A Brief Story of TIME...
Please elaborate on your theories and how they relate to the nature of time. Always intrigued by the interesting theories that come to mind when on psychedelics, or from the integration of psychedelic experiences.
Ooh - this is probably the biggest metaphysical thread that exists for me (the other being infinity). I could actually write an entirely separate thread on Time - several threads - a book, really. I'm working on my first at the moment (book) so Time will have to wait until I have more of it.
Time... it's *Huge* - the topic. I *can't* really write a short response - although I will try to zoom in on the thought that specifically pertains to what I wrote about the 'echo' on DMT.
It's important to point out that I don't believe in time. Time, as Douglas Adams put it (or was it Stephen Hawking), is something that we humans invented to explain the fact that everything does not all happen in the same place at the same time - else we would all just go mad.
However, I actually believe that everything *does* all happen in the same place at the same time - and this statement alone would take pages and pages and pages of context to have it make any kind of sense.
Obviously I have to accept time as a reality in order to function in the real world, or I'd *really* piss people off a lot. I also have two very distinct postures in terms of expressing most of my psycho-spiritual beliefs.
On the one hand I look at things from the perspective of a corporeal sentient mammal - a being that has a beginning and an end - is born and dies - believes in time.
On the other hand I look at things from the perspective of an eternal being who was always here and always will be, who does
not believe in Time and subscribes to both Richard Alpert's statement "Be Here Now" and my own - "Everything Is Happening".
My personal position subscribes to Einstein's theories of infinte multiple universe's in which every action plays out in every possible combination and configuration, and that every possible combination of every possible outcome actually exists in its own timeline (OK, dammit, I knew this was going to happen - I'm going to have to explain how the universe works, and I have to pull it off in under an hour or I'll burn my dinner).
This means for one, that if we ever find a means to travel in time, then going backwards and changing something in the past is *not* going to have the butterfly effect and ripple forward through time, changing our present - because for one (the obvious one) if we go back in time and change something then that thing was already changed - and the now that is, is the now that always was and will be. All that our action in the past that we travelled to and affected does, is to spawn the first of another infinte thread of potential timelines in which our meddling in the past will be a manifest aspect. Our actions will not affect *this* timeline - which is immutable (given that there is no time and everything that has happened and will happen is in fact just happening) - and our traveling back within it is essentially a pre-determined self-fulfilling prophesy.
So according to this theory of infinite timelines/universe's/whatever - the universe *has* to be static (there is no time) - and rather than our journeys as we perceive them (temporal and linear) being either the passage of time flowing by us - or we moving through the passage of time - we are instead constantly crossing laterally through these infinite groups of timelines.
The Persian Flaw of this theory - the standard paradox that exists in all things related to time and infinity - is that if there are an *infinite* number of timelines, they could not all have already happened, nor would they be able to at some point already have happended - at least not in a static universe.
But I have no intention of trying to explain the paradox that essentially holds the universe together, without which we really *would* all go mad (if for the sake of understanding anything I am trying to say, we pretend for the moment that time *does* exist, and that we have already all gone mad).
But there is a point that I am getting to - and it is the response to the question posed - and it relates to the topic that came up about things repeating - and my mentioning the DMT experiences in which I could hear an actual echo of something that I said out loud - and that this echo seemed to have a fixed amount of time elapse before it repeated.
So from here on it gets a little complicated - and in the hopes of actually being able to finish this thought (which I should not have done before supper) I will adopt the perspective of the corporeal sentient mammal for whom time
does exist ( at least supper time does, because I can smell its impending existence in my stomach).
The question that asks itself is this: When is now? As in what is the finite unit of time that can be said to be now - the moment - the point (location) and length of the moment (duration) in which I exist. And when can it be said to have passed from that moment into the next moment.
It was neccessary to have first illustrated the multiverse theory to be able to make this next bit make any sense. I can see the answer - and the point that I am attempting to make so clearly in my mind, but it's tough to explain in words. I will phrase much of this as assumptions. This is not to say that I am stating that I am right, or even that I neccessarily believe any of this to be true, it's just an easier context from which to write.
How I see it is that there is *no* now. If think back of the concept of a 'unit' of time - say the 250 milliseconds it took for my DMT echo to echo - just as a yardstick, then it is not that we live in the moment for 250ms and then enter the next moment - but rather that the moments themselves overlap to some extent. So if you look at yourself at being point zero (where point zero is the 'nowest' that it can be) then a part of us also exists in minus one (the immediate past) and part of us exists in one (the immediate future).
In this model there simply is no absolute 'now'.
To connect this model to the multiverse theory, it can also be considered that as versus traveling forward/backward through time, we are laterally traversing the closest fields of the temporal multiverse, and we could see how our presence in more than one finite moment could directly correlate to our state of existence in the multiverse. This is to say that we exist very briefly in more than one universe at any given moment - as we likewise exist in more than one finite unit of time in any pair of universes in the multiverse.
Relating this to the echo effect that spawned this rampage of drivel, lets take a very brief look at consciousness as it pertains to time (assuming for the moment that it (time) exists). Something happens (the event). When that thing happens we perceive it before we process it. At the moment that we perceive it we have not yet formed a reaction of any kind to it. A similar analogy would be the one of speaking. We think the thought before we say the words that express it. The pure thought - before any brainwork - is the baseline - ground zero. Then before we actually say what we are going to say, we very briefly think the words that we are going to say before we actually say them. This is the second temporal point. Finally we say the words - the expression of the subjective emotional response to the event - the third temporal point.
The same can be said of a reaction. Something happens (the event). We perceive it, but have not yet processed it. This is the first temporal point. Then we feel an emotional response to what has happened. This is the second temporal point. At
this stage there is no measurable difference between these two temporal points. In our multiverse construct these two temporal points are each in their own timeline - yet at this stage both timelines are still identical, as any and all difference is perceptual. Then we think the thought that will manifest itself as our reaction - the third temporal point. We have now existed in three separate temporal units, yet nothing is manifest to differentiate between universes. In this case,
two new timelines have been spawned, but are currently identical. Finally, we react. - And in this moment - the fourth temporal point - the newly spawned timelines become as unique as the number of possible reactions we could have had. amd we cease existing concurrently in all multiverses and timelines.
What I am trying to get at is that we think of 'now' as being static - but 'now' actually happens
before we react to it. And our reacting to it takes more than one unit of time.
If you extrapolate this very simplistic model of units of time, and accept that we inhabit more than one unit at any and all given times, then you can see that we might be in several units of time concurrently, just to a lesser degree, and that each unit of time spawns its own timeline, but two identical timelines will only exist for one unit of time - from perception to reaction, and reaction is the wildcard that can spawn an infinte number of potential new timelines. Each of these new timelines comes as a pair (perception to reaction) - so at every moment in which we exist, we always exist in at
least two timelines (universes) and also in at
least two units of time concurrently.
This is a little like marrying Newtonian physics with quantum mechanics in that this model operates on both the assumption that time does not exist (and instead there is a non-temporal multiverse), but *also* on the premise that time
does exist, but that it is non-finite, and we can and do occupy a minimum of two temporal points almost simultaneously.
And this brings us right back to our starting point - and a highly theoretical and in all probability unlikely explanation of why Sam's been hearing an echo.
So perhaps when we hear our own thoughts or someone else's words repeated, this is because we are a) experiencing a second unit of time overlapping the first, and b) we are briefly simultaneously existing in two different timelines/universes. We are hearing the words a second time because any two adjacent timelines in the multiverse are in every perceivable way identical to one another - and the temporal displacement of existing in both the now and the impending now, allows us to briefly exist in both universes separated solely by a single unit of the temporal present.
I have absolutely no idea if I made any sense of any kind to anyone. Perhaps asking metaphysical questions of me is just a bad idea all round.
If I believed in time I would apologize for having just wasted some of yours...
affectionately,
The Merry Prankster.
