The Primacy Of Consciousness

[Antlerman]

I like your take on time, timelessness and eternity. 

As far as I can see we (humans) are, by and large, ill-equipped to grasp the subtleties of these ideas.  

Our linear model of... past --> present  -->  future ...needs to yield to a new understanding.

Yes. And this is in no small part what mystical states of awareness offer. As Einstein himself said that mystical experience is the heart of all true science and true religion. I very much agree. We get stuck in the models of reality we create to map it out to talk about it, and begin to see reality through that model. The model becomes reality to us. The mystical experience, direct and unmediated, has the effect of breaking down these illusions and offers a new set of eyes, a new illumination on reality in order to peer deeper than simply the two-dimensional landscape of our conceptual realities, our models of 'what is'.

 

Codifying reality into ideas is to say the least a tricky business and hardly one where one can claim to accurately reflect it. But we seek for stability as we navigate our worlds, and so these models become useful structures to translate it for us for us to interact and engage with it. But where the mystical comes in is to in essence loosen our grips on these structures as the truth in themselves, that they are the end-game, that they define reality as it is. To do so limits us, leaving us stuck in our ideas, and hindered from penetrating more deeply into the nature of the world, and ourselves. Mystical experience teaches us to hold truths with open hands, rather than seize them and hold them inflexibly and thereby limiting us.

 

As far as time goes in how it relates to this, time is IMO very much a model of reality that fits a certain, relative experience of it. Our linear-line model of time seems very much tied to our human past in the development of an certain economy. As we were able to store goods from one season to the next, time previously understood as cyclical with the seasons, become a straight line from the past to the present to the future, preserving and protecting for 'tomorrow'. We began to think into our own future, projecting ourselves as a future self. We then psychologically tied our identifies to this projected "me" of the future, and the "me" of the past on a straight line from birth, through the stages of our growth into adulthood, to our old age, and then to continuation beyond death itself! We passed on our 'self' through our offspring, our heirs, our inheritances, legacies, etc. This is mental model of time that exists in our created reality. It becomes the set of eyes we look through, it is the lens of reality we collectively share and becomes as it were, a consensus illusion.

 

An interesting way to look at time in human experience is more from the cyclical model. And this will tie more directly to what Voice's question of me was. What happens in our human experience is that we are really more spiraling upward, like that double-helix of DNA models. Think of it in terms of a circle passing over and infinite number of points, where in our lives we touch those same points again and again and again circling in a pattern a loop over all of these. But with each passing of that point, it is not a static line, but a dynamic one. We are in movement, in motion. Each point includes that passing from the previous cycle, adding to itself and gaining a new altitude, a new look at that same point. It appears differently, but it is the same point. It is the same object. And so we cycle horizontally, and vertically within a field of motion. In the center of this, is the timeless. All points horizontally become points vertically, and at any time-slice, we can perceive the whole as we moving into that center itself. We can see past, present, and future. It is more like a vertical column of spirals.

 

Anyway, something from the links stood out to me and underscores this, "Like a book that can be translated into many disparate languages without losing a syllable of meaning, our universe seems to tell a story that is independent of the words in which we have always chosen to express it." Yes indeed. It can only be apprehended beyond words, beyond the mental models we put on as our eye glasses to see with the mind of reason what can only be seen beyond it.

[bornagainathiest]

A-Man,

 

I just love it when our thoughts, ideas and musings converge like this! 

 

Ok, you and I might use... disparate languages ...to comprehend and communicate things, but (mostly thanks to your input in this forum) I've definitely changed and won't confine myself to a severely reductionist p.o.v. on anything anymore.  I find myself 'strangely' open to the possibility of the mystical and the spiritual. 

 

It feels weird and exciting at the same time.

Emotionally I used to baulk at the very words, 'mystical' and 'spiritual', but now I find myself increasingly ready to give them a fair hearing, so to speak.  I'll be taking some time to consider your message, so this is just a swift (friendly) riposte, ok?

 

Thanks,

 

BAA

[Voice]

I'm still digesting your replies.  Antlerman, would you elaborate on the helix analogy?  It sounds cool, but I'm not sure I understand.

 

At the core, I'm not able to distinguish between the moment which we all experience together, and the spirit which many of you have described from meditations.  After my last posts and your replies, I realize time isn't the thing I'm talking about, but rather the moment, the present moment, the "singularity" as I've been calling it.  When I go to my core (I say that figuratively as in where my attention is concentrated), the moment and the spirit are one in the same thing.  I've had similar musings that the moment encompasses all time, that all is the moment.

 

Time models vary from culture to culture, though most have adopted our Western models of past and future, and history is recorded chronologically.  The way we think of time affects our behavior and expectations, and goals.  Some cultures don't think about future at all.  The moment, however, has properties of its own that transcend concepts of time.  To my knowledge, all cultures respect the primacy of the present moment in some way.

 

I want to review your responses again before saying much more.

[Joshpantera]

Well I like Antlerman's take on the after life. 

 

 

 

We are in the "afterlife" now because eternity doesn't have a beginning. If they wish to imagine the afterlife, open their eyes now as see themselves as they are.

 

BAA and I have had much to say about existing in a multiverse, an eternal realm larger than the bounds of any single universe. Here mysticism and cosmological speculation tend to meet. Even in a material sense free and clear of mystical suggestion the bottom line is that there's no real beginning. Just an eternity of existence.

 

I imagine that the experience of eternity right now in the present is simply an experience one should expect due to existing in an eternal realm. Something in the way of an experience of deep truth, given the circumstances. Tapping into that truth via meditation seems well warranted and not spooky or supernatural in any way. It's just natural. It just is what it is. And we just are what we are. We are it and it is we.

[Antlerman]

I'm still digesting your replies.  Antlerman, would you elaborate on the helix analogy?  It sounds cool, but I'm not sure I understand.

I'm not sure how well I can elaborate on it. We imagine ourselves on a straight-line trajectory. From what came before to what comes after. We see ourselves leaving the past and arriving to the future. In reality we are just circling around and around the same points we've been at in the past, except each passing over the same spot there is an accumulation of experience, or knowledge. The names and faces and places appear different but they are the same points of intersection for us in our lives. We come back to the same places on that circle again and again. But each passage we rise in altitude in a spiral upward. We aren't really moving from point A to point B on our path, but changing altitude. The points of the past and the present are on a vertical axis, not a horizontal plane. The center the movement spirals around does not change. It is the same in the past, present, and future. It is the Ground, so to speak. Everything rises and falls surrounding this and within this.

 

And in mystical experience, when one is able with the conscious mind to enter into this Ground, this Center, all time, all knowledge is present and no time and all time, no place and all places. You "time travel," in this sense, as there is no time to traverse. What "is", "is" at all times and all places, like the wetness of every wave and every depth of every ocean in all worlds, in all times. It is the same no matter where, no matter when. As you enter that, you touch all that is, was, and will be. It is truly the definition of omniscience and omnipresence. Not in the mythological understanding of that, as knowing all facts and data, in the sky-god theistic deity model, but beyond that in knowing all that exists, exists within this. It is an experiential awareness that transcends the fabric of reality we perceive by the mere senses and their extensions, the tools of science and reason. It is eternal knowledge.

 

At the core, I'm not able to distinguish between the moment which we all experience together, and the spirit which many of you have described from meditations.

There is a difference that only entering into that space will illuminate. There is simply no way reasoning and thinking about it will convey it. Talking about it hints at it, imagining what it must be like, like reading about an ocean having never been outside a desert. One can get it conceptually, but going to the ocean and falling into it, swimming in it, loosing yourself in it, is the only way to know what it is.

 

After my last posts and your replies, I realize time isn't the thing I'm talking about, but rather the moment, the present moment, the "singularity" as I've been calling it.  When I go to my core (I say that figuratively as in where my attention is concentrated), the moment and the spirit are one in the same thing.  I've had similar musings that the moment encompasses all time, that all is the moment.

 

Time models vary from culture to culture, though most have adopted our Western models of past and future, and history is recorded chronologically.  The way we think of time affects our behavior and expectations, and goals.  Some cultures don't think about future at all.  The moment, however, has properties of its own that transcend concepts of time.  To my knowledge, all cultures respect the primacy of the present moment in some way.

Yes, being in the moment, being present, practicing mindfulness is always beneficial for the reasons you say. It makes you open to and aware of that ever-present timelessness. The more we are atune to that, the greater our chances of awakening fully to it.

 

There is a quote I heard recently I like very much. "Enlightenment happens by accident. And meditation makes you accident-prone." This is very true. You put yourself into the path of awakening through such practices.

 

I want to review your responses again before saying much more.

Certainly. Thanks for pulling me out of my hiatus to engage in discussion here again.