A Theory of Eternal Life
By George Kinney
The following presentation is a brief consideration of a series of key ideas regarding possible relationships that exist between densities of matter, time, and quality of life. Further, I will attempt to shed some light on how these ideas may correspond to some of the most essential elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine, specifically the concept of Qi. Without attempting to define Qi, an attempt will be made to show possible similarities between the actions or properties of Qi, inseparable from the concept of Yin and Yang, and the properties of various states or densities of matter and energy.
Comprehensively, these key ideas allude to one or more ways of attempting to understand our existences, collectively and individually, in a vast and mysterious universe that possesses qualities, aspects, and dimensionalities that are essentially beyond our ability to define or fully understand…that is, these ideas are metaphors or symbols to aide us in the search for the miraculous, a search which by all indications so far, can by nature never be completed.
POINT
Let us first examine the fundamental nature of our understanding of time, and let us use geometric symbols to do so. Primarily, time, according to our psychological apparatus, is essentially sensed as an “instant” or moment, isolated in perception and connected with past and future moments psychologically thru the application of the associative cortex of our brain. Geometrically, this may be corresponded with a point.
LINE
The extension of this span of time, a moment, linearly gives us the psychological experience, presumably, of a series of events. This expressed geometrically can be visualized as the extension of a point into a line. The same relationship that exists, therefore, between a point and a line, exists also between a moment and a linear series of events. This extension is generally considered to be infinite in the sense that there are conceivably an infinite number of points in a line and an infinite number of potential events in a series. We may further assign a dimensionality value on them and that value would be one. That is, we have begun with one dimensionality, both in geometrical space and time.
Another way of looking at it is that a point, infinitely extended one dimensionally, produces a line. By the same token, a moment extended infinitely produces a series, or infinite succession of events in linear time.
-PLANE OR SURFACE
Our one-dimensional friend, the line, if extended either vertically or horizontally, becomes a plane, or we may say that the “trace” of a point becomes a potentially infinite line and the trace of a potentially infinite number of lines forms a plane or surface.
SOLID
A plane or surface, similarly traced in a any direction perpendicular to it, forms what we refer to in Euclidian geometry as a solid. Thus we may follow these natural progressions of dimensionality to result in the following relationships:
Point> line> surface> solid… forming the continuum of 3 dimensional space that we have all come recognize as our normal sphere of observable existence.
According to the same model, we may experience seconds becoming minutes, becoming hours, becoming days, becoming weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, etc.
These are the logical extensions of aspects of our psychology into graduating levels of dimensionality. *1
In addition, these relationships can be shown to correspond to our experiences in terms of sensations, perceptions, concepts, up to and most likely beyond abstractions and idealisms.
The point of all this is to demonstrate that our sense of time and space, as well as our method of arranging them into understandable forms, systems, and patterns, depend on assigning them graduating degrees of dimensionality in order to grasp them with our understanding, or even to experience them without comprehensive understanding. That is, all the human qualities and potentials for experience are RELATIVE. This is directly associated with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
EVERYTHING EXISTS AND IS MEASURED EXCLUSIVELY IN TERMS ITS RELATION TO SOMETHING ELSE.
A grossly oversimplified bumper-sticker understanding of E=MC2 is that something perceived in a particular state or form is observed as such due to the nature of the observer’s ability to observe and the particular conditions, internal external, under which the observation occurs. That is, energy and matter are either /or dependent, literally, on how one looks at it. This makes the existence of anything relative to the existence of something else and only such interdependence and interrelationship allows or defines such existence. This indicates that existence consists more of patterns and relationships than of tangible particles of 3-dimensional matter, shrinking in size logarithmically until they mysteriously disappear into theoretical beings such as the infamous ‘strings’ and slip away from our direct observation altogether.
You may also remember that in TCM fundamentals, we learned that Yin and Yang, the powerful creative forces of life, are interrelated and interdependent, that is, they exist only in RELATIVITY to each other. However, it is important to note here in light of modern advances in quantum physics, specifically in the observation of the characteristics of light and the behavior of energy in the ‘string theory’, that it seems reasonable at this point to speculate that the more comprehensive our awareness, that is, the more dimensions our awareness is able to embrace and process intelligently, the more comprehensive will be our experience of our environment. In fact it can also be justifiably speculated that the very nature of our environment and our ability to manipulate it constructively, which is a key element in the practice of TCM, rests in expanding this ability through increased awareness of the energies involved.
OUR CONCEPTS HUMAN OF LIFESPAN ARE DETERMINED BY THE LIMITS OF OUR AWARENESS
While a comprehensive understanding of this concept may be well beyond the scope of this presentation, it is not overly difficult to consider that the same limits we naturally place on matter due to the limitations of our natural sensory apparatus as it relates to our psychology and our understanding, we may also be imposing upon our concepts of our own potential lifespan. That is, our understanding of both our environment and our existence in it, as it pertains to time or duration, is deducted or induced by our method of observation, which may not include all of the potentialities existent within the phenomena themselves, apart from our ability to understand them. Here we return to the idea of the relationship that exists between the limits of our awareness and the definition of what constitutes our existence, both as matter and/or energy. Thus, varying densities of matter, or various states of matter, involve different laws of physics and time.
The implications of this concept in regard to conscious, practical manipulation of this awareness or energy and its application to healing disease and establishing and maintaining a beneficial equilibrium, or health, may be an important precursor to a vast new approach to health care and quality of life in general.
LIVING TIME
The idea of immortality can either be synonymous with the idea of eternal life or not, depending on how you want to look at it. One common connotation of immortality implies the absence of death. If taken as such, we would not consider eternal life and immorality to be synonymous terms at this time, although they are closely related. Only if we expand our understanding of death can we make these two concepts synonymous.
So right off the bat we have to say that if by death we mean the death and decomposition of the human body, and the absence of that process is immortality, then the concepts I am discussing here do not imply immortality. If, on other hand, we agree to consider death as a process that is intimately integrated with the process of life, and cannot be separated from life, then we could consider eternal life and immortality to be one and the same phenomena. So let’s say, for now, that we can have it both ways…that we can experience death, that is, the decomposition of the cellular material that makes our bodies, and yet that life, for us, can go on, relatively, forever. It is in this context that I offer the following information for consideration.
THE INTEGRATION OF SCIENCE, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY
Let me emphasize that what I am proposing as a possibility here has almost nothing whatsoever to do with any particular religion, cult, social group, or dogmatic system of worship of any kind. It is interesting to note, however, that most all organized religions and “spiritual belief systems” stem from the fundamental concepts (and the investigations thereof) that roughly form the general category of thinking sometimes correctly referred to as esoteric knowledge. Even this distinction is fading, however, as what has formerly been considered esoteric knowledge begins to merge with the most advanced ongoing scientific discoveries.
Let us consider some of the similarities that can be found that interrelate behavior, awareness, and duration of existence. **2
Matter in our neck of the physio/psychological woods may for our purposes here be broken down into various states of density that have corresponding relationships to duration, i.e., time.
They are, in order of density and duration, the mineral state, the cellular state, the molecular state and the electronic state.
We know that the present doesn’t really exist because by the time we consider it, it is already past. So if the present doesn’t really exist, and the past doesn’t exist any more and the future doesn’t exist yet, then everything doesn’t ever exist, and also, nothing always exists. This paradox can only be solved by evolving ones’ concept of time and by lifting the restrictions we impose on the consistency of matter according to our sensory apparatus. This process can be referred to as the conscious expansion of consciousness, or psychological evolution.
Here are some examples of comprehensive systems that express evolution through the increase of their dimensionality:
Dance: a.) A concept of possible motions including all types of dance, known and unknown. These motions exist in abstraction and only as potentials, but include all possible dances and the steps therein.
b) The specification of particular dances that share some common aspects with all “dance” and have unique characteristics which define it as a particular dance
c) The various steps that formally identify the particular dance from other particular dances
d) The variations of those identifying steps according to the individual interpretation and expression of the individual dancer
Literature: a) All books and all written ideas or experiences, including all linguistic applications such as letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, etc., which make up the essential elements of literary expression
b) Any particular genre of literature such as fiction, non fiction, speeches, poetry, etc. that classify literature into particular categories
c) The various literary techniques specific to a particular author, which utilize the general characteristics of the genre to identity his work from others
d) The individual and unique interpretation of these techniques in a specific work by a reader
The point here is that the trace of a dance movement in linear time forms a segment of a dance or an entire dance, dependent upon the duration of that extension. The finite repetition of that sequence may represent the lifetime of the dance, or the dancer, and the existence of the dance throughout linear time may represent eternity for the dance. That is, eternity for the dance is repetition of the steps in an infinite field of recurrence, which is not limited by the individual dancer’s participation by any physical application.
Art, Science, and even Religion may be seen to follow this pattern, as well. Religion is perhaps the most ephemeral of the pack in that its precepts and key ideas are not as easily categorized, yet contain definite and obvious concepts involving the transformation of various degrees of matter, an expanded concept of time, and an interactive paradigm of cause and effect which is largely dependent upon an individual’s psychology, expressed through behavior and the concept of choice. Beginning to sound a lot like quantum physics, isn’t it?
States or Densities of ‘Matter
Mineral states of matter.
These are the densest, and therefore the slowest instances of existence as we consider it. Relative to the next finer state, cellular life, it is 800 times slower. That is everything is experienced (if we can even use the word experienced in that reference) 800 times slower that it is in cellular life. In this context we will consider cellular life as it pertains to humans, as an 80-year span. The accompanying charts illustrate some of the variations in the velocity of matter at different densities and the relative ‘work’ done in various time spans relative to these variations.
Cellular states of matter (human body)
This is the next finer state of matter, cellular organization, specifically the human body, but also including the biological world of nature. We may consider it to last 80 years, more of less.
Molecular states of matter
Next up we have molecular life, represented theoretically as the nature of the existence of the human soul. Also, we may consider scents to be a part of this world. The sense of smell is akin to molecular states of matter, in that it can permeate and travel through cellular matter. So the soul can permeate and travel through cellular and to some degree, mineral matter. In this world everything happens roughly a 1000 times faster than in the cellular world.
Electronic states of matter
Last and certainly not least we come to the fastest of the lot, electronic matter or solar matter or the most essential expression of energy as it relates to matter, light, and how it specifically relates to a human life. Everything happens in just 40 minutes that happens in one month in the molecular world and 80 years in the cellular world and 800,000 years in the mineral world. In other words, life in the fast lane, the sub-atomic world of light, is about a million times faster than in a human cellular body.
Living Time and the Integration of Life
So what? Why does any of this really matter to anyone but speculative mathematicians, quantum mechanics (even shade tree ones) and theoretical philosophers?
Here’s why.
The beautiful paintings which follow describe the various world views of major spiritual systems covering a vast time spans and vast geographic areas.
Interesting to note is that they all involve behavior, choice, various states of matter, and duration of life force. They also include states of being superior by degree of dimensionality, which operate in realms of energy that are subject to fewer physical laws as density decreases. These higher states allude to conscious judgment of some degree and that choice and behavior are extremely important factors in determining further states of being.
INSERT PAINTINGS HERE
It is crucially relevant to notice the connection in all of these world views, the relationships of consciousness, behavior, choice, varying states of matter, and the allusion to an omnipotence that is both subjective and objective, intimately connected with what we may consider an invisible aspect or aspects of our being. All include states of being between death and birth that accommodate some form of conscious experience. All incorporate some form of existence after the decomposition of the physical or cellular body. All include some relationship between behavior and the potential outcome of some sort of ‘judgment’ that occurs after death and before birth.
EAST MEETS WEST
Understanding one’s life in time in light of the vastness that the above concepts suggests, life itself may become much more meaningful, and the idea of individual responsibility becomes inseparable from quality and duration of life. This is essential to the integration of fundamental TCM concepts into western medical modalities and research. To accept and seriously investigate the elemental properties of Qi and Yin and Yang together with the investigation of western advances in quantum physics is to initiate the ultimate merger between the ideas of the East and the West.
NEW AGE HEALTH POTENTIALS: FANTASY OR
EXPANDABLE REALITY?
Whatever else one might gain from this investigation, regardless of spiritual beliefs, the idea of being able to extend our abilities to manipulate cellular activity through the manipulation of molecular activity and ultimately through the knowledgeable manipulation of electronic or subatomic energy is an exciting and relatively limitless quest. It could even imply the refinement of health care to levels never before possible, even to the extreme of developing a capacity to treat a disease in the timeless, subatomic realm in order to literally prevent it from ever occurring in the first place. Imagine a doctor who could manipulate energies that existed in a patient that has contracted a life-threatening disease in a realm independent of time. This would be preventative medicine in the most advanced context.
PSYCHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION
However you look at it, this life is most likely very important, and how you consider it, that is, the degree to which you are aware or present for you own life is a major factor in determining the overall quality of it. It affects others, too.
For instance, what if you believed that everything existed always and forever? Every thing you did or said would then be in some way more or less permanent.
You wouldn’t waste so much time on insignificancies; things would matter more to you. And this level of awareness of your life would affect everyone around you, in direct proportion to your level of interaction with him or her.
It would be less attractive to you to be unpleasant or inconsiderate of others and of yourself. Personal self-esteem would gain ground in your overall evaluation system or worldview.
This is not to be confused with moralization.. It is relevant only insofar as it applies to actual conscious experience and the potential for the improvement thereof, a process that I fondly refer to as psychological evolution.
But even if you don’t think of life as something that extends for an individual consciousness beyond death and decorporealization, all this is still relevant, if only because it affects the 80 years you might have in which to live and breath and have your being. And anyway, to master the skills in self remembering and persistence in consciousness that might allow you to exist eternally as an individual being, but not confined to the limits and laws of cellular existence would take a whole lot more energy and intent than the vast majority of us are able to muster.
So don’t worry too much if you don’t think this will happen to you. You still might be eligible for some kind of rebirth or reincarnation, as another you just like the old one, constantly recurring on and endless circle of existences without memory of the succeeding life. Or perhaps you might progress with little increments of positive change (visualized by the upward spiral a slinky toy makes when stretched upwards) that might someday qualify you for electronic existence or the life of pure spirit or energy. But in any case, I highly recommend that you do everything in your power to avoid the ultimate degradation, that is, consignment to the world of mineral existence. Remember, that one lasts 800.000 years without significant change or modification. For most of us, that would be Hell.
SO THEN:
In summation, the quality of one’s life depends upon one’s fundamental understanding of time. Everything you do, say, feel, or think, is related to how you view time in general, and specifically how much time you may or may not have. Many if not most of us have experienced the death of someone close to us. At these times, our own sense of mortality is enhanced, for better or worse. Somehow we seem to understand something that passes us right by in our normal daily lives. It has to do with being present for our lives instead of absent from them. It has to do with living our lives under the stark, tangible realization that our bodies will, indeed, succumb to decomposition and yet embrace the thrilling, invigorating sense of timelessness that may exist for more durable components of our being.
NOTES:**2: The ideas of evolution and intelligent design are anything but mutually exclusive. One only had to consider the evolution of a novel to see this. What are the chances that War and Peace wrote itself, randomly, with no intelligent design? Tolstoy had letters and words already available, a totally random field of potential combinations of them, and he organized them into patterns that communicated his essential artistic ability, emotional desire and intellectual intent. Now the letters and words were also invented by intelligent design by humans who came before Tolstoy. The origins of the written word are clearly evolutionary yet include obvious intelligent design. In fact, nearly everything you can think of follows this pattern. Why then, is it so difficult to consider the possibility of mutual participation between intelligent design and evolution? I think discounting the possibility of such a combination of complementary forces is not only unwise, but also unfruitful.
*** 3: The big bang theory, Stephen Hawking and the others notwithstanding, is not necessarily all-inclusive, even though relative to what we have to observe it the best explanation we have within the confines of an understanding of time limited to linear conceptualization.
The thus-far unanswerable question is: What existed before the big bang? Nothing? Well, nothing is something. In fact, nothing and everything are equal according to Zen philosophy. The idea that everything either does or doesn’t have to have a start and a finish is based on a linear concept of time, that is, the progression of past to present to future.
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