Anderz

I cheated a bit in my intentional suffering practice and took aspirin, haha. And interestingly the tensions started to melt away faster. But it's probably unwise to make that a habit. I also listened to what Sadhguru said in his latest video that we need to have a pleasant state of experience to function well. So I will start focusing on pleasant feelings.

Time is an ever increase of indestructible information. Physicist Leonard Susskind's explanation of how information is indestructible and how entropy is hidden information can be compared to a computer simulation. To simulate a motionless bottle on a table is much easier than simulating the bottle breaking, which looks like more entropy but in reality is more complexity. So the information Susskind is talking about is at the fundamental level of reality. Actual destruction is impossible in reality.

Notice that there is clock time and also psychological time. The subjective experience of time can vary a lot, and I imagine with psychedelics time can really be experienced in radical ways. The experience of time depends on how the information in the now is perceived in consciousness. But there is also I believe a definite constant flow of "clock" time. As a side note, even the reality we experience can vary a lot, including things such as out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and even astral travel and psychedelic realities etc. It's all information in the now being experienced in consciousness. And for example real OBEs are consciousness actually manifesting in the vacuum energy of "empty" space, and not some mere hallucinations in the brain.

I forgot to explain in more detail what I mean by mind. By mind as content experienced in consciousness I mean everything! So the whole physical body is mind, and the environment outside the body is mind, and the earth and the universe, that's all mind, content in consciousness. So yes, with my view inanimate objects and mind are one. Regarding time, when my consciousness is in an off state during dreamless sleep, time is still moving as usual as I see it, and the world exists even then. The material world is simply information in the now, and consciousness is a feedback loop between the infinite unmanifested and the manifested reality. The manifested information is always totally indestructible and goes on expanding.

The third density body is crappy. Even the professional top models have crappy bodies basically, compared to fourth density bodies. But there is I believe a seed of beauty in all human bodies. And even more miserable are our inner bodies which feel like crap most of the time. It's fine to take care of the physical third density body, but the real early potential I think is in the inner body. If we can activate beauty within, that will really start transforming our lives. That's a kind of activation of self-love. Leo has this video about self-love:

Why hasn't humanity yet a clear understanding of time? Because, similar to free will, the true nature of time is something we need to NOT understand, if we want to continue with life as usual. Daily life today depends on the idea of free will and a past where we have lived at other times than the now. Leo has I believe mentioned the true nature of time in some of his advanced videos, but it's so radical so it's difficult to really make it a practical understanding. For example Leo said that we were never born. That's correct, or to put it another way, we were born now. In today's society such claim seems so outlandish that hardly anybody can even think of it as an actual possibility. So this is radical stuff.

@Member To say that everything is in the mind I believe is correct, but it's still useful to have an understanding of time. And time and mind are one, so it's impossible to claim that the mind is real and at the same time say that time is an illusion. Trying to remove time from the mind is like trying to remove space from the universe.

But then what mind means needs to be defined. To me mind means the content in consciousness. And consciousness is an on/off state of being aware as a self. Spiritual teachers who claim that consciousness is everything resort to cop out explanations when it comes to deep dreamless sleep where as I see it consciousness is in an off state.

Yes, I actually have a similar view. A simple example I have is to imagine nondual reality as the single constant Pi = 3.14159265... and examine what the cause of say the 5th decimal is. The cause of that decimal is the whole constant Pi itself! With our reality there is a slight difference though in my opinion. Reality is not like a Blu-ray disc with a movie on it. Even though the information on the disc indeed is timeless and changeless, reality has a different structure. Reality is an expansion of information and complexity. And that gives rise to evolution and the arrow of time.

The real shocker is that it's not time that is an illusion, it's change that is an illusion. Impermanence is maya, the appearance of change. Think of reality as a single changeless block, and what can that block do? The answer is; nothing. Since the block is changeless, everything in the block is also changeless. So not only is there no free will. There isn't even any change in reality other than as a manifestation of the changeless totality.

@Leo Gura The most amazing discovery I have made, is that reality as a whole is changeless. Maybe you have mentioned that in some of your videos. Or do you have another view? It's also similar to Brahman in Hinduism and God in Christianity:

Yes, I like that description. It's a flow of information. And I think of it both ways: time is a constant flow consisting of more and more complex moments. Julian Barbour calls it time capsules and Nows. He has written about physics having a timeless foundation.

When a baby learns how to control his or her body and starts grabbing things and stuff, then that's a miracle! It looks so simple and taken for granted as just an ordinary development of the human nervous system, but consider the complexity involved. It's mind-boggling. Similarly as adults it should be possible to learn how to dissolve the pain body through volitionary intent. Miracles should be involuntary it says in A Course in Miracles: "Miracles are habits, and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control. Consciously selected miracles can be misguided." (T-1.I.5.) But what is a habit? Surely a toddler learning how to walk, that's a habit forming. And that's a miracle as I see it. And things like volition and conscious control are ultimately an automatic process. Everything is automatic. ACIM says: "Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual." (T-1.I.12.) And when putting conscious attention into the pain body to heal it, then that's not itself a consciously selected miracle. The miracle of healing the pain body comes through the spirit and not through our ego's control: "Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle." (T-1.I.20.) To claim that learning how to walk is a miracle some may say is to stretch the meaning of a miracle too much. But dissolving the pain body, that's more clear that it's a miracle, because who can achieve that? Eckhart Tolle said that his pain body dissolved suddenly along with his spiritual awakening. That's a miracle. And if the concept of the pain body is expanded to not only include emotions as Tolle defines it, but also the mental, physical and spiritual levels, then to heal all that can definitely be called a true miracle.

Wolfram's model might only be applicable to a subset of reality. Because it may very well be that reality is not only a result of a simple algorithm. And also, the notion of time they use is incomplete in my opinion, because time in their model ticks as a certain clock speed, which I argue requires some external clocking mechanism. But other than that I think it's a great project.

Wolfram said that entropy is a result of computation leading to more complexity. Something like that. I believe he is correct. And Leonard Susskind said that entropy is hidden information, which as I interpret it means that entropy can actually be order and that it just appears as disorder to us because we lack the full knowledge and thereby information is hidden. Is actual time travel possible? In my opinion, absolutely not. Imagine traveling back one hour and meeting your past self, and then the two of you travel back to the present. Impossible. Why? Because it's impossible to move away from the now. (I believe Einstein's relativity will be proven to be completely wrong).

One miracle that may seem like incredible woo woo is the transformation of the human body to a fourth density body that the Law of One talks about. It's the same as the change of the body of flesh in a twinkle of an eye to a resurrection body described in the Bible. Such transformation actually seems possible to me. Third density is a result of the complexity on our planet still being too low generally for fourth density to emerge. Then as the complexity increases (reality is ever increasing complexity), the miracle of transforming the body of flesh into a fourth density body becomes possible. And the transformation can happen quickly, just as it says in the Bible. Higher complexity means higher density. And the Law of One mentions that there are several levels of density within each level. The bigger leaps, such as from third to fourth density will happen at a certain threshold. When the complexity reaches above the threshold, then boom, transformation happens. But just because an evolutionary leap like that happens doesn't mean that we will instantly get superpowers. It's likely more like how when a chick hatches from an egg. The newly hatched chick isn't that much different initially than it was inside the egg, and it takes time for the chick to grow and learn how to interact in the new environment.

ACIM says that "Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong." (T-1.I.6.) So how can they be called miracles? How can miracles be both supernatural and natural? My explanation is that miracles have to be seen in the context of time. Miracles are a natural result of reality reaching higher levels of complexity. As an example, today lifeforms are natural, but consider Earth 4 billion years ago before there were any lifeforms on the planet. Then when the first lifeforms emerged, that was a miracle! So what is called a miracle depends on what point in history it refers to.

I agree. And Leo calls ultimate reality nothing. I would call it no-thing, or the unmanifested. And the unmanifested is infinite. But exactly, infinity cannot be some manifested thing.

In the Wolfram model, the graph is the foundation but then from that it produces all kinds of complicated interconnections. Their math is way above my head, but the expanding graph can be seen as a wholeness. So for example at step 1001, all the past steps are still there as information. Physicist Leonard Susskind said that the deepest law of physics he knows of is that information is indestructible.

Not a proof maybe, but I have an idea about why the future is infinite! It's based on the premise that manifested reality is an infinitely fast expansion of information in the now. That sounds like begging the question almost, but there is logic behind the idea. If the future had finite information, reality would come to a halt immediately.

I heard that some philosophers say that there are still problems with Zeno's paradoxes. And I agree that there is a problem. For example 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ... = 1 is fine as an abstraction but as some experts have pointed out there is a problem when that kind of abstraction needs to be turned into a concrete situation. What they say is that one cannot just assume that a sum to infinity is actualizable.

I don't see how time can progress in a continuous line. No matter how small time interval, there is always an infinite number of smaller divisions within that interval. I got very existed when I learned about The Wolfram Physics Project. They use a simple graph that expands from an initial state as the foundation of their model. And unless they mess it up and turn it into some continuous model, the graph is always finite. And time in their model is the expansion of the graph.

@LastThursday That's a crucial distinction. My view is that only the unmanifested is infinite. The manifested reality is always finite. And that's what produces time and the arrow of time when the manifested reality unfolds from zero information and expands forever into the unmanifested. Manifested reality will never reach infinite information so time goes on forever.

@Member I have a similar view, that the future already exists. The unmanifested reality is infinite and contains all past and future, while the manifested reality is an unfoldment of the unmanifested.

@LastThursday The lack of symmetry is the ray I mentioned. Time has a beginning, but no end. Consider the opposite scenario where there is the problem of time stretching an infinite number of years into the past. Or the problem of time starting from no time. The ray approach solves that problem by saying that time has a beginning now and is forever expanding into the future. And instead of last Thursday, think of all the past, including the whole history of our universe, as information compressed into the now.