What came before the Big Bang?

[Yadon]

If there was no time, there also was no space, as the two are inextricably tied. And if there was no space; no time, 'when' and 'where' did the universe originate?

It originated in consciousness, where there is no space or time, where there is no history, no memory, and if that is the case, then the universe is The Absolute. It only exists in the present, which is 'when' and 'where' the BB is now occurring.

As astronomer John Dobson suggests:

Since it [The Absolute] is not in time, it cannot be changing.
Change takes place only in time.

And since it is not in space, it must be undivided, because dividedness and separation occur only in space.

How absolutely and utterly compelling.

'The universe is the Absolute, as seen through the glass of Time, Space, and Causation'
Vivikenanda

You see the hedge against the hills;
you see the hills against the sky;
but you see the sky against consciousess.

Of course there was no space, I never denied that.

However it's a leap of inductive logic to say that the pre-space-time-existence was consciousness. So far as we have observed consciousness requires a physical brain of some sort, either organic but possibly computerized (if we ever invent artificial intelligence).

If you want to assert that consciousness can exist outside of that context, you will need to prove it for it to have any validity beyond pure conjecture.

 

[idav]

You see the hedge against the hills;
you see the hills against the sky;
but you see the sky against consciousess.

Still redefining consciousness to fit your worldview I see. Consciousness belongs to entities. If the universe is conscious then it is an entity which is aware. You say the universal consciousness is a higher state yet described as lower. What is the universe suppossed to be conscious of? Like the universe is awake and we arent, we arent conscious of anything?

Also there is a huge difference between a universe and a multiverse. If the absolute is a multiverse then the absolute is more than our one universe. I see youd prefer to redifine universal as well.

 

[godnotgod]

Still redefining consciousness to fit your worldview I see. Consciousness belongs to entities. If the universe is conscious then it is an entity which is aware. You say the universal consciousness is a higher state yet described as lower. What is the universe suppossed to be conscious of? Like the universe is awake and we arent, we arent conscious of anything?

Also there is a huge difference between a universe and a multiverse. If the absolute is a multiverse then the absolute is more than our one universe. I see youd prefer to redifine universal as well.

You're still in the realm of 'this' and 'that'; 'self' and 'other'; 'subject' and 'object', when the reality is that YOU are the universe itself.

There is no entity; no 'agent' of consciousness that is conscious; there is only consciousness itself. That such an agent exists is your delusion.

Otherwise, if you can show me this so-called 'agent of consciousness', then please proceed.

I explained that my working definition of 'universe' is that which is Everything, and that includes multi-verses.

 

[godnotgod]

If you want to assert that consciousness can exist outside of that context, you will need to prove it for it to have any validity beyond pure conjecture.

It is pure conjecture to assert that consciousness requires a brain. We don't know that. There are documented cases of people with virtually no brains who have normal or near normal function.

I assume you are referring to emergent theory, which is only a hypothesis. It may well be that brains require consciousness in order to be brains at all, the idea being that consciousness relegates certain automatic and repetitive functions, as well as memory recall to the brain so it can focus on more immediate tasks.

We do have Amit Goswami's experiments demonstrating non-locality.

Kundalini says that the kundalini experience super-charges the brain to realize its full potential over ordinary consciousness.

 

[Yadon]

It is pure conjecture to assert that consciousness requires a brain. We don't know that.

First I'll note that I never said that it can't, I don't know that. I said that if you want to make your point on the level of science, you have to verify the claim scientifically.

Second conjecture is based on little to no information. In a scientific context, conciousness has never been observed outside of a biological brain. This isn't just some wild guess.

So saying that it can exist outside of a biological brain is conjecture, since there is no evidence for it.

There are documented cases of people with virtually no brains who have normal or near normal function.

That is a very large leap to take. Yes, there are people with half a brain (literally half) who can reprogram it to act somewhat normally, or even only have a third left. But the big difference is, they still have a biological brain. Also in those severe cases "near normal" or "normal" function is a stretch. They have to completely relearn to speak and eat, and are disabled for the rest of their lives.

I assume you are referring to emergent theory, which is only a hypothesis

No, I am not.

It may well be that brains require consciousness in order to be brains at all,

Still conjecture and somewhat semantical.

the idea being that consciousness relegates certain automatic and repetitive functions, as well as memory recall to the brain so it can focus on more immediate tasks.

Computers can do all of that; automatic and repeated tasks, recalling files ect ect. It can multi task as well with background processes as well as ones using more resources in the fore-front.

We do have Amit Goswami's experiments demonstrating non-locality.

I took some time out of my day to research this man. He greatly misinterprets Quantum Mechanics, and is basically fooling himself and others. I can't find where he conducted any experiments (of the type you talk about it would require him having access to multi-billion dollar facilities). And at that the wave-function collapse occurs on a scale too small for our neurons, and doesn't actually involve an actual conscious observer but just an interaction from another force.

Also on his very own website his bias becomes clear:

Quantum Activism is the idea of changing ourselves and our societies in accordance with the principles of quantum physics.

The Center for Quantum Activism seeks to educate, support and facilitate the transformation from the current materialist worldview to one based on the primacy of consciousness.​

First he considers himself an activist, second he thinks there is some way society can base itself on his interpretation of physics (I don't even know what that means practically speaking), third they want to support and facilitate a philosophical change.

If he was unbiased he would say they want to investigate the possibility of non-physical reality. But the matter of the fact is even if we found something "not physical" that would mean it wasn't made of any kind of 'stuff' so to speak. So how can an object exist without being made up of something?

Again I'm not saying that the Universe isn't made up of consciousness, but there are absolutely no signs or evidence of that in the observable Universe. I see the same stuff repeat by the same predictable laws and matter go about doing things in the stars and planets mindlessly. Unless you take an extremely deterministic view point, it doesn't appear to be conscious in the least, but even then consciousness is more self-awareness with the inability to change anything.

Basically in short, perhaps not impossible but extremely unlikely, and with no supporting evidence. Find the evidence, then we can discuss it.
​

Kundalini says that the kundalini experience super-charges the brain to realize its full potential over ordinary consciousness.

Are you talking about when one meditates and the energy rises up the spine to the brain? That's a hormonal and psychosomatic thing, it has nothing to do with consciousness before time and space.

 

[EyeofOdin]

Most indigenous faiths talk about "The Void" and sometimes of "Chaos". Egypt called it Nun, Greece simply called it "Chaos" and Scandinavia, Germany and England called it "Ginnungagap" which means "great void" or "vast gap" (ginning of uncertain origin and "gap", which is where we get our word "gap", having identical meaning)

Before the big bang, there was, in a sense, nothing. But this was a different nothing other than the empty space we call nothing. This nothing is like true nothing, before empty space, where there was not space, time, order or direction, a true Chaos.

It was once explained that it's a dumb question to ask "where" the big bang occurred, because it occurred everywhere. Everywhere was it's origin, because the universe was all the "where" there was, and the only where there was was in a tiny ball of energy. Outside of it, where there was no universe or space, there wasn't a reference point or a "where". No such thing a place or coordinates.

I don't pretend to completely understand this, and neither do many people who are much smarter than me.

 

[godnotgod]

Most indigenous faiths talk about "The Void" and sometimes of "Chaos". Egypt called it Nun, Greece simply called it "Chaos" and Scandinavia, Germany and England called it "Ginnungagap" which means "great void" or "vast gap" (ginning of uncertain origin and "gap", which is where we get our word "gap", having identical meaning)

Before the big bang, there was, in a sense, nothing. But this was a different nothing other than the empty space we call nothing. This nothing is like true nothing, before empty space, where there was not space, time, order or direction, a true Chaos.

It was once explained that it's a dumb question to ask "where" the big bang occurred, because it occurred everywhere. Everywhere was it's origin, because the universe was all the "where" there was, and the only where there was was in a tiny ball of energy. Outside of it, where there was no universe or space, there wasn't a reference point or a "where". No such thing a place or coordinates.

I don't pretend to completely understand this, and neither do many people who are much smarter than me.

Very good.

Actually, there is always nothing, even now. Were it not for nothing, everything could not be, because everything comes out of it....and returns to it. Coming and going....coming and going...birth and death....round and round, over and over and over again.....

Zen asks: 'show me the path where there is no coming and there is no going.'

 

[godnotgod]

[youtube]gMoMJyjyI3M[/youtube]
The Riddle of Consciousness | SAGES & SCIENTISTS: Menas Kafatos - Part 1 - YouTube

 

[idav]

You're still in the realm of 'this' and 'that'; 'self' and 'other'; 'subject' and 'object', when the reality is that YOU are the universe itself.

There is no entity; no 'agent' of consciousness that is conscious; there is only consciousness itself. That such an agent exists is your delusion.

Otherwise, if you can show me this so-called 'agent of consciousness', then please proceed.

I explained that my working definition of 'universe' is that which is Everything, and that includes multi-verses.

Then you shouldnt use consciousness to describe the universe. Consciousness is a human thing, we humans are the definition of what we call a conscious agent. If we are the universe then the universe is conscious through us not the other way around. Yes yes the ego is illusion, yes we know. I assume your trying to say the universe is cosciousness without the ego, which is conciousness without self awareness, a more pure state of a more fundamental sense of awareness. In meditation we can stop the chatter but self awareness is a valuable tool as well, else we would be oblivious even to the absolute but it wouldnt matter sense we wouldnt have the mind to care.

 

[godnotgod]

godnotgod Quote:
We do have Amit Goswami's experiments demonstrating non-locality

.

I can't find where he conducted any experiments (of the type you talk about it would require him having access to multi-billion dollar facilities). And at that the wave-function collapse occurs on a scale too small for our neurons, and doesn't actually involve an actual conscious observer but just an interaction from another force.

Oneness Experiments [proof of non-locality]

The good news is that not one but three separate experiments are now showing that quantum consciousness, the author of downward causation, is nonlocal, is unitive, is God. The first such experiment proving it unequivocally (that is, with objective machines and not through subjective experiences of people) was performed by the neurophysiologist Jacobo Grinberg and his collaborators at the University of Mexico. Let's go into some details.

Quantum physics gives us an amazing principle to operate with - nonlocality. The principle of locality says that all communication must proceed through local signals that have a speed limit. Einstein established this speed limit as the speed of light (the enormous but finite speed of 300,000 km/second). So this locality principle, a limitation imposed by Einsteinian relativity, precludes instantaneous communication via signals. And yet, quantum objects are able to influence one another instantly, once they interact and become correlated. The physicist Alain Aspect and his collaborators demonstrated this in 1982 for a pair of photons (quanta of light). The data does not have to be seen as a contradiction to Einsteinian thinking once we recognize quantum nonlocality for what it is - a signalless interconnectedness outside space and time.

Grinberg, in 1993, was trying to demonstrate quantum nonlocality for two correlated brains. Two people meditate together with the intention of direct (signalless, nonlocal) communication. After 20 minutes, they are separated (while still continuing their unity intention), placed in individual Faraday cages (electromagnetically impervious chambers), and each brain is wired up to an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine. One subject is shown a series of light flashes producing in his or her brain an electrical activity that is recorded in the EEG machine from which an 'evoked potential' is extracted with a computer upon subtracting the brain noise. The evoked potential is somehow found to be transferred to the other subject's brain onto his or her EEG that gives (upon subtraction of noise) a transferred potential (similar to the evoked potential in phase and strength). Control subjects (those who do not meditate together or are unable to hold the intention for signalless communication during the duration of the experiment) do not show any transferred potential.

This experiment demonstrates the nonlocality of brain responses to be sure, but something even more important - nonlocality of quantum consciousness. How else to explain how the forced choice of the evoked response in one subject's brain can lead to the free choice of an (almost) identical response in the correlated partner's brain? As stated above, the experiment, since then has been replicated twice. First, by the London neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick in 1998. And again by the Bastyr University researcher Leana Standish and her collaborators in 2004.

The conclusion of these experiments is radical. Quantum consciousness, the precipitator of the downward causation of choice from quantum possibilities, is what esoteric spiritual traditions call 'God'. We have rediscovered God within science. Moreover we have a new integrative paradigm of science, based not on the primacy of matter as the old science, but on the primacy of consciousness. Consciousness is the ground of all being which we now can recognize as what the spiritual traditions call 'Godhead'.

Amit Goswami
*****

Amit Goswami is professor of physics at the University of Oregon.
He is the author of five books, including The Self-Aware Universe,
Quantum Creativity, Physics of the Soul, and The Visionary Window.
He also wrote a textbook on Quantum Mechanics
that is well regarded and used.

Proof of God

 

[EyeofOdin]

Very good.

Actually, there is always nothing, even now. Were it not for nothing, everything could not be, because everything comes out of it....and returns to it. Coming and going....coming and going...birth and death....round and round, over and over and over again.....

Zen asks: 'show me the path where there is no coming and there is no going.'

Yes, but the "nothing" then and the "nothing" now are two completely different nothings. The nothing then didn't have space, measurement, relation while the nothing now can be broken down, mapped and divided into different areas.

 

[godnotgod]

Yes, but the "nothing" then and the "nothing" now are two completely different nothings. The nothing then didn't have space, measurement, relation while the nothing now can be broken down, mapped and divided into different areas.

Which amounts to much ado about...nothing!..LOL!

(but it's a GOOD nothing!)

 

[godnotgod]

About Non-Locality of Consciousness:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDoHkubUIn4

 

[jtartar]

Do you believe in the Big Bang?

Do you think it was a superior being who created the Big Bang?

Do you think the multiverse theory is a good explanation?

Was it something else?

yoda89,
It is probably beyond man to understand who God created the universe. There could be many universes, and many realms. The one thing I am sure of is: There was NO big bang, that created the universe as we know it.
Science knows the rule about explosions: The bigger the explosion the more chaos. Is that what we see in the universe?? Absolutely NOT!!! There is order and harmony, in fact so good that we set our clocks by the movement of heavenly bodies. Science has to come up with these ridiculously silly theories, because they just cannot believe in a God, so they have no other alternatives.

 

[Ouroboros]

yoda89,
It is probably beyond man to understand who God created the universe. There could be many universes, and many realms. The one thing I am sure of is: There was NO big bang, that created the universe as we know it.
Science knows the rule about explosions: The bigger the explosion the more chaos. Is that what we see in the universe?? Absolutely NOT!!! There is order and harmony, in fact so good that we set our clocks by the movement of heavenly bodies. Science has to come up with these ridiculously silly theories, because they just cannot believe in a God, so they have no other alternatives.

Big Bang wasn't an explosion. It was an expansion of space-time itself. There's a huge difference. The term "Big Bang" is a misnomer (a word that doesn't reflect the true meaning of what it references). It was used early in the theory to make it more palpable to the public. It's really an inflationary theory, not a bang. Filling a balloon with air in a rapid manner is a closer analogy to how it happened.

 

[gnostic]

The one thing I am sure of is: There was NO big bang, that created the universe as we know it.
Science knows the rule about explosions: The bigger the explosion the more chaos. Is that what we see in the universe?? Absolutely NOT!!!

Reading your post, it is quite clear to me, that you have not read the theory on the Big Bang cosmology, let alone attempting to understand the theory.

Like ouroboros said, there is no "bang" or "explosion" in the BB theory. The theory is about expansion of the universe, or the expansion of space-time.

It would seem that you that you have only read the theory's title - the "Big Bang" - and assume that's what all the theory is about, without reading and understanding the contents within the theory. There is no way for you to arguing about or against the BB effectively, if you don't understand the real theory behind its name.

My suggestion is that you should familiarize on the subject (of the Big Bang) before you make another ignorant claim of what the Big Bang isn't. Read one of the following:

WMAP's Introduction to Cosmology, from NASA.
Big Bang - Wikipedia.
​

And btw, the name - Big Bang - wasn't coined by the person who started the inflationary theory - Georges Lemaître in 1927. :no: the name was coined in 1949 by Fred Hoyle, who was advocate for his own competing cosmological theory - the Steady State model that have debunked since 1964.

 

[Awkward Fingers]

Pardon any autocorrect issues..
Jtartar Other than the fact that you've shown you have no idea what the big bang was, I'll play along and indulge.
I'm curious though, let's say it was an explosion.. A bunch of Pennies, wrapped around dynamite. And after it went off, you happened to like how the pennies happened to land. If you liked the layout that happened to happen, and it was pleasing to you, would you say it wasn't chaos? If it worked out somehow in your favor, it was order?
How do you define if something is chaos or order, simply whether it's beneficial to you only?

 

[Ouroboros]

Pardon any autocorrect issues..
Jtartar Other than the fact that you've shown you have no idea what the big bang was, I'll play along and indulge.
I'm curious though, let's say it was an explosion.. A bunch of Pennies, wrapped around dynamite. And after it went off, you happened to like how the pennies happened to land. If you liked the layout that happened to happen, and it was pleasing to you, would you say it wasn't chaos? If it worked out somehow in your favor, it was order?
How do you define if something is chaos or order, simply whether it's beneficial to you only?

I like your label "Omphaloskeptic."

And to add to your post, chaos isn't completely out of order either. Chaos is mostly when something is too complex for us to see the pattern. Fractal geometry is an example of how something can look like chaos but being ordered on a very high level. At least that's my understanding.

 

[Cornelius Feather]

This is a tough one. I mean, some say there was nothing before the Big Bang, however, there obviously was "something". We know there was a tiny spec floating somewhere with this universe in it. Where did this spec come from, or, more accurately, where did this energy come from. I know there is a hypothesis at the moment being looked into that explains how something can appear from nothing.

h t t p://w w w.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=something-from-nothing-vacuum-can-yield-flashes-of-light

 

[metis]

This is a tough one. I mean, some say there was nothing before the Big Bang, however, there obviously was "something". We know there was a tiny spec floating somewhere with this universe in it. Where did this spec come from, or, more accurately, where did this energy come from. I know there is a hypothesis at the moment being looked into that explains how something can appear from nothing.

h t t p://w w w.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=something-from-nothing-vacuum-can-yield-flashes-of-light

Yes, and even that some sub-atomic particles seemingly just may appear from nowhere is problematic in that maybe it merely changed from one form into another. For example, a photon can either be a particle, a wave, or even both at the same time, so is it possible that a particle or wave could seemingly "disappear" but then show up elsewhere?

I don't know, but it seems that there had to be some substance of some type there to begin with for it to suddenly appear, such as Hawking's hypothesis that gravity could have alone been the cause of our universe.