Kevin's Watch

ur-monkey wrote: Suppose it all gets a bit chaos theory at some point. A butterful flaps its wings in Tibet...How curious the idea that chaos theory and karma could be linked...?

dANdeLION wrote:Well, while you're looking for it, can you tell me who/what (Ms.) Victory at Sea is?

ur-monkey wrote:I like to think of it as a domino effect - karmic dominoes, if you like! It's a wonderful example of the complex interplay of cause and effect in the universe...and how quickly and profoundly energy can change form.

I can't believe that no Limey have understood my joke yet. Ah well, perhaps they did

Murrin wrote:

It's nearly enough to make me believe in 'intelligent design'.

Yeah, there are some pretty narrow margins involved, and if we were on the only planet like this, orbiting the only star like ours, then I'd just have to say it was too damn odd to be coincidence, but, uh.... Well, but:

Robert Francis Kennedy wrote:'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.'

Let's go for a ride wrote:

Murrin wrote:What existed before was entirely unlike what is here now, even down to space-time itself. So, logically, the universe outside must have some other property analogous to what we call space-time but in some other (completely incomprehensible, to us) form.
And of course, if there is a system so simple as an inifinitely repeating universe (the big bang-big crunch-big bang thing) then it would be the way you suggest, yes. Some more recent theories suggest a completely different outcome of our own universe, however - one in particular (can't remember much about it) suggests that once the universe's cooling/expansion reaches a certain point the fabric of space-time itself will come apart (returning to my first post, if this universe was simply a result of some quantum event in a larger existance, then the expansion and final dissolution of our universe would be the dissipation of the energy released by that event).

The Esmer wrote:
Primal Scream

www.space.com/scienceastronomy/big_bang ... 40601.html


An astronomer has turned observations of the early universe into a sound clip that represents a primal scream from the first million years after the Big Bang.

Whittle said that most people think the theoretical Big Bang starts out with a huge explosion, then it gets quieter with time.

"In fact, the Big Bang starts out completely silent," Whittle said. "The expansionis purely radial theres no sideways motion. There are no pressure waves. What they are, are density variations on all scales, everywhere."

The universe expanded rapidly after the Big Bang, during a period called inflation. Later, it continued to expand at a slower rate as it cooled enough for gas to condense and form stars. All this time, density variations contributed characteristics to the sound that Whittle's team has determined.

The Esmer wrote:

The Esmer wrote:syntax - def:The rules governing construction or formation of an orderly system of information

“Reality” as it is perceived,

Syntax

A man staring at his equations
said that the universe had a beginning.
There had been an explosion, he said.
A bang of bangs, and the universe was born.
And it is expanding, he said.
He had even calculated the length of its life:
Ten billion revolutions around the sun.
The entire globe cheered;
They found his calculations to be science.
None thought that by proposing that the universe began,
the man had merely mirrored the syntax of his mother tongue;
a syntax which demands beginnings, like birth,
and developments, like maturation,
and ends, like death, as statements as facts.
The universe began,
and it is getting old, the man assured us,
and it will die, like all things die,
like he himself died after confirming mathematically
the syntax of his mother tongue.

....instead of as it may be “in itself.” Isaac Bonewits


The Other Syntax

Did the universe really begin?
Is the theory of the big bang true?
These are not questions, though they sound that they are.
Is the syntax that requires beginnings, developments
and ends as statements of fact the only syntax that exists?
Thats the real question.
There are other syntaxes.
There is one, for example, which demands that varieties
of intensity be taken as facts.
In that syntax nothing begins and nothing ends;
thus birth is not a clean, clear-cut event,
but a specific type of intensity,
and so is maturation, and so is death.
A man of that syntax, looking over his equations, finds that
he has calculated enough varieties of intensity
to say with authority
that the universe never began
and will never end,
but that it has gone, and is going, and will go
through endless fluctuations of intensity.
That man could very well conclude that the universe itself
is the chariot of intensity
and that one can board it
to journey through changes without end.
He will conclude all that, and much more,
perhaps without ever realizing
that he is merely confirming
the syntax of his mother tongue.
prologue - The Active Side of Infinity

this universal process as metamorphosis: this involves a whole being in rhythmic growth, a pulsing consciousness creating and destroying by transformations, much as the caterpillar turns into the butterfly; or as the flower expands from a bud, contracts in the ovary, expands once more into fruit, and contracts into seed. This is fundamental, and can be seen everywhere in the cosmos, with stars exploding into supernovae and imploding into black holes. It is suggestive of the breathing in and out of universes.

Dissipate how, and to where?

Fist and Faith wrote:But there's no possibility of finding evidence of anything pre-BB, because the BB reduced everything to the most basic units possible. Units so basic that they are not capable of retaining any information of any sort.

How does the information get put back in? Where did it go? And could you see a "BangCrunchBang" as "fluctuations of intensity", and satisfy the "no beginning, no end" question somewhat? Consider if "everything" is always contained within itself, then the "energy" may be dispersed initially, but in theory would not dissipate, but merely "re-assimilate" with "everything else", that when the "Crunch" time came, all of the "original" energy is still technically "present" , and can therefore "eternally" power the "Bang", and the "endless fluctuations", or "breathing" of the universe? Consider if "time", which can be construed as a "state of all matter" and its current "location" in relation to the rest, like a "snaphot" of the "progress and motion" of the universe at any given instant, be then qualified as a particular "variety of intensity " of those "fluctuations"?

"one need not necessarily recognize the existence of any special God or a deity. One need but worship the spirit of living nature, and try to identify oneself with it. . . . Be what he may, once that a student abandons the old and trodden highway of routine, and enters upon the solitary path of independent thought -- Godward -- he is a Theosophist; an original thinker, a seeker after the eternal truth with 'an inspiration of his own' to solve the universal problems." -- The Theosophist, October 1879, p. 6

since I just found this recently, and it's something I've always said, it proves your theory that we will always find what we're looking for:

it is only by studying the various great religions and philosophies of humanity, by comparing them dispassionately and with an unbiased mind, that men can hope to arrive at the truth. It is especially by finding out and noting their various points of agreement that we may achieve this result. For no sooner do we arrive -- either by study, or by being taught by someone who knows -- at their inner meaning, than we find, almost in every case, that it expresses some great truth in Nature.
www.theosociety.org/pasadena/

Actually Factually Accurate wrote:Everything Reality required to be perceived

And Described (Named) by the perceiver

Was provided by Reality Itself

And Everything the perceiver required

To Describe Reality to himself

Was provided by Reality Itself

Only to Describe Itself...

Ted Nugent has an album titled "Intensities in Ten Cities"; 

Chuck Norris reportedly likes it intensely.