Voice Posted July 10, 2014 Share Posted July 10, 2014 Unfortunately, when you apply mathematical constructs to describe time as we understand it, they take the forms of funnels, asymptotes which approach not zero, but division by zero. Zero would be too easy. If it were zero we would be able to describe black holes quite easily. The moment doesn't have a value of zero. The moment is undefined. It's some kind of mystery. It's the core of a fire we think of as time. This is why we rack our brains trying to understand what is the nature of the self, of the Observer, of the Moment, and why as the moment persists, we continue to rack our brains trying to understand it. We approach a limit where to understand it we would have to divide by zero. Mathematics, you have to understand, is a language. It's a sort of universal language, but nonetheless a language. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voice Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 Actually, there is a way to think of the moment as having a value of zero, simply by placing it at the origin in your graphs, giving it the coordinates, (0, 0, 0, 0). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orbit Posted July 15, 2014 Share Posted July 15, 2014 According to anthropology/sociology, the self is not just inside your head, it is social. People make something of what is made of them by others. Our "self" is a mental and social construct that arises through this process: there is human interaction; we present ourselves anticipating the others' response; they interpret our interaction and react to us based on the meanings that our actions hold for them (interpretation); we do the same in interpreting their reaction to us, and absorb that reaction/our interpretation of it, into our sense of self. Other people are the mirrors that show us who we are. All of that is by way of saying that when he says the self isn't real, I think he means "you can't touch it/measure it"--but it is a social psychological construct, which is real enough to us, those who experience it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orbit Posted July 16, 2014 Share Posted July 16, 2014 Hi--the self that we are conscious of is the only self we have. If it can't be perceived, for all practical purposes it does not exist for us--so no, there is no "higher self/soul" in my view. Psychologists theorize that we have a subconscious but only because we can perceive its effects on our experience/behavior--and it is theory only. This may lead to the question "what if it exists and we can't perceive it?" In that way madness lies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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