THE FLUX AND THE CHANGELESS

The practical Heraclitus wrote that the world is a flux; that is, in a constant state of change. The idealistic Parmenides wrote that the world is actually a homogeneous sphere and therefore nothing ever changes. He thought change was merely an illusion. Plato took a middle position. He wrote that the world really constantly changes, but that the human mind uses certain changeless ideas which we apply to our observations of the world in order to make sense of it. If we did not know these changeless ideas, the world would change so fast that no one would be able to make any rational sense of it. In a sense, Plato taught that these ideas used by the mind act like brakes that slow down the flux enough for us to observe it clearly.

Now, suppose that Plato was right about the mind slowing the flux. Imagine a world without any mind applied to it. Such a world would have no brakes. In fact, would not such a mindless world be moving so fast that it would go out of existence at virtually the same instant it came into existence? This world reminds one of a virtual particle. Physicists know virtual particles to be sub-atomic entities that come into existence and go out of existence at practically the same instant. The theory of evolution would be impossible in a mindless world. Reality would be impossible. This world would be equal to absolute nothingness.

On the other hand, imagine that the whole world stopped in one moment of time. Similar to a projector breaking down while running a movie and stopping on one picture in the roll of film. This condition would mean that nothing would ever change. The world would be absolutely changeless. What could cause such a condition? If the mind is the only source of a changelessness that must be applied to the world to slow it so that sense can be made of it, then only a mind could stop the world in one moment. This power of the mind seems to indicate that a close relationship exists between the mind and the passage of time. Without mind, there can be no time.

If these evaluations are true, then man and the world itself could never have evolved, and a Mind had to have existed before man's mind came into existence in order for the world to possess reality and the passage of time.