Time – the 4th Dimension of Mind

“The distinction between the past, the present and the future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”
- Albert Einstein

"Time is a confidence trick invented by the Swiss"
- Woody Allen

The DeLorean roars to life as Marty slams the pedal to the floor in a jolt of powerful acceleration. Doc re-connects the broken cable just as lightning strikes the clock tower. With perfect synchronicity the energy bolt shoots directly into the flux capacitor as the DeLorean contacts the cable, but the flux capacitor fails and Marty is burnt to a crisp as the car ignites and slams into the shop front ahead. Doc is flash fried in the explosion and nobody lives to travel ‘back to the future’.

Why? Well, here’s the thing... Time does not exist. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.

There is no future and there is no past. Never was. Everything that ever happened is merely a memory, and everything that ever will happen is simply an abstract perception. Time is merely a condition of the mind and has no existence outside of it. In a way, humans invented time as a means to measure, record and predict events so as to better understand and catalogue them. So if time does not exist what is there? Time has to exist right? I mean you’re reading this right now and it’s taking up time to do it, isn’t it? Not quite. The only aspect of any kind of time is this moment right now, this very instant, and it is eternal, yet fleeting. We exist in the instant in which the perceived future becomes the remembered past. Your activity may change, your location may change and your physical body may change, but it all happens in the same eternal moment we all exist in; this one right now.

But, I hear you say, if time does not exist, how is it that I age? Well, age has nothing to do with so called ‘time’. Age is merely your body experiencing entropy [the change, decay, death and rebirth of cells etc.] All things that exist in the universe are bound to the laws of entropy. The fact that we can remember a time when we were young, and predict a time when we will be old and die are merely perceptions in your mind, but they are not real in the tangible sense. Memory is a very unreliable tool. We use time to help us file events into sequential order to better understand them.

Now, the non-existence of time does not mean that events did not happen. Everything that ever has happened or ever will are not changed by this concept, it simply means that they exist only in the mind. Change is happening all around you. Change is eternal, but it is all happening in this very same instant, passing from future to past in one eternal moment.

Let’s take a look at another example of time apparently passing; night and day. The very measuring stick we use when discussing time. Stepping up one level we have the Earth year. Well these things have nothing to do with ‘time’ but are simply a relationship made by us to explain the spinning of the planet and its’ revolutions of the Sun. It works conveniently for us but doesn’t prove the existence of time. And besides, where do we draw the line? The measurement of time we use on Earth will not be appropriate on Mars or Pluto or for the Sun itself. Not to mention the endless other planets, moons, stars etc in the universe. All things are relative. If humans ever manage to colonise Mars, for example, they will have to develop a new time system to function with. After all, Mars spins at a different rate and revolves around the Sun differently.

What about the speed of light? For years that has been a benchmark for measuring time in the universe. But science is discovering that even the speed of light is not constant. Gravity saw to that. Think of black holes. It seems the denser the gravity, the slower ‘time’ appears to pass. But only according to the poor fellow who found himself hurtling into one. His buddy watching from the event horizon saw his friends’ destruction in an instant. Time is measured merely by the individual perceiving it.

Time is a perception of the mind and can be altered. We can do this in many ways, most of which involve the rhythm of our brain waves. Take for example the snooze button on your alarm clock. 7am strikes and you slam your hand on snooze. You slip back asleep and begin a marathon acid trip of the mind that we call dreaming. You travel across the galaxies and have detailed conversations with your dead pet, Scribbles, before painting the Eiffel Tower and falling off a cliff. You wake up enough to peer at the clock and realize that only one minute has passed. It’s a strange phenomenon no doubt, but many of us have experienced it. Marijuana, alcohol, meditation, these can all effect out relationship to time. The speed of the clock doesn’t change, but our perception of time can be altered drastically. A minute can seem like an hour and vice-verse. If time exists in the mind then it only makes sense that the rhythm of our brain-wave patterns can change it.

Part of the discomfort of coming to terms with a universe devoid of time is the realization that time travel cannot exist. For most of us the concept of time travel is a silly notion meant for science fiction and children’s tales, but I dare you to deny that on some base level you do not hold hope that somehow time travel is possible. It is a product of our natural desire for immortality that we quietly dream of travelling through time. It can be such a romantic and thrilling concept to perhaps have the opportunity see the dinosaurs, the building of the pyramids, or witness your own birth. Or perhaps to change the past in order to alter the future. What if you could go back and stop Hitler’s rise to power? Or travel forward beyond your years and see where the human species is going, and beyond. So we cling to the imprinted need to believe in time, perhaps because it feels safe or because it provides us an excuse to do nothing because there just isn’t enough time.

Not enough time.

It’s a notion that seems to play on all of our minds. It eats at us, causes stress and has us watching the clock knowing that someday that clock will tick for the final time and we will have to face our ultimate destiny. Time is a prison for the mind. We build our lives around it and are slaves to its unbearable, unchangeable persistence. Realizing, however, that time never actually existed in the first place can free us all. No longer are we bound by the relentless drum-beat of that inevitable tick of doom. In a world without time we are free to just ‘be’... to break free of the past and future... to live in the moment... to be truly present and to live, literally, like there is no tomorrow. Because there is only now, and this moment is eternal. As are we.