J Krishnamurti:How does one obtain sustained clarity.Side question, is flux illusory?

[lmfao]

Often we might have an enlightenment experience or two, but it's temporary and we wish we could make it last forever. 

 

I love this video so much, because before I found it after having done much contemplating and thinking and meditating on the issue of time in general. Asking "what is now?", wondering whether reality is continuous or discontinuous. 

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I feel the urge to type out the tangent in my thinking. 

Time is also a weird conceptual paradox. It's strange how any sort of flux, perception or continuity exists. In My explanation I will pressupose the existence of past and future, but this is only so I can highlight the distinction between what a 0th dimensional object looks like vs 1st/second Dimensional object. This is because I want to focus in on the idea of the present moment being a "point" and why it's paradoxical. You can discard the presuppositions after the intuition I'm trying to explain has been communicated. 

Let's suppose that an interval of time were to be represented as a line we can draw on paper. As you move from left to right, you move from past to present. 

By very definition, any sort of line is composed of an infinite number of points. A line has size. Points on the other hand are sizeless; they represent location with 0 size. They are considered 0th Dimensional objects because of that. 

ALL that we have IS the present moment, since the present moment by definition represents what IS. I really want to emphasise this last sentence. 

Referring back to the graph we drew of time above. Let the variable called "time" be allowed to be assigned a single number. A number is chosen, and it corresponds to the present. The assigned number corresponds to a single point on the line, with the point being the present moment. 

Because points are sizeless, there is not any sort of leeway for motion, change, flux or perception. Since we are always in the present moment, we are ALWAYS at a point. 

But if we were at a point, it should feel frozen, static and not dynamic. In the absence of an interval of time, nothing can change or move. Points have a single identity (like they have a single location, with the single location being given by a fixed set of numbers) and do not stray from that fixed identity, hence no leeway for change. Yet, we are under the feeling that life is in flux. The feeling that perception exists. 

What's going on, I have no idea. 

This reminds me of calculus. A conceptual tool to say that a single point has an "instantaneous rate of change".

And this isn't just mental masturbation, it relates to your direct experience. Ask yourself, what is now? When is now? And you'll find yourself running into these same contradictions, not knowing or knowing whether flux, time or change exists. 

@Leo Gura thoughts? Is flux an illusion? 

Edited May 23, 2019 by lmfao