Thought experiment: Nothing ever happens

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Rani Madhavapeddi

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Jun 19, 2026, 6:39:45 PM (13 days ago) Jun 19
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https://youtu.be/r68Jx_MIRVM?is=sFT7sd4NZlMNHSZK

Rani Madhavapeddi Patel

Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 19, 2026, 7:33:15 PM (13 days ago) Jun 19
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Rani All

One Eternal Moment

I have always felt that everything happens now.

Not just what is appearing in front of me at this moment, but everything that has ever happened and everything that ever will happen. The past appears now as memory. The future appears now as imagination. Both arise in the same place: here.

This has led me to question whether time exists outside of thought at all.

We divide life into past, present, and future, yet those divisions seem to exist primarily in the mind. Direct experience is always immediate. It is always now. In fact, I sometimes wonder if even the phrase present moment is misleading. A present moment sounds like a small slice of time surrounded by other moments. What I sense is something different—one eternal moment without beginning or end.

Or perhaps not even a moment.

Just THIS.


Jeff Angelson

On Fri, Jun 19, 2026 at 6:39 PM Rani Madhavapeddi <rmadha...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Rani Madhavapeddi

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Jun 19, 2026, 7:45:16 PM (13 days ago) Jun 19
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Jeff,
Yes time and space and all this is in the now. I wish you can read what I wrote in the now I wrote in  but you can read it only in the now that you have. 
Happy Father’s Day

Rani Madhavapeddi Patel


On Jun 19, 2026, at 4:33 PM, Jeffrey Angelson <jeff.a...@gmail.com> wrote:



Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 19, 2026, 7:55:54 PM (13 days ago) Jun 19
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The Big Bang Happening Now

There is no past.

There is no future.

There is not even a present.

There is only eternal creation.

Not something that happened long ago.

Not something waiting to happen.

Creation happening now.

Not “now” as a moment in time, but as the timeless reality in which all things appear.

Stars and galaxies.

Trees and oceans.

Thoughts and memories.

Birth and death.

All of it arising in one seamless movement.

There is nothing to say about it.

It is before every word.

Before every thought.

Before every description.

Yet it appears as words, thoughts, and descriptions.

It appears as you and me.

The Greatest Show on Earth cannot be explained.

It can only be lived.

We are the creator and the creation.




Jeff Angelson

Rani Madhavapeddi

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Jun 19, 2026, 8:04:41 PM (13 days ago) Jun 19
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And when you close your eyes all this disappears! 

Rani Madhavapeddi Patel


On Jun 19, 2026, at 4:55 PM, Jeffrey Angelson <jeff.a...@gmail.com> wrote:



Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 19, 2026, 8:22:59 PM (13 days ago) Jun 19
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Yes !!


Jeff Angelson

Paul Rezendes

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Jun 20, 2026, 9:12:59 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Dan, Jeff, Janet, Rani, Sunhee,

Why do people like Krishnamurti and David Bohm seem to be saying that the observer is the observed? Is there really an observer, someone watching that is separate from what is seen? When we sit and watch a sunrise, is the sunrise what it is because we are who we are? Is what you see really out there? Right now I'm looking at a laptop. Is the laptop really out there, as I see it, without me being who I am with the senses I have? If I was a bat looking at the laptop, what would it look like? So what's really out there? Is there really any out there that exists unrelated to the observer? Can we separate how we see things from who we are, what our senses tell us?

Paul


Janet Asiain

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Jun 20, 2026, 9:35:52 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Paul, All

I don’t understand how what a computer looks like to a bat has to do with the observer/observed paradox! But never mind my limitations. I think that Bohm said in that snippet was that what appear to be the watcher and the watched in fact are inseparable co-arisings in the the one unified field. Like an optical illusion, it’s just how we see things. 

Maybe this is where that bat comes in😂

Anyway why is it such a problem just to see things the way we see them (as separate)? It’s actually necessary to live an embodied life. Yet from time to time we might get a glimpse of the underlying reality. Then we need to be able to hold paradox. It’s not just the one way or the other way, it’s both!

The left hemisphere doesn’t like, can’t handle, paradox — OK I have to stop right here because my phone wrote “paradise” instead of “paradox” — no further comment is possible!

Janet A


Paul Rezendes

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Jun 20, 2026, 10:02:27 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Janet,

I agree with most of what you said, especially about holding both. When one understands that the sense of being this separate body is wholeness expressing itself as difference, and also realize that the separateness can't live in isolation, and that it is related to everything else in order to feel separate – no sense of separateness, no sense of difference, no experience, no reality, no THIS – then that understanding holds both. In that understanding, there seems to be wholeness and separateness co-arising. You said, I think that Bohm said in that snippet was that what appear to be the watcher and the watched in fact are inseparable co-arisings in the one unified field.” That is what my questioning was pointing to. Forget the bat scenario, that seems to have thrown things off. I'm not always the best at trying to communicate.

Paul


Janet Asiain

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Jun 20, 2026, 10:18:07 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Paul

OK then! But I do love bats and would actually love to understand how they experience the world. There’s a bat sanctuary with a You Tube channel — 🩷

I also have found, as I’ve recently been trying to explain, that after I’ve pushed conceptual understanding as far as I can get it to go, it seems to simply evaporate, leaving a state of awareness that has no use for it, that holds paradox without effort. Very restful! Makes a lot of “problems” look a bit absurd, in a mostly affectionate way

Janet A 


Paul Rezendes

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Jun 20, 2026, 10:30:57 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Janet,

Interesting, I thought I was detecting some kind of shift. Sounds very positive.

🩷
Paul

Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 20, 2026, 10:41:22 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Janet Paul All

I think the wonder is in realizing that what is seen is creation happening through the unique body-mind. There is no observer or observed. It’s one. It’s undivided, constant, always there, always changing. It’s Life

Jeff

Jeff Angelson

Paul Rezendes

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Jun 20, 2026, 10:46:15 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Jeff, yes. And when our different personalities talk about it, the understanding can sound different.

Paul
Sent from my iPhone

On Jun 20, 2026, at 10:41, Jeffrey Angelson <jeff.a...@gmail.com> wrote:



Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 20, 2026, 10:49:39 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Paul Janet Diehards

Another question is this: if what we see is created through the unique body-mind, doesn’t that make it real? Why do we so often say that what we see is not real?

It seems to me that we live in two worlds at once: the relative and the absolute. The changing world of people, trees, thoughts, stars, love, loss, and experience is real. It is Life appearing in form.

What comes and goes is not unreal. It is relatively real—real within the realm of appearances and experience. Forms arise, change, and disappear, but they are never separate from the reality from which they arise.

Like waves on the ocean, they are temporary but not unreal. Yet they do not possess independent or permanent existence. They are emptiness taking shape, reality taking form, Life appearing as THIS  




Jeff Angelson

On Sat, Jun 20, 2026 at 10:18 AM Janet Asiain <janet...@gmail.com> wrote:

Paul Rezendes

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Jun 20, 2026, 11:09:42 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Jeff,

A big yes. That really resonated here. I thought it was well articulated. At least that's how it came across here.

Paul 

Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 20, 2026, 11:14:04 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Paul All

Yes, the descriptions can sound different. But for me that’s not the main point. The main point is that what we experience is not separate from us. What is seen and the seeing arise together. In that sense, we are not passive observers of a world “out there.” The world we know is being created through this body-mind in relationship with everything else.

And if what we see is our creation, then it is real. Not absolutely real as a fixed thing, but real as a living expression of reality. The forms come and go, yet they are not separate from what is. Emptiness appearing as form is still reality 

It’s amazing, beyond words. Perhaps that’s the reason the mystics fall silent  




Jeff Angelson

Paul Rezendes

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Jun 20, 2026, 11:28:04 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Jeff, YES!

Paul


Janet Asiain

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Jun 20, 2026, 11:36:59 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Jeff, Diehards

Who says what we see isn’t real? Not me!
What does real even mean? “Relatively real” I kind of go for it think you could get some serious pushback from others on that distinction. 

Anyway my “point” is that it doesn’t work to hang on in to any of this stuff with much of a grip. One cannot the relax grip through convincing arguments or effort, but the grip itself can relax. 

In my case, after many decades of trying to understand, however feeble my efforts undoubtedly were — 🤗


Paul Rezendes

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Jun 20, 2026, 11:55:46 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Jeff, Janet,

Sounds to me that we're basically coming from the same understanding. We just have different ways of articulating things.

Paul

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Dan Kilpatrick

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Jun 20, 2026, 11:56:12 AM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Paul, Janet, Jeff, Rani, and All,

Not sure how I was included here, but to respond to Paul's email, I can't see how the observer is not the observed. It seems pretty straightforward actually, in just looking at it. Our consciousness is not broken up into an entity who has various experiences and who is separate from the experiences. The experiences are the experiencer and the experiencer is the experiences. Where is the dividing line?

So when we experience being experiencers separate from their experiences, this is the nature of experiencing happening in our consciousness, undividedly. Separation that is not separate from anything, just being experienced as separate. Undivided separateness....

This feels like what Janet was pointing to about contradictions etc. It all sounds very interesting, Janet. To live with contradictions that don't need to be resolved, and maybe more....  

The view from here, -Dan

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Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 20, 2026, 12:17:34 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Dan Diehards

The “I” sense always seems to be the subject. Yet when I look closely, the sense of “I” itself appears in consciousness just like every other experience.

The feeling of being the observer is itself observed.

That doesn’t make it wrong or unreal. It is part of the human experience. But it does raise an interesting question: if the sense of “I” can be observed, is it truly the observer, or is it another appearance within what is?

Perhaps this is why the dividing line between observer and observed becomes so difficult to find.



Jeff Angelson

Rob MacDonald

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Jun 20, 2026, 12:48:41 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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I am coming into this late, but I resonate with what Janet said here: "it doesn’t work to hang on in to any of this stuff with much of a grip".

For me, history and 'just this here right now' are perfectly reasonable roommates. 😁

To deny that this 'one moment right here right now' is not the product of past interactions—like ingredients constantly being folded in a mixing bowl to create the batter of 'right now' - seems just plain ignorant. 

For example, I broke a clay pot three weeks ago. It sat in two pieces for three weeks and then yesterday I super glued it back together.  'In this moment' the clay pot appears whole again, but with a visible seam where it was previously broken.  "In this moment" Whole again, but with a history.  Isn't that this human experience?

I don't think I offer anything not already said above, but I figured I'd offer this clay pot experience, as it seemed relatable to the topic at hand.

I think that is part of why people bristle at the non-dual message.  "What do you mean my past doesn't matter?!?!?"  Like this thought experiment, if you sit in silence, 100% you can feel into just this moment and most of the time the experiment produces results.  But if you broke your arm yesterday and your pain medicine is wearing off, and sitting in this quiet moment you feel the throb of the broken arm, your history is a part of this present moment.

-Rob M.



On Sat, Jun 20, 2026 at 11:56 AM Dan Kilpatrick <kilp...@gmail.com> wrote:
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Dan Kilpatrick

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Jun 20, 2026, 1:04:45 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Thanks Jeff, sounds like wr are getting st 5he same thing. Yet, each exploring is unique and has its ow significance. Same and unique at the same time.
Thanks again, -Dan

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Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 20, 2026, 1:06:16 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Rob Diehards

I think the crux of the matter may be that the past appears in the present.

When I remember breaking the clay pot three weeks ago, the memory is happening now, but it points to something that seems to have happened then. The same is true of conditioning, old wounds, and even physical scars. They all show up in present experience.

So when people say “there is only now,” I get what they’re pointing to. At the same time, it seems odd to deny history altogether. The seam in the repaired pot is here now, but it tells a story.

Maybe the past never appears as the past. Maybe it only appears now—as memory, sensation, conditioning, circumstance, and the traces of what has come before.



Jeff Angelson

Dan Kilpatrick

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Jun 20, 2026, 1:22:37 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Rob, All,

So maybe the issue is that we tend to see the past and now as being separate. Now includes the past, as whatever is happening now can never be divorced from yesterday. This seems clear. 

Plus, what is the past? Are we in direct contact with it, other than in whatever is right in front of us right now? Do we only know it through its impact on what is here, except as memories, as Jeff pointed out?

Thanks Rob, just some impressions, -Dan

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Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 20, 2026, 1:29:44 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Dan Ron All

Rob, Dan, All,

Thanks, Rob, for the clay pot example, and thanks, Dan. I think that’s what I was fumbling toward. The past seems undeniable, yet when I look for it directly, I only find its appearance here and now—as memory, conditioning, circumstance, or the visible traces of what has come before. The past seems real enough, but I only ever encounter it in the present.

Jeff 


Jeff Angelson

Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 20, 2026, 1:38:46 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Diehards

Life, the Greatest Show on Earth, is magic. The clown just keeps us looking in the wrong direction. Sometimes he even convinces us that he is the show. And that’s the funniest trick of all.

Jeff 


Jeff Angelson

On Sat, Jun 20, 2026 at 1:22 PM Dan Kilpatrick <kilp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dan Kilpatrick

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Jun 20, 2026, 1:55:49 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Jeff, really clear and well-said, at least to me.
Thanks, Dan

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Paul Rezendes

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Jun 20, 2026, 2:19:37 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Everyone,

Rob M. Glad to see you come in. I agree too about what Janet said: "it doesn’t work to hang on in to any of this stuff with much of a grip”. 

Right now, and I mean just for now, how it seems here is that everything that ever happened is this now. This can't be what it is separate from everything that ever happened. As some quantum physicists are now saying: the past and the future are quantumly entangled as the present.

Paul

Dan Kilpatrick

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Jun 20, 2026, 5:20:53 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Thanks Paul, for sharing your view. Yes, it seems that if there was a Big Bang, it is right here in everything now. Hard to see it otherwise...

And just to complement this, something that came up here: we seem to feel that now is part of time, when it really is the other way around. 

-Dan

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Paul Rezendes

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Jun 20, 2026, 6:08:41 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Dan,

Yes, as you said: "And just to complement this, something that came up here: we seem to feel that now is part of time, when it really is the other way around.”

We tend to think that there was a beginning and that there is an end to the universe or what this is. Not sure there was ever a beginning and I'm not sure if they'll ever be an end. I'm not sure it's in time at all. As you said, time appears in it and as it.

Paul


Dan Kilpatrick

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Jun 20, 2026, 6:25:44 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Paul and Everyone,

Absolutely with you here about beginnings and ends. It seems to me we don't really know what yesterday is, so how can we know if there was a beginning! All of it implies time, as you said. So what is happening in the absence of time?????!!!!! 

Unknowable??? Anything we project would seem to create time. Of course, time is involved in anything thought puts together.....

-Dan

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Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 20, 2026, 9:51:07 PM (12 days ago) Jun 20
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Dan, Paul, and All,

Reading this, what stands out to me is the possibility that there may not even be a “this” in which time appears.

It seems to me there is just this seamless, undivided flow—eternal, if that word means anything at all. Not eternal as endless time, but perhaps outside of time altogether.

The whole movie is here, constantly changing, constantly unfolding. We never step outside of it to observe it because we are not separate from it. We are LIFE showing up as THIS. The apparent observer, the observed, the memories of yesterday, the ideas of tomorrow—all of it is part of the same movement.

Thought seems to divide the seamless flow into stories of past, present, and future. Useful perhaps, but still only fragments of an indivisible whole.

So when we speak of beginnings and endings, are we describing reality itself, or are we describing how thought slices the seamless into pieces?

What resonates here for me is life as one continuous flow of energy, endlessly morphing and shape-shifting. Not something appearing in something else, but LIFE expressing itself as everything that is.

There also doesn’t seem to be reality and non-reality. There is only LIFE appearing as everything. The changing forms, the thoughts, the memories, the sense of self, the stars, the trees, the questions about beginnings and endings—all of it is part of the same seamless movement.

And through it all, it’s still the Greatest Show on Earth.

—Jeff



Jeff Angelson

Paul Rezendes

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Jun 21, 2026, 6:54:32 AM (11 days ago) Jun 21
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Jeff, thanks. I am with you.

Paul

Dan Kilpatrick

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Jun 21, 2026, 7:27:40 AM (11 days ago) Jun 21
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Everyone,

Just sharing something here coming up this morning. The questions here about time and space seemed to bring all this to the human level. The absence of time and space means nothing is being excluded, including excluding itself. This is because there is nowhere for anything to be excluded or separated out. There is no such "place" or "time", it is all right here.

It is also saying that living is all possibilities, all potential. Again, nothing being excluded.

This probably makes little sense, but there it is. -Dan



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Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 21, 2026, 8:15:34 AM (11 days ago) Jun 21
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Dan All

Dan,

What strikes me is that if there is no actual separation in time or space, then there is nowhere outside of THIS for anything to be excluded to.

It also suggests that life is not fixed or closed. What we call possibility and potential may simply be the openness of life itself. Outside of time, anything can appear at any time. Maybe this is what is meant by infinite potential—not an endless number of future events, but the fact that reality is never confined by the past or limited by what we think should happen next.

Perhaps this is also why the past can never be found apart from what is here now. We know it only through its appearance in the present—as memory, conditioning, consequences, or whatever is showing up.

Just some reflections. Thanks for sharing.

Jeff 


Jeff Angelson

Dan Kilpatrick

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Jun 21, 2026, 9:22:25 AM (11 days ago) Jun 21
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Thanks Jeff, yes, what you shared is what was being pointed to. I tried to get at this openness in an earlier email but not sure it went anywhere. Living is creation itself, in a very intimate and immediate way, down to the seemingly most insignificant detail it seems to me. We just tend to overlook its simplicity, not sensitive to it.

It seems possible to live in the wonder of all this possibility, which as you shared, is not looking for anything to happen. No one is doing this openness, it is not graspable nor something personal. It seems (to me) to be in the nature of living itself, open to itself, always. So maybe openness for us means simply being naturally aligned with living itself, with our own nature. Nothing to be grasped or held onto as Janet was saying. Being what we already are. 

Just some musings, -Dan

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Janet Asiain

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Jun 21, 2026, 11:11:43 AM (11 days ago) Jun 21
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Jeff, Everyone

Midsummer Blessings!

To add another strand to the current thread:

Someone, I forget which sage, characterized the past as nothing but memory, the future as nothing but imagination — both aspects of the present

Janet A


Dan Kilpatrick

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Jun 21, 2026, 11:13:16 AM (11 days ago) Jun 21
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Janet, 👍.


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Jeffrey Angelson

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Jun 21, 2026, 12:15:55 PM (11 days ago) Jun 21
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Thanks Janet

Maybe that is why “now” is so difficult to grasp. It isn’t another point in time. It may be the timeless presence in which all points in time appear.



Jeff Angelson

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