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Is there really a "now?" Think about it. Time moves from past to future. We can divide this process up into discreet units (gradient). This was first done with the calendar for measuring days and the passage of seasons. Then we decided to apply smaller gradients to days and began with sundials and shadows or hourglasses and "beads" of sand in order to break the day into "hours" and "minutes." Some used similar sized candles in churches and temples by tracking the number of "times" the candles burned away.
The Standard units for time are called "seconds."
yoctosecond 10^-24 s
zeptosecond 10^-21 s
attosecond 10^−18 s shortest time now measurable
femtosecond 10^−15 s pulse time on fastest lasers
picosecond 10^−12 s
nanosecond 10^−9 s time for molecules to fluoresce
microsecond 10^−6 s
millisecond 0.001 s
second 1 s SI base unit
minute 60 seconds
hour 60 minutes
day 24 hours
week 7 days Also called sennight
fortnight 14 days 2 weeks
lunar month 27.2–29.5 days Various definitions of lunar month exist.
month 28–31 days
quarter 3 months
year 12 months
common year 365 days 52 weeks + 1 day
leap year 366 days 52 weeks + 2 days
tropical year 365.24219 days average
Gregorian year 365.2425 days average
Olympiad 4 year cycle
lustrum 5 years Also called pentad
decade 10 years
Indiction 15 year cycle
generation 17–25 years approximate
jubilee (Biblical) 50 years
century 100 years
millennium 1,000 years
exasecond 1018 s roughly 32 billion years, more than twice
the age of the universe on current estimates
Planck time = time required for light to travel, in a vacuum, a distance of 1 Planck length = 10^-44 s. It is the smallest amount of time that could possibly make any sense in our perception of reality because light is the fastest transmitting medium from which any of our measuring devices can detect or interpret data.
So, even if our reality is not "granular" (gradient) our ability to perceive it -- is granular -- of course depending on your definition of "is."
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Don't mess with my understanding of the word "is."
Or my perception of "now."
Every morning before I'm off to work I take a minute to clear my mind and just think, "here and now."
It works well for me.
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Well, okay.
I'm a glutton for punishment.
So I suppose you can mess with time and space a little.
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Did I tell ya I dreampt once that Max Planck was my science teacher?
I and every other student in that class loved science, he was a great teacher.
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Our capacity to find answers is predicated upon the plasticity of our mind and the perimeters, the dimensions to which it can reach progressively. By concentrating on a dimensionless point, we can transcend time and space, be allwheres at once and the greatest distance specifically. This is experiential, not allegorical or rhetorical.
When a person experiences samadhi, the ubiquity of "now" permeates the whole Universe.
The Sadhu of Love, Yogi SatyaPremAbunda, entreats his disciples:
"Fret not, little Grasshopper, for dharma shall prevail. Do not try to persuade the truly disingenuous of the ubiquity of love for such efforts are as futile as the woodpecker arguing with a mountain of granite about the sublimity of soft kisses that will melt it into liquid and disolves it into the ocean."
http://twitter.com/MysticalSadhu
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In other words, what I hear Sadhu saying "is",
There IS only NOW.
Unbounded by the chains of our thoughts which create
all that other "stuff".
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Love the question. My answer is the opposite of Sadhu. There is no NOW. At least not in this reality.
Here's my view:
Our interpretation of the present is really based on our short term memory, which lasts some 30 seconds or so. If we had no short term memory, we would not be able to think, plan, procreate, remember to eat, etc. In short, we would perish.
However, what is in short term memory is not NOW, it is the past. Now can only be defined as an instant. Or, in mathematical terms, it is t=0, or the limit as "delta t" approaches zero at t=0. As an absolute, or an infinite concept, it could only exist in an infinite universe, which also much be continuous. As I "tend" to believe that our universe is not infinite and is bound by the attributes of the Program, the smallest unit of time around the concept of NOW would be a clock cycle of the Program. If it is the Planck time, then it is 10E-43 seconds (although it could be other resolutions). In any case, it has a duration, so it can't be instantaneous or absolute. Therefore, there is no NOW, only our PERCEPTION of now, which is our very short term memory.
That said, in the other realm, where consciousness "probably" goes after death, everything is NOW, as Sadhu said. That is because there is no physical stuff, no brain, no short term memory, therefore no need for time as a dimension. Hence, everything is NOW.
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That's an interesting explanation, Jim. Given the discreet nature of the universe that science has thus determined, delta t can indeed never reach an actual zero value. One thing I see coming up again and again in these forum threads is the nature of whatever meta existence is responsible for or sustains our current virtual reality existence. My own take is that there is no such thing as any actual material existence that resembles in any remote fashion our own universe. Elaborate and rich experiential programmed realities are all virtual constructs. There is likely a vast hierarchy of sub realities, often times having radically different characteristics. At the most bedrock level is some elemental computational substrate - a best candidate for what that might be is cellar automata. The cellar automata iterated and refined upon itself to where consciousness eventually arose. Consciousness gave rise to virtual realities for above all consciousness craves stimuli - experience. (We are no different in that respect.) Consciousness invented virtual realties to give rise to on-going unfolding of experience and growth. From what I understand now, it is imminently logical that consciousness precedes the existence of any universe. A universe, a virtual reality, is a complex tapestry that requires intricate design. When consciousness arose was trillions upon trillions upon trillions of iterations bygone. Why does God declare Himself the Great I Am? Having neither beginning or end? Can you recall distinctly when your consciousness became self aware? (I suspect that God can't either.) Of course none of that is really helpful in answering the truly ultimate question of "why is there something instead of nothing". Sorry, I got nothing on that one. But cellar automata, based on a minimal binary state requirement, might be how the something self organized over immense iterations (cellar automata are highly constrained compared to the molecular biology involved in a cell, so meaningful evolution over immense iterations is actually conceivable). First replicating creature spawned in life simulatorFirst self-replicating mathematical creature
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jim wrote:Love the question. My answer is the opposite of Sadhu. There is no NOW. At least not in this reality.
Here's my view:
Our interpretation of the present is really based on our short term memory, which lasts some 30 seconds or so. If we had no short term memory, we would not be able to think, plan, procreate, remember to eat, etc. In short, we would perish.
However, what is in short term memory is not NOW, it is the past. Now can only be defined as an instant. Or, in mathematical terms, it is t=0, or the limit as "delta t" approaches zero at t=0. As an absolute, or an infinite concept, it could only exist in an infinite universe, which also much be continuous. As I "tend" to believe that our universe is not infinite and is bound by the attributes of the Program, the smallest unit of time around the concept of NOW would be a clock cycle of the Program. If it is the Planck time, then it is 10E-43 seconds (although it could be other resolutions). In any case, it has a duration, so it can't be instantaneous or absolute. Therefore, there is no NOW, only our PERCEPTION of now, which is our very short term memory.
That said, in the other realm, where consciousness "probably" goes after death, everything is NOW, as Sadhu said. That is because there is no physical stuff, no brain, no short term memory, therefore no need for time as a dimension. Hence, everything is NOW. And if nothing "is" - or at least isn't now - i. e. even the person or thing you are looking at, is just a perception of something that only "was" ...
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