Lately I've been exploring the direct path of Advaita and asking the question "Is there any evidence the place where this [thought, perception] is arriving to, is limited in any way?" This is exploring the reality of birth, death, and ultimately-
the idea of time, from the persepctive of consciousness.
Last year I read
Bernardo Kastrup's books:
Why Materialism Is Baloney,
The Idea Of The World,
Decoding Jung's Mataphysics, and
Decoding Schopenhaur's Metaphysics
This has deepened the contemplation and exploration, leading me to ask
In My Experience:
what is time? This question is necessary to go beyond the idea of the death of a body or belief in independent personhood. In direct experience I can investigate truth and belief.
Birth is an idea based on
the before and after of the personal. Like the plot of a story- a
beginning necessitates that something follows but nothing was before.
Middle rests on their being something before and their being something that follows.
End is dependent on preceeding events and necessitates nothing follows. Death is an idea based on a belief in time-
beginning, middle, end. Science and physics have shown that space and time are interdependent
and are an illusion created by the function of a human brain.
Max Tegmark, a physicist at MIT says: “We have the illusion, at any given moment, that the past already happened and the future doesn't yet exist, and that things are changing...But all I'm ever aware of is my brain state right now. The only reason I feel like I have a past is that my brain contains memories.”
Furthermore, no science has found where memories are located. In exploring my own direct perception, memories come from nothing and disappear back into nothing. In my direct experience, all I ever know as time/memory is a thought. I have never experienced birth. Nobody has experienced their own death,
(only anecdotally as in NDEs- which are stories coming from thought, including the thought something was before... after).
Truthfully, when asking
where am I, or
when am I, I only ever experience the eternal now. Eternal means
without beginning or end, to always be
. All of the thoughts I experience are outside of time. I never have yesterday's thought. All of the memories I "have" aren't experienced as something I can touch, hold, or measure. I don't have them other than as a thought, only ever now.
What are the weight of thoughts? What are the weight of memories?...about being 5 years old, 15 years old...30 years old? Are any of these of comparable sizes? How do they measure up to the items of experience that are happening now?
They only are ever experienced now, there is no yesterday's thought to compare to this one.
My question about birth, death, and the cycle of life has to do with
Where is the cycle of life experienced for me?
I can see a lifeless body that thought says
before was my father, but- where is the father in relation to that body?
Where is the memory, where is the image of the body? The memory is now, the seeing of body is now. No two thoughts are happening at the same time, but one comes after that
presupposes a before. This is the illusion.
The thought that says "that was my father before" is simply a functioning of language concealing the belief in time, which is a function of biology.
Consciousness is not a function of biology -or at least, science hasn't yet found out what consciousness and biology have to do with each other, so there is no evidence to suggest that consciousness is limited to the body. Death and Birth are
remnants of a language built to describe the human experience of perception, which includes the illusion of time. No thought is heavier than another. No thought happens at the same time as another thought. Time is only a product of language- as real as Santa Claus.
In exploring time in direct experience I have noticed a change in the way thought is taken seriously when it includes a story about time, moreso- me being in time.
Just like when I begin dreaming at night- I don't experience the birth of the dreamed character, the character "wakes up to the dream world" right in the middle, in the Now of the dream. Similarly, every day I wake up in the middle- in the now of this.
Waking up to the dreaming of the illusion of time has deepened my explorations of reality to a degree that is immeasurable and deeply satisfying.
Thanks for reading!
Most of my experience in this post is from direct investigation. Supporting argument sources are here:
https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/iff-books/authors/bernardo-kastrup https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/738387/Time-NOT-real-EVERYTHING-happens-same-time-einstein
), to post notes or practice notes in one thread. It would be easier and more helpful that way, to follow your notes and idea. Thanks.
I say, torches and pitchforks!!!
