time loop fear

[esse_est_percipi]

No reason to think the next iteration would go anywhere like this one did, though I suppose if it keeps going onto infinity you'd eventually get this same universe again

And an infinite amount of new universes which are only slightly different to this one, and an infinite amount which are completely different. If the multiverse theory is true.

 

[Pan]

You will be reborn as you, forever, I intuit. I say "intuit" as I have no proof of this, empirically speaking, nor do I profess to know what is beyond death. I am reminded, instead, of what Voltaire said: "Of course I have lived before; I live
NOW.". These questions are not easy, nor are the answers forthcoming.

 

[Pan]

Time looping, to my mind, beckons recurrence, but in a different way, loops widen and narrow. The cycle, for what it is worth,remains the same. To my mind, there is no escape from us AS US.
The multiverse theory appears to be "true", or at least philosophically/scientifically "correct". I bracket so much verbiage with quotes, knowing all the while that this makes for interesting discourse, but precious little else.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

Quotes and interesting discourses are...interesting.
I like this other quote by Voltaire:

"It is not more surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is resurrection."

 

[builtwrong]

Though I don't believe in it, I really couldn't be too afraid of time looping. Assuming you don't remember anything from your past life and the suffering doesn't stack in some way would it really be any different than living just once?

 

[esse_est_percipi]

Though I don't believe in it, I really couldn't be too afraid of time looping. Assuming you don't remember anything from your past life and the suffering doesn't stack in some way would it really be any different than living just once?

No, not from a subjective viewpoint.
But it would appear to make existence absurd and meaningless.

 

[Wayfaerer]

Though I don't believe in it, I really couldn't be too afraid of time looping. Assuming you don't remember anything from your past life and the suffering doesn't stack in some way would it really be any different than living just once?

Yes. If your life was full of pain and misery, you'd be "suffering in the moment" for all eternity. If this did not matter, then Nietzsche never would've put forth his "thought experiment" in the first place.

 

[RedDEE]

Truth be told, we are time looping now, in this life we are living. All the same shit is happening over and over again, but in a different expression. The exact same shit is happening over and over again, but it appears different things are happening. This is an illusion, the exact same shit keeps on happening. I've had drug trips where I really understood it - when you're aware that time is looping, you can look into the future, because you know what's going to happen because it's already happened to you a million times.

What we're currently going through is like a spiral. Actually, it is a spiral. Imagine the difference between a spiral and a circle. If life were going in a perfect circle, it would be like everything "resets" and we live it again. That's not how it goes. It goes in a spiral - and a spiral is very similar to a circle in very many ways. A spiral is circular. But a spiral does not repeat itself, as the spiral goes down, it is different. I don't know how to explain this in text - I'm going to draw up some shit in photoshop to show you what I'm trying to explain.



Here, we have a circle. As we go around, we have numbers 1 through 10. Imagine time was like this circle. If we were going around this circle, the same numbers would repeat themselves forever. Once you got to 10, it would "reset" itself right back to 1 again.

But time is not like that. Behold, the spiral,



Time is like that. We are traversing down the spiral. Imagine the #1 being your birth, and #52 being your death. As you go down the spiral, time progresses, and different things happen. It never "resets" itself, you always "see different numbers".

But at the same time, it is still "looping". We are traveling through time down a spiral that never repeats itself, and is progressive, while at the same time it is circular and it is looping.

So as you go down the spiral, you will start to notice a certain pattern. They say history repeats itself, right? For example, we're having a pandemic right now and we have to wear masks everywhere you go. Well that happened in 1928, too. Here's a picture of people wearing masks at a football game during the 1928 pandemic,



So once you realize that time is both progressive and circular, you can start to observe certain patterns emerging. You may notice certain cycles that repeat itself within your own life. Once you fully realize that time is progressing down a circular pattern, you may even be able to predict the future. Enlightened sages and Sadghurus have claimed to attain the "Siddha"(magic power) of being able to look into the future.

I'll end on this note. Time is a spiral, but it has both a beginning and an end. This spiral of your life, it will end. Thank God.

 

[almost_dead]

So I keep coming across this theory/idea that we have already lived the same life a number of times before, and when we die we will have to keep living the same life over and over indefinitely. (not necessarily related to whether we ctb or not, though sometimes people link it to ctb'ing, which I think is a scare tactic and cruelly causes more anguish and worry for people who are already suffering.) I actually find this the scariest theory of what happens after we die. For me, it is worse than eternal nothingness, worse than reincarnation (at least traditional reincarnation is reincarnation as a different being), perhaps worse than some hell God could send you to.

Nietzsche called this idea the eternal recurrence of the same and I think it is also found in ancient egyptian myths and indian religious philosophy. In cosmology it is called the big bounce model of the universe, though I'm unsure whether the expansion and collapse cycle is supposed to produce a completely different universe, only a slightly different one, or exactly the same one. It would depend on whether the beginning of each cycle produces exactly the same initial quantum configurations of particles and energy, but I don't see why that would have to be the case.

I find this idea really disturbing and terrifying, even though it makes no difference to the present given that whether it's true or not we don't remember any of the previous iterations anyway.

I find it disturbing in a philosophical sense maybe, as I can't see what ultimate meaning there is in such an existential setup. It seems absurd and nihilistic, like the sisyphus myth but on a universal scale. There doesn't seem to be any purpose to it, no learning curve or possible spiritual progression. It just doesn't seem to square well with the fact of suffering or morality. It's all very well for people who have nice happy lives and never experience a day of depression, but what about those who suffer and have a bad lot in life? Are they just destined to live out the same miserable existence over and over because of some eternal cosmic lottery which decreed that they have the same conscious experiences as the same being on a playlist loop forever?

Maybe if the repetition of the universe is not tied to the identity of conscious experience, that might change things. So, the next universe might pan out in exactly the same way materially, but instead of experiencing it as x at time t1, in universe+1 I experience it as y at time t2, etc. Until I experience it from every possible conscious point of view. From the point of view of every monad, Leibniz's indivisible conscious building blocks of the universe. Obviously I don't know what the ultimate purpose here could be, but at least it introduces a crucial difference within the repetition of sameness, which might hold the key to some wider purpose. This sounds like reincarnation but it's not necessarily tied to the concept of karma or any other buddhist principle.

Anyway, whatever is the case, this is the one afterlife theory/theory of existence that I hope isn't true, as I initially described it.
And even though there is no evidence for it being true, I hate being reminded of it because I cannot completely rule it out from a logical point of view.

bruh , If you dont remember your past life , then even if this theory is true , How will it matter ?

 

[Wayfaerer]

bruh , If you dont remember your past life , then even if this theory is true , How will it matter ?

See my above post.

 

[builtwrong]

Truth be told, we are time looping now, in this life we are living. All the same shit is happening over and over again, but in a different expression. The exact same shit is happening over and over again, but it appears different things are happening. This is an illusion, the exact same shit keeps on happening. I've had drug trips where I really understood it - when you're aware that time is looping, you can look into the future, because you know what's going to happen because it's already happened to you a million times.

What we're currently going through is like a spiral. Actually, it is a spiral. Imagine the difference between a spiral and a circle. If life were going in a perfect circle, it would be like everything "resets" and we live it again. That's not how it goes. It goes in a spiral - and a spiral is very similar to a circle in very many ways. A spiral is circular. But a spiral does not repeat itself, as the spiral goes down, it is different. I don't know how to explain this in text - I'm going to draw up some shit in photoshop to show you what I'm trying to explain.

View attachment 42808

Here, we have a circle. As we go around, we have numbers 1 through 10. Imagine time was like this circle. If we were going around this circle, the same numbers would repeat themselves forever. Once you got to 10, it would "reset" itself right back to 1 again.

But time is not like that. Behold, the spiral,

View attachment 42809

Time is like that. We are traversing down the spiral. Imagine the #1 being your birth, and #52 being your death. As you go down the spiral, time progresses, and different things happen. It never "resets" itself, you always "see different numbers".

But at the same time, it is still "looping". We are traveling through time down a spiral that never repeats itself, and is progressive, while at the same time it is circular and it is looping.

So as you go down the spiral, you will start to notice a certain pattern. They say history repeats itself, right? For example, we're having a pandemic right now and we have to wear masks everywhere you go. Well that happened in 1928, too. Here's a picture of people wearing masks at a football game during the 1928 pandemic,

View attachment 42810

So once you realize that time is both progressive and circular, you can start to observe certain patterns emerging. You may notice certain cycles that repeat itself within your own life. Once you fully realize that time is progressing down a circular pattern, you may even be able to predict the future. Enlightened sages and Sadghurus have claimed to attain the "Siddha"(magic power) of being able to look into the future.

I'll end on this note. Time is a spiral, but it has both a beginning and an end. This spiral of your life, it will end. Thank God.

I don't think it's that simple, history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme

 

[RedDEE]

I don't think it's that simple, history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme

That's essentially my point.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

I don't think it's that simple, history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme

The spiral rhymes, the circle chimes.

 

[Pan]

The spiral, if you will, is circular, and incorporates many circles of varying width and radius. This spiraling, to my mind, would point to the same life containing similar patterns of varying width and radius. The spiral is unending, to my limited frame of reference, and Is simply a variant of the circle. Of course, all of this is only intuitive and remains a mystery, as we confront the permanent zone of unknowing.

 

[Pan]

Time loop fear aside, I can't help but think an apocalypse of sorts is looming. Who knows? I do know that, at least in the u.s., dark clouds are gathering. I am afraid. My only alternative is to pack my bags and flee to Belize, which, minus the palms, beaches and heat, is no better. is no better. The industrialized west is collapsing. For lack of a better comparison, Rome is falling. I truly pray I don't live long in this life, in these dark and anxious times.... and

 

[Pan]

The spiral rhymes, the circle chimes.

Love that quote by Voltaire, by the way.