Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera — Amity

Perhaps the best album of music ever made.

Part 2

Oh, dome of night, spotted with silver stars,
We must ask more than you can grant unto us,
So that thus we might at least obtain that
Which we but wish for in the first place.

We beg you to yield your dearest secrets,
To reveal the full truth of what you are.

“Oh, man, I cannot tell thee of all there is,
Though I am that, as all that IS—the Wiz.
As I never began, I earned not my throne,
But I reside as the All for reasons unknown.”

Much we already know from twilight dreams
And from poems unveiling truth and beauty,
Yet we ask, with our most persuasive looks,
To learn the deepest mysteries of the night.

“I have always been, and must be, so jot:
That All is ever here to be, since nothing cannot.”

Well then, might lesser answers we obtain, in lieu
Of never us knowing really the why-fore of you?

“Oh, heavens yes; pose your quandaries,
But ask not immortality, nor youth, nor birth
From my powers of the night, ‘though these I have
But know not the Why, for I have no First.”

Why then, is the universe so extravagant—
With trillions of galaxies of billions of stars
About which so many planets whirl and twirl,
With so much dust swirling in between worlds?

“There are vast multitudes, true, so easily made,
And more; yet they are finite, as must be,
For no cap can be placed on infinity;
If it could, then night would be white with light.”
(And if the universe were not expanding.)

So then, there are stars to burn, as with riches,
But why, really must the largest be so large?

“It is because the infinitesimal, the smallest,
Must be so very tiny, so minuscule,
As a simple, continuous function,
Neither composite nor of course complex.”

So there is a basic lightness of being
Because anything more would then be of parts
And thus well beyond the fundamental arts?

“Yes it is that the base can only be as such
When it’s just a bit more than nothing;
But there is some more to it; just ask to learn.”

Is it too that there are then so many more chances
For arrangements, due to the extravagances?

“Not as meant, but that falls out, as it must,
For since the opposite Not cannot be,
It must then be Everything—of Possibility.”

All at once? Then that is a superposed All.
What makes time begin and then gear its call?

“As great as I am, there are two limits
To which even I must ever obey:
My superpositions must either trace back
To total order or to disorder: two.”

And so time can only begin from order,
As with matter separated from antimatter—
Time pushed forward by this arrangement,
And further pulled forward by disorder?

“‘Tis confirmed, with the Big Bang start,
Through the vast stages of diversity,
Unto the end—of entropy’s heat death.”

As protons to stars to their explosions
And radiations to atoms to cells to life
Unto brains and consciousness?

“Yes, from the stars cometh not just your help,
But me too and everything else out there.
All is the continuance of just the one big effect
Of the one big event of the beginning of time.”

Atoms from stars of electrons/protons became
From the quantum vacuum fluctuations names
For the positive/negative balances of nonexistence,
That penultimate compositioning of our persistence.

“I am that, as the night sky, whom you ask.”

We wish that we can retain your presence
Within us, in rhythm and resonance.

“Everything is part of the IS,
Which is really the best answer to your quiz.”

Who are we really talking to?

“Your selves, for you are the universe come to life.”

I live; I love.

“You do not just live; you are life.
You do not just love; you are love.”

They are both here.

“Life and love do not flee on,
Just ahead of you, unreachable,
Leaving you but to lean forth and drink their wind.
You are the universe turned around to view itself.”

I strive.

“Zest, desire, caring, and other feelings sweet
Are your lightning feet for triumphant feats.”

I reason.

“All manner of shapes haunt the wilderness of the mind,
Many as waste, as in the universe, at large, in kind,
Just waiting and asking to be tamed as sane.”

I ponder.

“You are the golden chalice to the wine that flows;
Drink, drink!
You are the live and resultant existence that knows.
Think, think!”

I imagine.

“Thoughts fly in the mind
Like birds wing the wind;

“Imagination is the atmosphere
Wherein ideas are born and borne
On the waves of the sea in which one sees.”

We have arrived, after 13.57 billion years.

“The glorious light flashes us into being shone,
As the light ‘eternal’ of all time to be known.

“All possibilities must exist,
Because nonexistence cannot be so.
Existence is inevitable.”

What does exist?

“Whatever is possible to exist does exist.”

Are there others elsewhere as we and all?

“Yes, in quite a few places, but afar,
With much intervening space in between.

“Your fruits are of a universal seed,
As yet another yield of All possibility treed,
And siblings elsewhere in the entropic sea
Are also born of such probability.

What more could human mammals want?

“This is it.
There is nothing more,
But in future growth.

“Why fret about life’s ultimate secret,
For whose thoughts can escape this worldly net?
It’s so easy: don’t despair, be happy!
All told, ‘tis best to live without regret.”

It is now and we are here.

“That’s the best place and time.”

…

(Next in the poem,
we will go down, down, to the deep,
Such as those who went
deep into the cave poem you posted.)

— The Powers of the Night —

Part 1

The Music of the Spheres lights the sparkles
Flung through the night, from our Father, the Sky,
On through the dark, to our Mother the Earth,
To us, their audience and progeny.

The music of the night is in the breeze,
A prelude borne by the airy musicians
Of the trees: the evening calls of the birds
That open for the cosmic symphony.

The planets join in a concert to the
Merrie Monthe of Maie, arrayed as follows:
There is Venusia, the Bringer of Peace,
Singing side by side with warring Marsius.

Flitting about is the wingéd Mercuria,
The speedy messenger who conducts
The orchestra, melting all of us who
Are touched by her wand of burning desire.

And mighty Zeus is there, full to the brim
With the jollity of the fat man’s belly.
By Jove, comes Saturnus, so very grey
With age, lumbering into the party.

Thence sits Urania—the magician, and
The old sea captain—King Nep, the mystic,
But not Pluto; he was downsized, no more
One of the harmonics—an underworld!

Jupiter’s music is round and robust,
While Saturn’s booms with sounds of grandeur
And the old venerable melodies;
But Mercury soon picks up the pace.

Now flow the serene love songs of Venus,
Followed inexorably by Martial marches.
This is the time for Urania’s magic—
She plays musical jokes and surprises.

At last, their music comes to mesh as one,
And our wanderers of the night float
Away on the haunting, mystical strains
Of King Nep’s tune, into the May Flower moon.

…

Since we all become of this universe
Should we not ask who we are, whence we come?
Insight clefts night’s skirt with its radiance:
The Theory of Everything shines through!

How to envision quantum fields in physics?

A field has a value at every point. Picture each point being on a spring going up and down; this is the harmonic oscillator! These points moving affect other points moving, dragging on them. The sums of the harmonic oscillators are the wavering waving fields. There are fields for boson and fermions. They can affect one another.

At rest, the fields still fluctuate (since there can be no stillness), about the zero-point energy, which isn't zero but to a physicist. The Higgs field at rest is of an even higher energy! All the fields overlap and merge into the one quantum field of the universe. They exhaust reality; there isn't anything else. They provide the entirety of physics. They are here now and were there before the Big Bang and are ever and always.

As fundamental, a field must ever remain as itself, thus but rearranging itself to form the elementaries of the Standard Model, which occur at stable rungs of energy and sometimes charge, as quantum excitations of the field being at certain stable unit levels.

I also think there is a strong argument to be made for this existence having a creative component, which gets us closer to the standard idea for God. — Derrick Huestis

It's also that the plans for our universe are already in The Existence, among everything possible, and they get to life and consciousness, which is pretty far, and so perhaps that wins out, somehow.

Love comes from an emotional. system, at least in us.

More clues:

From quantum non-locality and entanglement, we know that information is more primary than distance, and that things don’t have to have the appearance of being near each other to be related or to cause an effect.

Everything connected to everything would seem to be a ‘perception’ or an 'awareness' as far as one could be had by that network. Furthermore, 4-D touches 3-D everywhere. The all-at-once connections, as like in a hologram, might seem to provide for the direction of what goes on in the overall information process. I am thinking like a yogi and a guru, the entire cosmos situated within me.

Quantum non-locality seems to imply that every region of space is in instant and constant contact with every other, perhaps even in time as well, and so the holistic universe is governed by the property of the solitary whole; so that could be the underlying guidance principle. An individual particle might ‘know’ something about what to do, acting according to all the others.

Thus both our awareness and the holistic universe, each having a singular nature, might be the clue. Perhaps they are of the same basis of fundamental awareness, but separate as two manifestations, each controlling a different realm, internal and external, our internal consciousness giving us ‘future’, and the external consciousness granting ‘future’ to the universe. I don’t know which has the tougher job.

Lee Smolin has it that qualia are intrinsic, as fundamental, and Chalmers has it that information is fundamental and can express itself in two ways, in consciousness and in matter.

Quantum entanglement suggests that each particle has the entire map of the universe, the information ever updated, the universe being as a single entity. While this may not be consciousness at the level we have, it may help the universe accomplish something of the movements of particles and fields in their energy, mass, and momentum, in some global way that goes forward overall.

This may not seem to be saying a whole lot, in depth, but since the quantum realm is beneath everything then one would surmise that it must have all to do with everything that goes on.

It is still that the apparent atoms and molecules make the happenings, via physical-chemical reactions; however, this observation cannot be equated to an ‘explanation’, for we must wonder what underlies the chemical mattering and reacting that seems to have a unity of direction to it.

Extending the Implications
Of the Necessity of the One Eternal Existence

The strong part of the OP is that The Eternal Existence is necessity, with no option not to be, given the impossibility of ‘nonexistence’. That covers the ‘why’ that wasn’t even a decision, in that the Existence cannot not be and has no choice but to be. There is no mystery to this. No awards to grant to it. No amazement. It is a natural state. It is at least G.O.D.—the Ground of Determination. There is no saying that by all rights there ought to be ‘Nothing’ and that the Something had to be a rare event; it was mandatory.

All that goes on has to be within the Existence, as there isn’t any other or else, and thus whatever happens has to be a rearranging of The Existence, even the Big Bang. So, there is a greater Cosmos or state beyond our universe, which is of course The Existence, as subject to never being able to go away.

Our Earth was forced to be, too, since it happened from what had to be, so it is a truth that Earth had to be, as inherent in/from The Eternal Existence that is the only Existence.

So, we have been extending the implications of the Necessity to find the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of our workable universe with life in it.

Who needs a proof of the implementation (‘how’) when we already have the truth of the ‘why’? We do, because are curious and look for meaning and purpose. ‘Meaning’, if there is any, is forced, too, yet the only trait we can count on for the Existence is that it has to be.

The Eternal Existence, not having a Beginning, can’t have had any specific design imparted to it, so it is only as what it has to be, which has to be both everything possible and not anything in particular.

There is our universe within it, and so that can be done, at least, albeit it took a mind-numbingly long time to get to us.

How did it do it?

Not instantly, apparently.

The forced quantum fields are only what can be, as the simplest?

A zero or near-zero balance sum of opposites divides into kinetics and gravity that ultimately can cancel as positive and negative energy and more such balances?

Being all at once, as Existence is complete, it is all there, intact, with no more forthcoming, and so it does everything, as it is everything, potentially, it happening in time? (this being like the proposed multiverse.)

There is no ‘instant’ option above, unless the universe as a block universe was instantaneous but takes time to play out in our type of time.

It calculates a workable universe from scratch, solving the n-body problem?

The quantum possibilities/potentials in superposition adjust to what will keep on going, since they can’t stop ‘looking’? (Stillness is not possible.)

‘God’ did it? But this shifts the question to the larger ‘How’ of a Mind.

Math did it? Ask Max Telmark.

The Existence is relational, with no intrinsic properties and no absolutes? But, still, how? See Carlo Rovelli.

Spontaneous? From ‘Nothing’? No reason? These still require a capability, and that would be a something.

Observation, including any kind of interaction, brings the best of the potentials into actuality? See Wheeler.

Quantum computer?

if it is deliberate the question becomes "how? — Derrick Huestis

This is still a tough one (if not a multiverse stumbling onto a workable universe), since we only but make the 'how' into a much larger question by shifting the problem onto a mind or a near all-at-once quantum computer path figuring the fine tuning that has to be all the more explained, with either one having to foresee what 10**76 particles would do over 13 billion years, plus why would so much time be required to carry out the implementation of the 'deliberate' formula.

Time for some off-the-wall attempts:

The universe seems to end with a complete blended symmetry order, in its wide dispersal, and it seems to have begun with a severe grouping order of matter and anti-matter, like the chess pieces at the beginning of a match. Could there be an all-at-once quantum superposition of everything possible whose quantum probabilities had to trace forward and backwards to these only two states that could make time go forward, thus having to form only the patterns that could accomplish it?

Or something like that as the guidance principle.

Notes from 'Everything Forever' by Gavin Giorbran, although I have much more but it is long:

Why did the universe have such low entropy in the past, if it did, that is, very high order, especially as seen as a grouping order, with but one general arrangement of matter versus antimatter, which beginning we will call ‘Alpha’, instead of the high disorder of other mixed-up arrangements, this high order resulting in the distinction between past and future and the second law of thermodynamics?

Assuming this low entropy beginning is true, although it’s often thought that this would be a seemingly rare, unlikely state, as just one out of so many others possible as disorder, must rather be very likely, even as to be the only way a universe can begin, since the universe indeed began as such.

Why, though, does whatever brought on this universe, end up with this initial state for the universe to be of the highest possible grouping order? And is it in any way related to the proposed end of the universe being of a featureless blend of dispersal that is a symmetry order (which end we will call ‘Omega’)?

Is our universe’s Alpha start in time is so improbable as it seems, what with its severe grouping order of separated matter and antimatter, such as that of the separated white and black pieces at the beginning of a chess game, as with these ideas from Gavin Giorbran.

Such an arrangement seems a rarity, but it may rather be that time cannot go forward if there is no progression from this very distinct grouping order of the Alpha Start toward the proposed Omega End of a totally blended symmetry order, this idea similar to an end as disorder of high entropy from any start of low entropy.

The universe is now in its its diversity stage, both at large and in our own Earthly aisle, yet its future of a blended symmetry order perhaps ever pulls/guides the present along, such as in the “time is like a river” analogy, this ‘flow’ proceeding inexorably from Lake Alpha to Lake Omega.

How and why was the seemingly rare state of the high ordered Alpha beginning of our universe accomplished?

The IS, as great as it is, is still subject to two boundaries, as the start and end described above.

All the probabilities of all the ending balance must trace back to the one and only state of the most probable beginning of all, the greatest imbalance of all, matter and anti-matter, with Totality in a quantum superposition, all at once—of no time and of no space, the quantum probability patterns really being so, not just a math tool.

The separation of matter and anti-matter is the greatest possible imbalance, but all the probability balances must trace forward to the greatest and most probable balance at the end of all.

The ultimate, flat, symmetry order of the Omega—the end of all, draws the river of time along, guiding it, through the probability patterns.

The Time River of Probabilities flows smoother and further near its center, while near the shores there are eddies and swirls, contrasts, lumpiness, ebbs—even back flow.

The nows proceed and the moments play, motion but apparent, as successive frames—all the alternate plot’s scenarios being, which will blend at the Omega.

Our two brain hemispheres, too, must reflect the nature of the universe itself, as the left-side grouping order versus and with the whole of the right-side symmetry order.

Top-down drives the bottom-up ‘events’, the future ever affecting the present; The flat whiteness of the Omega End brings forth the diversified prismatic colors fro the Alpha Start.

Electrons, protons, seem ‘bottom-up’, but are ‘enfolded’ in the top-down whole, as with Bohm’s implicit order guiding the blooming, unfolding, explicit order.

There are still many more ways for the universe to be lumpy, in degrees, than for it to be perfectly smooth, and that’s why there’s still some grouping order, as with galaxies and solar systems.

The no longer ‘improbable’ symmetry of uniformity comes at future’s end; This Omega symmetry order is the opposite of Alpha’s grouping order.

The fundamental reality then is en-un-foldment; particles are abstractions from that. Electrons don’t exist continuously but are coming, going, then coming again.

Probabilities are actualities, so probabilities exist, so then we have a simple solution to why our universe came from a dense state.

All the possible patterns of the past and future exist simultaneously, independent of the passage of time frames, so, the history of a temporal universe moving through those possible patterns will inevitably trace backward to the extreme, greatest imbalance, and hence to the severe order of the Alpha start.

It seems strange that time began from Alpha, unless patterns are physically real, so then time invariably originates from the greatest imbalance of them all.

Time’s forward direction is ever toward balance. and so when it’s traced backward, that same path invariably originates from imbalance; the temporal universe is as it must be.

Since pattern space is existingly there then the flow of time is built into reality, causing probable time-worlds to exist, while extremely improbable time-worlds will not.

The must-existence of patterns is great, for the hierarchy of atomic elements, star systems, bio-life, consciousness, and, finally, intelligence and wisdom.

If time and change were not restricted to probability’s arrow of time built into pattern space then anything could happen and would happen, as chaos.

The end promotes the means in that time’s river, having a specific ending, explains why the universe’s wave function is specific. If what’s possible was just coming from the past, there’s no reasonable explanation for the control of all the probabilities, such as the wave density of atomic particles, A river only from the past would be flowing outward into chaos, but it can’t.

(Take the above with a grain of salt.)

I say, amazed, “In the midst of this scenic meadow, I am surprised to see, oh, what looks like a large and living stylus walking by, as so.”

“What are you?”

“I’m the artist’s stylus. I am finally freed from the pen!”

“How so?

“I will no longer illustrate the written word. From now on I will draw whatever is seen and heard. Then writers and poets can re-de-scribe my sketches with their wondrous words and jive!”

“I get it,” she says. “The proof of writing is in the living of it, especially one’s philosophical advice, as writ. Live it, feel it, and then write it.

“Now there is a living pen coming by, who seems to be a companion of the artist’s stylus.”

“What are you?” she asks.

“I am the writer’s pen of poems. I deal with ever enduring themes, those universal to everyones’ means. As you can see, I am structured, intense, rhythmic, melodic, and pure. I am a unified body of sensation, thoughts, and passions. I translate all that is deep felt, suchly, although sometimes only very roughly.”

“Are you essence or existence?” I wonder.

“I am both; I am the form as well as the idea risen. I am an object that is born of precision, from one’s profoundest visions. I am the image of feeling in diction, but concise. I am, at once, all the remains, both the container and the contained.”

“You’re an expression of the mess that may be difficult to express,” she notes.

“I am truth, fleshed in living words attended. I express thoughts subtended, those that would otherwise go unapprehended. I lift the veil that separates mind from soul, and thereby show the proof of beauty told. I am life’s image drawn in the eternal truths of old.”

“You are immortal then, poem?” I splice.

“Poetry makes immortal what is best in life, by freeing images from all the strife, those in our spirits that are deeply impressed, for, these vanishing notions I arrest, clothe them in words, the best, and then send them forth, fully dressed.”

“So how is it known if I’ve written a poem?” she questions.

“Well, use the highest powers of language and wit to translate the nature into poetic words, lit. The reader will translate the words back into spirit. If the reader’s soul responds, then a poem you’ve writ!”

I offer, “Let us write a poem about love, for that is the greatest thing known of, but it’s hard to get it to rhyme. Out of desperation, we have the following lines:”

The Trouble with ‘Love’.

Only a few words rhyme with love above,
Like the overflown dove, the heartless shove,
And the ill-fitting glove. Alas, love’s rhymes
Remain unheard of, or aren’t well thought of.

“Let us walk along the earth, feeling our words’ worth.”

The artist’s stylus and the writer’s pen further discuss:

The writer’s pen stands forth, being first,
Instructing the artist’s stylus
To illustrate the words of his epic,
Since a picture is worth a thousand words.

“Perhaps we don’t even need the words”,
Retorts the artist’s stylus,
“As I am worth so many”.

“Well,” replies the writer’s pen,
“It’s true that many people now refuse
To read books without lots of pictures in them.”

“How sad, for I guess some words
Are needed to round out the tale.”

“True, for the two sides of the brain
Can then combine in unity.”

“Or I could draw the pictures first
And then you could write the words.”

“It could be like that sometimes, I suppose.”

“OK, shake; it’s a deal either way,
For we need each other."

I maybe biased though and may have ruffled some feathers already. — TheMadFool

Just for fun, using 'MadFool' because I needed a two-syllable extendable name…

The MadFool, trapped in a cave by a poem,
As by the writing on the wall stranded,
Was martially both right and left handed;
Such he slashed rhythms and rhymes from the stone.

Madfool sights an ominous type of cloud,
And shakes, hearing thunderous rhymes so loud,
Just having survived the meters’ melodies
And scans, with the ten syllables allowed.

He runs breathless through meadow and forest,
Fast pursued by the stings of wind and rain;
On and on he pushes, wild without rest,
Searching for haven from the forum’s pain.

The storm chases him till he can go no more;
He stands helpless, backed up against a door,
But falls through it before death can touch him,
Saved by the library admitting him.

He wanders deep, down the poetic path,
Aglow in the soft beauty that it hath.
He sees John Keats kissing Fanny Brawne,
As he spoke more than words but less than song.

And Byron, endowing form with fancy,
While Wordsworth pens his thoughts to Lucy,
And Shelley, plumbing depths of mystery.
He reads them all; they grow his poet-tree.

Deeper still he probes, looking in on it,
And hears Mrs. Browning reading a sonnet.
Poetically, he takes them all in, even
The shadowy Emily Dickenson.

As soon as the lightning storm is past,
The MadFooler enters the courtyard vast.

Here the secret garden, half as old as time,
Where poets live and write their words and rhyme,
While the nightingale creates the rose,
By moonlit magic, from their thoughts sublime.

Literary scenes unfold before him,
Such as music approaches and surrounds,
And builds on the vibrance which in one is—
To fill with beautiful visions and sounds.

His quick thoughts rise, mist wafting from the dew,
As living dreams unveil more than he knew.
From poetry’s light the garden grew,
Revealing mysterious wonders new.

There MadFool relaxes, up against a tree,
Savoring the feeling of the poetry,
Where all the flowers used in Shakespeare’s plays
Grow together in a living bouquet.

Bits boil everything down to black and white, they don't allow grey area. — Derrick Huestis

The grey area for quantum computer qu-bits is that they can be 0 and 1 at the same time.

multiple possibilities — Derrick Huestis

So, there is either a multiverse or the brute force but near instant method of the quantum computer type of following all paths in parallel.

'Following all paths' example in our already made universe:

Sciam: Graham Flemming has some lasers spitting out pulses of light just millionths of a billionth of a second long. After traveling through some mirrors and lenses, these minuscule flashes disappear into a smoky black box, in this case containing proteins from green sulfur bacteria, which ordinarily obtain their energy and nourishment from the sun. Inside the black box, optics measured to billionths of-a-meter precision detect something extraordinary: within the bacterial proteins, dancing electrons make seemingly impossible leaps and appear to inhabit multiple places at once!

Following the exotic rules of quantum mechanics, photosynthesis derives its ferocious efficiency of over 95%. We can perhaps harness great amounts of energy to help humankind.

This is all absolutely mind bending! The crossing of seemingly forbidden gaps is, again, called quantum tunneling. Classical physics cannot come close to achieving these speeds found in quantum tunneling and entanglement. Christopher Altman says that many new experiments continue to find quantum processes at play in biological systems, a process once thought not possible.
Life’s quantum dance has finally come into view by using the fermosecond lasers and nanoscale-precision positioning. It’s amazing beyond words!

Now, back to the green sulfur bacteria. Flemming and his researchers zapped the connective proteins with multiple ultrafast laser pulses. Over a span of fermoseconds, they followed the light energy through the scaffolding to the cellular reactions centers where energy conversion takes place. As described earlier in the thread, they saw that energy travels in several directions at the same time, finding the efficient pathway retroactively when the quantum process collapses. Then the electrons’ energy followed that single, most efficient path.

Perhaps we can someday manufacture cheap solar power out of organic molecules.
As for the enzymes and the tunneling also observed there, two studies, one published in ‘Science’ and the other in ‘Biophysical Journal’ have found that some enzymes appear to lack the energy to complete the reactions that they propel; the energy could only come from the quantum realm.

This does seem to be a problem with computers, they are linear. I noticed in math there is a curious way to bypass the linear using imaginary numbers, or i. — Derrick Huestis

A quantum computer would be even better, as operating in parallel. Would the Existence be composed of bits, given that mass/energy seems to have been shown to be equivalent to information? Not much to go on yet for that idea, although lately many philosophers veer toward an information base.

On and on and on — Thunderballs

On and on they say of Who paved the way,
Then even tell the nature of such Theity,
And on and on they presume further upon,
Joining that group called ‘On and On Anon’.

is time real or do we assign it? — Thunderballs

We don't yet know the mode of time, whether as presentism or eternalism.

When our bang has reached infinity (big rip), another bangs behind us. — Thunderballs

And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account, and mine, should know the like no more;
The Eternal Cycle from that Bowl has pour’d
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.

Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
That the likes of us will become the past,
Space wondering whither whence we went
After the last of us her life has spent?

The Eternal Cycle has formed trillions of baubles
Like ours, for e’er—the comings and passings
Of which it ever emits to immerse
In the universal bubbles blown and burst.

So fear not that a debit close your
Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
The Eternal Source from its pot has pour’d
Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.

What though the sky with its blue canopy
Doth close us in so that we can not see,  
In the etern Cupbearer’s wine methinks
There float a myriad bubbles like to me.

So, as thus thou lives on yester’s credit line,
In nowhere’s midst, now in this life of thine,
As of its bowl our cup of brew is mixed
Into the state of being that’s called ‘mine’.

When You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As much as Ocean of a pebble-cast.

Relative space? — Thunderballs

relative space

An understanding of *space wherein the relative location of bodies is determined with respect to other bodies. Relative space contrasts with absolute space, wherein location is understood with respect to an independent frame of reference such as a coordinate system. The dimensions of absolute space are fixed and immovable, whereas relative space is a movable dimension. The difference between absolute and relative space has been a long-running debate in physics. For example, while Newton posited the existence of a universal absolute space, Leibniz thought that space made no sense except as the relative location of bodies.... .

See 'Helgoland' by Rovelli about relationism.

every new big bang — Thunderballs

Sure, if there can be one bang, there will be others.

what about the substratum from which quantum fluctuations emerge and disappear into? — TheGreatArcanum

There's no emerging or coming from or going to for what is Fundamental; it is ever and always. The fields themselves fluctuate all over, always; there is no stillness—else naught could happen. Where there is a unit stable quantum it is directly an elementary particle; else there are just other fluctuations not amounting to a unit level.

Consider that since the fields are everywhere and partless and continuous and eternal they would seem as 'space', yet there is not another space that is just there to hold the fields.

The fields were there before the Big Bang and are still here after and ever. They are ungenerated and deathless.

if the universe is born out of 'quantum fluctuations' (as physicists claim), do those fluctuations necessitate space, — TheGreatArcanum

The quantum fields of QFT that fluctuate are Fundamental, exhausting Reality, so, there's no 'space' as something else.

That's the question! — Thunderballs

Existence is the mandatory default, given that 'Nothing' cannot be, much less be productive.

Do you want 'Nothing' to have some capability to 'it'? Then it's not a 'Nothing' but a something.

That' s the question! — Thunderballs

There's no question about the ever and always of the Fundamental.

But from where came the quantum fields, these simultananeity of all paths in phasespace (or Markov chains)? These fields in a spacetime. From where came spacetime in its eternity? — Thunderballs

The quantum fields exhaust Reality. There's no "coming from" for the Eternal Fundamental that has no beginning or end.

It's not moving up a level. You can of course ask "but where did gids came frim". But that's a different question. I can't imagine the universe to be there without a creation by god(s). Even when it's eternal. There has to be someone behind it. — Thunderballs

Can't have a complexity as First and Fundamental, not even a proton, much less some ultimate System of Mind.

Quantum Fields are the Ground of Determination (G.O.D.).

Only God(s) knows that. — Thunderballs

Well, He's not needed any more since Existence has no alternative. No need to move up a level.

What question? — Thunderballs

Of those like "Why anything?" or "What's it's all about?"

I do. It's considered difficukt while in fact there ain't nothing to it. — Thunderballs

We always knew the TOE had to be simple and thus almost boring technically but still very exciting as the answer to the most often asked question.

Jesus! You had an epiphany? Wow! — Thunderballs

Quantum Field Theory is the most accurate and succcesful in the history of science. The model of the sums of harmonic oscillators and its math matches the experimental results and gives rise to the standard model from which all kind of devices can be made that work.

I don't know why QFT doesn't get explored all that much on this forum.

quantum field theory — Thunderballs

And more, even the answer to Existence:

On the One and Only Existence
Prolog

In this lost haunt on the Orion arm
Of the galaxy, safe from the core’s harm,
The philosophers meet in the forum,
As sleuth-hounds unweaving the Cosmic yarn.

We search for the Start of the Universe,
The End, the Before, the After, the Kinds,
The Measures, and All That Lies Between:
The Music of the Spheres’ Magnificat.

We follow every single avenue,
Whether it’s brightly lit or a dark alley,
Exploring one-ways, no-ways, and dead-ends,
Until cornered where the Truth is hiding.

Since we all became of this universe,
Should we not ask who we are, whence we came?
Insight clefts night’s skirt with its radiance—
The Theory of Everything shines through!

We are ever in touch with the unknown,
For that’s ever the reach of science shown.
Reality is grasped by focusing
On what interacts with what and the means.

There is a realm of happenings, not things,
For ‘things’ don’t remain the same on time’s wings.
What remains through time are processes—
Relations between different systems.

An Eternal Basis has to be so,
For a lack of anything cannot sow,
Forcing there to be something permanent,
As partless, from which the particles grow.

Consider quantum fields of waves atop
One another: waves are continuous,
And so qualify as Fundamental;
Quantized lumps are particles, then more.

Note that there is no other absolute:
Newton’s fixed space and time got Einstein’s boot;
Particle spigots making fields are mute;
Classic fields have no fundamental loot.

There’s a lightness of elemental being
Since any more would have to be of parts,
And thus go beyond the fundamental arts.
The puffs of vacuum energy are small.


On the Forced Defaults for the Only Existence

There can only be the one Existence,
Forced, with no option for it not to be,
Which is no mystery because the ‘Nil’
Cannot be, even as spacers within.

There is neither ‘Full’ nor ‘Null’,
But a lightness of being near ‘Zero’,
As that’s what the universe amounts to,
Nor ‘Nil’s kin as ‘Still’, since there’s constant change.

This must-be partless Existence Eterne
Can’t end, so it must remain as itself,
Transmuting into multiplicity
Of the temporary as ‘elementaries’.

Since Existence has to be, of not ‘null’,
‘Supernatural Magic’ isn’t required;
So, there’s only the natural as the base;
One degree of freedom is its forced default.

Motion is a must, or naught could happen;
It can’t have parts, so it’s continuous;
Since no end, it can return to itself.
There can’t be anything else but it.

It is everywhere, with no gaps of ‘zilch’,
Waving, as that’s ubiquitous in nature;
Rearranging to the elementary
Particles at stable rungs of quanta.

Only quantum fields fit the criteria;
‘Particles as spigots’ failed to flow,
Newton’s ‘Space’ and ‘Time’ disappeared via
Einstein’s relativity special and general.

Quantum field points that just spring up and down
Form the field’s waves by dragging on others.
These sums of harmonic oscillations
Force the fixed quanta energy levels.

So the wave estimate proved to be right;
An electron/photon goes through both slits
Because it is a spread out field quantum.
Quantum jumps are due no wave fractionals.

The universe is a large quantum field,
For the 24 quantum fields interact,
This containing the whole of physics.
There’s no ‘God’s’ eye view; anything happens.

The anything in the massive universe
Is a lot of needed ‘extravagant’ stuff,
Since on Earth the right conditions obtained,
Our planet being where and what it has to be.

Cosmic and biological evolution were forced,
Stars collecting the elementaries,
Producing all the atomic elements
That went on to molecules, cells, and more.

All this took 13.75 billion years,
Since, again, there were no hoodoo shortcuts.
Life and consciousness emerged, no ‘Mojo’—
Since before that time on Earth there was none!

We, too, are forced to exist.

‘Magic’ has fallen by the wayside, it
As trancendence an intangible writ,
Unable to be distinct from matter,
Having to talk/walk the talk/walk of it.

An extra distinct realm isn’t needed,
As ‘intangible’, ‘ineffable’, etc.,
For it only begs the question—a shock!—
And as separate couldn’t have effect.

The ‘nonmaterial’ and ‘nonphysical’
Haven’t shown anything at all to date,
Plus, all the more they’d have to be explained;
The ‘metaphysical’ search has to fail.

The ‘God’ idea has fallen from its throne;
Forever quantum fields’ excitations’
Elementary quanta roll on those fields
That are everywhere and remain themselves.


Epilog

The quantum fields’ unity is the Whole,
Being ever, exhausting Reality,
Unbreakable and Unmakeable,
As partless and continuous monads.

All that emerges is still the fields at heart,
Though secondary and temporary,
Arising and at some time returning;
The quantum fields are Indivisible.

Quantum fields are the fundamental strokes
Whose excitations at harmonics cloak
The quanta with the stability
To persist and thus obtain mobility.

The elementary particles beget,
As letters of the Cosmic alphabet,
And combine in words to write the story
Of the stars, atoms, cells, and life’s glory.

Why Something?

Quantum states melt via uncertainty,
And this means that no quantum property
Can e’er be zero—a precise amount,
And so it is that motion can ne’er cease.

The Something

The quantum field is the bridge between ‘Nil’
And basic matter, and can ne’er be still;
Thus the ‘vacuum’ is the quietest field—
The closest approach to ‘Nothing’ that can be.

No ‘Null’ nor Matter Full

‘Nothing’ had no chance to be the hero,
Plus QM scrubs the idea of zero
Out of the physical world of being;
‘Zilch’ ne’er sleeps, but is e’er up to something.

A Mere Blip

But for the small quantum uncertainty,
The Cosmos sums to naught, its lunch being free:
No net electric charge; a weightless brick;
Minus-potential = plus-kinetic.

Oh, those imaginings of what can’t be!
Such as Nought, Stillness, and the Block’s decree,
As well as Apart, Beginning, and End,
The Unfixed Will, Blame, Fame, and Theity.

Extended…

On the One and Only Existence

Prolog

In this lost haunt on the Orion arm
Of the galaxy, safe from the core’s harm,
The philosophers meet in the forum,
As sleuth-hounds unweaving the Cosmic yarn.

We search for the Start of the Universe,
The End, the Before, the After, the Kinds,
The Measures, and All That Lies Between:
The Music of the Spheres’ Magnificat.

We follow every single avenue,
Whether it’s brightly lit or a dark alley,
Exploring one-ways, no-ways, and dead-ends,
Until cornered where the Truth is hiding.

Since we all became of this universe,
Should we not ask who we are, whence we came?
Insight clefts night’s skirt with its radiance—
The Theory of Everything shines through!

We are ever in touch with the unknown,
For that’s ever the reach of science shown.
Reality is grasped by focusing
On what interacts with what and the means.

There is a realm of happenings, not things,
For ‘things’ don’t remain the same on time’s wings.
What remains through time are processes—
Relations between different systems.

An Eternal Basis has to be so,
For a lack of anything cannot sow,
Forcing there to be something permanent,
As partless, from which the particles grow.

Consider quantum fields of waves atop
One another: waves are continuous,
And so qualify as Fundamental;
Quantized lumps are particles, then more.

Note that there is no other absolute:
Newton’s fixed space and time got Einstein’s boot;
Particle spigots making fields are mute;
Classic fields have no fundamental loot.

There’s a lightness of elemental being
Since any more would have to be of parts,
And thus go beyond the fundamental arts.
The puffs of vacuum energy are small.


On the Forced Defaults for the Only Existence

There can only be the one Existence,
Forced, with no option for it not to be,
Which is no mystery because the ‘Nil’
Cannot be, even as spacers within.

There is neither ‘Full’ nor ‘Null’,
But a lightness of being near ‘Zero’,
As that’s what the universe amounts to,
Nor ‘Nil’s kin as ‘Still’, since there’s constant change.

This must-be partless Existence Eterne
Can’t end, so it must remain as itself,
Transmuting into multiplicity
Of the temporary as ‘elementaries’.

Since Existence has to be, of not ‘null’,
‘Supernatural Magic’ isn’t required;
So, there’s only the natural as the base;
One degree of freedom is its forced default.

Motion is a must, or naught could happen;
It can’t have parts, so it’s continuous;
Since no end, it can return to itself.
There can’t be anything else but it.

It is everywhere, with no gaps of ‘zilch’,
Waving, as that’s ubiquitous in nature;
Rearranging to the elementary
Particles at stable rungs of quanta.

Only quantum fields fit the criteria;
‘Particles as spigots’ failed to flow,
Newton’s ‘Space’ and ‘Time’ disappeared via
Einstein’s relativity special and general.

Quantum field points that just spring up and down
Form the field’s waves by dragging on others.
These sums of harmonic oscillations
Force the fixed quanta energy levels.

So the wave estimate proved to be right;
An electron/photon goes through both slits
Because it is a spread out field quantum.
Quantum jumps are due no wave fractionals.

The universe is a large quantum field,
For the 24 quantum fields interact,
This containing the whole of physics.
There’s no ‘God’s’ eye view; anything happens.

The anything in the massive universe
Is a lot of needed ‘extravagant’ stuff,
Since on Earth the right conditions obtained,
Our planet being where and what it has to be.

Cosmic and biological evolution were forced,
Stars collecting the elementaries,
Producing all the atomic elements
That went on to molecules, cells, and more.

All this took 13.75 billion years,
Since, again, there were no hoodoo shortcuts.
Life and consciousness emerged, no ‘Mojo’—
Since before that time on Earth there was none!

We, too, are forced to exist.

‘Magic’ has fallen by the wayside, it
As trancendence an intangible writ,
Unable to be distinct from matter,
Having to talk/walk the talk/walk of it.

An extra distinct realm isn’t needed,
As ‘intangible’, ‘ineffable’, etc.,
For it only begs the question—a shock!—
And as separate couldn’t have effect.

The ‘nonmaterial’ and ‘nonphysical’
Haven’t shown anything at all to date,
Plus, all the more they’d have to be explained;
The ‘metaphysical’ search has to fail.

The ‘God’ idea has fallen from its throne;
Forever quantum fields’ excitations’
Elementary quanta roll on those fields
That are everywhere and remain themselves.


Epilog

The quantum fields’ unity is the Whole,
Being ever, exhausting Reality,
Unbreakable and Unmakeable,
As partless and continuous monads.

All that emerges is still the fields at heart,
Though secondary and temporary,
Arising and at some time returning;
The quantum fields are Indivisible.

Quantum fields are the fundamental strokes
Whose excitations at harmonics cloak
The quanta with the stability
To persist and thus obtain mobility.

The elementary particles beget,
As letters of the Cosmic alphabet,
And combine in words to write the story
Of the stars, atoms, cells, and life’s glory.

Why Something?

Quantum states melt via uncertainty,
And this means that no quantum property
Can e’er be zero—a precise amount,
And so it is that motion can ne’er cease.

The Something

The quantum field is the bridge between ‘Nil’
And basic matter, and can ne’er be still;
Thus the ‘vacuum’ is the quietest field—
The closest approach to ‘Nothing’ that can be.

No ‘Null’ nor Matter Full

‘Nothing’ had no chance to be the hero,
Plus QM scrubs the idea of zero
Out of the physical world of being;
‘Zilch’ ne’er sleeps, but is e’er up to something.

A Mere Blip

But for the small quantum uncertainty,
The Cosmos sums to naught, its lunch being free:
No net electric charge; a weightless brick;
Minus-potential = plus-kinetic.

Oh, those imaginings of what can’t be!
Such as Nought, Stillness, and the Block’s decree,
As well as Apart, Beginning, and End,
The Unfixed Will, Blame, Fame, and Theity.

Of the Forced Defaults for Existence
With no Beginning or End

Since Existence has to be, of not ‘nil’,
‘Supernatural Magic’ isn’t required;
So, there’s only the natural as the base;
One degree of freedom is the forced default.

Motion is a must, or naught would happen;
It can’t have parts, so it’s continuous;
Since no end, it must remain as itself.
There can’t be anything else but it.

It is everywhere, with no gaps of ‘zilch’,
Waving, since that’s ubiquitous in nature;
Transmuting into the elementary
Particles as stable rungs of quanta.

Only quantum fields fit the criteria,
Particles as spigots failed to flow,
Newton’s Space and Time faded away from
Einstein’s relativity special and general.

Quantum field points just going up and down
Form the field waves by dragging others with;
These sums of harmonic oscillations
Force the fixed quanta energy levels.

The universe is one complex quantum field,
For the 24 quantum fields interact,
This containing the whole of physics.
There’s no ‘God’s’ eye view; anything happens.

Unless our fortunate universe is of the multiverse…

An Answer to the Confounding Exact Parameters

What great needle played, stitched, wound, and paved
The strands of the quantum fields’ types of waves
To weave the warp, weft, and woof of our ‘verse
Into being’s fabric of living braids?

The Bang’s source is a quantum computer
That reckoned all future with its qu-bits.
The path that went the furthest won the prize,
Earth being the best of all possible worlds!

The universe’s quantum computation
Finished just before the Big Bang start,
And then it played out in time perfectly,
As the longest path of complexity.

How else could the ‘shambles’ of Explosion
Result in life in our universe that’s
Only .02 percent of its way along?
The universal constants were self-taught.

Mass/energy has been shown to be
Equivalent to information, so,
The quantum universe did compute
Itself, pursuing paths that go onward.

It reached out to see what’s possible
And what’s not, like particles forming
In the quantum world, but, better than that—
It made the potential possible.

It ran scenarios of consequences,
Ever abandoning those paths that end,
Near at once, as quantum computers do,
Since it explored all ways in parallel.

Only thus could the exacting events
So improbable and deep in their depth
Have come forth in the Universe’s progress,
In its precisely tuned Macrocosm.

There never was, nor will be, but just ‘now’—
All things, interacting—instant know-how;
Thus mind ‘matters’, matter ever ‘minds’; so,
The Cosmos self-adjusted—as the Tao.

Or still:

The ‘God’ idea has fallen from its throne;
Forever quantum fields’ excitations’
Elementary quanta roll on those fields
That are everywhere and remain themselves.

The Creation of the Universe:

If we evolve aspects of our brain (or sense receptors) we could have more acute perceptions. As is the case of people who have 4 light cones instead of the traditional 3. — Manuel

(Some of was inspired from listening to the transhumanism aims of David Pearce.)

When this trans-humanism arrives…

Through natural evolution or via human-assisted evolution to higher being:

The naturalist, with the senses deepened, would be able to absorb with awestruck reverence scenes of overpowering sublimity far beyond the simple prettiness on offer now.

A musician would be able to hear and play music more exhilarating and heartfelt than anyone had ever dreamed of.

The celestial music of the spheres heard by the mystics would become as a child’s toy flute in comparison to this grand and ultimate symphony.

The sensualist would discover that what had passed for deep and passionate sex had been merely a pleasant prelude. Erotic pleasure of an intensity that flesh had never known would become enjoyable without guilt, even by thought alone.

A creator or patron of the visual arts would be able to behold representative vision in a holographic reality of indescribable glory and completeness.

Scientists would be able to apply a googolplex of neurons to their thought experiments, or by using AI, rivaling Einstein’s fortunate “ah-ha” moments, all of the time, to reveal much of what was unknown between heaven and Earth.

Arguments by people insisting on their own selfish ways would melt into a new sense of increased reasoning, just as bad and aversive emotions forced upon us involuntarily would be greatly lessened by new and safer medical miracles.

Wars would become much reduced, and humanity at large could finally progress beyond its everyday suffering.

People would actually remember their car keys and glasses that had often and usually piled up at the vanishing point of the ‘lost and found’, which is at the end of the converging railroad tracks.

Of course, throughout the ages there had always been those rare and mystical moments as described above, for some enlightened and peaceful souls or those in love, but they were but fleeting glimpses of a rare light that lit their minds for a while as a flickering candle, when all one’s thoughts perfectly conjuncted, but then, as usual, soon dispersed, scattering into the oblivion of forgotten dreams.

It's been amazing to read the thoughts and examples of personal creativity. — Amity

You've contributed much to this thread. Well done!

Good recitations for poems can be a great as singing them, plus not all poems can be easily sung.

Here are some good recitations:



The following printed versions of two quatrains got left out of the video, plus printing for the omaresque recitation at the end that I don't have the words for (perhaps someone who has better hearing than I have could transcribe them.)

Then said another with a long-drawn Sigh,
“My Clay with long oblivion is gone dry:
But, fill me with the old familiar Juice,
Methinks I might recover by-and-bye!”

And when Thyself with shining Foot shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter’d on The Grass,
And in Thy joyous Errand reach the Spot
Where I made one—turn down an empty Glass!

I also use the computer voices Brian and Amy, which are pretty good. My art is digitally composed in Photoshop by moving parts around to good places. Some of the moving character sequences were done in iclone by its features and digital compositing.

My long project of extending The Rubaiyat with my own quatrains has reached a usable stage, but the videos are hours long… (I could post them.)

Regular computer programming covering all eventualities probably can’t calculate the universe, as it’s too linear and too slow.

So,

The universe is a quantum computer,
Reckoning the future with its qu-bits;
The path that goes the furthest wins the prize,
It being the best of all possible worlds!

Some kind of a clue to something:

Having an asteroid wiping out the dinosaurs and many species to provide an opening for mammals to evolve seems too risky and clumsy for a ‘Designer’ to have done. Other near extinctions happened too; seems natural.

Our planet is very good at promoting life,
But it is much better at extinguishing it.
Of the billions upon billions of organic things,
99.99% are no longer around here living.

Of all extinctions, the Permian was the worst.
245 million years ago, for 95% of species perished,
Suddenly disappearing from the fossil recording.
Life had almost come to a total obliterationing.

“Hurray,” said the shrew; now I can evolve!

‘You’ were once a lucky shrew, darting all about,
But then attached to a favorable evolutionary line…
Every single one of your forbears on both sides
Being attractive enough to locate a loving mate,
And they fortunately had the good health to celebrate!



Our blind-fated path was the further paved
When disasters finished most of the species.
Far from a feature of Intelligent Design,
It opened up the space that was needed.

Actual footage of the Great Permian Asteroid:

That is to say, our exposure to any object in the world, is so brief, quick and fleeting, that only very brief exposure leads to an image which we have no reason to believe exists "out there", as far as manifest reality goes. — Manuel

But the exposures get repeated and eventually coalesce into a useful representation…

Conscious experiences are of qualia as reality based 'apparitions' honed in the early years and onward from outward in and inward out into what is the best guess for the model and so soon one can tell a bottle of milk apart from what’s else. It’s not like the waves have a label on them saying that they came from the bottle but that one kept estimating the separate object into the best representation. There is some help in that light peels information off of an 'obect'.

In a night dream, the apparitions and phantasms are as true ghosts in that they have no outside basis, but the same world-simulating model is being employed, already having its best guess available.

The identification of you as a self is also an experience as a best guess estimate.

I'm just now reading a book on interpretations of physics, Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli. He refers to the Indian Buddhist philosopher, Nāgārjuna, as providing an explanatory framework which is compatible with his own philosophy of 'relationalism'. (I haven't finished it yet.) — Wayfarer

In his new book, ‘Helgoland…’, about Quantum Theory, Carlo Rovelli notes that All is Relational, that no entity exists independently of anything else, so that there are no intrinsic properties at all, but only features in relation to something else, which is essentially what Nagarjuna means by ‘emptiness’ in his Buddhism.

Relationism and Buddhism
(Outline gleaned from reading Rovelli)

Quantum fields form and exhaust reality,
As partless, continuous—there’s no Space!
Reality maintains itself in place
As the net of objects interacting.

Copernicus’ revolution’s complete;
External entities aren’t required
To hold the universe; God’s not needed,
Nor any background; there is no Outside.

Nor is there the ‘now’ all over the place.
GR’s relational nature extends
To Time as well—the ‘flow’ of time is not
An ultimate aspect of reality.

All is Relational: no entity
Exists independently of anything;
There are no intrinsic properties,
Just features in relation to what’s else.

Interactions and events (not things) are
Quantum entangled with such others else;
Impermanence pertains all the way through—
What Nagarjuna means by Emptiness.

There are no fundamental substances,
No permanences, no bird’s-eye view
Of All, no Foundation to Everything,
Plus no infinite regress ne’er completed.

(The fields are not from anything—causeless!
Or ‘not from anything’ is of lawless
‘Nothing’, which can’t ever form to remain.
There is no reason, then, to existence.)

Hope’s Necessary ‘God’ vanishes!
This realization of Impermanence,
No Absolutes, and Emptiness,
Is Nirvana, though coincidently.

So, then, to continue, given that we build things 'out there' via our representations 'in here', using material that's 'out there', and the devices work 'out there' and remain 'out there, such as a computer, as known 'in here', the noumena work quite well.

I'd like to read a physicalist response. — Tom Storm

That we have senses indicates that they take something in, called noumena, and then makes it way through the brain and on into the phenomena of consciousness, and since we can navigate the world we know that we have a useful representation.

From the article:

To bring the point home, consider that in certain intense states of absorption – during meditation, dance or highly skilled performances – the subject-object structure can drop away, and we are left with a sense of sheer felt presence. How is such phenomenal presence possible in a physical world? Science is silent on this question.

However,
In meditation, the resulting quietus
Of the brain’s self-boundary & ID center
Via focus on mantras, hymns, or prayers
Is but a neurological effect, nothing more,
Thus one does not become one with the Cosmos.

(Tested via electrodes in Buddhist monk meditators)

Coding…



(One of the objectives)

The Programmer sets the if-then switches,
Like eight-way 3D Rubic Cube intercepts,
After having set the quarks and leptons,
And coding stars to generate atoms.

Then more precise tweaks, to dark energy,
To umpteen decimal places so rare,
And the forming of the DNA code
To blend life’s ingredients, stirring slow.

Darn, the n-body problem is so tough,
For unforeseen side-effects e’er arise,
Among branches of the would-be life-tree,
A zillion variables overlapping.

This was all still in a simulation
To test out the the coming universe.
Fixes were needed.

The Programmer sat up at his terminal,
Brought up his 1,000,000,000 line program,
And opened the patient for surgery,
Working swiftly from a red inked printout
Marked up during a long coffee hour.

He clamped off the bleeding capillaries,
Redid most of their interfaces,
And bloodlessly sealed them shut again,
Although these were only preparatory
And minor repairs in auxiliary areas.

Next, the main arteries had to be incised,
And therefore it was no longer possible
To open and unblock the incursions in sequence,
Since indirect ramifications and side concerns
Concerns quickly arose and wildly flared,
As fleeting thoughts, for one thing led to another,

Thereby requiring immediate attendance,
Lest, they, in the formless impressionism
Of the art of computer programming,
Fade to vague remembrance, and reappear later,
Always at an inopportune time, as defects known as bugs.

The phone rang while he was juggling
These evaporating images and so he had to ignore it;
But, no matter, for PhoneMail would record the call.

Twenty minutes later,
He had sutured the incisions and readied
A compile and regression test which would
Either attest to the quality of the operation

Or reveal its fatal errors and necessitate
The revitalization of the patient or, at worst,
Require a complete restoration to
Preoperative health from a backup file.

Then He fed it all into the Big Bang.

t would be nice to be able to ask. — Manuel

Oh, greatest of aliens, tell me what the future holds.

No, for you won’t like it.

I really want to know.

OK; thus this thread can continue about what we can and can't know.

In the Near Future, via the Great Quantum Computer projecting, he saw that:

The Lake Tahoe area is mostly saved from the fires, but its ski chairlifts get charred.

Afghanistan becomes a safe haven for terrorists to operate from and the Taliban go back to their old torturous ways, strictly enforcing the Will of Allah.

What remained of Haiti from earthquakes was destroyed by a category 5 hurricane. They had but a few trees and none afterward, and so again the island suffered severe erosion. The hurricane kept right on going and ground Cuba into the ground.

…

The Hoover Dam in the western U.S. held back nothing, its lake having gone dry. People suggested building a water pipeline to the west from the east, for the east had plenty of water from all the remnants of hurricanes that used up all the names from three alphabets in one year. Congress bickered over it and then killed it.

Trump got reelected and still said that global warming was a hoax and defunded science. Evangelicals danced in the streets.

The Covid Zeta variant virus had evolved to be able to remain alive for 400 feet and so this became the main concern for a while, drawing resources and attention away from the planet’s heat crisis until all the unvaccinated had died. Booster shots were needed for the rest.

Meanwhile, the ice caps had melted and were gone. Greenland became truly green, whose name was but an advertising ploy after not so many had moved to Iceland, but then caught on fire and turned a charcoal color. Iceland had no more ice, and so was renamed ‘No-ice-land’.

Much of the world had been ablaze for years now, and recently, a high cyclone, one of so many, had killed 150,000 people in Myanmar, and earthquakes had done in many more in China and elsewhere, as well as did a record number of tornados that had continued to sweep across many countries.

Temperatures often hit 130F degrees.

A tsunami sprung from the Atlantic and washed over Florida, coast to coast. Another one came forth in the Pacific, from the deep Marianas trench, sinking Baja. Mexico City disappeared into a sinkhole. Quebec Province was severed from Canada by quakes, and floated back towards France, where they had always wanted to be. Africa sunk two feet in an hour. The Indian ocean washed out Sri Lanka and entered the Indian subcontinent.

Siberia sunk into a mush of methane gas, increasing the warming even more. Sicily got the boot from Italy. Alaska gushed oil all over the place. Gibraltar fell and sunk and closed off the Mediterranean Sea.

All were aghast to see the LAX airport fracture, and slide into the ocean. The Amazon Jungle flooded, what was left of it after all the trees had been cut for lumber. Mauna Kea erupted and buried Hilo, Hawaii. Krakatoa came back to life. Sumatra went under. Finally, the San Andreas fault could take it no more and moved 1200 feet. What was left of California had become a small island. New Orleans was washed away like silt from a river. What was left of Mexico moved into Texas, where it used to be. Notre Dame Cathedral in France crumbled away into dust. The Eiffel Tower (Le Tour-i-fell), lived up to its name and tipped over.

Trump declared martial law and gave himself another term in office. The Arizona county recount from 2021 was still going on.

Russia shook and shook, destroying their nuclear reactors. Japan went under. In the Philippines, only the mountains broke the sea. Australia just about cracked in half. Antarctica sunk ten feet and out of sight. The pyramids crumbled, exposing the rulers of old. The Panama canal closed. Vatican City was no more. Rome was waterlogged. Venice was long gone.

It was all the beginning of the mother of all near extinctions, one that might erase 99.99% of all life. A 50 mile section of the Alps disappeared from an earthquake, looking as if it were never there; you could see right through the gap. When all of Florida easily went under, being that it was already at sea level, the world had really woken up to the end of days, but it was much too late. Every very coastal city in the world had been inundated, for water always finds its way in. Northern Canada, along with its eastern and western sections, was no more, as part of the Great Lake of the North; only the now more temperate interior remained dry, it filling up with more and more people and tropical birds by the day.

A small portion of Siberia was quite usable, too, for a while, only being at 100F degrees, and an ‘iffy’ part of Argentina was OK. Alaska was gone to its mountains, as were Central and Latin America, and most of Mexico. There were no more islands but for if they had high mountains, of course.

The heat in the world had become totally unbearable, the temperatures now reaching 140 degrees F sometimes; crops would no longer grow. A new but rare and expensive form of food pill extended life for some of the rich. Most people really had no place to go. The pace of the disaster was startling, exceeding even the grimmest of predictions by scientists.

Australia’s population, being mostly coastal, had retreated somewhat to the thin edge between its useless interior and the deep blue sea. The Great Inland Sea reappeared, then evaporated, and then returned. Meteorology had become a fruitless science; summer was now year-round everywhere.

The Great Lakes were enlarging, even with their locks having been closed, for the water runneth over. Resistance was futile, for water was slippery stuff, its tiny hydrogen atoms easily rolling around the oxygen.

Various schemes and solutions had been endlessly debated, most of them being as tough on mankind as the heat, the rest of them unattainable. It was all happening much too quickly. The estimates had been way off. Nature was now a dragon and she had roared, and was spewing her fiery breath upon her own fragile planet.

Some ever had tried to live in their basements, but the heat still found them; some dug underground, but the floods came.

Eskimos bought refrigerators and air-conditioners.

Many near extinctions had happened before, one being only 174,000 years ago, when, at Toba, in northern Sumatra, a supervolcano erupted during an ice age. Six years of volcanic winter followed this eruption, bringing pre-humans to the very edge of elimination.

There were but a few thousand of them left around, since very little light could reach the dusty ground. It took twenty thousand years for them to recompose from the caldron of fire that had almost brewed humanity away. It was from this handful of hardy souls that we modern humans arose.

Due to the intense global warming and ice melting that reached a runaway exponential point, such as in calculus, the weather patterns had been greatly altered, and were bringing numerous and severe storms every day all over the globe, causing much interior flooding, plus wiping out most of the better crops that still had a chance to grow. Roads and tires had melted. The rate of destruction was becoming astronomical. No one could keep up with it; it was everyone for themselves.

Charon had started using a fleet of huge ocean liners to ferry the damned dead across the River Styx.

Billions had perished in a matter of a few years more, and there was little government infrastructure working anywhere. Humans were hardly a match for nature gone wild. It could and would only get worse unto the sure end.

Trump still said that the 2020 election was flawed.

…

Death seemed to be a way of life throughout history. That we were even here was due to the dinosaurs and 90% of all the species being wiped out. A small and nervous shrew-like creature looked out and ‘noted’: the dinosaurs, the forever Kings of the Earth, were gone. “Hurray, no I can evolve.” The shrews attached to a favorable evolutionary line. Every single one of our forbears on both sides had survived, they being attractive enough to locate a loving mate, with whom their love to celebrate.

It no longer mattered that humans were on a one way trip from the quantum fluke, that maximal disorder within old Planck’s nook… to the escalation caused by the Dark Energy, the Universe heading toward the oblivion of its sparse and accelerated expansion, all that we ever loved and knew going to extinction; for, our world was ending now, or at least it was the beginning of the end, for the temperatures were still increasing daily.

Al Gore had been the last one into the Washington bunkers, having steadfastly worked up to the end. Greta Thunberg went in with him.

Some of the remaining nations of the world noted that they had indeed squandered the good things of life, squabbling over their differences in culture. Many had all been looking for truth in the wrong direction, which was back into the past of myth instead of to and for the future. They had fiddled, and now the world was burning.

The Ninja Empire Grandmasters and their teams flew into Niihau on their last tanks of gas, there to take sanctuary and a vote for a desperate but uncertain plan. The landing strip now had a slight but tricky slope to it.

Mountainous Niihau was somewhat unaffected, as were other of the higher island regions, although they were few and far between, for which the trade winds still brought some moderation; yet, the subtropical and near tropical areas were now all very much overly tropical.

On Niihau, Jack, a young master, had to walk the last mile on the new beach that had formed inland. The world’s roulette wheel was rolling double zero on what might soon be the last survivable day on Earth, and a hurricane was headed in his direction. Tsunamis had washed deeper and deeper inland everywhere; most of the internet no longer functioned.

The top dragon, Old Rascal, as the new #1 West, awaited them all. A rainbow appeared as the spirit of the previous GrandMaster West, flying through, past them, as the scent on the breeze and as the vision of the courage to act.

The votes had been counted. Grandmaster Rascal had now engaged one of the last working underground silos. Grandmaster Trish, #1 East, keyed in the codes and nodded to him, saying “Would you like to do the honors?”

“Yes, for unto me falls life’s last duty. Nature will now have to contend with herself. It will be fire versus ice, dragon against dragon, just as shown by the picture on the great China wall; however, this could well be the end for all of us.”

“Or not, if it works,” she answered.

“Hopefully, global warming will be defeated by the worldwide dust in the atmosphere, stopping it. The years will tell; it is our only hope. Ashes will fall everywhere like snow, and then real snow will fall.”

Rascal pressed the button: Nuclear missiles were being fired deep into the heart of the Yellowstone caldera. At least seven surrounding states and two Canadian provinces would be obliterated; yet, winter would come, probably bringing its own array of problems to contend with, but, then, after that, could spring be far behind?

On the 'lucky' fine-tuning and also the possible 'multiverse'…

THE MEADOWS OF HEAVEN

We of the highest consciousness ever known
And the most versatile form that’s been grown
Reside as consequent beings in this Earthly realm,
Possibly the most fortuitous creatures
That the universe has ever wrought.

Indeed,
We are this universe come to life—
Necessarily from a long line
Of ‘fortunate accidents’.

It had to be this way, for any universe
In which we could emerge
Would have to be appropriate for us
Or we wouldn’t be here to discuss it.

Looking back,
We already know ahead of time
That we will discover
The many ‘happenings’
That made us possible.

All this we know and expect
Because we are here.

Perhaps in some other ‘wheres’,
Junkyard universes litter the omniscape,
For they flunked, failed, and miscarried—
A quadrillion trillion universes broken down
For every one that worked to any extent at all.

In some of these forlorn universes,
Perhaps the material was inert
And so it just sat there, doing nothing, forever.

In others, maybe gravity was insufficient
Or had no natural place to collect particles
And so they thinned out endlessly,
Spreading coldly toward infinity.

In yet others again,
Even those in the same ballpark as ours,
Perhaps the portions weren’t quite right.
Although they may have formed a few elements,
They went no further than that for a zillion years.

It could also be that all the possibilities-probabilities
That are of so many imbalances must ever trace back
To the Perfect Imbalance of matter and antimatter,
This no longer seen as improbable.

In our universe, the dark chest of wonders
Of Possibility and Probability opened up
In just the just right way:

Naked quarks spewed forth,
Among other things,
And boiled and brewed
In one of the steamiest broths
Ever cooked up.

They somehow simmered and combined
Into the ordinary matter
Of protons and neutrons.

Then quite independently,
By some unknown means,
Dark matter-energy arose as well,
In just the right mix, and, luckily, too,
Some very long filaments,
Called cosmic strings,

Formed and survived long enough
To be useful as collection agents,
Which were merely imperfections,
As in an unevenly freezing pond—
A kind of a cooling flaw.

None of these happenings were connected,
Except by Potential’s destiny,
So, ‘fortunately’,
The cosmic strings attracted,
By their gravity,
Both dark and ordinary matter,
Which in turn
Attracted even more of the same.

These pearls of embryonic galaxies arose
And were strung along these cosmic necklaces,
As can still be noted today.

So it was
That some almost incidental irregularities,
Frozen out as cosmic anchors,
Were latched onto by matter, both light and dark,
The proportionate portions of which were favorable,
The dark matter dwarfing our ordinary matter
For some reason of a happy ‘circumstance’.

‘Fortuitously’, as well,
Anti-matter, if there ever was any,
Did not fully cancel out the uncle-matter.

The universe could not foresee any of this
In and of itself’s fundamental substance(s),
For if it could have
Then we’d only have the larger problem
Of how the foreseer could have been foreseen,
Ad infinitum…

So it could have been like the ‘trying out’
Of all possibilities in superposition…
A brute force happening
Of every path gone down.

We know much of the rest of the story
Of how the stars and their supernovae
Created the light and heavy elements,
Which combined into molecules,
Which ‘auspiciously’
Became able to replicate themselves, as DNA,
And progress to make cells, tissues, and life.

And then there was the luck of oxygen,
A mere waste product of photosynthesis
By bacteria, and later, plants,
That could fill the lungs
As well as build an ozone layer of protection
From the harmful rays of outer space.

Luck on top of luck, good fortune,
And then prosperity…
‘Stumbled along’ the right path.

Of course all this took many billions of years—
And it is of course this long ‘yardstick’
That baffles the mind and sticks in the throat,
But demonstrates the long time lag needed
To produce even the tiniest of advances.

It bears some of the hallmarks
Of ‘randomness’ at work,
Although quite probable
If Potential had it all ‘worked out’.

Dinosaurs roamed the Earth
For over two hundred million years—
Imagine the length of that time.

They were supreme and invincible—
The kings of all the Earth ‘forever’,
On land, sea, and even in the air—
Heading towards forevermore and beyond,

But…
Dame Fortune once again intervened
When the asteroids or some such catastrophe
Finished off the dinosaurs,
As well as 90% of the existing species.

This ‘random’ event left a vacuum
In which newer species could thrive.

Proto-man gave way to near-man
And thence to us, eventually,
When two ‘monkey’ chromosomes fused together,
Making ‘us’ incompatible with the chimps
And so our ancestors then
Truly descended from the trees!

‘You’ were once a lucky shrew, darting all about,
But then attached to a favorable evolutionary line…
Every single one of your forbears on both sides
Being attractive enough to locate a loving mate,
And they fortunately had the good health to celebrate!

We came to need no specialized niches,
Since we could adapt to any terrain,
Having brains that could learn much more
After birth than instinct could bestow before.

Our higher consciousness
Was the crowning glory—
We had won the human race—
The be all and end all; the grand prize
Of the universal lottery.

So there is nothing more,
Aside from our own progress
To be and learn.

This is it!
That’s all there is.

DNA remembers every step of our evolution—
And you can see this in ‘fast’ motion
When embryos form simply in the liquid womb,
Replicate, and then grow cells
That diversify into a human being
After going through some nonhuman stages.

The human embryo actually forms
Three different types of kidneys,
One after the other,
The first two discarded
(Resembling those of jawless fish
And reptiles, respectively)
Before our final kidney appears.

There is also a fetal coat of hair
That then greatly diminishes.

Thus four billion years compresses into
The nine months of pregnancy.

So then hail and good fortune,
Fine fellows and ladies,
And welcome all of you
To the Meadows of Heaven—
The highest point of all being,
Although we are surely
Still in our infancy.

The path “chosen” by Potential ends here,
With our consciousness.

There were many pockets of universes,
And it is was this very one
That could sing our verses.

The further design
And the role of mankind
Is now in our hands.

We were borne here upon the shoulders
Of so many who have long since come and gone,
All of them advancing the cause,
Over eons of wiles—so here we are.

Fare thee always well, fine friends,
For we are some of
The luckiest sons and daughters of being
In a rare medium well done.

Celebrate; live; be,
For everyone dies,
But not everyone lives.