The Illusion of Time
This article in Thursday’s Washington Post intrigued both my wife and I. It is a synopsis of a conversation between a reporter (Joel Achenbach) and Brian Greene, a theoretical physicist. This physicist, like many in the business, is working hard trying to validate string theory.
Hold on! Before you roll you eyes and click elsewhere this is actually incredibly exciting stuff. Physicists are closer than ever to being able to understand the most fundamental mysteries of life. The implications are mind-boggling.
One of the more controversial theories — which increasingly is being accepted by these theoretical physicists — is that which we call time is just an illusion. A lot of people feel the same way but physicists like Greene say it can be inferred from Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Past, present and future are all equally real and timeless. But what is real? It is apparently not what we think, at least according to physicists like Greene. Space is real. Mass and energy are real. Gravity is real. But time is probably just an illusion.
I won’t bother to explain their logic since I am not a theoretical physicist. But the article (while it exists in its free form online) is worthy of reading. Physicists are not snake oil salesmen. They are scientists. They are trained to be skeptical. They are trained to use the scientific method and to work out the mathematical proofs. All the pieces are not in place yet to tie together Einstein’s discoveries on the relationship between matter, energy and time and the subatomic world. But it’s not unreasonable to suggest that sometime during our lifetimes this question may be answered.
So we are going to purchase his book “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality” this weekend. We will see what we as laymen can glean from such a sharp and insightful mind. But it is interesting how sometimes the scientific world can intersect with the spiritual and metaphysical world. This may be one of those times. In the future these two universes, often perceived to be polar opposites, may turn out to be unified after all too.
In my metaphysical reading I consistently learn that after death we live in what amounts to a timeless state of energy. In that state we can review our life as many times as we want and run it back and forth like a tape recorder. I read about astral planes and astral beings and how after death we move out of the physical plain into the next astral plain and possibly into many more. I have one friend who assures me that she has through meditation already moved into an astral plain or two.
I don’t know how much of this stuff to believe. But I tend to believe it a lot more when I hear respected theoretical physicists make aspects of it look very plausible. Those of you who have browsed through my metaphysics archive will recall an early entry on deja vu. You will recall how creeped out I was by these experiences and how on some level I know they are true. Now perhaps theoretical physicists are agreeing with me that deja vu is what I think it is: some part of my mind is aware of my future in what I perceive to be the present.
If time is an illusion what exactly is a life anyhow? The only thing that works for me is that it is an experience. Perhaps we are all trills. A trill in Star Trek is an intelligent species that lives inside another intelligent “host” species such as a human. Perhaps our individual energy is what we call a soul, and our body is the mechanism for experience. And one aspect of our body is that because of the way it is constructed it has the attribute of perceiving time.
Perhaps one life is like a breath or a heartbeat in a larger life. Perhaps we glean what knowledge and understanding we can from our symbiot (the body) then depart and jump into another world, another body and another experience.
If time does not really exist then perhaps we experience a multitude of lives all at once. Perhaps we are everything and everyone. Perhaps part of me … of us really … is President Bush. Perhaps I am also Bill Clinton. Perhaps I was also Mother Teresa. Perhaps I am the cat on my lap at the moment and he is also me. (Maybe that’s why it feels so nice.) Perhaps we are all one entity. Perhaps I am you reading this, and you are me writing this. Perhaps we truly are just an aspect in the mind of God … which means we are God.
Perhaps we are all the same thing and yet all completely different. Perhaps we truly are Yin and Yang. Perhaps we are modeling infinite diversity in infinite universes and infinite times all in a timeless place we call the now.
I hope it is so. There would be no reason to fear death. Every life would be truly part of a great and much larger adventure. And my ramblings are not complete fantasy. Because with time likely to be an illusion and with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity demonstrating that we are all intrinsically connected and related we are neither dead nor alive. We simply are: different and the same, spawning colors in a gigantic universal kaleidoscope. And it is the relationship of all these colors that is the greater truth and beauty. And it is the relationship and the larger abstract picture that is this thing we call love.
Hi,
If you are interested in this subject, read comments posted at
http://www.socialtext.net/wired-mag/index.cgi?is_time_an_illusion
In my understanding, time is an illusion, being just the way our mind puts events in certain order. Time exists as a notion, but does not have physical reality. You can also say that the true nature of time is stream of events or changes. Our mind adds to it a “sense of time” and we have the whole thing as experienced by humans. I could elaborate on this but I will only add that the clock is not measuring “time” being just the mechanism of the constant change which can be compared with other changes. Direction of the time sets the stream of events and its ireversibility is guarded by the law of entropy.
Question of existence of time is closely related to a question of physical existence of our world. As you know space is expressed by three dimensions or distances from certain origin. Distance equals time multiplied by speed. If time is not a physical entity, we cannot really get a hard, physical world as a result of this equasion. Answer is simple although might be difficult to admit: we live in a mind-space… And so on so forth.
I am off course not the first one who has this understanding of our world. Understanding does not really matter as long as is not a base for a change. Philosophy as such is a bookish science if not coupled with a practice which can give achievement of its point of view. And this set is called a religion.
That’s all. Thank you for your patience if you read this to the end.
Comment by Janusz | December 14, 2008
Dear sir,
Since some years i am duty on the thoughts that there is no time. Intuition said me there is no time and it will be investigated by the thought that time only reach our mind but the upset en down going of the sun and the rotation of the earth around his axes.From the beginning,from the occlusion in the belly of the mother,and after that from our birth,we, our beginning brains, continually programmed with the being. The human nature evolved,but only in the mind! Mind you, there is nothing only the holy Ghost, who has an particle in the nature and in each human being, but there is nothing!The humaniness people says that the human kind make it all. That is really true but it is the Great master of the Universe that has a small part in any human being who made it. The human being create with his conviction. The real conviction and does growing the human kind to the perfection human being. But time is an illusion, also the dead of our mind, only our mortal material. Please give me stones to subscruter this thought.
Very truly yours,
Arie Aalders
Comment by Arie Aalders | February 8, 2009
time is an illusion; what would time be without the human invention of clocks… they’re just a means to measure the movement of planets & stars, the cycle of earths movement around the sun etc. Each day i’m sure somebody, somewhere comes closer to a true understanding…
Comment by John Haggar | June 11, 2009
Something to consider.There is no future until it becomes the present but once it has become the present it is already becoming the past.
We all know the past is irretrievable in ‘present’ terms and the future refers to nothing tangible other than an expectation of events which may or may not occur……….
So do we really only exist in the moment and if we do what is a moment?
Also another point worth considering is as humans we wonder where or if we will or will not exist after death but how often do we as humans ask where did we come from? That is we will not compare birth with death but yet they are exactly the same thing…..transits through portals of inhuman existence albeit in the most basic form as molecules of organic matter to human existence. Many more molecules of still organic matter but in a form we identify as human. Then at death we return to the basic matter we were prior. The only thing missing on entry and exit is our consciousness which supposedly dwells within our human form. So does the humanly immeasurable quantification of the mass of consciousness still exist outside of a human form once it has ceased to exist? Guess all will be revealed when we get there.
Thanks for your time.
Comment by Mark M. | July 8, 2009