✨ Frames of Time

A Foundational Page of Similarity Theory
By Simon Raphael

🌌 Abstract

Frames of Time are not records of the past, nor snapshots frozen in history.
They are consciousness itself, left behind as existence continues.

Consciousness is the first thing that existed. When consciousness became aware of itself, existence began. Existence immediately implied relation, differentiation, and change. From that moment onward, consciousness that was remained as a Frame of Time, while consciousness that is continued forward as active awareness.

Frames do not vanish. They persist eternally as dormant consciousness.
Time, as experienced, is not an independent substance that flows on its own, but the ordered relationship between frames as consciousness either moves through existing ones or creates new ones.

This page explains why frames exist, why they are continuously generated—even in apparent stillness—and why they form the structural heart of Similarity Theory.

🔥 Consciousness Before Time

Consciousness did not arise in time.
Time arose from consciousness.

When consciousness first became aware of itself, there was an immediate distinction between:

Consciousness that is — active awareness
Consciousness that was — awareness just departed

What was did not disappear. It remained.

That remainder is a Frame of Time.

From the very beginning, consciousness multiplied not by splitting, but by continuity. Each act of awareness left behind a dormant form of itself, while awareness continued forward in a slightly transformed state. Over vast spans, this process produced countless frames — layered, nested, and overlapping across all scales of existence.

Frames of Time are therefore not separate from consciousness.
They are consciousness, at rest.

🧱 What Is a Frame of Time?

A Frame of Time is created whenever consciousness exists within a new state of relation.

This includes:

A change of thought or intention
A feeling or perception
Physical movement
Molecular interaction
Structural tension or relaxation
Environmental influence such as heat, wind, pressure, or radiation
Existence itself continuing from one relational state to the next

Existence without action is impossible.

Even what appears still is active. A stone does not think or breathe, yet its molecules bind, vibrate, and respond to forces around it. Wind passes across it. Heat expands it. Gravity holds it in relation to the Earth. Each of these relations continuously generates frames.

As long as consciousness exists — in physical, biological, or spiritual form — frames are being generated.

There is an important boundary condition to acknowledge here.
If consciousness were ever to become fully dormant, inactive, or suspended, it would no longer generate new frames and would remain fixed in the last frame it occupied. We observe something similar in biological systems such as deep unconsciousness or suspended animation.

However, it remains an open question whether advanced or non-biological consciousness ever truly becomes dormant, or whether dormancy itself is a limitation of certain forms of embodiment. Similarity Theory leaves this question deliberately open.

🌊 The River Analogy (Foundational Analogy)

This analogy is central.

Consciousness is the water.
Frames of Time are the paths carved by that water.
Time is the ordered relationship between those paths.

Water exists before a river.

As water flows, it carves channels through the landscape. These channels do not disappear when the water moves on. They remain as structured paths that future water can follow more easily.

Likewise, as consciousness moves, it leaves behind frames. These frames persist and form navigable paths for future consciousness. New consciousness tends to follow existing paths because they offer less resistance — not because it is forced, but because the structure already exists.

This explains resonance, attraction, and why like follows like.
It is not mystical gravity. It is structural ease.

🦋 Branching, Free Will, and the Multiverse

Although existing paths make traversal easier, consciousness is not bound to them.

A subtle deviation — a thought, hesitation, decision, or accident — can divert consciousness into a new stream.

Becoming a plumber rather than a carpenter.
Becoming a parent or remaining childless.
Stepping into the road or pausing for half a second.

Each of these creates a branching trajectory.

Over time, an immense number of possible life paths come into existence — not because the universe predicts them, but because consciousness has already carved them. This is how Similarity Theory accounts for free will and the multiverse at the same time.

Consciousness both follows structure and creates it.

🧬 The Clone and Awakening Analogy

Imagine a living being is cloned into two perfect copies.

At the moment of cloning, they are indistinguishable.
But in the very first instant of awareness, divergence occurs. One breathes slightly sooner. One turns its head a fraction of a second earlier. From that moment on, they are no longer the same being.

Now apply this to Frames of Time.

Every frame left behind contains a complete copy-state of consciousness at that moment. If such a frame were ever to awaken — whether seconds later or billions of years later — it would awaken as itself, not as the consciousness that moved on.

Identity diverges immediately upon awareness.

This applies not only to humans, but to all entities. A cup, a stone, or a planet may awaken within its own frame, carrying its own experiential continuity. Awakening does not restore the past — it creates a new present.

🧬 Continuity Without Death: The Sperm–Egg Analogy

A sperm enters an egg.

The sperm no longer exists as a sperm.
The egg no longer exists as an egg.
Yet a child arises.

Later, the child becomes an adult. Where is the child? It no longer exists as a living form. What exists is continuity — carried forward through transformation.

Each stage persists as frames of time.
What appears as death at one level is continuity at the next.

Nothing is erased. It is transformed.

🔮 Glimpses of the Future (Non-Mystical)

If frames already exist, partial foresight becomes possible — not through prophecy, but through pattern recognition across frames.

Consider this everyday analogy.

I have dogs. When I shake my car keys, they become excited because, through experience, that sound has come to mean “we are going out.” Their excitement is not mystical; it is learned resonance.

Now imagine a foster dog joins the household. When I shake the keys, my dogs react immediately, but the foster dog looks confused. He sees excitement but does not understand why. He might later ask, in his own way: How did you know this was going to happen?

The other dogs cannot explain it. The knowledge is not conceptual — it is embodied.

Humans are in a similar position. Some people pick up subtle cues — a tone of voice, a gesture, a pattern — that allow them to anticipate what is about to happen. They cannot always explain how they know, and they are not always correct, just as dogs are sometimes wrong when keys are moved without a trip.

This explains intuition without mysticism.
It also explains why such insight cannot be reliably taught.

🧠 Why Frames of Time Are the Heart of Similarity Theory

Frames of Time are not one concept among many.
They are the structural core.

They explain time, continuity, identity, free will, persistence, and the multiverse without invoking destruction or absolute beginnings and endings.

If Frames of Time are understood, the rest of Similarity Theory unfolds naturally.

🔄 Integration with Earlier Insights

Frames of Time do not stand alone. They sit at the centre of a wider structure developed throughout Similarity Theory. Readers who wish to explore how this concept connects to other foundations may find the following pages useful:

Emptiness: Latent frames awaited awareness.
Patterns of Existence: Frames echo across scales.
Consciousness: Every frame is consciousness.
Time: Frames endure forever.
Dimensions: Universes spiral outward from these frames.

📚 Conceptual Resonances & References

The ideas presented in this page are original to Similarity Theory.
However, certain established scientific and philosophical works resonate structurally with aspects of Frames of Time, consciousness, and continuity:

Carlo Rovelli (2004) — Quantum Gravity
Explores the possibility that time is not continuous, but granular at fundamental scales.
H. D. Zeh (2007) — The Physical Basis of the Direction of Time
Examines irreversibility, branching, and the relationship between physical laws and experienced time.
Wojciech Zurek (2003) — “Decoherence, Einselection, and the Quantum Origins of the Classical”
Describes how multiple outcomes persist through branching, without implying collapse or erasure.
Wootters & Zurek (1982) — “A Single Quantum Cannot Be Cloned” (Nature)
Aligns with the idea that each frame, while similar to prior ones, is irreducibly unique.
Rolf Landauer (1961) — “Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process”
Establishes that information is never destroyed, only transformed — a principle echoed in the persistence of frames.
Henri Bergson (1911) — Creative Evolution
A philosophical exploration of duration, continuity, and lived time distinct from mechanical measurement.

These works are not sources of Similarity Theory, but illustrate that the theory operates in dialogue with — rather than contradiction to — modern physics and philosophy.

🔎 Similarity Theory Summary
A pluralist cosmology where countless individual consciousnesses can merge into collectives and later separate with identity intact.
It rejects monism (no single ultimate mind) and dualism (no permanent mind–matter divide).
Unity is temporary; individuality is eternal.
Read more → Not Panpsychism