Addiction to Time as a Super-Structure

[AshvinP]

Practically all be-ings experience integration towards eternity which encompasses all potential as a whole. No be-ing can consciously split into parts. This would mean that every 'next' state of that being should be less conscious than the previous, this would be like reversed time. Every next state should lose memory since the limited state can't remember the higher state, and thus it can't be experienced as a stream of consciousness. This 'splitting' action is experienced somewhat differently. I've mentioned that in the Deep M@L essay. It can be said that there are constantly infinitely many streams of being that integrate from the periphery towards the center of eternity. Each stream is a metamorphic view experiencing its own awakening from the deep cosmic sleep, acquiring self-consciousness and continuing to work consciously on its integration. Those beings which are well ahead in this process in certain sense form 'resistance', an opposite flow from the center towards the periphery. This is the principle of world creation. Without this resistance all peripheral flow towards the center would immediately implode into eternity. Through the resistance, the peripheral flow must find creative solutions for its integration, which is the basis for exploration of be-ing in time.

Cleric, it is still not clear to me from your explanations how and why the splitting of MAL into alters occurred in the first place. If MAL is and has always been meta-cognitive, and if "No be-ing can consciously split into parts", then how and why the splitting actually happened?

I would hazard a response here that Cleric is distinguishing conscious splitting into parts from unconscious splitting. From our current perspective, MAL has not always been conscious, and, in line with thinkers like Jung and Steiner, we could rightly say it was "unconscious" or "in deep sleep" in the process of fragmenting into differentiated perspectives. Similarly, from our current perspective, all conscious beings such as ourselves are experiencing increasingly more integration as a whole. These are the types of things Heidegger was also exploring and I hope that becomes more clear in Part III of my essays on Thinking, Memory and Time. It's important to note that when I say, "from this or that perspective", I am not saying what is occurring is any less real. All perspectives are real and we can only think in terms of them. But it is very interesting and important to remain flexible as our capacity for 'aperspectival' consciousness develops - for ex. we can take note that, from the perspective of the future ("those beings which are well ahead in this process"), what looks like integration to us looks like fragmentation to them. That is sort of the "reversed time" perspective Cleric references.

[Eugene I]

I would hazard a response here that Cleric is distinguishing conscious splitting into parts from unconscious splitting. From our current perspective, MAL has not always been conscious, and, in line with thinkers like Jung and Steiner, we could rightly say it was "unconscious" or "in deep sleep" in the process of fragmenting into differentiated perspectives. Similarly, from our current perspective, all conscious beings such as ourselves are experiencing increasingly more integration as a whole. These are the types of things Heidegger was also exploring and I hope that becomes more clear in Part III of my essays on Thinking, Memory and Time. It's important to note that when I say, "from this or that perspective", I am not saying what is occurring is any less real. All perspectives are real and we can only think in terms of them. But it is very interesting and important to remain flexible as our capacity for 'aperspectival' consciousness develops - for ex. we can take note that, from the perspective of the future ("those beings which are well ahead in this process"), what looks like integration to us looks like fragmentation to them. That is sort of the "reversed time" perspective Cleric references.

OK, that makes sense if we accept the assumption that "MAL has not always been conscious". This, however, would be at odds with the traditional Western theology and theistic idealistic philosophy of ever-conscious (and even ever-omniscient) God, we need to be clear about that.

[AshvinP]

I would hazard a response here that Cleric is distinguishing conscious splitting into parts from unconscious splitting. From our current perspective, MAL has not always been conscious, and, in line with thinkers like Jung and Steiner, we could rightly say it was "unconscious" or "in deep sleep" in the process of fragmenting into differentiated perspectives. Similarly, from our current perspective, all conscious beings such as ourselves are experiencing increasingly more integration as a whole. These are the types of things Heidegger was also exploring and I hope that becomes more clear in Part III of my essays on Thinking, Memory and Time. It's important to note that when I say, "from this or that perspective", I am not saying what is occurring is any less real. All perspectives are real and we can only think in terms of them. But it is very interesting and important to remain flexible as our capacity for 'aperspectival' consciousness develops - for ex. we can take note that, from the perspective of the future ("those beings which are well ahead in this process"), what looks like integration to us looks like fragmentation to them. That is sort of the "reversed time" perspective Cleric references.

OK, that makes sense if we accept the assumption that "MAL has not always been conscious". This, however, would be at odds with the traditional Western theology and theistic idealistic philosophy of ever-conscious (and even ever-omniscient) God, we need to be clear about that.

Agreed, it is at odds with that highly anthropomorphized Church dogma (which also excludes any sort of progressive metamorphic revelation of God whatsoever). That is not the same as Western theistic philosophy of thinkers like Hegel, for ex.

[Eugene I]

OK, Ashvin and Cleric, I just wanted to outline a sequence of stages the MAL and world went through according to your metaphysics:

1. MAL was initially non-meta-cognitive/unconscious
2. At some point it dissociated into alters. The question is - why and how did it happen? I guess this question is not different from the one that Bernardo's metaphysics would also face.
3. At some point it started ideating the universe. Did it happen before or after dissociation? Before or after it became meta-cognitive/conscious?
4. At some point it realized a need/imperative to integrate back into unity, and, in order to facilitate this process in the world of alters, Christ entered the world and accomplished his mission in order to catalyze the metamorphic unification process.
5. Unification is accomplished through thinking/high-level-cognition by accessing the unified shared ideal content of MAL and alters.

Let me know if I missed or misrepresented something. I'm just trying to glue the pieces of your many ideas and posts together to have a full but concise description.

[Cleric K]

I would hazard a response here that Cleric is distinguishing conscious splitting into parts from unconscious splitting. From our current perspective, MAL has not always been conscious, and, in line with thinkers like Jung and Steiner, we could rightly say it was "unconscious" or "in deep sleep" in the process of fragmenting into differentiated perspectives. Similarly, from our current perspective, all conscious beings such as ourselves are experiencing increasingly more integration as a whole. These are the types of things Heidegger was also exploring and I hope that becomes more clear in Part III of my essays on Thinking, Memory and Time. It's important to note that when I say, "from this or that perspective", I am not saying what is occurring is any less real. All perspectives are real and we can only think in terms of them. But it is very interesting and important to remain flexible as our capacity for 'aperspectival' consciousness develops - for ex. we can take note that, from the perspective of the future ("those beings which are well ahead in this process"), what looks like integration to us looks like fragmentation to them. That is sort of the "reversed time" perspective Cleric references.

OK, that makes sense if we accept the assumption that "MAL has not always been conscious". This, however, would be at odds with the traditional Western theology and theistic idealistic philosophy of ever-conscious (and even ever-omniscient) God, we need to be clear about that.

This topic is very deep and quite sensitive for contemporary man. I won't go into too many details because I'm not sure how to present the things in a more understandable manner. I'll only try to hint at few things.

One of the hinderances is our rigid conception of Time. It seems like there's concrete moment in time when MAL decides to split and then concrete moment when it integrates. When we grasp Time in this manner we do something similar to the flat Earth fallacy - we extrapolate the metamorphosis of our state of being into imagined far past and far future. This results in the ideas like the Big Bang and Heat Death. Even though in certain sense it is justified to speak of these poles, neither of them is something that happened/will happen in a physical Cosmos, in linear time. The more we move towards these poles, the more time breaks down and in fact the poles are one thing - the eternal potential. Time is simply spread out, differentiated ideas, experienced relative to each other in gradual integration. Here's something to stimulate us:



It's not a model of reality, just an exercise. The fishes in the middle (for example, try to trace an orange fish as it goes to the left) emerge from infinity and sink into infinity.
Those experienced with DMT can probably confirm that in higher doses visuals transition from patterns (which we can call countable) to hyperbolic geometry (uncountable).



My point is that splitting into alters never really happens in the way it's popularly imagined. There's only one metamorphic view that we experience but it interferes with infinitely many other potential views. We shouldn't imagine that an alter is one of the fishes. It's always the whole metamorphic view. In certain sense when we incarnate we 'zoom in' and lose sight of the hyperbolic nature (which makes us feel like a Spirit among Spirits) and focus more and more on the countable fishes passing in the middle. These are like our passing thoughts and perceptions which we experience in the unity of our "I". When we disincarnate (or we work on higher development) we 'zoom out' and begin to grasp our microcosmic soul life (the fishes in the middle) in the wider hyperbolic context, which is the landscape of our Karma - that is, our specific relations with all other infinite beings (again - a being is not a separate fish, it's like spiritual interference that shapes our whole view).

"MAL has not always been conscious". This should be understood as that our metamorphic perspective has not always been conscious. But when our temporal journey was starting there were other perspectives who were fully conscious. So there's no conflict with theism. Difficulties arise only when we try to imagine that there was a definite moment where everything started and there were no conscious perspectives. But there's no such moment. We always have 'overlapping pipelines' of metamorphic streams. We can nowhere reach a place where everything started 'clean'. As we move towards the poles it seems like these pipelines were going forever, with no beginning and no end. There are always beings who are far ahead of us and others who are still in Cosmic Sleep. In certain sense the metamorphic view we now experience, just like the fishes, has been metamorphing for infinite amount of time until it reaches our current state. It will metamorph for infinite amount of time towards the complete curving of the hyperbolic idea-space into itself. From linear time perspective these moments are never reached - we started infinitely long time ago and will reach the destination infinitely in the future. But as said, the more we move towards these poles the more the very idea of linear time breaks down. Alas it's very difficult to explain how exactly this affects our sense of self.

I realize that all the above is very fragmentary and probably makes little sense. It's a very difficult topic. I hope that with time I'll be able to find concepts (we probably need new ones!) to make the approach to these things more gradual. But in all cases we need the deep understanding of sacrifice, death and resurrection. At any point we should be clear that we are working for a self higher than ours. For example, our separate incarnations are separate human beings in a sense. Each of them works (so far unconsciously but now it must become more and more conscious) towards the development of another being. The separate incarnations develop in a way, separate organs for that being. Unless we are able to experience the smallness of our current self, and the fact that this self is only a fragment within a higher self, we'll never be able to solve this mystery of the One and the Many. In our essence we are that other being but we can't simply expand and make it our possession. It's the other way around. We must consciously seek to be the possession of the higher self, to serve it. Only in this way we approach it and attain oneness with it.

[Eugene I]

Cleric, yes, Reality is simultaneously One and Many, in Time in in No-Time. But because there is still May (as well as One), we can speak of Many, and because there is still Time (as well as no-Time), we can speak of Time and of all that unfolds in Time. But yes, if we forget about One and No-Time and only limit our perspective to many existing in time, we arrive to a distorted perspective on Reality.

This is similar to Hawkins idea of the universe existing as a closed and "spherical" space-time-matter object with no beginning or end point in time.

But anyway, as we agree that Many still unfolds in Time (along with Oneness that is always complete in no-Time), with that said, we can still speak of dissociation and metamorphic integration unfolding through time.

[SanteriSatama]

I've noticed that even some of the most enlightened thinkers and idealists still sometimes get caught in the trap of thinking about time as a super-structure that envelops consciousness, rather than consciousness enveloping time.

It has been said that as the eternal Self, you can either be on top of the mountain, where you can see everything but there's not that much to do (i.e non-duality), or you can go down and get lost in the forest, where you can see very little but there's plenty of things to do (i.e the Maya).

In one of his talks, Alan Watts talks about God periodically getting bored of non-dualistic infinite bliss and voluntarily coming down into a localised and ignorant finite-form for the purposes of temporal excitement and adventure. Now and again, it would seem that the Mind at Large goes on vacation from being God and gets well and truly lost in the woods.

It's a very seductive idea that to me certainly feels very close to the truth, and yet also seems to be fundamentally problematic: In order for "God to become bored" it would have to be subordinate to a higher super-structure of time, that allowed sufficient animation and process for boredom to manifest.

But surely this cannot be possible, as the structure of time is contained within consciousness, not the other way around. Time is a subordinate structure, not a super-structure. The non-dualistic experience is an experience without time - quite literally eternal.

But nonetheless it would seem, self-evidently and paradoxically, that consciousness appears to "cycle" through various states. It seems that there is an addictive temptation to try to make sense of it within the context of a higher transcendental timeline. For example mystics often speak about God's big descent into the Maya as "The Great Fall" - a time-based metaphor with "the falling" implying a process.

Are we addicted to time as a super-structure? And if so, how do we account for the apparent cycles and oscillations between Universal Mind and disassociated mind?

What I can say pretty safely, if you try to think of time as an object of thought, you are already thinking wrong. If you utter the word "eternal", you already objectify time as a superstructure.

Process philosophy is not about objectifying time as a superstructure, process philosophy is pre- and post-structuralism, it's about empirically coherent acceptance of the impermanent and unique, and the continuous struggle for some (relative) permanence that follows from the acceptance. The creative contradiction.

Time is both form and no-form, and neither. Time is when the dualism of potential and actual ceases and arises.

[SanteriSatama]

Things like 'God became bored and split into parts' are simply false. As a matter of fact there's no such perspective of MAL which decides to 'split into parts'.

Yes there is such a pespective, it's called math. The two basic ways to derive or create natural numbers are A) addition, concatenating ones into longer strings containing more and more ones. B) division, fracturing The One into Egyptian fractions of the form 1/n, n for natural numbers. And then wiping the one above and reducing n to p, splitting natural numbers into constitutive, dissociated prime numbers which are divisible only by one and self. Which is more economic and efficient than the additive method of addiction.

In such primal, primitive ontology of finite field computability of Matrix Universes, the One God of number theory descends and incarnates into World as the each biggest prime number his subroutines are able to compute and write down.

Is this theology objectively true, eternal and immutable? Hell no, it's a soap opera full of passion, rebelling and redeeming. Math is a narrative full of passion and drama. Especially when it comes to what you call "higher beings". The "Ring" is a mathematical concept and a big battle field of competing definitions. Ring is a generalization of a Field, and Field means ability to do basic arithmetics, ie. computability and predictable and controllable sense of causality. In the Star War of the Ring, the Empire claim that a field (and hence also the Ring) can be created by Magical Axiom, by a mere declaration of existence, the Rebel fellowship vehemently disagree and demands that a field needs to be empirically demonstrable construction in coherence with mathematical induction - which, again, is hard to define. Others may have their own different thoughts on the issue, and the situation keeps on evolving.

this would be like reversed time.

Which is not a counterargument by proof of absurdity, as reversed time is mathematically and empirically very valid. Also, very often and very meaningfully, less is more. So, your integral case of consciousness is full of holes. To fill the void, can you take for granted that the God of Gaps is really even aware? If not, can you see and feel other way to fill the gaps into intergral, than to become less consciouss and more aware? Less sapient and more sentient field of transmitting impartially between multiplicity of Wills?

Those beings which are well ahead in this process in certain sense form 'resistance', an opposite flow from the center towards the periphery. This is the principle of world creation. Without this resistance all peripheral flow towards the center would immediately implode into eternity. Through the resistance, the peripheral flow must find creative solutions for its integration, which is the basis for exploration of be-ing in time.

Sounds better. Integral remains a thorny math problem, but also some progress is being made with new creative solutions and intuitive suggestions towards such. The palindromic supersymmetry of centers and edges figures in these. Polysynthetic expression that allows various various interpretations is less, and as such more, than a question that demands for more and can get only an undecidable answer, which is less than it seeks.

Another aspect of the above is that this integration is not an 'improvement in time',

Only if you keep on objectifying and limiting time as unilinear motion from an beginning to an end, an additive succession of states. We can create and give much more experiental time more efficiently by other ways. As much as any Will wants and feels the need for, so that it is able to improve by the criteria and standards it sets for itself.

If we say that, we simply don't really try to overcome our linear time habits.

I do very much admire and appreciate your curious writing style of longer form, where the linear and partial reading-commenting style is constantly suprised in a good way, which makes the linear style a fun exploration. <3

The center of eternity

I continue to hold the opinion that "eternity" should be banned from the vocabulary when discussing such matters. It's just a boogie man hiding under the bed, a nightmare dream. The logical proof of undecidability of the Halting problem is not watertight, LNC does not need to be assumed by logical necessity. The stronger motivation is ethical.

If you need eternity to face your worst fear, do that. But don't try force the eternity over others who may have other interests, other things to attend to.

[AshvinP]

Things like 'God became bored and split into parts' are simply false. As a matter of fact there's no such perspective of MAL which decides to 'split into parts'.

Yes there is such a pespective, it's called math. The two basic ways to derive or create natural numbers are A) addition, concatenating ones into longer strings containing more and more ones. B) division, fracturing The One into Egyptian fractions of the form 1/n, n for natural numbers. And then wiping the one above and reducing n to p, splitting natural numbers into constitutive, dissociated prime numbers which are divisible only by one and self. Which is more economic and efficient than the additive method of addiction.

In such primal, primitive ontology of finite field computability of Matrix Universes, the One God of number theory descends and incarnates into World as the each biggest prime number his subroutines are able to compute and write down.

Is this theology objectively true, eternal and immutable? Hell no, it's a soap opera full of passion, rebelling and redeeming. Math is a narrative full of passion and drama. Especially when it comes to what you call "higher beings". The "Ring" is a mathematical concept and a big battle field of competing definitions. Ring is a generalization of a Field, and Field means ability to do basic arithmetics, ie. computability and predictable and controllable sense of causality. In the Star War of the Ring, the Empire claim that a field (and hence also the Ring) can be created by Magical Axiom, by a mere declaration of existence, the Rebel fellowship vehemently disagree and demands that a field needs to be empirically demonstrable construction in coherence with mathematical induction - which, again, is hard to define. Others may have their own different thoughts on the issue, and the situation keeps on evolving.

I think you may have missed the bolded word in your response.

Beyond that, you are missing the fact that mathematic symbols are, by definition, abstractions of an underlying Reality. When you think of a mathematical object like "triangle" you are directly perceiving-knowing the real "triangle" concept, but as soon as you incorporate it into a formal mathematical system it has become an abstraction. Cleric is not speaking of abstracted "perspectives of MAL", but the actual perspectives of idea-beings who do not consciously decide to fragment their own perspectives into parts. I know your mathematical knowledge is much superior to mine, but I still feel confident in the above basic points.

[SanteriSatama]

I think you may have missed the bolded word in your response.

Beyond that, you are missing the fact that mathematic symbols are, by definition, abstractions of an underlying Reality. When you think of a mathematical object like "triangle" you are directly perceiving-knowing the real "triangle" concept, but as soon as you incorporate it into a formal mathematical system it has become an abstraction. Cleric is not speaking of abstracted "perspectives of MAL", but the actual perspectives of idea-beings who do not consciously decide to fragment their own perspectives into parts. I know your mathematical knowledge is much superior to mine, but I still feel confident in the above basic points.

But I'm not talking about formalism only, who is just another player in the drama, who has the role of the Deceiver / Heyoka. Much more about intuitionist ontology of math, ie. actual math-idea beings in idealist ontology and their perspectives and desires. Perspectival multinaturalism of math, animistic animation of theology of math-ideas. Process philosophical intuitionist mathematics.

In the 'Theology of Arithmetic' (lending the title of the neoplatonic book) the idea of Metacognitive One is by implied definitions the discussions on this forum a Will, and so are his children, disassociated prime numbers, with their additive self-definition. Beyond field of rational numbers (which in their reduced forms are intersubjective coprimes), division starts to break up pretty fast when trying to extend number theory to new spheres, informing that division is the Other of addition. So, there's a kind of archetypal war and drama going on between addition and division.

As an earthly vessel, I don't have the full story, only glimpses of the heavenly war. But the very idea that there could be a full story comes from the idea of One Ring to rule them all, which as such is a highly competitive idea and erisian apple and source of war.

In the normative academic definition of Ring, it's defined by addition only and division does not really exist for it. It's a top down definition of reductionistic bottom-up addition-addiction. Quantitative more more more...!!! Worship of metacognitive One is for subjects of Sauron, the dead god of Nietzche. Said with my heartfelt sympathy for him and his decision to dissolve and become divided.

In our foundational war against reduction and reduction to addition only, we say that less quantitative addition can be more and better quality, e.g. division of diets into exquisite tastes instead of trying to devour All.