. Where there is God there cannot be any creatures since these would be overpowered by His majesty and swallowed up, as it were, into His being. This idea of Luria’s is known as tzimtzum (withdrawal).



There then remained around the very center point an empty space, a vacuum. This withdrawal was equidistant around that central empty point so that the space left empty was completely circular. It was not in the form of a square with right angles. For Ein Sof withdrew Himself in circular fashion, equidistant in all directions.

If the “empty space” left after Ein Sof’s withdrawal were to be depicted as a square this would suggest that after the withdrawal Ein Sof is nearer to the center at some points more than others, whereas the circumference of a circle is equidistant from the center at all its points.



The reason for this was that since the light of Ein Sof is equally spaced out it follows by necessity that His withdrawal should be equidistant in all directions and that He could not have withdrawn Himself in one direction to a greater extent than in any other. It is well known in the science of mathematics that there is no more equal figure than the circle. It is otherwise with the figure of a square, which has protruding right angles, or with a triangle or with any other figure. Consequently, the withdrawal of Ein Sof had to be in the form of a circle.

Ein Sof is infinite and it cannot, therefore, be said that He is nearer one point than another. The great difficulty here lies in the whole concept of a limitation of the Limitless.



Now after this withdrawal of Ein Sof (which left an empty space or vacuum in the very center of the light of Ein Sof, as we have said), there remained a place in which there could emerge the things to be emanated, to be created, to be formed and to be made. There then emerged a single straight line of light from His circular light and this came in a downward direction, winding down into that empty space.

Even after God’s withdrawal there has to be something of Ein Sof in the empty space otherwise nothing could exist there (nothing can exist without God’s power). Therefore a line of light (figuratively speaking, of course) is said to wind downward into the empty space. The figure is of a kind of deep hole in the center down into which the line of light winds itself. In the empty space left after Ein Sof’s withdrawal, the various worlds emerged. In the kabbalah there are four main worlds, corresponding to the four infinitives mentioned. These are: 1) The World of Emanation (the realm of the Sefirot) 2) The World of Creation (lower in degree than the former); 3) The World of Formation (lower in degree than the first two); 4) The World of Action (or Making), the world as we know it, the physical universe (or, as many kabbalists understand it, the spiritual source or counterpart of this world of ours). All four worlds are seen as emerging in the empty space or vacuum.

8-)
Alan

Another excellent Kaballistic reference is the Sephir Yetzirah. Similar message, but inclination toward the early form of Tarot and the Tree of Life cosmology.