[MD] Reality Lies Outside Linear Time

[Ham Priday]

Hi Khoo --


> Right now I have arrived at the point where I develop
> biofuel projects mainly in South East Asia and this leaves
> me little time for navel gazing and chart out the big picture
> philosophical stuff which I really like to do.

Me too.

> But pertinent to this list, I am not from academia, and my
> forays into philosophy, religion and even "eastern" oriental
> topics were picked up along the way of reading writers at
> the fringe of science and of being immersed in the multicultural
> context of South East Asia having lived here all my life and
> for a brief spell under the nurturing guidance of Buddhist
> monks. So you won't find any great rigidity in my analysis;
> but I like complicated concepts whittled down to simple
> plain talk every one can understand. ...
>
> "Insight" is not the product of great intellect or thought;
> nor a great deal of effort and work on a certain subject.
> *I believe its what comes naturally when you let go or
> find yourself prepared to let go your conditioned reflexes,
> the stimulation of the **anterior superior temporal gurus
> notwithstanding.*

That's the part of your reply that interests me most.  To borrow from 
Pirsig's phrase, reading writers on the fringe of science, while being 
immersed in worldly activities, is precisely how one accesses "the cutting 
edge of reality".  Such people aren't stymied by "rigid analysis" but are 
able to share their thoughts in plain, understandable language.  I'm not an 
academic, either, so I can relate to fresh new insights from other 
free-thinkers who are not constrained by elitist rules.

> One of the big problems about 'insight' is its communication to
> others who may not share the same experience of that very
> 'insight'.  Explaining 'insight' diminishes it - one cannot really
> frame the words to reflect its full force and weight; especially
> to another who may not have experienced the same 'insight'.

Very true.  And those of us who tend to use sophisticated terms (in order to 
be logically consistent) often find ourselves "talking past" our audience. 
But when you are fortunate enough to have grasped a genuine insight, and 
actually live by it for a time, you are the best
person to communicate it to others.  For you can then describe it in terms 
of your own experience.  This, I think, was demonstrated in your 10/16 post 
on time perception.  You explain it from a fresh new perspective, not just 
quoting someone else's words, but presenting the time continuum as 
"transforming day into night", which makes it come alive.

And this is a great paragraph:

> Subject Object Metaphysics has its roots in this framework of
> linear time.  The Reality, the Metaphysics of Quality if you like,
> that lies outside this worldview shows us an interlocked and
> interrelated uinverse where we are all connected and all the
> same at the same time. And the secret to the time machine;
> or a machine that transcends Time.
>
> The idea of an individual has no meaning or sense
> in such a world view.

I had said somewhere that "experience is a linear progression through time 
in which the only reality is a finitude called 'the present'."  But I was 
wrong.  Your description actually led me to realize that there is NO NOW, 
that the infinitesimal "present" is an illusionary precept.  And, if every 
event of the past and the future is also experienced as NOW, that experience 
is illusionary, too.  In other words, existential experience cannot be 
reality.  Zeno's paradox that "motion is impossible" because an arrow never 
completes the successive intervals of its trajectory needed to reach the 
target was long ago shown to be a mathematical trick.  On the other hand, 
your paradigm of the relational universe in which we are interlocked 
demonstrates that a machine that transcends time would make individual 
existence insensible.  Now that's a genuine insight!

Do you have more?

> So my reversion to "poetic vision" rather than the replicability
> of the "scientific method" - again reflecting the emerging recent
> dichotomy on this list; of the classicalists versus the romanticists.
>
> One final point: just as the Enlightenment of Buddhism is not
> for everyone not yet ready in their present life; I did not expect,
> nor I suspect Pirsig did, everyone to fully come to terms with
> what the Metaphysics of Quality is all about. At best a metaphor;
> at worst a scaffold for the ultimate insight.  A roadmap perhaps
.> to the mountain top for ready inquiring minds.
>
> But as a quantum leap into a new philosophical inquiry but based
> on the western tradition of the scientific method; it depends,
> I suppose, on how much one is prepared to let go of some,
> if not all, of its fundamental premises.

I'm willing, Khoo.  Lay it on me!

Essentially yours,
Ham