There is Past and Future

[WokeBloke]

Definitions:

Past: Already experienced events (mostly forgotten).

Present: The current experience (changing)

Future: Unexperienced events that will happen (unpredictable and unknown).

 

There are many claims that one has no past or future. There is only "now". I will attempt to convince you otherwise.

 

 

First notice that experiencing is all you have ever known. It has always been on from your perspective.

Now because you are experiencing you are generating a past for yourself. The very nature of experiencing is such that one is always generating a past via their actions.

 

Evidence for Past:

1. Look at your hand. Mentally record the position of your hand. This is state 1. Raise your hand above your head. This is state 2. Do you agree that state 1 was before state 2, already happened, can't be undone, and is therefore in the past?

2. Look at a picture of yourself when you were younger. Do you agree that you use to be that person and that is your past body?

3. Look at the history of the world. Do you agree that the year 2020 is already over? Do you agree that the year 100 BC is in the past?

4. Examine the fact that what you ate for breakfast yesterday is not happening right now despite people saying "everything happens now". Would you agree that you are not eating your breakfast from yesterday right now and that it therefore happened in the past?

 

Thank you for reading. I would love to hear my opinions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Someone here]

The past is imaginary.

Memories are thoughts occurring now.

All you have is the now. 

[Mosess]

@Someone here can we say there is no now?

[WokeBloke]

3 minutes ago, Someone here said:

The past is imaginary.

Memories are thoughts occurring now.

All you have is the now. 

Memories are also visual such as pictures I mentioned in the post. 

[Someone here]

3 minutes ago, Mosess said:

@Someone here can we say there is no now?

Yes in fact even the now is unstable 

[Moksha]

When people say there is only the present moment, they are pointing to a deeper reality, beyond personal experience. Consciousness creates the apparent dimensions of time and space, and everything within its cosmic web is only relatively real.

This is directly realized, but has also been supported by science. If time was absolute, it would pass at the same rate, regardless of the perspective of the observer. However, once you move beyond the narrow band of normal human existence, the illusion of objective reality begins to fray.

My favorite example is the Hafele–Keating experiment:

In October 1971, Joseph C. Hafele, a physicist, and Richard E. Keating, an astronomer, took four cesium-beam atomic clocks aboard commercial airliners. They flew twice around the world, first eastward, then westward, and compared the clocks against others that remained at the United States Naval Observatory. When reunited, the three sets of clocks were found to disagree with one another, and their differences were consistent with the predictions of special and general relativity.

[WokeBloke]

4 minutes ago, Moksha said:

When people say there is only the present moment, they are pointing to a deeper reality, beyond personal experience. Consciousness creates the apparent dimensions of time and space, and everything within its cosmic web is only relatively real.

This is directly realized, but has also been supported by science. If time was absolute, it would pass at the same rate, regardless of the perspective of the observer. However, once you move beyond the narrow band of normal human existence, the illusion of objective reality begins to fray.

My favorite example is the Hafele–Keating experiment:

In October 1971, Joseph C. Hafele, a physicist, and Richard E. Keating, an astronomer, took four cesium-beam atomic clocks aboard commercial airliners. They flew twice around the world, first eastward, then westward, and compared the clocks against others that remained at the United States Naval Observatory. When reunited, the three sets of clocks were found to disagree with one another, and their differences were consistent with the predictions of special and general relativity.

I didn't say time was not relative. 

Do you accept that there is change?

If there is change then there is a past.

To say that people have no past is like saying what is happening right now is not happening.

[Nahm]

10 minutes ago, WokeBloke said:

what is happening right now is not happening

Now you’re getting somewhere. The knower can not know the knowers justifications & assumptions, as without them there is no knower. 

1 hour ago, WokeBloke said:

First notice that experiencing is all you have ever known. It has always been on from your perspective.

The assumption is a knower & a known. The justification of your idea (of it being right) hinges on using time to justify that there is no time. There is also the presence of the ever-notorious ‘it’, The Great Rug all justification, assumption and rationalizing gets swept under. See what “it” actually is. Then talk about “it”. 

[OneHandClap]

27 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Yes in fact even the now is unstable 

Clarification: the present moment is unstable, but the now is not. The now is a sort of "eternal" time. It doesn't correspond to past, present, or future, since it is beyond conceptualization. This is a subtle point, but one stressed a lot in Dzogchen practices. 

[The0Self]

10 minutes ago, WokeBloke said:

To say that people have no past is like saying what is happening right now is not happening.

[Someone here]

@OneHandClap what's the difference between "the present moment" and "the now"? 

[Inliytened1]

I can see how language starts to quickly break down here because "now" is prior to language or concept/thought.   It's something that you ARE or IS (pure Being). 

@WokeBloke look at it like this..you ARE the now.  That is your true nature.  Then the "now" begins to imagine it is something that has a past, present and a future.   But technically calling it now is just a mere pointer because past present/now and future all fall away when you become the actual now, which is not the now. Lol.

[OneHandClap]

7 minutes ago, Someone here said:

@OneHandClap what's the difference between "the present moment" and "the now"? 

Basically what @Inliytened1 wrote above. "The present moment" is still a subtle reification of time and subject to grasping. Again, this is a very subtle point that you can find a lot of material about in Zen or Dzogchen (Nagarjuna was a great writer about these concepts). 

[WokeBloke]

16 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

I can see how language starts to quickly break down here because "now" is prior to language or concept/thought.   It's something that you ARE or IS (pure Being). 

@WokeBloke look at it like this..you ARE the now.  That is your true nature.  Then the "now" begins to imagine it is something that has a past, present and a future.   But technically calling it now is just a mere pointer because past present/now and future all fall away when you become the actual now, which is not the now. Lol.

One is an ongoing process.

When you type the first word of your reply to me is that in the past relative to the last word of your reply?

Edited October 12, 2021 by WokeBloke

[Inliytened1]

3 minutes ago, WokeBloke said:

One is an ongoing process.

When you type the first word of your reply to me is that in the past relative to the last word of your reply?

Well actually all that exists is what is actual.  If I look back at the first word then it exists if I don't it is not actual.

[WokeBloke]

Just now, Inliytened1 said:

Well actually all that exists is what is actual.  If I look back at the first word then it exists if I don't it is not actual.

You are saying just because you forget something means it didn't happen.

Tell that to Hitler.

[Inliytened1]

2 minutes ago, WokeBloke said:

You are saying just because you forget something means it didn't happen.

Tell that to Hitler.

This is hard to swallow but you know what I am going to say about this.  And I'm Jewish.  . But reality is indeed a Mind.  And this is a dream.

[WokeBloke]

1 minute ago, Inliytened1 said:

This is hard to swallow but you know what I am going to say about this.  And I'm Jewish. 

 

I don't know what you're going to say.

[WokeBloke]

3 minutes ago, Inliytened1 said:

This is hard to swallow but you know what I am going to say about this.  And I'm Jewish.  . But reality is indeed a Mind.  And this is a dream.

So you aren't aware?

[Inliytened1]

Just now, WokeBloke said:

So you aren't aware?

Ofcourse.  But Consciousness is mystical you cannot pin it down with language so I'm not sure what that has to do with the thread.  If your trying to claim that the past happened, I mean..your imagining it or dreaming it up RIGHT NOW.   So we are back to that.  If you want to say it happened you could say that it was dreamed up but that is not quite right because it implies it was dreamed up in the past.  You are dreaming a past right now.