What is the present?

Hey all, this is just something I have been thinking about for a long time and I'd like to get others' perspectives on it.

It's sort of hard for me to explain, but please bear with me

Basically, I have been thinking alot about what is the present? Everything that happens is immediately in the past.

How do we know when we are dead if we are living in the past?

Forgive me if this post doesn't make alot of sense.

What I am wondering is that if everything that happens is immediately in the past and only a memory, I can't fathom what happens to your memories and like, sense of "being" when you die.

It's not a fear of death but like, wanting to understand what happens when everything in your life is just part of a memory?

I am not religious or seeking any sort of religious answers. I am not meaning to be rude, but I don't go much for religion, it doesn't really explain anything to me that a good fictional book can't

I am inclined to believe in reincarnation, which is another of my questions, just thinking about the idea of one day waking up as a different person in a different time with no knowledge of past lives makes me feel a bit uneasy.

How do you learn from a past life if you don't remember it?

Is memory tangible?

I understand what you are saying Vily. It has become a popular new-age term to say live in the present and what they might mean is that you get as close to it as possible because how can you live in the present when you have thought etc.? By the time you think of anything, it is then in the past.
As far as the other, it might be beneficial to learn about the Higher Self, Real Self, Inner Self, or what ever you prefer to call yourself because the false ego may die someday and you may return to who you really are.
Just one opinion.

Humans are incapable of processing the present. We can only understand the future and present. I believe the omnipresence that is associated with deities is really being able to comprehend past, present and future.

I see what you mean when you say everything is immediately in the past but I suppose it could be said that the present is the experience of new memories forming.

One other thing is that the things you do in your life have an effect on the world around you in all kinds of ways and these effects keep going after you are dead, much like how scientists can see stars in the nights sky that we know are long dead.

I know I haven't answered all your questions but then I don't think I can. I hope some of what I have said seems relevant to you.

I will say this. In my opinion, the past and the future are definitely infinite. But the present is a harder thing to grasp. It's either infinite, in the sense that every moment that has ever existed has existed in the present, or it is such a minute fraction of time that it barely exists, if it does at all and isn't just a figment of our inability to truly understand time.

As for reincarnation, I have no idea.

last year and some change ago I got blasted in the lung in a random armed robbery gone awry. There was this big gaping hole in my lung and it was gushing blood...I was all like #...then I realized the gravity of the situation. At that time I was not as spiritually evolved as I am now and was as you so eloquently put it, ''living in the past''.
So it happened in a delayed state.

Once I realized the gravity of the situation, and felt the intense pressure rather than enormous pain, I soon saw my entire life in the span of what one could classify as a second. It was surreal seeing everything I have done with all the emotional content in the span of the time it takes to blink an eye.

I grew up with an optimistic outlook on life and always did things my soul felt it had to do. I looked back on all the things and I was totally at peace.
One could say that chemicals in my brain lessened the pain, and to some degree this is true.
But on another level, in my consciousness at the present time, I was outside of my spaceship body and floating around looking at myself. They cut away all my clothes and I couldn't help but think of the most absurd things as I participated and mingled amongst the large crowd that had gathered.
Thinking of things like, damn Im just lying there in my boxers. Everyone is watching, I chuckled to myself. It was pretty funny.Then I looked at my brand new chef coat and I was all like, I just bought that....

after the pain subsided I blinked my eyes and was awake, seven days later. It was a trip .....



Also I believe that time is 3 dimensional. The opposite is TIMESPACE...we live in SPACE TIME. TIMESPACE is the dream world, wonderland, 4thdimension, heaven, hell, whateveruwannacallit. a rose by any other name.
Tiime space is where space and time flip. Time becomes the chair and the chair becomes time....
absurd ?
yes

Thanks for sharing your views everyone

Wow, Iiinvision, you're lucky to have lived

Actually you made me think of something else, the whole concept of time is an illusion, so is existence an illusion too?

OOBEs make me think this... our whole lives are based on the concept of time.. and if you can go OOB, your body is just an illusion and chemical reactions in your "shell" create the illusion of feelings and sensations etc..

So... everything that happens is not really happening