>>13095488Suppose that your current identity, your physical body, your consciousness, your memories, etc. is a certain configuration of matter and energy (or any philosophical "substance" of your choosing).
Suppose now that you maintain consciousness only insofar as this configuration or structure is maintained within certain limits.
Whenever the necessary configuration is present, "you" exists and is conscious, and whenever it is not, "you" does not exist.
Suppose that whenever "you" does not exist (the necessary configuration for "you" to take place is lacking), the passage of time does not exist from "your" point of view (seeing as you yourself do not exist).
Let's suppose that this configuration dissolves, and then arises once again by pure random chance.
Perhaps an enormous length of time has to pass for this to occur, maybe the lifespan of multiple universes (Big Crunch/Big Bang cycles, for instance).
Would your consciousness be reconstituted in this case?
And would you notice that any time had passed at all between the original dissolution and the reconstitution?
Assuming that from the point of view of this reconstituted consciousness, no passage of time was registered:
You could have died billions of years ago and stayed dead over the span of multiple universes and Big Bangs, until the exact same configuration of particles and physical laws happened to eventually assemble in almost the exact same way they were configured back when you died, which would have led to a resumption of your consciousness starting from the very moment you died originally.
And you would never know that this ever happened.
In fact, you could be dying every few seconds for trillions of years, but it would all seem like a continuous and uninterrupted passage of time to whatever configuration of energy and matter represents your consciousness.