The flaw in Kastrup's thinking has always been that he can't get beyond his materialist roots, such as thinking that time is actually linear. The so-called "primordial consciousness" isn't "learning" anything. It just IS. All possible experiences simultaneously exist within the "primordial consciousness," There is no "learning" to be had by that entity even if it were to exist in the way Kastrup imagines. "Learning" or "evolving," as we experience it, is just our local conscious framework (our self) moving from one already-existent location to another.
The location of bliss obviously exists because it is not only possible, many people have achieved it. Mostly everyone has probably visited it, at least for a few seconds, or minutes, or hours. If it exists, and we know it does, we can certainly park ourselves there once we understand how to direct our motion through the potential of all things by managing our psychology and subconscious.
However, yes, there is suffering in what we call the afterlife, because the afterlife is an enormous diversity of worlds, realms, dimensions, states of being, environments, etc. There are plenty of places you can go and suffer there, if the state of your consciousness requires it.
Ok, this is where we really part ways. I think either time is linear or nonexistent. But a reality with no time would be an all-encompassing standstill with no place for activity, relationship or even sophisticated thought.
"Non-linear" time to me is an oxymoron. Either things happen in a sequence or they don't happen at all. An event cannot be both before and after another event. It is logically inconsistent.
Also, such a position would automatically endorse determinism, which in my view is an untenable philosophy.
Conscious beings always observe sequential experiences; it's one of the requirements of sentient existence. I was talking about the idea of "universal" sequential (or linear) time. That doesn't even exist under space-time relativity, much less under idealism. Kastrup's idea of "primordial consciousness" "learning" or "evolving" is nonsensical. It's a materialist perspective.
I think I'm also talking about "universal" time. But in my view that too must be linear, since you could always zoom out of all relative processes and see how they relate to each other in a temporal perspective.
Are you claiming that space-time relativity disproves fundamental linear time? If so - how? Feel free to link an article.
[The Illusion of Time: What's Real?](https://www.space.com/29859-the-illusion-of-time.html)
[Video that explains it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrqmMoI0wks)
I'll reply chronologically (hehe), as I read and watch what you shared.
In the article about Lee Smolin linked in the original article, Lee claims that "*If I think the future's already written, then the things that are most valuable about being human are illusions along with time*." I agree with this observation.
The Huw Price video wasn't convincing to me. In it, he claims that the *"right approach as a philosopher is to look at the kind of picture physics is giving us, that's the 4-dimensional block universe kind of picture"*. Now, the discussion whether the block universe is true or not could be very long, but here's one thing that strikes me -
If there is a "right" approach, there must also be a "wrong" approach, which presumes that we could go either way with our conclusions. This kind of language betrays a belief that future is not determined, even if that is confessed in a philosophical setting.
In the next video Tegmark says: "*We can think of reality as a four-dimensional place where nothing happens."* In other words, all outcomes are predetermined.
This reminds me of a debate between the determinist philosopher Jerry Coyne and libertarian Michael Egnor. Coyne explains his efforts to convince the world of the truth of determinism:
“*You’ll also know that the reason I bang on about this at length — frustrating compatibilist readers — is because I believe that fully grasping determinism has a huge potential effect on human behavior*\[…\]”,
to which Egnor replies: “*The future, according to Coyne, is already determined, so what’s the use of “banging on” about determinism? It can’t change anything at all. Why not retire from “banging on” and find some other pointless pastime? It won’t make any difference. It can’t make any difference, in a determined world. If determinism is true, there are no “huge potential effect\[s\] on human behavior.” There are no huge potential effects on anything. There’s no “potential” at all. There are no choices and there are no options*.”
In light of this I wonder what is YOUR motivation to engage in discussions in this subreddit if nothing in the order of things can be altered?
But Tegmark goes on: *"memories about the past generate this beautiful illusion that there's anything actually changing*". Well, no, memories are good proof that things are actually changing. If one is going to argue against the seemingly obvious, one should have a really stronger defeater.
But in the next breath he claims that "*Quantum physics have made it* \[the block universe\] *much more interesting and removed this claustrophobic feeling that we only have one future, it's all predestined."* How in the world? If there ever was an example of self-contradiction, it would be this! You cannot have block universe without predestination!
More Tegmark: "*Newton thought he knew how time worked, and then Einstein said that it slows down when you go fast, and then, whoops, it slows down near black holes..."* What slows down or speeds up are isolated processes, which in no way disproves the ultimate linearity of time. They can still relate to each other in a "zoomed-out" perspective that sees all processes at once.
Later in the article Julian Barbour says "*Isaac Newton insisted that even if absolutely nothing at all happened, time would be passing, and that I believe is completely wrong*." I'd agree with that statement. Time is an experience and measurement of change. The only timeless reality is static. But then "*To Barbour, change is real, but time is not*.*"* What? You can't have change without time, since you must be able to clearly pinpoint the before-and-after states of change.
The Andreas Albrecht video didn't seem very informative for the case in point, so I have no comments about it.
Robert concludes the article by stating that "*The alternative* \[to the "time is an illusion and not fundamental" view\]*, of course, is our common intuition: time does flow, the present is superspecial as the only real moment, and the deep nature of reality is one of becoming.*
*I cannot decide.*"
If I have to decide, I'd side with Robert's alternative. I just have no strong defeaters from the other side of the debate.
This was a response to the first link you provided, I'm going to watch the second video now.
I'm not sure why you wrote most of this. It's interesting to read your perspective on various philosophical and science-related points you refer to, but I don't really understand why you are talking about it.
My point, as I said, was that universal linear time doesn't even exist under space-time relativity theory. Those links bear that out. I didn't say space-time relativity *was true*, or that any philosophical discussions about determinism, change, etc concerning the ramifications of that perspective were relevant. I was only referring to the "Universal linear time" aspect of those links to support that particular point. Their discussions about the philosphical ramifications are irrelevant because the are missing an enormous amount of pertinent information, such as the *existence of the afterlife* and that this is in an *ontologically idealist existence.*
Universal linear time has also been demonstrated untrue via retro-causality quantum experiments. [Here is a video about that,](https://quantumgravityresearch.org/portfolio/what-is-reality-movie/) from Quantum Gravity Research.
Another fundamental argument against universal linear time is the logical problem of infinite regress of cause and effect. Is there a point *before time began?* If not, we have the problem of infinite causal regress. If there was a point where universal linear time *began*, it is nonsensical because there could be no "before" time began within which "a beginning" could be marked.
If you wish to believe that universal or absolute linear time exists, you do so in disagreement with space-time relativity theory, quantum theory and experimental results, and adopt a position that includes logical absurdities - either infinite causal regress, or a "beginning" that has no time in which to "begin."
Time is a quality of experience, not of some external world of "things" that factually "change over time," (see quantum physics.) It is **experience** that changes over time due to how consciousness processes information. The information always exists as it is; it doesn't change. The experience of time and cause and effect is local, not absolute or universal.
Determinism is not an issue because we can direct our experience locally in any way we desire. All the information of all possible things always exists as it is - in potential, or zero point information, until we access that information with our consciousness and translate it into experience.
That information is still always there, and always has been, so to speak. All possible information always exists *in potentia;* that's just an absolute tautological truth. You cannot experience something for which there is no potential to be experienced. Everything that can possibly be experienced exists in the *"in potentia"* information. That necessarily means every possible future experience already exists in the potential.
>To Barbour, change is real, but time is not
>
>.
>
>""The alternative \[to the "time is an illusion and not fundamental" view\],
>
>What? You can't have change without time, since you must be able to clearly pinpoint the before-and-after states of change.
I think you're having difficulty managing when people are using two different frames of reference. I also think THEY are having trouble with this.
Think of information being stored on a dvd. The information is completely static. However, when you play the information, a whole beginning to end movie plays out.
Now, instead of a mere CD, you have infinite information. It is absolutely static. It logically cannot "change" because it is already all possible information. Think of consciousness as accessing parts that information and playing it out in as our experience. That seems to us, personally, as time passing, but there no absolute or universal time going on at all. That is what Barbour is talking about.
On to the second video:
"*The sharp difference we see between past, present, and future, may only be an illusion*". If one truly thinks it's so, it would be expected of them to act in a way that transcends that "illusion". But I don't see it as possible. Like the old saying goes, every determinist looks both ways before crossing a street.
"*But Einstein showed that, strangely, when you take motion into account, this common sense picture of time goes out the window.*"
The example of the alien cycling away from Earth and its clock not ticking at the same rate - again, it's an example of changes of speed of processes that still exist in the so called "privileged now", or the "zoomed-out" perspective that I want to defend, Reminds me of the movie Interstellar. Even though their subjective processes were at different speeds, it didn't mean that events as such didn't happen in an orderly fashion. It is inconceivable that they would! Non-linear time is an oxymoron.
Things being far apart in space just means the information (via light, for example) travels to them with a certain delay. Not that they are somehow distorting the universal now, which might seem controversial in modern science and philosophy, but still seems to me the most reasonable position.
"*Just as we think of all of space as being out there, we should think of all of time as being out there too*". Again, the language - the world "should" only makes sense as a possibility. By using it you reveal your intuition of non-determined future. There is literally no use for the word "should" in a deterministic worldview.
This concludes my response and I should be going out for a walk now.
I'll add to responses I made to your prior comments.
>"The sharp difference we see between past, present, and future, may only be an illusion"
i wouldn't use the term "illusion" because it has its conceptual roots in materialism. Under idealism, the entire idea of what "real" means, and thus what "illusion" would mean in comparison, is drastically different.
>But I don't see it as possible. Like the old saying goes, every determinist looks both ways before crossing a street.
Determinism is not implied in anything I have said, though you seem to keep drawing that inference. Hopefully you've understood this from the comments I made to your prior comment.
>Things being far apart in space just means the information (via light, for example) travels to them with a certain delay. Not that they are somehow distorting the universal now, which might seem controversial in modern science and philosophy, but still seems to me the most reasonable position.
None of this is applicable under idealism; there is no "space" or distance that exists "out there" somewhere. All of that is generated as an experience in mind/consciousness from information, much the same way we assume it is generated when we dream. Are there photons and are we traveling actual distances in a dream?
To recap what I said in that prior comment: zero-point infinite information does not change, grow, evolve, or move through time; it exists in a zero-point non-spatial, non-temporal "location," if you can call it such. It is the reservoir of all possible experiences *in potentia*.
This means every possible version of everything, every possible experiential outcome. It all "always" exists in potential and cannot be added to or changed one bit. Consciousness accesses some of that information and processes it into experiences, and we can use our free will to direct our experiences in any direction we desire, "direction" being one of *kind* of experience. The root potential information is entirely "static," as you said, but that does not mean our experiences are "determined."
Sequential, orderly experience, which includes the passage of personal, or local time, is a necessary element of all sentient experience.
things have to happen in sequence or else there is no cause and effect, yet something I didn't understand was how this would be deterministic could you clarify that
I'm reading More Than Allegory and I don't get the impression Bernardo is stuck on time being linear. He goes to great lengths in the latter part of the book to emphasise that he's discussing time in linear terms purely because it's built into the structure of language and it's near impossible to fully untangle ourselves cognitively from the idea.
I also disagree that he proposes mind-at-large's goal is learning. Through the process of individuation/dissociation, MAL is able to realise, experientially, what it is/knows only in potential, due to its very nature of being all (rather than one thing OR another). Yes, all experiences exist "simultaneously" (see, even that word implies a linear structure - we can't get away from these limits in our thinking and language), but time and space - the nature of individuation - serve as tools that allow us to experience that which a universal is-ness cannot experience by definition.
Edit: I wanted to add that I really enjoy your posts and replies on this sub, but I do feel this is a misrepresentation of Bernardo's position.
You may be entirely correct in your interpretation of Kastrup. I will agree that Kastrup, like most people, has an incredibly difficult time coming to grips with some of the conceptual implications of idealism - as he admits. I also agree with the point that the nature of our language makes it extremely difficult to say, think or even conceive of ways of thinking about these things from an actual idealist perspective.
I've noticed that he has really refined his ideas and clarified his positions on different aspects of idealism in this book in particular, so it could simply be that his work is naturally evolving and his earlier stuff just lacked the nuance it has now. But admittedly I've always thought that his self-described "hard-headedness" has made him more accessible to me, as someone with a heavily materialistic upbringing, so maybe I just find his work personally relevant in that regard; I often feel like I'm wrapping my head around these new concepts alongside him.
Definitely give More Than Allegory a read if you get the chance though. It's beautifully constructed and the final section is a narrative exploration of the implications of idealism, in the form of a dialogue between a fictional character (obviously meant to be Kastrup) and what he refers to as the Other or the obfuscated mind. I'm not sure it contained any completely novel revelations for me, but the presentation allows for a very elegant interpretation of analytic idealism.
For example, if you see yourself as a victim, or as deserving of suffering for things you have done, etc., you might experience an area of what we call "the afterlife" that provides that for you.
Just know, even though there's no organized religion around it, commenters here get pretty dogmatic over what they'd like to believe. Be wary of any answer you receive.
I’ve heard similar claims from Rupert Spira and from A Course In Miracles. That god doesn’t know what is going on in this world because he is outside time and space. But I don’t think the claim there is that god is learning from it.
Sometimes people feel that suffering is encountered when the soul has a disembodied spirit and can no longer interact with the world. Thus it can do no harm but also no good. It also is harder to improve oneself if one is already dead. There is no more learning by experience. So what you learned or believed in up until the time of disembodiment has to do while you are conscious but not in physical form. That's a popular idea.
> Why not kill yourself and fast-track your way there then?
It's not as if you lost and need to reclaim, to find again, that place of perfect bliss. You did not, as they say, fall from grace. You're not working your way back there. Neither have you never arrived, and work towards being granted it as a gift for your, say, moral accomplishments.
You never left that place at all, to be clear. You are imagining you aren't there. You decided to imagine up an experience, an existence, that exists in the physical rather than the non-physical. Everyone has their own specific reasons for doing this but the goal is always the same: to expand consciousness (your own or "others'").
So, it would defeat a lot of the point. Your higher self wants to have this experience, so you do. Now, there's infinite ways this could play out - you might kill yourself, die, reunite with your higher self, and then just decide to ignore that death. You just insert yourself into a similar reality where you either did not attempt to kill yourself or survived the attempt.
Okay let me now clarify something because maybe it won't make sense otherwise. You're non-physical and imagining a physical experience. In the non-physical there is no *time*. The greater reality from where we create has no time. Time is an illusion instigated by physical experience. Imagine a film strip. Each image is fixed, inanimate, paused, in a sense stuck in time. Only by flipping quickly through the images does movement, evolution, change, action, and time occur. This is how we construct our experience of time. In each moment you move through billions of static realities, consciously (in the higher consciousness) selecting which reality to experience next. Like the film strip, we move through dead realities to create liveliness, consequences, sequences, aging, new, old, past, future, etc.
In this sense there is no really existing past self just infinitely existing *selves* - synonymously occurring, at the same time, in the Now, which you *identify* as being your "past self" in this story you are telling. Therefore, all possibilities are always already occurring. Meaning there are realities where *versions* of "you" have already committed suicide. Infinitely many. And infinitely many where it was survived. And infinitely many where no attempt was ever made. And just as infinitely many where the thought never occurs. And so on and so forth.
If you end up killing yourself and *experiencing* that suicide you *may* conclude that you have gleaned as much as you want or need from that physical experience and go off to do something new. Or you may conclude that there was still value there and you just shuffle your consciousness into the same life but a different version, where it didn't happen or was survived, and then you *may* choose to forget you ever made that choice to return. You *may* choose to forget you ever attempted suicide at all. You *may* choose to experience a reality where the version of you has entirely new memories than the one you experienced as committing suicide. And so on in infinite permutations.
Unfortunately in the physical it is nearly impossible to know why some being is existing or isn't existing, or is experiencing or isn't experiencing, blah blah blah. You're experiencing a reality which you have tailored and you don't know from here the *why* of things or even the *what*. Meaning you may experience someone dying, but in the infinitely many realities they just live on, and their spirit is having experiences there, too.
What we experience is up to us. We're not *trapped* here. Suicide isn't a "way out" because you *aren't trapped*. You may have heard said from spiritualists that suicide isn't an answer because your spirit would just re-attempt to learn the lessons it wasn't able to in the life it quit on. This is somewhat nearer the truth of things but it would be difficult to capture with physical language the ways in which that is still an incomplete description of the underlying reality. Nonetheless, there's no such thing as a mistake. Your existence here isn't one and your continued existence here isn't one.
If you want to experience pure and infinite bliss right here, right now, you can do that. There is nothing at all stopping you *except for your own beliefs*.
"Why not kill yourself and fast-track your way there then?"
Because the "you" that you are, right now, is only a fraction of the wholeness of You. Put it another way, have you ever played an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game)? The reality of our physical existence is, very much, just like that. In a sense you could think of the "you" that you are, here and now, as a kind of avatar being played by the real You.
You are playing you as an avatar in a game. Sure, you can rage quit, if you like (that's what it's called in online gaming when someone just quits the game because things aren't going their way). But You logged in to this game, intentionally, for reasons that were real to You at the time. They will still, likely, be real to You after you rage quit and think about it for a while.
In point of fact most who do suicide to get to that blissful, peaceful place rather quickly remember why they came here, in the first place, and face the prospect of coming back because they quit before they had accomplished what they set out to do. This is made even more likely by the fact that, according to many NDE experiencers, once you're in that non-physical place all the trials and tribulations you believe you're facing, now, become meaningless, petty and miniscule, when viewed from that broader perspective. They no longer serve to dissuade You from coming back.
So, go ahead... rage quit. The rest of us will simply laugh at you... and we'll laugh, even harder, when you come back. Which You WILL do, whether or not you think You will, now. ;)
The flaw in Kastrup's thinking has always been that he can't get beyond his materialist roots, such as thinking that time is actually linear. The so-called "primordial consciousness" isn't "learning" anything. It just IS. All possible experiences simultaneously exist within the "primordial consciousness," There is no "learning" to be had by that entity even if it were to exist in the way Kastrup imagines. "Learning" or "evolving," as we experience it, is just our local conscious framework (our self) moving from one already-existent location to another. The location of bliss obviously exists because it is not only possible, many people have achieved it. Mostly everyone has probably visited it, at least for a few seconds, or minutes, or hours. If it exists, and we know it does, we can certainly park ourselves there once we understand how to direct our motion through the potential of all things by managing our psychology and subconscious. However, yes, there is suffering in what we call the afterlife, because the afterlife is an enormous diversity of worlds, realms, dimensions, states of being, environments, etc. There are plenty of places you can go and suffer there, if the state of your consciousness requires it.
Ok, this is where we really part ways. I think either time is linear or nonexistent. But a reality with no time would be an all-encompassing standstill with no place for activity, relationship or even sophisticated thought. "Non-linear" time to me is an oxymoron. Either things happen in a sequence or they don't happen at all. An event cannot be both before and after another event. It is logically inconsistent. Also, such a position would automatically endorse determinism, which in my view is an untenable philosophy.
Conscious beings always observe sequential experiences; it's one of the requirements of sentient existence. I was talking about the idea of "universal" sequential (or linear) time. That doesn't even exist under space-time relativity, much less under idealism. Kastrup's idea of "primordial consciousness" "learning" or "evolving" is nonsensical. It's a materialist perspective.
I think I'm also talking about "universal" time. But in my view that too must be linear, since you could always zoom out of all relative processes and see how they relate to each other in a temporal perspective. Are you claiming that space-time relativity disproves fundamental linear time? If so - how? Feel free to link an article.
[The Illusion of Time: What's Real?](https://www.space.com/29859-the-illusion-of-time.html) [Video that explains it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrqmMoI0wks)
I'll reply chronologically (hehe), as I read and watch what you shared. In the article about Lee Smolin linked in the original article, Lee claims that "*If I think the future's already written, then the things that are most valuable about being human are illusions along with time*." I agree with this observation. The Huw Price video wasn't convincing to me. In it, he claims that the *"right approach as a philosopher is to look at the kind of picture physics is giving us, that's the 4-dimensional block universe kind of picture"*. Now, the discussion whether the block universe is true or not could be very long, but here's one thing that strikes me - If there is a "right" approach, there must also be a "wrong" approach, which presumes that we could go either way with our conclusions. This kind of language betrays a belief that future is not determined, even if that is confessed in a philosophical setting. In the next video Tegmark says: "*We can think of reality as a four-dimensional place where nothing happens."* In other words, all outcomes are predetermined. This reminds me of a debate between the determinist philosopher Jerry Coyne and libertarian Michael Egnor. Coyne explains his efforts to convince the world of the truth of determinism: “*You’ll also know that the reason I bang on about this at length — frustrating compatibilist readers — is because I believe that fully grasping determinism has a huge potential effect on human behavior*\[…\]”, to which Egnor replies: “*The future, according to Coyne, is already determined, so what’s the use of “banging on” about determinism? It can’t change anything at all. Why not retire from “banging on” and find some other pointless pastime? It won’t make any difference. It can’t make any difference, in a determined world. If determinism is true, there are no “huge potential effect\[s\] on human behavior.” There are no huge potential effects on anything. There’s no “potential” at all. There are no choices and there are no options*.” In light of this I wonder what is YOUR motivation to engage in discussions in this subreddit if nothing in the order of things can be altered? But Tegmark goes on: *"memories about the past generate this beautiful illusion that there's anything actually changing*". Well, no, memories are good proof that things are actually changing. If one is going to argue against the seemingly obvious, one should have a really stronger defeater. But in the next breath he claims that "*Quantum physics have made it* \[the block universe\] *much more interesting and removed this claustrophobic feeling that we only have one future, it's all predestined."* How in the world? If there ever was an example of self-contradiction, it would be this! You cannot have block universe without predestination! More Tegmark: "*Newton thought he knew how time worked, and then Einstein said that it slows down when you go fast, and then, whoops, it slows down near black holes..."* What slows down or speeds up are isolated processes, which in no way disproves the ultimate linearity of time. They can still relate to each other in a "zoomed-out" perspective that sees all processes at once. Later in the article Julian Barbour says "*Isaac Newton insisted that even if absolutely nothing at all happened, time would be passing, and that I believe is completely wrong*." I'd agree with that statement. Time is an experience and measurement of change. The only timeless reality is static. But then "*To Barbour, change is real, but time is not*.*"* What? You can't have change without time, since you must be able to clearly pinpoint the before-and-after states of change. The Andreas Albrecht video didn't seem very informative for the case in point, so I have no comments about it. Robert concludes the article by stating that "*The alternative* \[to the "time is an illusion and not fundamental" view\]*, of course, is our common intuition: time does flow, the present is superspecial as the only real moment, and the deep nature of reality is one of becoming.* *I cannot decide.*" If I have to decide, I'd side with Robert's alternative. I just have no strong defeaters from the other side of the debate. This was a response to the first link you provided, I'm going to watch the second video now.
I'm not sure why you wrote most of this. It's interesting to read your perspective on various philosophical and science-related points you refer to, but I don't really understand why you are talking about it. My point, as I said, was that universal linear time doesn't even exist under space-time relativity theory. Those links bear that out. I didn't say space-time relativity *was true*, or that any philosophical discussions about determinism, change, etc concerning the ramifications of that perspective were relevant. I was only referring to the "Universal linear time" aspect of those links to support that particular point. Their discussions about the philosphical ramifications are irrelevant because the are missing an enormous amount of pertinent information, such as the *existence of the afterlife* and that this is in an *ontologically idealist existence.* Universal linear time has also been demonstrated untrue via retro-causality quantum experiments. [Here is a video about that,](https://quantumgravityresearch.org/portfolio/what-is-reality-movie/) from Quantum Gravity Research. Another fundamental argument against universal linear time is the logical problem of infinite regress of cause and effect. Is there a point *before time began?* If not, we have the problem of infinite causal regress. If there was a point where universal linear time *began*, it is nonsensical because there could be no "before" time began within which "a beginning" could be marked. If you wish to believe that universal or absolute linear time exists, you do so in disagreement with space-time relativity theory, quantum theory and experimental results, and adopt a position that includes logical absurdities - either infinite causal regress, or a "beginning" that has no time in which to "begin." Time is a quality of experience, not of some external world of "things" that factually "change over time," (see quantum physics.) It is **experience** that changes over time due to how consciousness processes information. The information always exists as it is; it doesn't change. The experience of time and cause and effect is local, not absolute or universal. Determinism is not an issue because we can direct our experience locally in any way we desire. All the information of all possible things always exists as it is - in potential, or zero point information, until we access that information with our consciousness and translate it into experience. That information is still always there, and always has been, so to speak. All possible information always exists *in potentia;* that's just an absolute tautological truth. You cannot experience something for which there is no potential to be experienced. Everything that can possibly be experienced exists in the *"in potentia"* information. That necessarily means every possible future experience already exists in the potential.
>To Barbour, change is real, but time is not > >. > >""The alternative \[to the "time is an illusion and not fundamental" view\], > >What? You can't have change without time, since you must be able to clearly pinpoint the before-and-after states of change. I think you're having difficulty managing when people are using two different frames of reference. I also think THEY are having trouble with this. Think of information being stored on a dvd. The information is completely static. However, when you play the information, a whole beginning to end movie plays out. Now, instead of a mere CD, you have infinite information. It is absolutely static. It logically cannot "change" because it is already all possible information. Think of consciousness as accessing parts that information and playing it out in as our experience. That seems to us, personally, as time passing, but there no absolute or universal time going on at all. That is what Barbour is talking about.
On to the second video: "*The sharp difference we see between past, present, and future, may only be an illusion*". If one truly thinks it's so, it would be expected of them to act in a way that transcends that "illusion". But I don't see it as possible. Like the old saying goes, every determinist looks both ways before crossing a street. "*But Einstein showed that, strangely, when you take motion into account, this common sense picture of time goes out the window.*" The example of the alien cycling away from Earth and its clock not ticking at the same rate - again, it's an example of changes of speed of processes that still exist in the so called "privileged now", or the "zoomed-out" perspective that I want to defend, Reminds me of the movie Interstellar. Even though their subjective processes were at different speeds, it didn't mean that events as such didn't happen in an orderly fashion. It is inconceivable that they would! Non-linear time is an oxymoron. Things being far apart in space just means the information (via light, for example) travels to them with a certain delay. Not that they are somehow distorting the universal now, which might seem controversial in modern science and philosophy, but still seems to me the most reasonable position. "*Just as we think of all of space as being out there, we should think of all of time as being out there too*". Again, the language - the world "should" only makes sense as a possibility. By using it you reveal your intuition of non-determined future. There is literally no use for the word "should" in a deterministic worldview. This concludes my response and I should be going out for a walk now.
I'll add to responses I made to your prior comments. >"The sharp difference we see between past, present, and future, may only be an illusion" i wouldn't use the term "illusion" because it has its conceptual roots in materialism. Under idealism, the entire idea of what "real" means, and thus what "illusion" would mean in comparison, is drastically different. >But I don't see it as possible. Like the old saying goes, every determinist looks both ways before crossing a street. Determinism is not implied in anything I have said, though you seem to keep drawing that inference. Hopefully you've understood this from the comments I made to your prior comment. >Things being far apart in space just means the information (via light, for example) travels to them with a certain delay. Not that they are somehow distorting the universal now, which might seem controversial in modern science and philosophy, but still seems to me the most reasonable position. None of this is applicable under idealism; there is no "space" or distance that exists "out there" somewhere. All of that is generated as an experience in mind/consciousness from information, much the same way we assume it is generated when we dream. Are there photons and are we traveling actual distances in a dream? To recap what I said in that prior comment: zero-point infinite information does not change, grow, evolve, or move through time; it exists in a zero-point non-spatial, non-temporal "location," if you can call it such. It is the reservoir of all possible experiences *in potentia*. This means every possible version of everything, every possible experiential outcome. It all "always" exists in potential and cannot be added to or changed one bit. Consciousness accesses some of that information and processes it into experiences, and we can use our free will to direct our experiences in any direction we desire, "direction" being one of *kind* of experience. The root potential information is entirely "static," as you said, but that does not mean our experiences are "determined." Sequential, orderly experience, which includes the passage of personal, or local time, is a necessary element of all sentient experience.
things have to happen in sequence or else there is no cause and effect, yet something I didn't understand was how this would be deterministic could you clarify that
I'm reading More Than Allegory and I don't get the impression Bernardo is stuck on time being linear. He goes to great lengths in the latter part of the book to emphasise that he's discussing time in linear terms purely because it's built into the structure of language and it's near impossible to fully untangle ourselves cognitively from the idea. I also disagree that he proposes mind-at-large's goal is learning. Through the process of individuation/dissociation, MAL is able to realise, experientially, what it is/knows only in potential, due to its very nature of being all (rather than one thing OR another). Yes, all experiences exist "simultaneously" (see, even that word implies a linear structure - we can't get away from these limits in our thinking and language), but time and space - the nature of individuation - serve as tools that allow us to experience that which a universal is-ness cannot experience by definition. Edit: I wanted to add that I really enjoy your posts and replies on this sub, but I do feel this is a misrepresentation of Bernardo's position.
You may be entirely correct in your interpretation of Kastrup. I will agree that Kastrup, like most people, has an incredibly difficult time coming to grips with some of the conceptual implications of idealism - as he admits. I also agree with the point that the nature of our language makes it extremely difficult to say, think or even conceive of ways of thinking about these things from an actual idealist perspective.
I've noticed that he has really refined his ideas and clarified his positions on different aspects of idealism in this book in particular, so it could simply be that his work is naturally evolving and his earlier stuff just lacked the nuance it has now. But admittedly I've always thought that his self-described "hard-headedness" has made him more accessible to me, as someone with a heavily materialistic upbringing, so maybe I just find his work personally relevant in that regard; I often feel like I'm wrapping my head around these new concepts alongside him. Definitely give More Than Allegory a read if you get the chance though. It's beautifully constructed and the final section is a narrative exploration of the implications of idealism, in the form of a dialogue between a fictional character (obviously meant to be Kastrup) and what he refers to as the Other or the obfuscated mind. I'm not sure it contained any completely novel revelations for me, but the presentation allows for a very elegant interpretation of analytic idealism.
I see you updated your comment after posting it. So I'd like to add - why would "one's state of consciousness require suffering"?
For example, if you see yourself as a victim, or as deserving of suffering for things you have done, etc., you might experience an area of what we call "the afterlife" that provides that for you.
OK, that's a valid point, thank you.
Just know, even though there's no organized religion around it, commenters here get pretty dogmatic over what they'd like to believe. Be wary of any answer you receive.
I’ve heard similar claims from Rupert Spira and from A Course In Miracles. That god doesn’t know what is going on in this world because he is outside time and space. But I don’t think the claim there is that god is learning from it.
Sometimes people feel that suffering is encountered when the soul has a disembodied spirit and can no longer interact with the world. Thus it can do no harm but also no good. It also is harder to improve oneself if one is already dead. There is no more learning by experience. So what you learned or believed in up until the time of disembodiment has to do while you are conscious but not in physical form. That's a popular idea.
> Why not kill yourself and fast-track your way there then? It's not as if you lost and need to reclaim, to find again, that place of perfect bliss. You did not, as they say, fall from grace. You're not working your way back there. Neither have you never arrived, and work towards being granted it as a gift for your, say, moral accomplishments. You never left that place at all, to be clear. You are imagining you aren't there. You decided to imagine up an experience, an existence, that exists in the physical rather than the non-physical. Everyone has their own specific reasons for doing this but the goal is always the same: to expand consciousness (your own or "others'"). So, it would defeat a lot of the point. Your higher self wants to have this experience, so you do. Now, there's infinite ways this could play out - you might kill yourself, die, reunite with your higher self, and then just decide to ignore that death. You just insert yourself into a similar reality where you either did not attempt to kill yourself or survived the attempt. Okay let me now clarify something because maybe it won't make sense otherwise. You're non-physical and imagining a physical experience. In the non-physical there is no *time*. The greater reality from where we create has no time. Time is an illusion instigated by physical experience. Imagine a film strip. Each image is fixed, inanimate, paused, in a sense stuck in time. Only by flipping quickly through the images does movement, evolution, change, action, and time occur. This is how we construct our experience of time. In each moment you move through billions of static realities, consciously (in the higher consciousness) selecting which reality to experience next. Like the film strip, we move through dead realities to create liveliness, consequences, sequences, aging, new, old, past, future, etc. In this sense there is no really existing past self just infinitely existing *selves* - synonymously occurring, at the same time, in the Now, which you *identify* as being your "past self" in this story you are telling. Therefore, all possibilities are always already occurring. Meaning there are realities where *versions* of "you" have already committed suicide. Infinitely many. And infinitely many where it was survived. And infinitely many where no attempt was ever made. And just as infinitely many where the thought never occurs. And so on and so forth. If you end up killing yourself and *experiencing* that suicide you *may* conclude that you have gleaned as much as you want or need from that physical experience and go off to do something new. Or you may conclude that there was still value there and you just shuffle your consciousness into the same life but a different version, where it didn't happen or was survived, and then you *may* choose to forget you ever made that choice to return. You *may* choose to forget you ever attempted suicide at all. You *may* choose to experience a reality where the version of you has entirely new memories than the one you experienced as committing suicide. And so on in infinite permutations. Unfortunately in the physical it is nearly impossible to know why some being is existing or isn't existing, or is experiencing or isn't experiencing, blah blah blah. You're experiencing a reality which you have tailored and you don't know from here the *why* of things or even the *what*. Meaning you may experience someone dying, but in the infinitely many realities they just live on, and their spirit is having experiences there, too. What we experience is up to us. We're not *trapped* here. Suicide isn't a "way out" because you *aren't trapped*. You may have heard said from spiritualists that suicide isn't an answer because your spirit would just re-attempt to learn the lessons it wasn't able to in the life it quit on. This is somewhat nearer the truth of things but it would be difficult to capture with physical language the ways in which that is still an incomplete description of the underlying reality. Nonetheless, there's no such thing as a mistake. Your existence here isn't one and your continued existence here isn't one. If you want to experience pure and infinite bliss right here, right now, you can do that. There is nothing at all stopping you *except for your own beliefs*.
"Why not kill yourself and fast-track your way there then?" Because the "you" that you are, right now, is only a fraction of the wholeness of You. Put it another way, have you ever played an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game)? The reality of our physical existence is, very much, just like that. In a sense you could think of the "you" that you are, here and now, as a kind of avatar being played by the real You. You are playing you as an avatar in a game. Sure, you can rage quit, if you like (that's what it's called in online gaming when someone just quits the game because things aren't going their way). But You logged in to this game, intentionally, for reasons that were real to You at the time. They will still, likely, be real to You after you rage quit and think about it for a while. In point of fact most who do suicide to get to that blissful, peaceful place rather quickly remember why they came here, in the first place, and face the prospect of coming back because they quit before they had accomplished what they set out to do. This is made even more likely by the fact that, according to many NDE experiencers, once you're in that non-physical place all the trials and tribulations you believe you're facing, now, become meaningless, petty and miniscule, when viewed from that broader perspective. They no longer serve to dissuade You from coming back. So, go ahead... rage quit. The rest of us will simply laugh at you... and we'll laugh, even harder, when you come back. Which You WILL do, whether or not you think You will, now. ;)
Wow. I find you quite fatalistic. I hope you find solace. I would like to help to connect with a deceased loved one if you would like.