Where the past exists...

[RMQualtrough]

Ever noticed how a perception or thought comes out of nothing, and back into nothing?

Past memories you have, the moment itself when it happened arose and fell, from nothing back into nothing. A single moment. The sense that there was even any continuity IN that experience while it was being had, is a product of the mind and the consistency of the external world.

See by the end of the time you were having your happy memory, say 10 minutes into it, the first 5 minutes of that time had vanished. A happy day was even when experienced made od billions of moments which came into being from nothing - then back into nothing.

There's only this right now. There's only this exact moment...

If you're KO'd, you wake and experience, ultimately, no gap in experience at all. I.e., neither I who stay conscious, nor you who is out cold, ultimately ever cease to experience. To me it seems you do, because I can describe moments you cannot. But ultimately for both of us experience is, firsthand, continuous with zero interruption...

A happy memory you have, where is that moment? It is back in the same exact nothingness as the thought you had 5 minutes earlier is now. There's only this precise moment. Events (really just morphing objects, we are one of these) move through awareness AKA nothingness. Really they don't move anywhere but rather transform constantly. After transforming, the prior condition of the object is in nothingness. It isn't THERE in a place called the past. It's nowhere.

At least it seems that way, as I was told earlier that block time is disproven. Which is helpful for an easier understanding... Block time would be fine but would then require belief in more that is not able to be directly experienced than just multiple finite perspectives as other humans (merely objects in and of nothingness) may report.

[Leo Gura]

Where does the present exist? Where does anything exist?

Where did whereness come from?

That could be your koan

[silene]

5 hours ago, RMQualtrough said:

Ever noticed how a perception or thought comes out of nothing, and back into nothing?

I have pondered this too. The thing is, calling the origin of consciousness 'nothing' assumes that consciousness is all that exists.

But how about if subconsciousness or unconsciousness also exist, with our conscious awareness like a narrow beam of light from a torch, illuminating one (or a few) items at a time. 

Or if awareness is one small compartment of reality, receiving signals in from the invisible unconscious, which it has to interpret into a map or story about what's going on. With inevitable mistakes and illusions. 

How do we tell the difference between theories like this? 

Edited November 23, 2021 by silene