Q. (Andy Hoye)
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| Andy Hoye |
I can sit across the dinner table from "you." And fondly "recall" our lunch at the sushi restaurant and discussions of golf, family members and all this nonduality stuff. And smile. But those moments are not happening "now." And I can imagine a bike ride tomorrow. Recollection and imagination are acts of the mind, like thoughts. The mind understands time, and, looking at an escarpment, we can see evidence of geologic time. That record exists independent of the arrival of the human mind. The broken window does not "unbreak." Evidence of the arrow of passing time is clear. The record of events in time takes many forms, however. The library is open 24-7-365. The present is an eternal window through which is observed a flow of changes in the physical universe, which evolves. Time allows the fun to happen.
At the beginning of the universe, in the first microsecond, time was just another dimension. (From Hawking's latest book, "The Grand Design," p. 134: "In the early universe -- when the universe was small enough to be governed by both general relativity and quantum theory -- there were effectively four dimensions of space and none of time.")
What if "time" is the real active function in the Copenhagen interpretation, the "observer influence?" Time is a key part of the Uncertainly Principle. It may be that the consciousness of time is one of the critical barriers to awakening. When lived, the present moment is eternal -- it is outside of time.
G.
Time is a fascinating topic, to be sure. There are two viewpoints on "time". There is the consensus view that things "obviously" occur one after the other in some sequence, like geologic time. Surely, as in the striae in an outcropping of rock, since we can scientifically date different levels as having so many divisions of "time" ago, there must be time. JFK, Elvis, Abraham Lincoln lived some "time" ago. Some time ago, this body looked different than it does now.
However, is it fundamentally real? As you quoted Steven Hawking, "time" did not exist until after the Big Bang. If time were "real", would we have to have come to some agreement of how we were going to define it? Isn't it "we" who have gathered our scientists together and asked them for some "standard" of time, completely defined by something else, like the radiation emitted by cesium atoms? If it were truly real, and not some mental construct, wouldn't we all know what "time" it was, automatically, without having to agree on what a second was?
However, is it fundamentally real? As you quoted Steven Hawking, "time" did not exist until after the Big Bang. If time were "real", would we have to have come to some agreement of how we were going to define it? Isn't it "we" who have gathered our scientists together and asked them for some "standard" of time, completely defined by something else, like the radiation emitted by cesium atoms? If it were truly real, and not some mental construct, wouldn't we all know what "time" it was, automatically, without having to agree on what a second was?
As you know, there is a very different viewpoint on time; that "time" is not a "container"
that events and objects "move through", nor is there any entity that "flows" with it. This viewpoint sees "time" as an intellectual structure, together with space within which humans sequence and compare events. "Time" is not an event nor a thing, not can it be truly measured. Leibnitz and Kant, among western philosophers held this view.
that events and objects "move through", nor is there any entity that "flows" with it. This viewpoint sees "time" as an intellectual structure, together with space within which humans sequence and compare events. "Time" is not an event nor a thing, not can it be truly measured. Leibnitz and Kant, among western philosophers held this view.
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| Ramana Maharshi |
"my" personal experience, is that "time" is only an idea constructed by the mind. As Ramana Maharshi says, along with many other "Eastern" philosophers and mystics, "time is only an idea."
As you may recall from my presentation at the Science and NonDuality conference last fall, i had a slide of a famous Ramana quote:
"Time is only an idea. The interval between two states is called "time". A state cannot come into being unless the mind calls it into existence. If the mind is not made use of, there is no concept of time...The question of time does not arise at all to the one established in one's true nature."
Isn't this the "common" experience? we have "hours", and "minutes" in which "time flies", others in which "time drags"; sometimes "time stops". Isn't this telling us that time is purely mental, relative, and experiential?
Isn't this the "common" experience? we have "hours", and "minutes" in which "time flies", others in which "time drags"; sometimes "time stops". Isn't this telling us that time is purely mental, relative, and experiential?
Our best cognitive neuroscience supports this mystical view, of time being only an idea, a function of the mind, when the "I" is present. The Andrews-Hannah work in 2010 at Harvard demonstrated this by the construction of the 11-member "selfing" network. As is stated in the intro to that paper, which looked at the brain components constructing the "default mode network", the "selfing" network:
"These dissociated components contribute differentially to two processes common during spontaneous thought: construction of imagined events and assessment of their personal significance."
The green network is the one that creates the sense of a "self in time", the blue one creates the sense of "self and other". The two yellow centers are core to the entire default mode network. Our brain demonstrates what our daily experiences tell us, that our brains have evolved a "selfing" network to create for us a sense of time and how we progress through it. If "time" were real, would we need a network in our brain to define it for us?
"Time" for me has changed dramatically. When "I" was a Senior Vice President at a Fortune 500 company with deadlines, milestones, "deliverables" with 1,000 folk working for "me", there was a strong sense of "time", as there was a strong sense of "me" needing to do something in/with "time", so that "I" would be successful and be rewarded and not fired. Thoughts about "me" and "my performance" were continuous.
However, in that same job, when "the page turned" and thoughts stopped, and self-referential fears vanished, time "stopped", "fell away", as something that had reality. i still showed up at meetings "on time" when they were supposed to occur, and work proceeded even better than before, now freed of the endless narrative of thought. But without the fear, without the "I", without thoughts, there was just "now, now, now", doing whatever occurred as it arose.
As the "I" has dissolved/dissociated and been absorbed, the "world" has gone from being perceived as fundamentally "real" in every sense of the word, to one that was both "real" and "unreal, a dream", that could be seen in either aspect, like a "Necker Cube". At one moment, "the world" appeared one way and with just a shift in seeing, it would be seen as the other. As the "I' has become more and more absorbed, the predominant "manifestation" of the world is as "unreal".
As the appearance of the "world" is also a construct of the mind, as in the Andrews-Hannah paper, by the "blue" network, which constructs "self and other", then how could time be "real" as it is all "about" the apparent appearances in this "world"?
"Time" and "other" are concepts that our brains create through the "selfing" network that has evolved. This may have some pragmatic value, but, IME, it is all "in the mind".
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| Selfing network - Andrews Hannah |
"These dissociated components contribute differentially to two processes common during spontaneous thought: construction of imagined events and assessment of their personal significance."
The green network is the one that creates the sense of a "self in time", the blue one creates the sense of "self and other". The two yellow centers are core to the entire default mode network. Our brain demonstrates what our daily experiences tell us, that our brains have evolved a "selfing" network to create for us a sense of time and how we progress through it. If "time" were real, would we need a network in our brain to define it for us?
"Time" for me has changed dramatically. When "I" was a Senior Vice President at a Fortune 500 company with deadlines, milestones, "deliverables" with 1,000 folk working for "me", there was a strong sense of "time", as there was a strong sense of "me" needing to do something in/with "time", so that "I" would be successful and be rewarded and not fired. Thoughts about "me" and "my performance" were continuous.
However, in that same job, when "the page turned" and thoughts stopped, and self-referential fears vanished, time "stopped", "fell away", as something that had reality. i still showed up at meetings "on time" when they were supposed to occur, and work proceeded even better than before, now freed of the endless narrative of thought. But without the fear, without the "I", without thoughts, there was just "now, now, now", doing whatever occurred as it arose.
As the "I" has dissolved/dissociated and been absorbed, the "world" has gone from being perceived as fundamentally "real" in every sense of the word, to one that was both "real" and "unreal, a dream", that could be seen in either aspect, like a "Necker Cube". At one moment, "the world" appeared one way and with just a shift in seeing, it would be seen as the other. As the "I' has become more and more absorbed, the predominant "manifestation" of the world is as "unreal".
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| Necker cube |
As the appearance of the "world" is also a construct of the mind, as in the Andrews-Hannah paper, by the "blue" network, which constructs "self and other", then how could time be "real" as it is all "about" the apparent appearances in this "world"?
"Time" and "other" are concepts that our brains create through the "selfing" network that has evolved. This may have some pragmatic value, but, IME, it is all "in the mind".
Gary,
ReplyDeleteYou can get a sense of how time is a human construct by noting that until about 400 years ago, when clocks became reasonably available, there was apparently no concept of a common, universal time that existed everywhere. The nervous system and body generate some natural rhythms which the default mode network picks up on, as you point out. We have invented a series of technologies that make increasingly more consistent rhythms(hour glass, mechanical clock, quartz clock, atomic clock). We call the output of these technologies "time". The concept allows for great efficiencies(we don't have to wait around for each other),and so we organize our lives and society around it. We forget that time is a concept and start accepting it as fundamental and real.
The "Necker Cube" analogy is a good one. Anyone who has had a lucid dream knows, first hand, that waking and dream consciousness are interchangable. Every lucid dream starts with the awareness "This is a dream(!)". The next thought is almost always a variant of "Wait...it can't be...it's too real".
ReplyDeleteThe difference between waking and dream consciousness is that waking consciousness is subject to physical law. The dream world, on the other hand, is composed of nothing but mind. As a result, limitations can only come from the mind. That's why
you can make anything happen in a lucid dream, as long as you maintain awareness that there are no constraints.
One of the most effective techniques for increasing the frequency of lucid dreams is simply to regularly notice the dream-like quality of waking consciousness, i.e., "Neckering" back and forth.
Nice...
ReplyDeleteHi Sandip. Great that you found it useful. The cognitive neuroscience on this is really helpful. Understanding how, and where the brain creates a sense of personal time, allows it to fall away. stillness
DeleteIf one was able to enter a "timeless" state in their mind wouldn't they experience no time? Like a photon.
ReplyDeleteIsn't what we think of as a stillness or "now" really just a sequence of different nows? Which is still a sequence of time events. We still experience our breath and heartbeat and the sensation of "being", which seems to require a series of "now".
When a photon is emitted it's frame of reference should be that it's instantly absorbed, even if it has to travel billions of years and is eventually absorbed in someones telescope. It experiences no time so from it's reference frame it would be emitted and absorbed right away. So isn't that what timeless would actually be like?
Also wouldn't being a coordinate in the Lorentz transformations suggest time is a real dimension? Even though it uses a complex number. There are other real phenomena that are measured with complex numbers.
Hi Anonymous,
DeleteIt really isn't like that. There is just no sense of personal time, of me existing "in time". It is a change in perception, not an alteration of physics. As described in the post and in the recent video "Meditation Works Like Magic Mushrooms?", one exists in a continuous psychedelic/mystical state of "All is One" and "now, now, now".
The "now, now, now" state is heavily neurotransmitter-reinforced with dopamine and endogenous opioids, as the brain strongly prefers it and once established in it, has no interest in being anyplace, or anytime else. There is just no sense of any interest in going into the past to look at memories, or to predict the future. One just eternally is only NOW and here, picosecond by picosecond, fully Present as there is no other place in space/time to be.
If you have access to streaming, there is a good Netflix series out called "Rectify", in which the lead character has been in solitary confinement on death row for 20 years with no possibility of parole. He learns how to live in NOW, rather than "in time" just to deal with his situation. In the first episode, there is a good discussion between himself and his next cell neighbor through the ventilation grate, who is struggling to "do his time" on what this is like. The lead character gets released on DNA evidence, and so he is now trying to learn to "live in time" again.
As far as the Lorentz transformations, Cesium clocks, and photons, there's no violation of physics, just a dramatic modification of perception.
Trust this is useful.
stillness (and living in NOW)
Ok, I see what you are saying. Sounds like if one meditated while on an opiate they could achieve that state quickly. Of course this would lead to obvious problems.
DeleteBut as to some of the objections about time like " As you quoted Steven Hawking, "time" did not exist until after the Big Bang. If time were "real", would we have to have come to some agreement of how we were going to define it? "
Space didn't exist before the big bang in the same sense that time didn't. If it were only a mental construct why would time slow down in an exact mathematical way when things speed up?
What I mean is space-time is considered "real", time is a vector in it, it may well be illusory to us in some way but it seems like it is Something.
If we are quoting Hawking then it should be pointed out that he also believes time was originally a 4th spacial dimension at the origin of the big bang. So whatever it turned into after the start of the big bang, it has to be something otherwise it would violate conservation laws to just vanish.
If you look @ the video "Meditation Works Like Magic Mushrooms?", you'll see how the same loss of the sense of time is generated w/psychedelics, just as it is from nondual meditation.
Deletewe basically have come to an arbitrary, agreed upon way to "measure" time scientifically with the decay of cesium. The Wikipedia article on "time" goes through all of the arguments, philosophical and scientific on time.
It is interesting that the brain evolutionarily developed a neural circuit which is part of the larger "selfing/I-ing" network just to create a sense of us existing "in time". As we know experientially, sometimes time feels like it passes quickly, others not so much. Deactivating the default mode network, and the selfing/I program, which contains the "in time" circuit arguably restores the "natural" situation of living only in "NOW", which is something we believe many other animals do.
stillness
From Andy Hoye: This thread has discussed reality, and by inference, fiction. Gary, you have rejected the reality of time by suggesting that an interdependent neural network has to form to place "us" in "it." And concluded for that reason and others (mainly experiential/anecdotal by you and Ramana) that time is "not real." (I am not disagreeing with the perceived experience of "now, now, now.") But it is useful to recall that the brain has many hardwired, and pathway-defined structures which interface with other things which we conventionally call "real." All the sense organs and their brain components, for example....the capacity to balance on one foot, etc. My point is that just because there is a set of brain cells or organelles dedicated to interfacing with a phenomenon, that fact does not automatically define that phenomenon as "unreal." Or are you suggesting that the neural circuit which condemns time to being fictional can do so simply because it is in the cortex, where I guess we assume that all "thoughts" reside. And that therefore, the "time-thought" is like Ramana's "I-thought?" Thanks again for your remarkable blog.
DeleteHi Andy,
DeleteThe latter part of the post describes the other part of the default mode network that creates the other major illusion, of "self and other". (As it wasn't the focus of the post, it may not be as clear as it could be.) If it is deactivated, then the illusion of there being a world separate from "me" disappears, and everything is seen as "One".
This means that our original perceptions of "the world" as contacted by the senses when there is an "I" there in a subject/object relationship, disappears. The senses still contact the same stimuli, but there is no "I" there to create a story about them. The body still responds "naturally" (and perfectly) to hot and cold, wet and dry, rough and smooth as it has been evolved to do, just w/o the narrator.
we split off from the chimpanzees about 6 million years ago, and our species functioned perfectly in the "natural" world w/o an I/me/my, until the "I/me/my" evolved about 75,000 years ago, a mere eye blink. we don't need the "I" to navigate in the sensory world.
The perception of "the world" that then manifests is the same as what folk get w/the common "serotonergic" psychedelics, like LSD, ayahuasca, psilocybin/magic mushrooms, etc. The recent video "Meditation Works Like Magic Mushrooms?" @ http://youtu.be/JCXQ2syNsKU discusses this in detail, as does the blogpost "magic mushrooms work like meditation? the latest science..."
my ongoing "experience" of "the world" is that it is seen mystically/psychedelically 90% of the time as was shown in the study referenced in that blogpost. The only difference is that w/psychedelics it only lasts as long as the "trip".
Trust this is useful.
stillness
Gary - Accepting no "I/me/my" (easy to do, of course), and so no narrator, and then, the realizing the perceived world as a seamless "one" (seamless meaning there is no 'outside' or 'inside' of 'me'), what is our test for "real?" Yes, RM reminds us that nothing not present in deep dreamless sleep is real. Even accepting that rather steep restriction, how do we support that final test as scientists? If time is not real, why is space real? ... etc... Reality-testing, empirical research, even brain studies ... what claim to they have to reality? -- Andy Hoye
DeleteSee the full reply to this below.
Deletestillness
oops - just read the July 27, 2013 post on the subject of reality...hard to keep up with this big blog -- assume your answers their address my question. -- Andy Hoye
ReplyDeleteHi Andy,
DeleteYes, the blogpost "What is really 'real'? What does "nothing is real" mean?" @ http://happinessbeyondthought.blogspot.com/2013/07/what-is-really-real-what-does-nothing.html gives, IMHO, a useful discussion on "reality". There is little that i could add to that post.
FYI, this blog is on a Google platform, and the search box at the upper right is a fully-enabled "search". If you put, for example, "reality" in the search box, 7 different posts appear from the 243 that exist, including the one mentioned above.
The blog was intended as a ongoing "resource", and many folk use it that way. A folk in a recent Liberation Unleashed response string to requests for the best book for folk beginning to work with nonduality, listed this blog. With over 497,000 page views (cumulative), folk are finding it useful.
stillness