We can experience timelessness now, but in order to experience eternity, we would need to have conscious awareness of every moment from the big bang to the end of the universe.
I do not think it is possible to experience anything after the organic brain, which is demonstrably the source of awareness and sense of self, ceases functioning.
Finn, there seems to be some fundamental unit of time in the universe which governs the speed of light and other physical processes such as chemical reactions and orbits of celestial objects.
These processes take place whether or not human beings are around to witness them. We invent arbitrary units of time in order to divide past, present and future up into useful quantities, but doing so has no effect on the actual flow of time, only on our perceptions of it.
Terry
If there is a fundamental unit of time (irrespective of what it does) then time is divided with or without the intervention of humans.
truth
So, Terry, it seems that you equate "eternity" with "everlasting". I do too, but in a different way. I see see both eternity and everlasting as a never-ending on-going NOW (or now-ing), artificially divided into useful units.
i see time as the relationship of objects in space, which apears to a living being as representative of a direction, because we function in a linear way.
'Eternity' as a religious concept - place, i find meaningless;
however as a temporal term it represents all time - that is 'all' the relative spacial relationships in the universe.
death then, is nothing; everything 'else' is eternity!
Well, Bo. That got a reluctant smile from me.
'nothing' is eternal, everything else is finite,
truth
Letty, it seems to me that BOTH life and death are eternal/eternity.
Twyvel, since everything is both "emptiness and form", they are all simultaneously eternal AND infinite.
coluber, et. al. Would appreciate your input:
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=21487&highlight=
I'll check back later. gotta make a phone call.
Well If you put it that way JLNobody,
The emptiness of form is eternal an infinite, yet is neither temporal or atemporal nor finite or infinite....
truth
I'm thinking, I'm thinking.
Finn, the clock may tick whether or not human beings are around to hear it, but we are the ones who put 12 numbers on its face.
JLN, the NOW of most human beings is limited to a century or less. It may seem eternal to me as long as I am alive to experience it, but others will observe that my NOW apparently comes to a distinct end when I die.
But since I cannot presume to have a privileged place in either time or space, the NOW of any being who has ever lived or will ever exist is just as real and just as "present" as mine. Perhaps all NOWS coexist in a higher dimension of space-time.
The realization of "time" can be probabilistic also, and there can be some probability that time does not elapse.
What I mean, JL, is that the concept of "eternity" is ONLY linguistic, it is ONLY semantic, it is only a concept as far as we are mortal beings with a specific outlook on life. It does not exist if we are immortal, it does not exist if we are omniscient. It is ONLY subjective. Concepts like infinity are real because they carry one definition no matter who talks about them (or if anyone even does). "Eternity" is like "tommorrow" - it is a linguistic placeholder that means nothing in and of itself and changes all the time.
Most of these responses are highly intellectualized and difficult to understand and to tell the truth, over my head. Here is my experience, and it may not be clear to you and even sem absurd, but it's not theory, it's what I've seen, and it's as well as I can express it at this time.
In our experience, it seems like we live in time, psychological time. That is, there is a movement through time, a feeling that we exist and move in a field of time. This is simply everyday consciousness.
It appears that there is a germ of our being, an ego or soul that has a past, a present, and a future. This ego travels through time like a boat moves on a river, a river of time.
Now, what if this ego is merely memory constructing an illusion of a substantial self, i.e., the ego. It would be something like a neon light which moves and gives the illusion that something is moving along the light, when in fact it's just the on and off of a series of lights giving the illusion of something moving along the light. The illusion of the barber pole that gives the illusion of something moving up the pole is similar.
What if there is just the flow of time with memory constructing the illusion of a self, then in reality we are not really a boat on a river, we are the river itself or a spring constantly renewing itself. "Life springs eternal."
So underneath this construct of time through which we feel we're traveling through—the illusion—is the flowing, the constantly renewing being without the illusion of a self. In that state of mind there is stillness, and that stillness is eternity.
Eternity is outside the field of time. The illusion is that there is a substantial self which travels through time, but when the self is seen as an illusion, then psychological time is transcended and the stillness of eternity is experienced.
When you see the illusion, then you can live an everyday life without taking yourself that seriously. You stop crusading. You are able to tolerate others without feeling the need to convert them to your religion because your religion is not based on belief. Your religion has, in effect, undercut itself, i.e., it doesn't take itself seriously. It can't become fanatical because humor has become a part of it.
eternity is not something that can be 'defined'. eternity is, forever. never ending. it's beyond time since we, as humans, have no concept of eternity because we have an end. everything around us has an end, whether that end is a very long time from now or not. therefore, until we are beyond the reaches of 'time' as we know it, we wont be able to comprehend true infinity.
to comprehend the infinite we must become infinite ourselves.
How can eternity be both forever and beyond time? Forever is a measure of time.
