The Arithmetic of Allized page 43

The Death Of Forever
A New Future for Human Consciousness
Darryl Reanney (1995 Edition)

Page 25

" One of the most important branches of physics is called Quantum theory, because it deals with the tiny packages of energy (quanta ) that comprise the subatomic micro world. Light which we normally think of as an electro magnetic wave, can also be visualized as a stream of tiny particles-quanta-called photons. Conversely , Subatomic entities like electrons are commonly considered as tiny particles but under certain experimental conditions they exhibit a wave like character. This wave / particle duality is a cornerstone of quantum physics
The bizarre side of quantum theory comes when we try to figure out what a quantum particle like an electron actually is. One thing it is not is a particle in the ordinary sense of a speck of matter which occupies both a defined amount of space and a defined position in space Physicists in the 1920s and 1930s discovered that it is impossible to determine the position and the velocity of an electron at the same time. This is not a flaw in in technique. Rather, the electron, in a fundamental sense, does not have a specific position

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and velocity the uncertainty is an in built feature of our real world, not a fault of our instruments
"A deeper understanding  revealed the quixotic fact that a particle like an electron has only a certain mathematical probability of being found in any one spot.This probability has a ripple or wave-like form, but it is more like a 'crime wave'- a statistical distribution - than a physical undulation
" The basis of matter , then , when examined intimately, dissolves into a ghostlike intangibility ; the quantum wave is a  mathematical wraith , a ripple of possibilities."
"The quantum wave  only  has this  wraithlike character when it is not being looked at. When an  observer intrudes, when a scientist for example, tries to measure the properties of an electron the, the ghostly wave function collapses.The particle becomes real it can now be specifically assigned a fixed location, with a probability of 1,i.ea certainty
This is a staggering conclusion .It means that consciousness is not an observer in the dynamics of the universe; it is an active participant. Consciousness , literally and factually, creates reality , by summoning forth material particles,
definable certainties, from the elusive quantum wave .Objective 'reality' in this perspective falters  on the brink of a profound ambiguity. Subject and object; mind  and matter are not separate;  they interact and interlock."

When the thats away the  how's will play said Zed Aliz to the scribe .
The scribe writ simply A cat is said to have said, 'it is said, that a cat has nine lives'.

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"…In the perspective of physics the past does not cease to exist simply because our awareness moves beyond it"

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" The laws of physics have no inbuilt time asymmetery.They work just as well in the future-to-past sense as the past-to-future sense. We see this clearly when we look at the quantum wave .The wave is a ripple of possibility, not a real thing It has neither past nor future; it can be described as travelling forwards in time and backward in time with equal validity. This is true not just of the quantum wave. Subatomic particles exhibit the same disregard for time. In the last half century physics has unearthed a garden of so-called 'fundamental particles' - mesons, positrons, neutrinos, etc. For each of these particles of ordinary matter there exists an antiparticle of equal mass but opposite 'charge' (antimatter)

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According to modern physics, both the quantum wave and the physical particles that constitute matter are symmetric with respect to the direction of time. The spacetime landscape , at least as far as quanta are concerned, can be crossed with equal ease.

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'…1923'…'Kahil Gibran'…              " Forget not that I shall come back to you
               A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and form for
              another body
               A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another
               woman shall bear me"

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"At this stage in the evolution of our minds, our experience of reality is like that of a shadow, a limited, impoverished ghost-image projected into the three dimensions of our present (average) mode of consciousness by the invisible (to us ) four-dimensional 'truth structure' that lies beyond and behind it, extended in time as we are extended in space. I cannot stress too bly that it is this four-dimensional truth structure which is the universe's reality. What we call objective reality, our everyday commonsense world, is but a dim phantom construct of the timeless hyperstructure that exists, in or perhaps as, the 'mind of God', to use religious imagery. Yet, just as our present three-dimensional state of consciousness evolved from the one dimensional mode of our remote ancestors, so there is abundant evidence that the four-dimensional mode is struggling to be born in the homo sapiens species at this human moment in the cosmic story we are almost there."
"…This seems to bring us to the end of our quest.Yet one problem remains and like all final problems, it is the greatest one of all, sticking like a thorn in the vision of hope which the inner eye holds out to us. The cosmos is a spacetime continium and in this regard, the poet's intuition of a timeless state of consciousness merely

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reflects the facts of the physical universe as science depicts them.However timelessness implies foreverness and the same science that reveals spacetime to us also tells us that the universe will one day end in fire or ice.
The death of forever. The fact that the very cosmos in which we live is 'mortal' This was where this journey started and it is from this existentialist crisis of truly universal proportions that this book gets its name.At the finish of the race, we seem to run head-on into one last, unresolvable paradox, just as light was dawning. Something that seems to make our intuition of timelessness as insubstantial as a lovely vision, dreamed by a dreamer in a quiet time but dissolving like a snowflake at first contact with brute fact.
Is this really the case? In chapter 7, I discussed a recent model of spacetime put forward by Stephen Hawking"
"…Hawking built a model of the cosmos which he called the 'no boundary' model because in his theory, time does not begin at a 'point' nor does it end in one (Figure 7.3.).From the earlier perspec-tive of Chapter 7, this model seemed from many points of view unsatisfactory, because it used imaginary time, not real time. Chapter 9 gives the model a new source of credibility for it is characteristic of the inner eye that it can disregard the 'commonsense' aspects of experience and penetrate to the inner logic of nature.
Thus when the inner eye 'sees a circle, a mandela, and recog-nises therein some form of flawnessness, it is, at a different level, seeing the endless number 3.1415926…It may be significant we call such numbers trancendental. Indeed, science builds its deepest truths using numbers that are, in an important sense, 'illogical'. The square root of minus one is imaginary (it is in fact, part of the number system Hawking uses to build his model ). The square root of 2 is irrational. And so it goes on.
Moreover, the word 'imaginary', like all symbols invented by the conceptual mind, confuses the issue by implying that such numbers are in some way 'unreal' This is fundamentally false. As Hawking's colleague
mathematician, Roger Penrose, says cryptically:

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It is important to stress the fact that these 'imaginary' numbers are no less real than the real numbers we have become accustomed to…the relationship between such real numbers and physical reality is not as direct or compelling as it may at first seem to be…
We find a similar situation in particle physics where the so-called ultimate building blocks of matter (quarks) are given such mythic names as 'strange', charmed etc. At this deep level of reality, the distinction between scientist and poet breaks down and scien-tists use the language of song and parable in their intuitive attempts to seek out the basic structures of the world.
To return to my point, I find it fascinating that Hawking himself  recognises that his use of imaginary time, far from being a ruse or  trick, may in fact be a door to a higher order of insight. Listen to his own words:

This might suggest that the so-called imaginary time is really the
real time and that what we call real time is just a figment of our
imaginations. In real time, the universe has a beginning and an
end at singularities that form a boundary to space- time and at
which the laws of science break down. But in imaginary time,
there are no singularities or boundaries. So maybe what we call
imaginary time is really more basic, and what we call real is just
an idea that we invent to help us describe what we think the universe is like.

This goes to the heart of the matter for the defining quality of the inner eye in its most highly evolved form is that it can 'see' the deepest hidden  structures of reality without impediment. If timeless-ness is an authentic feature of consciousness - and the evidence I have summarised in this book very bly suggests that it is - then consciousness may just as well 'exist' in what the mathematicians call 'imaginary time as in 'real time. Indeed it may be precisely because the ego-self lives in real time that it 'knows', death. While it may be precisely because consciousness lives in imaginary time that it 'knows' eternity.
I now want to build on Hawking's model, but I want to do so in a particular way. I want to use it in the poetic sense of a metaphor not in the rigid sense of a mathematical model. There are three reasons for this:first, Hawking's model presupposes that the uni-

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verse is closed (that spacetime is positively curved ) and this is as yet unproven. Second I do not believe Hawking's model (despite the credentials of its creator) is science's last word on the subject. Third, we are, by any definition, crossing into uncharted psychological  territory by thinking about human hopes for the future in terms of imaginary time or any other mathematical representation of time that science may discover.
The key feature of the Hawking metaphor is that time closes back upon itself to form a loop. This is why
in this metaphor we cannot talk of a beginning or an end to time,for a circle has neither except for the arbitrary points we choose to mark on it. It may be no accident that the inner eye has for long sensed that reality is eternal, for in this higher-order understanding, foreverness is restored to its ancient position as the foundation stone of consciousness.
The most fascinating consequence of the 'loop of time ' meta-phor is summed up in Figure 7.3. Here, we see evolution starting with the 'north pole'(the Big Bang) and progressing around the circle to 'now', represented by the 18 th line of latitude (say )

At this point Alizzed said the '18^th line of latitude' ocurrs on the 18^th line down of page 212
The scribe writ, not including  title heading The Death of Forever

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From this 'now' perspective, we can look 'back' at our past, hidden behind the 'southward' spacetime rim .Yet this is illusionary , a hangover of the flawed way we look at time through the ego-self window. The loop of time metaphor shows that when we look forward into the future we are also looking back into the past because the arrow of time traces out the full circumference of the circle, eventually coming back to itself.
In this 'song of reality'. The distinction between past and future vanishes. The process of 'seeing'is then symetrical in both directions. In  T.S. Elliot's apt words:
                  Time present and time past
         are both perhaps present in time future
         and time future contained in time past

If this is what consciousness 'sees' it is 'timeless' in a deeper and different sense than we ever dreamed possible. In real time, such a closing of the loop would play havoc with our notions of causality, cause becoming effect and effect cause."
"…The unexpected feature of the loop of time metaphor is that a signal from the future becomes a signal from the past. Nothing is

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wholly new, for information is always travelling where it has been before. This is why I find the loop of time parable so satisfying. It resonates deeply with a poem cited earlier - T.S. Eliot's 'Little Gidding':                    we shall not cease from exploration
         and the end of our exploring
         will be to arrive where we started
         and know the place for the first time          through the unknown, remembered gate
         when the last of earth left to discover
         is that which was the beginning
The famous line 'know the place for the first time' is critically significant in the context of this book."

"…It is said of the renaissance artist Michaelangelo that he approached a block of marble believing that the perfect sculpture he sought to create already existed in the unhewn stone. The artistic act was thus an act of discovery not creation, and the long hours of painstaking work were devoted to revealing what was already there."
"…This is I believe, the stamp of an authentically creative act : one discovers what is already true.
When a human being 'sees' a pre-existing truth, already known to

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the cosmos, in a very deep sense, the universe recognises part of itself,comprehending it at a higher level of understanding. This kind of incremental knowing is the self-realization of the cosmos
In other words, there is a deep knowing about consciousness that is utterly distinct from mere intellectual comprehension. This deep knowing is a remembering of what is already there. One becomes, in the full sense, conscious of what one has always subconsciously been aware of. In terms Eliot's poem the 'gate'is remembered even though it is unknown. We arrive before we started and know the place for the first time!
We do not create the future, we discover it.
Roger Penrose captures something of the flavour of the mode of knowing in The Emperor's New Mind, when he says:
         Recall my proposal that consciousness, in essence, is the
        'seeing' of a necessary truth: and that it may represent some
         kind of actual contact with Plato's world of ideal mathemati-
         cal concepts. Recall that Plato's world is itself timeless. The
         perception of Platonic truth carries no actual information and
         there would be no actual contradiction involved if such a
         conscious perception were even to be
         propagated backwards
         in time
The loop of time metaphor goes a long way towards explaining a puzzle that many readers will have picked up as they worked their way through the pages of this book.
The argument I put forward in Chapters 8 and 9 "

At another moment  in the now of know time the scribe noted that the line containing
' The argument I put forward in
Chapters 8 and 9' had 9 further words in the line.
As in
         ' that ego cages consciousness, is not a novel one -'

Further the scribe added  8 x 9 is  72

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" The argument I put forward in
Chapters 8 and 9, that ego cages consciousness, is not a novel one -
it is an ancient tenet of many religions. In particular, much of what I said in those chapters could be described as a scientific interpreta-tion of a set of  beliefs mapped out in the Hindu Upanishads thousands of years ago. Hindu belief, for example, sees the ego as a deception (maya) which seperates the ' I ' from the ultimate. When the mirage of ego is dissolved, the underlying union is made plain -
Thou art That  (tat tvam asi) is the illuminating recognition of this oneness. This is essentially packages of energy  (quanta ) that comprise the subatomic micro world. Light which we normally think of as an electro magnetic wave, can also be visualized as a stream of tiny particles-quanta-called photons. Conversely , Subatomic entities like electrons are commonly considered as tiny particles but under certain experimental conditions they exhibit a wave like character. This wave / particle duality is a cornerstone of quantum physics
The bizarre side of quantum theory comes when we try to figure out what a quantum particle like an electron actually is. One thing it is not is a particle in the ordinary sense of a speck of matter which occupies both a defined amount of space and a defined position in space  Physicists in the 1920s and 1930s discovered that it is impossible to determine the position and the velocity of an electron at the same time. This is not a flaw in in technique. Rather, the electron, in a fundamental sense, does not have a specific position