Many of us seek to know what we have waiting for us upon death. But do any of us consider, logically or scientifically, how we might define life and death?
The Expanding Universe
In “How Long? How Far?” we began to wonder about the different ways we see space and time, and how those aspects of the observable universe come into being.
If the observable universe was in the thin expanding rubber surface of a balloon (as opposed to the boundary of our two-dimensional expanding droplet) then as the distance from its center increases, the distance between it’s galaxies would increase.
The radius or distance from the center, as in our droplet experiment, might represent time (complexity or entropic state) and the surface area of the balloon might represent space. What we discover as duration increases (air is blown into the balloon) the ability for the galaxies to interact with one another decreases. Energy density between galaxies decreases, so in order to maintain more complex systems (which require greater durations of sampling to survive) new languages using lower forms of energy must evolve.
An example of new languages among primitive information exchanges might be the difference in energy density between the language transfer of physical chemistry (subatomic particles), chemistry (molecular bonding), and organic chemistry (the much smaller van de Waal forces (energy/information exchanges) between macromolecules).
This brings up the problem of virtual verses real. Is our universe virtual or real? When a new language is born of a lower potential for information transfer in the observable universe, are the virtual symbolism and the original manifested components (what we call the real) connected?
Are our thoughts connected to what we consider real? Is the word “Love” connected to the feeling?
This wonderment leads to the comparison of the ideas of “virtual” with “real” and then the pursuit of any connection between the two.
Forcing Right Behavior
Whether it be in church or the political arena, when we are told to work hard to accomplish any good act, we are relying too much on the surface lie, that our ideas are perfect truth and if we but worked hard to attain utopic ideals, our problems would be solved.
One of the topics I’ll discuss on this subject is that the world of “if” does not exist. “If” is an idea within the realm of “What Is” and because it is only one aspect or POV floating on a sea of the implicit, it must involve error. But because of Uncertainty, we cannot fathom such error. (However, the more diverse our POVs the closer we can get to an “if” world that may work).
Part of forcing right behavior in government is forced sharing, whether it be communism, socialism, or democracy. Sharing is good, but if we are not centered in a balanced mental state where unconditional sharing is a possibility, then our hard work is apt to backfire on us. These ideal forms of government require a mature and centered individual, who realizes that they need not travel to arrive. They only need to change their perspective, a nearly instantaneous event (when posted – see DOUBLE-SLIT EXPERIMENT).
As Krishnamurti says, we must realize that the end does not justify the means, it works from beginning to end.
In church, we do not have to struggle to attain the Ten Commandments no matter how righteous they sound. The mature human collapses the commandments down into two: “I am the lord they god, thou shalt have no other gods before me” and “love thy neighbor as thyself.”
But really, if we find ourselves centered, our ideals will become realities with no effort at all (when posted – see FAITH).
Why? Because our mental balance is an equilibrium between the scientific, the “What Is,” the explicit, with the spiritual, the “What Is Behind What Is,” the implicit.
Continually forcing outcome, we are lost.
Diversification is the Key: No Perspective or POV Is Trivial
There may be a danger in relying too much on science. For example, recording, collapsing too much on video may cause the “What Is” world, or the world of the explicit POV to dominate the effects of the implicit, “What Is Behind What Is” world, or the implied world (i.e. what works).
If individuals, as they grow and mature, limit their POVs, they end up limiting the diversity of ways of surviving until they are backed into a corner with only one or two options: off me or off them. This is the progressive vilification that leads to terrorism.
Vilification: Accepting Contrary POVs
Where does “evil”come from? How do we define it?
Is our POV the right one? What do we mean by right one?
How can we tell?
Vilification starts with the tiniest of steps and it is a natural process growing out of our unswerving beliefs in our own ideas, ideas that may not work because they only represent a part of the whole truth about the universe, the part-truth or “What Is.”
According to Krishnamurti’s way of thinking there is “What Is” or how we define or explain or generalize about what we sample out there and in here. And there is all that unexplained, undefined stuff lying just below the surface ( the implicit: “What Is Behind What Is”) What David Bohm calls The Implicit Order.
Because our POVs are limited to “What Is” or only part of the truth, we will never know if our speculations or predictions are the truth about the way things work unless we can agree to define what we mean by “something works.”
When and for how long will it work in time? Where and how far will it work in space?
Because our POVs, speculations, thoughts, and ideas are always part of the “What Is” and because of Uncertainty (the limitation of a single POV), we can never know the whole truth. We can never predict with 100% accuracy what will work.
How long? How far?
One of the mysteries I’m trying to answer for myself is about the difference in measuring space and time.
Leading from my experiment on how an expanding droplet “learns to see” space and time, I will attempt to connect the concept to our own experiences of space and time.
For primitive boundaries how long in duration something lasts (the number of samples between actually sampling the target configuration (primitive sequential recognition) feeds into the “growth” of time.
The radius and circumference of boundary expansion is synonymous with the likelihood of sampling a configuration or statistical distribution.
Who Are We?
Where did we come from?
How did we form?
And what will become of us?
Strange that a little droplet of water expanding into sluggish oil should give us some insights into ourselves, into our birth, life, and death. Here goes:
Before our droplet can change shape, before information can cross its boundary and endure as a change in that boundary, there must be a 100% probable Here and Now for it to sample. But, for man or droplet, such does not exist at this early stage. Nothing makes sense–there is no recognizable sequence in the samples.
We’re starting with one puzzle piece of information, and nothing we’re sampling connects up to it. That’s what making sense (also making space and time) looks like. Our system must first sample possible locations to create the sequence of locations we call space. Our system must sample sequences of logical next steps to create its own time. It must sample its environment at regular intervals in order to become aware of its own duration. (The natural vibrational frequencies of tuning forks are good examples of a regular sampling rate at a boundary.)
The only boundary configuration that works for longterm thought and memory is complex. One might think of it as the product of the natural selection of creating duration in space and time. At first our droplet’s boundary is too curved to interact, then it becomes so flat that random perturbations from its environment can change it, but the changes will not endure. Only when boundary shapes change for good can sequences in space and time form. The experiment ends when again the boundary becomes so curved no new information can be acquired and the droplet can no longer respond to its environment. We would no longer be aware of our existence.
Next, we’ll explore how similar is the birth, life, and death of the human brain and how, as a complex system, its end might differ from the droplet’s.
Focusing, Imaging, and Configuration
When starting from the human side, the spiritual side, the side of the mind in working our logic—when we talk about life, death, and what may, or may have existed before life and after death—we must consider the three words that are title to this piece.
From the scientific language, the philosophy growing from our fluid experiment, we are brought to the realization that Krishnamurti’s “What Is,” the virtual reality of our minds, is where we exist and that we become aware of reality from birth by representing our boundary, our difference, our change, our sampling of “What Is Behind What Is” and then generalize that information into the fleshed-in, virtual world of our minds, the multifaceted world we call “What Is.”
We say that the boundary we represent seems to condense or collapse out of “What Is Behind What Is,” each time we reach out to sample it.
The question important to me is not “Do we exist after death?” nor is it “Are we aware of our existence?” but “What happens to the configuration, the boundary, that was uniquely us, after we die?”
The conclusions we hope to come to will be that no matter how improbable, all perspectives exist, just not always here and just not always now. They live on, perhaps until the time two or more such perspectives can collapse across a boundary to create the essence of an existence, an existence in the here and now. The awareness of awareness (How we become watchers instead of simply responders).
But what is the nature of perspectives as they statistically and momentarily bump into and separate from one another? What causes them to hook up in the first place? (For those possible answers, see menu items “Sampling and Statistics” and “Space and Time.”)
So, our main question might be “If we cannot know the nature of What Is Behind What Is—how it operates in the arenas of the before and after lives—how can we possibly predict the chances of a before life or after life based on this life? (the one we’re in the process of constantly sampling in the here and now)
As an analog our expanding-droplet experiment can tell us what is possible to describe using our mathematical language (solutions to the general energy equation) that illuminates both the change in energy across a boundary and the experience of that change, The Flow.
Here and Now: 100% Probable
To discover how experimentalists, as observers, generalize anything about their worlds, visit the Sampling and Statistics topic under the MENU on the RHS of this HOME page.
Basically, all anyone can sample is what is Here and what is Now. That seems obvious, but is it? When we reach out in any number of ways to sample our universe, what if nothing is there? Is there nothing because there really is nothing to be sampled? Or, is there nothing only because it is not right here, but somewhere else. It is not here because, it exists, but not now, not at the moment we tried to sample it.
We all know when we interact with anything that it exists. But does it exist if we attempt to sample it, as it eludes us?
If every time we sample something, we find it, then we say it is 100% probable. What we don’t always say is: it’s 100% probable here and now.
But what happens when it isn’t here and now? What are its chances, or its likelihood of existing then?
Many times we categorize such improbable events as nonexistent or figments of the imagination, especially in scientific inquiry where they need to be reproducible–able to be sampled over and over again. For how long?
High Curvature “Relationship”
A high curvature relationship occurs at the beginning and the end of our two-fluid experiment.
A tiny bubble has such a high curvature/small radius that it is difficult for random vibrations to deform it.
As the water-based fluid flows into the oil-based fluid, into the crests (fingers) of the unstable waves at the boundary, their tip radii get very small and their curvature very large, thus damping out vibrations there.
In both cases (beginning and end), the curvature at the boundary of the two-fluid system is so large that the boundary cannot be made to deform. In this case, there exists no relationship across the boundary. Therefore, no recognizable existence there.
The Union of Opposites 