Calvin: Let’s say life is this square of the sidewalk. We’re born at this crack and we die at that crack.
Calvin: Now we find ourselves somewhere inside the square, and in the process of walking out of it. Suddenly we realize our time in here is fleeting.
Calvin: Is our quick experience here pointless? Does anything we say or do in here really matter? Have we done anything important? Have we been happy? Have we made the most of these precious few footsteps?
The transcension hypothesis asks whether the evolution of our civilization is rapidly developing into something similar to a black hole.
Some physicists also argue black holes may be “seeds” or “replicators” for new universes, thus giving us a clue as to what we would do after we encounter other intelligent life forms.
The purpose of being a human is to complexify reality even more. To hand on a more diverse, more complicated, more multifaceted universe to our children.
Neil deGrasse Tyson explained the relaunch of Carl Sagan’sCosmos, a series meant to promote science literacy and discussion about our place in the universe. During a segment about the Big Bang (16:46), Tyson disputed the notion that religion and science could coexist when trying to understand the nature of existence:
Moyers: Do you give people who make this case, that that was the beginning and that there had to be something that provoked the beginning, do you give them an A at least for trying to reconcile faith and reason?
Tyson: I don’t think they’re reconcilable.
Moyers: What do you mean?
Tyson: Well, so let me say that differently. All efforts that have been invested by brilliant people of the past have failed at that exercise. They just fail. And so I don’t, the track record is so poor that going forward, I have essentially zero confidence, near zero confidence, that there will be fruitful things to emerge from the effort to reconcile them.
So, for example, if you knew nothing about science, and you read, say, the Bible, the Old Testament, which in Genesis, is an account of nature, that’s what that is, and I said to you, give me your description of the natural world based only on this, you would say the world was created in six days, and that stars are just little points of light much lesser than the sun. And that in fact, they can fall out of the sky, right, because that’s what happens during the Revelation.
You know, one of the signs that the second coming, is that the stars will fall out of the sky and land on Earth. To even write that means you don’t know what those things are. You have no concept of what the actual universe is. So everybody who tried to make proclamations about the physical universe based on Bible passages got the wrong answer.
So what happened was, when science discovers things, and you want to stay religious, or you want to continue to believe that the Bible is unerring, what you would do is you would say, “Well, let me go back to the Bible and reinterpret it.” Then you’d say things like, “Oh, well they didn’t really mean that literally. They meant that figuratively.”
So, this whole sort of reinterpretation of the, how figurative the poetic passages of the Bible are came after science showed that this is not how things unfolded. And so the educated religious people are perfectly fine with that. It’s the fundamentalists who want to say that the Bible is the literally, literal truth of God, that and want to see the Bible as a science textbook, who are knocking on the science doors of the schools, trying to put that content in the science room. Enlightened religious people are not behaving that way. So saying that science is cool, we’re good with that, and use the Bible for, to get your spiritual enlightenment and your emotional fulfillment.
Alan Watts suggests that humans created a superior being to worship out of fear and uncertainty.
The behavior of worship is reinforced by government and religious organizations to create a population that will obey. If we realize that we are all one energy, we can start to see through the illusion.
Audio of the speech is from Alan Watts lecture Zen Bones and Tales.
The Yin and Yang of the Universe
According to Buddhist philosophy, all this universe is one ‘dadada.’ That means ‘ten thousand functions, ten thousand things, one suchness,’ and we’re all one suchness. And that means that suchness comes and goes like anything else because this whole world is an on-and-off system.
As the Chinese say, it’s the yang and the yin, and therefore it consists of ‘now you see it, now you don’t, here you are, here you aren’t, here you are,’ because that the nature of energy, to be like waves, and waves have crests and troughs, only we, being under a kind of sleepiness or illusion, imagine that the trough is going to overcome the wave or the crest, the yin, or the dark principle, is going to overcome the yang, or the light principle, and that ‘off’ is going to finally triumph over ‘on.’
Death is the Other Face
Isn’t it odd that anything exists? It’s most peculiar, it requires effort, it requires energy, and it would have been so much easier for there to have been nothing at all. Therefore, we think ‘well, since being, since the ‘is’ side of things is so much effort’ you always give up after a while and you sink back into death.
But death is just the other face of energy, and it’s the rest, the not being anything around, that produces something around, just in the same way that you can’t have ‘solid’ without ‘space,’ or ‘space’ without ‘solid.’
Reborn Star Dust
You are really a playing of this one energy, and there is nothing else but that, that is you, but that for you to be always you would be an insufferable bore, and therefore it is arranged that you stop being you after a while and then come back as someone else altogether, and so when you find that out, you become full energy and delight. As Blake said, ‘Energy is eternal delight.’
Fear of the Illusion
You realize you’re That–we won’t put a name on it– you’re That, and you can’t be anything else. So you are relieved of fundamental terror. That doesn’t mean that you’re always going to be a great hero, that you won’t jump when you hear a bang, that you won’t worry occasionally, that you won’t lose your temper. It means, though, that fundamentally deep, deep, deep down within you, you will be able to be human, not a stone Buddha.
But to have no hang-ups, that is to say, to be able to drift like a cloud and flow like water, seeing that all life is a magnificent illusion, a plane of energy, and that there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Fundamentally. You will be afraid on the surface. You will be afraid of putting your hand in the fire. You will be afraid of getting sick, etc. But you will not be afraid of fear. Fear will pass over your mind like a black cloud will be reflected in the mirror.
Mysteriously beautiful fractals are shaking up the world of mathematics and deepening our understanding of nature.
What do movie special effects, heart attacks and the rings of Saturn have in common?
You may not know it, but fractals, like the air you breathe, are all around you. Their irregular, repeating shapes are found in cloud formations and tree limbs, in stalks of broccoli and craggy mountain ranges, even in the rhythm of the human heart.
In this film, NOVA takes viewers on a fascinating quest with a group of maverick mathematicians determined to decipher the rules that govern fractal geometry. Discovered by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, fractals are the architecture used by nature.
Their remarkable findings are deepening our understanding of nature and stimulating a new wave of scientific, medical, and artistic innovation stretching from the ecology of the rain forest to fashion design.
The documentary highlights a host of filmmakers, fashion designers, physicians, and researchers who are using fractal geometry to innovate and inspire.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has detected water in the atmospheres of five planets beyond our solar system, two recent studies show.
The five exoplanets with hints of water are all scorching-hot, Jupiter-size worlds that are unlikely to host life as we know it. But finding water in their atmospheres still marks a step forward in the search for distant planets that may be capable of supporting alien life, researchers said.
We’re very confident that we see a water signature for multiple planets – Avi Mandell, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., lead author of one of the studies, said in a statement.
This work really opens the door for comparing how much water is present in atmospheres on different kinds of exoplanets — for example, hotter versus cooler ones.
The two research teams used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to analyze starlight passing through the atmospheres of the five “hot Jupiter” planets, which are known as WASP-17b, HD209458b, WASP-12b, WASP-19b and XO-1b.
The atmospheres of all five planets showed signs of water, with the strongest signatures found in the air of WASP-17b and HD209458b.
Detecting Atmosphere
To determine what’s in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, astronomers watch the planet pass in front of its host star and look at which wavelengths of light are transmitted and which are partially absorbed.
Evan Grant demonstrates the science and art of Cymatics, a process for making sound waves visible. Useful for analyzing complex sounds (like dolphin calls), cymatics also raises some philosophical questions with the correlation between high frequencies and complex shapes.
Cymatic Shapes with Sound & Water
Cymatic Shapes with Salt on a Metal Plate
Vibrating a metal plate with sand creates wave patterns such as concentric circles. The higher the frequency, the more complex the shapes produced, with certain shapes having similarities to traditional mandala designs.
Cymatic Rotation
Dr. Hans Jenny in his studies, demonstrates rotary movement controlled by frequency.
Robert Anton Wilson was a philosopher and author of several books dealing with such themes as quantum mechanics, the future evolution of the human species, weird unexplained phenomena, conspiracy theories, synchronicity, the occult, altered states of consciousness, and the nature of belief systems.
His books explore the relationship between the brain and consciousness, and the link between science and mysticism, with wit, wisdom, and personal insights.
I have learned more from Robert Anton Wilson than I have from any other source. – George Carlin
The function of public education consists of killing curiosity, encouraging docility, and preparing mindless drones to work for corporations. – Robert Anton Wilson
Pot-heads develop a certain inevitable alienation from society. They begin to feel like one-eyed men in The Kingdom of the Blind. – Robert Anton Wilson
I have never experienced another human being. I have experienced my impressions of them. – Robert Anton Wilson
My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. – Robert Anton Wilson
If you think you know what’s really going on, you’re probably full of shit. – Robert Anton Wilson
The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one’s intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics). – Robert Anton Wilson
Alan Watts shares his thoughts on reality, our shared connection and the process of waking up to fundamental truths.
Alan Watts – The Way of Waking Up (Transcript)
So then, here’s the drama. My metaphysics, let me be perfectly frank with you, are: That there is the central self, you can call it God, you can call it anything you’d like – and it’s all of us.It’s playing all the parts of all beings whatsoever everywhere and anywhere. And it’s playing the game of hide-and-seek with itself, it gets lost, it gets involved in the farthest out adventures, but in the end it always wakes up and comes back to itself.
And when you’re ready to wake up, you’re going to wake up. And if you’re not ready, you’re going to stay pretending, that you’re just a little – poor little me. And since you’re all here and engaged in this sort of inquiry and listening to this sort of lecture, I assume that you’re all on the process of waking up. Or else, you are teasing yourselves, with some kind of flirtation with waking up, which you are not serious about. But I will assume that maybe you are, not serious, but sincere, that you are ready to wake up.
So then, when you’re in the way of waking up, and finding out who you really are. You meet a character called a Guru; as the Hindu’s say this word: the teacher, the awakened. And what is the function of a guru? He’s the man who looks at you in the eye and says (laughs) “Oh, Come on..” (laughs)…”I know who you are.” You know, you come to the guru and say “Sir, I have a problem, I’m unhappy and I want to get one-up on the universe or I want to become enlightened – I want spiritual wisdom.” Ah, the guru looks at you and says “Who are you?”
You know Shri Ramana Maharshi that great Hindu sage of modern times? People used to come to him and say “Master, who was I in my last incarnation?”, as if that mattered. And he would say “Who is asking the question?” – and he would look at you and say “Basically go right down to it, you’re looking at me – you’re looking out, and you are unaware of what’s behind your eyes..go back in, find out who you are. Where the question comes from, why you ask.” And if you look at a photograph of that man – I have a gorgeous photograph of him, and you look in those – I walk by it everytime I go out of the front door, and I look at those eyes, and the humor, the lilting laugh, it’s a – ho ho, come on….(laughs) SHIVA, I recognize you.
When you come to my door and you say “I’m so-and-so.” I say “ha-ha” what a funny way god has come on today. (laughs) There are sorts of tricks of course a guru will play..they..they well, they’re going to put you through the mill. And the reason they do that, is simply: you won’t wake up, until you feel you’ve paid a price for it. In other words, the sense of guilt that one has or sense of anxiety is simply the way one experiences keeping the game of disguise going on. Do you see that? Supposing you say: “I feel guilty.” Christianity makes you feel guilty for existing. That somehow the very fact that you exist is an affront. You uh, a fallen human being.
I remember as a child when we went to the services of the church on good Friday, they gave us each a colored postcard with Jesus crucified on it, and it said underneath: This have I done for thee, what doest thou for me. You know you felt awful, you nailed that man to the cross. Because you eat steak, you have crucified Christ. Cause you’ve killed the bull, but after all you depend on it. Mithra, it’s the same mystery. And what are you going to do about that? This have I done for thee, what doest thou for me. You feel awful, that you just exist at all.But that sense, that sense of guilt, is the veil across the sanctuary:Don’t you dare come in!
In order to, you know, in all mysteries when you’re going to be initiated, there’s somebody saying: “uh, uh, uh, uh, don’t you come in – you’ve got to fulfill this requirement, and this requirement, and this requirement, this requirement, then we’ll let you in.” So you go, you go through the mill. Why? Because this is, you’re saying to yourself: “I won’t wake up until I feel I deserve it, I won’t wake up until I’ve made it difficult for me to wake up – so I invent for myself an elaborate system of delaying my waking up. I put myself through this test and that test and when I feel it’s been sufficiently arduous then I may at last admit to myself who I really am, and draw aside the veil.”
And realize that after all, when all is said and done…I am that I am. Which is the name of god. And when it comes to it, that’s really rather funny. They say in Zen, when you attain satori, nothing is left to you at that moment but to have a good laugh.
But naturally, all masters, Zen masters, Yoga masters, every kind of master, puts up a barrier. And says to you…He simply plays your own game, you know, we say anybody who goes to a psychiatrist or has his head examined, because you, when you go to a psychiatrist you define yourself as someone who ought to have his head examined. Same way the Zen masters say anybody who studies Zen or goes to a Zen master ought to be given 30 blows with a stick. Because he was stupid enough to pose the question that he had a problem. But you’re the problem, you put yourself in the situation. So, it’s a question fundamentally: Do you define yourself as a victim of the world, or as the world?
Alan Watts provides a philosophical analysis of the bible.
Alan Watts – Notable Excerpts
The Gospel of Jesus, which of course was hushed up since its inception, was that, wake up everybody and find out who you are.
Is it not written in your law, “I have said ye are gods.” And if that is what the scripture says it can’t be denied. So why do you tell me I blaspheme because I say, “I am a son of god.”
“Son of” in Hebrew and in Arabic means of the nature of. When we call someone a son of a bitch, we mean bitchy. And so if you call someone a son of god, you mean divine.
What happened was, that this being blasphemous for the Jews. It became blasphemy for the Christians for anyone else than Jesus to say it.
They said, “Ok baby it was so with you, but there it stops. No more of this business.” And as a result of that Jesus was made irrelevant by pedestalization, by being kicked up stairs! In spite of the fact that he’s said greater works than these, that I do, shall you do; oh no, upstairs with you baby…because we just can’t have that sorta thing going on in a monarchical universe. We are not gonna have democracy in the kingdom of heaven.
This is why the gospel is impossible, because we’re suppose to follow the example of Christ…where he says for example, “Be not anxious for the morrow. Do not worry about what you shall eat, what you shall drink and what you shall wear. God will take care of you! Doesn’t he take care of the birds? Don’t the flowers grow? And they’re wonderful, they’re crazy, they’re great. What are you worrying about? I’ve never heard a sermon preached on that…never. Because it’s totally subversive the economy would crash! So they say, “That’s all very well, but that was the boss’s son!” See he had that colossal advantage…
He had an unfair advantage. So how can you ask us to follow the example of Christ. But supposing he didn’t have an unfair advantage. Supposing that was true about Jesus as a son of god is true of us.
Why talk about this? Is it interesting? Is it important for the human being to realize that in some sense of the word, whatever it means, he is god or one with god?
The importance of it is this. To know that you are god is another way of saying that you feel completely with this universe. You feel profoundly rooted in it and connected with it.
If you don’t know that. If you don’t feel that. Well naturally you feel alien. You feel a stranger in the world and if you feel a stranger you feel hostile. And therefore you start to bulldoze things about to beat it up and to try and make the world submit to your will.
You obviously can blame someone and say, “I didn’t ask for this! Take it away!” And yet very few people are all too ready to take it away. Camus said that the only serious philosophical problem is whether or not to commit suicide. And if you don’t, if you don’t say take it away. What are you gonna do? You really gotta assume responsibility for it, you have to say yes to what happens.
The real meaning of Karma, the word in Sanskrit means simply: doing. And if I say of an event, “it is your karma”, it is saying, “it is your doing.”
So the exposition, a book which would expound karma, would be not so much a who done it? But, a you done it. But that seems, fantastic.
Neil deGrasse Tyson‘s interview on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast is remixed into a funky psychedelic music video about the universe. (Animated by Andy Greenhaw)
In our experience, the Universe never makes anything in ones. When we thought Earth was it. No, Earth is one of many planets. The Sun is! No, the Sun is one of a billion stars in the Milky Way. The Milky Way! No, no there are a hundred other billion galaxies in the Universe.
The Universe? Well we’ve been there before. Am I going to say there’s only one? Because the trend says more. So maybe there’s this Multiverse.
Let’s just continue to push the question a little deeply. If this “entity” never makes anything in ones, then why would it only make one Multiverse? Maybe there are multiple Multiverses.
Quantum theories suggest that reality is much like the dream world where all moments are possible, there is no beginning, no end, only infinity.
Consciousness Creates Reality
The theory of biocentrism describes reality as a process that fundamentally involves our consciousness. Robert Lanza’s scientific theory explains how, without consciousness: all matter dwells in an undetermined state of probability, time has no real existence and space is just a concept we use to make sense of things.
If we look towards neuroscience and quantum mechanics to further fill in the blanks and shortcomings of biocentrism, all that we are left with are quantized states of consciousness. Reality, how we know it, does not exist. And if it had any sort of existence that we could visualize, it would look something like an endless sea of static, of information in which all probabilities exist. Imagining all these probabilities within a zero-dimensional space without time is not easy. But it is perhaps as close as we’ll ever come to imagining what reality really is.
Linear Time is an Illusion
Any perception of time or continuity is actually an illusion. This is one of the reasons why Robert Lanza’s recent biocentric universe theory was considered to be “a wake-up call” by NASA’s astrophysicist David Thompson: when we look at the big bang or when we observe how quantum particles jump back and forth in time, we have the arrogance of assuming that time simply moves forward in a straight line and we then go on to see these time-anomalies as unusual and counter-intuitive. But there is no indication that our perception and memories define the arrow of time.
All of this seems to suggest that our reality would completely disintegrate or, at the very least, become highly inconsistent and random at any moment. But the reason why we experience a rigid world with deeply structured laws of nature is because consistent patterns evolve according to mathematical principles. Since every possible pattern can exist within infinity, the only connection between two independent quantized moments of consciousness is the information that overlaps. Smaller or more compressed units are more common and the laws that we are subject to naturally emerge and bring about our consistent reality as it is the most probable one.
Patterns can be found in any type of chaos and since very complex structures are required for consciousness to exist, the reality that we experience evolves along the probable branches of its own specific pattern. If neural disorders such as Capgras syndrome have taught us anything, it’s that we have an incredible ability to rationalize the oddities in our reality. There is one claim though, that becomes hard to refute: that the pattern of quantized moments of experience is inherently infinite and, statistically, an afterlife is inevitable.
Theories Covered in The After Life Dysfunction By Athene
