NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 56:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe , the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 36:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Cosmological Constant  –  Lambda,  Λ   =  in Einstein’s General Relativity equation

(+)       Positive  > 0   Repulsive force,  Space Expands

(– )                  Negative  < 0   Attractive force,  Space Contracts

Einstein saw the need for a “fudge factor” for his Field Equations, which he  theorized as an Energy Density of Vacuum Space, Lambda, Λ , a Cosmological Constant that would determine Expansion or Contraction for the Universe. Negative attractive force acting on simple parallel Space-Time would be the effect of Gravity on the Mass of the Universe.  Positive repulsive force, similar to whatever drove the Big Bang’s initial Expansion – Inflation, would “mysteriously” by no known mechanism, continue after initial Expansion of Space-Time. Thus would it proceed whether Mass contracted toward & into Black Holes or not. Unlike a chemical “explosion”, there was & is no kind of “pressure” that drove the Big-Bang & later Inflation–Expansion of Space-Time. An explosion propels material into Space; Inflation os a growth of Space as well.

Other energy fields: E-M, Fine-Tuning, Higgs fields associated with the Weak Force, the Inflaton field hypothesized by Inflationary Cosmology, the Dilaton field hypothesized by Superstring theory, & the fields associated with Elementary Particles – each contribute to the Vacuum Energy, either Negative or Positive.

If the total effective Cosmological Constant is Positive (+) & larger than some positive value Λ⁺_max, or Negative (– ) & smaller than some Negative value Λ^– _max, then the Universe would have expanded (if Positive), or collapsed (if Negative), too quickly for Stars or Galaxies to form. This again parallels the Fine-Tuning of Gravity to 1 part in 10⁶⁰ for Mass, but now with Lambda, for Space-Time.

Enumerating conceptual contributions to Lambda:

Λ_vac  =  contribution to the Cosmological constant from the Vacuum energy of all the Fields combined – potential energy V, for Universe through phases, along with Zero-Point energies of Vacuum

Fluctuations of the Quantum Fields of the Fundamental Forces & Elementary Particles

Λ_bare  =  Einstein’s original Cosmological Constant, not associated with contributions to the Vacuum    Energy from other Fields

Λ_Q    =  Quintessence Energy changing with Time

Total Effective Cosmological Constant

=   Λ_eff   =    Λ_vac  +   Λ_bare   +   Λ_Q     @   (10⁵³  –   10¹²⁰ )    x    Λ_max  (+/–) whichever larger

The originally theoretical calculation, [before some of these other contributions were piled on] was up to  a (10¹²⁰  x ) – a discrepancy which was called the very worst in Physics !  Unknown Dark Energy of some kind seems to leave the Cosmological Constant Fine-Tuned to near–Zero (after the cancellation of very large numbers), all to a Precision reminiscent of that for the Gravitational Force Coupling Constant G.

Imagine “fine-tuning” the [net annual income of every person on Earth] – minus [all their expenses] & demanding that the difference balances out to exactly 1 cent, to 120 significant figures, & remain exactly that unchangingly for Eons. That is the kind of Fine-Tuning the Universe exhibits in order for Intelligent Life like ourselves to exist.

As large as is (10¹²⁰  x ), the Reciprocal is a (10^{– 120} ) which equals that Cosmological Constant, or does so within an order of magnitude since (10^{– 121}) is more often noted [for measurement in inverse Planck Lengths], as the value that matches currently observed “slow-flat” Expansion of the Universe.

Λ  =

_1______________________________________________________________________

100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

=

0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001

To be that close to Zero & yet precisely Positive & Non-Zero is extreme Fine-Tuning indeed.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

“There is no Creation, no Destruction, no Bondage, no longing to be freed from Bondage, no striving for Liberation, nor anyone who has attained Liberation. Know that this to be Ultimate Truth.”  –  the “no creation” school of Gaudapada, Shankara, Ramana, Nome – Ajata Vada

for very succinct summary of the teaching & practice, see:  www.ajatavada.com/

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 55:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe , the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 35:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

A similar sort of response can be given to the claim that fine-tuning is not improbable because it might be logically necessary for the constants of physics to have life-permitting values.  That is, according to this claim, the constants of physics must have life-permitting values in the same way 2 + 2 must equal 4, or the interior angles of a triangle must add up to 180 degrees in Euclidian geometry.   Like the “more fundamental law” proposal above, however, this postulate simply transfers the epistemic improbability up one level: of all the laws and constants of physics that conceivably could have been logically necessary, it seems highly epistemically improbable that it would be those that are life-permitting, at least apart from some sort of axiarchic principle.

Other Life-Permitting Laws Objection

According to what I call the “Other Life-Permitting Laws Objection,” there could be other life-permitting sets of laws that we know nothing about. This objection is directly answered by the way in which I have formulated the fine-tuning argument. As I formulated it, the fine-tuning argument does not assume that ours is the only possible set of life-permitting laws. Rather, it only assumes that the region of life-permitting laws (or constants or initial conditions) is very small compared to the region for which we can determine whether the laws, constants, or initial conditions are life-permitting – that is, what I called the epistemically illuminated (EI) region.  In the case of the constants of nature, it assumed only that given our current laws of nature, the life-permitting range for the values of the constants of physics (such as gravity) is small compared to the surrounding EI range for which we can determine whether or not a value is life-permitting.

Other Forms of Life Objection

As raised against the Fine-Tuning argument based on the constants of Physics, this objection claims that as far as we know, other forms of non-carbon based life could exist even if the constants of physics were different.  So, it is claimed, the Fine-Tuning argument ends up presupposing that all forms of embodied, conscious life must be carbon-based. Besides the extreme difficulty of conceiving of how non-carbon based material systems could achieve the sort of self-reproducing material complexity to support embodied moral agents, another problem with this objection is that many cases of fine-tuning do not presuppose that all life must be carbon based. Consider, for instance, the cosmological constant. If the cosmological constant were much larger than it is, matter would disperse so rapidly that no planets and indeed no stars could exist.  Without stars, however, there would be no stable energy sources for complex material systems of any sort to evolve. So, all the fine-tuning argument presupposes in this case is that the evolution of embodied moral agents in our universe require some stable energy source.  This is certainly a very reasonable assumption.

Weak Anthropic Principle Objection

According to the weak version of so-called anthropic principle, if the laws of nature were not fine-tuned, we should not be here to comment on the fact.  Some have argued, therefore, that LPU is not really improbable or surprising at all under NSU, but simply follows from the fact that we exist. The response to this objection is simply to restate the argument in terms of our existence: our existence as embodied moral agents is extremely unlikely under NSU, but not improbable under theism. As explained in section 4.3, this requires that we treat LPU and our existence as “old evidence,” which we subtract from our background information.  This allows us to obtain an appropriate background information k¢ that does not entail LPU.  The other approach was to use the method of probabilistic tension, which avoided the issue entirely.

There are arguments for the existence of conditional epistemic probabilities for P(A|B &k’) even when A implies our own existence. These provide the formal underpinnings in support of the intuitions underlying the “firing-squad” analogy offered by John Leslie and others in response to this objection. As Leslie points out, if 50 sharp shooters all miss me, the response “if they had not missed me I wouldn’t be here to consider the fact” is inadequate.  Instead, I would naturally conclude that there was some reason why they all missed, such as that they never really intended to kill me. Why would I con­clude this ? Because, conditioned on background information k′ that does not include my continued existence – such as the background information of a third-party observer watch­ing the execution – my continued existence would be very improbable under the hypothesis that they intended to kill me, but not improbable under the hypothesis that they did not intend to kill me.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

In the Waking State, one experiences the Interior & the Exterior, what is sensed & what is thought.  In the Dream State, the situation is the same.  Both what is sensed & what is thought in both States are not the Self & are unreal. The contents of both what is sensed & what is thought in both Waking & Dream states should not be regarded as defining the Self.  When what is sensed & what is thought are falsely associated with the Self, this is superimposition.  No activity of the Exterior & the Interior yields Liberation. The activity of an unreal superimposition cannot yield eternal, real Liberation from that unreality.

Liberation is by Knowledge alone & Knowledge is neither sensory nor conceptual in nature. The Self that is realized by such Knowledge has neither Inner nor Outer, but is ever-existent, omnipresent, indivisible, & ineffable.

The true nature of the individual self is actually Brahman.  There is only one Self, whether imagined to be individualized, or else realized as it truly is.  If one inquires into this apparently individualized self, all that one finds is the Self, which is Brahman.  All that is thought to make oneself different from the Self can be relinquished by the Self-Inquiry that negates mis-identification, which is the questioning “Who am I ?”  For this reason the Upanshads instruct neti, neti “not this, not this”.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

“There is no Creation, no Destruction, no Bondage, no longing to be freed from Bondage, no striving for Liberation, nor anyone who has attained Liberation. Know that this to be Ultimate Truth.”  –  the “no creation” school of Gaudapada, Shankara, Ramana, Nome – Ajata Vada

for very succinct summary of the teaching & practice, see:  www.ajatavada.com/

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 54:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe , the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 34:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Apart from rejecting the claim that the justification for the existence of God is based on some sort of inference to the best explanation, however, one can also object to the atheist’s key assumption that the “designer of an artifact must be at least as complex as the artifact itself.”  This assumption is not even clearly true in the human case, since it is at least conceivable that one could produce a computer that is more complicated than oneself, which is a common theme of science fiction.  In the case of God, however, we have even less reason to believe it. If the theist were hypothesizing an anthropomorphic god, with a brain and a body, then this objection would be much stronger: one would then be tempted to ask, isn’t that god’s brain and body as much in need of explanation as the universe itself?  Thus, this objection might seem to have significant bite against such a conception of God. Within traditional theism, however, God has always been claimed to lack any sort of significant internal complexity.  In fact, most of the Western medieval tradition claimed that God was absolutely simple in every way – God did not even have complexity with regard to God’s properties.

Aquinas, for instance, claimed that all of God’s properties (such as God’s omnipotence and perfect goodness) were absolutely identical; these were in turn identical with God’s essence and existence.  Although I do not think that this view of God as being absolutely simple is coherent, the point here is that the “who designed God” objection begs the question against traditional theism, by assuming a type of God which traditional theists would all disavow.  Even the heirs to traditional theism who deny absolute divine simplicity, claim that God’s overall being is extraordinarily simple.  Thus, what these atheists really need to show is that the God of all varieties of traditional theism is logically incoherent insofar as those versions of theism hold on to some form of divine simplicity.  This, however, is a very different objection – and a much harder task – than simply raising the “who designed God?” objection and then claiming that one has eliminated the theistic explanation in a single stroke.

More Fundamental Law Objection

One criticism of the Fine-Tuning argument is that, as far as we know, there could be a more fundamental law that entails both the current laws of Physics and the values of the constants of physics. Thus, given such a law, it is not improbable that the laws and constants of physics fall within the life-permitting range. Besides being entirely speculative, three problems confront such a hypothesis. First, although many physicists had hoped that superstring theory would entail all the current laws and constants of physics, that hope has almost completely faded as string theorists have come to recognize that superstring theory (and its proposed successor, M-theory) has many, many solutions, estimated at 10⁵⁰⁰ or more.  Consequently, the prospects of discovering such a fundamental law are much dimmer than they once were. Second, such a fundamental law would not explain the fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe.  Finally, hypothesizing such a law merely moves the epistemic improbability of the fine-tuning of the laws and constants up one level, to that of the postulated fundamental law itself. Even if such a law existed, it would still be a huge coincidence that the fundamental law implied just those laws and values of the constants of physics that are life‑permitting, instead of some other values.

As astrophysicists Bernard Carr and Martin Rees note “even if all apparently anthropic coincidences could be explained [in terms of some fundamental law], it would still be remarkable that the relationships dictated by physical theory happened also to be those propitious for life” . It is very unlikely, therefore, that the fine‑tuning of the universe would lose its significance even if such a law were verified.

To illustrate the last response, consider the following analogy. Suppose that super-determinism is true: that is, everything about the universe, including its initial conditions, is determined by some set of laws, though we do not know the details of those laws.  Now consider a flip of a coin and let L_h and L_t denote the claims that the laws are such as to determine the coin to come up heads and tails, respectively.  We would have equal reason to believe that L_h as that L_t. Hence, since L_h entails that the coin will come up heads, and L_t that the coin will come up tails,  the epistemic probability of heads remains 50%, and likewise for tails.  This would be true even though each of their physical probabilities would be one or zero.

The fact that the laws of nature determine the initial conditions, instead of the initial conditions’ not being determined by any law, has no influence on the epistemic probability.  This can be seen also by the fact that when Laplacian determinism was thought to be true, everyone nonetheless gave a fair coin a 50% chance of coming up heads.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

All beings are, by nature, pure Consciousness. Apparent difference from this Consciousness is only illusory appearance due to Ignorance.  The illusory difference is removed by comprehending the Knowledge that one is solely Being.  Such Knowledge alone is the means to realize immortality, for Being never ceases to be.  Nothing else can yield this Realization, for Consciousness is identical with Being.  Knowledge is of the nature of Consciousness itself, & there really exists nothing but Being, which is Knowledge or Consciousness.

In relation to all, the Self is the Witness, & being such is attributeless.  The Witness is That which never changes, but which knows all the changes –  thoughts, modes, & states – of all Minds.  The Witness knows all the functions of the Mind in Waking & Dream.  In the absence of the Mind’s functions, that is without those 2 states of Waking & Dream, what remains of the Witness is pure Consciousness, which is omnipresent & immutable.  This the Self, the true “I” which is free from Ignorance & has no attributeness, no functions, & no qualities, & which is transcendent of all 3 States (waking, dream, deep dreamless sleep).  Space-like & never tainted by any of the defects or limitations of the beings that Consciousness indwells, Consciousness alone is the Self.

The Self is free from all notions, forms, & actions.  The Self is always 1 – without – a –  2^nd.  Adi Shankara proclaims that, as long as there is no Self-Knowledge, the identification with the Body & such, & the belief in the authenticity of Sense-Perceptions continue, just as Dreams appear to be true as long as one does not wake up.  To spiritually wake up, one must know the Self truly.  The Reality of the Self is pure Consciousness with no Duality & with nothing else existing whatsoever.  One cannot have simultaneously the Knowledge of the Self along with the idea of oneself as the performer of activity, or an experiencer.  For steady unalloyed Knowledge, one should cease such mis-identification.

[The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

“There is no Creation, no Destruction, no Bondage, no longing to be freed from Bondage, no striving for Liberation, nor anyone who has attained Liberation. Know that this to be Ultimate Truth.”  –  the “no creation” school of Gaudapada, Shankara, Ramana, Nome – Ajata Vada

for very succinct summary of the teaching & practice, see:  www.ajatavada.com/

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 53:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe , the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 33:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

“Who Designed God?” Objection

Perhaps the most common objection that atheists raise to the argument from design is that postulating the existence of God does not solve the problem of design, but merely transfers it up one level to the question, “Who or what designed God?”  The eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume hinted at this objection:

For aught we can know a priori, matter may contain the source or spring of order originally within itself, as well as mind does; and there is no more difficulty conceiving that the several elements, from an internal unknown cause, may fall into the most exquisite arrangement, than to conceive that their ideas, in the great universal mind, from a like unknown cause, fall into that arrangement.

A host of atheist philosophers and thinkers, such as J. L. Mackie, Graham Oppy, J. J. C. Smart, Richard Dawkins, & Colin McGinn have also repeated this objection.  For example, J. J. C. Smart claims that:

If we postulate God in addition to the created universe we increase the complexity of our hypothesis.  We have all the complexity of the universe itself, and we have in addition the at least equal complexity of God.  (The designer of an artifact must be at least as complex as the designed artifact.)

As an objection to the Fine-Tuning argument, it is flawed on several grounds.  To begin, this objection would arise only if either the Theistic hypothesis were constructed solely to explain the Fine-Tuning, without any independent motivation for believing it, or one considered these other motivations as data & then justified the Theistic hypothesis by claiming that it is the best explanation of all the data.  However, it is not that Theism is the best explanation of all the data, but only that given the Fine-Tuning evidence, an amazing LPU Life Permitting Universe strongly confirms Theism.

We are not to treating the other motivations for Theism like data, which we then combine with the Fine-Tuning evidence to infer to the best explanation. Many theists have claimed that for most people at least, belief in God is grounded in a fundamental intuition regarding the existence of God, an intuition relevantly similar to moral intuitions.  If this is right, then we are not treating the existence of God like a scientific hypothesis that needs to be justified by some form of inference to the best explanation.  That is like trying to justify moral belief by reference to the findings of the Natural Sciences.  Theism is a basic & distinctive mode of human thought & activity.  Thus, in analogy to ethical intuitions, faith should be considered a mode of knowing, not just a mere leap of belief under insufficient evidence.

The religious mode of knowing or justification involved in faith, therefore, should not be treated as providing data for an inference to the best explanation, but rather analogous to ethical intuitions, or even intuitions regarding virtues.  Everything else being equal, simpler theories are more likely to be true or empirically adequate than complex theories. Clearly, one cannot ground our belief in these virtues in an inference to the best explanation, since all such inferences presuppose the virtues. Our knowledge of God is based on religious experience.  It is relevantly analogous to our knowledge of the material world, which they claim is not justified by appeal to an inference to the best explanation.

If we do not treat these other motivations for Theism as part of a body of data for which we employ the strategy of inference to the best explanation, then the “who designed God” objection largely evaporates.  The existence of God is not a hypothesis that is being offered as the best explanation of the structure of the Universe, & hence it is not relevant whether or not God is an explanatorily better (e.g., simpler), ultimate explanation than the Universe itself. Nonetheless, via the restricted version of the likelihood principle, the various features of the Universe can be seen as providing confirming evidence for the existence of God.  One advantage of this way of viewing the situation is that it largely reconciles the views of those who stress a need for faith in coming to believe in God & those who stress reason.  They each play a complementary role.

Consider the following analogy. Suppose that in the year 2050, extraterrestrials visit earth, & we find that they share the same fundamental ethical beliefs as we do – e.g., that it is wrong to torture others for no compelling ethical reason.  Further, suppose that we were able to show that it is very unlikely that such an agreement would occur under ethical anti-realism – for example, because we have good reason to believe both that unguided naturalistic evolution would not produce these beliefs & that ethical anti-realism is not compatible with viable, alternative explanations of human beings based on Design (such as Theism). Finally, suppose we could show that it is not unlikely for this agreement to occur under ethical realism.  The discovery that these aliens shared the same ethical beliefs as we do would therefore confirm ethical Realism, even though we would not believe ethical Realism because it provided the best explanation of some set of phenomena.  In fact it would decisively tip the balance in favor of ethical Realism.  The evidence of Fine-Tuning does the same for Theism.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

All the efforts involving mis-identification within the Mind & all the superimposition of experience upon the Self produce only Illusion & not anything real.  The Illusion is that of limitation by Form; the Illusion of being a Body, or at a location; the Illusion of perishability; the Illusion of the belief that something destructive of Bliss can exist; the Illusion of differentiation or division into parts, & of connection with actions & their results. The Self is actually all–pervading & space-like, imperishable. The Self is the eternal Bliss itself, Siva, un-differentiated & un-divided, partless, actionless, & free of all  karma.

The infinite Self is only one, & nothing other than the Self can belong to the Self.  Therefore the Mind cannot belong to the Self. The Self is ever unattached & cannot belong to anything else.  Therefore the Self is unaffected by anything done by the Mind.  When attachment is present, even as the notion of possession, the possessor, as it were is possessed by the possession.  Since the Self is unattached to all, including the Mind, the Self is possessed by none & is not affected by any.  If one becomes detached from all things & to one’s own thoughts in the Mind, he finds that what he has reached was the real Self all along.  Since there cannot exist a Mind that is something other than the Self which is Infinite & Non-Dual, the Mind cannot have, in Reality, any activity or its results.

Freedom from the Mind is freedom from the fear of loss of Happiness & from the fear of ceasing to exist. This Freedom from desires & the grief of concomitant with desires.  Thus, one who knows the Self, free from the Mind, is truly happy. & is solely That which is the same in all beings.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

“There is no Creation, no Destruction, no Bondage, no longing to be freed from Bondage, no striving for Liberation, nor anyone who has attained Liberation. Know that this to be Ultimate Truth.”  –  the “no creation” school of Gaudapada, Shankara, Ramana, Nome – Ajata Vada

for very succinct summary of the teaching & practice, see:  www.ajatavada.com/

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 52:

Prior to excerpting the other Ramana Maharshi disciple in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe , the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 32:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

D_t(φ)/V(φ) << 1 & D_x(φ)/ V(φ) << 1, where V(φ) represents the potential energy of the Inflaton field, & D_t(φ), D_x(φ) represent its Time & Space partial derivatives.

To intuitively see why Paul Davies’s is correct about Fine-Tuning odds, consider an analogy of a very large scrabble-board.  If we were to shake the scrabble board at random, we would be much more likely to get an ordered, meaningful arrangement of letters in one small region, with the arrangement on the rest of the board essentially chaotic, than for all the letters on the entire board to form meaningful patterns.  Or, as another analogy, consider a hundred coins lined up in a row, which are then shaken at random.  Define a local island of order to be any consecutive sequence of five coins which all are on the same side – that is, either all heads or all tails.  It is much more likely for the sequence of a hundred coin tosses to contain one or more subsequences of five consecutive heads or tails than for it to be all heads or all tails.  Indeed, it is likely that such a sequence of coins will have at least one such island of five consecutive heads or tails; the probability of the coins coming up all heads or all tails, however, is around one in 10³⁰, or one in a thousand, billion, billion, billion.

The same argument applies to the mass-energy configurations of our visible universe, with the argument being grounded in probability calculations based on the standard probability measure of statistical mechanics over phase space.  These calculations show that among all possible configurations, it is enormously more likely (by a factor of around 1 in 10^x, where x = 10¹²³) for local islands of low entropy to form than the whole visible universe to be in a low-entropy state. Indeed, if we consider the set of all configurations of mass-energy that would result in an observer – e.g., an organized structure with the same relevant order as our brain – the subset of such configurations that are dominated by BB [(Ludwig) Boltzmann Brain] observers would be far, far larger than those configurations that are dominated by non-BB observers.

Boltzmann proposed that the state of our observed low-entropy Universe (which includes our existence) is a random fluctuation in a higher-entropy Universe. Even in a near-equilibrium state, there will be stochastic fluctuations in state of the system. The most common fluctuations will be relatively small, resulting in only small amounts of organization, while larger fluctuations and their resulting greater levels of organization will be comparatively more rare. Large fluctuations would be almost inconceivably rare, but inevitably occur if a universe lasts infinitely long. Even if the universe does not have an infinitely long past, modern cosmological theories of the Big Bang do suppose that the latter occurred via stochastic fluctuations in a larger meta-universe; the paradox is retained by incorporating our brief-but-finite past into the random fluctuation.

Furthermore, there is a “selection bias”: we observe our very unlikely universe because those unlikely conditions are necessary for us to be here. This is an expression of the Anthropic Principle.

If our current level of organization, having many self-aware entities, is a result of a random fluctuation, it is much less likely than a level of organization which only creates stand-alone self-aware entities. The number of self-aware brains that spontaneously and randomly form out of the chaos, complete with memories of a life like ours, should vastly outnumber the brains evolved from an inconceivably rare local fluctuation the size of the observable Universe.

“The idea that the thermodynamic arrow of time arose from a gigantic fluctuation leads to an amusing form of solipsism. From the standpoint of entropy, I, sitting at my keyboard typing these lines, am a pretty big fluctuation. A tree that I remember seeing is also a big fluctuation. It would be a smaller fluctuation, entropy-wise (recalling that entropy is extensive), not to have the tree, but to change my brain slightly and create the memory of that tree. Therefore, in terms of likely or unlikely fluctuations (and that’s what entropy measures) it would be far more likely that the tree doesn’t exist. You, reading this, should similarly doubt the existence of the writer.”  – Lawrence S. Schulman

The Boltzmann brain paradox is that any observers (self-aware brains with memories like we have, which includes our brains) are therefore far more likely to be Boltzmann brains than evolved brains. This suggest a problem either with current cosmological theories or the anthropic principle.

One class of solutions to the question makes use of differing approaches to the measure problem in cosmology: in infinite multiverse theories, the ratio of normal observers to Boltzmann-brain observers depends on how infinite limits are taken. Measures might be chosen to avoid appreciable fractions of Boltzmann brains.

A major question for a chaotic inflationary Multi-Verse model is whether it can circumvent the BB problem that plagues the random fluctuation model. If not, such a model will encounter the same disconfirmation as RF, thus giving us strong reasons to reject it. The inflationary model can avoid the BB problem, and this is its key advantage.

“Inflation is best thought of as the “dominant channel” from random chaos into a big bang-like state. The exponentially large volume of the Big Bang-like regions produced via inflation appear to completely swamp any other regions that might have fluctuated into a Big Bang-like state via some other route.  So, if you went looking around in the universe looking for a region like the one we see, it would be exponentially more likely to have arrived at that state via inflation, than some other way, and is thus strongly predicted to have the whole package of inflationary predictions.”  –  Andreas Albrecht

The idea here is that inflation takes small, low entropy regions and expands them into enormously large regions with enough order so that they will be dominated by non-BB observers (if they have observers).  The assumption is that the regions that undergo inflation are so small that they are much more likely to occur than regions that generate observers by random fluctuations; further, because of inflation, these initial small regions become so large that they dominate over those regions that produce observers by means of random fluctuations. Albrecht admits, however, that his argument that inflation would be the dominant channel “rests on very heuristic arguments” and that “the program of putting this sort of argument on firmer foundations is in its infancy”.

Several articles have been written in recent years arguing that inflation will generate universes in which BBs enormously dominate among observers in the far future. These arguments, however, present a problem only if one adopts a block universe view, according to which future events have the same ontological status as present and past events.  Although advocates of inflation typically assume such a view, they need not. If one adopts a metaphysical view in which the future is not yet real, these arguments will not themselves show that inflation leads to a present dominance of BB universes. Further,  the same dominance of BBs occurs for long-lived single universes; further, the evidence at present strongly suggests that our universe will continue existing for an enormously long time, if not forever, if there is no supernatural intervention.   In any case, I shall next present a powerful reason for thinking that Albrecht’s argument is flawed and that without assuming highly special initial conditions, inflationary cosmology leads to a dominance of BBs for any period of time in which observers exist.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

The Mind & its modifications, in the form of thoughts, modes, & states, are limited.  The Self, unlike any of the Minds, is not of limited knowledge, for Supreme Knowledge is the Self’s true nature.  That  Supreme Knowledge is unmodified Consciousness itself, which is the Self itself.  The Self has no Ignorance, just as light has no darkness.  The Self is also without change, without impurity, ever beyond conception, forever beyond the Senses, & never of a material nature.

The Self is, by analogy, said by the Wise, to be like sunlight, while the Mind is like a crystal. And the various Experiences are like the colors seen in the crystal. The significance of this analogy is that all objects are seen in the Mind only by the light of the Self.  Objects of knowledge, sensed or mental, appear only in the Waking & Dream states. When these Waking & Dream states are not present, no such sensed or mental objects are experienced. Yet the Knower (the Self) is always the Knower, never ceasing, unlike all that is unreal. For the Knower is formless Consciousness. Duality appears only in those Waking & Dream states & is thus likewise unreal. For what is Real must be Real always. By relinquishing the superimposition of the known on the Knower, one then abides as the Non-Dual Knower, unceasing Consciousness, always.

Prior to the discrimination of the Self & the non-Self, one may think that the Absolute does not exist. One may doubt that the Self alone exists. After such discriminating Self-Inquiry, what was thought of as an Individual self is known to be only Brahman. There is no Individual self, or Mind, which would have done such thinking. Upon such Self-Inquiry, the experiential Knowledge is that only the Self. Brahman is, & the Individual & Mind are only Brahman & nothing else.

For the Self, which is of the nature of pure Consciousness, the connection to any objective experience, mental or sensed, is a product of delusion.  The “I” is truly free of all attributes, & is not associated with any quality or entity, & is ever non–objective.  The Ignorance that imagines otherwise is purposeless.  That Ignorance merely creates Bondage among the ever-free, Suffering in the midst of Bliss. This is like drowning in a mirage whose “waters” serve no purpose. If the delusive attempts, to connect the Self with what is not the Self, are given up, the Mind rests in Brahman, the Absolute Self, “as if free from Bondage”, say the Sages.  In Reality, that Self was never bound.  The Self is ever Unborn & ever free of Duality.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

“There is no Creation, no Destruction, no Bondage, no longing to be freed from Bondage, no striving for Liberation, nor anyone who has attained Liberation. Know that this to be Ultimate Truth.”  –  the “no creation” school of Gaudapada, Shankara, Ramana, Nome – Ajata Vada

for very succinct summary of the teaching & practice, see:  www.ajatavada.com/

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 51:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe , the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 31:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

So, how does Inflation explain the special initial conditions of the Big Bang, which is the primary aim of the theory?  According to Albrecht, it explains the initial conditions by a two-stage process, via the “chaotic inflation” models. First, as Andreas Albrecht explains, “One typically imagines some sort of chaotic primordial state, where the Inflaton field is more or less randomly tossed about, until by sheer chance it winds up in a very rare fluctuation that produces a potential-dominated state. ..”   Potential-dominated states are those in which the potential energy of the Inflaton field is enormous compared to the rate of change of the Inflaton field with respect to time and space.  That is, in order for inflation to occur, the Inflaton field must be both spatially and temporally almost uniform relative to the total energy density of the field .[1] Although macroscopic uniformity of matter is typically a state of very high entropy (such as perfume spread throughout a room), it is generally accepted that in the case of the gravitational field and the Inflaton field, greater uniformity entails lower entropy. This is said to explain why the universe becomes more and more inhomogeneous as it expands (with matter clustering into galaxies and stars forming), and yet at the same time its entropy increases.  Entropy increases because the gravitational field becomes less uniform.  Since the gravitational field would play a significant role in the space-time of the early universe, a near uniform Inflaton field would correspond to extremely low entropy.

Now a general requirement for inflation is that the Inflaton field be nearly uniform, in the potential-dominated sense defined above, over some very small patch. Although these states will be extremely rare, given a large enough initial Inflaton field, or enough time, they are likely eventually to occur in some small patch of space simply as a result of thermal fluctuations.  Once they occur, inflation sets in, enormously expanding the patch.  Eventually, because of the postulated nature of the Inflaton field, in one or more regions of this expanded space, the field decays, resulting in re-heating that produces a bubble universe with ordinary matter.  So, in effect, because Inflation can only occur in highly uniform states of the Inflaton field, any Universe produced from an inflated region will have initially low entropy.

Accordingly, Albrecht proposes that inflation explains the low entropy of our universe by a two-stage process:

(i) a low entropy patch occurs as a result of a statistical fluctuation, and then

(ii) that patch inflates into our Universe.  As John Barrow and Frank Tipler pointed out decades ago, however, if the right special initial conditions must be stumbled upon by a statistical fluctuation, why not simply hypothesize a very large, or infinite, material field that undergoes a random fluctuation that produces a universe relevantly like ours? Why invoke the additional mechanism of inflation?

The answer requires looking at the standard objection to “random fluctuation models.” The objection is that universes being produced by such a fluctuation (without inflation) would almost certainly lead to small islands of observers surrounded by chaos, not one with a low degree of entropy throughout.  Even more ominously, a random observer most likely would be a so-called “Boltzmann Brain.” A Boltzmann Brain (BB) is a small region of mass-energy with the same structure as our brains (including the same sort of apparent memory and sensory experiences), but with the surrounding regions of space and time in a chaotic, high-entropy state. Although the experiences of such brains would be highly ordered for a brief time, they would not in any way correspond to reality, and any sort of inductive reasoning would fail.

The BB concept was originally articulated as part of an objection raised against the proposed anthropic-selection-effect explanation of the low initial entropy offered by Ludwig Boltzmann, one of the principal founders of statistical mechanics. Boltzmann attempted to explain the relatively low entropy of the universe by claiming that it was the result a fluctuation from the normal “chaotic,” equilibrium state, and that a fluctuation with a high degree of order was necessary for the existence of observers.   As theoretical physicist Paul Davies and many others have pointed out in responding to Boltzmann’s anthropic explanation, a fluctuation “the size of the solar system would be sufficient to ensure the existence of life on Earth, and such a fluctuation is far more probable than one of cosmic proportions”.  Indeed, fluctuations of even smaller dimensions – ones in which matter has the same organization as the brain with all its apparent memories and sense experiences but in which the surrounding space-time was chaos – would be even more likely. Consequently, insofar as a random fluctuation world contained observers, any randomly selected observer would almost certainly be a BB.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

All the objects of knowledge change. All that are described as “mine” & Ego, also cannot illumine themselves, nor can they illumine each other.  The Self is different from all that are described as “mine” & Ego. The Self is the unchanging, illuminating Consciousness.  This Consciousness is truly one’s only Identity.  Therefore, there can never truly be Bondage.

One Non-Dual Self alone is.  The one Non-Dual Self is the undivided Consciousness. This is the only Knower in all.  There are not different kinds of Knowers, such as higher & lower knowers. The Minds of all are pervaded by the one Consciousness within, which is the Self.  This is the “I” of all.  So there is no one else who knows, or who does not know.  The “I” is truly the Absolute, Brahman, all-knowing & all-pervading.

This “I” pervades & illumines the Mind. An the Mind pervades & illumines all things ever experienced.  Thus this “I” is the illuminator & pervader of all. This Self is the Witness of all objects of the Mind. These mental objects are subtle thoughts & also all the objects conceived as external as well. This includes being the Witness of all other Minds conceived as existing within the Mind.  Thus the Self is the Witness of all.

The Mind cannot conceive the Self, yet the Mind has no existence apart from the Self. The Self can neither be accepted, nor rejected by any of the Minds. That which cannot be accepted or rejected by the Mind is Brahman. That is truly the “I”.  Brahman & the Self are One.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 50:

Prior to excerpting the other Ramana Maharshi disciple in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe , the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 30:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

In addition to the four factors listed above, the fundamental physical laws underlying a multiverse generator — whether of the inflationary type or some other — must be just right in order for it to produce life-permitting universes, instead of merely dead universes. Specifically, these fundamental laws must be such as to allow the conversion of the mass-energy into material forms that allow for the sort of stable complexity needed for complex intelligent life.  For example, as elaborated in section 2.2, without the principle of quantization, all electrons would be sucked into the atomic nuclei, and, hence, atoms would be impossible; without the Pauli-exclusion principle, electrons would occupy the lowest atomic orbit, and, hence, complex and varied atoms would be impossible; without a universally attractive force  between all masses, such as gravity, matter would not be able to form sufficiently large material bodies (such as planets) for life to develop or for long-lived stable energy sources such as stars to exist.

Although some of the laws of physics can vary from Universe to Universe in superstring-M theory, these fundamental laws and principles underlie superstring-M theory and therefore cannot be explained as a Multi-Verse Selection Effect. Further, since the variation among universes would consist of variation of the masses and types of particles, and the form of the forces between them, complex structures would almost certainly be atom‑like and stable energy sources would almost certainly require aggregates of matter.  Thus, the above fundamental laws seem necessary for there to be life in any of the many universes generated in this scenario, not merely in a universe with our specific types of particles and forces.

In sum, even if an inflationary/superstring multiverse generator exists, it must have just the right combination of laws and fields for the production of life-permitting universes: if one of the components were missing or different, such as Einstein’s equation or the Pauli-exclusion principle, it is unlikely that any life-permitting universes could be produced.  Consequently, at most this highly speculative scenario would explain the fine-tuning of the constants of physics, but at the cost of postulating additional fine-tuning of the laws of nature.

Inflationary cosmology runs into a major problem in explaining the low entropy of the universe. This is a critical problem, since unless it can do this, arguably much, if not all, of the motivation for inflationary cosmology vanishes. Further, this problem will cast severe doubt on the ability of an inflationary multiverse to explain the fine-tuning.   The problem is that, applied to the universe as a whole, the second law of thermodynamics demands that the entropy of the universe always increase. Indeed, even if one has doubts about the applicability of the second law to the universe as a whole, inflation invokes a thermalization process, and thermalization is known to be a paradigmatic entropy-increasing process.  As Cambridge University physicist Roger Penrose states,

Indeed, it is fundamentally misconceived to explain why the universe is special in any particular respect by appealing to a thermalization process.  For, if the thermalization is actually doing anything (such as making temperatures in different regions more equal than they were before), then it represents a definite increasing of entropy.  Thus, the universe would have had to be more special before the thermalization than after.  This only serves to increase whatever difficulty we might have had previously in trying to come to terms with the initial extraordinarily special nature of the universe. . . . invoking arguments from thermalization, to address this particular problem [of the specialness of the universe], is worse than useless !

Based on this sort of argument, it is now widely accepted that the pre-inflationary patch of space-time that inflated to form our universe must have had lower entropy than the universe right after inflation. For example, Andreas Albrecht, a defender of inflationary cosmology, admits that inflationary cosmology must hypothesize a special initial low entropy state:  “For inflation, the inflaton field is the out-of-equilibrium degree of freedom that drives other subsystems.  The inflaton starts in a fairly homogeneous potential-dominated state which is certainly not a high-entropy state for that field . . . ” . Elsewhere, he says the pre-inflation patch must have been in a “very special state”.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

When the conceptions of “me” & “mine” are attributed to the Self, such are manifestations of Ignorance.  They are superimpositions upon the Self, which is only One, with neither Individuality nor any experience or thing possessed by and Individual. The “individual self” is thought to be the Seer, Hearer, Thinker, Knower, & such. In Reality, it is Brahman, the imperishable, indivisible, Non-Dual Self.  The “individual self” or “I” is not different from the Real Self, which is Brahman.

Meditation on the Self is declared to be without Time, Space, direction, or Causation, since the Self is without these things. The Self itself is to be realized as timeless, & the Realization itself, being of the same nature, is bodiless & without regard to place. The Self itself is, without Causation, being Uncreated & Unborn. And the Realization, being of the same nature, need not wait for circumstance & is not an attempt to produce the Self anew. The Realization is a realizing of what the Self truly is.  Le the Mind thus turn within, immersing itself in Self-Inquiry, absorbing itself in Knowledge, thereby losing its own form as it searches inwardly for its source. In this lies great Bliss & Immortality.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 49:

This time, after excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue to preface a return to the series: Fine-Tuned Universe series, we examine, not the Future or Past of the Universe, but back again to Fine-Tuning as such.

Some more  from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

Just as the Mind becomes the Object, the Instrument or means of Knowing, the Actor, the Action, & the results in a Dream, so is this also the case in the Waking state. The Real Self is different from the Mind & all those things that the Mind becomes (object, instrument of knowing, actor, action, results). The Self is without interior & exterior, such as the Mind & the World.  The Self is homogenous Consciousness.  Know the Self by ceasing the attribution of anything exterior or interior to the Self.  Remembrance & forgetfulness, including remembrance & forgetfulness of the Self, these processes are also, only of the Mind.  Both of these processes are products of Ignorance & do not touch the Self. Cease to regard the Self as a known or unknown object.  If the Supreme Self is regarded as an object of knowledge, such is a superimposition of Imagination or Ignorance.  True Knowledge prevails when such Ignorance, or superimposition, is negated. This is like the case with the rope & the illusion of the snake.

4 prerequisites (sadhana chatushtaya) for Self-Realization:

1. viveka – Discrimination between temporary (unreal) & permanent (Reality)
2. vairagya – Detachment, indifference to enjoyment of pleasures
4. mumukshuta  – Desire for Liberation
3. shatsampatti – Devout 6 Qualities
(i)    sama –  control of thoughts (ii)   dama –  control of senses                 (iii)  uparati – control of obligations & activities                                                  (iv)  titiksha –  control of passions, fortitude, endurance
(v)   samadhana –  control of mind for spiritual study & reflection
(iv)  sraddha –  control of trust & faith in Guru & the Teaching

Fine-Tuned Universe 29:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

One major possible theistic response to the Multi-Verse generator scenario, whether of the inflationary variety or some other type, is that the laws of the Multi-Verse generator must be just right – fine-tuned – in order to produce life-sustaining universes.   To give an analogy, even a mundane item like a bread machine, which only produces loaves of bread instead of universes, must have the right structure, programs, and the right ingredients (flour, water, yeast, and gluten) to produce decent loaves of bread.  If this is right, then invoking some sort of multiverse generator as an explanation of the fine-tuning re-instates the fine-tuning up one level, to the laws governing the Multi-Verse generator. So, at most, it could explain the fine-tuning of the constants and initial conditions. (Even the latter will be problematic, however, as we shall see in the next two sections.)

As a test case, consider the inflationary type Multi-Verse generator. In order for it to explain the fine-tuning of the constants, it must hypothesize one or more “mechanisms” or laws that will do the following five things: (i) cause the expansion of a small region of space into a very large region; (ii) generate the very large amount of mass-energy needed for that region to contain matter instead of merely empty space; (iii) convert the mass-energy of inflated space to the sort of mass-energy we find in our universe; and (iv) cause sufficient variations among the constants of physics to explain their Fine-Tuning.

Glossing over the details, in inflationary models, the first two conditions are met via two factors.  The first factor is the postulated Inflaton field that gives the vacuum (that is, empty space), a positive energy density.  The second factor is the peculiar nature of Einstein’s equation of general relativity, which dictates that space expand at an enormous rate in the presence of a large near-homogenous positive energy density.  Finally, because the inflaton field gives a constant positive energy density to empty space, as space expands the total vacuum energy within the space in question will increase enormously.  This in turn generates the needed energy for the formation of matter in the universe.  The vacuum acts as a reservoir of unlimited energy, which can supply as much as is required to inflate a given region to any required size at constant energy density.

So, to achieve (i) – (ii), we effectively have a sort of “conspiracy” between at least two different factors: the inflaton field that gives empty space a positive energy density, and Einstein’s equation.  Without either factor, there would neither be regions of space that inflate nor would those regions have the mass-energy necessary for a universe to exist.  If, for example, the universe obeyed Newton’s theory of gravity instead of Einstein’s, the vacuum energy of the inflaton field would at best simply create a gravitational attraction causing Space to contract, not to expand.

The conversion of the energy of the Inflaton field to the normal mass-energy of our universe (condition (iii) above) is achieved by Einstein’s equivalence of mass and energy, E = mc², along with the assumption that there is a coupling between the inflaton field and the matter fields.  Finally, the variation in the constants (and to some extent the laws) of nature is typically claimed to be achieved by combining inflationary cosmology with superstring-M theory, which purportedly allows for an enormous number (e.g., 10⁵⁰⁰) of possible combinations of values for the constants of physics. The important point here is that the laws underlying the inflationary scenario must be just right in order to cause these variations in the constants of physics from one universe to another. If the underlying laws are those given by superstring-M theory, arguably there is enough variation; this is not the case, however, for the typical grand unified theories that have been recently studied, which allow for only a very limited number of variations of the parameters of physics, about a dozen or so in the case of the simplest model. There is no reason to expect a generic field to have an enormous number of stable local minima of energy, which would be required if there is to be a large number of variations in the constants of Physics among Universes in Inflationary Cosmology.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 48:

This time, after excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue to preface a return to the series: Fine-Tuned Universe series, we examine, not the Future or Past of the Universe, but back again to Fine-Tuning as such.

Some more  from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

Being alone knows itself, the “I”-less “I” realized as “I,” forever undefined, the only Existence, the only Knowledge, the only Knower. Thus is Brahman, Absolute Reality, always present, unmarred Perfection, the unformed Void, attributeless Being, ever itself just as it is. The only Identity, the only Reality, Being alone knows itself .

Without any other is Absolute Being, formless & Non-Dual, the only Existence. Two that are Formless cannot be. Undivided, homogeneous, alone is Being. nothing outside it & no outside; nothing within it; alone is Being, pure Existence. Nothing comes before eternal Being; nothing comes after eternal Being. Without any other is Absolute Being, pure Existence.

The Truth of Being is solely Reality. Not from illusory things falsely experienced does the sense of Reality in every experience derive, but only from the Self, the only Source, the Real. Real Being depends not on anything else to be. Uncaused itself, the Absolute Self doesn’t cause anything else. Infinite, there is nothing beyond produced by it. Mistake not perception or conception for Existence itself. Reality is solely the Truth of Being.

Some more  from another great Sage:

Since every “thought” appears to arise in & merge into Consciousness, no such “thought” exists beforehand  & afterward. Consciousness is mistaken for the “thought” during the thinking, but is all that remains beforehand  & afterward [the unreality of Time aside for the purpose of discussion].  The subsequent creation of an entirely new thought, as though experienced some time earlier, is thereupon mistaken as “continuation” of the same thought.

Fine-Tuned Universe 28:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Given acknowledgement of that hypothetical 2 or 3 or 4-edged sword, more of course can be said about the Coincidences themselves. At the same time, numerous technical details (including Physics, Mathematical & Philosophical details) are omitted in our brief reviews to stay with our Scope & Audience, not by assuming as accomplished, or eventual, the needed fixes of Normalizations, Infinities, & other paradoxical nuisance that beleaguer Fundamental Theories. We therefore do not accept Coarse-Tuning Arguments CTA opposing Fine-Tuning Arguments FTA, like the CTA’s of Paul Davies, etc., They are based on the Arithmetic of “infinite” ranges conceivable for a given Parameter. But like the several responses to Fine-Tuning, the kinds of Physics Parameters in focus for Anthropic Principles fall into a few broad categories as well:

 Observer-Selection effect not part of Multi-Verse:

 Observer-relative life-permitting (LP) fact that we, or I, observe a life-permitting universe instead of a non-life-permitting universe; ) what I call the indexical LP fact that this universe is life-permitting – or has some life-permitting feature F, where “this” is an indexical that picks out the universe we inhabit; and  what I call the existential LP fact that a life-permitting universe exists.

The Weak Anthropic Principle states that the universe we inhabit must have a life-permitting structure, appears to be enough to make the observer-relative LP fact unsurprising.  With regard to the indexical LP fact, some philosophers claim that we cannot make a purely indexical reference to our universe but can only refer to our universe via an implicit description.  Thus, for instance, one could claim that “this universe” is reducible to  “the universe we inhabit,” where the “we” is in turn reducible to some other description such as “conscious observers with characteristics X,” where X refers to some set of purely qualitative properties.  If this analysis is correct, then the claim that “this universe is life-permitting” would be a tautology, and hence have an epistemic probability of one.

Everything that exists Mathematically exists Physically.                             Max Tegmark

Special-ness consists of our being able to glimpse a simple, unified explanation of the occurrence.  John Leslie

Collins defeats the murky logic of the Multi-Verse by:  exploiting the non-deducibility loophole for the indexical Life-Permitting fact.

Inflationary-Superstring Multi-Verse Explained & Criticized

By far the most commonly advocated version of the restricted Multi-Verse hypothesis is the “multiverse-generator” version that claims that our universe was generated by some physical process that produces an enormous number of universes with different initial conditions, values for the constants of nature, and even lower-level laws.  Many scenarios have been proposed – such as the oscillating big bang model and Lee Smolin’s claim that many universes are generated via black holes. Among these, the one based on inflationary cosmology conjoined with superstring theory is by far the most widely discussed and advocated, since this is the only one that goes beyond mere speculation.  According to inflationary cosmology, our universe started from an exceedingly small region of space that underwent enormous expansion due to a hypothesized inflaton field which both caused the expansion and imparted a constant, very large energy density to space as it expanded.  The expansion caused the temperature of space to decrease, causing one or more so-called “bubble universes” to form.  As each bubble universe is formed, the energy of the inflaton field is converted into a burst of “normal” mass‑energy thereby giving rise to a standard big-bang expansion of the kind we see in our universe.

In chaotic inflation models – widely considered the most plausible – space expands so rapidly that it becomes a never-ending source of bubble universes.  Thus, an enormous number of universes naturally arise from this scenario.  In order to get the parameters of physics to vary from universe to universe, however, there must be a further physical mechanism/law to cause the variation. Currently, many argue that this mechanism/law is given by superstring theory or its proposed successor, M-theory, which are widely considered the only currently feasible candidates for a truly fundamental physical theory. It should be stressed, however, that both inflationary cosmology and superstring-M-theory are highly speculative.  For example, Michio Kaku states in his recent textbook on superstring theory, “Not a shred of experimental evidence has been found to confirm . . . superstrings” (1999, p. 17). The same remains true today.  The major attraction of superstring-M-theory is its mathematical elegance and the fact that many physicists think that it is the only game in town that offers significant hope of providing a truly unified physical theory of gravitation with Quantum Mechanics.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 47:

This time, after excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue to preface a return to the series: Fine-Tuned Universe series, we examine, not the Future or Past of the Universe, but back again to Fine-Tuning as such.

Some more  from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

The Self is just Being, pure Existence. It is not being this or that. It is just Being, pure Existence. Self-Realization is just Being. It is not being this or that. It is just Being.

Being, pure Existence knows no alternative. The Self is just Being, pure Existence.

Being, pure Existence never changes its nature. That which truly is never ceases to be.

That which ceases never actually is. That which truly exists never changes. That which changes never truly exists. That which is changeless is without destruction. The indestructible is only that which is without creation. The unborn is the undying. The unchanging is alone Being, pure Existence. Being never changes its nature.

The Self ever is just as it is. There is no time when Being, pure Existence is altered.

There is no time when you are not the Self. Primordial Being eternally is, is what you are even now. Immutable Being is Peace itself. For there is no time when Being is altered.

Just as it is, the Self ever is.

Fine-Tuned Universe 27:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

The whole gamut of Credence “re-consideration” arguments included in Nick Bostrom’s monographs can be readily turned around to support Solipsism, Design, & even “re-consideration” of one’s true Non-Dual Identity. Furthermore, within the Sim-Arg   & Anthropic Principles themselves, numerous thought-provoking surprises can tend to awaken the Mind from its diurnal sleep-walk called the Waking State

In any case, Robin Collins speaks similarly in terms of a Restricted Principle of Indifference which has the same egalitarian democracy of Numbers, all in an acceptable range being deemed equally probable. But if we have other Information (like Napoleon has) to prefer certain Numbers or ranges, we can modify our position. Whether it be arguments by Bostrom or Collins, the net result of this or these principle(s) is to display due diligence against Special Pleading, & instead to favor Objectivity & conservative limits. When still making the Argument within these bounds, the Conclusion is all the more convincing. Various other good points are made by Collins (& of course other authors as well), just one other for now, being his refutation of blanket Agnosticism applied to Anthropic Principle issues.

Collins reminds the reader that Agnosticism can be claimed when one has “no idea” regarding the Probabilities, & not just obvious ignorance of the precise, specific value of a given Probability [or because the claim is convenient]. Both Collins & Bostrom, & others speak in terms of Credence & less-than (<)  &  greater-than (>) inequalities where landslide quantities allow reliable estimation of over-whelming likelihood or un–likelihood. The general range of Probabilities has to be well known as quite vast in these cases. There remains no comfort-zone of Agnosticism here. One must pick a side: Design, Ensemble, or Brute Chance. [And to clarify the obvious for the unfamiliar reader: Ensembles of Kazillions of Universes are “necessary” for the logical [vs. illogical Brute Chance] Scientific Realist. One can only believe super-incredible Coincidence is “coincidence” with a whole lot of Tries available.]

Cosmic Coincidences in Constants of Nature:

For one thing, thoughtless Faith in some Future Technology or Theory is one of the pat responses for Global–Warming–deniers  & those uninspired to lift a finger or spend a governmental dollar toward alleviating & solving human Population crises, disease, social & economic inequality, and so on. “Let them eat cake, let Science fix it” [while at the same time cutting government sponsoring of Science, hoping Corporate greed will magically find & adhere to the wisest decisions].

Another important issue in this regard is that of “future progress in Scientific understanding” is a also 2-edged sword in other ways. As usually invoked by the Brute Chance camp, there is an optimistic Futuristic hope–guess that somehow all the incredible coincidences of Universe Fine-Tuning will be later explained away by “future progress in Scientific understanding”, Future Science will find how all the Parameters just had to have the values they have, in agreement with Future Theory. Thereby, coincidence, Suprisingness, Fine-Tuning, &  Anthropic Principles go down the drain. This (vain) hope constitutes a large part of  Scientific Realism (better called scientific metaphysics because it avows mystical belief in theories in themselves).

They are eager search for the GUT  [Grand Unified Theory]  &  TOE [Theory Of Everything] which are to unify Physics & determine all Parameters to be just as they are from 1^st Principles. But, on the other hand, “future progress in Scientific understanding” describes some unification that is already traceable from Thales to  Aristotle to Ptolemy to Galileo to Newton to Maxwell to Einstein to Quantum Theory to QED to Quantum Gravity to QCD to String Theory to GUT to TOE (leaving out many sub-steps along the way). All that March of Science History proceeds in a direction that could also be interpreted as refining the Universe’s or RWOT Objective reflection of Subjective Non-Duality.

Taking that latter leap & turning back within allows all the “inspiration” sought in Design Anthropic Principles to be upgraded from UQD [Un-Qualified Duality] to QND  [Un-Qualified Non-Duality] & fulfilled if the TOE should be a real TOE (like our half-joking amateur version). To merely conjoin Quantum Gravity with a GUT may not enlighten anyone.

The funding comes through because the last investigation of fundamental structure of the Universe – Nuclear Physics, provided the reigning super-weapon. If research in Bio-Chem, Genetics, Nano-tech, AI, VR, IT, Robotics, Mind-control, Propaganda–Spin, Physics, or Chemistry can deliver more super-weapons then the funding falls under National Security. [We see this evil intent in Jacob’s Ladder & the Aliens sequence up through the Prometheus movie.]

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates have been available on:

jstiga.wordpress.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 46:

This time, after excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue to preface a return to the series: Fine-Tuned Universe series, we examine, not the Future or Past of the Universe, but back again to Fine-Tuning as such.

Some more  from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

The Knowledge of Reality, which is the Realization of the Self & the Realization of the Absolute, is attained by the direct path of true Knowledge. By liberating oneself from the mis-identification with what is not the Self, one knows the Self. When the Real Nature of what has been considered as the non-Self is seen, it invariably proves to be non-existent, for such non-Self was dependent upon mis-identification in order to even ever appear.  Blissful & Eternal is the Real Self. One should regard only that which has no beginning or end, is ever existent, is unchanging, is transcendent of all that has Form, of all that changes, & all that is in Time. The Self is also continuous & undivided as Real & one’s own true Being. By this Knowledge, one abides in the Natural State, which is the only True State of the Self. The Self may be said to call unto itself, as the Sought & as the Seeker; as the Guru & as the disciple; as God & as the devotee. The Self seeks itself in meditation. The Self reveals itself as inner experience. The Self knows & abides in itself for blissful Eternity.

Some more of Master Nome’s earliest aphorisms:

Now is not a time. Here is not a location. Here and now is formless, real Being.(2,28)

The past & future have no reality. The fleeting present moment is also an illusion. Timeless Consciousness is conceived as time & all that time measures. (2.57)

When does time begin ?  When there was no time.  But if there was no time, no then or now, did it begin at all ?  (2.60)

There is no cause for illusion; for illusion is unreal, and for an unreal effect there cannot be a real cause. Causality is itself illusory. (3.21)

The entire Universe is in the mind and the mind does not exist. (1.102)

Consider the World to be a dream, and discover the absence of the dreamer.(1.69)

To expect the perception of forms – theWorld, body, senses, and thought – to disappear at its own level to transcend them is like expecting the dream character in one’s dream to see the dream forms – dreamWorld, dream body, dream senses, and dream thoughts – disappear within the dream, before waking.

1. When the forms – the World, body, senses, and thought – vanish, the Reality of pure, transcendent Being alone remains. Even when thought of as appearing, the Reality of pure, transcendent Being alone remains. (2.53)

Be free from thought’s definition, from the notion of a second knowing principle, & from the notion of a differentiated mind.

Fine-Tuned Universe 26:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Details to follow soon later on, but suffice it for the moment to say that Surprisingness in the Bostrom sense depends for one thing on Relative Fine-Tuning or Selection of LP parameter values when the allowed Range is divided by the entire plausible or possible range. Temperatures in the Universe, for instance, vary enough that it is fair to say that Earth is currently Fine-Tuned in LP Temperature as might numerous other Earth-like and possible LP planets. So here with Temperature we have Fine-Tuning but no great Surprisingness in itself. But Surprisingness further relies on compounded probabilities (like the cheating gambler who will 11 consecutive Lotteries). Temperature Fine-Tuning then may play a component role in an immense chain of compounded probabilities that is Surprising enough to “demand an Explanation (Design or Ensemble, since Brute Chance is just the denial of that “demand” for Explanation). Flipping a Heads, H on a Coin-Toss is not Surprising, being 50%, but the compounded probabilities of an Octillion H’s in a row could be found to have the Surprisingness on 1 Chance in a Kazillion (of course an artificial term for an unthinkably large number).

However, if some other Parameter, let us say allowable magnetic field for the sake of discussion, exhibited an LP Range that was ¼ ^th of its total possible Range [none of this hypothetical really makes sense] then Surprisingness drops put right there on the issue of Relative Range even if the actual or Absolute Range happened to seem very small (plus or minus a few micro-webers or whatever). This hypothetical Parameter could then be dropped from the Fine-Tuning discussion, even as a relatively significant component of compounded probabilities, & so it is for ever so many LP characteristics we might conjure up in our imagination. But then after all the weeding out of the irrelevant, compounded probabilities & Surprisingness of Fine-Tuning for LP Parameters remains remarkable, to say the least.

Bland & Restricted Principles of Indifference:

Bland Indifference can describe the “living in denial” categorized within Psychological Compartmentalization, which in the extreme is the Borderline Psychotic defense against Cognitive Dissidence or disturbing contradictions encountered in Life. As Nick Bostrum used the terms when discussing his Sim-Arg, the Principle of Bland Indifference has another statistical meaning related to the Conclusion of the Subject in Leslie’s Gender Scenario where the Female places her bet with the bigger numbers, regardless of other considerations. If a given century involved 5,000 Females (vs. only 3) in the Project, than Odds are, she lives in that century. This allegiance to the numbers, no matter what, is her Bland Indifference, so to speak.

Generally, by the Bland Indifference Principle we should reason such that if we don’t have any Information that indicates that our own particular experiences are any more or less likely than other human-type experiences, then these experiences should be dismissed from the Reference Class in determining our Credence about a given Probability [a neo-Copernican principle].  furthermore, that Credence generally equals the sheer Probability Numbers, if lacking special detailed information.

[That’s why it looked like the Credence version of the 3 Bearded Men scenarios looked that same as the earlier Probability-based. They were the same. It was a needed repeat but only with the Credence instead of the Probability. Added was the note that New Information could temper the Credence or Belief, thus distinguishing it from Probability. Credence held more promise for fixing the Adam & Eve paradoxes, which scenario compares to some Anthropic Principle  issues.]

One common retort would be the Napoleon Case for instance. No matter how many crazy people think they are Napoleon, Napoleon’s own grounds for thinking he is Napoleon are different, & the existence of those crazy people shouldn’t undercut his self-confidence. The Bland Indifference Principle suggests that if 1 Million crazy people have thought they are Napoleon, and if hypothetically Napoleon knows this statistic, then Napoleon himself should only believe he is Napoleon with a Credence of 1 in a Million. But to be less “bland” in one’s “indifference” for Napoleon is to recognize his uniquely special reasons for confidence in his self-identity (memories, peer agreement, etc.) & rely not just on Numbers.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates have been available on:

jstiga.wordpress.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 45:

This time, after excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue to preface a return to the series: Fine-Tuned Universe series, we examine, not the Future or Past of the Universe, but back again to Fine-Tuning as such.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

In Self-Realization, all notions about the Absolute & the Self are relinquished. Notions about the Absolute are such as that it is separate from oneself, or objective, & that it is always-present. Notions about the Self are such as that it is endowed with Form, minuteness, that it is changeful, material, embodied, defined by thought, in Time, or endowed with Individuality. For Knowledge, the superimposition of the jiva–hood (concept of individuality) is removed from Atman (the Self) & Isvara–hood (idea of the Lord God) is removed from Brahman (the Absolute). Upon removal of such superimposition, r Ignorance, one realizes the Identity, as declared in the Upanishad, Tat tvam asi (Thou art That). If the Self remains undefined, it is only Brahman, & That alone. Therefore, one should know the Self.

Some of Master Nome’s earliest aphorisms about the unreality of a World:

There has never been a single objective thing. (1.3)

The World is unreal.  (1.16)

All that is objective is illusion. Illusion is that which is not. (1.34)

All things change. that which is not a thing is immutable. (1.63)

There is no World (any objective thing), & there is no one to experience or know it. (1.94)

It is you who say that anything is real. the object does not declare its own reality. to known the Reality, know yourself. (2.54)

Any object of experience has no more existence separate from the Self than printed letters from a page of paper, or waves from water. (3.24)

It is better to say the World in you than you are in the World. (3.42)

An unreal body performs unreal actions in an unreal World. (3.50)

Do not be afraid to let go of a World that does not really exist. (3.57)

Know the World to be unreal and yourself as not a character in it, & the dream is over. (2.93)

Regard all manifestation as an hallucination or as a daydream lasting but a moment. (3.30)

Regard all thought as an empty echo and the World as a dream. (3.67)

Ego, manifestation, form and ignorance: these are like an optical illusion, a mirage, a dream without substance, the life-history of a fictional character. (3.96)

The conception of space requires misidentification with the body.  The conception of time requires misidentification with thought.     The Self is neither the body nor thought. It is spaceless and timeless. (1.37 )

As space is endless, clear, formless, embracing all, bound by none, all-pervading, ungraspable, & has no within or without, so it is with the Self. (1.61)

The World, time, space, life, death, objective things, the mind, ignorance, bondage, & an experiencer of these are just concepts. Concepts are unreal. Absolute Being alone is. (2.55)

Fine-Tuned Universe series 25:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Nick Bostrom further extends this LP (Life Permitting issue by multiplying our single data-point by an (even larger) finite number of other earthlike planets in the Universe with intelligent life. To consider 1^st a weakly informative scenario, he conceives of widespread telepathic ability (which some actually attribute to plants*[1] on a cosmic level). Putting out the “call” we hear back, just as SETI might by more conventional radio waves: “yes intelligent life has evolved here.” The quality of that new information would improve if we could count the Number of planets so responding, or ever able to respond. But once more we are only hearing from the “winners” and not from perfectly earthlike planets in vast numbers who may be without Intelligent Life.

On the other hand again, if all telepathic or radio respondents specifically affirm somehow that that their planets are actually earthlike, & none of a larger sample replied affirming other planet-types, then more again is learned. With increasing numbers involved in the latter versions, we could begin to Probabilistically rule out intelligent life evolving on non-earthlike planets.

LP Epistemically Illuminated Regions:

When the Philosopher examines Anthropic Principles he may specify some conceptual boundaries, or at least some terminology not always included in a Physicist’s discussion. For one thing, the Philosopher seeks to determine in each case an Epistemically illuminated region within the possible or conceivable range of some parameter value. For instance, to take a simple example, Temperature. How hot, or how cold must it be. to rule out the possibility of Life as we known it (which does admit some extremes) & in what narrower range Intelligent Life (being of necessarily greater complexity however it is configured)? In fact, an Intelligent Life–Permitting range is usually the only one of immediate interest (evolution of simpler forms could hold promise for the Future, should conditions, like Temperature, also change over Time so as to enter the narrower Intelligent Life–Permitting range). But since the former, more immediate & narrow case of Intelligent Life–Permitting is a big enough conundrum to bite off & chew for now, Intelligent Life–Permitting is actually the default sense in which Life–Permitting or LP is generally meant.

Then, an Epistemically illuminated region in terms of LP further specifies the limits of our knowledge & imagination, especially if we admit Silicon-based, Boron-based, Nitrogen-based, & other conceivable but not necessarily feasible modes of Life, along with Carbon-based variations now familiar. Strong arguments tend to rule out all but Carbon-based or C-based Life reaching the complexity of LP as in Intelligent Life–Permitting. But these are all issues in setting the confines of an Epistemically illuminated region within the range of a given Parameter. One practical detail concerns LP Physical Constants that we are already aware of. For familiar C-based Intelligent Life, just what do we observe as some finite local region around actual value of Constant that is observed? Do we see a finite region of possible variance, & finite regions of actual & tolerable variance already observed? For instance, if we see as LP the Celsius Temperatures between – 50 to + 50 hypothetically, we might also imagine a wider  possible range of say – 55 to + 60. All numbers being purely hypothetical values, those were chosen for simplicity.

Robin Collins, (theistic) Philosopher, divides Anthropic Principles into 3 broad categories &and rules on their viability after considerable philosophical & scientific argument, these being:

(1)  Intelligent Design Argument, be it Theistic, some more abstract Deist principle of Nature, etc., or attributable to aliens, Future time-travelers, or VR – and such Design (for short & to distinguish from less rigorous religious-political uses of the same term) That Argument is defensible on its own terms (one cannot simply unilaterally declare a Physicalist Universe & dismiss dissent – although that is the norm rather than the exception throughout Philosophy & Science).

(2)  Ensemble Argument, of a kazillion universes (as isolated regions of 1 Infinite or virtually so) Universe, or as a Multi-Verse. Universes “bubbling off” an M-brane & other exotic bootstrapping appear in some models. Cosmogenesis deriving Quantum Fluctuations, Quantum Many-Worlds, or a serial sequence of alternating Big-Bangs & Crunches echoing across essentially beginningless & endless Time. Any such Ensemble Argument is defensible, however fantastic, because any Long Odds will come home to roost eventually if you bet endlessly. Our 13.7 Billion year Universe may be old enough to support Cosmic & Biological Evolution, or not. But the number of bets taken in any of these Ensemble Arguments render Cosmic & Biological Evolution trivial by comparison, to say the least. If a Cray Super-Computer should attempt to electronically “write”, in conventional decimal form, the number of Eons needed to count the Kazillion–Universes in such an Ensemble, the poor machine could not even scratch out a beginning in a Universe-life-so-far of 13.7 Billion years for instance. The numbers of Universes discussed are so fantastic that it may well be hubris to take this projection in stride. And yet the same decry any admission of Deity, Consciousness, or even Mind as so far, far more fantastic as to be rejected out of hand. But so again is it throughout Philosophy & Science, with the typical “proof” being: just look at how dumb  &  inconsistent are the Fundamentalist Christians. Is that a complete Argument ?

             (3)  Brute Chance Argument, being the off-handed dismissal of both Design  & Ensemble Arguments as needless hypotheses. Something had to happen, & the way things came out is the way things came out, period, Long Odds be damned. These adherents just have to include some great customers for the convenience-store Lottery ticket sales. Robin Collins for one, goes at length to rule Brute Chance or Brute Fact as he calls it. He later argues at length against Ensembles, an arduous effort we will only touch base with here. If his narrowing the field of 3 categories to the 1 category of Design should hold water, then one last rhetorical questions remains. What’s more fantastic, aliens, Deist-Theist-Consciousness based Design alternatives, Time-travelers, or Future VR Sim  programmers?

Secret Life of Plants  –  from earlier studies, speculations, and claims over recent centuries by Jagdish Chandra Bose, George Washington Carver, and Corentin Louis Kervran, a skeptical retired detective, Grover Cleveland Backster (Cleve Baxter as it is sometimes misspelled) had turned amateur “botanist” when applying his Polygraph equipment to Plants in a small Lab he ran in the suspicious locale of Times Square (ala Nikolai Tesla, the “mad scientist” before him) and like Tesla (not associated with plants but only with Times Square), Jagdish Chandra Bose, George Washington Carver, and Corentin Louis Kervran, Baxter was “buried” in cynical criticism and laughter. Soviet Scientists did considerably more of this same research, and Japanese research institutes did much more. All of the foregoing named (except Tesla) claimed unassailable evidence that Plants, at some distance, telepathically responded to Human emotions and even thoughts, in their own electrical  “emotional” responses, as if responding to the tome (the “vibes”) of those Human emotions and thoughts without necessarily dissecting detailed meaning. Most recent “advances” in this area have Archeologists , ascribing to a few diverse ancient cultures the use of certain Plants to telepathically communicate with “other star systems” and perhaps “other galaxies.” All of this is left without comment for the reader’s perusal if interested, with the disclaimer of any other judgment or opinion here. We have bigger fish to fry here and try (sometimes unsuccessfully) out of controversial, incredible topics without direct relevance. Picking other battles and moving on we will try to side-step ESP. Parapsychology. UFO’s, Conspiracy theories, and politics in general. The taint of the Plant story likely deprived (along with the same racism that greeted Carver) Jagdish Chandra Bose from a Nobel Prize for his other eminent work. Let’s go one further and dare ourselves to just look at Soviet and US Parapsychology research supporting very unpopular hypotheses that Human thoughts and emotions can, at a distance, affect Petri-dish Cells, Ice crystals, and Minerals. (???)

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 44:

This time, after excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue to preface a return to the series: Fine-Tuned Universe series, we examine, not the Future, but now the Past of the Universe.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

There is no delusion or modification in eternally, changeless Self.  Possibilities of delusion or modification, have been already been negated by Inquiry, or reduced to an infinite regression. But the Self alone is Infinite, & Causality is not real. One cannot actually recall when this root of Ego, the root of Maya, began, was created or was born. Though there is knowledge of perpetual Existence, which is of the Self alone. For never was there a time when you were not, & never will there be a time when you will cease to be. Thus, the Self is ever the Unborn – neither coming from another state or thing, nor giving birth to any state or thing – & the Ego is unborn since the Ego never comes to be. This may also be regarded as the final significance of the Maharshi’s Inquiry as to “Whence am I ?” graciously given to show the method of tracing inwardly from where the identity of “I” derives, as well as “Who am I ?”

How can there be the Ego’s effect (delusion), as the supposed cause itself has never come to be ? The Ego is an assumption. But who assumes this assumption ? No one. Who knows the Knowledge of the Self ? The Ego “I” cannot know the Self, since the Self alone is capable of knowing. The “I” is inert & the “known” is a mere notion, a vacuous imagining, & an assumption that is non-existent. There is no Ego to be ignorant, or to be bound. There is no Ego to attempt to know the Self, or to return to the Self, or to unite with the Self. The Self is what you are, & it is innately Ego-less.

Fine-Tuned Universe 44:

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

At 1^st blush, Anthropic thinking can begin with an inference derived from our own presence, establishing 100% Probability of intelligent life [I] on this planet earth [E]. With the single data-point of our own Presence, we might speculate about the Probability [I] of intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe [U] of earthlike planets. Thus, loosely speaking, & loosely symbolizing, we might doodle to ourselves:

[I]–[E]   ==>  [I]–[U]

[Earth’s intelligent life on  SUGGESTS  intelligence elsewhere]

Granted that the Number of earthlike planets is quite large, the Probability about which we speculated, [I]–[U] depends of course on the fraction of earthlike planets that will have evolved intelligent life, a fraction we have no way to meaningfully estimate. So if we qualify the loose symbology above into 2 alternative forms, one with the conclusion of High-Probability of [I] elsewhere, hi–[I]–[U]; & the other with the conclusion of Low-Probability of [I] elsewhere, lo–[I]–[U]:

(a)       [I]–[E]   ==>  hi–[I]–[U]

(b)       [I]–[E]   ==>  lo–[I]–[U]

Since each Speculation, both (a) & (b) is on the face of it as likely as the other, the single data-point of our Presence does not allow us to choose between the 2 Speculations. On the other hand, we might have effectively “zeroed-down” that “lo”– to vanishingly small, which is to effectively to cast a Contra-Positive of the original generic Hypothesis:

n– [I]–[U]   ==>  n–[I]–[E]

But that Conclusion is contradicted by the simple fact of our being here so such a Contra-Positive could NOT hold True. Converting this back to the original again, which must be equivalent, suggests that:

[I]–[E]   ==>  [I]–[U]

is similarly False. But our statements concern Truths rather than Falsehoods, & loosely at that, & yet even this reasoning is suggestive of the disconnect between our single data-point & any Universal conclusion. [Contra-Positives can be less intuitive, like double-negatives, but they can clarify some vague issues. Our Presence suggesting Life elsewhere “sounds” reasonable. But if we check the Contra-Positive we see that no failure to find Life elsewhere will ever convince US that We do not exist. Therefore, we best be cautious about using our Presence to imply Life elsewhere any further than that it “could happen.” Further examination then must focus on whether necessary conditions in the Universe are hard to come by, & how hard,]

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 43:

This time, after excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue to preface a return to the series: Fine-Tuned Universe series, we examine, not the Future, but now the Past of the Universe.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

The Existence of the Self is Absolute & immutable. If the Ego were ever the Existence, as part of it or sharing in the Absolute Existence in any way whatsoever, Existence would be changeful & transitory, & would cease to exist. Being is always Ego-less & Existence has no Ego whatsoever. Where is the Ego ? The Ego is not in the World, which is unreal. The Ego is not in the Body, which is unreal & not the Self. The Ego is not in the Senses, which are unreal & not the Self. The Ego is not in Thought, which is unreal & not the Self. The Ego is not in Thought, which is unreal & not the Self. The Ego is not in the flawless, unmodified, perfect Self. The Ego is never actually experienced by itself & is not actually experienced in any of those factors like the World, Body, Senses, Thought, or Self. The Ego dwells nowhere. The Ego is not a thing in itself & does not reside anywhere. The Ego is not inherent in anything. The remaining possibility is that the Ego’s supposed existence is an effect produced by something else. The Ego is not produced by the World, the Body, the Senses, the Prana (vital energy), of the Mind. Those produce phenomena, sensations; physical subtle, & mental experiences; & thoughts. The World, the Body, the Senses, the Prana, & the Mind appear after the Ego is differentiated. And so they cannot produce the Ego since an Effect does not produce a Cause. The Ego is not produced by the Self, which is the Absolute. The Absolute Self does not produce or create at all, but ever just is. That the Ego is said to rise from the “origin”, of “substrate”, of the Self is expedient teaching intended to guide those desirous of Liberation to the Origin, the one Substrate, in order to realize its Ego-less nature. Such instruction should not be interpreted as the Ego “really” being born, or the Self actually giving birth to the Ego. The Ego cannot be self-produced, for to imagine so would be to suppose its pre-existence, which is absurd. That would lead to the consequent question as to what caused the “pre-existent” Ego. This, in turn, would lead either to the delusion regarding the effects causing the “cause”

Past of the Universe 1:

The GU Grand Unification Epoch is taken to have occurred just after the impenetrable, undefined. &  unknowable 1^st interval of 10^–43  sec, the “Planck” Epoch.  During the Planck Epoch, a virtually infinitely hot & dense proto=Universe “cools” to a mere 10³² or Hundred Nonillion degrees,

During the GU Grand Unification Epoch, it remains too hot for the 4 fundamental Forces [Gravity, Strong & Weak Nuclear, Electro-Magnetic] to be distinguished [hence “unified”]. The Temperature does drop to a “chilly” 10²²  Ten Sextillion degrees, prior to re-heating [by thermalized negative Gravity & the Inflaton Field decaying into Particles].

Temperature cools back down after the Chaotic Expansion [60 orders of magnitude to a “grain of sand”], from 10^–36  or 10^–35 sec out to 10^–32 sec . That cooling induced “phase transitions [like steam condensing] which breaks the symmetry of the GUT Grand Unified Theory or the Grand Unified Super-Force, breaking out Gravity from of the Unified 4 Forces.

Further cooling from Non–Chaotic Expansion Epoch [to 4 inches across or 10⁹⁰  (x) the primeval Planck Volume]  cooling has dropped the Temperature to 10²⁸ or Ten Octillion degrees.

During the succeeding Electro–Weak Epoch from 10^–32  to 10^–12 sec, the Unified Gauge Forces split off Strong Nuclear Force, by which Gluon Bosons bind larger Baryons like Protons & Neutrons.

Resembling later Dark Energy, this early negative Gravity produces the limited smoothness of Space, leading to galaxies neither too small, nor too big. There did remain a slight fluctuation in the Density Distribution of Matter, without which Galaxies, Stars, & Planets would never have coalesced.

The successive non-Chaotic, Chaotic, non-Chaotic Inflations cooled out hot & dense relic early particles like Magnetic Monopoles, Gravitinos, Axions, & other “hedgehogs”, cosmic Strings, & Brane Domain walls. The Electro-Weak Force [later to separate as Weak & Electro-Magnetic Forces] also breaks out during this Electro-Weak Epoch, ending at 10^–12 sec.

Baryo-genesis [making Protons & Neutrons etc. ] has begun at the 1^st femto-second, 10^–15 sec, with the official Quark Epoch starting at that 10^–12 sec. Combinations of 3 quark Leptons make up Protons & Neutrons, etc. The Hadron Epoch per se starts at a micro-second, 10^–6 sec when all Quarks were forever trapped within Hadrons [Protons & Neutrons].

Hadrons are made up of specific combinations of Red, Green, & Blue Quarks, either Up or Down. The virtually empty Hadron has each of the 3 Quarks making up about ¹/₃  of the Mass, & Hadrons of course make up all but a small fraction of a % of all Atoms & thus all Atomic Matter.

But each Quark in size can be contrasted to a single Atom. The number of Atoms in my thumb is about the number of tennis balls I could crammed into a hollow, carved-out Earth, 20,000 km around. As tiny as each Atom must then be, a Quark compared to an Atom would have that Atom be an empty Solar System, 200 Billion km around just counting out to Pluto.  This represents the extremely empty Hadron. As to how empty the Quark [made of Strings ?] itself could be described we cannot say.

At about 10–4 sec the Universe was continuing to expand more slowly, as it does today, except that this slower Expansion appears to be accelerating indefinitely at this point in time. Addition of Space which comprises the Inflation & “slower” Expansion prior to & then after Inflation. This is not the same as the velocity of motion within that Space. And yet that “slower” expansion continued “faster” than the Speed of Light. So that in a sense, much of the Universe will ever be receding beyond our possible knowledge. Meanwhile, by the Age of 1 sec, Temperature had cooled down a Quadrillion times to a “frosty” 10¹³ degrees [Ten-Trillion].

From a hundredth of a Second to a full Second, Matter–Energy was an Ionized Plasma where Matter & Radiation were inseparable. But Radiation was so dense (a Hundred Billion kg/cm3) that no Light was visible, since each Photon interacted immediately. The formation of Matter from Energy is made possible by Photons materializing into Baryons & Anti-Baryons with their subsequent annihilations transforming them into pure Energy. Because of these Photon & Matter collisions & annihilations, Matter was unable to remain viable for more than a few nanoseconds before a bombardment of Electrons would scatter these Photons.

Known as the “Epoch of Last Scattering”, the Temperature had now dropped to that mere 10¹³ degrees, [Ten-Trillion]. Strong Nuclear, Weak Nuclear, & Electro-Magnetic interactions now able to exert their Forces.  Odd Neutrons begin to decay to Protons, Electrons, & Neutrinos on a massive scale. This freed up additional Protons & also free Electrons that could combine with other particles.

After one second, the Universe had cooled further by a factor of a Thousand to 10¹⁰ degrees K [Ten-Billion]. Photons no longer had the energy to disrupt the creation of matter or transform energy into matter. Nucleo-synthesis became possible. The Universe diameter now approached a Quintillion meters 10¹⁸ m or a Quadrillion km. Before that 1^st second, Neutrinos had cooled down and were not interacting with other particles, even though they had played a role in Proton-Neutron conversions that did occur later, and still do occur today in extreme nuclear fusion reactions. Neutrinos also play important roles in higher element synthesis aspects of Super-novae. The prior Proton-Neutron mass-conversions had occurred by hot-Weak-force processes that simple “froze out” at that torpid 10¹⁰ degrees K [Ten-Billion].

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

Essay outside of the NMT (No-Me Teaching) series 6:

Vedanta’s analogy for 3 daily States of Mind.

We find another powerful Analogy, which we can call the “Coin”, at the beginning or the Mandukya Upanishad.  A gross physical analog with which to look at the waking and sleep states this Vedanta text employs an analogy of a particular coin to illustrate states of Reality and their relationship.

The actual coin, or actually the series of coins had somewhat of a bullseye design. For a more clear explanation, we us U.S. coins for example. If the smallest coin where a dime, for instance, then the very special quarter in this series would have a dime “imbedded” in its center.  It is as if the dime were retained & another fifteen cents worth of silver were placed around it.

The half-dollar of the series incorporates the quarter with the dime imbedded.

Finally, another fifty cents worth of silver is placed around the compound half-dollar & the last in the series would be a large silver dollar piece containing the compound silver half-dollar itself.

Some such coin had existed in India, fashioned in this “bullseye” concentric manner, whatever the actual denominations might have been.  The point of Analogy was to equate the entire composite silver dollar with the Reality of Consciousness.

The composite coins were chosen to illustrate how a larger category remains as the Background for the included region superimposed on it.  The dollar coin of Consciousness remains in the middle where the half dollar has been superimposed.  The Consciousness dollar Substrate still remains the ultimate Background even in the middle of the half-dollar where, in turn, the quarter is superimposed on the half-dollar which remains as its intermediate background.

Finally, in the same manner, the superimposed dime has the quarter for its immediate Background, with the half-dollar as the Background behind both of those.  Consciousness again is the ultimate silver dollar Background.

This composite is specifically a very hierarchical & inclusive one. Within that silver-dollar Consciousness-Reality, the half-dollar piece represents the state of primal Ego Ignorance, as yet bereft of any thought & yet still permeated by Consciousness which is its all-Background,support, & substance.

This half-dollar piece represents the  Deep Sleep State & also any moment of simple Ego superimposed upon pure Consciousness.

The quarter, in turn, represents any imaginary thought process within the half-dollar of Individuality, Ego, or Mind.

So the half-dollar is Ego, & at the same time the Deep Dreamless Sleep State, & the quarter is Mind.

There is a specific State involved there too in that the quarter also represents the Dream State & all other flights of Imagination, Day-dreaming, mental Conceptualizing, & Thought in general.

So Thought is within &nd is permeated by Ego-Mind, which in turn is contained within & permeated by Consciousness.  The Ego is more fundamental than Thought, a kind of pre-Thought.

Consciousness that remains as the Background of Ego & the Deep Sleep State.  Meanwhile, this Ego & the Deep Sleep State are the Background of all Thought.  One Non-Dual Consciousness is very much the whole story.

All along,. Ego is a momentary insubstantial disturbance in Consciousness.  Like a whirlpool or eddy current in the Ocean, it never stands as a separate thing & appears or disappears in a moment.  Not being other than “Water” at any point, like a transient Current such a thing as Ego is more a matter of definition than substance.

Not even a Thought in itself, the Ego is like the Origin point on a graph where Cartesian coordinate axes meet.  Here this meeting Point is not counted as a Point in itself.  Nevertheless,each Thought or Coordinate Point has that Reference Origin in its very definition.

A pre-Thought, like Ego is at the beginning, middle,or end of any given Thought, each a “structure” which is not yet a Thought in itself.  We might thus see the Ego as part of the middle of each Thought, as the Reference for the defining of the thought content.

Like a Quark which is more fundamental than a nucleon, an elusive sub-component, the Ego eludes direct definition. However Thought is imagined then, Consciousness lights up the Ego & any thought.

Consciousness thus remains the Background like the silver dollar in the Coin Analogy. The Ego, in turn, is Background for Thought, just like the half-dollar is the Background for the quarter.

What we call Deep Sleep just happens to be an extended period of thoughtless no-Mind.  We actually experience a smaller version of this thoughtless no-Mind between each thought.  Occasionally,  other instances of  thoughtless no-Mind appears when we are knocked unconscious, under anaesthesia, in certain periods of trance, & so on.

Ego is also seem in the fact that we come out of Deep Sleep & so on with the same Personality intact.  I even recall the pleasant quality of Deep Sleep as some thing enjoyed by me as Consciousness. ‘

Since Ego is part of every Thought, so is Deep Sleep the same Background evident as the temporal “space” between Thoughts.

Dream itself is but Thought.  All the sights, sounds, touch, smell & taste; all the objects, people, places, & times are all made of evanescent Thought that vanishes, in total, at the moment we awake.

When we do awake, we add in those vivid Thoughts we know as Perceptions.  We consider these Perceptions to be “direct experience”, which is really a joke for we do not remain steady in the so-called “direct experience” of immediate Perception.

We often consider & think of things other than our immediate surroundings. We spend far more time Day-dreaming about the Future, or some other Fantasy.

Our biased memories of the Past are effectively Dreams as well.  In fact, all conceptual Thought is like the Dream State interspersed within the Waking State Perception.

If we set Perception aside to typify the Waking State, then all other Thought is essentially the Dream State Background shining through. Gaps between Thoughts.

Again the Deep Sleep State is behind that, & Consciousness is the ultimate Background behind it all.

Consciousness, on turn, illumines all Thought.  Then again the Waking State is just one particularly vivid & more-consistent Dream state.

Perception too appears in the Dream, at its own level.  So there is really not much of a distinction.  What is so special about the Waking State, which is the dime in the center, is that it is the most derivative .  It is a Waking State of perceived Objects, performed Actions & accrued karma, Birth & Death.

The real special quality of the Waking State lies in the conscious quality that allows the pursuit of Self-Knowledge in the Waking State by intentional Self-inquiry.

The “Coin” scheme situates the Waking State as but one Dream among many..  Perception is placed among other Thoughts & Concepts.  By the same token,  we set that same Waking State aside for this special reason of. the pursuit of Self-Knowledge in the Waking State by intentional Self-inquiry.  At the same time, Concept & Imagination, & the entire Dream State is situated within the Ego-Mind, while Egoity is only an insignificant disturbance within Consciousness.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 41:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we skirt around the Fine-Tuned Universe series to add further questions about the Universe.

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Future of an expanding Universe part IV:

Timeline:

Assuming that Dark energy continues to make the Universe expand at an accelerating rate, at some 2 Trillion yrs. from now, all galaxies outside the Local Supercluster will be red-shifted to such an extent that even gamma rays they emit will have wavelengths longer than the size of the observable universe of the time. Therefore, these galaxies will no longer be detectable in any way.

By 100 Trillion yrs. from now, on a new Degenerate Era star formation will end, leaving all stellar objects in the form of degenerate remnants. This period, known as the Degenerate Era, will last until the degenerate remnants finally decay.

Star formation ceases:

It is estimated that in 100 Trillion yrs. or less, star formation will end, whereby the least massive stars take the longest to exhaust their Hydrogen fuel. Thus, the longest living stars in the universe are low-mass Red Dwarfs, with a mass of about 8 % Solar masses.  They have a lifetime of order 10 trillion) yrs., the length of time over which star formation takes place.

Once star formation ends & the least massive Red Dwarfs exhaust their fuel, Nuclear Fusion will cease. The low-mass Red Dwarfs will cool & become White Dwarfs. The only objects remaining with more than planetary mass will be Brown Dwarfs, with mass less than 8 % solar masses, & degenerate remnants. White Dwarfs are produced by stars with initial masses between about 0.08 & 8 solar masses.  Neutron Stars & Black Holes, are produced by stars with initial masses over 8 solar masses. Most of the mass of this collection, approximately 90%, will be in the form of White Dwarfs.

In the absence of any energy source, all of these formerly luminous bodies will cool & become faint. The Universe will become extremely dark after the last star burns out. Even so, there can still be occasional light in the Universe. One of the ways the Universe can be illuminated is if 2 Carbon-Oxygen White Dwarfs with a combined mass of more than the Chandrasekhar limit of about 1.4 solar masses happen to merge.

The resulting object will then undergo runaway thermonuclear fusion, producing a Type Ia supernova & dispelling the darkness of the Degenerate Era for a few weeks. If the combined mass is not above the Chandrasekhar limit, but is larger than the minimum mass to fuse Carbon (about 0.9 solar masses), a Carbon star could be produced, with a lifetime of around 1 Million yrs.

If 2 Helium White Dwarfs with a combined mass of at least 0.3 solar masses collide, a Helium star may be produced, with a lifetime of a few 100 Million yrs.

Finally, if Brown Dwarfs collide with each other, a Red Dwarf star may be produced which can survive for 10 Trillion years.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

This Self is referred to by the Maharshi, Ribhu, & other sages as “I–I”. That true “I–I” is the “I” in the statement “I am the Absolute.” In the Realization of the significance of the Mahavakya (great aphorism) of the Upanishad: “I am Brahman.” Adi Shankara explains, the entire notion of “I” is removed, just like the idea “a man is here”, conceived when mis-perceiving a tree stump in the darkness, is completely removed upon illumination being brought. Brahman alone is, & Brahman alone is, & Brahman alone knows Brahman. When the “I” is removed, all of “mine” is also removed since that is completely dependent upon the delusion of “I”.  The Ego is the root cause of delusion, illusion, bondage, & suffering. The Ego is the root of the Mind, the root of even the very idea of an existent Mind, & the root of all else. It is the 1st Illusion to be imagined & the last to disappear. The Ego is the cause, substance, & experiencer of all Illusion. Without the Ego, Illusion is impossible.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 40:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we skirt around the Fine-Tuned Universe series to add further questions about the Universe.

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Future of an expanding Universe part III:

Summary:

The 1^st, the Primordial Era, is the time in the past just after the Big Bang when stars had not yet formed. The 2^nd, the Stelliferous Era, includes the Present Day & all of the stars & galaxies we see. It is the time during which stars form from collapsing clouds of gas.

In the subsequent Degenerate Era, the stars will have burnt out, leaving all stellar-mass objects as stellar remnants, White Dwarfs, Neutron stars, & Black Holes.

In the Black Hole Era, White dwarfs, Neutron stars, & other smaller astronomical objects have been destroyed by Proton decay, leaving only Black Holes.

Finally, in the Dark Era, even Black Holes have disappeared, leaving only a dilute gas of Photons & Leptons [electrons. etc.]. The Future History assumes the continued expansion of the Universe. If the Universe begins to recontract, subsequent events in the timeline may not occur because the Big Crunch,

That Big Crunch would be the recontraction of the Universe into a hot, dense state similar to that at the Big Bang, will supervene.

Timeline  part 1:

Primordial Era  [0 – 1 Million yrs.]

Stelliferous Era [from 1 Million yrs. to 100 Trillion yrs. post Big Bang]

The observable Universe is currently 13.8 Billion yrs. old, within the Stelliferous Era. About 155 Million yrs. after the Big Bang, the first star formed.  Since then, stars have formed by the collapse of small, dense core regions in large, cold molecular clouds of Hydrogen gas. At first, this produces a proto-star, which is hot & bright because of energy generated by Gravitational contraction. After the proto-star contracts for a while, its center will become hot enough to fuse Hydrogen & a star begins.

Stars whose mass is very low will eventually exhaust all their fusible Hydrogen & then become Helium White Dwarfs.  Stars of low to medium mass will expel some of their mass as a planetary Nebula & eventually become White Dwarfs.

More massive stars will explode in a core-collapse Supernova, leaving behind Neutron stars or Black holes. In any case, although some of the star’s matter may be returned to the interstellar medium. That degenerate remnant will be left behind with mass that is not returned to the interstellar medium. Therefore, the supply of gas available for star formation is steadily being exhausted.

The Milky Way Galaxy & the Andromeda Galaxy will merge into one 3 Billion years from now,  17 Billion yrs. after the Big Bang, or in ~ 25% of the Universe’s present age.

The Andromeda Galaxy is not about 2.5 Million Light-yrs. away from our Milky Way Galaxy,  They are moving towards each other at approximately 120 kilometers per second. Approximately three Billion years from now, or 17 billion yrs. after the Big Bang, the Milky Way & the Andromeda Galaxy will collide with one another & merge into one large galaxy.

The galaxies in the Local Group, the cluster of galaxies which includes the Milky Way & the Andromeda Galaxy, are gravitationally bound to each other. It is expected that between 100 Billion & 1 Trillion yrs. from now, their orbits will decay and the entire Local Group will merge into one large galaxy.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple Master Nome:

The Mind does not bind the Self. The Mind does not define or limit the Self. The Mind does not divide the Self, & does not alter the Self. The Self is not bound by the Mind, because the Mind has no independent existence. The Self is not bound because there is nothing other than the Self, & so there is no Mind at all. The “Mind” is nowhere but in the Self, yet in the Self there is no Mind. The Self is not in the Mind, but the Self alone pervades the Mind to an extent that distinctions of pervader & pervaded do not exist.

Though thought exists only as the self, the Self has never become a thought & has never given rise to a thought. Thought is entirely unreal & does not exist at all. The Self alone exists & is 1–without–a–2nd. The Mind exists nowhere but in the Self, yet there is truly no Mind in the Self. The True Nature of the Mind is only the Self. There is truly not Mind at all & the Self alone exists.

Self-Realization is the Ego-less state. Freedom from the Ego is the quintessence of Liberation. That Freedom is Abidance in the Self as the Self. The falsely assumed, individualized “I” is completely removed by Self-Knowledge, & the 1 true “I” of the “I” alone remains.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 39:

Prior to review of Idealist Philosophy, in the text below we skirt around the Fine-Tuned Universe series to add further questions about the Universe.

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

(Supposed) Future of an expanding Universe part II:

Planets fall or are flung from orbits by a close encounter with another star on some 10¹⁵  (Quadrillion) yrs.  Over time, the orbits of planets will decay due to Gravitational Radiation.  Otherwise, planets will be ejected from their local systems by Gravitational Perturbations caused by encounters with another stellar remnant.

Stellar remnants ultimately escape galaxies or fall into Black Holes by some 10¹⁹ to 10²⁰ yrs.  Over time, objects in a Galaxy exchange Kinetic Energy in a process of Dynamical Relaxation, making their velocity distribution approach the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution.  Dynamical Relaxation can proceed either by close encounters of 2 stars or by less violent but more frequent distant encounters.  In the case of a close encounter, 2 Brown Dwarfs or stellar remnants will pass close to each other. When this happens, the trajectories of the objects involved in the close encounter change slightly. After a large number of such encounters, lighter objects tend to gain Kinetic Energy while the heavier objects lose Kinetic Energy.  Because of srch Dynamical Relaxation, some objects will gain enough energy to reach Galactic escape velocity & depart the Galaxy.  They leave behind a smaller, denser Galaxy. Since encounters are more frequent in the denser Galaxy, the process then accelerates. The end result is that most objects are ejected from the Galaxy, leaving a small fraction (a few %) which fall into the central supermassive Black Hole.

After some 10³⁴ yrs, the later evolution of the &verse depends on the existence and rate of Proton Decay.   If the Proton is unstable, it has a ¹/₂  -life of at least 10³⁴ yrs.  If any of the Grand Unified Theories  (GUT’s) are correct, then there are theoretical reasons to believe that the half-life of the Proton is under 10⁴¹ yrs.

Neutrons bound into nuclei  are also expected to decay with a ¹/₂  -life comparable to the Proton’s.  In the event that the proton does not decay at all, stellar-mass objects would still disappear, but more slowly.

If the Proton half-life is approximately 10³⁷ yrs, shorter or longer Proton half-lives will accelerate or decelerate the process. This means that after 10³⁷ yrs, one-half of all Baryonic matter will have been converted into gamma ray Photons & Leptons through Proton decay.

Some review of Idealist Philosophy:

From Plato’s “ideals”, misapplication of the title for the philosophical school Idealism is sometimes begun there. Actually Idealism became began earlier with the Eleatic philosophers: Parmenides, Zeno, & Melissus.  Later on, the Neo-platonists went well beyond Plato, again into Idealism, as with Plotinus, Porphyry, and so. Later, small contributions are made by Boethius & even René Descartes. But George Berkeley was the 1^st true Idealist, seeing the World as Mind, (though he left “behind” a physical World made by God as a handy reference).  The Eleatic philosophers & greatest Neo-platonists philosophers were actually beyond Idealism, being Enlightened Sages, embracing more Subjective Non-Duality.

Several German idealists like Fichte, Kant, & Hegel preceded a British school of Idealism culminating in Thomas Green, Bernard Bosanquet, John McTaggart & Francis Bradley. Twentieth-century philosophy in America begins with Idealism.  At the turn of the 20^th century, it was rising with Brand Blanshard & with Josiah Royce at Harvard.

Idealists were remarkable. They had never heard of Protons or Electrons, hardly even of Freud.  Since they had come into Philosophy, not from Science, but from the Humanities, their scientific insight was lacking. Nor was their Logic very subtle. But whatever their technical deficiencies, these Idealists were wise men, learned men.

They knew how to state a case. They were perceptive, humane, & versatile. Philosophy for these Idealists was not an avocation or a specialty, but a way of life & the “breath” of life.  It was a passionate pursuit of reasonableness in action & feeling as well as in thought.

The Idealism of the turn of the century was a fusion of two streams of thought.  One of these, Subjective Idealism, took its rise in the ingenious mind of Bishop Berkeley & flowed down through David Hume & John Stuart Mill.  The other, Objective Idealism, is as old as Plato & comes down through the Germany of Hegel, & the English Green & Bradley, to Josiah Royce in Harvard Yard.  The first of these idealisms stands for the thesis, “All that is real is experience.”  The second stands for the thesis, “All that is real is rational.”  To see what American “Absolute Idealism” meant, we must see the meaning of both these theses. [to be continued]

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 37:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we skirt around the Fine-Tuned Universe series to add further questions about the Universe.

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

(Supposed) Future of an expanding Universe part I:

If the expansion of the Universe continues forever, the Universe will cool as it expands, eventually becoming too cold to sustain Life . For this reason, this future scenario is popularly called the Big Freeze.

Dark Energy can be represented by the Cosmological Constant Λ, a constant Energy Density filling Space homogeneously, or represented by scalar fields, such as Quintessence or Moduli, dynamic quantities whose Energy Density can vary in Time & Space.  Dark Energy accelerates the expansion of the Universe, so that the space between clusters of galaxies will grow at an increasing rate.

Red-shift will stretch ancient, incoming photons (even gamma rays) to undetectably long wavelengths & low energies.  Stars are expected to form normally for 10¹² to 10¹⁴ years (1-100 Trillion years).  But eventually the supply of gas needed for star formation will be exhausted. And as existing stars run out of fuel & cease to shine, the Universe will slowly & inexorably grow darker, one star at a time.

According to theories that predict Proton decay, the stellar remnants left behind will disappear, leaving behind only black holes, which themselves eventually disappear as they emit Hawking radiation. Ultimately, if the Universe reaches a state in which the temperature approaches a uniform value, no further work will be possible, resulting in a final Heat Death of the Universe.

Infinite expansion does not determine the spatial curvature of the Universe. It can be open (with negative spatial curvature), flat, or closed (positive spatial curvature). If it is closed, sufficient Dark Energy must be present to counteract the Gravitational attraction of matter & other forces tending to contract the Universe.  Open & flat Universes will expand forever even in the absence of Dark Energy.

Observations of the CMB, Cosmic Micro-wave Background radiation by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe suggested that the Universe is spatially flat & has a significant amount of Dark Energy.  In this case, the Universe should continue to expand at an accelerating rate. The acceleration of the Universe’s expansion has also been confirmed by observations of distant Supernovae.  If, as in the Concordance Model of Physical Cosmology (Lambda-cold Dark Matter or ΛCDM), the Dark Energy is in the form of a Cosmological Constant, the expansion will eventually become exponential, with the size of the Universe doubling at a constant rate.

If the theory of Inflation is true, the Universe went through an Episode dominated by a different form of Dark Energy in the first moments of the Big Bang; but Inflation ended, indicating an equation of state much more complicated than those for Dark Energy.  It is possible that the Dark Energy equation of state could change again resulting in an event that would have consequences which are extremely difficult to predict.

Some more from Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome:

Thoughts move in modes. Innumerable thoughts & modes are contained in states of Mind. All are included in 3 states of Mind: Waking, Dream, & Deep Dreamless Sleep. In the 1st 2 states (Waking & Dream), thought itself projects itself into itself & the content of thought changes according to those states. The Waking state is equivalent to the Dream state. In both states, the same kind of multiplicity manifests. In both states, subject & object appear.

The same kinds of mental function appear in both states. In both states, there is the same tendency to identify as a particular character with a particular Body exists. Cause & Effect are present in both states. Both states are characterized by non– perception of Reality & the mis–perception of Reality, which delusions are equivalent to not seeing a rope & imagining to be a snake. These 2 states, Waking & Dream are mutually exclusive (contradictory). Everything experienced in a given state changes within that state itself, or else changes with the transition from 1 state to the other. Only Existence-Consciousness remains the same, unaffected by the changes in such experiences & any change of state. So what is present in the Waking state tends to be absent in the Dream state, & what is present in the Dream state tends to be absent in the Waking state.

What appears within a state is only that state of Mind itself. The Dream state of Mind appears as only & all that is experienced in that Dream state. So too is it with the Waking state. Each state of Mind itself composes all that appears with the state. In the Deep Dreamless Sleep state, there is an absence Waking & Dream thoughts & their content. There is therefore no World, no Body, no Senses, no Ideas, no Memories, & no “person” existing in the Deep Dreamless Sleep. Yet Existence-Consciousness still is, & that Existence-Consciousness is the Self. The Self continues, even in the absence of thoughts in Deep Dreamless Sleep. The Self is then unaffected by the absence of all else, just as it is when all else appears in the other 2 states (Waking & Dream).

Deep Dreamless Sleep is characterized by the presence of Cause but with the absence of the Effect. Therefore it may be said that the “unmanifest seeds” of, or potential for, Ignorance is present but not the Effects of such Ignorance. In the Deep Dreamless Sleep there is only the non–perception of Reality, while the projection or hallucination of Multiplicity & Form are absent. The Self, Existence- Consciousness, is free from both Cause & Effect. In Self-Knowledge, neither the Veiling avarana of Reality not the Projected vikshepa Illusion of Multiplicity, neither the non– perception of Real Being nor the mis–perception of Existence persists. The Self is itself & knows itself as it is.

From Existence-Consciousness comes Deep Dreamless Sleep. From Deep Dreamless Sleep comes Dream. From Dream comes the Waking state. Each succeeding state occurs with the preceding state. All occurs within Existence-Consciousness. & that is what one truly is. So it is better to say that the states, & the Worlds that appear in them, are more within one’s Self than that one is in those states of Mind (Waking, Dream, Deep Dreamless Sleep). Being beyond the 3 states, the Self is called “the 4th” (turiya), yet the Slf is only One & its own self always (turiyatita or even beyond the 4th). The 3 states of Mind are only seen as 3 only so long as Consciousness is not known as it is. As Dream is to Deep Dreamless Sleep, emerging from within it, “forming” yet not really so, for both

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 35:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 26, the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

[In the unreal reflection called the “Universe”, a product of an unreal Mind, even there, Infinite Intelligence is evident and inspiring.]

Fine-Tuned Universe 26:

Irreducible Complexities:

Michael Behe & others argued for the presence in the living cell of various “irreducible complexities” that would require the agency of Intelligence to bring them about.  But they left open “the simplest possible design scenario,” This would posit “a single cell – formed billions of years ago – that already contained all information to produce descendent organisms” via Evolution.  They suppose that “irreducibly complex” systems that manifested themselves long afterward, such as that which produces complex blood-clotting, might have had their designs already present in potency in that first cell but not yet “turned on”.  The force of this suggestion depends on what “turning on” amounts to.

The original ID, Intelligent Design argument would require it to involve a “special” action on the Designer’s part, which would seriously dilute the notion of pre-established “potential”.  On the other hand, if such special “turn on” action is not required, the “complexities” hardly qualify as “irreducible.”

On the Cosmic scale, the Irreducible Complexity theorists postulated an enormous Inflation of the infant Universe during the 1^st fraction of a second.  This lasted no longer than 10⁻³⁵ seconds.  But that, in a brief moment, this Multiplied the diameter of the Universe by a mind-boggling factor of perhaps 10⁵⁰ – 10⁹⁰.

Problems thereby solved included the “Flatness Problem,” the tight constraint on the initial Energy Density that had given rise to the Fine-Tuning issue in the first place. It was shown that the Inflationary Expansion would be so great that it would force the density of the infant Universe to the critical value, no matter what the initial density might have been.

The need for Fine-Tuning of the Density Parameter would in this way be eliminated, or at least reduced, & the Principle of Indifference would once more reign for the pre-Inflation state, which could have any of the possible values of the Energy Density.

Besides handling anomalies, Inflation had 2 other major features in its favor. It could explain the Isotropy of the CMB Cosmic Microwave Radiation, for which Collins and & Hawking had attempted to develop an Anthropic explanation. More significantly, as later developments would show, it could make use of Quantum Theory to provide an answer to a long-standing puzzle.  Where were the great in-homogeneities needed for galactic formation to come from if the background radiation was isotropic ?

Inflation would have the effect of magnifying Quantum fluctuations to such an extent that they could furnish the necessary “galactic seeds”.  That would depend on finding that the radiation was not in fact perfectly isotropic, as it had originally seemed to be. But very tiny departures from isotropy were found by means of extraordinarily precise satellite observations. Furthermore, the pattern of these departures across the width of the sky is claimed to offer strong support to the Inflation hypothesis.

Other support has come, for example, from the distribution of diffuse inter-galactic gas in the very early Universe. It has to be said, however, that as yet no adequate theory has been formulated that can explain why the Inflation occurred. The hypothesis does not yet have as strong a mandate, therefore, as does the Big Bang theory to which it is an addendum. But as matters stand, it would be fair to say that the warrant for the original claim of Fine-Tuning for the initial Cosmic conditions had been substantially weakened. The Universe may have had a “chaotic” starting point after all.

Alas, for the Atheists, Inflation has since been defeated by later satellite observations, so Theistic Anthropic & Irreducible Complexity theses still stand.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome disciple:

The Wise free themselves from the Mind, from Thought, realizing that all Duality, which is all experience other than the Self, is a creation of the Mind. Such “creation” is due to thoughts & is composed of thoughts. Abidance, free from thought, requires one to abide free from dualistic notions regarding the Mind itself. The unmoving Self does not “travel” through the Mind, & thought does not “drag” the ever-still, transcendent Self about. The Self is silent & untouched, endowed with the supreme, solitary power of Reality. The Self does not contend with thought, as if thought were an enemy with its own power. Self-Inquiry entails freedom from the pursuit of delusive thoughts that, in the form of vasanas (or tendencies) form Samsara. Self-Knowledge is not merely a blank Mind in which thought activity is temporarily stilled. For Self-Realization, one should know the Self’s freedom thought & the true nature of the Mind. Inquiring: “for whom is this thought, for whom is this Mind ?” one should seek the Knowledge of the Self, beyond all mental modes & states. Inquiring: “Who am I ?” one should know true Being, interior to any thought, more formless than any thoughts, transcendent of all thought, more formless than any thought, transcendent of all thought, & ever free from all thought. After carefully reading the written instruction-order left with 1 empty bottle he smiles to see they have upped their order and he replaces the 1 empty with 2 full bottles. You get the sense that payment would be a small issue if there was any payment.

[The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 33:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 24, the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 24:

God behind, & Probability in Fine-Tuning:

The Fine-Tuning argument concludes that, given the evidence of the Fine-Tuning of the cosmos, the existence of a Life-Permitting Universe (LPU) significantly confirms Theism over the Naturalistic Single-Universe Hypothesis (NSU).  Such confirmation is highly significant.

The challenge raised by the two most widely advocated versions of the Multi-Verse hypothesis – the unrestricted Multi-Verse hypothesis advocated by Lewis and Tegmark, according to which all possible Universes exist, and the restricted Multi-Verse hypothesis arising out of inflationary cosmology.  I argued that neither of these is able adequately to explain away the fine-tuning or undercut the fine-tuning argument.

Finally, one might wonder whether there are other viable alternative explanations of LPU to that offered by Theism, NSU, or the Multi-Verse.  One such possibility is various non-theistic Design hypotheses – either non-theistic supernatural beings or aliens in some Meta-Universe who can create bubble Universes. The postulated designer, D, could not be a merely “generic” designer but must be hypothesized to have some motivation to create a Life-Permitting Universe. Unless these hypotheses were advocated prior to the Fine-Tuning evidence, or we had independent motivations for them, they would not pass the non-ad-hoc-ness test of the restricted version of the Likelihood Principle.

Furthermore, from the perspective of probabilistic tension, these alternative design hypotheses typically would generate a corresponding probabilistic tension between the claim that the postulated Being had a motive to create a Life-Permitting world instead of some other type of world and the Beings’ other attributes, something that does not arise for classical theism. Finally, for some of these postulated Beings, one could claim that even if LPU confirms their existence, we lack sufficient independent reasons to believe in their existence, whereas under Theism we have such reasons; or one could claim that they simply transfer the problem of design up one level.

The only one of these alternatives is the Axiarchic hypothesis, versions of which have been advanced in the last thirty years by John Leslie  & by Hugh Rice and others, wherein goodness or ethical “required-ness” has a direct power to bring about concrete reality.  Whatever the merits of this hypothesis, it is likely to entail Theism.  Since God is the greatest possible Being, it is supremely good that God exist.  Therefore, it is unclear that the axiarchic hypothesis actually conflicts with theism.  In any case, we have solid philosophical grounds for claiming that given the Fine-Tuning evidence, the existence of a Life-Permitting Universe provides significant support for Theism over its non-axiarchic contenders.

If Atheism is correct, if the Universe and its laws are all that is or ever has been, how can it be said that the Universe, with all of its Fine-Tuned features, is in any relevant sense probable or improbable ?  There are no antecedent conditions that could determine such a probability.  Hence, if the Universe is the ultimate brute fact, it is neither likely nor unlikely, probable nor improbable; it simply is.

Further, even if the Universe were somehow improbable, it is hard to see on the hypothesis of Atheism how we could ever know this.  If we were in the position to witness the birth of many worlds –  some designed, some undesigned – then we might be in a position to say of any particular World that it had such-and-such a probability of existing undesigned.  But we simply are not in such a position.  We have absolutely no empirical basis for assigning probabilities to ultimate facts .

In conjunction with the likelihood principle, probability is extensively used in scientific confirmation.  Consider, for example, the arguments typically offered in favor of the thesis of common ancestry, continental drift theory, and the atomic hypothesis.  The thesis of common ancestry is commonly supported by claiming that a variety of features of the world–such as the structure of the tree of life – would not be improbable if this thesis is true, but would be very improbable under other contending, non-evolutionary hypotheses, such as special creation. Consider, for instance, the following quotation from evolutionary biologist and geneticist Edward Dodson, in which he summarizes the case for evolution, understood as the thesis of common ancestry:

All pieces of evidence concur in suggesting evolution with varying degrees of cogency, but most can be explained on other bases, albeit with some damage to the law of parsimony. The strongest evidence for evolution is the concurrence of so many independent probabilities. That such different disciplines as biochemistry and comparative anatomy, genetics and biogeography should all point toward the same conclusion is very difficult to attribute to coincidence.

Similar lines of reasoning are given for accepting continental drift theory. For example, the similarity between the animal and plant life on Africa and South America millions of years ago was considered to provide significant support for continental drift theory.  Why? Because it was judged very unlikely that this similarity would exist if continental drift theory were false, but not if it were true.

Finally, consider the use of epistemic probability in the confirmation of atomic theory. According to Wesley Salmon, what finally convinced virtually all physical scientists by 1912 of the atomic hypothesis was the agreement of at least thirteen independent determinations of Avogadro’s number based on the assumption that atomic theory was correct.  For example, one method of determining Avogadro’s number is through observations of Brownian motion, that is, the random motion of very small particles suspended in a liquid, a motion that was postulated to be caused by the unequal, random impact of the molecules in the liquid.  From this motion and the kinetic theory of heat, one can calculate what the mass of each molecule must be in order to account for the observed motion, and then using that value one can obtain Avogadro’s number.

The scientists reasoned that if atomic theory were false, then such an agreement between thirteen different determinations of Avogadro’s number would be exceedingly epistemically improbable – in Salmon’s words, an “utterly astonishing coincidence” .  Indeed, if scientists had not judged the agreement to be exceedingly improbable if atomic theory were false, it is difficult to see why they would take it to count as strong evidence in its favor.  On the other hand, the scientists reasoned, if atomic theory were true, such an agreement would be expected.  Thus, by implicitly using the likelihood principle, they reasoned that these independent determinations of Avogadro’s number strongly confirmed atomic theory.

It should be noted that one could not avoid this sort of reasoning simply by rejecting Scientific Realism, since even though anti-realists reject the truth or approximate truth of certain types of well-confirmed hypotheses, they still accept them as being reliable bases for future explanations and predictions – that is, in Bas van Fraassen’s terminology, they accept them as being “empirically adequate.”  Consequently, instead of interpreting the confirming evidence as evidence for a hypothesis’ truth, they accept it as evidence for the hypothesis’ empirical adequacy.  This means that insofar as realists need to appeal to epistemic probabilities to support the approximate truth of a theory, anti-realists will need to appeal to those same probabilities in support of a theory’s empirical adequacy – e.g., anti-realists would need to claim that it is highly improbable for the determinations of Avogadro’s number to agree if atomic theory were not empirically adequate.

Since some of the probabilities in the aforementioned examples involve singular, non-repeatable states of affairs, they are not based on statistical probabilities, nor arguably other non-epistemic probabilities. This is especially evident for the probabilities involved in the confirmation of atomic theory since some of them involve claims about probabilities conditioned on the underlying structure and laws of the universe being different – e.g. atoms not existing. Hence, they are not based on actual physical propensities, relative frequencies, or theoretical models of the universe’s operation. They therefore cannot be grounded in theoretical, statistical, or physical probabilities. Similar things can be said about many other related types of confirmation in science, such as the confirmation of quantum electrodynamics (QED) by its extraordinarily precise prediction of the gyromagnetic moment of the electron, which we shall discuss later in this chapter. Such cases, I contend, establish the widespread use of purely epistemic probabilities

in scientific confirmation that are neither grounded in other types of probability nor in experience – e.g., the probabilities invoked in the confirmation of atomic theory clearly are not grounded in experience, since nothing like such an agreement had ever occurred before.

The probabilities in the above examples do not seem to be statistical probabilities; nor can they in any obvious way be justified by appealing to statistical probabilities.  This is especially evident in the case for the epistemic probability involved in the confirmation of atomic theory since it involves claims about likelihoods if the underlying structure and laws of the universe were different – e.g., if atoms did not exist.  Hence, these claims cannot be grounded in theoretical, statistical, or physical probabilities.  Similar things can be said about many other similar types of confirmation in science, such as the confirmation of quantum electrodynamics by its extraordinarily precise prediction of the gyromagnetic moment of the electron, which we shall discuss below.  Such cases, I contend, establish the widespread use of purely epistemic probabilities in scientific confirmation that are neither grounded in statistical probabilities nor experience – e.g., the probabilities invoked in atomic theory clearly are not grounded in experience, since nothing like such an agreement had ever occurred before.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome disciple:

The view of the World is a mirror image of the view of oneself since the identity of oneself determines the definition of the World. The Seer himself appears as the Seen, the “I” as “this”. For the purpose of knowing Reality without veils, one should Inquire to know oneself, giving up the objective outlook, as well as the Ego to whom it belongs. Those who are detached from the World & the Senses, who are not identified with the Body, who also perceive the transient nature of all the World, & who yearn for the direct experience of Knowledge of Reality as it is, those should so Inquire. The Wise view the World as transitory, as inert, & as a passing Dream. Such a one never expects the World to provide him with what is his Happiness, Identity, & Reality. To transcend the World is to remain blissful, at Peace always, & free in the Knowledge of unreality of the World & in the Knowledge of the Self’s freedom from that Illusion. This is the perception of Reality, free from the forms of Illusion. This is Abidance in wordless Being, true perception, transcendence of the World, & limitless freedom unaffected by anything of the World. The direct experience of indivisible Existence, & true experience is beyond debate or doubt for those who Inquire to know the Self, which is the sole existent Reality.

By the term “World” is meant all that is perceived, all objects, all activities, all events, the forms of living beings, anything in Space & Time, & anything seen, heard, touched, or sensed in any manner. Transcendence of the World is Liberation from Bondage & Suffering in relation to all of that. Abandonment of the objective outlook constituting the World yields the perception of Reality as it is. Such cannot be anything of the World, but only by Knowledge of the Self, the Reality that is. Where could one go in the World that would be beyond the World ? Yet one’s real Being is ever beyond, & Knowledge reveals the nature of one’s real Being. The Self is changeless & permanent. The World is changeful & impermanent. Each object has a creation, a changeful duration & a destruction. This is true for all objects & for the World as a whole without exception. The Self is permanent with no creation or destruction. The perception of the World depends on the changeful Senses. A change in the Senses brings a change in the object & the World perceived. The Self does not change as the Senses do, for it is unchanging Being & the unchanging Witness of all the changing Senses. A change of mode, or state of Mind yields a corresponding change in the Senses & the perceived World. The Self is not changed, being unchanging Existence & Consciousness, & also the Witness of the Mind as well as the Senses. The Self is One, partless & indivisible. The World is composed of innumerable parts & divisions. The Self has no Form & is purely formless Being. The World is composed of Forms without which there is no World. There is no formless World.

To experience a World is to conceive that World. The World is not actually a Perception, but rather a Conception. To conceive or experience a World, one must first consider oneself as some kind of Body, or as in a Body, or consider the Body as existent & the Body as being somewhere. None of that is true, for such is only imagined in the Mind.

For such Illusions of the World, one must also regard the Sensations, not as Sensations or modes of the Mind, but as literally “physical”. Such Sensation is endowed with the Duality of inner & outer, with the apparent object portion of the Sensation considered as separate from knowing aspect. [So there is not only “hearing” but also real “sounds”, not only “seeing” but also real “light”, not only “touching” but also real “matter”].

Since the Body is not oneself, & the Self is not in a Body, the World is not arrayed “around” oneself. The “around” part is imagined in the Mind, & is not really all “around”.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 31:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 22, the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

Fine-Tuned Universe 22:

Multi-Verse Ensemble:

Most of what can be said about a Multi-Verse could similarly be applied to another kind of Ensemble, be it a serial, temporal Sequence of Bib-Bangs alternating with Big-Crunches, Quantum Mechanical Many-Worlds, baby-universes bubbling of M–branes, Lee Smolin-esque universe-born-at-every-Black-Hole-singularity, Chaotic Inflationary universe-islands within one Big-Bang Universe, and so on. Standing in for all those (with suitable verbal modifications understood) the Multi-Verse of any kind immediately presents a shocking number for enumeration, requiring as heck of lot of stuff. J ust because so many Physics parameters could be varied independently, the number of all possible combinations is staggering.

“Universes that drift like Bubble in the Foam upon the River of Time” Arthur C. Clarke

But only such an unprovable, purely speculative boondoggle rescues Physicalism out of the jaws of encroaching Design as the only other explanation for the extremely improbably Fine-Tuning of this Universe. Such there must be if this Universe was to support Intelligent Life, counting as part of this Universe, the many particulars of Astronomy, Geology, Geochemistry, and so on going into the make-up of planet Earth. Either it is a “set-up” or the “luck of the draw” from out of very many straws indeed.

If we could know that our own Universe was only one of an indefinite number with varying properties we could perhaps invoke a solution analogous to the principle of Natural Selection; that only in certain universes, which happen to include ours, are the conditions suitable for the existence of Life, and unless that condition is fulfilled there will be no Observers to note the fact.                                                    biologist Carl Pantin, early 20^th century Multi-Verse speuclation

The hard-core Many-Worlds advocates split off new universes with every collapsed Wavefunction, with ever Observation by every Observer. These and others take the less extreme but still mind–boggling jump to Ground-Hog Day – like closely-parallel universes so that in the Ensemble or possible histories or whatever, “everything that could ever happen does happen somewhere, sometime.” Ockham’s Parsimony of restraint (explain with as few moving parts as possible) is way out the window here. Philosopher used to wonder at the efficiency of rare, or with-us solitary Intelligent Life in such a vast Universe. But how about the efficiency of a kazillion Universes?

But although the Constants of nature are Numbers, they are not just Numbers and they are not only Numbers. They are the barcodes of ultimate Reality, the pin numbers that will unlock the secrets of the Universe.                                                                               John Barrows

It is one thing, to offer an Analogy, to imagine the futuristic Computing Power that could fabricate a Matrix–level VR Simulation (as ever here, discarding from the movie all body-vats, subterranean wars, A I – Architect self-programming program, Kung-Fu, the One, and so on). But to imagine that “VR – Life-supporting” Simulation to be the result of random keystrokes, for a thousand monkeys or whatever, well that affords some insight in the improbability of our Universe and the enumeration of any Multi-Verse that could include ours as just an accident of Random Chance. Needless to say though, here an in all application of Math to the Universe (as in just all of Physics), a distinction must be maintained between an abstract Mathematical structure with predictable rules and some “physical reality” we cannot define or even experience except as a construct of the Senses. Applying any highly selected Mathematical stricture to the Universe is special pleading and the Multi-Verse heads the list.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome disciple:

The Senses are part of the Body. The Body is perceived only by the Senses & has no reality apart from them. Each of the 3 illusions depends on the other (~ bootstrapping Dependent Origination). Such (mutually inter-dependent) Illusion is like the painting of a wall that is painted on the wall depicted when the wall itself has not yet been built. [Contained in that comment is also a “barbershop mirrors” type of self-referencing paradox. Like the old Morton Salt label girl carrying Morton Salt on which a small version of herself was carry Morton Salt, & so on, my hometown had a town-entering Billboard that depicted the town & Billboard, which again depicted the town, & so on.] The Self, however, is bodiless & not a part of the Body or associated with a location in relation to a Body. The Senses are otherwise, so how can the Senses be considered to be the Self ?

The Senses depend on the Self. But the Self exists as it is, innately nondependent on the Senses. This is the highest state of Detachment from the Senses. As pure Being, one is always detached from the Senses & thus, detached from the whole World. The Self is not the Senses & is not experienced by the Senses. The Senses are capable of perceiving Sense objects only, & the Self is not a material object. The sensory experience is only that of Sensation & not a separate Sense & a separate object. The Self is not a Sensation or a product of Sensations. So, how can the Senses be considered to be the Self ? The Self is the “eye of the eye” unseen by the Eye. The Self, which is formless Existence-Consciousness, cannot be sensed & does not have Senses. The Self is not a sensing entity, conceived as the nexus of all the Sensations. Instead, the Self is unalloyed Consciousness. The Self is all–seeing but “eyeless”. In Truth, the Senses do not exist. The Senses are only a figment of the Mind, which is in the infinite Consciousness. Upon the substrate of the Self, which is Existence-Consciousness, the Senses appear, being only the thought of those Senses. Nor do the Sense-objects separately exist. The Senseobjects appear only to & in the Senses. The Senses vanish, leaving the substrate unaffected & all alone. The substrate is Reality, which is unchanging. There is no actual creation of the Senses in that Consciousness.

Just as the Mind becomes the Object, the Instrument or means of Knowing, the Actor, the Action, & the results in a Dream, so is this also the case in the Waking state. The Real Self is different from the Mind & all those things that the Mind becomes (object, instrument of knowing, actor, action, results). The Self is without interior & exterior, such as the Mind & the World.  The Self is homogenous Consciousness.  Know the Self by ceasing the attribution of anything exterior or interior to the Self.  Remembrance & forgetfulness, including remembrance & forgetfulness of the Self, these processes are also, only of the Mind.  Both of these processes are products of Ignorance & do not touch the Self. Cease to regard the Self as a known or unknown object.  If the Supreme Self is regarded as an object of knowledge, such is a superimposition of Imagination or Ignorance.  True Knowledge prevails when such Ignorance, or superimposition, is negated. This is like the case with the rope & the illusion of the snake.

When the conceptions of “me” & “mine” are attributed to the Self, such are manifestations of Ignorance.  They are superimpositions upon the Self, which is only One, with neither Individuality nor any experience or thing possessed by and Individual. The “individual self” is thought to be the Seer, Hearer, Thinker, Knower, & such. In Reality, it is Brahman, the imperishable, indivisible, Non-Dual Self.  The “individual self” or “I” is not different from the Real Self, which is Brahman.

Meditation on the Self is declared to be without Time, Space, direction, or Causation, since the Self is without these things. The Self itself is to be realized as timeless, & the Realization itself, being of the same nature, is bodiless & without regard to place. The Self itself is, without Causation, being Uncreated & Unborn. And the Realization, being of the same nature, need not wait for circumstance & is not an attempt to produce the Self anew. The Realization is a realizing of what the Self truly is.  Le the Mind thus turn within, immersing itself in Self-Inquiry, absorbing itself in Knowledge, thereby losing its own form as it searches inwardly for its source. In this lies great Bliss & Immortality.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

http://www.blogger.com     as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]

NMT (No-Me Teaching) new series 29:

Prior to excerpting the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome in the text below we continue the series: Fine-Tuned Universe 21, the premise that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would make the Universe incapable of Life.

The 3 GUT [Grand Unified Theory: Strong & Weak Nuclear – Electro–Magnetic] forces are indistinguishable until a Trillionth second old Universe at a now chilly Quadrillion degrees back when Magnetic Monopoles of a Quadrillion Proton masses were knotted lines in Space.

Fine-Tuned Universe 21:

 Cosmological Constant:

Lambda, capital L, lowercase  l  is a symbol appearing in Einstein’s modified Field Equation used in his formulation of General Relativity:

R_mn   –  ½ R g_mn  +  L g_mn    =   8p G/c⁴  T_mn

He rescinded this “fudge factor” as his self-styled “greatest mistake”; but later it was widely embraced as a Cosmological Constant, especially when described in terms of  Omega, capital W_L, a ratio of the Energy Density “due to the Cosmological Constant” to the Critical Mass Density of the Universe and the corresponding influence of Gravity. Martin Rees in his Just Six Numbers, similarly called this  l   =   W_L  while he reserved “plain” Omega, capital W or lowercase  w  as a measure of the “amount of Matter in the Universe” determining the relative importance of Gravity and the Universe’s Expansion Energy. Specifically the Rees  W,  w   =   the Universe’s actual Mass Density to the Critical Mass Density which matches the Cosmological Constant Energy Density. So in Rees terms the High, Medium, and Low curves depicted above describe Open curved-out Expansion, critical Flat Expansion, and curved-in Collapse and these are linked to W_L  >  1,  @  0.3,  <  1.  Slight differences and similarities confuse these related used of Lambda  & Omega but Universe Expansion is the concern I each case.

• N = ratio of the strengths of gravity to that of electromagnetism;
• Epsilon (ε) = strength of the force binding nucleons into nuclei;
• Omega (ω) = relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the Universe;
• Lambda (λ) = cosmological constant;
• Q = ratio of the gravitational energy required to pull a large galaxy apart to the energy equivalent of its mass;
• D = number of spatial dimensions in spacetime.

Fine-Tuning Itself:

 Some of the small tolerances “allowed” (for Intelligent Life) have already been mentioned for  a , a_s , a_G  and so on. For Rees’ ratio N  =  10^–36

(for 2 Protons), stated as 10^–40 (Electron-Proton) by others, the “tolerance” is  some 1 part in Millions.

The vacuum energy  is beyond our scope, but a brief baby-step from elementary Quantum Theory may help for starters. Quantum Energy states ranging from high to low exhibit the gnarly character that any lowest state is quite precisely determined (in terms of frequency if talking about momentum, in terms of time if talking about energy, simply because the bottom is at the extreme low end, without so much wiggle room there. This precise level must therefore store highly uncertain Energy occupation across all quantum states, even in empty Space. The resulting fuzzy residuum of undetermined Energy, quite thinly disperse in Space and thus not to be harnessed, does however add up to a huge amount incrementally across the myriad portions of Space. This empty Space or Vacuum Energy, first described by Dirac as Zero-Point Energy dwarfs the rest on the Universe Rest-Mass = mc² because the Universe is not empty.

Similarly critical are the Omega Expansion ratios (defined variously). In fact the Electron charge must match the opposing Proton charge to at least 1 part in a Sextillion. Many of the Fine-Tuned tolerances are of a similar sort, very long odds if Random. Some of the Fine-Tuning resembles not so much constraint to some narrow window as much as extreme removal to an extreme end, very high or low. Theoretical determination of the Cosmological Constant has been famously off the mark by a factor of 10¹²⁰. The huge 10¹⁰⁰ too large theoretical repulsive negative-pressure of the Vacuum Energy*[1] must be offset by counter-balancing attractive contributions to the Cosmological Constant, whether included with the speculative Quintessence field or otherwise.

In any case these are Large Numbers coming in again. Similarly, the distant-Future collapse of Matter in the Universe (not the Lambda-Omega collapse of Space-Time itself) in giant Black Holes segues to irradiative evaporation of those Black Holes over the course of 10¹⁰⁰ years.

 Rees’ Q number determines ripples in the smoothness of the Universe, which at 10^–5  compares to the ripple of a tsunami as high as a football field is long, coursing around the Earth’s oceans, but seen from Space as infinitesimal on the scale of the planet, the un-smoothness ripple being only a  ¹/₁₀₀₀% of the Earth’s size, by analogy, or smoother than a cue-ball. But if Q were down to a 10^th of its value, Galaxies would never coalesce. If Q were larger, the Universe would be so “cluttered” Galaxies as to prevent us from estimating any value of Q at all.

Some more selected verses from the Ramana Maharshi disciple, Master Nome disciple:

The unknown Knower of all that is known, the Supreme Knowledge itself, Consciousness remains undivided by the triad of Knower, Knowing, & Known. Consciousness can never be a known or unknown object. Consciousness is the Witness of all, the only Knower. Consciousness, the Knower, is never defined by the Known. Consciousness, the Witness of every state, of all thought, is not defined by thought, nor contained in any state. The Witness is never known. Consciousness is ever non-objective. Consciousness is formless – with nothing objective within or without. Unknown, Consciousness alone is known. Not a process of knowing, Consciousness alone is knowing. Not a knower, Consciousness alone is the Knower, the unknown Knower of all that is known.

The removal of superimposition is accomplished by Self-Inquiry. This is the intention of the negation of the Upanishads, “neti, neti”, “not this”. Such indicates the negation of one’s attributes, identity, or definition, of what is not truly the Self, not the essential Existence, or pure Consciousness. The removal of superimposition is the revelation of the Truth.  The Truth, or the Reality, is not newly created, nor did the superimposition diminish it in any way, just as the snake did not chase the rope away. But to see the rope, the Imagination of the snake must cease. Similarly, to know the Truth of the Self, Ignorance must cease.

True Knowledge is not experienced unless the prior ignorant conception is negated, just as the snake notion is destroyed to see the rope.  The Self, of the nature of pure Consciousness, is self-existent & can never be negated. Egoism has its origin in Delusion & has for its object that which is only imagined. Its definitions are only thoughts. The discernment of “Not this, not this” negates the very existence of Egoism along with its origin, its effects, & its imagined object.

All qualities, gross (physical) or subtle (mental), ought to be negated from the Self, from one’s Identity. If one is to know the Self as it is, whatever be the qualities attributed to the Self, be they physical or mental, they are to be regarded as mere ornaments. These should not be regarded as the Identity of the one who “wears” those “ornaments” (qualities).

If one rejects all that is objective from one’s Identity, one comes to the conclusion that the Self is the Knower, free from all that is perceived & conceived. In the same manner as one relinquishes misidentification with the Body, & all that is objective, so should one sever the mis-identification with the supposed subject, which is the Ego.

The Self’s existence is independent of all & is different from all that is objective. The objectified “I” is the Ego. The superimposed objective portion of the “I” – consciousness should be abandoned, for it is not actually the Self.  Negation of what is objective means also negation of the Ego.  What remains is that which is implied in the aphorism: Aham Brahmasmi – “I am Brahman”. Only Brahman can be itself, 1– without – a – 2^nd.  That is the only true “I”.

Brahman is unborn, immortal, imperishable, ageless, & all-comprehensive.  The same Absolute Brahman appears, according to one’s understanding, as God, who is said to be the Lord who dispassionately dispenses the results of karma, or as the Witness, which is Consciousness in relation to all else, or the attributeless, eternal “I”, of the nature of the indivisible, non-dual, Being-Consciousness & which alone is 1– without – a – 2^nd.

The Self has neither rise  nor set, is neither in darkness nor illumined, but is always the spiritual Light, with nothing material or mental in its nature at all. The distinction between the Self & oneself is due only to superimposition, which is like imagining different openings in a castle wall, for instance, to be different spaces, rather than perceiving the castle space itself. The Self is non-dual, 1– without – a – 2^nd.  It is neither distinct nor in relation to anything else.  For non-dual Existence means there is no other. There is, thus, no difference or non-difference, no oneness or manyness, & no separate knower or doer or experiencer.  The Self has nothing to accept or reject. And there is nothing, or no one else to accept or reject the Self. There is no one else to think the Self is, or that the Self is not. Such is the Truth regarding the Self.

The above themes & 1600 pages more are freely available as perused or downloaded PDF’s, the sole occupants of a Public Microsoft Skydrive “Public Folder” accessible through:  

www.jpstiga.com/

http://jstiga.wixsite.com/nonduality/

or with Caps-sensitive:

http://sdrv.ms.YPOgkX/

Duplicates (but with graphics) have been available on:

as  “Being-as-Consciousness, Non-Duality – new & final version” with link:

http://being-as-consciousness.blogspot.com/

[But from now on, they will be different & still usually daily.]