Time and timelessness

Whit,

Some other questions and thoughts...

On Friday, May 11, 2018 at 11:24:46 AM UTC-4, Whit Blauvelt wrote:
    On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 02:19:51AM -0700, Ralph Frost wrote:
    ...

    There is so much about how knowledge works that's dependent on temporal relations, that it's hard to conceive how it might work beyond that.

[rf] Are you experiencing time as such an entangled tenet in your mind wrap capacity that you cannot conceive of the temporal relations just as different categories , as in "before, currently, potential or expected but not yet happened"  -- "past, present, future"?  Just mental categories...?

I recently found myself puzzling frantically over how to make a connection in an airport even though I had left home a hour or two late.  Then I realized I was dreaming and that I could let the angst go because it did not, and in fact could not be resolved as in a regular, actual  experience. I was in "dream time" -- "~neuron time". Armed with a memory, i am convinced of the "past".  Able to guess or expect or predict, learn or surmise developing or repeatable events, I am convinced of the "future". And yes, the shadow on the sundial moves and night and day alternate and seasons changes in regular varying patterns.  If I have batteries in the clock, the clock hands and date indicators move with great accuracy so I know when to pay my bills.   But, again, these are part of our conventions and map.

As well, if you have taken or studied some calculus, please reflect on the conditioning of onboarding years worth of dx/dt meditations --  a change in some variable "x"  relative to  a small change in "time, t".   A bird flying east overhead seems to be moving relative to time, but the actual change of it swimming through air occurs due to a lot of fancy, energy-related protein-folding, etc.  So, the "time", the dx/dt, is part of our conceptual map, the comparative summary, as a function a shorthand approximated category.  Time and the temporal relations are in our mental map, but not a fundamental part of the territory.

...

   While our current paradigm of time has cracks in it, the only alternatives   proposed so far seem to me to toss baby with bathwater.

[rf] What is it that you are meaning by this as an alternative?

Or, putting it another way as I nervously question or reflect upon perhaps how much my own paradigm has shifted,  are you saying that you cannot easily glide from the left side of the spectrum  where "time"  is definitely an intrinsic field,  through the mid-section and over to the right side where "experience exists but time does not" -- where time and temporal relations  are  clearly just nested mental, enzyme-catalyzed artifacts and categories? 

What might it be like for you, or where on the spectrum do you see yourself -- and why?


    I agree with you  that more data from experience may be essential to progressing on this  (allowing that "progress" is also "timely"). Jonathan's fascination with  time (and James' own struggles with the concept of it) followed from his  experience of timelessness on a meditation retreat.

    Best,
    Whit


[rf] Amid my own few, skimpy, provincial experiences, upon reflection I notice that it is the anomalies and breeches within the vast consistency of our life and living processes that provide the evidence supporting the "correct insight" that, scientifically: "experience exists; time does not".  And, we can notice that this stands, even though we generally think there is 100% corroboration with  the "obvious flow of time" with ALL results of ALL empirical tests (that I am aware of or able to understand).  I chalk this implausible or apparent counter-factual development up to the previously unacknowledged "nesting problem".  Reality is actually nested structured~duality, yet ~previously we've been unaware of that underlying principle.

Perhaps there is a better way to express that.  The temporal anomalies are important.

Best regards,
Ralph Frost, PhD

Changing the scientific paradigm.
https://magnetictetrahedra.com


On Friday, May 11, 2018 at 11:24:46 AM UTC-4, Whit Blauvelt wrote:
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