time as illusion

[billyjack]

sorry, published too quick there.

[quasimodo1]

the instantantienty of time, as a concept, as what Conrad said made the perfect life/mindset..."the care of the past and the future in every passing moment of the present". Lofty goal maybe. RJS

[billyjack]

I have a suggestion if anyone wants to understand time. How can you have a discussion about time without bringing into the discussion space and motion. It is the trllogy of time space and motion that make the objective in our obstructed universe.

by saying all is one or all is now, this implies that now or all is space, time, and motion. so your categorized trilogy of the three latter concepts was taken into account in previous entrees, i think. but i dont think we need to seperate them like that. its watt's contention (the guy this thread started up talking about) that all these things concepts such as space time and motion are really the same thing, call it "it" or existence or the universe or "you" if you like

Ok, again. This only works if you believe that what happens in the future is already decided: you can call it predestination/fate whatever you want. The past exists because it is known, experienced and has an effect on the present. The future does not have an effect on the present.

our actions in the present moment are just as much reliant upun our "conception" of the past as our "conception" of the future. note:i say conception, as in concept, as in idea, as in its all in our heads. when dealing with the concept of time, we deal not only with what was, but what will be. keeping the future in mind keeps us out of jail or from falling off mountain tops. so although the future hasn't happend yet, we act in accordance with the idea that it will. just as we act in accordance with our ideas of the past. shoot, this is how the scientific method is constructed: learn from the past so we can predict the future. once again, there is no past without future. as long as we are dealing in concepts, you have to accept the conceptual existence of its opposite.

I The essense of time is really receptivity which encompasses all pasts and futures of individuals and the whole human race even the universe. Nothing is as important as what you think. Thought is indeed the activating frequency that brings about all present experience now. Time is a grand illusion and is how we maintain an ego that has no reality in Truth. Actually without a thought you would be free and know time in its essence.

time is an illusion, at least our conception of it is. so i agree on that. and i also think that what we think is important as well. but, to use an allan watt's analogy, keep in mind that thought is like a spotlight. it focuses in on things and makes them extremely clear at the expense of ignoring everything else. but our body and its reaction to its surroundings is more like a flood light--not extremely focused but at the same instance ignoring nothing. thought, or mind if you will, goes together with body. so i would say that without a thought you would know the essence of time (this is the whole idea of the hindus, zen, and toaist meditators) since time only exist in thought! but you need to be able to come back to thought to disect and understand the state of "non-thought" in order to communicate that experience with everyone else. and yes, the ego is a myth as well! if time is an illusion, than as herman hesse said, the line that seperates good from bad and right from wrong is an illusion as well. because the only seperater of these ideas is an illusion:time.

[alwaysalready]

I think time and space is how we keep from recognizing oneness or the unobstructed universe. Time and space maintain our separete sense of self and are always obstructions and so we live in this obstructed universe, the world of duality and are quiite blind to the world of unobstructed freedom and light. Someday may we all wake up from this terrible dream of death and destruction and know ourselves without illusions.

[billyjack]

I think time and space is how we keep from recognizing oneness or the unobstructed universe. Time and space maintain our separete sense of self and are always obstructions and so we live in this obstructed universe, the world of duality and are quiite blind to the world of unobstructed freedom and light. Someday may we all wake up from this terrible dream of death and destruction and know ourselves without illusions.

cheers

[byquist]

billyjack, Watts would admit that he had his personal faults and that he was part showman, but his writing you could say is ofttimes visionary, is wide-ranged, and is tinged with wit. His focus was on the here and now, not some plan or scheme, which is good advice. You might like Charlotte Joko Beck. She certainly read him.

[Triskele]

i agree for the most part. i think at the end there you're speaking of the eternal recurrance of the nietzchian theme and his dyansian conception of the eternal universe. but i dont think he woud call any moment a repitition anymore than we would call the repition of drum beat the same beat every time. its going on the same rythym, but its context in term of its place in the musical score is changing, although it repeats. so maybe time lies between the conceptions of progression and repetition. when i think of what this would look like in terms of shape, i think of the dna double helix (following a form but changing as it goes round and round)

yeah, i can see your imagery of a double helix, but i question it. is it necessarily true that there is only one strand of time, or two, or three, what if time is more akin to a net, in that we occupy one strand of time that loops and knots itself even as it connects and binds other strands. this replication going on continously so as to make a limitless twisting weaving that time makes. anywho...

[billyjack]

billyjack, Watts would admit that he had his personal faults and that he was part showman, but his writing you could say is ofttimes visionary, is wide-ranged, and is tinged with wit. His focus was on the here and now, not some plan or scheme, which is good advice. You might like Charlotte Joko Beck. She certainly read him.

i'll look her up. any writing with new analogy's to describe time and its relationship to oneness is always welcome...

yeah, i can see your imagery of a double helix, but i question it. is it necessarily true that there is only one strand of time, or two, or three, what if time is more akin to a net, in that we occupy one strand of time that loops and knots itself even as it connects and binds other strands. this replication going on continously so as to make a limitless twisting weaving that time makes. anywho...

agreed. there are many meanings that can be used as a definition of time. its your contention that these meaning might be connected the way the sqaures on a net are connected with knots. . . i never thought of it like that--i just figured the connection that these differing meanings of time had was that they are all representations or metaphors or ideas regarding time, when in actuality time cannot be represented with language or thought anymore than the "self" can be. ie...all these differing meanings of time are ideas. but ideas arent reality. so maybe time doesnt exist in reality. maybe time is just a net we throw out to make sense of things, to control things, to see things in terms of causes and effects. because if i had the ability to digest experiences in life like i digest food, and not think about what has happened and only experience what is happening, then i wouldnt know what past was, and therefore i wouldn't know future either. i would just know experience, i would just know now.

[LaffingRain]

I have a suggestion if anyone wants to understand time. How can you have a discussion about time without bringing into the discussion space and motion. It is the trllogy of time space and motion that make the objective in our obstructed universe. A great book that in my opinion explains time,space and motion is The Unobstructed Universe by Steward Edward White written in 1940. The book says that time has three aspects-sidereal,psychological and orthic. Orthic is the correct or true. The book goes on to answer in my opinion any question you might have as to what is time and more importantly what is real and what is illusion.

I agree with above poster, I'm obtaining new insights to time, space and motion with The Unobstructed Universe study/read. Another book someone here might be interested to read Eckhart Tolle The Power of Now, and he has a new book A New Earth; has been on Oprah Winfrey's Book Club. Pretty good read, my opinion, to read with The Unobstructed Universe.

To get a slight grasp on this idea of time/space being One, consider when looking at the sky at night, at all those twinkling stars; according to science you are now viewing something that is either millions of light years away, or you are looking at the past, at something that is not there anymore, that perhaps has changed in some way, such as the astronaut who returns home and only a few years has elapsed for him, while on Earth 20 years has gone by. out there in space, the boundaries are not the same as traveling around here in a car.
cherrio, fascinating conversation, whatever I'm glad to be here now. Can't really think of where I'd rather be..

[blazeofglory]

Time is a relative term. We try to materialize it whereas it is totally immaterial. There is no time and our framing of it is only out of illusions.

There is no beginning and no end. Can you say when time started? By what calculation? Your measure is limited and time in essence is illimitable thing.