Absolutes

[Brian]

 

Well, at least I know where I am and am not lost in space.

As far as you know...

[Marblehead]

 

I have long suggested, BTW, that the structure of reality is such that it simply cannot be discovered in its entirety (a philosophical extension of the work of Planck and Heisenberg) and one of the links I posted earlier in this thread speaks to this idea, too.

The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao.

 

Inference can take us back only so far.

 

"Reality" is so subjective though.  I really have no desire to be a bunch of atoms that are mostly empty space.

[Brian]

The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao.

 

Inference can take us back only so far.

 

"Reality" is so subjective though. I really have no desire to be a bunch of atoms that are mostly empty space.

But you are a bunch of atoms! You are also a consciousness. You are also a corporeal entity and a complex chemical machine and a vibrant spiritual being. You are all of these things yet none adequately describes you. Pretty cool, isn't it?

[Marblehead]

Does that mean I'm ineffable?

[3bob]

just reincarnate into the past and start to straighten things out...

[Marblehead]

Would that be "back to the future" or "forward into the past"?

[silent thunder]

Again I have to convey my deep gratitude for this forum and it's participants. 
 
Such amazing insights, experiences and perspectives all clanging and ringing and lighting up the spaces in between my thoughts... pure bliss!  So many things have been said while I've been at work for long hours, but a couple things I can share quickly tonight...
 

There are two days a year we can do nothing they are called yesterday and tomorrow.
 
moving back and forth right and left, up and down all at the same time, I do this physically so the universe has to be the same or I would only be able to move liner and in one direction.

 

Have you ever experienced subjective time?  Time slowed waaaaaay down to a ridiculous level?  My experiences of this have conveyed to me the almost absolute sense, not the knowledge, that time is not in any way absolute, but fluid and entirely flexible and directly tied to the process of my perspective, of my mind, yet not entirely; because every experience I hold in memory, has always happened in the present.
 
Memory, to me, which is how my mind seems to navigate and interpret the eternal * present moment, which is potentially an absolute to my little shiny mind thing.  Memory is fluid and after spending almost every day of the last three decades with the same person, we have both come to realize that our memories of events that we have both experienced together, sometimes vary based on our current mood, and sometimes by our faulty faculties and sometimes by one of us having extremely lucid recall.  *I use the word and cross it out to convey the sense that based on experience this is so, while the dissonance of the actual reality of eternity, cannot abide in my mind as a concept.
 
Time, is to me, how my mind assigns value to, and interprets the present, which may be an absolute, and which lies beyond the capacity of my mind to compress and express, yet somehow may touch it via my experience and is held in the memories of my 'past' experiences.
 
Such an amazing and beautiful thing, our experience of time and our memories, which as we age, become all we truly possess, if we even hold to that...  My Mother has lost almost all of her mind, though her body remains very vital.  It is a stunningly painful and yet, endlessly interesting process to witness. 

 

I recently had this flow into my mind when the word memory was read in a passing article.

 

 

 

Time flies and memory is liquid.

 

I look at my son, now 10 and it really seems it was just last weekend when I could hoist him over my head without a thought and huck him across the room to land with a laughing crash on the bed.

 

Sometimes I see my wife of 28 years moving out of the corner of my eye and I'm transported to our late nights and afternoons rehearsing in old theaters, pouring over scripts and delighting in the anxiety and excitement of the coming performances as we fleshed out the moments from the page, to moments of living art. It seems this was perhaps last year and not almost three decades ago.

 

Memory is a liquid thing. My Mother, still alive in body, is now dead in mind. She now has no memories of me and the sight of me, so like my Father and their troubles which she cannot remember concisely, still makes her anxious and angry, so I remain away.

 

Time is fluid. Only the present exists. All of these moments are present moments. Nothing has ever happened in the past, or the future. My memory is the process my mind has adopted to sift the eternal present into a manageable paste that I smear over the surface of my thought pond.

It's glorious and terrifying, endearing and painful simultaneously.

Love with abandon. Time flies and memory is liquid.

Love with abandon and...

 

 

As to linearity, consider this -- materials contract and expand with changes in temperature and different materials experience these dimensional changes at different rates. In fact, not every material will change in the same direction over a given temperature range. For instance, the fact that metals change at different rates has long been used to create thermometers and thermostats which employ bi-metallic strips while liquid water contracts as it cools until a few degrees above standard freezing point, at which point it begins to expand -- even before it starts to freeze (this is why ice skates work, BTW...)

We typically don't worry about the fact, for instance, that the distance to the grocery store changes with temperature but the engineers designing the roads we drive on are well aware of it.

The physicist is generally pretty good at taking duality in stride, using aspects of reality which may seem in conflict to those who haven't done the kung fu themselves while understanding that "the truth" is far more nuanced and interesting. Useful simplifications and generalizations need to be kept in context and assumptions must be kept in mind lest one develops unfortunate attachments to "facts."

I have long suggested, BTW, that the structure of reality is such that it simply cannot be discovered in its entirety (a philosophical extension of the work of Planck and Heisenberg) and one of the links I posted earlier in this thread speaks to this idea, too.

 

I'd love to post to so many things you've shared in this thread, but this resonates and is all I have time for now.

 

We can experience the Dao, yet we cannot understand it, or know it, or speak of it effectively.  It's always maddening to even try.  My name here is my mind's attempt to explain my experience of this.  So many things that I used to take for granted are no longer absolute in my mind, based on my experiences (which are interpretations held in my fluid mind).  Any mental concept to me, is not an absolute, but may seem like one, based on my perceptions.  Yet all perception, as so many have so poignantly pointed out over the last couple thousand years, are based on gambles... projections.

 

I no longer have the sense that outer space, or 'vacuum' is empty, or that there is a thing such as darkness (only unperceived light) and that silence, far from being silent is quite full of mind shaking, self dissolving thunder.

 

My awareness and experience of life seems to me a continual process of simultaneous expansion and contraction of varying degrees, within the varying patterns of my experiential, mental and spiritual processes.

 

It is mystical, practical and only to my mind when I try to codify it, sequential. 

 

Physics has always been a deep love of mine.  To me, it holds on par, truths for the Western mind, truths that have long been expressed so eloquently in the East with Tao, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism etc; and it's people like you Brian, who have delved deeply into it's path and abide and exude such compassion and love continually, that it reinforces to me the reality that there is but one Source to all that we may experience here in what we interpret as reality.

 

No matter which way we wander, nor where we look... if we keep at it, we are bound to experience Source.  Where, or how indeed could we ever be separated from it? 

 

So, another absolute I consider now more than ever to be real. 

 

It is not possible to be separated from source, by any amount, ever.

Edited March 11, 2016 by silent thunder

[3bob]

different dimensions have different laws,  or we could say 3d laws work fine for 3d,  although 2d laws won't cover 3d.  thus 2d and 3d are not false just limited to where they apply, - now extrapolate that to the end of minds ability to measure or enter into - where all energy implodes yet Mystery is. 

[Karl]

But you are a bunch of atoms! You are also a consciousness. You are also a corporeal entity and a complex chemical machine and a vibrant spiritual being. You are all of these things yet none adequately describes you. Pretty cool, isn't it?

 

Now you sound like an objectivist-there is hope. ;-)

 

 

[Karl]

different dimensions have different laws,  or we could say 3d laws work fine for 3d,  although 2d laws won't cover 3d.  thus 2d and 3d are not false just limited to where they apply, - now extrapolate that to the end of minds ability to measure or enter into - where all energy implodes yet Mystery is. 

 

Except we only have 3 physical dimensions, the other dimensions are the product of theoretical physics and maths, but has no basis in fact. It is actually the minds of physicists that have been able to theorise multi dimensional universes even if they cannot conceive them in fact.

 

We cannot discover the origin of the universe because it had no origin. We can only explore the stuff of the universe.

[Nikolai1]

 It is actually the minds of physicists that have been able to theorise multi dimensional universes even if they cannot conceive them in fact. 

Physicists can't conceive anything 'in fact', all they have is theory.

 

The physicist cannot see this - they must imagine that their theories correspond to reality.  They then get very confused when light seems to be both a wave and a particle.

 

They cannot see that the wave is what we see when we look through the theoretical paradigm of context; the particle is what we see when we appraoch through the theoretical paradigm that is singularity divorced from context.  There is no paradox there whatsover and they would see that if they understood that reality is not the same as their theory.

 

It's basically the autistic mind.  Physics is the science of the autistic, and a certain autism is a benefit to the pursuit of that science.

 

The autistic person cannot get their head round alternative perspectives.  To the autistic person things are as they appear to them, and the perspective they have taken.  But of course they are not aware that they have taken a perspective.

 

When the physicist realises that both the wave and the particle are what we see when we have taken a perspective, they could not continue to be physicists.  They have transcended the science.

[Marblehead]

Except we only have 3 physical dimensions, the other dimensions are the product of theoretical physics and maths, but has no basis in fact. It is actually the minds of physicists that have been able to theorise multi dimensional universes even if they cannot conceive them in fact.

I still suggest a fourth dimension, that being space/time.

[Brian]

I've met lots of physicists over the years and haven't yet encountered those who "get very confused when light seems to be both a wave and a particle."

[blue eyed snake]

I've known several physics-students with autism, none of them were confused about light being particles or waves, 

even i, with a decidedly alpha background, know they are just models, 

 

reality is inconceivable, the only thing the mind does is making models of 'reality' ,

a useful trick, both studying physics and going to the grocer

 

 

[Marblehead]

BTW  Consider:

 

Particle (noun)

Wave (verb)

 

Wave is not a "thing" just as Dao is not a "thing".

[Brian]

A wave waves, it's what waves do...

[Marblehead]

A wave waves, it's what waves do...

Define "wave" please.

[Brian]

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/wave

[Marblehead]

There.  You see?  "Wave" is a verb.  It's not a "thing"  It can't act like a particle because it doesn't exist without the disturbance of particles.

[Brian]

Might wanna read a little deeper there, MH...

 

noun

 

1A long body of water curling into an arched form and breaking on the shore.

 

1.1A ridge of water between two depressions in open water:

‘gulls and cormorants bobbed on the waves’

 

1.2A shape seen as comparable to a breaking wave:

‘a wave of treetops stretched to the horizon’

 

1.3 (usually the wave) An effect resembling a moving wave produced by successive sections of the crowd in a stadium standing up, raising their arms, lowering them, and sitting down again.

 

1.4 (the waves) literary The sea.

 

1.5A sudden occurrence of or increase in a specified phenomenon, feeling, or emotion:

‘a wave of strikes had effectively paralyzed the government’

‘horror came over me in waves’

 

2A gesture or signal made by moving one’s hand to and fro:

‘he gave a little wave and walked off’

 

3A slightly curling lock of hair:

‘his hair was drying in unruly waves’

 

3.1A tendency to curl in a person’s hair:

‘her hair has a slight natural wave’

 

4 Physics A periodic disturbance of the particles of a substance that may be propagated without net movement of the particles, such as in the passage of undulating motion, heat, or sound. See also standing wave and traveling wave.

 

4.1A single curve in the course of a wave.

 

4.2A variation of an electromagnetic field in the propagation of light or other radiation through a medium or vacuum.

[Marblehead]

Yes, I did read further.

 

The word "wave" as a noun exists only after a disturbance had been applied to particles.

 

A particle at dead rest will never act.  It "acts" only after a disturbance has been applied to it.

 

Now, how is a wave created?

 

A simple example:  a body of water at dead rest.  It is perfectly flat and it is not acting.  Throw a large boulder (a disturbance) into the water and a wave of water particles is created.  Yes, this wave can be called a noun.  But it really isn't.  It is the act of the water particles that have been disturbed.

 

 

I fully understand waves.  I worked with radio waves for twenty years in the Army.  Electrons are disturbed and the radio wave is created.  But the wave didn't exist until I pushed the button.

 

How a single particle behaves would be determined by the disturbance applied to it.  Many particles disturbed in a given manner would create a wave of particles.

 

A wave is the action of the particles.  Waves don't exist of themselves.  "Waves" don't act.  Particles act (because of a disturbance) and may (or may not) establish themselves into a wave pattern.

 

 

What bothers me is the statement that "a" particle acts like a wave.  A single particle cannot act like a wave.  Yes, it likely can be made to wiggle (multiple effects from the cause).  A wave does not exist therefore it cannot act like a particle.

[Brian]

[Marblehead]

Yes Brian, those are waves  They are waves of water particles that have been disturbed, likely by the wind.

 

I know that you must hold to the dogma. 

 

I have no dogma, only my understandings based on my observations.

 

Sure, you might say I'm not seeing the picture clearly, or that I'm not seeing the entier picture or even that I have misunderstood what I have observed.

 

But the bottom line is that you have not yet convinced me that I should reconsider my understanding.

 

But life goes on and I have some work to do in the gardens so I catch up with anything that happens while I am working.  That is, if any distrubance has been applied so that something happens.

[Brian]

BTW, electromagnetic waves (and, it would seem, gravitational waves) maintain their waveform as they propagate through a vacuum...

 

 

Both noun and verb -- just another example of the manifest dualities of the physical realm. There's an underlying non-duality we haven't uncovered through rational exploration but there is reason to believe there are things/non-things simply beyond rational exploration.

 

Planck's law is now 116 years old but it explained observations of the behavior of nature which had been discovered generations earlier and solved the "ultraviolet catastrophe" of classical ("objectivist") understanding. I recognize that the nature of reality makes some people uncomfortable but, frankly, the universe doesn't seem to care -- remember Chapter 5 of DDJ?

[blue eyed snake]

Yes, I did read further.

 

The word "wave" as a noun exists only after a disturbance had been applied to particles.

 

A particle at dead rest will never act.  It "acts" only after a disturbance has been applied to it.

 

Now, how is a wave created?

 

A simple example:  a body of water at dead rest.  It is perfectly flat and it is not acting.  Throw a large boulder (a disturbance) into the water and a wave of water particles is created.  Yes, this wave can be called a noun.  But it really isn't.  It is the act of the water particles that have been disturbed.

 

 

I fully understand waves.  I worked with radio waves for twenty years in the Army.  Electrons are disturbed and the radio wave is created.  But the wave didn't exist until I pushed the button.

 

How a single particle behaves would be determined by the disturbance applied to it.  Many particles disturbed in a given manner would create a wave of particles.

 

A wave is the action of the particles.  Waves don't exist of themselves.  "Waves" don't act.  Particles act (because of a disturbance) and may (or may not) establish themselves into a wave pattern.

 

 

What bothers me is the statement that "a" particle acts like a wave.  A single particle cannot act like a wave.  Yes, it likely can be made to wiggle (multiple effects from the cause).  A wave does not exist therefore it cannot act like a particle.

 

I like this!

 

but methinks, what you say, " A wave is the action of the particles.  Waves don't exist of themselves.  "Waves" don't act.  Particles act (because of a disturbance) and may (or may not) establish themselves into a wave pattern." Holds only true for the closeby reality, waves in the sea and in the air, even to waves of emotion when you wanna be fussy. I like that way of looking at it.

 

But a statement like : " a particle acts like a wave"  uh, what I remember from conversations with these students ( some pretty weird conversations I had with those guys  , that is about light and the movement of electrons, becoming far away from our daily life.

 

i think they said something like, when you want to talk about light you need words and math to describe what you want to say ( and to describe what you have seen) but light is neither particle nor wave, its just light and sometimes it comes in handy to describe it as a particle, in other instances describe it like a wave.

 

maybe it's like that deep place where you can land in meditation, there are just no useful words for it, but it does happen!