Someone here

I can't delete them. I can't do it . I'm so attached to it .I think I can control this thing and not let it spiral out of sight. No fap is still intact. Just watching a little porn here and there is no big deal, right ? I have no problem with wet dreams .if they happen I don't consider it a relapse .

If we live in a multiverse that indicates eternal inflation, does it mean we actually live over and over again the same life? Do all matter and particles that makes ''me'' me, fall in the same chronological order which will indicate that I am indeed a product of eternal and infinite energy? This frightens me, mostly because we are not able to control whether we actually want to exist or not. We are just a product of eternal inflation that always existed and will continue to exist for eternity, thus making us eternal beings. Another issue I have is, if we live in multiverse where all possible outcomes are actually possible, then it means that there are infinite amount copies of me, and some copies are presidents, doctors, criminals etc. Now, with that said, what are your opinion on , me living again after I die on this earth? Will I eventually be born again and live same life again, or will I cease to exist, because there are infinite number of ''me'' out there, so it wouldn't break any mathematic number? What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!' @Leo Gura would like to hear your thoughts on this .as you mentioned something similar in this video Thanks.

Yes .I agree .but you need to tell that to these teachers that I'm referring to .although they are so stuck in their perspective that they will never even accept any reference to a 'personal story'. These teachers, of course, no longer ‘tell stories’ (well, except the gigantic story that all stories are a sign of ignorance…). They imply that they themselves exist in some sort of mystical state beyond the personal, or that they have entered into a kind of space where the personal no longer has any meaning, relevance or interest. They don’t have a past or future, they don’t have ‘personal relationships’ (who is there to have a relationship with?), and they certainly never suffer (because all suffering is an illusion, right?) And so you end up feeling inferior to these people (or non-people, or nobodies, or absences, or whatever they are calling themselves today) and terribly guilty and narcissistic for still having interest in your personal story. Liberation or enlightenment obviously hasn’t happened for you yet! And so you wait and wait for liberation to happen. And although these teachers say there is nothing you can do to reach liberation, and nobody there who can do anything anyway, you carry on going to their meetings and reading their books, in the vain hope that it will happen one day. Although there’s no ‘you’ it can happen to. And no ‘one day’….

Neo-Advaita types. Like Jim Newman and Tony parsons . If you listen to certain nonduality/Advaita teachers who are on the scene at the moment, you may get the impression that there is something terribly wrong with having a personal ‘story’. Having a thought-created story about yourself, your past experiences, your relationships, your feelings, your desires and hopes and fears, and so on – in other words, being a living, breathing human being – is a clear sign of delusion and duality. And you need to wake up from this mess! If you go to a public meeting held by a teacher of ‘radical Advaita’, and they invite questions, and you start talking about something personal – for example, the death of a loved one, an addiction you have, a painful event that happened in your past – they will tell you that you are ‘stuck in your story’, or ‘lost in the dream of time and space’ or they will simply say you are ‘still a person’ and ‘haven’t woken up yet’. The fact that you ‘told a story’ shows that you are still coming from duality – you are still identified as a seeker, stuck in the personal. Once you ‘get it’, you will no longer tell personal stories. You will exist in the eternal Now, and know nothing of your past.

@axiom thank you . I will contemplate on that .

Unfortunately I don't have any access to psychedelics .they are illegal in my country. My main concern is If time is shaped like a doughnut and therefore repeats with the exact events over and over, would I be the same ‘me’, consciously or not?

@Reciprocality sorry its hard for me to understand your posts. Could you explain it in a simpler way ?

The question I feel is about determinism: if we believe that the Universe would have inevitably organized itself in the exact way that it is now, than what we do doesn’t matter. If we believe that we will come back again and again, and ask the same questions, get the same answers, do the same things, then we are not here.

@Gesundheit2 lol

If time is a line, and this line is not merely circular, but spirals, then each circling could be a lot like the one before. Who knows

Observing time passing is not the same thing as time passing, in this sense there is no time passing outside ourselves, just as there is no “COLOR" in physical light, only different wavelengths of force. We cannot-not-exist and this world is most likely doomed, meaning this universe is probably just one of infinite or many possible universes. And we are most likely not bound in our domain of existence.

@gettoefl Time is an abstract concept, not a physical object with geometry. We have been seriously misled about the nature of reality outside our minds by the terminology used by physicists in this regard. regarding eternal recurrence...Reality is repetitious but it never repeats exactly, because the infinity of sameness is exactly equal to the infinity of variety. All our life experiences are repetitious but not exact copies. So enjoy this version of “you” and your life experiences, they will not be repeated, not precisely, not exactly the same.

Why is time an illusion? What do you mean by time? And what do you mean by it being an illusion? Time exists. Sure. We even have a word for it. We are even talking about it right now. It's just like everything else.. What you think it is.... Isn't actually what it is. our naive perception of its flow doesn’t correspond to physical reality. including Isaac Newton’s picture of a universally ticking clock. Even Albert Einstein’s relativistic space-time.. Which is supposed to be an elastic manifold that contorts so that local times differ depending on one’s relative speed or proximity to a mass is just a simplification. In other words the universe is like a movie.. All past presents and future are contained in the same place (for lack of better words). But that's none of your business as you are completely bought into the linearity of life. Better question be What is time? And good luck answering.

Yes I'm right now imagining these infinite incarnations. But are they gonna become actuality at some point in time ? The theory is basically that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a similar form, an infinite number of times. It is based on the philosophy of Predeterminism. People are predestined to continue repeating the same events over and over again. Nietzsche was merely riding on this cosmic abstraction to dramatize his philosophical musing.

@Inliytened1 yeah whatever. Death is really not the main topic of this thread what's your thoughts on eternal recurrence?

Lol.if only it was that simple. What if there is an afterlife? .bottom line is no one knows what happens after death .we could ascend to a different dimension with a different timeline. At some point or other, all of us will be faced with fears about death. After all, what happens when the light’s go out remains one of life’s biggest mysteries. Not only is it normal to fear the unknown but in these current uncertain times, we’re probably going to find our thoughts turning to our own mortality even more. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, contemplating death can spur us on to make important changes in our lives. It can make us question whether we’re living a life that’s based on our values – the things that are important to us.

The reason why Nietzsche's concept and theory of “eternal recurrence” can be depressing is because that it assumes that at some point in time (whether in either a decade or millennia, or even regardless of if the universe “lives forever” or “had gone through multiple life cycles”) any past event or experience (like one’s birthday or a natural disaster) were to eventually repeat in a “perfect” manner - if it was to happen, every “minute detail” (like the positioning of the candles on one’s birthday, or the minute events that define the natural disaster in question) of the experience must be exactly the same; no deviations, no variations, not even a single change. “Eternal recurrence” can be possible IF the current understanding of the laws of physics explicitly states that the “underlying elements” of the universe are discrete (and by discrete as per mathematical context, I MEAN FINITE, NOT INFINITE). Essentially, for the “observer” who is depressed because of that said concept and theory, this means that the universe has “finite possibilities or experiences”, and that the “observer” will assume that at some point in the near or far future (even considering the above timescale at the beginning of this post), the universe is “about to run out of new things to experience”. To sum this paragraph up - NO MORE NEW THINGS TO EVEN OCCUR ANYMORE; EVERYTHING WILL EVENTUALLY REPEAT. Also, many “observers” will assume that SOMETHING BAD WILL HAPPEN if this eventuality were to ever occur; for them, in an artist’s words, to experience the same event atom for atom can be TANTAMOUNT to plagiarism whether intentional or accidental. In order for “eternal recurrence” to be non-existent (and in turn, cure the “dread” and angst” of the observer), there must be at least scientific or mathematical proof that any event, under any circumstances, must never repeat, exactly atom for atom - in plain English, there is always something new for the universe to occur, regardless of time (whether it’s either a decade, a century, a millennium, a civilization reset, a universal life cycle, or even multiple universal life cycles away). To date, there is STILL no credible scientific or mathematical proof that will put this theory (and in extension, the observer’s existential dread/angst/crisis) to rest. This concept and theory actually gave me an existential crisis

I share the same worry as you. Its giving me existential crisis

Life and the universe is an unending cycle, you will keep coming a countless number of times and when the universe becomes too old, it self destructs and begins afresh! Everything will start all over again. I read so. But I should be more concerned with the current life I have and not care about my next life, example, i have one beautiful gift now and I begin to worry about another gift which was planned to be presented to me soon, hence making me unable to enjoy my current gift. Whenever you find yourself alive, this world or the next or a thousandth, live it and make the best out of it, don't care about the one you don't have now!

Before Einstein came up with relativity, which entails a Big Bang beginning, scientists believed that the universe was largely unchanging, and of fixed size. In a universe of fixed size, Nietzsche theorized in his unpublished journals which became known as the Will to Power, everything will eventually return to its previous position, and re-enter into its previous relationships. Imagine, for instance, that the universe is a computer screen with the screen saver on. A ball bounces around this limited area and will eventually happen upon a path that it has already taken, given infinite time and no possibility of an expanding screen, the ball will eventually only take paths that it has taken before. In a universe of fixed size and infinite time where all is will to power and nothing else, things will settle into established patterns of existence.

Last night I was discussing deja vu with a friend. We were musing about how such a phenomenon could exist. Is it just a time delay between the memory and perception in the brain, as science says? Or is it something deeper than that? Is there something meaningful in the events we perceive as having happened before? What if the universe does cycle back on itself as you suggest? What if your life repeats each time this cycle occurs? How would you ever know? If everything was exactly the same, there would be no way to tell. Nothing could distinguish one cycle from another. Suppose the universe does cycle, but each cycle is slightly different. The Butterfly Effect demonstrates that the smallest actions can create huge differences in future events. So, maybe each cycle is different because of trivial events that happened long ago. If that is the case, would some things still be the same? Is it possible to cross paths with yourself from a different cycle? I've long believed that deja vu is a sign that you're living the life you're supposed to live. But what does that really mean? It could mean that we keep trying this thing, over and over until we get it “right”. Maybe the universe does come back into existence each time it ends. Maybe it repeats itself each time, and we are destined to come back and do this all over again. Maybe deja vu is recognizing the times we have done this before, in a different instance of the universe. Most of our lives we don't notice, because big differences come about from the smallest changes. Then every once in a while, you recognize a moment that you know has happened before. There is way more to what is physically possible than we could ever understand. Maybe the universe keeps repeating over and over until we get it right. What happens when we do get it right? What if it is this time?

It isn't a wonder that the LGBT community has a higher percentage of people that will suffer from a mental health issue, than those that don't belong to the community. Whether it's linked to direct HBT bullying at school which can have a traumatic and lasting impact in to later life, or the more subtle effects caused from HBT language, hiding your identity or being fearful to holding your partner's hand in public. Some people spend years in a workplace without coming out as they fear it may affect their work life - living a lie day to day is both exhausting and stressful. Do you think marriages between same-sex couples should or should not be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages

@Leo Gura would really appreciate your take on this ?

If eternity exists, and there is no beginning and no end (to everything even that’s outside the universe), does that mean there was still an eternity before our time our moment right now?

Hmmm. Cosmologists today are by no means certain that the universe is infinite. It's uncertain. Even if the present does recur in some way, there is no reason for our decisions right now or the next second to be identical. There are three different theories 1. Big Bounce 2. Big freeze 3. Big rip We don't know which is true. [there are other variations e.g. the idea of baby universes forming inside of some black holes and then budding off to make their own space-time not connected to ours in any way] In all these theories our universe continues into the future not just for centuries, for billions of years. For all except the Big Rip it continues for trillions of years. With the Big Freeze then there isn’t any recurrence, as with each new moment, the universe is just a bit colder. Every second, the already very cold background radiation is slightly cooler throughout the universe due to the expansion of space. With the big Rip, it may lead to a new universe after the big Rip as it looks very like the inflation stage of our universe so just possibly could start a new universe. With the big Bounce, time continues through to the new universe. So - the new universe will have new stars and new planets and be altogether new. With eternal recurrence, if there are infinitely many big bounces, then eventually two of the bounces will start identically. That doesn't mean that our bounce ever happens again but one of the infinitely many bounces happens again. NO REASON FOR THE NEXT SECOND TO BE THE SAME AS BEFORE - EVEN IF UNIVERSE HAS BEEN IDENTICAL BY CHANCE FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS However that doesn't mean it has to continue the same way as before even if it started identical. Because - for instance suppose we ended up like this in a future universe, identical situation, me typing the same words into a computer in an identical world. I could then type a different word next from the one the person similar to me typed in a previous universe. It would only be identical for all time if the universe was deterministic, that if you have the same situation the exact same things always happen including the exact same decisions of any living beings in that situation. But we are pretty certain that our universe is not deterministic. For instance radioactive decay is not deterministic. The motion of air molecules is not deterministic, you can't predict exactly what will happen if one molecule hits another. Weather seems to be not deterministic either. So the decisions of humans are surely not deterministic. So, if the same situation as this with people that look exactly like us ever repeated, even if the universe was the same as ours identically for the last 13 billion years, there is no reason for us to do the same things as them in the next second. It is a similar idea with an infinitely large universe. If the universe is big enough you expect to find identical patches in it. The larger the universe the larger those patches that are identical. There is no reason why our patch particularly would repeat. But if it did, then somewhere, trillions of light years away from us, there might be a patch exactly like ours. But it would be the same, even if that patch was identical to ours for the last 14 billion years, there is no reason for it to continue to be the same for the next second.