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About a week ago, walking down the street while contemplating the “Christ In You” thread, I was suddenly struck by the thought, “all motion is relative”.

My first reaction was, “Duh ... you think?”

But then, immediately I was prompted to park the wise guy, pay attention, and follow the thought. So, I did, with interesting results. (Along the spiritual path, obedience is a wonderful – if a sometimes rare – thing.)

Here’s what evolved.

Motion requires the existence of others – other people, other things, other places. It also requires time and space. Motion is a measurement in terms of time of the rate of change in the amount of space between two or more people, things, or places. Motion describes how I, standing on the north side of the street, and you, standing on the south side, can meet and come together in the middle of the street. Each of us moves in relationship to each other and in relationship to the pavement on which we were and are standing. Relative. It requires there to be a “me” and a “you” and the street on which we are standing and the space between us.

From there, I recognized that there is also motion in the brain, between and among ideas and concepts. The activity (thought) going on in my brain that morning regarding the ideas in the “Christ In You” thread depended upon their being more than one thought in the thread. The motion here consisted of my reactions and responses to those other ideas: others. Without others – other members of Open Forum, other ideas, other positions, there would be no thread.

So what?

Well, at the Position (word?) represented by JHVH (God or Allah or Satchidananda or etc.), as well as the Position of every True Teacher (there being no meaningful distinction between God and a True Teacher) there is no motion, precisely because there, there are no others. So the whole conversation taking place in the “Christ In You” thread is, what, invisible to JHVH. JHVH cannot perceive what “others” are doing or saying, because JHVH cannot perceive “others”. And neither can Teachers, which explains the egoically unsatisfying responses of Teachers to so many questions posed by still egoically-bound seekers.

All motion -- motion of every kind -- takes place in the realm of egoic reality. All motion is relative. All motion requires "others".

So obvious, so cool.

Here's a thought, from the movie Pi: When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out, and you will find it everywhere.

A propos to the relative motion to other bodies: there was someone, can't remember who, but it was some individual who suddenly found himself in a non-separated condition, indeed could no longer define his borders, who, upon riding in a car, could not discern whether it was the car moving, or the street moving beneath the car. A prime example of relative motion - in this case, the relativity being not between discrete entities, but being relative to the position of the viewer's state of consciousness - to the extent that he no longer had boundaries, he could not longer situate himself within his world, and thus could no longer discern what was in motion and what wasn't - presumably because he had become both his body AND the car, AND the road. And presumably, at the time, he assumed that SOMETHING had to be moving, because the scenery was changing and he was habituated to relative motion. In reality, no doubt, nothing was moving because it was all HIM, in flux.

So very interesting, Speculum... Your ponderings echo some of my own in regard to time and motion. And Anna's offerings are also very relevant to what I was considering posting.

This all reminds me of something I wrote on another board. I said that sometimes when it seems that others are in motion, it is really the observer that is moving, and not the observed. An example would be when seated on a train as it starts moving ever so slowly. Sometimes it is first perceived that those outside the train window on the platform are the ones doing the moving. And then a quick readjustment of perspective shows the reality, that that is an illusion, and it is actually the other way 'round.

And like you, I thought it is the "JHVH" as well as the teacher/guru that could also be regarded as a "fixed" point, while we as the embodied manifestations could be considered that which is in motion. The very center point of a merry-go-round never moves at all while the riders are having an interesting time in what appears to be a race on the brightly colored horses.

Speculum wrote:All motion -- motion of every kind -- takes place in the realm of egoic reality. All motion is relative.

Agreed. And "motion of every kind" could also be regarded as that which we refer to as e-motion, co-motion, and loco-motion.

Two monks were observing a flag fluttering. One said: "See how the flag is moving.'

The other said: "No, the flag is motionless. It's only air (wind) moving."

The sixth patriach happened to be passing by. He told them: "Neither air nor flag moves; mind is moving."

(my paraphrase)

Zeno's paradox:
* Motion is impossible, because, before any destination can be reached, the point halfway between the starting place and the destination must be reached. But before the half-way point can be reached, the point half way between your starting point and the half-way point must be reached. But before that point can be reached ...
* Suppose I shoot an arrow. At any given moment of its flight, the arrow occupies a fixed position in space. That is to say at any given moment the arrow is stationary. But if the arrow is always stationary it cannot move. Hence motion is impossible.

Zeno may not have proved motion impossible, but he did prove it an illusion.

Cool stuff from Zeno. Never heard of him before.

I have often pondered the pendulum of a clock. Left to right, right to left ... wondering if it could actually stop before reversing positions ... it has to ... but it can't.

Must be its not really moving at all in the first place. Hmmm. Had never thought of that.

In Wei Wu Wei's book, Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon, I found this interesting passage about "Time" and motion that seems related to this discussion and echoes my previous post in this thread.

Our concept of Time, but not our percept, as of something in flux, is probably mistaken. Besides, if we were in it we could not be aware that is was flowing; at least the "I" that perceives would have to be on the bank of the river, and would therefore be intemporal (outside time). It is much more probable, and others have realised it, that we ourselves are in movement and that what we observe is immobile. Like planets circling round the sun, like electrons round the nuclei of the atom, our "life" should be an orbit round reality. But our perceptions wear blinkers -- they can only perceive one segment at a time, a split-second vision of a slice of reality, which we build up into a continuity, like a cinema-film made up of "stills." Unfortunately we take each slice as a thing-in-itself whereas it is merely a segment, the relative reality being the totality. But the totality is not the totalisation of fragments which only represent a fraction -- for we only perceive one aspect, what we know as the outside (and only one, or, at most, three sides of that) of anything whatsoever.

and on another page in the same book---
The illusion of Motion is due to our inability to see every thing at once, to the fact that we see one thing after another. The motion is in our psyche.

I'm going to have to get Wei Wu Wei's book.
I have a copy of a Japanese painting of two sparrows in bamboo. Every time I really see this work, I see a depiction (reminder) of perfect timeless-ness.
As hard as it is to say that time or finite-ness (space) doesn't exist, as much as I couldn't say a dream didn't exist—AS WHAT IT IS, it’s becomingly increasingly hard (unfounded and irrational) to insist that time or finite-ness is real.

I don't know if anyone here is old enough to remember the 60's fascination with strobe lights, but I remember them well, indeed, we owned one for a while. If you have danced with one (I mean danced in a room with one on, and all the rest of the lights off), you have the delightful experience of fragments of time, one after another, but disconnected by virtue of fragments of visions facilitated by the strobe. In retrospect, knowing what I know now, it was the intuitive knowledge that the strobe was revealing reality as it truly was that so appealed to the psyche. Funny how the human being will eke out the truth, in some way or another, even without knowing it.

windabove wrote:I'm going to have to get Wei Wu Wei's book.

Hello Windabove.
In WWW's Fingers... it is a group of various essays, quite a few of which seem very unrelated... like disconnected random thoughts, ponderings. I think this was his first book, and I find it more cumbersome than some of his others. But this is just a personal preference, not meant to say what would be the most interesting/relevant for you. I guess what I'm saying is... Fingers is not a book I would be eager to recommend.(But of course, as I evolve, that too may change. ) I just found that passage relevant to this discussion. And it is not a book that only addresses the subject of time and motion. In fact those topics seem only a small part of the book as a whole.

There are eight books of his that have been recently re-printed. Significant information about him and his writings could be found here...
http://www.weiwuwei.8k.com/