[baudrunner]

The Chicken and the Egg

There is an inherent nature to the human being that seems to conflict with the predatory and animal roots of our humble beginnings. Funk and Wagnalls includes in its definition of the word noble - "characterized by, or displaying superior moral qualities." Cerebral processing of empathic insight can induce a noble act of humanity, a word which one automatically associates with compassion and benevolence. Human social doctrine obligates those of the higher classes to follow noble principles - "noblesse oblige".

In contrast, a tracing of the conduct of humankind from earliest times reveals a history of violence and disregard for human life which has no parallel in the animal kingdom. Even in relatively recent history kings and queens moved men about on battlefields quite literally as if they were toy soldiers, often with no purpose but to subdue others and take in taxes what was not theirs or to appropriate real estate so as to benefit from the bounty of lands they did not previously own. There was as often as not nothing noble in their intentions or their behaviours. Even God appears culpable, instructing Moses to take another tribe's fertile grazing lands after killing those who owned them so that his people might have respite from their wanderings in the desert. And of course, according to the scriptures Sampson was said to have been possessed of the Spirit of the Lord and slew 40,000 Philistines.

Obviously there is a complexity to the human nature that transcends instinctive behaviour. To examine this further one should separate human characteristic behaviours from those of the animal. As a rule there is no cruelty in the instinctive behaviour of the animal. Most animals, that is. The cat might play with a catch before killing and eating it. The shrike, a common predatory bird, will impale its prey on the barbed wire of a fence and continue hunting, repeating the process a number of times before finally setting down to feast. A killer whale will throw an unfortunate seal about like a rag doll for no reason other than to amuse itself. These are exceptional behaviours but they might encourage a more refined appreciation of the word instinct.

The term instinct alludes to behaviours requiring no complex thought processes or evaluations to carry them out. In fact, instinct involves intuitive knowledge but it does not connote automatic behaviour in the sense that the animal is not aware of what it is doing. Instinct releases the animal from any requirement to develop a higher cortical ability, because its life is essentially simple and patterned. Humans follow the universal directive to develop intelligence, and are not considered to follow instinct. Nevertheless, there are certain characteristic behaviours that are predetermined, and common to both animals and humans. We often hear the term "mating instinct", for example.

Sexual reproduction is defined as the exchange of genetic information. A few billion years ago the very first assemblages of proteins from amino acids and nucleotide sequences from sugars, bases and phosphates are found in the viruses, which are no more than a few nucleotide sequences bound in a protein coat - genetic information in a box, as it were. Viruses were the first simplest forms of life to replicate in a process wherein genetic information is traded, although some might argue that viruses are not actually alive. An early scenario involving their reproduction would take the following route: two different viruses coincidentally invade a simple single-celled nucleotide based life form at the same time; their protein coats dissolve and reassemble around a new set of nucleotides when the cell deteriorates and dies because of the viral invasion and the process produces two new viruses, each containing some of the information from the other and/or from the pre-nucleated cell. Neither virus planned this scenario because of course viruses are not sentient so the products are no more than an induced chemical reaction, the result of a random occurrence. Over the evolutionary time frame simple nucleotide sequences become more complex and form gene segments, which lead to the resulting chemical alteration of the basic construction of cellular life forms and they continue to grow more complex over time. Returning to the argument as to whether viruses are actually alive I opine that they are not since they have not evolved in nature over the billions of years that life has existed since the earliest time, only mutated through random occurrence. Yet they are the essential catalyst for evolution because it was through the survival of the fittest cellular life forms which were able to overcome viral invasion by what we refer to as adaptation but which were essentially random chemically induced mutations that life as we now know it appeared. As the multi-cellular life form becomes more and more complex over the evolutionary timeframe eventually randomness gives way to determination.

One way in which determination has manifested is through the evolvement of the mating ritual into a lifeong commitment to a single mate. This concept is not a characteristic unique to the humans. Many birds mate for life such as the Canada goose and the cardinal. Even some fish, such as the marlin, mate for life. And some animals gestate longer than humans, such as the elephants, who carry their young for twenty-two months and who also reach the age of reproduction later than humans and care for their young most of the time until then. It is the nurturing instinct which is generally the domain of the female and therein lie the roots of sexual differentiation, which has given the female the X-X pair of the gender determinant chromosomes whereas the male has the X-Y pair. One logical assumption is that the apprehension of another's condition or state of mind, or empathy, is determined by certain genetic properties of the X chromosome.

A reasonable conclusion may be drawn from all of this, which is that since bringing forth new life can be considered the domain of the female of a species that sexual differentiation occurred after life developed the ability to reproduce and that therefore the male has evolved from the female. This too would have its roots in the random organization of the DNA, for when DNA is processed to display the chromosomes one can easily imagine that the configuration of an X chromosome could visually be transformed into a Y chromosome by bringing together the two legs of its lower half. Similarly, The Y could be transformed into an X by splitting the stem.

Recent research into the Y chromosome has indicated that among all the other chromosomes it alone appears to possess the unique ability to repair itself when damaged. The simplified explanation is that it does so by folding a normal section over the affected area and chemically correcting the damaged part. This tells us that the chromosome does not have the normally rigid structure of the other chromosomes, which would lend itself to possible misconfigurations and the need to develop a knack for restoration. This would only be the case where the Y chromosome is a later evolutionary development, like an afterthought, and that it is probably by nature at least half X chromosome.

It is a given that for billions of years of prehistory reproduction was asexual in nature involving simple replication by way of cell division or mitosis and that the evolution of the earliest life was a slow process of developing possible chance mutant variations of itself, rather than the more rapid variation guaranteed by sexual reproduction which over time becomes the predominant technique as a matter of course. The earliest form of mitosis probably occurred as the result of spurious cell growth which precluded the ability of the cell to maintain its integrity and a coherent shape. Gravity probably contributed to the gradual flow of the cell in a fluid environment and a narrowing or pinching occurred in effect splitting the two halves into separate entities which survived the trauma. Lichen and fungi grow on rocks and trees in a humid environment and no doubt represent a higher state resulting from just such a process. The evolution of life may be considered to have occurred in phases. The very earliest pre-nucleated and nucleated cellular life can no longer be found, in spite of the fact that evolution is an ongoing process. They were long ago relegated to the status of food for the more advanced life forms that developed from them and have long disappeared.

Like females, males also have an empathic nature, which is often repressed because of the roles that society imposes on the genders to maintain the rigidity of the Y chromosome. It is not within the scope of this discussion to analyse the various additional conformations that the sex determinant chromosomes may display because they represent aberrations, for example there exists an X-Y-Y combination and X-X-Y and X-X-X combinations, but they should be mentioned if only to support the empathy gene location premise. Individuals born with an X-Y-Y pair have their X rendered ineffectual and are known to not possess this characteristic attribute.

To suggest that genes determine our being and not the other way around in progressive evolutionary development is like asking whether the egg came before the chicken. It has been said that a chicken is just an egg's way of making another egg. Genetic evolution is an ongoing process and not just dependent on the recombination of two sets of genes via sexual reproduction, which only happens as a matter of course. Behavioural modification can suppress genes. Lifestyle and diet can transform genes. In fact, we each determine our genetic makeup throughout the course of our lifetime and our DNA on analysis does not show exactly the same patterns at birth as it does at the end of a rich and full life. Inherited behaviours can be purely environmental, as in learned and copied behaviours passed from father to son by way of instruction and observation, and they probably determined the eventual appearance of the first double Y chromosome pair. Support for this supplemental theory of genetic variation comes from the fact that adaptation is responsible for evolving traits. The change to an adapted genesis could not be instantaneous at conception, it must evolve gradually over life times.

If we consider the state of existence to be the rationalization of itself and the order of the organization of the universe to be an expression of that rationalization then life is the rationalization of matter and of the elemental products of that expression and cognizance is the anthropocentric manifestation of that order which produces the sense that we make of this universe. That is the case for all living things and it is the priorities to which they have directed their cognizant rationalizations that have shaped their being and the rules which they have ascribed to themselves which bring that being about. Sentience is merely the opportunity to grow more cognizant. We who are not satisfied are in effect and inadvertently directing ourselves toward greater satisfaction. Again, what is an inescapable fact is that we continually make ourselves in this universe that is our workshop with the tools that we have to work with which are the products of the natural processes directing events toward order and stability.

[baudrunner]

That number: 10^43, is indeed a very small number and when one does the math of the collapsing star into an ultra-dense compacted body, even when one includes that factor in reducing the size of the smallest sub-nuclear particle one is bound to suggest that that star must have been the size of an entire galactic cluster whose static presence in this otherwise dynamic Universe brought all of its components together by its own gravity. To support that idea, we can point to quasars. Who knows what a quasar actually is? We will probably never know for certain, but the inference is a plausible one.

How then are we to reconcile that idea with the fact that black holes are found to exist within galaxies?

Insomuch as that quasar is in a state of collapse and that this process is one which occurs over millions, perhaps billions of years can we not also suggest that even a single very large star which we theorize has collapsed into itself is actually still collapsing? How long does this process continue? How are we to determine when this collapse actually ends? Is it a perpetual process?

Questions, questions...

Prerequisite: Acceptance of the theory of light propagation as explained in TOE part 6 above.

Imagine yourself in an immense well-lit room with a virtually infinite number of small objects each just big enough to be seen. For that matter, take yourself to a very dark place under a new moon, like the middle of the ocean, and marvel at the countless stars in the night sky.

Now, given that the molecules of the receptors in our retina are stimulated by the modulations of the characteristic surface properties of all those objects or stars that we see carried on the molecules and atoms in the medium through which the light is propagated, we conclude that the information that those modulations represent are present in the electron orbits of each individual atom which occupies our field of view. In other words, there is evidently no limit to the amount of information that it is possible to store on an atom.

Sound fantastic? Philip Bucksbaum is currently doing research on just that quantum phenomenon. Read the article below to learn more...

http://www.eet.com/story/OEG20000831S0019

(I have yet to see an intelligent refutation of my theory of light propagation. It is not sci-fi, good people, but the way it is)

People who are afflicted with cerebral palsey, autism, or motor-nueron disease all have fully functioning minds, as the state of the art tools with which they are provided to express their thoughts and ideas prove to us. It is very apparent that the mind is indeed separate from the brain and that it represents the sum of all the energies that define the unique identity of one's corporeal self and that it guides its cognizant processes. Who would know this better than Steven Hawking?

The energy that represents the mind is modulated with all of the information representing one's unique identity.

[baudrunner]

What and who are we? Where did we come from?

As to the true meaning of life, it is the domain of scientists to investigate cause, not to extrapolate intent and determination from reality. Speculations and theories abound but they are invariably without solutions and so the Socratic method trudges on in the realms of philosophical digression and impractical non-science.

In our studies of the history of scientific investigation we find ourselves tripping over the dogmas of many uncertainties and untruths. They are as changeable as the flavours of the times: like the pre-Copernican idea of geocentricity wherein the world lies at the centre of the universe.

Where at one time there was little separation between the doctrines of philosophy and science the two disciplines have diverged to become estranged over time. Every so often we encounter a gem of radical thinking and discovery and on inspection conclude that it is the Aristotelian method that yields the most abundant fruit. Of the three ways to learn it is direct experience which is the greatest teacher, followed by example, and only then by instruction.

As we evolve an ever more sophisticated intellect it seems to be an acceptable and almost gratifying experience to deviate ever farther from reality in our suppositions, applying mental agility in the search for collateral meaning. Philosophy becomes art and it is left to art to explain life. Little wonder then that much of what purports to be art has shown a devolution to the present form where expressionism has lost the complexity reflected in the tools and the toys of the highly complicated society which it serves. Art no longer imitates life, because artists no longer appear to understand it. Heaven forbid that life should imitate art.

It is easier to assess the pointless focus of another's life than to be the censor of one's own meaningless existence, but such as it is, that is human nature. Everyone's a critic, and as often a critical judgementalist. Even the slightest introspection would reveal that the censure is invariably rooted in the critic's own character. When someone is telling you all about you, they are usually telling you about themselves. It is a common phenomenon social psychologists call projection. Projection contributes much to the gist of an amateur psychoanalysis. To understand another is to know oneself, but just as often as not, neither applies.

To understand oneself demands that we first understand the whole of humanity. To understand humanity requires understanding the real roots of our humble beginnings. Then we might better master the direction that the path of our history is taking us. We will learn how and why we differ from the animals with whom we share this earth.

Knowledge is like a tree where the trunk represents the truth and the divergent branches the misperceptions of reality, which nonetheless have their beginnings in the truth. What we think is real and what actually constitutes reality are for the most part two autonomous views for most of us. It is our intent not to deviate from that truth but to align ourselves with it, for while much knowledge has been acquired by taking divergent paths, the facts can be misleading. If we establish that fact and truth are mutually inclusive then not all knowledge is both factual and true, merely elemental. Let us embrace logic in the hope that it will help us to discover the truth, then perhaps in knowing the facts we may reveal true meaning and purpose. We cannot easily understand how or why without knowing what.

The progressive path of evolution has contributed to the enhancement of the human being. Over the course of our evolutionary history our brains have grown steadily larger so as to accommodate an increasingly larger cortical surface area, the "gray matter" of our cerebral cortex. We engage in deeper thought, a more acute reasoning and a keener understanding of the nature of things than we did while we were still struggling to meet the challenges of our environment. It is most apparent that the pace of human evolution appears to have greatly eclipsed that of the animal. We observe that animals simply evolve into better animals: lions become better lions; gnus become better gnus; horses become better horses. But humans find themselves on a direction that diverges ever more distant from the animal kingdom.

The differences become self evident. For example, if changing environmental conditions preclude the continued existence of a certain animal then the animal dies out, even to the point of extinction. We, however, rise to the challenge and conquer any adverse environmental conditions imposed upon us. If one were to ascribe a single character trait in the human that appears lacking in the animal it is an intellectual attribute, that of inspiration - the ability to overcome challenges through inspired problem solving and innovative engineering.

Animals then are content to pursue their limited and patterned behaviour so long as their environment is compatible with their sustained existence. Higher primates are also environmentally symbiotic in that their habitat provides them with the food and comfort sufficient for their continued existence without the need for innovation. Their ability to learn through training and observation is not equivalent to any ability to create new methods through inventive engineering on their own to enhance their lives in the natural condition. Their environment in some areas is changing radically by the encroachment of humans into their territories, and their continued existence is threatened by it. In some areas they have become extinct because they lack the ability to meet the challenges of that changing environment. Among the lower primates, the lion tamarind of southeast Brazil is one such species seriously threatened with extinction. Any other animal will suffer the same fate when its environment is no longer able to sustain it.

Applying logic to reason, one may safely assume that humans are not animals, that there is something in our genetic makeup that predisposes us to uniquely human characteristics and intelligence. It is not enough to say that it was the requirement for throwing accuracy that gave rise to human intelligence, or perhaps that it was the development of language. These are definitely contributors to the evolvement of human intelligence, but there is yet the underlying root cause that prompted the first humans to be inspired to develop the concept of hunting with projectiles or express ideas using vocal sounds to communicate in the first place.

Inasmuch as all species of life can be traced to some prehistoric ancestor which evolved to become the modern version of itself, it was only the human whose brain had the genetic predisposition to enlargement for the sake of intellectual aptitude. Again, it is the overall surface area of the two millimetres thick layer of the wrinkled and folded surface of the brain called the cerebral cortex which determines the number and complexity of neural networks and therefore the degree of complexity of associative reasoning and calculation of which our brains are capable.

Physically, the brain may be compared to the characteristic growth of a broccoli flower. Following the stem from the bottom of the plant the closer one gets to the surface the more numerous and finer the divergent pathways become until one arrives at the florets, comparable to the neuron bodies of the cortex itself. A larger cortical surface area allows for a greater diversity of intellectual potential.

Because a bigger chassis requires a bigger engine, the result of the development of our brain size leads as a matter of course to the development of a more highly evolved inner brain, the support system. The ability to develop more complex intellectual skills, rationalize with greater skill, think higher thoughts, imagine more fantastic things, all lead to the requirement for more memory and therefore better memory management and more highly advanced associative reasoning faculties. This naturally leads to the ability to acquire more knowledge and more knowledge opens doors to deeper thinking. "I am already intelligent. Therefore, I can become more easily more intelligent."

None of the preceding explains what inspired humankind in the first place. Inasmuch as necessity is the mother of invention, that which leads to the decision that anything is necessary arises from the capacity to be innovative and to invent. If inspiration determines the need, than what was it that inspired humans to begin with? What was that momentous occasion, if there was one, that ingrained in the brains of primitive man the seed that ultimately led to the development of a larger brain mass? It cannot be competition, because all of the lower animals compete with one another for food and shelter, and yet they just evolved into better animals, still trapped in their smaller brains.

To examine the reasons for the separation of humankind from the animal we must delve far into the earliest times of paleantological history.

Whatever and whenever major natural catastrophes or cyclic events cause mass extinctions, there are always survivors. The current school of thought on the subject teaches us that all the dinosaurs died out when a massive comet struck the earth. That is a convenient solution to the puzzling problem of what became of them. There is no doubt that such an event occurred, for we see the evidence in the depositions of the material of this collision in the sedimentary strata corresponding to the applicable geological era all over the world. But that is not to say that there were no survivors. Never in earth's history has all surface life perished due to some calamity of nature. Early man has survived ice ages by living around hot springs or fortunately finding himself outside of the glacial fringe. In the case of the comet those early precursors to humankind would have defeated extinction by living in caves, where lichen, moss and fungi and underground springs provided sustenance and oxygen necessary for survival while the dust settled. These were probably our primordial ancestors.

They were also dinosaurs of a sort, belonging to a unique phylum. The niche that they had carved for themselves arose from the choice of their staple diet, the eggs of other dinosaurs, rich in protein and nutrition. The fact that they superseded the evolution of post-apocalyptic life by millions of years explains in part the huge gap between the development of human intelligence and that of the other animals including the primates. He was already smart enough to know how and where to hide, and why.

The first reptiles appeared about ninety million years before the earliest dinosaurs. There is an interim of five million years between the appearance of the first dinosaurs and the emergence of the earliest mammals. Our scenario easily satisfies the question of how humans developed such large brains when all the other animals seem trapped in their limited intelligence because of their comparatively small brains. We had a considerable head start. At the very earliest time we were relatively small egg-laying dinosaur-like creatures ourselves, not quite primates. Our legs became adapted to running bipedally to escape the threat of chase and our arms grew longer to be better able to clutch our booty while fleeing pursuit. To organize a raid on a dangerous mother raptor's cache of eggs required cunning and skill. This led to the development of a rudimentary social structure, perhaps the first, because there is in cooperation a higher probability of success.

The question of why we don't lay eggs now can be readily attributed to evolution. Examples can be found in nature. There are shark species which give birth to live young. They tend to have a long gestation and reproduce infrequently. Sharks are known to be among the oldest surviving predatory life forms on the planet, predating the first mammals by about eighty million years. And yet, there are species of sharks who do not give birth to live young, but instead deposit egg sacs that look like square pouches with a fine tendril at each corner. So it seems that giving birth to live young as opposed to eggs, or egg sacs, is a matter of divergent evolutionary trends. It is evident that sea life has remained fairly consistent in character and nature over time, of course largely because the environment does not change to the extent that the surface environment does, therefore the need for adaptation is less stringent. Yet it is obvious that even sea life can evolve creatures that experience live birth whose primordial origins no doubt lie in an egg-laying ancestry. The odds are largely in favour of surface based life evolving the same way much more rapidly.

Early hominoids had only the night to contemplate their place in the cosmic scheme of things. The clear blackness of night, especially during the phase of a new moon, unadultered by manmade smog and atmospheric pollution must have presented an awesome sight. It is no wonder then that the oldest known organized society still in existence is that of the Rosicrucians, thought to have originated with the earliest of the ancient Egyptians, and based on the study of astronomy. It is also no wonder that the religion of the ancient Egyptians was centered around the "celestial river", the Milky Way rising out of the southern Nile at night, for it is by way of the celestial river that the dead join with the "seven spirits before the throne", the seven planets there were known to exist at the time.

A rethinking of the age of the pyramids and the sphinx has given us the approximate age of the sphinx at around 25,000 years. This is based on the evidence of erosion due to streaming water from its original base which was excavated rather recently and which could only have been caused by the post-diluvial rains, an acknowledged period in geological history. The alignment of the sphinx is such that it is oriented on the thirtieth parallel with its nose pointing at exactly that latitude on the horizon when during the summer solstice the rising sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator - in other words, when it rises farthest north on the horizon which happens around June 22 in the modern calender. The three pyramids at Giza are so arranged so as to be in precise alignment with the positions of the three stars in the belt of Orion, the stellar constellation, as they were exactly 25,000 years ago at that time when Orion is positioned beside the milky way in the southern sky. Astronomers have concluded from the archeological evidence that the ancients had knowledge of precession, that is the wobble of the axis of the earth, which is how the earth behaves in motion, much like the end stage of the spinning of a top. We now know that this wobble increases and decreases in cycles in correspondence with the influence of gravity that the planets have over the earth's motion. This knowledge is definitely not the result of the ponderings of the mind of an animal.
With the discovery of modern fertilizers and the unstoppable might of the industrial revolution came a radical change in human social behaviour. No longer the hunter-gatherer, humans now earned the time to develop culture and realize their creative potential. Anatomists have recorded a general increase in bone density and overall dimensions of the human anatomy over the last three hundred years of human history. We also have enjoyed a greater longevity as a result of those advancements. The demands of an increase in the input of information and the investment in time now given over to study and contemplation has no doubt also contributed to a corresponding relatively rapid increase in cortical area necessitated by the growing need to expand the neural network.

All of this only serves to reinforce the concept of humankind's unique place in nature, its separation from the animal kingdom and the tremendous gap of intelligence that exists with respect to the intelligence of those whom we believe to be our closest living relatives in the animal kingdom, the higher primates. Indeed, insomuch as lions evolved into better lions and bears evolved into better bears, therefore apes have evolved into better apes and humans into better humans, and we have evolved into a species apart from the animal. In truth we are no more related to the ape than we are to the cat or bear. Each has evolved to meet the demands of their environment and have settled comfortably in their niche. It is apparent from what we know about human evolution that humankind has never been comfortably ensconced this way. We are not animals. We are different. We have learned to walk upright and wondered at the planets and the stars, and they have inspired us. We have survived the nuclear winters and the ice ages to become what we are today because more than 230 million years ago we smaller and weaker dinosaurs developed a taste for the concentrated proteins and nutrients of the eggs of those great lumbering beasts that then ruled the earth. No doubt the first cooked meal that our human ancestors ever ate was the omelette. The recipe: a flat rock, the stifling heat of a primordial sun, and a clumsy thief.

Logically, there is no other way to explain the huge degree of separation that humans have from any other species in what we like to call the animal kingdom. Evolution in natural selection and adaptation and the development of the far more highly evolved brain of the human compared with that of any other animal is a process requiring aeons of time more than that allotted to that period since the establishment of the first primates, which happened about 70 million years ago at a time when a strange prehominoid had already established his presence on earth even before Pangaea divided to form the continents almost 200 million years ago. When the first primates appeared, about 150 million years after the earliest mammals, our ancestors were already walking upright, and five million years later, shortly thereafter in the geological time scale, the dinosaurs became extinct. When that happened we were by then expert in our chosen field of egg procurement and no doubt contributed to their demise. The assumption here is that the human race never diverged from a phylum in common with the primate but that it is unique and distinct, otherwise we would also have evolved to become merely better apes.

One might question this idea on the basis of appearance alone, not to mention the fact that our DNA is 98% compatible with that of the gorilla. In genetics a 2% difference is huge. If we can use genetic arguments to make comparisons then it follows also that more DNA means a more complex and more advanced species. On that basis the fruit fly should be far more highly advanced than we are because their DNA has for more genetic material than that of either humans or apes. The fact is that we can't draw such conclusions.

Apes look like somewhat similar to us because there are only so many logical conformations that anatomy can take to cope with the environment. We can say that all birds look the same, or all quadrupeds look the same, or all insects look the same. In doing so we are oversimplifying the zoological process of classification. Insomuch as apes appear to be evolving into bipedal creatures whereas the simians of the South American jungle appear quite happy with their grasping tails and their arboreal lifestyle, if anything they support the very fact of the evolutionary progression which places humans clearly far ahead of the apes in the chronology of palaeontology.

[Marko]

Hello baudrunner!

I came across your theory, and I would like to hear your views on some points, and then I may be able to add more profound comment.

Originally Posted by baudrunner If you have been following my posts then you know that I do not believe that creation occurred with a Big Bang and here we are. That is too simplistic for my taste.

What do you think about the Multiverse theory? This could explain lot of things.

Originally Posted by baudrunner The TEO part two: As humans, we are mortal. It is tempting to contemplate the existence of a spiritual realm which complements the Universal sea of consciousness, a realm where the identity that we create, which opportunity this finite, corporeal harbour of the spirit affords us, can continue to maintain its being for all time. Having experienced the projection of my spiritual self from my corporeal self I am confident in declaring that this realm does indeed exist. Insomuch as the spirit exists then it follows that transmigration of the spirit is a fact of life and that the transmigratory experience allows us to develop our spiritual selves to that state where we are ultimately released from the cycle of life and death to remain in that realm. It is up to us to choose to evolve spiritually. Choose life.

I dont want to draw any premature conclusions,so I will again ask you a question: Is your theory based on the mind-body dualism, or you see them as different manifestation of the same thing?
Also, I would like to hear what do you think about the afterlife? In your theory, is there reincarnation,pure consciousness or nothing after we die?

Regards!

[baudrunner]

Hi, Marko!

Thanks for giving the post your attention Marko, and welcome. We need more good heads to instill some sense into these discussions.

What do you think about the Multiverse theory? This could explain lot of things.

My thoughts on the Multiverse theory are well known to some of the regular posters. In short, I am a practical thinker. I will accept m-theory as representative of the common beginning for all of the different manifestations of energy if for the idea alone, and then throw in a little of divlewing's wave convergence/reinforcement theory whereby we may be able to describe the quantum niches that are encountered by the various conformations and interactions of those vibrating strings to produce all the force and matter particles which give rise to reality as we know it. Having said that, the Multiverse theory becomes implausible and impractical. All the Universes that could be realized must then also be here, in limited number no doubt, not in imaginary realms which subscribe to rules of physics different from what we know and from each other because they can't in any practical sense, but in forms we perhaps do not understand but can yet access. You see, each of those quantum niches represent a composite of multi-wave string resonance which have encountered threshold energies where their organisation can be maintained in time, through their creation of a loci wherein a spec motion is displayed and which contribute to mass and time through velocity. The different thresholds are represented by discrete particles which further encounter additional organisation into the elements, which in turn encounter further organisation into life, the reason for which I have discussed in part one of my TOE. This is the only way that it happened, and that it could have happened. Mathematics does not prove anything. It can easily be used to explain untruths, as evidenced by Einstein's static Universe theory. I'm afraid that this Universe is the only one that exists. In my posts on Particle and String Fundamentals I provide links to the Fermilab site wherein it is stated that the existence of other dimensions has never been proved and no evidence exists of them. it's all just math, Marko.

I dont want to draw any premature conclusions,so I will again ask you a question: Is your theory based on the mind-body dualism, or you see them as different manifestation of the same thing? Also, I would like to hear what do you think about the afterlife? In your theory, is there reincarnation,pure consciousness or nothing after we die?

My theory is based on experience and deep insight. I realize that the entire scope of existence encapsulated by the Universe is not representative only of what we feel and see before us. We life forms in this physical realm occupy a narrow band in the entire spectrum of existence.

I believe that God existed once as you and I, perhaps a billion or more years ago, and you will read this in another post of mine. I see that this physical realm is not of His creation but that His realm is a deconstruction of this one, and where all the energies that comprise the corporeal, which gave us the opportunity to evolve the spirit as a higher state of existence and which is a legitimate part of the "Universal Unconscious" whose manifestation is a predisposition to the grand idea that begat it all, was separated from those minimal amount of energies required to sustain the unique identity of the individual self. In a few hundred million years we might very well develop the technologies required to achieve that.

Our belief structure has imposed, perhaps subconsciously, a type of qualification ritual related to religion etc. whereby we are required to be qualified to enter that spiritual domain. It is true that matters pertaining to the physical have no equivalent in that realm so an adjustment of our way of thinking is genuinely required before we divest ourselves of our corporeality. I believe that transmigration of the spirit, ie. reincarnation, is a fact of life, but not a given for all who are alive. I like to remind people that we may all share the same reality but we do not necessarily all live on the same plane. We have to be aware of the potential before we can attain it.

To summarize, insomuch as there exists a spiritual realm, one might call it another dimension or another Universe, but in reality everything occupies the same Universe. We just have to learn to look beyond the obvious. It is quite conceivable that that which comprise the spiritual realm are pure subharmonics of those quantum niches of which we are made, or, we might represent those subharmonics and that spiritual realm the pure resonant essence of the fundamental. Either way, it would have had the same beginning.

[Marko]

Originally Posted by baudrunner I'm afraid that this Universe is the only one that exists.

Imagine this problem:

We now live in the Stelliferous era. There are two possible scenarios for the future of our universe- Big Freeze and Big Crunch. Well, most of the observations and data are implicating that Big Crunch is redundant, so it seems most reasonable to go like this in the future: Degenerate era, Black hole era, Dark era – the Big Freeze scenario. For the sake of this argument, lets pretend that we are in the Dark era, and that we can wait infinite amount of time. What do you think, will we witness some quantum transition and reincarnation of the universe? I think that this is possible without some heavy violations of the laws of nature. Then it would be like this : Big Bang.....Big Freeze....Big Bang....Big Freeze... infinite number of times. One universe, but in infinite number of oscillations. No Multiverse, but permanent transformations of our universe?

In this situation, things would become very interesting!

Best wishes!

Marko

[baudrunner]

Marko,

I will refer you to my TOE: part IV.

In a nutshell, and incidentally I have expanded the following hypothesis in other posts elsewhere on this site, the expanding Universe is in perpetual motion. That is, we can draw inferrence from the generally accepted facts that a) it had a beginning, and b) it is expanding and that this expansion is accelerating therefore we conclude c) that it is a process which is in perpetual motion: a + b -> c. This can also be analyzed from the point of view that a perpetual motion process which had a beginning must necessarily be an accelerating one. Derivation of the premise c above, then, is a simple exercise in logic.

Having said that, we turn to my TOE: part IV, which examines the event at that moment when the acceleration attains light speed. Then, infinite mass is encountered in a place where time stands still. What we are left with is a "black crust" with which all the matter in this cycle of the creation will eventually collide, leaving a spatial void. That is the end of this cycle of the Universe. On the other side of that crust is a new creation process, the next cycle, with a beginning where energy, mass and time is newly created from a still point of reference and which is pretty much a repeat of this cycle and the one before it, and so on, to the beginning as I have described it in the post that you have read. So you can see that the periphery of the Universe is a creation front, which continues to expand and create and which accelerates as it expands and which has the property of a wave, where the end of every cycle is represented by a black crust of infinited density and where time stands still, only to propagate for perpetuity.

The wave is analogous to any other, for example that produced by a tuning fork. Just let your imagination superimpose the "black crusts" of our infinite mass where time stands still over the dark bands in the demonstration, the only difference being that only the wave front is advancing and the blank bands would be static spheres, since the initial event that started it all was the emission of a single front. Also, since matter and energy represents the hysteresis of the trailing portion of the cycle and since all matter eventually collides with a crust most of the cycles in between these crusts should be devoid of anything but space, except for those near the leading front.

tuning fork analogy

[Marko]

Originally Posted by baudrunner That is the end of this cycle of the Universe. On the other side of that crust is a new creation process, the next cycle, with a beginning where energy, mass and time is newly created from a still point of reference and which is pretty much a repeat of this cycle and the one before it, and so on, to the beginning as I have described it in the post that you have read.

Dont you think that in this situation, with infinite oscillating mechanism something like this is possible:if the universe faces a infinite number of oscillations,why there wouldnt be a infinite number of oscillations of our life, of ourselves?



I am an atheist, I dont believe in reincarnation (In my opinion,mind and body are different manifestation of the same thing), but here is what I had on my mind:

Here I give you some extracts from my previous post.

Note that when I say "other,distant universes" this can be in the Multiverse form,and in the form of infinite number of oscillations of our universe-the only one universe. So, for the sake of the argument, I will use Occams Razor and this other universes will be in the form of infinite number of oscillations of our universe-the only one universe.



This is from the thread PLAYING WITH THE CONSTANTS QUOTE/ From my perspective, every „semi-reasonable“ theory of afterlife possibility should be based on this: If afterlife is possible, in some distant universe,after extremely huge number of accidents (bigger than 10¹ºººººº maybe!!), it can only be possible in the form of our unique „real existence base of level 1“ , with „our number of real existence“ which we possess now.Only if we could have identical DNA we have now + identical environment influences we had in our development from the womb,only then afterlife, or „cycle of life“ is possible. Then, this process is continued until infinity.It would be like this: When we die,we lose our real existence development (memory included),but we are born again after the series of a