Hi Dave and all!

>>>we discover that the sequence of events by which the world extends itself has only a few moments in which it is unquestionably in a specific state.<<<

From a, let's say logic and distanced viewpoint it appears to me there only is a certain specific state in a relative-dual meaning, namely: nothing - something (or in popular terms: No Big Bang  - after Big Bang).

>>>In between the well-defined instants, there is a transition in which growth occurs, but in which there are very many equivalent and exclusive ways for it to occur.<<<

This is, how I see it, an assumption, that there are well-defined instants, which is not necessarily so (1), in the meaning that there are single, fully describebable elements with certain relations. It's very hard to understand now this in-between of instants, which touches the nature of time. When instants would be well defined, they would be sort of "closed"- timeless. For experiencing time, one instant has to vanish and instead a different instant would be occur (and somebody must watch and compare the two states), and there is no possibility for an in-between, because when it isn't an instant in itself, it has to be a relation, and how can relations be thought between certain instants? (3) It is the old struggle between the "beings/substances" and the "relations", what really is, and this struggle is occuring when we consider to see the world atomistic; btw Descartes said in his "Principia" God would keep the world going by swapping instants. But, a different turn on this we find here:

>>>one instant implies the next, without cancellation of the prior instant, since we carry forward whatever we were doing etc.<<<

When I put it more visually, I'd say one instant carries the other in itself, is pregnant with the other. But this is again problematic, because it would mean there wouldn't be true instants cause they are dissolving into each other, in other words from digital (distinct though "implying" instants) to analog (continuous) again.

>>>To participate in this world we have to attach to a worldline, meaning that we must accept whatever logical relationships hold things together etc.<<<
>>>Were we to jump to a new worldline<<<
You remember RAMs second book? He was a nonhuman and as a tourist he signed up for an earth trip, so he jumped into a worldline as a human on our earth here. In a meditation about these great issues it was as if a big wise being tried to teach me with graphics, and I saw glowing lines of potentialities, or probabilities. On the level of that being, as far as I understood, these probabilities were things like for us realities (2) (my hacking fingers for example) and they organize and build and structure this rug of probabilities. So now Dave, this is interesting: Are there positions where different world lines can be overviewed? It's difficult, as you must be in one, and then how could you see others? I know there must be a way, you've said this some times, it's when something gets mixed, different world lines of different systems such as ghost apparitions and miracles, precognitions and those things. The "jump"- that's something mysterious. It's not that easy to say when two people meet there are two worldlines meeting, because they somehow must be in one worldline or they would never meet, so "world line crossings" are maybe too easily spoken out, or is it just a hierarchy thing, worldlines within worldlines? Boy I can't follow my own thoughts anymore...had no Schlag in my coffee today.


Remarks

(1) It's unfortunately a problem too to build the world from non-well defined states.

(2) Probability is a strange thing because it isn't a thing at all! It just remains because it works so well in gambling halls and casinos and then came the Quantum Mechanics and built a theory with it, kinda substancialized it which Einstein reminded of a casino. Actually, imagine you throw dice. Each side of a die has a probability at 1/6 to be the upper side after you throwed. Now you are shaking your dicebox, it's still the probability of 1/6 for each side to be the upper and THEN, you have thrown it and now the probability of the upper side to be the upper side is just 1 ! Ha ha, never got that thing. It's the same with the "reduction of the wave packet" in quantum mechanics. There is this probability wave (paradoxically, it's well defined) and bang! Then it has collapsed to probability 1 and you have a dot on a photographic film.

(3) Generally when talking of instants or moments, there always is the question about the glue of it. Or like Kant said: "A rule to combine" occurances, which is given by the mind in his book. For if there isn't a glue of that sort, all moments are just a random stack of atoms with no relationship to each other.
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When I wonder about those issues like if incarnations are planned, then I tend to recall this graphics the big entity was giving me. It was definitely a different perspective then I could fully digest, a glimpse that maybe comes a bit close to the viewpoint of those "consciousness workers", to say there are probability lines taken as things to work with, or what we see as concrete reality as just a density of probability, the past seeds the future but the future also the past, enduring structures appearing as cycles or curls of probability/world lines...It's just so different behind the curtain. I like the saying about the void: "It's not nothing, it's not something." Negative philosophy. It still works with logic (Tertium non datur)- as long as it is forbidden to make yes/no- decidable affirmations.


Sorry for that people, must be possessed of a rambling entity right now!

Spooky