How can Destiny and Free Will co-exist?

Ultimately, I don't believe in "Free Will".

We do have one choice, however. We can acknowledge nonduality (the idea that all is one-with-God, that the universe is but a multi-faceted expression of God's love, and that God is ultimately in charge. This is also known as "surrender" to God's will.), or we can embrace duality (the notion that we are all separate entities, and that God somehow created something "outside" of Himself: i.e. us & the universe. OR, you can just deny that God exists--this is also duality.). Our lives & our destiny are determined by this one choice.

We are put on a path based on that decision. Ultimately all paths lead to God-realization. How we get there is determined by our initial choice. However, if you think about it, even that decision is influenced by God's grace. So, if we believe in non-duality, we must also acknowledge that even that decision is not up to us.

Conclusion: "Free Will" is an illusion. The only reality is God.

So, hang on to your hats folks. It's going to be a hell of a ride.

(P.S. I don't believe in "Hell" either).

Side Note: This will really twist your noodle... If everything is One-with-God, that means nothing exists outside of God, so in fact, everything we encounter is but a manifestation of God. So that hot babe (or stud) you're fucking is really God. Depending on your perspective, this is a real turn-off, or really hot. The basis of Tantric Sex.... Try it, you'll like it.


Good luck with your paper.

Okay now you want me to explain 100 years of quantum physics in one post?! LOL. Seriously though... I'd like to answer you as completely and accurately as possible which means I'm going to refer back to notes I took and some of the books I read. I've got baseball all weekend here so I won't be able to do this til Monday. Hopefully I'll be able to find the post by then!

But just as a precursor, the areas that generally came to mind are:

Feynman's every possible path hypothesis with the double slit experiment

The overwhelming experimental evidence showing how you could not follow individual photons or electrons in said experiment because your very awareness of them changed their path to meet your expectation, and

The entire workings of non-locality (especially as it relates to String Theory) and how the most plausible explanation for it centers around all things actually being one (Strings thus being the "DNA of the Universe" carrying the information for the whole in each of it's tiniest parts.)

May I pose this to you... If God is all there is... INFINITY, how can there be anything but an infinite number of options to choose from and express yourself as? Free Will is an illusion only in that you can never really be anything less than All That Is... but so long as you choose to know yourself as less than All That Is and see the individual parts, Free Will is all there is because the parts stretch on for infinity.

This of course begs the question, if I am really God/All That Is, why am I here thinking I'm just a human. My answer is always the very sophomoric analogy that is if your very saliva was the taste of say chocolate, you could not know the pleasure of eating chocolate since that taste was ever present. You must first remove from your experience something before you can recognize it in the first place. Therefore is INFINITY wanted to experience itself, it must create individual consciousnesses that don't remember their own infinity, thus allowing those parts to return to the whole and remember their wholeness exeperientially... To taste the analagous chocolate.

If, as all the major religions assert, God is indeed omnipresent, there cannot, by definition, be any place in which He does not exist. Therefore any place, thing, thought, or state of being that appears to exclude or be separate from Him, must necessarily be illusory. The reality is that God IS there: that He IS the sum and substance of all we encounter, all we experience, all that we think and feel, all that we are.

So, the answer can only be that our "separateness" is also an illusion, created for the very reason you stated. When we chose to eat from the "Tree of Knowledge", the choice was really to experience duality in order to gain "knowledge". One can only gain knowledge through experience of duality. When one exists in a state of perfection, it is difficult to truly understand the concept of imperfection. One needs darkness to fully appreciate and understand light, heat to understand cold... ad infinitum. Therefore, the illusion of separateness, "duality" was created for us to gain knowledge/wisdom. When we acquire "wisdom" the illusion/ignorance will dissapear.

How does the sum over paths formulation of quantum mechanics imply that consciousness creates reality"? Are you saying that the particle experiences consciousness because the Universe works in such a way that action is minimized for the trajectory of a particle OR are you saying the human consciousness somehow causes particles to act in this way?

More interestingly (for me anyway), who are the teachers you refer to below and and what specifically did they teach?

"Quantifying and proving the very old and simple teachings which simply say that consciousness creates reality."

Emystic: BOOYAH! How's that for a deep intellectual response?

Colin: What religions DON'T teach you that God is infinite? It's fewer teachings that specifically say consciousness creates reality but only someone not following the idea that God is infinite not through to its logical end would not see this. Let me try to explain...

If God is infinite... there is NOTHING that is not God. If this is true, our very consciousness is indeed God and seperateness, as stated before, is illusory. Therefore that tree over there IS you, your life events ARE you and yet YOU are so much more. Everything being part of the same infinity is thus created by that infinity (it can't be any other way) and therefore you are creating reality.

It's hard to put my thoughts on this into words but I would invite you to take a look at the book, Seth Speaks (I linked it in a previous post) and try some of the things mentioned in there. All I can say is that for my own experience, once I started recognizing that my beliefs and thoughts (my consciousness) create my reality... I started to actively try to create different things and it's worked very well for me. As I looked at things in my life I liked or didn't like I was also able to trace back the beliefs and thoughts that created the situation and begin to change or embrace it if it was something I enjoy.

So anyway... not to leave you last point dangling... the Infinite Paths theory lent itself to the idea that all is one and God is indeed infinite... seeing as INFINITE paths means it includes all paths that are a subset of who you are... and following the same logic that brought me from infinity to creation of reality... that's how I saw that.

Might I add that all these beliefs are predicated on the belief that God is infinite or rather there is an infinite All That Is. If I'm wrong about that... then all this is just nice prose.

Mark,

What's your opinion on Pascal's "proof" for the existence of God aka "Pascal's Wager"?

You got me on that one PimpLink... I am not familiar with that text/theory at all. ANy good link you'd recommend?

I'm off for a bit to see the Series. Catch ya'll back later.

Let me start by stating that I adamantly defend the right of every human being to practice and believe in whatever religion they choose. I am not attempting to start a religious debate with my thoughts here, merely to offer a slightly different perspective.

You are assuming that there is a god and that everything stems from and leads back to this god. It's a wonderful theory, but one that I personally do not subscribe to.

God-based religion is a human creation; it was not born along with the universe. I believe that humans have always pondered the unanswerable, and an all-encompassing god figure was a conventient way to tie it all together quite neatly. (It also served the dual purpose of being a wonderful tool with which to control large groups of people and their thought processes, but that's another thread for another time.) Recent discoveries, such as that of atomic particles, have begun to shed light on those unanswerables and, in my view, have served to prove that the single-being theory is way off base.

Prior to the development of god-based religions was what we now refer to as "witchcraft". I won't go into a lengthy discussion or explanation of that belief system here, save to say I practice it myself and am much more comfortable with these beliefs than I am with the idea that I am "controlled" by a god-figure or some arbitrary "book of life".

I have a very scientific background, having studied engineering as an undergraduate. Shocking as this may sound, I don't subscribe to physics as the absolute answer to life's mysteries either. I admire Stephen Hawking and those like him, but my concern lies with the idea that they could be wrong. Everytime I hear a theory about the universe, for instance, I pause to ponder the "what ifs". What if just one of the foundational theories or laws is flawed? Then everything we "know" to be "the truth" is useless because it it based on flawed thinking or an ages-old incorrect calculation. It doesn't keep me up nights (much), but it also keeps me from accepting any theory or conjecture based on the laws of physics.

To answer the original question this thread posed, I believe that free will alone dictates our destiny and that each of us has absolute control over our lives, our personal environment, and our future. Granted, free will may be a product of neurons firing, etc., but that physiology does not dictate what the outcome will be. An individual's thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and past experiences may have some degree of influence, but I firmly believe that nothing is set in stone and that we are each free to make our own decisions, thus creating our own destiny. Each of us absorbs the information we choose to absorb via selective filtering and, in some cases, research and this, in turn, starts the free-will ball rolling.

Just my humble Great thread!

Doesnt destiny apply to whales?

Personally I am just using the term, "God" because it is common. I actually don't personify any greater being in my own beliefs and just see it more as the All That Is. Even those words do no justice...

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao
The name that cane be named is not the eternal name


And all that... =]

Here's the link:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

Okay, but how do you avoid the determinism of your brain operating as a system governed by physical laws?

Well, if we can't perceive the universe the way it really is, then the situation is much worse: we are blind in addition to being bound by universal physical laws.

Something's not a real "discovery" unless you also understand its import.

For example, even if the Vikings reached the new world first, as far as they were concerned they just bumped into some unoccupied land (or if there were occupants, they probably killed them!).

Columbus and the European explorers were true discoverers because they were realizing, "Hey, the Earth isn't flat, it's round! Maybe it's even a sphere!"

If you see a lottery ticket on your desk, it's just a fact. If you realize it's a winner worth $10M, THAT is a discovery!

Swell, but where does Free Will fit in there. You've described a bunch of causes which have had the effect of making you think the way you do. With a different set of causes, you'd think differently. You're a deterministic system.

I started to read one of those references and ran into the expression "extended one-dimensional objects" which strikes me as a bit like talking about a round-square.

I taught logic years ago, and one of the peculiar properties of a contradiction is that "with a contradiction, you can prove anything," which is why people who espouse paradoxical views seem to be able to tie everything together with such ease.

People confuse having a choice with being free. The ultimate question is "can you choose what you choose"? But even so, the whole idea of freedom doesn't make sense from the get go, at least when viewed as the opposite of determinism. We live in a physical universe and whatever happens because of the nature of that universe. Where can there be freedom in there (in the sense of people being responsible for their choices)?

Buddhism, at least in its classical original form, has no God, so there is one major religion which does not assert anything about God whatsoever. Who is the God of Zen? There is none. As Buddhism spread outside the sphere of the Brahmins and into the hands of the uneducated, it got translated into terms they understood, incorporating traditional local deities and so on. But at its heart, there is no God in Buddhism. If you're such a student of religion, I thought you'd already know that.

"Omnipresent"? No, not according to the deists, for example. (This, BTW, is the religion of our Founding Fathers in the US. Deism believes, in a nutshell, that God made the Universe then basically gave it to man and went away in order to give man freedom.)

Freedom is a contradictory concept, because on the one hand it can't exist in a deterministic universe, because in such a universe, you can't do anything other than what you do. On the other hand, imagine a universe that had no determinism. No predictability, then, and where is the freedom in a universe where there is no "connect" between your actions and their results?

Mark, that's being excessively liberal in interpreting something that is really quite simple. Richard Feynman himself was an atheist. You can read this in many interviews with him.

As far as the sum over paths formulation of quantum mechanics - it states that you integrate the action over all space to infinity. As you move away from the path the particle takes, the probabily amplitudes will cancel each other out. You know how in quantum mechanics, there is the wave equation? Well, that is why you are concerned with the probability of the particle being in various places but they cancel out as you move away from the path of the particle.

Just because there is an infinity sign in the integral (integrate over all space) does not imply god. Fields in physics extend to infinity. For example, one can say that the gravitational field of the Sun extends to infinity - though it falls off very fast. If you were on the other side of the galaxy, you could ignore the Sun's gravitational field on solar system x and any projections of the motion of a planet, etc. would be perfect without it. You can still work out the math that way though.

What do you mean "it includes all paths that are a subset of who you are"? If I'm interested in using the sum over paths integral in determining the path of an electron and I need to worry about who I might be or become? HuH?

Also, physics takes many shortcuts including many abstractions - and even though we say that the gravitational field of any object extends to infinity - in reality there is the limiting factor of the edge of the expanding Universe. So these formulations are not even precisely true anyway.
The gravity of the Sun does not extend it's influence to outside of the known universe. They are useful and get the "right answers".

Because of quantum mechanics, modern physics is not deterministic - so we don't need to worry about that - at least for now. People have been very interested in the possibility of hidden variables theory. Maybe there is something deterministic behind the appearant randomness of QM? There is Bell's theorem that shows that "no local hidden-variables theory can make predictions in agreement with those of quantum mechanics." Maybe someone will come along more clever than he and mess it all up.

As best as physics offers us to date, we don't need to be concerned with determinism in the classic sense. That is why i say I don't believe in destiny one bit. I'm not sure I completely believe in free will either as random events may impose themselves on the decision making process.

Colin's words on looking at current understanding of QM as being a good argument against determinism, I am in agreement with.

Your expanded explanation of the Feynman principal is good too and gave me pause to think but where I'm not clear is how one can recognize the existance of infinity and yet not then consider it's implication. In my mind it comes down to this:

Infinity by it's very definition leaves nothing excluded.

So if you believe in the existence of inifinity in any sense you must then consdier yourself part of it and thus the idea that there is an All That Is (or what some people like to call God) is upheld.

Either that or there is no infinity.

So although Colin may have pointed out that I streteched too far on my thoughts with Feynman leading to the concept of an infinity... let us address non locality and the recent discoveries of String Theory particularly how it would explain non-locality. We have experimental evidene for non-locality... it's not just a bunch of theoretical hyperbole at this point.

I'm not sure which reference that was. Modern String Theory speaks about the strings being tiny Planck length objects that exist in 10 or potentially 11 dimensions. I'm not mathematically inclined enough to explain how this works but I do know that is where the theory is at.

With all this heady intellectual conversation going on here I want to ask how many of my fellow conversationalists here have ever considered the possibility that there is consciousness beyond their own intellect and have pursued first hand experiences through meditation? We all (especially those of us who love to think) identify our entire being with our minds but perhaps there is more to us than that...

Here is a debate on the same subject but from a theological perspective > http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showt...?threadid=8869

I meditate. I usually do the "loving kindness" meditation [Vipassana method]. And yes, one insight I got through meditation is that since intellect is part of the illusion of "Self"--its reality can be questioned. I haven't reached the experience of actually realizing that the Intellect itself is an illusion [as taught by the Buddha]. One of the interesting steps of Vipassana is the maelstrom of thoughts stage--you become mindful of the differing and conflicting thoughts that swirl in your mind. The challenge has always been to learn to detach and not to judge.

My experiences with meditation are mostly in the last bunch of months. I did alot with simple breating and relaxion or visualization type meditations before but now I've really been trying to expand my consciousness. I've had some interesting experiences but only one I would say was really far out. As with anything outside the mind, putting words on it does it no justice so I won't even try. But it's been a neat beginning of a journey - which I why I posed the question - to see if it was shared by others here. =]

I believe Goedel's Proof already messed it up: Any logical and internally consistent system can be so construed as to generate contradictions is one way of putting it, I believe. And with a contradiction you can prove anything.

a OR b
b AND not-b (the contradiction)
not-b
Therefor a

Note that the argument also allows you to prove not-a:

not-=a OR b
b AND not-b (the contradiction)
not-b
Therefor not-a


This is why contradictions are pernicious logically.

The problem with free will is that it's a self-contradictory concept. In order for will to mean anything, we need determinism. If we have determinism, we can't be free.

Subatomic particles don't salvage anything in terms fo free will.

Besides, it's pretty clear that even though determinism doesn't reign on the subatomic level, Newton's laws (as later amended Einstein and others) still operate very dependably in the macro world.

Well, I'll grant you a consciousness. Does that make you feel better?

I already feel good so I don't think I'm looking for any help there. But thanks for the offer. =]

Mark,

I guess that depends on what your definition of infinity is. I don't know what you mean by
"if you believe in the existence of infinity" because I don't know what your definition of infinity is.

When you say "infinity", I think of a useful mathematical concept. One that allows the posing of such questions as "Sum the following series 1,1/2,1/4,1/8, .... infinity".

I don't see what there is to believe or not to believe in. Maybe you mean something different than I by "infinity"?

It's my belief that everything is infinite, and everlasting.
Each person has a unique energy "soul" that has always been, and always will be.

I believe that when you dream, you are in the same place that you are before you are born, and after you die.

I believe that our "souls" exist on another "realm" of consciousness, and travel at the speed of thought.

I believe in balance, and the absence of a true middle.
The more you focus on a center point... the more you realize that it is not so much a center, as it is an exponentially higher density flux between a 1 or a 0... good or bad... positive or negative... black or white... etc...

I believe that all of our "souls/energies" are linked by our subconscious in sort of a "network" of energy. I think that this would explain "deja vu" to some degree.

I also believe that this "other" realm where we are all linked by our subscious minds is what most people call "God".

Anyhow, that's a few of my beliefs.

I said I don't believe in destiny - I didn't say much about "free will" - only that modern physics is NOT deterministic. The physics of 100 years ago was very deterministic but if you want to believe that, you have to ignore the past 100 years of physics. Based on present knowledge, there is not much basis for believing the old deterministic no-random events model of the Universe.

Subatomic events DO have effects in the macroscopic world. The decay of uranium for example. In quantum mechanics, there is an effect called quantum tunneling. A particle behind a barrier has a very small probability of appearing outside of the barrier. The barrier can be the nucleus of an atom. So a particle inside a nucleus has a probability of appearing on the outside of the nucleus. When this happens, we say that radioactivity is occuring. Radiation does have many macro-world effects. Read the newspapers. Some people really worry about it. ;-)

What quantum effects might alter a decision-making process of a human being, we don't know. We don't know much about how a human makes a decision as far as the physical process. It is probably at least a fair bet though that there is some randomness involved in decision-making.

Voodoo: Everything is infinite? Is the Earth infinite? What do you mean?

Voodoo: Where do the new souls come from? Is there a soul repository somewhere? Any idea how many souls there are in the soul repository? Why does it have to be unique? Can't we share? Where is it exactly? What is it made of? What does it do?

Voodoo: Based on last nights dreams, before I was born I was Superman and used my X-Ray vision to look into teen (18+) girls' bedrooms. When I die, I get to back! :-)


Voodoo Is that faster than the speed of light?

Why exponential? Could you write the equation for that? I have no idea what you mean. An exponentially higher density flux of what? What is flowing between a 1 and a 0 and why is the density exponential?

This is the same as I believe - all the things you have described above form the basis for what is commonly known as "Hinduism"

- and actually .. it's also pretty close to Buddhists beliefs too

Voodoo:

quote:
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It's my belief that everything is infinite, and everlasting.
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Q: Everything is infinite? Is the Earth infinite? What do you mean?

A: Everything meaning each of our "energies/souls". The Earth is finite. At some point in the future it will no longer exist as a planet.

Voodoo:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Each person has a unique energy "soul" that has always been, and always will be.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Q: Where do the new souls come from? Is there a soul repository somewhere? Any idea how many souls there are in the soul repository? Why does it have to be unique? Can't we share? Where is it exactly? What is it made of? What does it do?

A: I don't believe that there are such things as "new" souls. I believe that there are such things as "foreign or alien" souls that come from distant places in "God", that may be new to the "human" form, but, they are not new in "God".

I believe that there is an "uncountable" number of souls in existance. The term "unique" means that there is nothing else "exactly" like it. To have 2 energies that were "exactly" alike, would mean that they occupy the same place at the same time. Which is "physically" impossible.

"It" is the collective subconscious minds of all unique energies. "It" is commonly referred to as "God". But, I don't believe it is a higher "being" as such, more of a higher realm.

Sharing of an energy? What do you mean by that?

"It" is made of the collective energies of all beings in the universe.

Voodoo:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I believe that when you dream, you are in the same place that you are before you are born, and after you die.
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Based on last nights dreams, before I was born I was Superman and used my X-Ray vision to look into teen (18+) girls' bedrooms. When I die, I get to back! :-)

A: Very nice! Yes, in my belief, you could go back there. But, to be a little more specific about my original statement... This "Place" or "God" if you will.... Is merely a "realm", it's not one specific idea, place or thing. It just exists.


Voodoo
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I believe that our "souls" exist on another "realm" of consciousness, and travel at the speed of thought.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Q: Is that faster than the speed of light?
A: Yes (In most cases)

Yes, someone has told me this in the past. I've never studied any religion, these are just concepts/ideas/thoughts that I've come to on my own, through life expierence.

Voodoo,

I've never understood this souls thing. Please tell me more.

Voodoo I like the way you articulate your beliefs. They are very closely aligned withy my Buddhist and Native beliefs.

I agree everything is interconnected:

"Just a a drop of water causes ripples in a pond,
so a thought dropped into the pol of consciousness can cause ever-expanding ripples in the universal human mind."
- Jean Richards

"If you would like to know the effect choices have had on one's life, look at yourself - what you see is the choices you have made." Shad Helmsetter

"We cannot live only for ourselves.
A thousand fibres connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibres, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, as they come back to us as effects." - Herman Melville

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." - John Muir

These complex interconnections are also demonstrated by the scientific concept of entrainment, which explains how similar forms have a collective consciousness, and can act as a single entity.

For instance when people paricipate in choirs and music bands, many of their vital body functions perform at similar rates. This includes their breathing patterns, their heart rates, and even their brain wave patterns.

This connectedness can be sensed by individuals in the group. If you have ever sung in a choir, or played an instrument in a band, you may be familiar with this feeling.

In other examples of entrainment, large flocks of birds, flying in unison, will flick and change direction as one. Women in prisons and college dormitories will often find that their menstrual cycles fall into alignment. Giant schools of fish will swim as one, flicking and turning as if they are a single entity.

Everything is intricately connected to everything else. It is a s though all life on Earth is part of a magical spider's web. When you touch one part, it can set off vibrations in many other parts, thereby causing a ripple effect.

We are all part of the same puzzle. The same piece and a diiferent piece.

We are all expressing the same oneness differently or that is how we perceive it, that it is differnt, it is the same.

"Am I the bulb or the light." - Joseph Campbell
We are both

Not sure how I can pose it any differently. What is infinity by definition? There is NOTHING not included in infinity. I understand you've looked at it as just a mathematical concept but all that math is a representation of things in our reality. If there is a need for a math function known as infinity, there must then therefore exist an infinity or there would be any need to use it in an equation. Someone says "two" and you can see two apples or two cars, etc... Someone says "infinity" and it's just as valid a representation even if you can't put it into a concept you can easily see or have had experience of.

So again I say, IF infinity exists, then by it's very definition, there is NOTHING it is not. And a whole sreies of logical steps about the nature of our reality can be made from there.

Either you read all the same things and got the same messages out of it that I have or we're just divisions of the same oversoul. =] lol.

Infinity requires some sort of reference. It's not anything by itself. For example, there are an infinite number of whole numbers. This does not say anything about number of grains of sand or anything else though. Whether there are an infinite number of whole numbers does not at ALL mean that there is nothing that is not part of the set of whole numbers.

I think you must mean something very different than I do by infinity but I have no idea what.

There is a concept in mathematics called an "infinitesimal" - the idea is that there is a quantity that is infinitely small. It's very useful in calculus. Should we assume something very deep about the Universe since I "believe in infinitesimals"?

Colin, I know you posted these questions to Voodoo, but I'd like to insert my opinion:

Everything is infinite...

I believe the answer there is that here and there... you and me... this and that... are all part of the illusion that there is anything but infinity. For reasons previously posted about (i.e. the weird saliva analogy), an infinite All That Is might create this illusion of relativistic preception in order to know itself experientially.


--
"Where do the new souls come from? Is there a soul repository somewhere? Any idea how many souls there are in the soul repository? Why does it have to be unique? Can't we share? Where is it exactly? What is it made of? What does it do?"

In my view the relativistic existence experienced apart from the All That Is (infinity) is matter of levels of focus. In other words there is the consciousness of infinity which is aware of all the parts as a whole... then the divisions it created each "level" being more focused on finite reality than the last. So a "soul" would be something we are a "level down" from in focus much like a cell in your body is something you are aware of but it is not likely aware of you. You are a gestalt of cells and energy... Souls are a gestalt of existences and so on...

--
"Based on last nights dreams, before I was born I was Superman and used my X-Ray vision to look into teen (18+) girls' bedrooms. When I die, I get to back! :-) "


Cute. =] One of those "hokey" things I took a stab at was the idea that our consciousness expands in our sleep and we become aware of the soul level of energy and are in touch with the "next level up." In doing this little experiment I began to ask for answers to things while I was "away" and I was finding I often got them. Usually they come back down through some pretty strange images. I would imagine this is because, much like the depth and number of things we as humans are aware of would be far beyond the mental vocabulary of a cell, so would the understandings of our souls be so far beyond our human mind focus, that we have to convert the knowledge into symbols that we can make sense of (hopefully).


--
I believe that our "souls" exist on another "realm" of consciousness, and travel at the speed of thought.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is that faster than the speed of light?


Non-locailty. I'm sure you've read of the succesful experiments with it. I've got a friend working on non-local computing up in Denver. It's most cool. =]

I think you feel guilt regarding your belief system for some reason.

Colin, it seems you use the word infinity to just mean a number of particualr things that is so high, you can't count it. You are still supposing there is a beginning and an end to it. That is not infinite.

in·fin·i·ty Pronunciation Key (n-fn-t)
n. pl. in·fin·i·ties
The quality or condition of being infinite.
Unbounded space, time, or quantity.
An indefinitely large number or amount.


That's the best dictionary example I could get. As I've said a few times here, my definition and understanding of the concept is to say that infinity has no beginning or end. There is nothing that is not included in inifinity. Of course feel free to disagree with me... but that's my understanding of the definition so I'm not understanding where the difficulty is is seeinghow I derive my beliefs from that. I think what the difference is here is that you have not tried to define infinity beyond it's mathematical boundries. Not that you are wrong... perhaps I have made a stretch that is incorrect... but I don't feel I have at this point in my evolution. =]

You believe that space-time is unbounded?

Colin, no guilt. I'm just very used to intellectual people staying in the jury of their mind rather than being willing to suspend disblief in an attempt to understand something through experience. Sometimes the answers in this life cannot be had in the mind. I can tell you all you want about the color red but if you haven't seen it, you won't get it. I can tell you all I want about why infinity and our connection to that, but until you have an experience with it, it's just so many words.

Prove to a blind man that red exists...

Prove to a mentalist that infinity exists...

Yet this is the argument of every faith system and leads to many distortions. So we arrive at an impasse in which the only answer is each person has to find their own experiences that lead to their own truth.

Which leads me to my final point before I finally leave this oh so fun thread...

Mark,

I still don't know what you are saying. Are you defining infinity as "everything that exists" or "everything that can exist" or something else?

That's good. I read the same thing almost word for word in books on ESP, the Occult, etc. when I was a child. Why are you leaving the thread? It won't be the same without you. Please stay.