A few thoughts on the origin of "time".
Simon Adams wrote: ↑Sat Feb 27, 2021 8:04 amA fundamental part of this problem is that time itself started with the physical universe in which it seems that much of the fine tuning (arguably including all the key constants) were already set. If they were different, even if time was produced it would end - often very quickly. So how does something that is ‘raw phenomenal consciousness’ instinctively try different fundamental ‘settings’ before time exists? This idea of evolving via trial and error seems like a natural idea to us, but that’s because we do everything in time, and think of temporal processes.
Well, the time of the observable "physicalist" universe does not have to be the same as the "time" of the ideational activity of the MAL, those can be different time realms.
But anyway, the origin of time/change is indeed a challenging problem. If there ever "was" a prior-to-time changeless state, then the very act of the beginning of time would itself be a change, but how would any change occur in unchangeable state in the first place? IMO the only non-self-contradictory assumption would be that the "change" is a fundamental and ever-present property of the ontic reality of consciousness. On the other hand, there is simultaneously a non-changing property of consciousness - the awareness. The mystery is that the unchangeable (awareness) and changeable (phenomenal experiences) properties simultaneously coexist in every instance of our conscious experience, and it's a simple fact of our every-moment direct conscious experience. This resolves the dichotomy of time-vs-timelessness.
I remember Rigpa wrote a good essay on the nature of time in the old forum. The idea is that "time" is an abstraction, but the fact of our direct experience is simply an ever-changing phenomenal content of the ever-present conscious experience that always happens "NOW". In other words, the "time" is always "NOW", but the "picture" of NOW is always changing. The faculty of memory lets us to be able to recall the contents of the past experiences and thereby creates an impression of the succession of time, but in reality every recollection of the past experiences always occurs in the same moment of NOW. Since in such view the "time" is gone (or recognized as a not-so-accurate mental representation of the reality), the question of the beginning of time also becomes irrelevant.
Now, coming back to the meta-cognition question, lets start from a set of simple premises within the framework of idealism (granted, they themselves being disputable): the ontic fundamental of consciousness has fundamental properties to be aware, to create and experience a change of its phenomenal content that it is aware of, to have an infinite variety of inter-related phenomena, and to have an "impulse"/will to express and experience a never-ending variety of forms. Given such conditions, a variety of phenomenal contents are constantly "fountaining" in the now-experience of the global consciousness. It would be pretty much a random bullion, but there is also a selection mechanism that gives preferences to more "satisfactory" experiences, and such selection mechanism would be guiding an evolutionary natural selection process of the development of conscious states.
Now, I can see three possible developmental scenarios here, and the question is which of the scenarios would be more likely:
1. The development of non-meta-cognitive ideational states of a physicalist character (a variety of "imagined" by the MAL physicalist universes) leading though natural selection to the fine tuning resulting in the universe where meta-cognitive forms of life can exist as the "alters" of the MAL. This is the BK's scenario.
2. The development of non-meta-cognitive states evolving into more refined and eventually meta-cognitive purely mental states of the single non-divided MAL. The ideational states of the physicalist character do not occur until the state of meta-cognition is attained. But once the state of meta-cognition is achieved (at which point such MAL becomes a "God" in our human terminology), MAL subsequently pre-meditatively decides to create the "souls and the world" and goes on to dissociate into alters, create the ideations of the astral universe and the physicalist-looking universe to give the alters the world with favorable conditions to evolve. This is a theistic scenario. The problem of evil/suffering can be resolved through the assumption that the alters freely and voluntarily agree to incarnate into humans and experience all the sufferings of human life prior to the incarnation (how it happens with animals is a more tricky question).
3. The development of non-meta-cognitive states first through the fragmentation process of dissociation into alters, and then each alter evolving into more refined and eventually meta-cognitive states. In this scenario the result is a community of meta-cognitive conscious alters that further cooperate in creating a variety of astral and physicalist realities where they can "incarnate" and evolve further. The hierarchy of such universes fits into the hierarchy of the spiritual developmental stages of the alters, or, in other words, the groups of alters create the realms/universes for themselves where they can find the most favorable conditions to evolve further. This is a-la-Buddhist scenario.
The data of the regression and NDE studies clearly do not support the scenario #1, but leaves the choice between #2 and #3 indecisive.
