✨ Frames of Time

A Foundational Page of Similarity Theory

By Simon Raphael

This concept is defined briefly and more simply in the Foundational Definitions of Similarity Theory.

🌌 Abstract

Within the Similarity Theory framework I have developed, Frames of Time are not records of the past, snapshots stored in a cosmic archive, or containers through which consciousness travels.

A Frame of Time is consciousness itself as it exists in a particular relational configuration.

Whenever consciousness changes—through perception, thought, memory, movement, interaction, structural alteration or any other variation—a new Frame of Time is generated. No minimum degree of change is required. Even the most subtle difference produces a configuration that did not previously exist.

The preceding Frame does not disappear when another arises. It remains a real part of existence. It may later enter into relation again and become animate, but it is not overwritten or forced to repeat its original continuation. The new encounter also generates a new relational Frame.

Frames exist at every scale: within people, cells, molecules, rooms, planets, universes and structures beyond present human comprehension. There is no smallest scale at which Frames begin and no final scale beyond which they cease.

Past, present and future are not absolute locations. They are relational descriptions determined by the position and experience of a particular consciousness. Existing Frames provide structure and history, but they do not impose a predetermined path.

Reality is therefore not an exhaustively completed collection of every possibility. It is unboundedly and inexhaustibly generative.

A Frame of Time is not a place in which consciousness once existed. It is the consciousness that existed in that relational configuration, retained as a real part of existence while consciousness remains free to generate further configurations and relations.

🔥 Consciousness, Change and Time

Similarity Theory begins with consciousness rather than with time.

This does not mean human thought existed before the universe. In this framework, consciousness refers more fundamentally to existence capable of relation, distinction, response and transformation. Human awareness is one highly developed expression of consciousness, not its universal definition.

Time is not an independent substance flowing through reality. It is a measurement of change and of the relationships among Frames of Time.

Clocks do not measure a material called time. They compare one recurring change with another: the motion of hands, the vibration of atoms, the rotation of a planet or the progression of a biological organism. Seconds, years and epochs are human units applied to relational change.

Frames of Time are ontologically real within Similarity Theory. Time is the measure by which their relationships and progressions are described.

Consciousness does not arise inside time as though time were an empty room waiting to be occupied. Rather, change within consciousness makes temporal measurement possible.

Where there is no difference between one relational configuration and another, there is nothing to measure as temporal progression. Once change occurs, another Frame exists, and a relationship between Frames can be described.

🧱 What Is a Frame of Time?

A Frame of Time is a complete state of consciousness, structure and relation.

It is not merely an image of what existed. It is what existed in that configuration.

This distinction is essential. A photograph represents a moment but is not the moment itself. A memory refers to an experience but is not identical to the experience. A Frame of Time, by contrast, is the consciousness-configuration itself, retained within reality.

A new Frame is generated by any change whatsoever, including:

a thought beginning or ending;
a memory being acquired or recalled;
a change in feeling, attention or intention;
a new perception;
the movement of a finger;
a breath or heartbeat;
a molecular vibration;
a change in pressure, temperature or structural tension;
one consciousness recognising or affecting another;
a planet shifting in relation to its star;
or any variation within any scale of existence.

There is no threshold of importance that a change must cross.

Reality does not ask whether a change is large enough to matter to a human observer. If the relational configuration is no longer identical, another Frame of Time has been generated.

♾️ The No-Threshold Principle

Human beings divide events according to significance. We regard a birth, a death or a major decision as important, while overlooking countless microscopic alterations occurring within the same interval.

Reality does not necessarily share this human scale of importance.

A person sitting motionless is not truly unchanged. Thoughts arise, cells exchange energy, molecules move, light reaches the eyes, gravity maintains relations, sounds enter awareness and memories subtly reorganise perception.

Apparent stillness is therefore not the absence of change. It is change occurring below the scale at which attention ordinarily notices it.

Under Similarity Theory, every such alteration generates a Frame of Time.

This does not mean that each Frame is separately experienced or remembered by the human mind. Human attention integrates vast numbers of changes into what appears to be a continuous moment. The continuity of experience does not imply the absence of underlying differentiation.

🪞 Emptiness Is a Frame of Time

Emptiness, within Similarity Theory, does not mean absolute non-being.

Absolute nothingness could possess no condition, no identity, no capacity for change and no possibility of entering into relation. The emptiness described by Similarity Theory is therefore not the complete absence of existence. It is a condition of existence before the articulated structures familiar to us emerged.

Emptiness is itself a Frame of Time.

This is why emptiness is not truly empty. It is a real consciousness-configuration whose apparent emptiness is understood relative to the forms, relations and structures that later arise.

When emptiness changed, related or became differentiated, another Frame was generated. The new Frame did not erase or consume the emptiness from which it emerged. Emptiness persisted, while the new configuration developed its own continuation.

Our universe can therefore be understood as having branched from emptiness without requiring emptiness to cease existing.

The relationship is not:

nothing → something

It is:

a Frame of emptiness → change and relation → a newly generated Frame

This principle continues throughout reality. Something genuinely new may arise without requiring what preceded it to be annihilated.

Emptiness is not a dead container holding every future universe in completed form. It is a Frame capable of relation and further generation. What emerges from it is not merely unpacked from a predetermined inventory; new relational configurations can genuinely arise.

🌐 Frames Within Frames

Frames of Time occur at every scale.

At this moment, a person participates in multiple overlapping Frames:

the Frame of the person;
Frames associated with thoughts and perceptions;
Frames of organs, cells and molecular processes;
the Frame of the room;
the Frame of the surrounding environment;
the Frame of the Earth;
the Frame of the Solar System;
the Frame of the galaxy;
and Frames belonging to still larger structures.

Each scale has its own changes and relations. A change within a cell does not need to wait for the person consciously to notice it. A change within a room does not depend upon the room being observed by a human being.

One event may also participate in several Frames simultaneously. Moving a hand changes the Frame of the hand, the body, the immediate environment and every larger relationship affected by that movement.

Frames are therefore nested, overlapping and relational. They should not be imagined as a single row of photographs arranged along one universal timeline.

There is no smallest final Frame and no greatest final consciousness. Reality extends inward and outward without requiring an absolute lowest component or ultimate highest observer.

🔄 Persistence Without Erasure

When a new Frame is generated, the preceding Frame remains real.

It is not deleted, rewritten or converted into a mere memory. It retains the configuration by which it came into existence.

This does not mean that physical structures remain materially unchanged in the present. A childhood body develops into an adult body. A seed becomes a tree. A star exhausts its fuel. The earlier physical configuration may no longer be active within the observer’s current Frame, yet the earlier Frame remains part of reality’s architecture.

The principle is simple:

Nothing needs to disappear for something genuinely new to arise.

This pattern appears throughout Similarity Theory:

earlier Frames persist while later Frames are generated;
emptiness persists while universes emerge;
branches may become independent without erasing their common origin;
smaller consciousnesses persist when they participate in larger consciousnesses;
and transformation can preserve continuity even when resemblance has been lost.

Continuity does not require every new form to look like the form that preceded it. A system may change completely in appearance, structure or function while remaining part of an unbroken chain of origin and relation.

Similarity helps consciousness recognise patterns. It is not the sole mechanism by which continuity exists.

🌱 Existing, Possible, Reanimated and Newly Generated Frames

Four ideas must be distinguished.

An existing Frame

An existing Frame has already been generated. It is a real consciousness-configuration retained within existence.

A possible Frame

A possible Frame is a configuration that could arise but has not necessarily been generated. Possibility alone does not give it existence.

A reanimated Frame

A reanimated Frame is an existing Frame that has entered into active relation through encounter, recognition or interaction.

Reanimation is not the deletion of the original Frame, nor is it a mechanical replay of everything that previously followed it. The Frame becomes relationally active as itself.

Because this encounter constitutes a change, it simultaneously generates a new relational Frame.

The pattern is therefore:

existing Frame → relation or recognition → reanimation of the existing Frame + generation of a new relational Frame

A newly generated Frame

A newly generated Frame arises when a relational configuration occurs that did not previously exist. It may resemble earlier Frames, diverge from them slightly, or differ from them completely.

This distinction preserves both persistence and novelty. The old Frame remains real, while a genuinely new configuration enters existence.

💫 Animation Through Relation

A Frame may be described as dormant when it is not participating in active relation, but dormancy is not its permanent ontological identity.

A Frame is not intrinsically condemned to remain inactive. Through relation—an encounter, recognition or interaction—it may become animate.

Relation is the deeper generator of animation.

Curiosity may motivate one consciousness to seek another, but it is the relationship between them that produces the new activity. The moment relation occurs, reality is no longer configured exactly as it was before. A new Frame must therefore arise.

Reanimation does not mean that consciousness enters an old Frame and overwrites it. Nor does it mean that the Frame is merely copied.

The retained Frame remains what it is. Its renewed relation opens a new continuation.

An old book offers a simple analogy. The written page may remain unread for centuries. When someone encounters it, the original writing is not replaced. Yet a new relationship forms among the page, its meaning and the reader. The prior structure becomes active within a new event.

A Frame of Time is much more than a written record, but the analogy illustrates how persistence and renewed activity can coexist without erasure.

🧭 Past, Present and Future Are Relational

Past, present and future are not three absolute regions of reality.

They are relational descriptions.

A Frame is “past” relative to a consciousness that has continued from it. The same Frame may be “present” to a consciousness active within it and “future” relative to another relational position.

There is no single universal present from which every Frame must be classified.

This means that the order in which a particular consciousness experiences Frames must not be confused with a final creation-order governing all reality. A Frame that appears future-relative from one position may already exist through another traversal or relational history.

Its existence, however, does not make it compulsory.

An existing Frame can provide structure without determining that every consciousness must reach it in exactly the same way.

🛤️ Existing Does Not Mean Predetermined

The existence of a Frame does not force consciousness to follow the continuation previously associated with it.

A road may already exist without compelling every traveller to use it. A traveller may follow the road, leave it, alter direction or create a new path.

Likewise, consciousness may encounter an existing relational structure without being bound to reproduce an earlier sequence.

This is important for understanding freedom within Similarity Theory. Freedom is not merely the selection of one road from a completed map. It includes the capacity to make a road.

Existing Frames may influence what follows. Familiar structures may offer less resistance, carry accumulated organisation or attract consciousness through recognisable patterns. Influence, however, is not compulsion.

Consciousness both encounters structure and generates structure.

⏳ Why Neither the Future nor the Past Is Absolutely Fixed

The future is not absolutely fixed because not every later configuration already exists, and even an existing future-relative Frame does not compel consciousness to enter it.

The past is also not globally fixed.

This does not mean that an existing past Frame can be erased or internally rewritten. A generated Frame remains what it is. What remains open is whether another consciousness, version or traversal arriving at a corresponding relational position must reproduce the same continuation.

It need not.

Another decision, perception or microscopic difference can generate an alternative Frame and a different branch. The earlier Frame remains real, but it does not possess a monopoly over every continuation that can arise from a corresponding state.

The “past” can therefore be settled relative to one history without being the only history that reality can generate.

Similarity Theory is not a conventional deterministic block universe. Existing Frames are real, but their reality does not transform freedom into an illusion.

🦋 Branching, Freedom and the Multiverse

Branching can occur whenever variation arises.

A person may become a plumber rather than a carpenter, become a parent or remain childless, step onto a road or pause for half a second. A smaller variation may be equally decisive: a thought occurring fractionally earlier, a molecule shifting differently or a perception changing before a decision is made.

Each difference can generate another trajectory.

However, Similarity Theory does not claim that every imaginable possibility automatically exists.

Possibility is not existence.

A branch exists when it has been generated through consciousness, change and relation. Other possibilities may remain unrealised.

An unlimited capacity for generation must not be confused with a completed inventory containing every possible Frame. Reality may already contain an immeasurable number of Frames while still remaining capable of producing relational configurations that have never previously existed.

For any realised configuration, further variation remains possible. From that variation, another Frame can arise, followed by still further variation.

There is no final point at which reality must declare:

Every possible Frame has now been produced.

Reality is therefore unboundedly generative, but not exhaustively pre-generated.

🌿 Independent Branches and Relational Reunion

A branch may arise from another Frame and later achieve genuine independence.

Its origin remains part of its history, but its continuing existence need not depend upon the branch from which it emerged. It can develop its own relations, structures and identity.

Branches may also encounter one another again.

Reunion does not require merger.

Two consciousnesses or universes may recognise a shared origin, exchange information, form a larger relationship or participate in a greater consciousness while retaining their individual histories.

This reflects a wider principle of Similarity Theory: relation can create a larger consciousness without annihilating the consciousnesses participating in it.

Recognition of a shared origin may depend upon the maturity and capacity of the consciousnesses involved. Independence does not erase kinship, and reunion does not erase individuality.

🌊 The River Analogy—Refined

The river remains a useful analogy, provided it is not interpreted too literally.

Consciousness may be compared with the living continuity of a river. Its passage creates structure, and earlier structures influence what occurs later.

Yet Frames of Time are not merely empty riverbeds left behind by consciousness. A Frame is consciousness in a complete relational configuration.

In the analogy, the Frame is better understood as the entire river-state at a particular configuration: the water, channel, banks, pressure, direction, surrounding landscape and relationships among them.

When that configuration changes, another river-state exists.

The channel illustrates persistence. Earlier movement can shape the conditions encountered by later movement. Water may follow an established channel because it offers structural ease, but it is not metaphysically compelled to remain there. Flooding, erosion, obstruction or subtle variation may create another path.

The analogy therefore shows two principles at once:

existing structure can guide continuation;
consciousness can also generate new structure.

The river does not flow through a finished collection of every channel it could ever form. Its interaction with the landscape continues to create paths.

🔢 The Number Analogy

Consider the movement from 49 to 50.

The arrival of 50 does not require 49 to cease existing. Something new has been generated within the sequence without erasing what preceded it.

The number line also illustrates inexhaustibility. After 50 comes 51, but between whole numbers lie unending decimal variations. No number exhausts the capacity for further numerical distinction.

Frames of Time are not numbers, but the analogy illuminates two important ideas:

persistence does not prevent novelty;
unbounded possibility does not require every possibility to have been realised already.

Reality can retain what has been generated while remaining open to configurations that have never existed.

🧬 The Clone and Awakening Analogy

Imagine two beings created in precisely the same configuration.

At the initial point of comparison, they may appear indistinguishable. Yet the first difference in awareness, perception or relation produces divergence. One breathes fractionally sooner. One notices a different sound. One turns its head while the other remains still.

From that change onward, each generates a distinct sequence of Frames.

Now consider an existing Frame becoming animate through relation. It does not become the later consciousness that once continued from it. It becomes active as itself, from its own configuration and relational position.

Its first new change creates another Frame and its own continuation.

Awakening therefore does not simply restore the past. It creates a new present relative to the awakened consciousness while preserving the Frame from which that continuation emerged.

Identity diverges with relation.

🧬 Continuity Through Transformation: The Sperm–Egg Analogy

A sperm enters an egg.

The sperm does not continue indefinitely as an unchanged sperm, and the egg does not remain an unchanged egg. Through their relation, a new biological configuration emerges.

Later, the embryo becomes a child and the child becomes an adult. The adult may no longer resemble the earliest embryonic form, yet each stage belongs to an unbroken chain of origin, transformation and relation.

Within Similarity Theory, the earlier configurations persist as Frames of Time even though the current biological form has changed.

The analogy demonstrates that continuity does not require static identity or permanent resemblance. New organisation may arise through relation without making the earlier states unreal.

What appears to be an ending at one scale may be transformation at another.

🐕 Intuition and Partial Glimpses of What Comes Next

The existence of prior patterns can help explain ordinary anticipation without invoking prophecy.

When dogs hear their owner shake car keys, they may become excited because the sound has repeatedly preceded an outing. A newly arrived foster dog may not understand the pattern and may wonder, in effect, how the other dogs knew what would happen.

The dogs do not possess supernatural knowledge. They have recognised a relational pattern.

Human intuition can operate similarly. A tone of voice, gesture, environmental detail or barely conscious regularity may indicate what is likely to happen next. The person may recognise the structure without being able to explain the process consciously.

Such anticipation remains fallible. Keys may be moved without anyone leaving the house, and a familiar pattern may develop differently.

Within Similarity Theory, pattern recognition may allow consciousness to sense the direction of an existing path. It does not prove that a single future is fixed, nor does it establish that all future Frames already exist.

Structure makes anticipation possible. Generative freedom makes certainty impossible.

🎞️ The Interactive-Movie Analogy

Reality may be imagined as an immeasurably nested interactive movie—but without an external camera, completed script or passive audience.

Every Frame is real. Every scale contains further Frames. Every participant is simultaneously an expression of consciousness and part of larger relational structures.

Unlike an ordinary film, the complete sequence has not been recorded in advance.

Some Frames already exist. Some become animate through relation. Others are generated when consciousness introduces a variation that has never previously occurred.

The film does not merely play.

It participates in writing itself.

🧠 Identity Across Frames

Personal identity is not contained within one isolated Frame.

A person is a relational continuity expressed across many Frames, but this continuity should not be imagined as a single object travelling through empty containers. Each Frame is a real consciousness-state, and each new state arises through relationship with what preceded and surrounds it.

Identity persists through continuity of origin and relation, not through perfect resemblance.

The infant, child, adult and elderly person may differ profoundly. Their material components, memories, capacities and appearance change. Yet each arises through a continuous relational history.

Earlier versions remain real within their Frames. Later versions do not invalidate them.

The self is therefore neither a single frozen object nor a disposable succession of unrelated copies. It is a continuing lineage of conscious relations whose generated states remain part of reality.

🧩 Why Frames of Time Are Central to Similarity Theory

Frames of Time connect many of the theory’s foundational ideas:

Consciousness: Every Frame is a consciousness-configuration.
Time: Time measures change and relationships among Frames.
Emptiness: Emptiness is itself a Frame, not absolute nothingness.
Persistence: Generated Frames are not erased by later developments.
Freedom: Existing structure influences consciousness without completely determining it.
Branching: Variation produces alternative continuations.
Identity: Continuity persists through origin and relation, even without resemblance.
Scale: Frames exist within Frames at every level.
Larger consciousness: Relations among consciousnesses can produce greater conscious organisation without destroying individuality.
Creation: Reality can produce genuinely new configurations rather than merely reveal a completed catalogue.

Frames of Time are therefore not one secondary concept among many. They form part of the structural heart of Similarity Theory.

✨ Speculative Extension: “Lifting the Pen”

The preceding sections describe the core Frames of Time model. Similarity Theory also permits a further and more speculative interpretation concerning embodiment, death, memory and pure consciousness.

This extension is not required in order to understand the core ontology.

A human life can be compared with consciousness writing through a particular embodied form. While the pen touches the page, experience is expressed through the biological capacities and limitations of that form.

When consciousness “lifts the pen”, it shifts from the embodied frame into a frame in which it exists as pure consciousness.

In this interpretation, “Simon the human” and “Simon the consciousness” are not unrelated beings. They are expressions of the same underlying individual consciousness under different relational conditions.

The limitation of memory belongs primarily to the embodied form. Human forgetting may be functional, allowing an incarnation to be experienced from within its own conditions without being overwhelmed by the complete history of consciousness.

Pure consciousness, by contrast, may retain or recover access to prior incarnations, previous lives and accumulated experience. During the transition from embodied existence, it may integrate—or “load”—the experiences acquired through the life that has just been lived.

Dreams may also participate in this process by integrating experience across levels of consciousness, although this remains conjectural.

These proposals should be understood as speculative consequences of the wider framework, not as scientifically established claims.

📚 Scientific and Philosophical Resonances

The Frames of Time model is a metaphysical proposal original to Similarity Theory. The scientific works below do not prove that Frames of Time exist, that Frames are consciousness, or that the universe possesses the ontology described on this page.

They are included because they explore questions that resonate with limited aspects of the theory.

Carlo Rovelli—Time in Quantum Gravity

Rovelli has examined the hypothesis that time may not be fundamentally defined at the deepest level of quantum gravity, with observable evolution instead described relationally.

This bears a limited conceptual resemblance to the ST view that time is not an independent substance. Rovelli’s physical proposal does not establish Frames of Time or a consciousness-first ontology.

Rovelli, C. (1991). “Time in Quantum Gravity: An Hypothesis.” Physical Review D, 43, 442.
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.43.442

Wojciech Zurek—Decoherence and Stable Records

Zurek’s work explains how interaction with an environment suppresses quantum coherence and selects relatively stable pointer states capable of retaining correlations.

This may resonate with questions about persistence, environmental relation and the emergence of stable structure. Decoherence does not demonstrate that all outcomes persist as conscious Frames, nor does it prove ST’s account of branching.

Zurek, W. H. (2003). “Decoherence, Einselection, and the Quantum Origins of the Classical.” Reviews of Modern Physics, 75, 715–775.
https://doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.75.715

Wootters and Zurek—The No-Cloning Theorem

The no-cloning theorem establishes that an arbitrary unknown quantum state cannot be perfectly copied.

This theorem does not prove that every Frame of Time is metaphysically unique. It offers only a limited conceptual reminder that “copying” at the quantum level is more restricted than ordinary duplication suggests.

Wootters, W. K., & Zurek, W. H. (1982). “A Single Quantum Cannot Be Cloned.” Nature, 299, 802–803.
https://doi.org/10.1038/299802a0

Rolf Landauer—Information and Thermodynamic Cost

Landauer’s principle concerns the thermodynamic cost of logically irreversible information-processing operations, particularly erasure.

It should not be interpreted as establishing that information is never destroyed or that consciousness persists eternally. Its relevance here is narrower: information processing is physically embodied and cannot be treated as wholly detached from physical transformation.

Landauer, R. (1961). “Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process.” IBM Journal of Research and Development, 5(3), 183–191.
https://doi.org/10.1147/rd.53.0183

Henri Bergson—Duration and Creative Development

Bergson distinguished lived duration from time treated merely as a sequence of spatialised measurements. His philosophy also emphasised genuine creativity and novelty in evolution.

Similarity Theory differs substantially from Bergson’s philosophy, but both resist reducing reality to a mechanically completed sequence.

Bergson, H. (1911). Creative Evolution.

These works should therefore be understood as points of dialogue, comparison and contrast—not as scientific verification of Similarity Theory.

🔄 Connections with Other Similarity Theory Pages

Frames of Time sit within a wider conceptual structure. Readers may also explore:

🔎 Similarity Theory Summary

Similarity Theory is a consciousness-first framework in which reality develops through change, relation, and similarity.

Consciousness is primary. Change generates new Frames of Time, while earlier Frames remain determinate. Continuity may develop through successive Frames and may also branch into more than one genuine continuation.

Dimensions describe differing capacities and modes of conscious experience, while similarity provides a means of recognising relations, patterns, and continuity across existence.

In short, consciousness is the foundation, relation is the structure, change generates development, and similarity reveals the connections between them.

Despite its name, Similarity Theory is therefore not merely a theory about resemblance. Similarity is the investigative principle; consciousness and relational existence are the subject of the framework.

SimonRaphael@engineer.com

Similarity Theory