If you believe that everything that ever existed, exists now, or will exist futurely, already exists this and every instant, if you believe that linear time does not exist outside the human realm, where they hop about like fleas, then it is clear there is no such thing as cause and effect.
A cause has to come before an effect, no? But if everything exists now and forever, the idea of before and after is rendered moot.
Cause and effect depends on time
A student comes to class late and a little breathless. “I’m sorry I’m late. I tripped. I’m such a klutz!”
“Did you trip because you’re a klutz or are you a klutz because you tripped?” This makes the class laugh since they could both be true.
Try this reversal with any other cause and effect pairing you have invested your belief in.
Brian is clever because he passed the bar exam the first time he tried, or, Brian passed the bar exam the first time because he is clever?
There is no discernible difference between these two statements. It makes no difference which one is supposed to have caused the other. Rather, we should think of these two ideas, cleverness and passing the bar exam on the first try, as peacefully co-existing in some vector space somewhere, linked together by the act of thinking.
Kathy keeps supporting her son because he’s irresponsible with money, or, Kathy’s son is irresponsible with money because she keeps supporting him.
It matters not at all which condition is supposed to have caused the other, although you could spend a long time guessing there. It only matters that you have linked these two ideas together by thinking about them repeatedly. You have created this reality with your thought. Subject any judgment you have to this questioning, and you will see how you formed it yourself, with your mind.
What the mind has created, the mind can also dissolve.
If linear time doesn’t exist, and cause and effect are meaningless, why are you so married to these ideas? Why do you love them so much? Remember all the essay questions that asked you to weigh the causes and effects of this and that.
Was the First World War caused by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, or the militarization of Germany, or the neural wiring of Kaiser Wilhelm, or the Entente Cordiale, or some other thing you don’t even know about? What caused it the most? What caused it the least? On and on you go, until you realize it’s an endless game, trying to determine what caused what. Rather, they happened and happen still, together. All these events are strands of the same yarn. Everything exists together, infinitely.
I am ready to question my beliefs
