KENNETH UDUT* -* 5:05 PM* -* Public We are part of the Universe. All the elements we are made of came from a very large exploding star that created the heaviest elements upon exploding, the intense heat fusing the parts together to make gold, silver and more. And these parts are all in us and through us. We are conscious beings. We are the Universe trying to Understand Itself. From dust we came, to dust we shall return. We started as stardust and in the far deep future, we will return to being stardust. But somehow, perhaps through the process of quantum entanglement, our consciousness - our souls - will continue to live on, somehow, elsewhere - and here, certainly, among those of us who remember. Is there a heaven? I believe there is. It is nothing that we could possibly imagine or concieve of - our minds cannot contain the vastness of what it is. While it is true that everything dies, it is more importantly true that absolutely nothing dies: all things live on, in some form, in some fashion, whether it be through the influence of our life's actions and words upon others, or through children, or through our dust becoming part of some future star yet to form that will eventually explode, creating new elements out of our dust, creating a new sun and planets with a new set of living beings who will one day contemplate, a billion years from now, "Who Are We?" And we will be a part of them, their most distance ancestors. Kenneth Udut Aug 7, 2011Edit -* Comment* -* Share +4 by kelly lieberman, Juan Garcia, Sally K Witt and 1 other 2 shares - Christopher Franko and Juan Garcia Dusty Hunt - i wonder what do we know of the star that formed the nebula that formed our solar system 5:07 PM Wilton Rao - That is deep, yo. Unfortunately, I don't feel confident enough to say that consciousness exists outside the body. In the end, all that we think and feel can be broken down into neural and hormonal signals conducted by our nervous and endocrine systems. Consciousness is just a tool evolution gave us to help us survive. Eeyup. I'm a downer. 5:08 PM (edited) Brent Leezy - I can't think of how our brains could live in an alt place when we are dead so I can't see how heaven is real and still say that it's just an escape from the fear of death 5:10 PM Sally K Witt - Great thoughts 5:11 PM KENNETH UDUT - +Brent Leezy well, the heaven was a 3rd thought. My niece's husband passed away at 32 this year, and today was his birthday, so it was a somber day. As I realized that they will all be reading this (on Facebook, where I had originally posted the thought) I added a 3rd thought regarding heaven. The scientific way i can see heaven as existing is the idea of Quantum Entanglement, that electrons can mirror each other perfectly, if having only been in contact one time and be far away from each other with no further communication. if electrons can mirror themselves, it is theoretically possible that the separated electron (separated from the flow of the consciousness of the person who passed on) continues on elsewhere in the universe - then it is possible that the whole mind and its workings are mirrored elsewhere in the Universe -- ie - heaven or at leat a consciousness that exists without a brain to contain it. Or: think of brainwaves (same idea as the mirrored electrons, but waves are easier to 'get' then quantum oddities like "spooky action at a distance") - Beethoven wrote his 9th symphony 150 years ago or so. think of "Ode to joy". His brainwaves concocted the music, the feeling, the EXPERIENCE. Listeners who are "in tune" with the music, the performers, the listeners, letting the music take them away to "another place" - well that 'other place" is Beethovans MIND - his consciousness - his soul even - use whatever term you wish. And for the time that music is performed, or replayed in someone's mind - their brainwaves are the SAME as beethovans - meaning that he LIVES on. Perhaps as a ghostly imprint of a small portion of his consciousnes but nonetheless, he lives on. And if someone who 'gets' beethovan decides to write further music that he "might" have written - well, yes, it is within the consciousness of a person living 'now' - but it is beethovans brainwaves transferred through the music, completely mirrored (like the electrons above) in someone else's brainwaves. It is a form of eternal life. OR if you believe we live in a holographic universe - that we are all living stretched out in two dimension (but experiencing them as 3 dimensions) over the surface of the event horizon of a black hole -- (see Leonard Suskind) - the thing about holograms is they are infinitely regressive - repeatable - a small chunk contains the same information as the whole thing... then our consciousness never dies as it exists somewhere, holographically encoded. it may be out of reach of us mere mortals but it would exist nonetheless. Do I believe that there is a form of life after death? I honestly don't know. But i try to see all sides of something, and I can see how it's POSSIBLE. If someone asks me about heaven, I usually say, "if there is life after death, then i see it as bodiless - consciousness only -- and the explanation of heaven vs hell would be this: Imagine you have an itch. You take your hand and scratch it. Now, imagine you have the itch in your mind but have no hands to scratch it with. That is hell." Phantom liimbs made me think of that -- ppl who lose a limb but who feel an itch in a foot that is no longer there, and cannot scratch it. But this is a way for me to justify "why do I try to be at peace with myself and with the world?" I work very hard at it. Being understanding, forgiving, seeing other people's points of view. I have to do it 900 times a day in the little things., like making course corrections in trying to send a rocket to the moon (without tiny course corrections, the rocket will miss the moon by a mile - just like we need course corrections daily in our life, in our choices, in our reactions to what happens to us). If my mind is at peace, then if i am a disembodied consciousness, it won't matter and I'll be okay with it. That would be a form of heaven. i also want to be buried - everybody I know wants to be cremated - cremation is common thing and I'm contrary -- because DNA is destroyed by cremation but not by burial. So let's say God, or the aliens that seeded our planet and bulit the pyramids, or some higher dimensional being comes down and says, "Okay, time to populate my next pet project", scoops up the DNA around the planet that exists and recreates us - I'd like to be one of them. Trying to cover my basis without obsessing over any of it. If I end up getting cremated, oh well. If life is but a flame that flickers and is blown out without even a whisp of smoke left behind, that's fine too. wow - thanks Brent - you got me yapping :-) I like working through those ideas. 6:21 PM* -* Edit Wilton Rao - Holy Jesus that is a lot of ideas. I'm familiar with the mechanism of quantum entanglement. And although it is entirely possible that all humans (maybe even our entire planet or universe) are entangled onto some other parallel universe, when we die, they die, too. That's just how entanglement works. A more feasible theory (in my opinion) is the theory that everything in our universe is entangled with everything else. We all came from the Big Bang, and that means that, on some level, every particle is "related" to every other particle. If one can access this connection, one can CONTROL THINGS WITH THEIR MIND do cool stuff, I guess. Your discussion of Beethoven is interesting (I love classical music!), but I'm not sure if it holds. When I listen to a Beethoven symphony, I feel passionate emotion within me. This emotion is caused by me recognizing patterns of beat, rhythm, harmony, and melody - that is, the physical compressions and rarefactions that make up sound waves. This emotion does not come from Beethoven's mind; Beethoven's mind may have caused this emotion, but I don't see how his brainwaves are my brainwaves. Also, if you have a lot of money, you may be interested in cryogenics. Freeze your body, make it last longer :D 6:31 PM KENNETH UDUT - +Dusty Hunt You know, that's something I want to know more about too. the star that went supernova IS our Creator - it created all of the elements on our planet, the earth, the other planets in our solar system, in our bodies. In fact, I created a future religion out of it: The Church of the Primal Supernova - http://free.naplesplus.us/articles/view.php/59799/primal-supernova - it is a combination of science and religion. The key players seem to be the Giant Molecular Gas Cloud, Gravity and the Primal Supernova. The primal supernova was the explosion of a star at least ten times larger than our sun. That star deserves our honor and respect. Its death gave us life - it truly did! I researched it hard and heavy for, oh, two days on the internet, but learned enough to understand the gist of it. I can't believe that NOBODY has given that sun a name or started a religion after it. It is the perfect blend of religion and science. It is something worth worshipping because it is in us, all around us, we breath it and it gives us life everyday. Our very DNA is made up of the same materials created by that nameless giant sun. Absolutely amazes and astounds me. 7:12 PM* -* Edit +1 Dusty Hunt - +KENNETH UDUT i think i have just found my religion.. and i have been looking all my life! whats it called? 7:44 PM KENNETH UDUT - +Dusty Hunt I dunno what it's called - but we should make up a name for it. You never know - it might get a huge following :-) +Wilton Rao well, i don't mean all of beethovan's brainwaves - just the portion that communicated the everything that is transferred when music is composed, performed and understood. Think of it this way: let's say you are a machine. the emotion caused by by recognizing beat patterns, rhythm, harmony and melody, the physical compressions and rarifications caused by the soundwaves: if you were a machine - Beethovan wrote the original programming. He set the dials and knobs, levers and such a certain way. Now, you, a machine, 150 years later, are set to the same parameters using beethovans original programming. The programming is part of his brain, for that is where it comes from. Your brain was programmed by beethovan, using the mechanism of music and having the fertile ground in your mind to comprehend it fully. He lives on through his programming - part of your brain, while being immersed in the music thinks what he thought, feels what he felt - you are connected. everything was reproduced perfectly in you, in your machine. Essentially, his brainwaves and your brainwaves (the part experiencing the music and all that it stirs up within you) are in SYNC with each other. Two things in sync are, essentially, identical. Recreated. He lives again. We take music for granted but it is an absolutely miraculous process, what it does to people. A scientific experiment can be set to the original parameters and perfectly reproduced. the scientific method is just a verification and simplification of what happens in Reality -- if a simple scientific experiment is repeatable, everything about it is the same as it was the first time -- it is the same experiment, just taking place at different points in the spacetime continuum. Music may be no different -- different points in spacetime, but it is the same experience whether now, 150 years ago, 1000 years in the future. This is only speaking to the perfect parts of the experience of music - when you are totally immersed in it, where you "get it" - not the times that your mind is on other things, reading your email (which beethovan didn't do), etc. Can you see what I mean? I know it's a weird way of putting it - and it stretches the imagination a little, but here - think of it in your own lifetime: You have a song from your adolescence, say, "Open Arms" by Journey. You were in love with someone when that song was playing on the radio way back when. Flash forward 20+ years, you hear the song play on the radio. suddenly, you are transported back to that time and place -- not by mere memories and pictures - but feelings, emotions, sensations. For all intents and purposes, at the moment you are immersed in the experience of the music, it IS 20+ years ago, and you ARE in that mental place you were in back then. it is not merely time travel - it is a point where TWO POINTS IN TIME ARE ONE. In a mini way, the spacetime continuum is PINCHED together at those two points, your current time, your past time, and they are ONE POINT. When the songs over, you're back to the Now (or when you're distracted in some way). It's that moment of Flow. Regarding entanglement - you're right - I was speaking of individual electrons, but really i was thinking more of the holistic viwe of the universe - that all elemental particles are connected to all other elemental particles. Since we are all connected via the 'fabric' of spacetime, we are all connected to everything everywhere. Like the Buddhist said to the hotdog vendor, "make me one with everything." - we are one with everything. We are not separate being contemplating the universe - we aren't even just products of the universe - we are an integral PART of the universe - it flows through us, and we through it. We cannot be separate from the universe. Man, i sound all New-agey when I talk like this. I like the theory too that there is but ONE ELECTRON, but due to the quirkiness of higher-dimensional physics, it can appear to be in trillions of places at once - but there is but one. It explains the results in the photon particle/wave experiment, etc. but that's one of the crazier-sounding ideas that i like to toss around but could definitely be so. Not sure about the controlling things with your mind: I had a friend who had just watched a movie that I refuse to see (I would probably enjoy the heck out of it too) - it was something like "what the blank do you know?". He was all into it and he told me things about manifesting objects and things. I can see why he liked it - and i would probably enjoy the movie, but I'm a science freak, always trying to get to the nature of things, exploring different possibilities etc, accepting some, rejecting others, etc. He singlehandedly turned me off to the idea of controlling reality with the mind, which I wasn't really into anyhow. I think if you could experience the spacetime continuum, "be one with the universe", you wouldn't necessarily be able to levitate, read people's minds, etc (possible of course - I believe anything's POSSIBLE, even if not terribly likely - especially with things that are easily faked) - but it would be more the "make me one with everything" way. I see it like the experience of music -- (I'm constatnly composing music in my head - I lack the ability to edit music which is why i never got into computer music, but I can play some of what I hear in my head) - the Flow - the Universe would move through you and you through the universe. or like the Kung-Fu or Tai-chi type way of utilizing energies in a harmonious way - work with the universe rather than fighting against it. i want to understand everything before I die. I just don't get a chance to talk about it "in real life" - and it's hard to find ppl online to talk to about this stuff, so I'm grateful. Please, if you see flaws, let me know. these are just unedited, raw responses. (I can't edit for s..t) 8:49 PM* -* Edit Dusty Hunt - god damn thats a long post.. i need a cup of tea and a fez to read all that.. anyway.. we could call this church .. the church of.. ancestrial cosmology 8:53 PM Dusty Hunt - or cosmic ancestry 8:53 PM KENNETH UDUT - rofl dusty - thanks! I have all this stuff bubbling in my head all of the time, and it's great to let it out. everybody 'round here likes talking about what each other did wrong today, or 5 years ago. I like "nature of things" talk -- gotta find my group in real life too! Ancestrial Cosmologists - Cosmic Ancestrians -- I like them both! i think Ancestrial Cosmology has a great ring to it. "Oh, there goes those crazy Ancestrial Cosmologists again, all talking science and stuff." Yeah, i dig it! I'd like to merge science and religion, just because they're both on a quest for Truth. Carl Sagan was a devotee of science - that was his religion - but he was antireligion. The thing is, when scientists talk antireligion, they start to sound pretty dumb to me since all of their arguments against religion are the same ones. They don't use the same scientific rigorousness in their arguments against religion that they do when pursuing a scientific truth, and that always takes away what they have to say a little bit to me. Cuts them down a notch, which is sad. The URGE to say THANKS, BIG YOU! is a Veeeerrrrry strong one in people. You can say "Thanks, mom and dad for having sex, otherwise I wouldn't be here tonight" but that would be creepy and get old quickly. But the urge to worship, to have repeatable ways to say "thanks" (prayers, candle lighting, looking at pretty gold things, icons, singing songs in groups of people, having something around your neck to touch when things are getting rough) -- it's a very STRONG urge in many many people, and it's not going away. Calling people who follow religions stupid just makes the one calling them stupid look stupid and uneducated. 'you're an idiot" - "no, "YOU'RE" an idiot" - this is "why" you're an idiot - oh yeah, this is why YOU are an idiot -- that kind of talk just goes around and around and around and goes noplace, helps no one. So i thought, "there has to be way to come up with a religion that SCIENTIFIC PEOPLE might be willing to give a shot to. For the sermon, you'd have the latest theories about life, the universe and everything. The songs of praise could be to the 92 Elements - each one could have their own songs, praising their roles in day-to-day life and in the universe. Extremely useful chemical combinations could also have their songs. The Forces would be sung about, I think a whole book praising Gravity in song is in order. why has no one come up with this before? Somebody must have. and if nobody has, then there is a severe GAP. Man, i wanna hear a couple of songs praising maxwell and the electromagnetic field. I want to see little scientific experiments done up front - show me neat magnetic tricks, the iron filings making the invisible fields visible. For the candles, i want to see blue copper flames. THIS is my kind of religion. I'll gladly stick money in the collection plate. I'm even a Reverand - You can call me Rev. Udut - no no - call me Pastor Ken - oh - wait - Father Kenneth - my mother and I years ago got ordained by the Universal Life Church (online of course) - she knows i always wanted to start a church (ever since I was a teenager) but I could never find something worth while. The only thing I could ever think of would be a church of Learning, where every week you learn something new, and it would also be a PRACTICAL church -- there'd be groups on "how to save money" - household formulas for cleaning, how to fix your credit, how to do a job interview - how to handle a cheating spouse - along with scientific inquiries - "let's extract DNA" and we all take blood samples of ourselves and extract our own DNA and stick it in a pretty glass vial mounted on a wooden plaque -- that's a great one for the kids! And I'm not kidding! it's just a matter of DOING it instead of wanting it. The way to manifest things into reality is to take ACTION, small actions every day = big results in the end. 9:23 PM* -* Edit Add a comment...