He replied that, yes, the Mind is the thing that is structured, but that the Mind exists independently of its individual properties.
I then asked if he believed that the Mind is everywhere, as opposed to being localized in the brains of people.
Gödel replied, “Of course. This is the basic mystic teaching.”
We talked a little set theory, and then I asked him my last question: “What causes the illusion of the passage of time?”
Gödel spoke not directly to this question, but to the question of what my question meant—that is, why anyone would even believe that there is a perceived passage of time at all.
He went on to relate the getting rid of belief in the passage of time to the struggle to experience the One Mind of mysticism. Finally he said this: “The illusion of the passage of time arises from the confusing of the given with the real. Passage of time arises because we think of occupying different realities. In fact, we occupy only different givens. There is only one reality.”
__________
Excerpts from Rudy Rucker’s, Memories of Kurt Gödel, Rudy’s Blog, first appeared in the magazine Science 82 in April 1982, and in Rudy’s 1982 book Infinity and the Mind.
