How Consciousness Achieves Permanence

Right now, as you read these words, you know this time point exists, past moments existed, and future moments will exist. But here's the crucial question: what happens to these time points after they occur? The surprising answer challenges everything we assume about time itself.

The 4D Theater of Life

The universe includes the three-dimensional structure of space—those three dimensions are known from our direct experience. But Einstein's theory of relativity reveals that time is also part of the fabric of the cosmos. Space and time are not separate entities but unified in a four-dimensional structure called spacetime.

Here’s a way to visualize a four-dimensional structure: Spacetime is like a continuous movie reel where each frame contains the 3D spatial arrangement at that point in time. As the movie plays, you see our physical world change frame-by-frame. Unlike regular movie frames separated by 1/24th second gaps, the universe's frames blend seamlessly together.

All Moments Have Equal Status

Spacetime is the stage where all events of your life occur. The laws of physics are timeless principles that apply uniformly to all moments as they describe how physical processes exist throughout spacetime. The universe is not fleeting—there isn't a special "now" moment that moves forward through time, leaving the past behind.

Think of it like this: the equation 2+2=4 doesn't happen at any particular moment—it's a timeless mathematical truth. Similarly, the evolution from Big Bang through cosmic history is governed by physical laws, however complex they may be. We don't need to ask "when" the laws of physics exist, just as we don't ask "when" 2+2=4 is true. These laws apply to all of space and time equally, with no special spatial location and no universal "present" moment. The past, present, and future are all equally real.

This doesn't mean you don't feel the flow of time, because you experience each moment sequentially in spacetime. But from the universe's perspective, all your moments exist simultaneously, like all pages of a book exist even as you read them one by one.

Conscious Life in Eternity

Take your brain as an example: Your brain has different arrangements of neurons at all of your life’s time points. These arrangements involve different configurations of electrical and chemical activity. It's this electrical and chemical activity over a time interval that represents the neural signal propagation during that moment of life.

The key to the framework is the following concept: spacetime is a timeless structure, and existence at its coordinates is eternal. Objects that exist at specific time and spatial coordinates do so permanently.

• Your brain states exist at spacetime coordinates permanently.
• Your neural activity exists at spacetime coordinates permanently.
• Your consciousness emerges from this neural activity permanently.

If the neurochemical activity is permanent, and consciousness emerges from this activity, then consciousness itself must be permanent. Both your current consciousness and yesterday's consciousness exist as permanent features of spacetime.

Living Yesterday Forever

This makes the Replay Thought Experiment inevitable: yesterday's you experiences yesterday because those neural configurations exist at those spacetime coordinates. If all time points exist equally, then they all exist permanently.

This all leads to the framework's conclusion: your conscious moments all exist permanently. And understanding that transforms how we think about every choice, every behavior, every moment of our lives.

Ready to explore these ideas further? Check out the framework Overview, join our Community, plus subscribe for insights on living with conscious permanence.

© 2025 Cory Lanker. This work is licensed under Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).