The Deep Thoughts of 14th Colony
 

I have had a series of deep thoughts that I thought to introduce, and it is about time. Not about time that I do so as if I had been postponing it, but it is about time itself.

This is not an argument to prove that time does not exist, it is merely an exercise in deep thought. I have oft said that God is outside the realm of time, that he exists in the past, the present, and the future at the same time. While not to suggest that we are on the same level as God, I present my deep thought that maybe we too exist in a realm where there is no time, where the past, present, and future exist as one and our definition of “time” is just a translation or analyzation or perception of what we are within.

To understand this strange new concept of time or time-non-existent, we must think for a moment about light and color.

White light is the equal amount of red, green, and blue light. When we look around us outdoors under the sun we see everything illuminated by white light. Daylight is white light. Though it does not appear as "white" to us, it is nonetheless white light. White light is made up equally of the 3 main colors of the light color spectrum, red, green, and blue. Our atmosphere is hit by white light from the sun but it only allows the color blue to pass through, while red and green are deflected. That is why the sky appears blue. You can also look through specific color filters which inhibit one of the colors of white light and then see an object cast in the color of the other colors remaining in the spectrum of white light. So any or more of the primary colors of white light can be blocked to enable us to see the other two colors instead, but without such method it appears as white light and not as 3 separate colors, red, green, and blue. Just white.

We can easily see red on its own, green on its own, and blue on its own, but put them together, as in red, green, and blue light shone on the same point or along the same line, and we see only white light and not the three that comprise it. Ponder this hypothetical:

What if we compared time to color? Let us say that red was the past, green was the present, and blue was the future. In our existence we can see the red(past), green(present), and blue(future) as 3 seperate colors easily distinguishable. But what if in reality, time was like white light, equally comprised of the 3 colors blended together to exist as one? In other words, like within white light, the past, present, and future were three equal things co-existing at the same exact time with no separation, wholly unset apart from each other. But how could that be possible, one might ask? How could one accept something like that anyway? Hold that deep thought.

To understand this strange new concept of time or time-non-existent, we must think for a moment not just about light and color, but of vibration and sound.

If a tree falls in a forest but no ear is around to hear it, does it make a sound? No. The tree falling or hitting the ground makes vibrations, vibrations are detected by eardrums which translate into signals which are sent into the brain where they are understood as sound. So, if a tree falls but no eardrum is around to hear it, it makes plenty of vibrations but simply no sound. When an eardrum receives the vibrations and sends the signals into the brain for translation, the comprehension of the vibrations by the brain is that of sound. No ear to hear, plenty of vibration, absence of sound. You could argue that sound is not real at all, but merely a perception within the mind; the brain’s way of explaining to itself the meaning behind the vibrations.

We have seen that white light is made up of red, green, and blue yet we can see the red, green, or blue parts of the white light only when some natural or human-made device is used to enhance one of the 3 colors or prevent us from seeing the other two. Thus within the white light the 3 colors are indistinguishable without a means to separate them. We have also seen that sound does not exist outside the mind, but that vibrations are translated and understood as sound within the mind, ergo just our imagination. It’s all in the mind.

So to sum up, “sound” is the brain’s way of understanding vibrations, and white light appears as only one color until something is used to separate one primary color from the three to let it be visible to us. So now imagine that “time” is only one present “now” rather than comprised of past, present, and future; and we exist in a space where there is no time behind us and no time in front of us, but only the white light which includes what we understand as the red light(past), green light(present) and blue light(future) all combined as one….while we have the eardrum and brain’s equivalent of intercepting and understanding vibrations into sound; and the light filter’s equivalent of separating and sensing the 3 main colors of white light, that intercept, separate, sense, and understand the combined oneness of time-unmoving. You did not begin reading this post 3 minutes ago (or 14 minutes ago for those who are slower) from now, and you won’t finish it 30 seconds from now. You are reading it now, you began reading it now, and you finished reading it now. But the passage of time was a trick of the mind, a tool or device, to separate the first now and the third now from the present now in order to give the reading meaning. You were born right now. You reached middle age now. You were married now. You turned 16 now. You had a child now. You saw your child graduate college now. You turned 4 years old now. You saw SW:Episode III now. You grew old and lost bladder control now. You died now. A person born “40 years after” you died (now) turned 26 now. Moses saw a burning bush now. President Lincoln was shot now. You brushed your teeth now. You had your first tooth now. You got dentures now. It all happened now, not before, not later, not then, not after, but now. Except that in your mind the now of now is like white light, and there is something that separates the 3 parts of white light into red, green, and blue so that they can be distinguished and enjoyed separately, understood separately. And so time, like the sound that is understood after the vibrations are received and translated, is what is understood by living beings after the now is received and translated and the 3 aspects of it are separated to be understood. Without that understanding, time does not exist.

I conclude with another way to view this concept of absense of time in the true universe. It is sure to conjur a Spaceballs joke, but oh well. Take a video tape of a movie. You have the start of the movie, the middle, and the end. While watching the middle of the story, the beginning was the past, and the end is the future. The story told in the movie has a timeline just like real life, with a past, present, and future. But turn the tape off, eject it, and step back and look at the video in your hand. The past, present, and future in the movie all exist at the same time right before your eyes. In fact, looking at the tape alone, it has no past, present, and future. It only has the NOW which exists at the same time in front of you. It is only when you watch the movie that the seperation between past, present, and future takes on meaning; otherwise it all blends together. Now imagine that that video is the universe itself, life and existance as we know it. Now imagine stopping the film, ejecting the tape, and holding it in your hand. Right there is the past, present, and future existing at once, as NOW. Like plugging into the Matrix, you turn on your awareness of time movement only when it is translated via some device. Otherwise, it is just NOW.

Eject the tape and stare at it. See it in your mind, the beginning, middle, and end; past, present, and future, existing as now, as one.

That is all for now. See you later. Or now. It’s only a matter of time. Or is it? That was my deep thought for today. Or for now. In another time I will post another of my deep thoughts, but that I will save for another time, a time to come later. Or now. Or before.

:light:

OMG I need to grab a cup of tea first hang on!;)

Get 2 cups, Rowan!

...and throw me a rope, NOW, and I mean NOW, not LATER!! ;)

LOL. Was that deep thought a bit too deep, hence the need for a rope? :salute:

You should check out the exciting field of "quantum chromodynamics."

Oh, it was deep alright but, I actually understood what you were saying, then and now and I will in the future which, I could have condensed and just said, "NOW".

;)

BST, I understood 14th too.

14th that was totally cool! I want to see your theory on lightships and the dimensions they move in, sometime. I've always thought that was fun, though Madeline L'Engle is a favorite author of mine.

14th try this one: CS Lewis described how God can interact with individuals at specific moments in time: his omniprescence and omniscience really, sort of like this (forgive me, I read this in college in the late 80s so this is highly paraphrased):

God exists outside of time. He is infinate, time is finite; therefore he is outside it, over it. Eternity is larger than time as it existed before time began and will exist after it ends. To see how God can both know the future perfectly and not dictate our decisions look at time like this: Eternity is an infinite geometric plane. Time is a finite line on that plane. God overlooks the plane and can see the entire span of time. He can see each person's beginning, life and end. Better yet: because he is outside of and not limited by time he can interact with any point on that line all the way down to the levels of the atoms that make up the line--the milliseconds of one person's life.

Did you follow that? If anyone did, I'm still trying to figure out how he squished himself (infinate, and outside time) down to a single cell start in Mary's womb. I know why he did it but the "how" is just mind-bending to me.

Anyway, that's my little bit of time theory. Unless you want to know my completely untheological theory of "when" God's Eternal Kingdom starts. Hehe. It has a lot to do with God being outside time.

Oh, on a totally different philosophical plane, my favorite passage from Jonathan Livingston Seagull is Jonathan's parting words to Sullivan Seagull:
"If we overcome Space and Time all we will have left is Here and Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think two friends would find each other again?" (it was something close to that.)

I loved that 14th! Wow, you can sit around a campfire with me /anyday/!
:muffit:

You know, if I had said any of that to anyone outside this forum, they would wonder what I was on. You do raise some good thought. You must have been thinking about that for a long time. I guess it was time for a huge brain dump.

http://hubblesite.org/sci.d.tech/beh...olor/rgb.shtml

have fun and see how red, green and blue combine to produce white light

Cool site, Rowan.

Thanks!! :thumbsup:

Your assumption is there is only one universe. Read these articles: http://www.thestate.com/mld/state/ne...on/4393213.htm
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom..._020205-1.html

The religious aspect of your post will not be explored here. There are other opinions and theories that may be controversial or will upset many people.

Read the book "Timeless Reality" if you get a chance.

Bring the marshmellows and I'll being the deep thoughts! :laugh:

Yeah, I used to say that life was a movie that we the characters only see a frame at a time, but that God is the writer, director, producer, casting agent, lighting and sound tech, scenery and set designer, editor, ect., and he sees the whole movie at once. If I'm right regarding your theory about God's kingdom, it always has been and always will be.

I don't want to go too far with this concept because I have been away from the path a long time, but when I was on fire as a believer I theorized that heaven and hell exist at the same time and location as earth, much like my concept about past, present, and future coexisting, but that you could only experience one or the others at once. I compared the 3 places like alternate dimensions located in the same plane of existance. Take your television, for instance, and consider only traditional TV reception or satelite dish reception rather than cable, for this example. The TV is tuned to channel 6 and only channel 6. Yet, channel 2-99 all exist at the same time in the same place, right there where your TV is drawing channel 6 from. But you only experience channel 6 because that is what your channel knob is tuned to. You cannot see, hear, or be aware of any other channel than what your TV is set on, even though all the channels are existing at once in the same place. That was my concept for heaven, hell, and Earth, being like channels that were recieved and felt only seperately and only one at a time. Humans could only experience this "channel", because we didn't have the power of God to change the channels and see and feel the other two channels. But if God chose, he could turn a knob and suddenly we would be in Heaven or hell in an instant, because our plane of existance would be changed. Maybe that is what the rapture will be, that moment of spiritual transformation.

That concept is similar to my view of alternate dimensions and universes. There could be several, or thousands, of alternate universes overlapping each other like varied television or radio signals, existing at once in the same place, but only experience-able to matter and energy tuned to that particular universe channel. The fantastic ability to open doors connecting one alternate universe to another would bring new meaning to the Universal-Remote channel changer!

Regarding lightships and how they travel in my stories, I have ideas involving alternate dimensions, that come from one of my stories, but I'll mention that later rather than now. Or now since it's the same as later, but it'll be later before you read the now. Heh heh. ;)

As soon as mind-time permits I shall. I have lots of links to scientific pages regarding multiple dimensions and other scientific brainrains, so it's probably something I'd be interested in, if I can understand it.

Great links, Rowan and Sci-Fi. I've bookmarked all of them. Thanks.

LMAO! I suppose that was a whopper of a brain dump. Ironically I come up with some of the craziest theories while in the bathroom. It's where I do my best thinking! :blush:

BTW ya all...I think deep thoughts often when I can, which isn't often, and sometimes they are deep and other times dumb, sometimes they are leaked and sometimes plumbed. I'll post my deep thoughts here from time to time. Some of my thoughts are worthy of a hurrah!, or a huh?, or a duh!, so don't expect the words of Einstien or Freud or Socrates or Hemingway every time. I'm more like a Homer Simpson philosopher. =D

Cool quote. :thumbsup:

Jewels you have a good memory!:D ;)


"If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?"

The entire book is on line at this location

http://www.42.dropbear.id.au/quotes.html

My my, how times flies with no replies. :cry:

Hey 14th! Got a quandary for ya!


Why is it, I gotta WASH all my dishes before I put 'em in the dishwasher?
All it really is, is a place to hide the dirty dishes, that's all!

If you know, please do tell!!! :D
:muffit:

Muffit the " Oven" works as a good hiding place when youre in a bind! :duck:

Hi Muffy, I'll be glad to answer that, but you should ask it here instead: http://www.colonialfleets.com/forums...2543#post92543 :D

~14th, the resident answer dude and deep thunker

LOL Amberstar!

Done 14th!
:muffit:

With no new replies to my time-seperation concept, here is a new deep thought for the day.

I have realized a potentially inevitable problem facing us in our future. Think about all the billions of tons of garbage dumped in trash dumps around the world every year. Think about all the plastic trash bags you seal closed with bubbles of air still inside and throw out. Think about all the empty glass jars and empty plastic soda bottles you throw away every day, every week, every month, every year, through your whole lifetime, but not before screwing closed the airtight lid! Do you realize how much of our air we are throwing away in tightly closed plastic bags and sealed plastic and glass bottles? Good God what are we doing?

That was my deep thought for the day. Thank you. You may go back to your business now.

Another deep thought cometh.

What does the world look like through the eyes of a blind person?

A blind person knows they cannot see, yet how do they know what "seeing" is? If all they have known was a world of darkness, how can they comprehend what a world of light would reveal? How do they think other people. those with full sight, see the world around them?

How do blind people dream?

How do they imagine the appearance of things they have never had sight to verify?

Do they think in color? Might their minds perceive colors our own minds could not have imagined?

Might a person blind since birth, having suddenly gained full sight, be relieved to see the world is better than they imagined...or dissappointed that it was not as fantastic as they had pre-visualized?

If future science somehow invented a way for a sighted person and a blind person to see into the other's minds to share each other's visions of the world and life itself, imagine how each person would experience the other person's visual memories compared to their own.

Imagine having a blind person work for ILM or any sci-fi special effects company, designing space ships and aliens. They would surely come up with shapes and styles we could possibly never imagine. I would be interested to see drawings of everyday objects made by blind people. Whether you can draw or not, try drawing something with your eyes closed and then look to see how close it is to another you drew with your eyes open. I wonder how close or different a drawing made by a blind person, and by a sighted person with his eyes closed, would be to each other, of the same subject.

:cool:

Sometimes, I have awoken from dreams I had trouble remembering. I couldn't recall the dream itself, yet I had vague images of something or set of things I saw, that I knew were from the dream but could not form a shape or color to the images to see what they were. Other times I've awoken with clear as crystal memories of what I saw in my dreams. But I wonder if the vague, hard to distinguish images are some of what a blind person attributes to the objects he touches, hears, or is told about. In other words, I wonder if the images he creates to identify what he knows is around him, are crystal clear, or vague and hard to define.

:cool:

Have you watched M.A.S.H.? In one episode Hawkeye Pierce was blinded by an explosion, and they didn't know if it was temporary or permanant. Pierce wanted to go back to work and assist regardless of his blindness. At the operating table where the other surgeons were stitching the insides of a severely wounded soldier, Hawkeye sensed that the perforated bowel was not fully stitched, by sense of smell. No other doctor detected it by smell, or saw the loose stitch by sight. In another, non-medical instance, it was raining and Hawkeye noted that the rain hitting the ground sounded like sizzling steak on a grill. He also was able to hear distant incoming helicopters before anyone else could (Radar was good at doing that, though he wasn't blind), and realized that without his sight all of his other senses had been highly enhanced to compensate.

So from a certain point of view, a blind person might be seeing more of the world than we ever can. Like I said, from a certain point of view.

More to come, at some point later. That's right, I did say "later", which comes now from a certain point of view.
;)

Ack! My deep thoughts are sinking down the page! That's too deep! :eek:

14th I have been reading your deep thoughts but I only have 2 weeks break between semestes and I really need to give it (my brain) a break because it has done nothing but ache with thinking for the past several months...apologies :/:;)