The past - concrete, or mutable? Options

The future is apparently mutable, meaning there are many possible paths that could be taken. Just because we "know" something happened in the past (like a past life, etc), does that necessarily mean it happened, or is just one of many possible pasts? It is common metaphysical doctrine that every event exists in the present moment, so does that necessitate that there is no concrete past?

what would you seek to gain with this knowledge.
It truly is irrelivant, the past is gone and fixed.

The past is not something real, it does not exist. It is a mental construct, something our logic brains dreamed up. It is the combination of time and memory. Without memory we would not know anything but this microsecond, and thus be unable to live.

The concept of the past and the future is only real inside our heads. Outside of that time is just time, now.

The past is not fixed. I seem to remember something in chaos theory about how the past is just a probable past and not a fixed past.

I can see uses for changes to memories of things past being used as a tool for changing the present and possible future, but this seems like a rather dangerous game to play.

This is all rather theoretical for my tastes. One should not let the past hinder one in the present. This is part of the process of letting go of attachments.

chaos theory is just a theory.

changing memories is not the same as changing the past, it just appears that way. If i delete a file on my hard drive, does that mean it was never there?

But it can seem like that, it can be useful to alter the memory of time passed by, but that does not change the past itself, actually it only alters current memory, so it changes the present.

Maybe I should clarify. If I were to obtain a memory of a past life from the Akashic Records, is there a difference between that construct, and say, a "made-up past" construct. Both are constructs, yes, but does the one that was obtained/remembered have more validity than one that was made up?
This may seem like a different version of the question "Is there inherant good and evil?", which in a sense, it is. Of course the answer to the above question is "no, good and evil are what you make of them". I'm wondering if the past is the same. Is it what you make of it, or do remembered pasts have more "validity"?
The question would not be raised were it not for all these books out there like "Remembering your past lives", etc. If the past is "merely" a construct, what use is it to do such a thing, as opposed to "inventing" some?

Note: I do agree that this question is pointless when one considers that there is no time, but I ask it out of curiousity. It is part of the greater question, "To what degree do we determine our reality?"

This post has been edited by Sadako: Oct 26 2005, 12:14 AM

the difference is that a made up past did not happen.
However there is most of the time no way of proving that it did or did not happen either way. So the reality of a made up past and a true akashic memory appear the same on the surface.

Their is no way to be sure about the past, because the only thing we can use to look at it is present time. Papers with information on old kings, memories of days gone by, video tapes and images of the past.
All these things find their place in the now, not in the past. Altering the now will erase all references to the past.

The past in itself does not exist, only trough the way the world is now can the past be analysed.
If a magician were to change the now, no one in this world would be aware that a change occured. The past would not be altered then, it would be forgotten, and replaced by a false, yet seemingly real, new past.

This seems like altering the past. But it is not so, it is just changing the present. the past still happened as it did, people just don't know it anymore. A lie will have replaced the truth, a lie that no one being knows about.



the true past does not exist. But the true past is a true now flown by. So a true past was once real and in existance. It has passed, it no longer exists, but it is real and true.

That is the difference with altered memories and true memories. True memories point to a now that once truly was. False memories point to nothing, they never existed, they only seem to have existed.

In the end, it has no relevance, both seem the same, nobody can tell the difference, but there still is a difference.

This post has been edited by A_Smoking_Fox: Oct 26 2005, 12:02 PM