Time- what is it?

[Birch]

I have a lot of ideas about time, but are any of them "really" what this "time" thing is about?

 

I would like to hear TTB's on this because I know that you have something to suggest :-)

 

Can I "reverse" mine and be as if none of the things that happened, happened?

 

How does one tell "what happened" - pure subjectivity?

 

If some things do not "happen" to you, what happens?

 

Why did my computer screen suddenly stop feeling 3D?

 

What's with the time/space idea, and why, if the latter is "in effect" as more than an idea, does it "work" in awareness at all?

 

How does one escape time and why would one want to?

 

Thx!

[zerostao]

if you woulda only asked about hard time

 

that einstein dude said sth about we are on a space/time fabric that can be warped by any object with mass. hmmm ok like black holes.

 

so the current fashionable thing is ,if we not only warp it but also twist it?

or can we just click and drag it and loop it back onto itself?

 

the space/time thing is actually the 4th dimension.

 

in 1943 there was that philadelphia experiment thing with einstein and tesla.

damn that tesla was so freakin cool he passed on that year, strangely

i think the classified documents(not the science part but rather what happened to the sailors) concerning much of the philadelphia experiment have been declassed, which is mind blowing in itself.

[NeiChuan]

Time and space are the same thing, essentially because they're within the same fabric, or are the same fabric. Distance is essentially time, and the space in between is also time.

 

space and time are concepts of consciousness.

 

say a pencil, the only reason it has a certain length is because it exists in a certain time. So the amount of time it takes for light to go from one side of the pencil to the other. Is the amount of time for the pencil to exist in our reality

 

If you have a bar of 10 light seconds long, it'll would take 10 seconds for that bar to exist in its entirety.

 

the expression of what you are in space time, creates the pattern of space time.

 

for time dilation say if your frequency/velocity goes up you won't feel as though you're going faster because your consciousness is moving at the same pace. INSTEAD You'll see everything as moving fast, so the space that's moving around you fast would be an expression of your frequency.

 

So time = space and vice versa because they're the same fabric.

 

Why someone would want to break the cycle, say go back in time is a whole different thing and would take another rant.

 

It would be what's satisfied me to say going back in time is not only selfish but completely useless. But yeah very long explaination.

Edited February 25, 2011 by NeiChuan

[Ninpo-me-this-ninjutsu-me-that]

I have a lot of ideas about time, but are any of them "really" what this "time" thing is about?

 

I would like to hear TTB's on this because I know that you have something to suggest :-)

 

Can I "reverse" mine and be as if none of the things that happened, happened?

 

How does one tell "what happened" - pure subjectivity?

 

If some things do not "happen" to you, what happens?

 

Why did my computer screen suddenly stop feeling 3D?

 

What's with the time/space idea, and why, if the latter is "in effect" as more than an idea, does it "work" in awareness at all?

 

How does one escape time and why would one want to?

 

Thx!

 

I love your questions Kate! I have no idea how to answer them, but I often wonder the same things.

 

Time and space are the same thing, essentially because they're within the same fabric, or are the same fabric. Distance is essentially time, and the space in between is also time.

 

space and time are concepts of consciousness.

 

say a pencil, the only reason it has a certain length is because it exists in a certain time. So the amount of time it takes for light to go from one side of the pencil to the other. Is the amount of time for the pencil to exist in our reality

 

If you have a bar of 10 light seconds long, it'll would take 10 seconds for that bar to exist in its entirety.

 

the expression of what you are in space time, creates the pattern of space time.

 

for time dilation say if your frequency/velocity goes up you won't feel as though you're going faster because your consciousness is moving at the same pace. INSTEAD You'll see everything as moving fast, so the space that's moving around you fast would be an expression of your frequency.

 

So time = space and vice versa because they're the same fabric.

 

 

Nicely said, I definitely couldn't have said it anywhere close to better myself (basically I don't get it...even if you explain many times) : For example the pencil.....so you said the pencil only exists in time related to the amount of time it takes light to go from one end of the pencil to the other..... but then I start wondering is the time at one end of the pencil the same as the time at the other end of the pencil....and if they are not the same time (due to the amount of time it takes for light to go from one end to the other) then surely they should be in a different space time continuum. Or not. I dunno.

 

I find the theory that time is in fact going backwards to be really interesting, and that it's only out minds that have warped the perception somehow. I remember reading a good book years ago called 'Cryptozoic' which was sci-fi and about time-travel, it also contained this theory.

 

My head hurts....

[KCHooligan]

Joao Maguira wrote a great book called "Faster than the speed of light". The central focused pertained to the novel idea that light may be slowing down. In theory then, black holes couldn't create wormholes in the space/time fabric; you'd just be stuck on its cernter point.

 

The fact that we can change our lifetime by simply say, riding in a fast plane, is really cool as well. Sure you'd need some heavy duty atomic clocks in sync at take off to landing to actually be able to notice the difference (few miliseconds, maybe), but you'd be that much younger than had you never taken the plane!

 

But the real topic is ether.

[Marblehead]

Hi Kate,

 

Rememeber? You said it. We can't go back.

[Birch]

Yes Mr MH, but I'm trying ( otherwise why practice ???)

Plus those Taoists seem to suggest it's doable, otherwise they wouldn't "still" be here blathering on about it.

 

They ( or we, or me) would have laid the issue to rest!

[Spectrum]

We ride these sinking sands of time lining hour glass shores

[Apech]

Time - what is it?

 

About three o'clock.

 

(sorry about this joke but I had to get it out of my system).

 

Time is very interesting. As I see it there are two aspects of time experience - i.e. subjective time. One is time looking backwards - which is really memory. When we think about where we are in relation to what we know ... then we make an inventory of how we got to the present moment. e.g. I got up, ate some breakfast, went out, came back and now I'm sitting at the computer ... this is a kind of mapping of recent events to place ourselves in time.

 

The other is time looking forward - which is looking at time as this unstoppable flow which comes towards us every minute - it is like a stream of permutations and fluctuations of possibility ... like a kaleidoscope of the possibilities of being .... (don't think I put that very well).

 

We stand in the 'now' looking both ways like Janus (god with two heads) and we create our own subjective assessment of time from these two views. What has been and what is to be.

 

My 2p.

[Easy]

[zerostao]

way cool when apech and easy join in.

when you stand in the now, are you at that precise moment in equilibrium where the measurable force of the past is balanced by the measurable force of future?

 

Can the kick meditation also be used if we are looking in a mirror seeing ourself

some fraction of milisecond as we were and not as we are?

I got lost when " the sense of process rules"

 

If kate could have asked a simpler question , like ,when did time actually begin and what was happening before that?

 

We can all agree than time travel forward holds no paradox?

 

you can skip the ad here in 3 seconds...we are familiar with the video referred to ?

[manitou]

God, I love this question. I think about stuff like this all the time too, LOL.

 

I think Einstein proved time is sort of an illusion. I now think of it in terms of a deck of cards. It 'seems' like life lays out one day at a time, like cards fanned out on green felt. But if you stack the cards up, the events pile up, one upon another.

 

I think this is how prophesies or visions happen; somehow the fanned cards have been placed back in their pile, and the visionary can see all the events piled up on top of each other, not spread out in a fan.

 

Life is but a dream, and we are the Dreamer. Collectively, apparently.

 

This is the concept that a shaman would use as well. When we re-imprint something from the past, (which is apparently an illusion) that's why it works in the present. There really is no past or present. It's all Now.

 

My brain is about to explode, so I'll stop now.

Edited February 25, 2011 by manitou

[zerostao]

right a deck of cards that is shuffled and re-shuffled. i will now use this example rather than my previous click & drag idea. hmmm depends on who i am talking with i reckon. but i do love a good poker game.

 

OR maybe a concept someone could use to describe the mechanism of the I-ching

 

3 o'clock ? 4;19 woulda been nice.

 

i also like kc's thought about the speed of light not being a constant ,it is a variable.

 

here is an interesting thing (for me anyways) hg wells book about time machine came out 12 years before einstiens theory of relativity.

[aridus]

I think that what it is, is not what it isn't; and what it isn't is a whole lot of things.

 

I think it isn't absolute, and isn't stationary, and isn't merely a difference of events - I do not believe that mere arbitrary differences need be so defined in how different these differences are. Events are not only in different 'times', but differently different 'times', also.

[wearydreamer]

It becomes interesting if you start first visualizing dimension a bit technically.

 

One dimensional observer observes 2-dimensional space.

 

Two dimensional observer (imagine two separate point observers of light for simplicity) observes 3 dimensional space. Extra dimension is perceived by difference in geometric angles of perceived objects of at two separate point of observations.

 

Three dimensional observer (imagine three separate point observers of light for simplicity) should observe 4 dimensional space. Extra dimension will be perceived because light will reach one of the point observer before other two point observers. However moment will be longer, i.e., process comprehending the information from 3 point observers will get completed only after light from the object instant is received by all 3 point observers.

 

With infinite dimensional observer, moment should be eternal. Or you can say there will no dimensions.

 

Also we don't need to take light so verbally as Physics takes, but yes it simplifies the thinking.

 

Time is just the sequence of perceived moments, recorded ones or the coming flow.

 

Overall I find time and space quite analogous to five senses. They are just context for information. Like sweet is context of information in sense of taste, it is not something defined in space and time. While long is a context of information in time and space. So time and space, along with senses define the scope of The Functioning. What is functioning is The Mind.

 

 

[Marblehead]

Life is but a dream, ...

 

 

Well, that brought to mind this:

 

[angelo]

Time is just a way to calculate and experience change.

[Taomeow]

I view taoism as a study of the nature of time, the science of time... but here's a pre-taoist experiment of mine that may have caused me to engage in this study to begin with, by introducing my own future to me...

 

A mathematician who was explaining Minkowski spacetime to me asked me if I can visualize this in a 4D space, i.e. a 5D spacetime. This is impossible to just visualize, so I used my meditation skills to meditate on it. First, I meditated on the normal Minkowski spacetime which is a cone starting at a point (I placed myself there) and expanding in 3D at the speed of light. This caused me to travel forward at the speed of light. The spacetime left behind created the "inaccessible past" we all know and love. When I was comfortably within the visualization, I introduced another spacial dimension to the picture.

 

What happened then was, the cone spontaneously reversed itself and the whole "future spacetime" started rushing toward me at the speed of light, with me at the point where it all converges, this one point in spacetime that is me absorbing it all at the speed of light. I let it happen for a few minutes but the vertigo and the omniscience became more than I could handle, so I closed the meditation. I don't have an interpretation -- just the experience. Apparently a 4D space is enough for time to take a U-turn, but you can't be the "3D you" and be there -- you are a "4D you" there too, and it's a different creature that might have a hard time explaining itself to the 3D creature. Practical tip I came back with? If you want to reverse time, you have to expand yourself.

[Easy]

Practical tip I came back with? If you want to reverse time, you have to expand yourself.

 

Nice work Taomeow!

 

This reminds me of a time years ago when I was writing a snippet of dialogue in a SF/Fantasy story in which the all-seeing Crone tells her skeptical engineer who acknowledges neither pre-cognition nor deja vu, "Build yourself a temporal mirror, Renfrow. I know you can do it. And hold that mirror up to time itself so you can see what I can see...everything happens all at once...all of it!"

 

And that played out as a picture in my head and it almost knocked me off the chair. What had happened in my visualization was that I had switched the qualities of space with those of time. Time was static, and space was the dimensionless emergent.

 

If you can work that one in, it is a nice little challenge to the commonly held paradigm.

[manitou]

I just had another thought. (My brain did finally explode, but I managed to reassemble it to a degree).

 

Look at quantum physics. (My knowledge of quantum physics is limited to what I've read in Capra's Tao of Physics.)

 

They've discovered that matter, when they observe it in its very smallest components, is both a particle and a wave of probability. The two properties apparently cannot be separated from each other, so I would guess that matter sits at the intersection or junction of time and space.

 

A particle takes up space. It doesn't go anywhere.

 

But a wave of probability would take up time going from point A to point B.

 

Apparently they are inexhorably intertwined.

[surfingbudda]

I think the NOW is all there is and ever will be. The past doesn't exist and the future will never come so why bother worrying about it.

[zerostao]

I just had another thought. (My brain did finally explode, but I managed to reassemble it to a degree).

 

Look at quantum physics. (My knowledge of quantum physics is limited to what I've read in Capra's Tao of Physics.)

 

They've discovered that matter, when they observe it in its very smallest components, is both a particle and a wave of probability. The two properties apparently cannot be separated from each other, so I would guess that matter sits at the intersection or junction of time and space.

 

A particle takes up space. It doesn't go anywhere.

 

But a wave of probability would take up time going from point A to point B.

 

Apparently they are inexhorably intertwined.

capra really relates the physics he presents to buddhist thought rather than taoist ideas.

[NeiChuan]

I think the NOW is all there is and ever will be. The past doesn't exist and the future will never come so why bother worrying about it.

 

Nothing to worry about. Everything to learn about. Your "now" and someone elses "now" may conflict, say if you travel faster then light in space, then come back to find that someone else is older.

 

Interests are what's important in this discussion, essentially limitless possibilities can be learned.

 

The mind can naturally slow down it's perception of time when adrenaline is running. There is alot more to learn..

[Taomeow]

I think the NOW is all there is and ever will be. The past doesn't exist and the future will never come so why bother worrying about it.

 

I remember reading a Chinese novel whose protagonist, a Chinese woman living in England, was having a relationship with a British guy prone to buddhist ideation. She heard this line from him a lot, and eventually they broke up over it.

[Taomeow]

Nice work Taomeow!

 

This reminds me of a time years ago when I was writing a snippet of dialogue in a SF/Fantasy story in which the all-seeing Crone tells her skeptical engineer who acknowledges neither pre-cognition nor deja vu, "Build yourself a temporal mirror, Renfrow. I know you can do it. And hold that mirror up to time itself so you can see what I can see...everything happens all at once...all of it!"

 

And that played out as a picture in my head and it almost knocked me off the chair. What had happened in my visualization was that I had switched the qualities of space with those of time. Time was static, and space was the dimensionless emergent.

 

If you can work that one in, it is a nice little challenge to the commonly held paradigm.

 

This sounds very cool! Did you ever finish the story? I'd like to read it if it's available.

 

I have bits and pieces of a time travel novel simmering on a few back burners... I've been trying to write it all my life, but it keeps mutating!

...such is time...