Post by Creator on Jul 18, 2006 2:43:54 GMT -5
Debbie read this little text in my blog and asked if I would post it here, so I did... It is my view on death and afterlife.
Death - according to The First Law of Thermodynamics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
My mother is what some people would call a natural born spiritualist. She gets weird things happening to her all the time. Radio starts playing in the middle of the night, drinking glasses shattering by themselves, a sudden scent of roses in her apartment in the middle of the winter, things move about in her home by themselves and she always knows when people close to her dies. I grew up with this. I've never seen myself as psychic. Science is my God and that's it. But some time back, I started to get premonitions too. I guess it all started when I (for fun) learned how to see my own aura. I must have opened up another sense by experimenting with this.
Recently, I kept getting the scenario that someone very close to me was going to die soon. And I just know that after I move over to England this year, I will never see this person alive again. The feeling was very strong and real and I got what I could describe as "film sequences" in my head on this theme. That he was dead. Connected to these moments of insight was a tremendous angst and I would start to cry. This person is my very best friend and we have known each other since I was 14. He is in his mid 50:ies, not ill that I know of, and it will be a quick and unexpected death. I don't really want to know this. But it really made me re-value things in my life. I have been absolutely LOUSY at keeping in touch. I really feel like I should spend a lot of time with him now. I want a lot of nice memories.
It is natural for me to look to science for answers, even in a case like this one.
The First Law of Thermodynamics tell us that Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be converted from one form to another. That fits well with the way I see things - that life is endless and cyclic just as nature and the universe is endless and cyclic. I believe in reincarnation. It makes sense to me, even though I am not a religious person.
Premonitions then? Physics define speed to be equal to the distance travelled by an object in a unit of time. For the initiated that is s=d/t. But since neither velocity nor distance are constant, why should time be? We just use velocity, distance and time to measure the relations between objects and events. Time is a mental construction that helps us understand causal relationships. All measurements of time are relative to the standard we choose. All measurements of size are relative to the standard we choose. If one of these standards changed or was constantly changing, would you be aware of it?
This does not mean that we do not have an experience of time. What it means is that our real experience of time is dependent, is always relative to our real experience of events. It also means that our experience of time is dependent on or embodied conceptualisation of time in terms of events. We think of time in terms of change because we change. We measure with intervals between events. The units of measurement are of course, completely arbitrary and for our convenience. Some realities are so close, so certain, that we call them the past. Some realities are so close, but uncertain, we call them the future. Is time is just a filing system for endless 'now's? Could that be why some of us can see what is to happen in the future?
Black Holes thoroughly and completely screw up both Space and Time, and at the singularity both illusions of Time and Space come to a stop. Since eternity is endless, there is no real need for time.
And "ghosts"? The Quantum theory is totally accepted in the world of science these days. In the Quantum Mechanical world, the idea that we can locate objects exactly breaks down. Suppose a particle has momentum p and position x. In a Quantum Mechanical world, I would not be able to measure p and x precisely. There would be an uncertainty associated with each measurement that I could never get rid of, even in a perfect experiment.
A consequence of the Uncertainty Principle is that if an object's position x is defined precisely then the momentum of the object will be only weakly constrained, and vice versa. One cannot simultaneously find both the position and momentum of an object to arbitrary accuracy.
A consequence of the Quantum Mechanical nature of the world is that particles can appear in places where they have no right to be (from an ordinary, common sense point of view). So yeah, anyone I ever knew who has now passed on is welcome to visit anytime. Just use your quantum powers! *L*
When my father died in 1996, my mother was in hospital after some serious surgery and was pretty much out of it on morphine. At the same time my dad had a stroke at home and went into a coma. My mum and dad were in separate parts of the same hospital. The night my father died, "something" had squeezed my mum's hand so hard that her wedding rings had been bent out of shape.
Another weird thing is my dad's wristwatch that he was wearing when he had his stroke. I got it after he died and I keep it in my bedroom. I have never changed the battery. Still, it makes a little "beep" every hour like my father set it to do. It is numb to all attempts to change the settings. It has been doing this hourly beeping for ten years on the same battery...
I hope that my friend will be around for the August blues picnic. He always performs there every year and I usually go. Got to hear him sing again before I leave for England and he leaves for the unknown.
Carpe Diem.
Death - according to The First Law of Thermodynamics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
My mother is what some people would call a natural born spiritualist. She gets weird things happening to her all the time. Radio starts playing in the middle of the night, drinking glasses shattering by themselves, a sudden scent of roses in her apartment in the middle of the winter, things move about in her home by themselves and she always knows when people close to her dies. I grew up with this. I've never seen myself as psychic. Science is my God and that's it. But some time back, I started to get premonitions too. I guess it all started when I (for fun) learned how to see my own aura. I must have opened up another sense by experimenting with this.
Recently, I kept getting the scenario that someone very close to me was going to die soon. And I just know that after I move over to England this year, I will never see this person alive again. The feeling was very strong and real and I got what I could describe as "film sequences" in my head on this theme. That he was dead. Connected to these moments of insight was a tremendous angst and I would start to cry. This person is my very best friend and we have known each other since I was 14. He is in his mid 50:ies, not ill that I know of, and it will be a quick and unexpected death. I don't really want to know this. But it really made me re-value things in my life. I have been absolutely LOUSY at keeping in touch. I really feel like I should spend a lot of time with him now. I want a lot of nice memories.
It is natural for me to look to science for answers, even in a case like this one.
The First Law of Thermodynamics tell us that Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be converted from one form to another. That fits well with the way I see things - that life is endless and cyclic just as nature and the universe is endless and cyclic. I believe in reincarnation. It makes sense to me, even though I am not a religious person.
Premonitions then? Physics define speed to be equal to the distance travelled by an object in a unit of time. For the initiated that is s=d/t. But since neither velocity nor distance are constant, why should time be? We just use velocity, distance and time to measure the relations between objects and events. Time is a mental construction that helps us understand causal relationships. All measurements of time are relative to the standard we choose. All measurements of size are relative to the standard we choose. If one of these standards changed or was constantly changing, would you be aware of it?
This does not mean that we do not have an experience of time. What it means is that our real experience of time is dependent, is always relative to our real experience of events. It also means that our experience of time is dependent on or embodied conceptualisation of time in terms of events. We think of time in terms of change because we change. We measure with intervals between events. The units of measurement are of course, completely arbitrary and for our convenience. Some realities are so close, so certain, that we call them the past. Some realities are so close, but uncertain, we call them the future. Is time is just a filing system for endless 'now's? Could that be why some of us can see what is to happen in the future?
Black Holes thoroughly and completely screw up both Space and Time, and at the singularity both illusions of Time and Space come to a stop. Since eternity is endless, there is no real need for time.
And "ghosts"? The Quantum theory is totally accepted in the world of science these days. In the Quantum Mechanical world, the idea that we can locate objects exactly breaks down. Suppose a particle has momentum p and position x. In a Quantum Mechanical world, I would not be able to measure p and x precisely. There would be an uncertainty associated with each measurement that I could never get rid of, even in a perfect experiment.
A consequence of the Uncertainty Principle is that if an object's position x is defined precisely then the momentum of the object will be only weakly constrained, and vice versa. One cannot simultaneously find both the position and momentum of an object to arbitrary accuracy.
A consequence of the Quantum Mechanical nature of the world is that particles can appear in places where they have no right to be (from an ordinary, common sense point of view). So yeah, anyone I ever knew who has now passed on is welcome to visit anytime. Just use your quantum powers! *L*
When my father died in 1996, my mother was in hospital after some serious surgery and was pretty much out of it on morphine. At the same time my dad had a stroke at home and went into a coma. My mum and dad were in separate parts of the same hospital. The night my father died, "something" had squeezed my mum's hand so hard that her wedding rings had been bent out of shape.
Another weird thing is my dad's wristwatch that he was wearing when he had his stroke. I got it after he died and I keep it in my bedroom. I have never changed the battery. Still, it makes a little "beep" every hour like my father set it to do. It is numb to all attempts to change the settings. It has been doing this hourly beeping for ten years on the same battery...
I hope that my friend will be around for the August blues picnic. He always performs there every year and I usually go. Got to hear him sing again before I leave for England and he leaves for the unknown.
Carpe Diem.
