Time warp

Have you noticed that time passes differently based on your particular perception of it?  If we are busy it tends to pass quickly.  If we're bored, it drags.  But what time is cannot really be defined.  We can tell that a duration has passed, but we can't measure it except by tracking some cycle within space.  This is still a function of our perception.  So if the rotation of that atom or star were to change speed, we would only be able to know it by the relation of it to another object also bound in space and time.

Think of it like an airplane.  If there were no windows to see things moving past you, you'd have no idea whether you were actually moving or not because everything in the plane would be moving at the same rate, whether that rate was faster or slower, everything would continue to move in unison and you'd never know how fast it was going.  Same goes for time. For all we know, time may actually not be static and might actually pass at different rates which we can't perceive because we can't step outside of it to find a fixed point of reference.

One thing that certainly seems to slow time is expectation.  I've been looking forward to many things lately.  Not in the sense of enjoyment, but simply, a lot of things to keep track of in the near future.  This made the previous month drag like none other.  I'm glad it's over so some of those things can actually occur and time can go back to the pace I usually perceive.

But this led me to remember something Augustine, the philosopher and theologian said.  He talked a lot about time and said that what we call future is really just expectation of something coming into being.  The past is the memory of that moment which no longer exists.  So that makes the present the point between expecting something and remembering it...which really has no space at all.  If you squeeze your conscious perception of time passing down to the smallest moment you can grasp, you'll experience an infinitesimally small point at which the future is sliding into the past, the expectation becoming memory.  It seems to rocket by and can actually be quite dizzying.  Try it right now and see.  Faster than sand through a funnel, moments of potential are becoming memories and we can't hold on to any one of those points.

This tiny point that occupies no area, no space, no time, is the present.  The eternal now.  And that is all that really exists.  If I focus on it too much, I seem to see everything around me like Neo seeing the matrix code; in constant flux through an infinitely minute Now.

At this point I also usually experience a sublimity.  Something enormous and palpably greater than myself.  It's there.  And if I chase it, try to focus on it, I find that it's focusing right back at me.  And that's where I usually lose it.  My mind starts to unravel and the window closes, thankfully, so I can exist without being dissolved into that present. 

I believe that this is a glimpse of the nature and reality of God.  Not some man in the sky.  If that's what you think then your conception of God is far too small.  I'm talking about the Source of all sources.  The prime.  The thing from which all that is derives its being.  And by many other philosophical proofs, I could demonstrate why it must be personal.  In short, it can't be a nameless force or a reflection of my own infinity because it must needs be something higher than my faculty to perceive it or contemplate it.  So if I can regard it, how much more would the source have to be capable of regarding?  If I can think of it, how much more must it, first and to a greater degree, think of me.  But there are treatises (literally) on this, and I invite you to do your own homework on it.

My point is that where else could such a being (even "being" is too small a word) exist but in the only spaceless, timeless space that does exist?  That ever-present, unchanging Now. In that point, I can access the big bang.  I can understand the origin of the universe.  I can know the meaning of knowing.  I can experience what IS on a deeper level than can be cognitively processed.  It's right there all the time.  Seriously try it, see what you experience.

Chronology

I have blogged on time before, but this is not so much on the nature of time as on the timing of events. Somethings precede other things. Layers below other layers were laid down first. It's a foundational principle of geology. The beginning of a story comes before the end. I learned something before I knew how to do it. Everything happens in sequences.

But in my life, in my perception, things seem to happen out of joint sometimes. An event can come before it's cause. A explanation may come before the question. It's really bizarre when it happens.

Sometimes it isn't so much out of sequence as just vastly distanced. For example, yesterday I was talking with my boss at work about an idea to resolve a particular situation. I would need to revise a document and possibly build a program out of it. He said to take my time because there was no rush. So today, I remembered that I had already written something related in the past. I couldn't remember why, other than at the time I thought it might be useful someday. So I found the document and it was exactly what I had been asked to write the day before. It perfectly addressed the very situation that I was facing, that didn't arise until the past month or so. And I wrote it in 2007!

I wrote the answer before I even perceived the question! Before I even foresaw that the question would come! Now of course, maybe I did simply know my job well enough to think through possibilities and it was all just good planning. But come on...I didn't change anything in it. It was exactly what I needed to write. And at the time there was no impetus to write it. I just thought it might be a good idea someday and then filed it away. Even the fact that I remembered it is amazing to me. Just last weekend I completely forgot that I had written something that I wrote only a week or two before. Someone showed it to me and I didn't recognize that I had written it. They told me I had...after which time I did finally remember.

I would just think this is one of those weird coincidences and explain it away if it weren't for the comments of my spiritual director a while ago. He said to me while we were talking that I had been seeing things happen out of time sequence. I hadn't told him I was having that happen. He just knew it because that's what happens with spiritual directors. It's a relationship arranged by God. But I hadn't thought about it before. He told me that this was common among contemplatives because reality is beyond time and when we start to move in that world, this one becomes far less stable...or rather we begin to see how unstable this world really is.

It's really true. From time to time, I'll have a moment click and it feels like tumblers fall into place, unlocking a bit more of the door. In that click, I can see how all the other dials and plates had been turning to align across time so that at this one moment the tumbler would fall into place. Some of those plates are nearer, others are behind, and they don't necessarily align in sequence.

Time

What is time? We can tell it passes, but can we really define it? Is it always the same, or does it change?

Physicists say that time is not always the same. It shifts with gravity and speed. I don't understand all that really. It's been proven they say...I guess as much as something like that can be proven. Of course those kinds of proofs aren't like proving that there is an oak tree behind the building. I guess it's something like a philosophical or mathematical proof. It is all an abstraction.

So what is time really? I guess it has to do with movement, becasue that is the only way we track it, by counting things that move in a cyclical pattern: the sun, clock gears, atoms. In our experience of time, we can all certainly think of instances where it seemed to go faster or slower. Of course, empirically, we say that is just our perception, because the cycles we count by continue to pass without alteration even when our perception of it changes. But that is just the thing. Our perception is really all we have to go by. Even counting the cycles is mediated to us through our perception. So, if I can only notice this thing called time through my perception, maybe we can rightly say that it does speed up or slow down based on our perception of it!

What about the cycles we are counting then? Well, if those cycles are bound in time, then perhaps they speed up and slow down as our perception does such that the gears actually take less time to rotate when we perceive time to go by quicker. This is confusing, so I'll try to clarify...if our universe is bound in this passage of something called time, then everything in it is bound in time. It takes time to cross from one place to another. It takes time to type one letter after the other as I write this. I can't get out of it. Even the clock and the atoms we coutn by are bound in time. So if it changed durations, we could never perceive it in the world bound in time, since it would all speed up or slow down at the same time. We'd have to be outside time to tell.

But humans are half spiritual, and spirits are not bound by time. So perhaps when we disengage from such focus on the things around us, like when bored, or sleeping, or engaged in a consuming activity, time is actually changing speed and the way we perceive it is because our spirits, which are outside time, recognized it.

St Augustine examined time as well. He lived before there were clocks, so his world was not so strictly bound to the seconds and minutes of the cycles of gears and atoms, but more like cycles of days and years. Still it was an interesting topic for him. What is time? He says that if we break it down to the smallest moment of our perception we can realize that it has no substance...like a mathematical point is the present that the future (our expectations) squeeze into and the past (our memories) squeezes out of. The present is an infinitesimally small point through which expectation become memory. So, there is really no present. I see a moment coming and as soon as I try to apprehend it, it has become a memory. So the present really doesn't exist at all! But then, the future doesn't exist either. It hasn't come to be yet. And the past doesn't exist either because it's already gone. So all of existence is really a series of infinitesimally small, massless presents, smaller than a moment. How fragile our life is! Remember this isn't my logic, it's St Augustine's!

This line of reasoning seems to color so many things. I think of the Matrix, and time travel, and so many other ideas all rolling through my presents at the speed of time...whatever that is!