We think our destiny is to journey to Mars and beyond. Yet as we build our spacecraft, we're about to be broadsided - from a different direction - by the most explosive event in history.
Sometime in the future science will be able to create realities that we can't even begin to imagine. As we evolve, we'll be able to construct other information systems that correspond to other realities, universes based on logic completely different from ours and not based on space and time.
Immanuel Kant declared in 1781 that space and time were real, but only indeed as properties of the mind. These algorithms are not only the key to consciousness, but why space and time − indeed the properties of matter itself - are relative to the observer. But a new theory called biocentrism suggests that space and time may not be the only tools that can be used to construct reality. At present, our destiny is to live and die in the everyday world of up and down. But what if, for example, we changed the algorithms so that instead of time being linear, it was 3-dimensional like space? Consciousness would move through the multiverse. We'd be able to walk through time just like we walk through space. And after creeping along for 4 billion years, life would finally figure out how to escape from its corporeal cage. Our destiny would lie in realities that exist outside of the known physical universe.
Even science fiction is struggling with the implications. In "Avatar," human consciousness is infused into blue aliens that inhabit a wondrous world. However, according to biocentrism, replicating human intelligence or consciousness will require the same kind of algorithms for employing time and space that we enjoy. Everything we experience is a whirl of information occurring in our heads. Time is simply the summation of spatial states - much like the frames in a film - occurring inside the mind. It's just our way of making sense of things. There's also a peculiar intangibility to space. We can't pick it up and bring it to the laboratory. Like time, space isn't an external object. It's part of the mental software that molds information into multidimensional objects.
We take for granted how our mind puts everything together. When I woke up this morning, I was in the middle of a dream that seemed as real as everyday life. I remember looking out over a crowded port with people in the foreground. Further out, there were ships engaged in battle. And still further out to sea was a battleship with radar antenna going around. My mind had somehow created this spatio-temporal experience out of electrochemical information. I could even feel the pebbles under my feet, merging this 3D world with my 'inner' sensations. Life as we know it is defined by this spatial-temporal logic, which traps us in the universe with which we're familiar. Like my dream, the experimental results of quantum theory confirm that the properties of particles in the 'real' world are also observer-determined.
Loren Eiseley once wrote: "While I was sitting one night with a poet friend watching a great opera performed in a tent under arc lights, the poet took my arm and pointed silently. Far up, blundering out of the night, a huge Cecropia moth swept past from light to light over the posturings of the actors. 'He doesn't know,' my friend whispered excitedly. 'He's passing through an alien universe brightly lit but invisible to him. He's in another play; he doesn't see us. He doesn't know. Maybe it's happening right now to us.'"
Like the moth, we can't see beyond the footlights. The universe is just life's launching-pad. But it won't be rockets that take us the next step. The long-sought Theory of Everything was merely missing a component that was too close for us to have noticed. Some of the thrill that came with the announcement that the human genome had been mapped or the idea that we're close to understanding the Big Bang rests in our innate human desire for completeness and totality. But most of these comprehensive theories fail to take into account one crucial factor: We're creating them. It's the biological creature that fashions the stories, that makes the observations, and that gives names to things. And therein lies the great expanse of our oversight, that until now, science hasn't confronted the one thing that's at once most familiar and most mysterious - consciousness.
Reality is simply an information system that involves our consciousness. Until we understand ourselves, we will continue to blunder from light to light, unable to discern the great play that blazes under the opera tent.
Robert Lanza, MD is author of "Biocentrism," a new book that lays out his theory of everything.
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Robert Lanza » Blog Archive » Biocentrism: How Life and ...
Time and Space are more correctly referred to as Time/Space...indivisible.
For the passage of time, space must exist. Once space exist time begins and vice-a-versa.
Imagine the concept of the beating atom, pulsating as it vibrates between point A and point B. Without space there is no place for the movement to pulsate or vibrate. And since this movement begins at point A and continues until point B, notably not being at both points at the same instance, time is a necessity.
Suggesting a three-dimentional multiverse (and presumably more than three dimensions), one must accept some form of Time/Space related to that reality if events in these multiverses are to transpire in a similar manner for us to experience in ways we understand now.
Which leads to the non-physical universe the one thing that does exist. Not as a "thing" "somewhere" but as a construct of supernatural logic. And in that construct of supernatural logic is this thing we experience as the three-dimentional universe.
This is like pulling on the thread of a sweater. You pull and it unravels the complete sweater only to be found that it is connected to another entire sweater.
Since all things are parts of a single thing (and I can explain that quite easily), what has brought the focus that we understand...
Understanding things that do not concern us is oxymoronic. We know what we know, however well founded. We know what we do not know, of details and perfected skills. But we have no idea what we do not know we do not know because it has not yet been conceived as it is yet unneeded.
Humanity slowly stretches its conception of what it is as it slowly needs to expand its function. The alternative is no alternative. And both conception and function need Time and Space.
Grasping that function is the conversation. All else deems no concern at this time in space.
Cheers,
TheeDaveMoore
http://www.ThinkersAndSinkers.com
Don Juan used peyote, Datura, Jimson weed and other chemical substances to cause the assemblage point to shift for poor Carlito, who was really much like a lot of us. Too smart in our world, too dumb in any other. The books are absolutely delightful and a must companion for Biocentrism. The truth of it is, we will find in the other 97% of our minds we don't use the way to traverse worlds without end. We already do in our dreams. These are precursors of what we can do when we are fully trained to do so. Currently, we make the oligarchy too much money being dumb, so if you want to strike out in that direction, you're on your own for the most part.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/25351987/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagualism_%28Carlos_Castaneda%29
However, "we" are only a part of something else. (Here I go again) :
There are only 2 entities in the universe : the material world and Consciousness. There can be no material world without a consciousness of it. There can be no consciousness without the material world to be conscious of. However, the material world began, there had to be a Consciousness at the time. That Consciousness cannot be individual or collective consciousness but Supreme Consciousness or Jesus' God, a Spirit. Can individual consciousness act solely on its own volition, or collective consciousness coordinate the individual consciousnesses? Evolution only disproves the anthropomorphic god of the Old Testament. (If Jesus had been teaching about the man-made god of the Hebrews, why would the priests want to kill him?)
did i miss something? help me out here guys
Time is man's creation to measure the distance from cause to effect.
Time is not a property, it is a tool. The number seven means nothing unless it is assigned a real value: seven bananas. Seven is a construct of our mind used to grasp the concept of volume/space. Time is, at its best, an expression of energy transfer between states. The release of stored tension takes place, whether at once or through several stages.
If mankind did not conceive his mortality, and fear it so, time would find its correct place as an arbitrary measure of change for the purpose of manipulating ongoing processes, no more. So far as we know, no previous earthly species gave a thought to our discovery/definition of time. They did, however, manipulate events by linking cause and effect, consciously: 'If I chase it now and bite it soon, I can eat it later'. It is mankind's folly to believe our manipulation of events is manipulation of time; it is not. But then again, it is this very folly that gave rise to religious blind- faith.
As "RabidRobot" points out below, it is our perspective that limits our grasp of reality. Plato's unrecognized contribution to our self-awareness is not that our view is limited, but that there is unlimited reality behind us, each step an expanding layer of awareness. The non-anthropomorphic reality does not change.
just filled with formless particles there would be no "time." Even if the universe were filled with objects, suns, planets, moons etc. if they were motionless, static in place, would there be any "time?"
Note that decoherence does not require an observer to collapse the quantum state, simply the entanglement of the fields is enough. So in that sense, everything in the Universe is connected to everything else in the Universe. But being able to manipulate that connection is another thing altogether, and time reversal requires power we shall never be able to obtain.
"Most of our suffering comes from being unaware of the results of our initiating the effect we are expeiencing."
There are a few pearls of wisdom in this exchange.
We are intelligent, clever and able to manipulate our environment for our safety and sustenance.
As long as we defecate and eliminate like the other animals in our world, we are mortal.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust and nothing else. Learn to live and enjoy every moment responsibly.
The materialists' advantage is that they share a clear, cohesive, empirically verifiable view of existence.
The rest of us have intimations of something more going on - something trancendental and unseen. But, as usual, the devil is in the details.
Some will frame their intimations like the blogger - others like Rabbi Schmuley - others like the Dalai Lama - others like our last three presidents, all of whom are religious christians (more or less).
World Parliament of Religions notwithstanding, there's no squaring these many and various circles. What we can agree on - and even agree on with the materialists - is that some basic values are morally superior to others.
After that, it's ever seer for himself or herself.
Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens have totally different opinions of the Iraq war, but they share a materialist world view.
Jim Wallis and Pat Robertson have totally different opinions of the Iraq war, but they share a transcendentalist world view.
Maybe you should step away from the keyboard for a bit and take some remedial reading comprehension lessons.
If by materialism you mean the empirical examination of the physical, common reality - it is the only way we know of how to find out how our common reality works - and we've only just started.
If by transcendental you mean the search for meaning and understanding of our place within our existence in the material world.
With science we can understand and manipulate (if only a little) material world.
With spirituality we can figure out how we would want the world to be and we can change ourselves accordingly.
I think we need both. It's a shame that so many religions spend most of their efforts on pursuing material changes instead working on changing the believers.
What all transcendentalists affirm (in one fashion or another) and all materialists deny is that there are sentient realms beyond the boundaries of our three dimensional existence (four if you count time) and the markers of our birth and death. Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, et al all assert that such transcendental thinking is delusional, and has no basis in reality. Transcendentalists, on the other hand, asser that strict materialists are the delusional ones.
It's an irresolvable conflict in world views - and if everyone would just be willing to live and let live, respecting that the "other" can have a completely different point of view than me, we'd have a nice "I-Thou" experience regardless of our memes.
But that's easier said than done. Nothing gets people frothing at the mouth quicker than a meme clash in this area - in case you hadn't noticed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave
You're taking all of your science too literally. Next you'll be saying the spin and color and flavor of quarks are just like Pop Rocks.
We see the effects of mathematical theories that are based on quarks. We see the aggregate characteristics of something that could be called "quark soup". But quarks themselves have little substance other than as a mathematical tool for predicting properties of particles we do observe.
All of the quarks "known" to exist are "inferred" from experiments. The math works, so the particle must exist. To say this is to believe there is nothing beyond the math - no reality to observe - and that is a deeply flawed assumption.
What I am addressing is the inflation of a word "uncertainty" into the anthropocentric required observer to collapse the probability wave.
Quarks, observed or not, are given qualities arbitrarily called "color" and "flavor", but only a misguided literal interpretation, as employed by the original author, would say quarks are actually "red" or "salty".
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During my visit ...I had many talks with the materialistic philosophers of Europe. The basis of ...conclusions is ...acquisition of knowledge of phenomena is according to a fixed, invariable law - ...exact in its operation through the senses. ...the eye sees a chair; therefore, there is no doubt of the chair's existence. ...... the universe is subject to our sensing, the proof is self-evident that ...knowledge of it must be gained through...the senses. (Thus)...materialists announce that the criterion and standard of human knowledge is sense perception. Among ...Greeks and Romans the criterion ...was reason -- ...Briefly... (there are) four criteria according to the declarations of men...: first, sense perception; second, reason; third, traditions; fourth, inspiration.
...In the future much that is announced and accepted as true now will be rejected and disproved. And so it will continue ad infinitum. (again, this is severely truncated... try searching out the original!)
(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 20)
We perceive our reality as we see fit. Just because we use time as a tool does not mean it actually is a construct of the universe that can be manipulated such as molecules and atoms. Going back or forward in time is not possible, but one can go back and forward through time in ones own mind. One is free to convince oneself of the existence of anything.
Time for example, can also be defined in distance. A year is the rotation of our planet around our star. The days are the rotation of our planet in relation to our star.
Time does not actually exist beyond the comprehension of an entities requirement. God is also a symbol of time and we use it to predict our own deaths. We will die one day and concepts of god ameliorate the uncertainty of what will happen to us when we do. We are uncertain that we will have more time to perceive beyond the eventuality of our deaths.