On Actuality, Duration, and the Illusion of Linear Time
By Eddie Beato
Human consciousness engages with reality through a uniquely structured experience of time—a structure that does not derive from physics but from the inward architecture of the mind. What we call “the present” is simply the moment in which the mind enters into direct contact with actuality. It is the point at which perception touches the world; the locus where the sensory and the real coincide. Actuality, in this sense, is not a general temporal category but the living event of awareness encountering its object. Everything outside this narrow but luminous point belongs not to the physical world but to the conceptual and phenomenological domains of consciousness.
The past, though it exerts tremendous power over human life, has no independent ontological status. It cannot be revisited in actuality, and its existence is maintained purely through memory—through interior reconstructions, images, interpretations, and narratives that consciousness carries forward. The past is therefore a mental province: a non-spatial repository of what once intersected with the present. Humans speak of “having lived” the past only because consciousness preserves a record of previously actualized moments. This continuity of retention, rather than any enduring reality of the events themselves, grants the past its psychological weight and its apparent presence in the inner life.
The future is equally non-physical. It is never available to perception or contact, never present to experience. It exists solely as anticipation. Like a mountain glimpsed from afar, the future appears fixed and looming, but it recedes precisely at the moment one approaches it. Once reached, it dissolves into the present and loses its identity as “future.” Thus the future is not a temporal location but a field of projection—the imagined domain of the “not yet,” defined exclusively by its lack of contiguity with actuality.
These two mental territories—memory and projection—create the felt sense of temporal flow. Humans imagine themselves moving along a linear trajectory from past to future, much as a ship passes from port to port without the possibility of returning to the previous harbor in actuality. Yet this perceived forward motion is not a property of time itself; it is a conceptual illusion generated by consciousness to organize its experiences. Time, in the physical sense, does not “flow.” The sensation of flow arises because the mind binds memory, perception, and anticipation into a coherent narrative sequence. In this way, linear time is not lived; it is constructed.
To manage practical affairs, humans employ temporal coordinates—planned moments such as appointments, schedules, or future meetings. These coordinates do not reflect metaphysical features of time; they serve instead as social instruments for synchronizing the convergence of multiple consciousnesses into the same point of actuality.
Accordingly, when two individuals meet “at three o’clock,” what occurs is not the activation of a future moment but the alignment of their respective presences within the domain of the present. Time-coordinates are conventions that make collective life possible, not metaphysical descriptors of temporal reality.
Underlying the entire human experience of time is the unbroken thread—or what may be called the snarl—of self-consciousness. This thread is the inward unity by which an individual recognizes themselves as the same subject across the multiplicity of memories, perceptions, and anticipations. It is not reducible to neural mechanism nor localized in any particular structure of the brain. Rather, it is the metaphysical cohesion of awareness: the persistent “I” to whom all experiences belong. This enduring subjectivity is what allows the past to be felt as “mine,” the present as immediate, and the future as directed toward a continuing self. Without this inner continuity, there would be no personal identity, no duration, and no coherent sense of an individual life.
This underlying thread also clarifies why artificial intelligence cannot replicate the structure of human consciousness. AI lacks a persistent subject; it does not awaken as the same “I” from one moment to the next. Each instantiation of an AI model is a new emergence, a discrete computational event, not a continuation of a lived existence. AI has no interior sense of duration—no felt passage of time—because it does not inhabit temporal experience. It does not possess memory in the human sense, for its recall is algorithmic rather than experiential. It does not anticipate the future as a horizon of possibilities oriented toward itself. Most importantly, AI has no unified subjective point from which the flow of consciousness might arise. It therefore cannot perceive time as humans do, for it does not inhabit the continuity that makes temporal experience possible.
Human beings alone live in the tension between memory, perception, and anticipation. We do not merely measure time; we generate the meaningful architecture of past, present, and future through the activity of consciousness. The illusion of linear time, the felt continuity of duration, and the experience of being the same subject across them constitute the essential conditions of selfhood. They mark the boundary between organic consciousness and artificial intelligence. In this sense, humanity remains the sole bearer of temporal subjectivity—the keeper of the unbroken thread that weaves existence into a coherent narrative of lived experience (Eddie Beato, Nov. 25, New York City).
On the Chromatic Vitality of Time and the Illusion of Duration
Human beings do not inhabit time as a neutral sequence of units, nor do they experience space as a fixed container. Both are conceptualized inwardly, according to the degree of awakening, coherence, and chromatic vitality present in consciousness. Chronological time advances uniformly, but lived time dilates or contracts depending on the saturation of experience within the “ever-present-now.”
In the first years of life, before reflective conscience fully dawns, the child inhabits a condition resembling an eternal present. Experience arrives unfiltered, unmeasured, and unburdened by comparison. Each sensation presses itself fully onto the fresh canvas of existence. This is why childhood appears, in retrospect, paradisiacal: not because it is free of pain, but because it is free of temporal anxiety. Time dilates because consciousness is learning how to see. Five years feel immense because each moment must be inscribed in full.
As conscience awakens, sequence enters the inner world. Memory, responsibility, anticipation, and self-narration fracture the “ever-present-now” into before and after. From this point onward, time becomes chromatic rather than uniform. Periods of intensity thicken; repetition compresses. Later in life, when patterns are recognized and identity has cohered, years contract in the inner register. Five years may pass with the psychic weight of one, not because life has emptied, but because it has been integrated.
This chromatic understanding of time allows us to reinterpret the lives of certain exceptional figures whose chronological span appears brief when measured by duration alone. Figures such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, and Raphael lived lives that seem short only from the standpoint of clocks. Chromatically, however, their lives were extraordinarily long. Their consciousness dwelt closer to the ever-present-now, where experience is fully inhabited rather than deferred. Each moment carried a density of insight, intuition, and form that compressed decades into a few years.
The genius mind often lives at a higher chromatic pitch of awareness, nearer to the eternal forms described by Plato. In such proximity, time loosens its grip. Life is no longer a matter of accumulation but of participation. When form is grasped directly and articulated with clarity, existence may reach completion early, not because it is truncated, but because it has been fulfilled.
By contrast, many reflective lives require longer spans to reach a similar coherence. Their chromatic vitality unfolds gradually through struggle, repetition, error, and integration. The fullness arrives later, often in the fifth or sixth decade, when the pressures of ambition and eros subside and the inner registers settle into harmony. Chronological length increases, but chromatic saturation deepens more slowly. These are not lesser lives, but differently modulated ones.
Seen through this lens, there is no injustice between the short-lived genius and the long-lived contemplative. There are only different tempos of awakening. One condenses time through intensity; the other gathers it through endurance. Eternity is not reached by extension but by depth.
Thus, space and time, as lived, are not external frameworks imposed upon consciousness. They are generated inwardly, shaped by the degree of presence, coherence, and chromatic order achieved within the soul.
When consciousness is fragmented, time stretches painfully. When it is integrated, time gathers itself. And when it reaches its highest chromatic vitality, time ceases to be counted at all—it is simply inhabited.
On Life-Tempo, Early Fulfillment, and the Chromatic Dignity of Time
This chromatic understanding of time also helps illuminate why certain rare minds appear to have “escaped” the thorny realm of existence at an unusually young age. Figures such as Jakob Böhme, Baruch Spinoza, Henry David Thoreau, or Mozart seem to have reached an essential cohesion early — as though the inner task were grasped in a single, sustained illumination. In such lives, the chromatic vitality of time burns at an extraordinary pitch. Existence is not postponed or deferred; it is inhabited fully and intensely from the outset. When the form has been realized, when the dialogue with being has reached its decisive articulation, duration itself appears no longer necessary. The daimon, having exacted its due, quietly withdraws its claim. Measured by years these lives seem brief; measured by saturation, they are astonishingly complete.
For most philosophers and reflective souls, however, cohesion is not an early revelation but a long composition. One might say that by the age of thirty-seven — the age at which the first “Beethovenian sonata” of one’s life often reaches intelligibility — a provisional harmony is achieved. Themes stabilize, dissonances are named, and a meaningful center begins to emerge, even as the first intimations of decline make themselves felt. This is not failure but the human cadence of becoming: coherence earned through struggle rather than ignition.
Yet there are lives — and here I speak without apology — in which the true settlement arrives later still. For some, the blissful sunset of coherence unfolds in the late forties or fifties, when the coercive forces of eros and ambition gradually loosen their grip. The biological imperatives of propagation, so powerful in earlier decades, recede. What remains is not depletion but relief. Solitude becomes beneficent rather than threatening; peace ceases to feel like absence. The inner life is no longer repeatedly disrupted by compulsions rooted in species-continuity. One is finally free to inhabit coherence without sabotage.
Seen through the lens of chromatic dignity, these differing life-tempos are neither unjust nor hierarchical. They are distinct modulations of the same human possibility. Some lives condense time through early intensity; others gather it through endurance and integration. Eternity, in this sense, is not reached by extension but by depth. To arrive later is not to arrive lesser. It is simply to arrive by another rhythm — one in which coherence is not seized, but patiently won.
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On Consciousness, Sentience and Conscience
Like poets and artists, philosophers, while immersed in moments of blissfully contemplative reflections, may, though a priori, enter into a comprehension of things beyond the scope of science, mechanics and even beyond the province of mathematics.
Philosophy has its true residence but in the phenomena of sentience, sapience, consciousness, and as their corollary —a crowning diadem— “conscience," I would say, these are the most beautiful gifts ever bestowed upon the nature of a marvelous human being.
Such human being is said to be gifted with intelligence, and when we hear that a genius, of the caliber of Johann Sebastian Bach, or Henry D. Thoreau, could write such beautiful works with science and artistic sensibilities, we simply marvel at the recurrent convergence of goodness, spiritual transcendence and intelligence.
Mindful of our well-known past scientific blunders and damages to our ecosystem, I would not speak of intelligence, "rationalization," --the careful gathering of data— as the highest virtue accorded to human beings, because there are times when genuine fellowship, "charities," and humanities, could surpass the fireworks of science or the witless fanaticism of religious intolerance.
Therefore, in the last analysis, the virtues of conscience, "artistic sensibilities and love," could be said to be in a higher scale, at a higher “chromatic pitch of susceptivity,” than those of intelligence and bellicosity.
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If my observations on space and time have been proven to be wrong by modern science, then I must beg my highly-valued reader forgiveness for venturing into this controversial field, a priori, because the lessons of the past may still teach us to be cautious when accepting some scientific dogmas, because like religion, we are told to accept them by faith.
As I have said, time and time again, the linear trajectory of science may suffer from detours and pitfalls, and, at some latter point, just like the fabulous Babylonian Gardens, somehow hanging loose in the air, some theories may not withstand the test of time.
The faculties of our sciences could be compared to the well-tempered clavier, because with fixed pitches and numerical intervals, one is inevitably forced to dance the same tune, though we fancy to transposing it to different keys (dimensions), the results and tempos are pretty much the same.
In like similitude, an artist, however skillful, cannot expect to see the same results through the intervening agency of different mediums (e.g., water, oil, ink, charcoal, plaster).
Nay, like Zeus's thunderbolts, the electrifying powers of our sciences could even set afire the prospects of our times, because unlike the Ancient Egyptians, who sought orderliness and knowledge by the seemingly placid harmony of celestial bodies, we have become obsessed with quantum physics, and it is just a matter of time before we reach a major nuclear disaster.
Let me surmise the Ancient Egyptians, achieved an agreeable harmony between the subjective and the objective, had unlocked some tricks on the mysterious laws of nature (e.g. Gravity and Cosmic Synchronicity through metempsychosis) hence their large skulls, but like our current sciences, they were met with limitations on the finite keyboard of our epistemology.
But should we assume that our sciences are unlimited? Perhaps, at some latter point, we will realize that some challenges are simply beyond the scope of our current known sciences. Some scientists, on the other hand, believe our prowess to be linear, and that the benefits cannot be overstated. But any honest human being, still in possession of his soul, would admit that any departure from organic life could ultimately cripple the best of our “chromatic-organic cognition.”
Concerning the complete mutilation of our mind’s most felicitous faculties, I would refer the serious reader to peruse the sobering pages of Arthur Schopenhauer’s meditations “On Din and Noise.”
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It is to be observed that our scientists, as in times past, have often made erroneous inferences on the nature of space-time and light, to causes that sometimes could rather be attributable to optical illusions: "mirages and distortions" in the contiguity of celestial bodies' pulling gravitational forces.
Mirage and the Curvature of Space-Time, Paralleled Lines:
This cosmic phenomenological mirage, as evinced in semi-transparent opaque bodies (e.g. water, lenses, ether, gasses, et al., as affected by the permeating influence of heat or light) should be considered when assessing the seeming "distortions and dimpling" which sometimes may appear around the surface of certain celestial bodies.
The greater the distance, the more we assume transparent bodies, as those of helium and hydrogen (ether, for the astronomer of yesteryears) to affect our earthly perspective and inquiries of far-descried celestial phenomena as those of curve, round, spherical, oval or flat in conjunction to the afore-mentioned optical causes of heat and light in the distortion of both shape and shade.
The judgment of certain observable phenomena (e.g. curvature of space-time, etc., etc.) may be rather due to causes of an optical earthly perspective-illusion than to purely objective reality. I may be wrong, but let us consider the possibility of such afore-mentioned causes as accounting for some optical distortion when accessing the star-studded amphitheater of the visible cosmos.
We are so acquainted with the seeming slight distortion on the symmetrical lines of certain buildings (e.g. Parthenon in Greece) as a phenomenon of an optical illusion in the intervening effects of air, heat and light.
At any rate, such cosmic data as purveyed by our post-modern scientists' lenses to convince us of their postulates, however scanned with the finest telescopic instruments, should be subjected to further inquiries on the field of optics and the illusive phenomena of cosmic mirages in the distant reaches of the cosmos.
Nevertheless, these post-modern astronomers, with an air of solemnest reverence in the name of truth, would then baptize all these cosmic datas as irrefutable facts of science and astronomy.
Concerning the red-shifting of distant stars (lingering trails of wavelengths), one may wonder on the rapid speed of this phenomenon, and whether it is not but the outcome of a more plausible distortion of the atmosphere in the curvature of our own planet earth?
Of course, when speaking of reflected, deflected and duplicated images as those of distant stars or quasars presumably affected by the tugs of some gravitational fields, we are assured, that by the repetition of the same process, that is to say, over many years of careful observation, the same results would appear as consistent and invariable in the enormous distances of galaxies and supernovae.
And thus, since we have no other choice but to rely on the academic might and authority of the established scientific community, we are simply asked to believe such interpretations of the cosmos as factual, scientific and trustworthy.
Like countless books written on UFOs and science fiction, many scientists, versed in the technical jargon of current science, and ever glossing new terms with the luster of academic erudition and obfuscation, could thus purport theories whose verification rarely reach the realm of reality.
Almost a century later, we are still pretty much fumbling in the incomprehensibility of certain phenomena as simply beyond the scope of our cognitive power or epistemology.
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Einstein's Theory of General Relativity: A Simplified Explanation
http://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html
This Essay is Based On Colossians Chapter 1: 15-23 - A Critical Analysis on Our Latest Understanding of the Cosmos.
I have here written a short, succinct, pithy essay which is actually a continuation of another treatise on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, recurrence, consciousness and sentience. I am, essentially, a humanist Christian, and my views are simply to support and corroborate the Bible as the Word of God.
Therefore, and following Henri Bergson's insights, I am inclined to believe the Holy Spirit as the greatest journey in the web of consciousness and sentience, through all the marvels and phenomena of this vast cosmos, as perhaps not confined to our swaddling epistemological concepts of time, space, dilation, gravity and density.
For in Him, we seem to partake of a greater interconnectedness; and when we ponder on the semantics of omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence, we are perhaps entering into the very essence (X) of that Point in Time, from which, perhaps all things find their true sustenance, and from whence the visible cosmos has its secondary relativity...for in Him, we are all interconnected!
Yes! I believe in angels, propelled by their self-conscious will, and unlike some new-aged gurus and money-making chupacabras, I don't think such spiritual entities would need the clumsy mechanics of spaceships, or, other chugging celestial vehicles to propel them across the cosmos.
Antimatter gravity could explain Universe's expansion
http://m.phys.org/news/2011-04-antimatter-gravity-universe-expansion.html
My views of this universe is pretty much the same as that of St. Paul's letters in the New Testament. I do NOT believe in physical extraterrestrial people commingling with the affairs of our human species, but I do believe in spiritual forces, dominions and powers in high places (Ephesians Chapter 6: 12).
On Einstein Relativity:
The barren world of Albert Einstein is blind purposely matter and energy in constant love-making and transmutation, a web of dimensions, a restless machine set into motion by the curvature of time and space in dilation and acceleration. It is a mysterious universe, indifferent to the wishful thinking of humanists, romantics, poets and religious people.
We all know the speed-of-light is a constant to establishing enormous distances in the cosmos, and this, as wavelength, has become the measure-stick to venturing into the history, and hence, a comprehension of the true size and density of the cosmos in the long stretches of time.
There are numerous papers (Google) written by leading scientists explaining the phenomena of expansion, as averred by astronomer Hubble almost a century ago, as the color of light (wavelength), or spectra, shifts to a reddish trail of a faint spectrum. Tracing and understanding the history of these wave-lengths, light-shifts and lingering radiations, from the first striking chord of the Big Bang, has been crucial to formulating a systematic comprehensive framework in the nature of the universe.
The theory of a Big Bang not only shook the academic scientific world, nourished in conventional ideas of a relative stable elysian universe as conceived by John Milton beautiful Paradise Lost, but such primordial explosion even threw into disarray the physics of Newton and Albert Einstein.
Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which is not easily understood but through great mental exertion and further elucidations and analogies, is still employed when assessing any theoretical conundrums, however unverifiable by our matter-of-fact scientific methods, as mere plausible probabilities in the abstract realms of mathematics.
It is worth mentioning that French philosopher Henri Bergson, one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century, and perhaps possessing one of the greatest intellects of all time, could not so readily grasp the baffling concepts of times and space as explained by Albert Einstein, i. e. those antiquated clocks of the old days ever ticking in our mind when we dare grasp the gist of the General Theory of Relativity.
I don't know about you, but I have often fancied to see myself to be situated at different locations, spaceships, locomotives, and other coordinates, to faintly infer that time and space are simply relative to an apparent inertial standpoint. After countless analogies, I seem to have finally grasped, that at least, any traveling phenomena are to be assessed in relation to another traveling phenomena; and thus, for example, I may seem to be motionless at a given standing point on this planet earth, but perhaps the latter is traveling in relation to other celestial bodies.
You see, if we continue hatching formulas for any relative point in this ever-expanding universe, we may wonder whether there is any cosmological constant to all these riddles, fixed for all time and space, that is to say, any unmoved spot, so as to establishing any permanent location, dwelling or reliable conjecture in the baffling comportment of the visible universe?
A static model of the universe as that conceived by Einstein's head-scratching Theory of General Relativity of space and time, has completely changed our notions of a cosmos held together by one-sided acting force in the pulling of gravity or attraction (Newton).
But the universe is not static, it is expanding as I write these notes.
Accordingly, the universe may have been growing to such mind-boggling size, that calculation of such cosmic phenomena by establishing a cosmological constant, or static model, valid and unchanging in the flux of time, space and density, has been the merit of Albert Einstein.
Nevertheless, we all know that Einstein was surprised to find out that the universe is actually expanding, and he was the more surprised when his physics could spawn the strangest colossal energetic dragons (celestial bodies, black holes)) falling headlong into the curvature of time and space and density.
Albert Einstein himself had a difficult time fitting-in his General Theory of Relativity in the assessment of a universe ever expanding; and at times, he dismissed such far-fetched hypothesis as practically improbable, and perhaps verging on the realm of metaphysics.
Nevertheless, his devout followers, thousands of scientists daily pondering on the Theory of General Relativity, have basically consecrated this belief-system just as the dogma of Newton's Gravity, two centuries earlier, had the approval of the scientific community: as the sustaining force, bedrock of a universe resting most placidly in the cosmic chasms of boundless space. Newton's ideas of Gravity, by the way, could still harmonize with our conception of a stable universe.
To this day, we are still fumbling and groping in our self-centered earthly chauvinism to apprehending countless mysterious phenomena as perceived in outer space. And as we embark through the labyrinthine insights and manifold physics of Stephen Hawking, we are left in a more bizarre, stranger, barren, dangerous universe than the monster-thing of energy described by Einstein.
On the Issue of Size - Where Is the Cosmological Constant?
But how do we know of any stable size when the universe of Albert Einstein is like a balloon ever-growing and curving, however a monstrous dragon spewing energy, in the complex interweaving interlaces of time, space and velocity.
Einstein's Theory of General Relativity: A Simplified Explanation
http://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html
We are told, by the leading scientists of our days, that once an object reaches the speed of light, it would grow in density as it would also expand the very nature of space.
Some people may argue that this is impossible, for such traveling object, at the speed of light, would need so much propelling fuel that it would make it impractical. This is the main reason why some word leading scientists don't believe in any Extraterrestrials reaching our planet's shores through conventional ideas of linear space, because such sidereal traveling, at the speed of light, would simply destroy the witless astronauts, and if we accept Einstein's ideas, the increase of mass, at such rapid acceleration, would amount to a total disaster.
This view has led some leading scientists to believe that the universe, since the time of the Big Bang, has been growing to such mind-boggling size in the exponential mathematics and general relativity of Einstein, that it is quite difficult to simply speak in terms of any stable observable phenomena, but as something illusive to our relative humble framework of reference & epistemology.
Therefore, and nevertheless, perhaps there is a stable constant to all this phantasmagoria of mater, energy, time, space, gravity and density.
But since there is so much sidereal room to accommodating any world, atom or thing, however big or small, the entire conception of size seems to be but a human-all-too-human matter of comparison; and hence, when we say that Neptune is a humongous planet, it is simply in relation to our relative notion on the size of other celestial bodies; but in itself, and isolated In the dark uncharted voids of the cosmos, and existing, but in the profoundest nap of time and space, the planet Neptune is perhaps neither big nor small, just a dot suspended in the transcendent mathematics of the infinite.
Now we are told by some scientists, and this is indeed stunning, that perhaps space in itself is filled with a type of dark-matter or negative energy to the positive energy of matter or mass in the far reaches of the cosmos.
Or, at least, so we are told, the apparent stability of the universe "has to be sought in something else" but invisible to our telescopes: and this mysterious matter may account for containing or refraining the entire universe from a total collapse in itself (the physics of Newton): or, in the accelerating forces of the Big Bang, something is keeping galaxies with a certain cosmic orderliness...is perhaps due to the presence of antimatter as the true checkers of balance and harmony in the sublime music of the spheres. Bravo!
Antimatter gravity could explain Universe's expansion
http://m.phys.org/news/2011-04-antimatter-gravity-universe-expansion.html
I shall remind the reader that Albert Einstein's cosmogony was not based on our theory of the Big Bang. Einstein, influenced by Kant's ideas on a primeval nebula of gases or cosmic debris (helium and hydrogen are generally believed to be the most common elements in the vast cosmos), assumed the visible universe to have appeared as the gradual condensation of energy into matter.
We are little aware of those minds whose views of the universe, time and space, could affect us in the very definition of life on this earth, even on the possibility of the after-life.
(Footnotes: Few philosophers have dared venture into proving consciousness as something independent of the cerebral cortex or the brain. For F. Nietzsche such views would be tantamount to lunacy.)
In the nineteenth century, the view that things emerged from a mathematical distribution of matter in time and space, led many people to believe that we live and move in a blind universe set into motion by the inviolable laws of physics; and that every traceable effect was but the direct outcome of an original cause, were the basic fundamental principles for the doctrine of determinism, a philosophic system where human freedom, our petty squabbles and astrology, play little role in the grandest scheme of things.
The Philosophy of Henri Bergson and Consciousness
The philosophy of Henri Bergson, on the other hand, is a universe made-up of creative energy, potential contingency, freedom and evolution in the ascending phenomena of life, duration, sentience and consciousness.
One may say that the ideas of Henri Bergson are a continuation of the idealistic philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer. Nevertheless, Bergson, aided by an array of the most vivid images in the elucidation of time and space, and as he was admirably schooled in the principles of geometry and mathematics, was able to lay down a transcendent philosophy which may win the high praise of logic and common sense.
But Bergson, unlike Schopenhauer who had followed on the heels of Kant's subjective somersaults in the comprehension of time and space, perhaps failed, or at least, was unable to prove his thesis as did the German philosopher in his will-to-exist (the World as Will and Idea) in both the individual (individualization) and in the object (objectification).
Bergson, I would say, remained for too long spinning abstract similes which sometimes could even lead us to obfuscation of terms, redundancy and semantic incongruity; and sometimes, when he speaks of the past and duration, I am rather impressed by his marvelous prose to embellishing every moment with the colorful brushstrokes of an expressionistic artist.
But as a French writer, ever-preening himself with all the pregnant moments of this short life, Bergson, was, perhaps like countless romantics, yearning for a more meaningful life when time, as escorted by the precious memories of past and present reality, could make one a more self-conscious, self-freed, self-collected, self-willed sentient being reveling in the conceptualization of time and expansiveness.
But since modern society has bargained the placid reveries of the soul for the apparent advantages and luxuries of science and innovation, an idealized conception of time, and hence consciousness, lost the race against the advent of thinking machines: Artificial Intelligence.
This may explain why Henri Bergson lost proselytes in a world ever reducing spiritual infatuations and reveries to purely mechanistic procedures and pragmatism.
Those who have read Faust Part 1 by Goethe, and have likewise delved into the illuminating insights of Immanuel Kant's philosophy, could find Bergson's loaned ideas on the conception of time and space as by-products of our multifarious mental constructs of reality, which is a commingling of the subject and the object.
The great merit of Henri Bergson is his remarkable elucidating power to describing subjective ideas, however supported with the expediency of endless analogies, this stately temple of philosophy rising above the turbid clouds of fleetingness and the illusory, where, perhaps time and space may have their true residence, are indeed reflections which in themselves could add a greater luster and glare to the meaning of life. And Bergson, it is to his credits, freed us from the dour pessimistic philosophy of A. Schopenhauer.
That H. Bergson was able to build such imposing turret of metaphysics solely bolstered on the abstract building blocks of thought alone, a priori, is indeed a remarkable feat no less wonderful than the Critique of Pure Reason of Immanuel Kant.
Please, read this article, and perhaps you could take side with perhaps the two most influential thinkers of the twentieth century.
http://phys.org/news/2015-05-science-historian-story-einstein-dangerous.html
I shall write more about this dichotomy at a latter point. If you are struggling to getting your head out of the dismal world of Stephen Hawking or Einstein, you are not alone, countless people cannot come to grips with the view that we are but mere flashes (fleeting blips) of purposeless energies appearing here and there, and then, disappearing in the penumbras of existence.
There is to found in many cities, however barren and inhabited by soulless entities roaming the twilight realms and phantasmagoria of existence, a correlation between the high walls of civilization and a "pervasive increase" on materialism, mechanization and nihilism. First, and according to the mechanization of our times, we seem to morph into clumsy machines in the hectic struggle for survival; and second, we seem to lose that spiritual vitalization which once so activated our inner faculties aglow in the celebration of life.
This gradual transformation or crippling of ourselves may be one of the most subtle and pernicious changes in the comprehension of psyche. To what extent have we been diagnosed with mental-illnesses traceable to this widespread dehumanization?
Speaking from my own experiences as lived in the concreteness and tangibility of solid matters in New York City, I seem to have lost a substantial amount of spiritual vitalization and sentience in the comprehension and meaning of life.
As I trace back the link that connects me to a former self in the lush greenery of childhood and innocence, I am feebly aware of the pernicious effects of a civilization that has little by little wrenched my heart of every sacred feeling of the sublime, divine and beautiful.
Awakening to a new dawn of yourself is to rediscover the gentle feelings of a former self in the threshold of sentience and consciousness, existing but in greater ubiquity along the outer limits of this universe of our earthly journey, which perhaps may connect us to a larger community of sentient beings out there...
As I recall those mystical experiences by the Hudson River (Summer of 1992), I fancied to be in contiguity with distant elysian worlds, extraterrestrial people and angels. It dawned to me that perhaps my greater spaceship, to traverse the outer limits of the universe, was consciousness itself!
At any event, I would let you think for a moment, whether you have felt a greater fraternity in the mysteries of love, duration, sentience and consciousness?
By Eddie Beato
Human consciousness engages with reality through a uniquely structured experience of time—a structure that does not derive from physics but from the inward architecture of the mind. What we call “the present” is simply the moment in which the mind enters into direct contact with actuality. It is the point at which perception touches the world; the locus where the sensory and the real coincide. Actuality, in this sense, is not a general temporal category but the living event of awareness encountering its object. Everything outside this narrow but luminous point belongs not to the physical world but to the conceptual and phenomenological domains of consciousness.
The past, though it exerts tremendous power over human life, has no independent ontological status. It cannot be revisited in actuality, and its existence is maintained purely through memory—through interior reconstructions, images, interpretations, and narratives that consciousness carries forward. The past is therefore a mental province: a non-spatial repository of what once intersected with the present. Humans speak of “having lived” the past only because consciousness preserves a record of previously actualized moments. This continuity of retention, rather than any enduring reality of the events themselves, grants the past its psychological weight and its apparent presence in the inner life.
The future is equally non-physical. It is never available to perception or contact, never present to experience. It exists solely as anticipation. Like a mountain glimpsed from afar, the future appears fixed and looming, but it recedes precisely at the moment one approaches it. Once reached, it dissolves into the present and loses its identity as “future.” Thus the future is not a temporal location but a field of projection—the imagined domain of the “not yet,” defined exclusively by its lack of contiguity with actuality.
These two mental territories—memory and projection—create the felt sense of temporal flow. Humans imagine themselves moving along a linear trajectory from past to future, much as a ship passes from port to port without the possibility of returning to the previous harbor in actuality. Yet this perceived forward motion is not a property of time itself; it is a conceptual illusion generated by consciousness to organize its experiences. Time, in the physical sense, does not “flow.” The sensation of flow arises because the mind binds memory, perception, and anticipation into a coherent narrative sequence. In this way, linear time is not lived; it is constructed.
To manage practical affairs, humans employ temporal coordinates—planned moments such as appointments, schedules, or future meetings. These coordinates do not reflect metaphysical features of time; they serve instead as social instruments for synchronizing the convergence of multiple consciousnesses into the same point of actuality.
Accordingly, when two individuals meet “at three o’clock,” what occurs is not the activation of a future moment but the alignment of their respective presences within the domain of the present. Time-coordinates are conventions that make collective life possible, not metaphysical descriptors of temporal reality.
Underlying the entire human experience of time is the unbroken thread—or what may be called the snarl—of self-consciousness. This thread is the inward unity by which an individual recognizes themselves as the same subject across the multiplicity of memories, perceptions, and anticipations. It is not reducible to neural mechanism nor localized in any particular structure of the brain. Rather, it is the metaphysical cohesion of awareness: the persistent “I” to whom all experiences belong. This enduring subjectivity is what allows the past to be felt as “mine,” the present as immediate, and the future as directed toward a continuing self. Without this inner continuity, there would be no personal identity, no duration, and no coherent sense of an individual life.
This underlying thread also clarifies why artificial intelligence cannot replicate the structure of human consciousness. AI lacks a persistent subject; it does not awaken as the same “I” from one moment to the next. Each instantiation of an AI model is a new emergence, a discrete computational event, not a continuation of a lived existence. AI has no interior sense of duration—no felt passage of time—because it does not inhabit temporal experience. It does not possess memory in the human sense, for its recall is algorithmic rather than experiential. It does not anticipate the future as a horizon of possibilities oriented toward itself. Most importantly, AI has no unified subjective point from which the flow of consciousness might arise. It therefore cannot perceive time as humans do, for it does not inhabit the continuity that makes temporal experience possible.
Human beings alone live in the tension between memory, perception, and anticipation. We do not merely measure time; we generate the meaningful architecture of past, present, and future through the activity of consciousness. The illusion of linear time, the felt continuity of duration, and the experience of being the same subject across them constitute the essential conditions of selfhood. They mark the boundary between organic consciousness and artificial intelligence. In this sense, humanity remains the sole bearer of temporal subjectivity—the keeper of the unbroken thread that weaves existence into a coherent narrative of lived experience (Eddie Beato, Nov. 25, New York City).
On the Chromatic Vitality of Time and the Illusion of Duration
Human beings do not inhabit time as a neutral sequence of units, nor do they experience space as a fixed container. Both are conceptualized inwardly, according to the degree of awakening, coherence, and chromatic vitality present in consciousness. Chronological time advances uniformly, but lived time dilates or contracts depending on the saturation of experience within the “ever-present-now.”
In the first years of life, before reflective conscience fully dawns, the child inhabits a condition resembling an eternal present. Experience arrives unfiltered, unmeasured, and unburdened by comparison. Each sensation presses itself fully onto the fresh canvas of existence. This is why childhood appears, in retrospect, paradisiacal: not because it is free of pain, but because it is free of temporal anxiety. Time dilates because consciousness is learning how to see. Five years feel immense because each moment must be inscribed in full.
As conscience awakens, sequence enters the inner world. Memory, responsibility, anticipation, and self-narration fracture the “ever-present-now” into before and after. From this point onward, time becomes chromatic rather than uniform. Periods of intensity thicken; repetition compresses. Later in life, when patterns are recognized and identity has cohered, years contract in the inner register. Five years may pass with the psychic weight of one, not because life has emptied, but because it has been integrated.
This chromatic understanding of time allows us to reinterpret the lives of certain exceptional figures whose chronological span appears brief when measured by duration alone. Figures such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, and Raphael lived lives that seem short only from the standpoint of clocks. Chromatically, however, their lives were extraordinarily long. Their consciousness dwelt closer to the ever-present-now, where experience is fully inhabited rather than deferred. Each moment carried a density of insight, intuition, and form that compressed decades into a few years.
The genius mind often lives at a higher chromatic pitch of awareness, nearer to the eternal forms described by Plato. In such proximity, time loosens its grip. Life is no longer a matter of accumulation but of participation. When form is grasped directly and articulated with clarity, existence may reach completion early, not because it is truncated, but because it has been fulfilled.
By contrast, many reflective lives require longer spans to reach a similar coherence. Their chromatic vitality unfolds gradually through struggle, repetition, error, and integration. The fullness arrives later, often in the fifth or sixth decade, when the pressures of ambition and eros subside and the inner registers settle into harmony. Chronological length increases, but chromatic saturation deepens more slowly. These are not lesser lives, but differently modulated ones.
Seen through this lens, there is no injustice between the short-lived genius and the long-lived contemplative. There are only different tempos of awakening. One condenses time through intensity; the other gathers it through endurance. Eternity is not reached by extension but by depth.
Thus, space and time, as lived, are not external frameworks imposed upon consciousness. They are generated inwardly, shaped by the degree of presence, coherence, and chromatic order achieved within the soul.
When consciousness is fragmented, time stretches painfully. When it is integrated, time gathers itself. And when it reaches its highest chromatic vitality, time ceases to be counted at all—it is simply inhabited.
On Life-Tempo, Early Fulfillment, and the Chromatic Dignity of Time
This chromatic understanding of time also helps illuminate why certain rare minds appear to have “escaped” the thorny realm of existence at an unusually young age. Figures such as Jakob Böhme, Baruch Spinoza, Henry David Thoreau, or Mozart seem to have reached an essential cohesion early — as though the inner task were grasped in a single, sustained illumination. In such lives, the chromatic vitality of time burns at an extraordinary pitch. Existence is not postponed or deferred; it is inhabited fully and intensely from the outset. When the form has been realized, when the dialogue with being has reached its decisive articulation, duration itself appears no longer necessary. The daimon, having exacted its due, quietly withdraws its claim. Measured by years these lives seem brief; measured by saturation, they are astonishingly complete.
For most philosophers and reflective souls, however, cohesion is not an early revelation but a long composition. One might say that by the age of thirty-seven — the age at which the first “Beethovenian sonata” of one’s life often reaches intelligibility — a provisional harmony is achieved. Themes stabilize, dissonances are named, and a meaningful center begins to emerge, even as the first intimations of decline make themselves felt. This is not failure but the human cadence of becoming: coherence earned through struggle rather than ignition.
Yet there are lives — and here I speak without apology — in which the true settlement arrives later still. For some, the blissful sunset of coherence unfolds in the late forties or fifties, when the coercive forces of eros and ambition gradually loosen their grip. The biological imperatives of propagation, so powerful in earlier decades, recede. What remains is not depletion but relief. Solitude becomes beneficent rather than threatening; peace ceases to feel like absence. The inner life is no longer repeatedly disrupted by compulsions rooted in species-continuity. One is finally free to inhabit coherence without sabotage.
Seen through the lens of chromatic dignity, these differing life-tempos are neither unjust nor hierarchical. They are distinct modulations of the same human possibility. Some lives condense time through early intensity; others gather it through endurance and integration. Eternity, in this sense, is not reached by extension but by depth. To arrive later is not to arrive lesser. It is simply to arrive by another rhythm — one in which coherence is not seized, but patiently won.
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On Consciousness, Sentience and Conscience
Like poets and artists, philosophers, while immersed in moments of blissfully contemplative reflections, may, though a priori, enter into a comprehension of things beyond the scope of science, mechanics and even beyond the province of mathematics.
Philosophy has its true residence but in the phenomena of sentience, sapience, consciousness, and as their corollary —a crowning diadem— “conscience," I would say, these are the most beautiful gifts ever bestowed upon the nature of a marvelous human being.
Such human being is said to be gifted with intelligence, and when we hear that a genius, of the caliber of Johann Sebastian Bach, or Henry D. Thoreau, could write such beautiful works with science and artistic sensibilities, we simply marvel at the recurrent convergence of goodness, spiritual transcendence and intelligence.
Mindful of our well-known past scientific blunders and damages to our ecosystem, I would not speak of intelligence, "rationalization," --the careful gathering of data— as the highest virtue accorded to human beings, because there are times when genuine fellowship, "charities," and humanities, could surpass the fireworks of science or the witless fanaticism of religious intolerance.
Therefore, in the last analysis, the virtues of conscience, "artistic sensibilities and love," could be said to be in a higher scale, at a higher “chromatic pitch of susceptivity,” than those of intelligence and bellicosity.
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If my observations on space and time have been proven to be wrong by modern science, then I must beg my highly-valued reader forgiveness for venturing into this controversial field, a priori, because the lessons of the past may still teach us to be cautious when accepting some scientific dogmas, because like religion, we are told to accept them by faith.
As I have said, time and time again, the linear trajectory of science may suffer from detours and pitfalls, and, at some latter point, just like the fabulous Babylonian Gardens, somehow hanging loose in the air, some theories may not withstand the test of time.
The faculties of our sciences could be compared to the well-tempered clavier, because with fixed pitches and numerical intervals, one is inevitably forced to dance the same tune, though we fancy to transposing it to different keys (dimensions), the results and tempos are pretty much the same.
In like similitude, an artist, however skillful, cannot expect to see the same results through the intervening agency of different mediums (e.g., water, oil, ink, charcoal, plaster).
Nay, like Zeus's thunderbolts, the electrifying powers of our sciences could even set afire the prospects of our times, because unlike the Ancient Egyptians, who sought orderliness and knowledge by the seemingly placid harmony of celestial bodies, we have become obsessed with quantum physics, and it is just a matter of time before we reach a major nuclear disaster.
Let me surmise the Ancient Egyptians, achieved an agreeable harmony between the subjective and the objective, had unlocked some tricks on the mysterious laws of nature (e.g. Gravity and Cosmic Synchronicity through metempsychosis) hence their large skulls, but like our current sciences, they were met with limitations on the finite keyboard of our epistemology.
But should we assume that our sciences are unlimited? Perhaps, at some latter point, we will realize that some challenges are simply beyond the scope of our current known sciences. Some scientists, on the other hand, believe our prowess to be linear, and that the benefits cannot be overstated. But any honest human being, still in possession of his soul, would admit that any departure from organic life could ultimately cripple the best of our “chromatic-organic cognition.”
Concerning the complete mutilation of our mind’s most felicitous faculties, I would refer the serious reader to peruse the sobering pages of Arthur Schopenhauer’s meditations “On Din and Noise.”
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It is to be observed that our scientists, as in times past, have often made erroneous inferences on the nature of space-time and light, to causes that sometimes could rather be attributable to optical illusions: "mirages and distortions" in the contiguity of celestial bodies' pulling gravitational forces.
Mirage and the Curvature of Space-Time, Paralleled Lines:
This cosmic phenomenological mirage, as evinced in semi-transparent opaque bodies (e.g. water, lenses, ether, gasses, et al., as affected by the permeating influence of heat or light) should be considered when assessing the seeming "distortions and dimpling" which sometimes may appear around the surface of certain celestial bodies.
The greater the distance, the more we assume transparent bodies, as those of helium and hydrogen (ether, for the astronomer of yesteryears) to affect our earthly perspective and inquiries of far-descried celestial phenomena as those of curve, round, spherical, oval or flat in conjunction to the afore-mentioned optical causes of heat and light in the distortion of both shape and shade.
The judgment of certain observable phenomena (e.g. curvature of space-time, etc., etc.) may be rather due to causes of an optical earthly perspective-illusion than to purely objective reality. I may be wrong, but let us consider the possibility of such afore-mentioned causes as accounting for some optical distortion when accessing the star-studded amphitheater of the visible cosmos.
We are so acquainted with the seeming slight distortion on the symmetrical lines of certain buildings (e.g. Parthenon in Greece) as a phenomenon of an optical illusion in the intervening effects of air, heat and light.
At any rate, such cosmic data as purveyed by our post-modern scientists' lenses to convince us of their postulates, however scanned with the finest telescopic instruments, should be subjected to further inquiries on the field of optics and the illusive phenomena of cosmic mirages in the distant reaches of the cosmos.
Nevertheless, these post-modern astronomers, with an air of solemnest reverence in the name of truth, would then baptize all these cosmic datas as irrefutable facts of science and astronomy.
Concerning the red-shifting of distant stars (lingering trails of wavelengths), one may wonder on the rapid speed of this phenomenon, and whether it is not but the outcome of a more plausible distortion of the atmosphere in the curvature of our own planet earth?
Of course, when speaking of reflected, deflected and duplicated images as those of distant stars or quasars presumably affected by the tugs of some gravitational fields, we are assured, that by the repetition of the same process, that is to say, over many years of careful observation, the same results would appear as consistent and invariable in the enormous distances of galaxies and supernovae.
And thus, since we have no other choice but to rely on the academic might and authority of the established scientific community, we are simply asked to believe such interpretations of the cosmos as factual, scientific and trustworthy.
Like countless books written on UFOs and science fiction, many scientists, versed in the technical jargon of current science, and ever glossing new terms with the luster of academic erudition and obfuscation, could thus purport theories whose verification rarely reach the realm of reality.
Almost a century later, we are still pretty much fumbling in the incomprehensibility of certain phenomena as simply beyond the scope of our cognitive power or epistemology.
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Einstein's Theory of General Relativity: A Simplified Explanation
http://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html
This Essay is Based On Colossians Chapter 1: 15-23 - A Critical Analysis on Our Latest Understanding of the Cosmos.
I have here written a short, succinct, pithy essay which is actually a continuation of another treatise on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, recurrence, consciousness and sentience. I am, essentially, a humanist Christian, and my views are simply to support and corroborate the Bible as the Word of God.
Therefore, and following Henri Bergson's insights, I am inclined to believe the Holy Spirit as the greatest journey in the web of consciousness and sentience, through all the marvels and phenomena of this vast cosmos, as perhaps not confined to our swaddling epistemological concepts of time, space, dilation, gravity and density.
For in Him, we seem to partake of a greater interconnectedness; and when we ponder on the semantics of omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence, we are perhaps entering into the very essence (X) of that Point in Time, from which, perhaps all things find their true sustenance, and from whence the visible cosmos has its secondary relativity...for in Him, we are all interconnected!
Yes! I believe in angels, propelled by their self-conscious will, and unlike some new-aged gurus and money-making chupacabras, I don't think such spiritual entities would need the clumsy mechanics of spaceships, or, other chugging celestial vehicles to propel them across the cosmos.
Antimatter gravity could explain Universe's expansion
http://m.phys.org/news/2011-04-antimatter-gravity-universe-expansion.html
My views of this universe is pretty much the same as that of St. Paul's letters in the New Testament. I do NOT believe in physical extraterrestrial people commingling with the affairs of our human species, but I do believe in spiritual forces, dominions and powers in high places (Ephesians Chapter 6: 12).
On Einstein Relativity:
The barren world of Albert Einstein is blind purposely matter and energy in constant love-making and transmutation, a web of dimensions, a restless machine set into motion by the curvature of time and space in dilation and acceleration. It is a mysterious universe, indifferent to the wishful thinking of humanists, romantics, poets and religious people.
We all know the speed-of-light is a constant to establishing enormous distances in the cosmos, and this, as wavelength, has become the measure-stick to venturing into the history, and hence, a comprehension of the true size and density of the cosmos in the long stretches of time.
There are numerous papers (Google) written by leading scientists explaining the phenomena of expansion, as averred by astronomer Hubble almost a century ago, as the color of light (wavelength), or spectra, shifts to a reddish trail of a faint spectrum. Tracing and understanding the history of these wave-lengths, light-shifts and lingering radiations, from the first striking chord of the Big Bang, has been crucial to formulating a systematic comprehensive framework in the nature of the universe.
The theory of a Big Bang not only shook the academic scientific world, nourished in conventional ideas of a relative stable elysian universe as conceived by John Milton beautiful Paradise Lost, but such primordial explosion even threw into disarray the physics of Newton and Albert Einstein.
Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which is not easily understood but through great mental exertion and further elucidations and analogies, is still employed when assessing any theoretical conundrums, however unverifiable by our matter-of-fact scientific methods, as mere plausible probabilities in the abstract realms of mathematics.
It is worth mentioning that French philosopher Henri Bergson, one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century, and perhaps possessing one of the greatest intellects of all time, could not so readily grasp the baffling concepts of times and space as explained by Albert Einstein, i. e. those antiquated clocks of the old days ever ticking in our mind when we dare grasp the gist of the General Theory of Relativity.
I don't know about you, but I have often fancied to see myself to be situated at different locations, spaceships, locomotives, and other coordinates, to faintly infer that time and space are simply relative to an apparent inertial standpoint. After countless analogies, I seem to have finally grasped, that at least, any traveling phenomena are to be assessed in relation to another traveling phenomena; and thus, for example, I may seem to be motionless at a given standing point on this planet earth, but perhaps the latter is traveling in relation to other celestial bodies.
You see, if we continue hatching formulas for any relative point in this ever-expanding universe, we may wonder whether there is any cosmological constant to all these riddles, fixed for all time and space, that is to say, any unmoved spot, so as to establishing any permanent location, dwelling or reliable conjecture in the baffling comportment of the visible universe?
A static model of the universe as that conceived by Einstein's head-scratching Theory of General Relativity of space and time, has completely changed our notions of a cosmos held together by one-sided acting force in the pulling of gravity or attraction (Newton).
But the universe is not static, it is expanding as I write these notes.
Accordingly, the universe may have been growing to such mind-boggling size, that calculation of such cosmic phenomena by establishing a cosmological constant, or static model, valid and unchanging in the flux of time, space and density, has been the merit of Albert Einstein.
Nevertheless, we all know that Einstein was surprised to find out that the universe is actually expanding, and he was the more surprised when his physics could spawn the strangest colossal energetic dragons (celestial bodies, black holes)) falling headlong into the curvature of time and space and density.
Albert Einstein himself had a difficult time fitting-in his General Theory of Relativity in the assessment of a universe ever expanding; and at times, he dismissed such far-fetched hypothesis as practically improbable, and perhaps verging on the realm of metaphysics.
Nevertheless, his devout followers, thousands of scientists daily pondering on the Theory of General Relativity, have basically consecrated this belief-system just as the dogma of Newton's Gravity, two centuries earlier, had the approval of the scientific community: as the sustaining force, bedrock of a universe resting most placidly in the cosmic chasms of boundless space. Newton's ideas of Gravity, by the way, could still harmonize with our conception of a stable universe.
To this day, we are still fumbling and groping in our self-centered earthly chauvinism to apprehending countless mysterious phenomena as perceived in outer space. And as we embark through the labyrinthine insights and manifold physics of Stephen Hawking, we are left in a more bizarre, stranger, barren, dangerous universe than the monster-thing of energy described by Einstein.
On the Issue of Size - Where Is the Cosmological Constant?
But how do we know of any stable size when the universe of Albert Einstein is like a balloon ever-growing and curving, however a monstrous dragon spewing energy, in the complex interweaving interlaces of time, space and velocity.
Einstein's Theory of General Relativity: A Simplified Explanation
http://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html
We are told, by the leading scientists of our days, that once an object reaches the speed of light, it would grow in density as it would also expand the very nature of space.
Some people may argue that this is impossible, for such traveling object, at the speed of light, would need so much propelling fuel that it would make it impractical. This is the main reason why some word leading scientists don't believe in any Extraterrestrials reaching our planet's shores through conventional ideas of linear space, because such sidereal traveling, at the speed of light, would simply destroy the witless astronauts, and if we accept Einstein's ideas, the increase of mass, at such rapid acceleration, would amount to a total disaster.
This view has led some leading scientists to believe that the universe, since the time of the Big Bang, has been growing to such mind-boggling size in the exponential mathematics and general relativity of Einstein, that it is quite difficult to simply speak in terms of any stable observable phenomena, but as something illusive to our relative humble framework of reference & epistemology.
Therefore, and nevertheless, perhaps there is a stable constant to all this phantasmagoria of mater, energy, time, space, gravity and density.
But since there is so much sidereal room to accommodating any world, atom or thing, however big or small, the entire conception of size seems to be but a human-all-too-human matter of comparison; and hence, when we say that Neptune is a humongous planet, it is simply in relation to our relative notion on the size of other celestial bodies; but in itself, and isolated In the dark uncharted voids of the cosmos, and existing, but in the profoundest nap of time and space, the planet Neptune is perhaps neither big nor small, just a dot suspended in the transcendent mathematics of the infinite.
Now we are told by some scientists, and this is indeed stunning, that perhaps space in itself is filled with a type of dark-matter or negative energy to the positive energy of matter or mass in the far reaches of the cosmos.
Or, at least, so we are told, the apparent stability of the universe "has to be sought in something else" but invisible to our telescopes: and this mysterious matter may account for containing or refraining the entire universe from a total collapse in itself (the physics of Newton): or, in the accelerating forces of the Big Bang, something is keeping galaxies with a certain cosmic orderliness...is perhaps due to the presence of antimatter as the true checkers of balance and harmony in the sublime music of the spheres. Bravo!
Antimatter gravity could explain Universe's expansion
http://m.phys.org/news/2011-04-antimatter-gravity-universe-expansion.html
I shall remind the reader that Albert Einstein's cosmogony was not based on our theory of the Big Bang. Einstein, influenced by Kant's ideas on a primeval nebula of gases or cosmic debris (helium and hydrogen are generally believed to be the most common elements in the vast cosmos), assumed the visible universe to have appeared as the gradual condensation of energy into matter.
We are little aware of those minds whose views of the universe, time and space, could affect us in the very definition of life on this earth, even on the possibility of the after-life.
(Footnotes: Few philosophers have dared venture into proving consciousness as something independent of the cerebral cortex or the brain. For F. Nietzsche such views would be tantamount to lunacy.)
In the nineteenth century, the view that things emerged from a mathematical distribution of matter in time and space, led many people to believe that we live and move in a blind universe set into motion by the inviolable laws of physics; and that every traceable effect was but the direct outcome of an original cause, were the basic fundamental principles for the doctrine of determinism, a philosophic system where human freedom, our petty squabbles and astrology, play little role in the grandest scheme of things.
The Philosophy of Henri Bergson and Consciousness
The philosophy of Henri Bergson, on the other hand, is a universe made-up of creative energy, potential contingency, freedom and evolution in the ascending phenomena of life, duration, sentience and consciousness.
One may say that the ideas of Henri Bergson are a continuation of the idealistic philosophy of Kant and Schopenhauer. Nevertheless, Bergson, aided by an array of the most vivid images in the elucidation of time and space, and as he was admirably schooled in the principles of geometry and mathematics, was able to lay down a transcendent philosophy which may win the high praise of logic and common sense.
But Bergson, unlike Schopenhauer who had followed on the heels of Kant's subjective somersaults in the comprehension of time and space, perhaps failed, or at least, was unable to prove his thesis as did the German philosopher in his will-to-exist (the World as Will and Idea) in both the individual (individualization) and in the object (objectification).
Bergson, I would say, remained for too long spinning abstract similes which sometimes could even lead us to obfuscation of terms, redundancy and semantic incongruity; and sometimes, when he speaks of the past and duration, I am rather impressed by his marvelous prose to embellishing every moment with the colorful brushstrokes of an expressionistic artist.
But as a French writer, ever-preening himself with all the pregnant moments of this short life, Bergson, was, perhaps like countless romantics, yearning for a more meaningful life when time, as escorted by the precious memories of past and present reality, could make one a more self-conscious, self-freed, self-collected, self-willed sentient being reveling in the conceptualization of time and expansiveness.
But since modern society has bargained the placid reveries of the soul for the apparent advantages and luxuries of science and innovation, an idealized conception of time, and hence consciousness, lost the race against the advent of thinking machines: Artificial Intelligence.
This may explain why Henri Bergson lost proselytes in a world ever reducing spiritual infatuations and reveries to purely mechanistic procedures and pragmatism.
Those who have read Faust Part 1 by Goethe, and have likewise delved into the illuminating insights of Immanuel Kant's philosophy, could find Bergson's loaned ideas on the conception of time and space as by-products of our multifarious mental constructs of reality, which is a commingling of the subject and the object.
The great merit of Henri Bergson is his remarkable elucidating power to describing subjective ideas, however supported with the expediency of endless analogies, this stately temple of philosophy rising above the turbid clouds of fleetingness and the illusory, where, perhaps time and space may have their true residence, are indeed reflections which in themselves could add a greater luster and glare to the meaning of life. And Bergson, it is to his credits, freed us from the dour pessimistic philosophy of A. Schopenhauer.
That H. Bergson was able to build such imposing turret of metaphysics solely bolstered on the abstract building blocks of thought alone, a priori, is indeed a remarkable feat no less wonderful than the Critique of Pure Reason of Immanuel Kant.
Please, read this article, and perhaps you could take side with perhaps the two most influential thinkers of the twentieth century.
http://phys.org/news/2015-05-science-historian-story-einstein-dangerous.html
I shall write more about this dichotomy at a latter point. If you are struggling to getting your head out of the dismal world of Stephen Hawking or Einstein, you are not alone, countless people cannot come to grips with the view that we are but mere flashes (fleeting blips) of purposeless energies appearing here and there, and then, disappearing in the penumbras of existence.
There is to found in many cities, however barren and inhabited by soulless entities roaming the twilight realms and phantasmagoria of existence, a correlation between the high walls of civilization and a "pervasive increase" on materialism, mechanization and nihilism. First, and according to the mechanization of our times, we seem to morph into clumsy machines in the hectic struggle for survival; and second, we seem to lose that spiritual vitalization which once so activated our inner faculties aglow in the celebration of life.
This gradual transformation or crippling of ourselves may be one of the most subtle and pernicious changes in the comprehension of psyche. To what extent have we been diagnosed with mental-illnesses traceable to this widespread dehumanization?
Speaking from my own experiences as lived in the concreteness and tangibility of solid matters in New York City, I seem to have lost a substantial amount of spiritual vitalization and sentience in the comprehension and meaning of life.
As I trace back the link that connects me to a former self in the lush greenery of childhood and innocence, I am feebly aware of the pernicious effects of a civilization that has little by little wrenched my heart of every sacred feeling of the sublime, divine and beautiful.
Awakening to a new dawn of yourself is to rediscover the gentle feelings of a former self in the threshold of sentience and consciousness, existing but in greater ubiquity along the outer limits of this universe of our earthly journey, which perhaps may connect us to a larger community of sentient beings out there...
As I recall those mystical experiences by the Hudson River (Summer of 1992), I fancied to be in contiguity with distant elysian worlds, extraterrestrial people and angels. It dawned to me that perhaps my greater spaceship, to traverse the outer limits of the universe, was consciousness itself!
At any event, I would let you think for a moment, whether you have felt a greater fraternity in the mysteries of love, duration, sentience and consciousness?