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From: hsf@hlexa.UUCP (Henry Friedman)
Newsgroups: net.books,net.philosophy
Subject: Time and Immortality (part 8)
Message-ID: <561@hlexa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Nov-83 18:01:21 EST
Article-I.D.: hlexa.561
Posted: Tue Nov 15 18:01:21 1983
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Short Hills, NJ
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		   (c) Copyright 1983 by Henry Friedman
	(Copying for personal use by users of net is authorized.)

		     The Perpetual Moment (continued)

       The analogy of a	"wavecrest of consciousness" moving through
       time,  you  will	 recall,  referred not to a single person's
       consciousness, but  to  the  consciousness  of  everyone	 we
       regard  as belonging to our frame of reference of time.	Our
       commonsensical view of this wave	would include everyone	now
       alive  on our planet, since we view everyone whose existence
       we can know of as being of the same (and	only) time.  When a
       person  dies,  his or her consciousness is no longer part of
       that particular wavecrest.  But the wavecrest (of all  those
       whose times had been synchronous	with his) continues to move
       into the	future,	from the point of view	of  his	 survivors.
       To the person who has died, however, the	continued travel of
       the wave	of awareness to	which he formerly  belonged  is	 no
       longer really relevant.

       But at that point (after	our deaths), it	would  appear  that
       those other "us's" in our past -- which were irrelevant dur-
       ing our life --	would now be quite relevant indeed, because
       in  those  past "us's," in those	earlier	waves of conscious-
       ness, we	would survive.	It  would  be  as  if  that  sudden
       transfer	 of awareness into the past that was posited in	the
       previous	chapter	had actually occurred, and  we	then  found
       ourselves  back	in  the	 past, with total amnesia about	the
       future -- in fact, with no knowledge that anything had  even
       happened.   At  what  point in our past,	you ask. At any	and
       all points.  Take your pick!

       If you have followed the	series this far, it is likely  that
       you,  like  me,	do not believe in the traditional idea of a
       soul that leaves	the body at death, nor in the related  idea
       of  a reunion in	heaven with friends and	loved ones who have
       gone before you.	Each of	us has a time that belongs  to	him
       or  her.	 And,  the  thesis to be developed in the remaining
       chapters	notwithstanding, *that*	time is	the only time  that
       we will ever really be the same "us," the only time in which
       we will ever have the same environment, family, friends	and
       loved ones.  Therefore, if there	is to be a "reunion," it is
       in our present lives that it must occur.

       If the description, above, of the continuation of our  cons-
       ciousness  in  the  past	is valid, our *present*	life itself
       has represented a reunion with loved ones we have lost  once
       "before,"  in  our  future! And we could	be comforted in	our
       *present* grief for loved ones lost in  this  life,  in	the
       knowledge  that	such  "reunions"  continue  to occur in	the
       past.

       At this point in	the development	of these ideas,	the special
       significance  of	 the  concept of parallel universes becomes
       apparent. For without this concept, every wave of conscious-
       ness would be like every	other. And those different versions
       of ourselves in	the  past  would  be  fated  to	 experience
       exactly	the same joys and sorrows, successes and failures -
       - with no possibility of	growth or change.  In contrast,	the
       concept	of  parallel universes would allow each	"beginning"
       in the past to be "new":	there would be	no  reason  for	 my
       "new"  wave  of	awareness  to  thread the same path through
       spacetime as had	the wave I had "just left."

       Like waves of flashing lights traveling up a giant Christmas
       tree,  the  path	from bottom of my life to top would be dif-
       ferent each time.  And  each  "reunion"	in  the	 past  with
       friends and loved ones would be fresh and new, pregnant with
       the possibility of infinite variations, as my wave of  cons-
       ciousness weaved	its way	through	the many worlds	in time.

       Of course, the above ideas have a danger, even if  they	are
       valid.	For  they may encourage	a mentally unhealthful ten-
       dency to	"live in the past."  On	the other hand,	by  imbuing
       our  past with new meaning, the idea of the perpetual moment
       may aid us in making peace with that past, so  that  we	can
       live our	present	more fully.

			      END OF CHAPTER

		   (Series to be continued in part 9.)