What is being? What is ceasing?
— synthesis

ceasing is when life is no longer “animate”

being is nothing but you “are” on this plane of existence — Ignance

Isn't ceasing only relative to your exact Universal (coordinate) position? And doesn't that suggest that no thing can actually cease?

Who is? And where is this plane?

can we imagine a place without time? — TiredThinker

The simplest answer would be God. He simply Is.

Isn't ceasing only relative to your exact Universal (coordinate) position? And doesn't that suggest that no thing can actually cease? — synthesis

what do you mean by this?

Who is? And where is this plane? — synthesis

i don’t think any person truly “is” but the concept of God definitely qualifies for it, the plane is what we would define as reality through our human lens, no?

Isn't ceasing only relative to your exact Universal (coordinate) position? And doesn't that suggest that no thing can actually cease?
— synthesis

what do you mean by this?

Let's say you are ten feet away from somebody has has just died. Then let's say your friend who is on a spaceship heading through space but is watching you and this gentleman live (electronically) but is one light year away. For him, the man won't die for another year, right? So on and so forth, so your Universal position determines when something is going to happen or if it ever happens (if you keep moving away at near the speed of light).

Who is? And where is this plane?
— synthesis

i don’t think any person truly “is” but the concept of God definitely qualifies for it, the plane is what we would define as reality through our human lens, no? — Ignance

It is if it is for you. Everybody has their own reality, no? And how would God play into this?

Time is the measurement of change. Like all measurements, one needs a zero point to measure from and that zero point is the present moment. Put marks on a circle and spin a wire which is relative to the speed of the rotation of the earth and one has a device to measure with, called a clock. The marks the wire just passed is called the past and the marks the wire is approaching is called the future. However, the only time one may look at the clock is in the present. Since the present moment neither arrives nor departs and it is the present moment everywhere in the universe, it gives context to the concept of past and future.

Like all measurements, one needs a zero point to measure from and that zero point is the present moment. — Present awareness

How can the present be a point, when time is always passing?

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

Omar Khayyam (ca 1100AD) - As a mathematician he worked on continued fractions, a subject I studied fifty years ago. :cool:

I guess a more interesting question would be what multiple time dimensions would be like if it were possible. We often understand space as being multi-dimensional, but in most theories (even in string theory with it's dozen dimensions), there is only one time dimension. — Mr Bee

I find this to be a common misunderstanding of dimensions that consolidates ‘space’ within an aspect ‘time’. What we commonly refer to as ‘time’ presupposes the existence of what we commonly refer to as ‘space’. This presupposes the existence of direction (shape), which in turn presupposes the existence of (potential) energy.

Now Einstein says time is an illusion but we still assume it has some basis is reality? In the movie, "Doctor Strange" he goes to a universe where time doesn't exist and creates a time loop. Now fiction aside, can we imagine a place without time? Would any events occur? Can memories form? Or do all possible events occur simultaneously? What is the lay of the land? — TiredThinker

I think Einstein was referring to the relativity of time in relation to knowledge. Memories can only form as such in an atemporal structure, where all possible events may be accessible at any time. Such a system would be structured according to a perception of value, significance or potential, rather than an observation of change.

If time is passing, what exactly is it passing?

If time is passing, what exactly is it passing? — Present awareness

It's a form of change, going by. We measure the going by of time, which is called passing. Since time is always passing (changing), a "zero point" cannot be determined, and it is simply assumed. An assumed point is lacking in truth. Therefore if a zero point is needed for measuring time, but the one employed is just assumed, the measurements are inaccurate.

I agree that we measure the going by of time, but that measurement always begins from NOW (the present moment). One could measure an hour from now or a year from now, but now is always the reference point. NOW, itself, does not change because it is always NOW. Since what we call time is continually passing that which we call NOW, now becomes the reference point to compare changes from within it. For example, you have never been older then whatever age you are now. It was NOW when you were a child and it is still now regardless of your current age. Your body has changed and your mind has changed but the fact that it is NOW, has not changed.

Smolen, hmmm... Still haven't read his last book. But he is after all the only person so far that has solved for the problem of time. I can't understand why the whole loop quantum gravity isn't as mainstream as it should probably be... it is after all at least falsifiable...

Momento.

That would result in many contradictions. If time did not exist, nothing could exist temporarily or forever. So everything, including nothingness cannot exist or not exist.

A timeless world could not exist for more than zero seconds.

The act of assuming is a conscious activity, It is obvious that activities require time to exist.

IMO it's a philosophical mistake to attempt to separate time from space. Sure, it can be done more or less mathematically, even having it move backwards, but it is inseparable from the field or manifold or context or whatever you wish to call it that is spacetime.

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
— Einstein — Luke

People who believe in physics, know time to be an illusion. The difference between past, present and future does not exist. Everything in the universe, always has been and always will be, here and now.

People who believe in physics, know time to be an illusion. — Present awareness

By physics do you mean alchemy? Science might really be alchemy, idn. There may be no way to test how our thoughts affect reality. We surely can wonder what our thoughts happen in, though. Intellectuals around Newton argued that his physics (unlike Descartes's vortex) required theism. They thought they "knew" how their physical laws led to philosophical "truths". Who is to say what will come after the post modern age, what new ideas will arise

By physics, I mean the properties of matter and energy.

This is my view on electromagnetic energy.

If you were on the surface of the Sun, the light which left there 8 minutes ago would be considered to be in he past, however, that same light would be just arriving at Earth and be considered to be in the present. If you were standing on the surface of another planet 10 light years away, that same light would reach you 10 years into the future from Earth’s perspective. Electromagnetic radiation, which travels in all directions in an unbroken stream, exists indefinitely. The light which left the earth during the period of the dinosaurs is still out there, traveling through space. In this sense, there is no difference between past, present and future. It all depends on where you are located in space.

I understand your argument and it is backed up by the claim in physics that light exists in eternity (and it alone as some would add)

Oddly the religion physically at the center of the world call themselves Christians and Orthodox yet through the lens of Plato say that light itself is God and that light alone is how the trinity can reveal it to the mind in meditation

Photons don't have mass and therefore time doesn't apply to them. Gravity can bend it though that's what I'm a little fuzzy about. The distinction between time and eternity is discrete

Now Einstein says time is an illusion but we still assume it has some basis is reality? — TiredThinker

What event, in-time or in-timelessness, provoked your question? Was that event in the past? How do you know?

Einstein's theory of Block Time was a hypothetical notion intended to make sense of his abstract mathematical theory of Relativity. The theory's relevance to Reality though, was proven in Time Dilation experiments. The passage of time is a subjective concept, even though in objective clocks it is recorded (remembered) differently. So I doubt that, in real life, he acted as-if time was frozen into a block of ice.

As Albert himself said, " People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion". The "illusion" is persistent because, as humans, we can't forget the past, and hope for the future. :smile:


Block Time : “Again, though, it might seem that dynamic change and temporal passage have been banished from nature by Einstein . . .” For example, his theory of Relativity required a patternless back-ground of Block Time, sometimes referred to as “Eternalism”, which freezes our perception of dynamic space & time into a static universe where all things & events exist simultaneously. Nevertheless, that timeless-spaceless “ice-cube” universe may be true mathematically (i.e. abstractly), but not true physically (concretely), because Eternity & Infinity are excluded from our Reality — yet remain like ghosts in human in imagination, in metaphysical mathematics, in Ideality.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page73.html

Time Dilation : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

A world without time is possible. What if you were a special microbe living on an asteroid that was floating aimlessly through space? What cyclical cosmic event could you use as a reference to define a day, an hour or a minute? You'd still go about your business I presume and time would be an abstract concept.