Is time real or an illusion?

[peky]

Our physical world changes in a constant manner that is predictive. It is apparent we are all meant to witness the same messages. It is us who perceive and interpret the messages differently. That is the non-constant in the equation.



Many people may not believe in God but in the beginning God said let there be light. He spoke it and when you speak something you have a destination in mind to hear your words. We are the destination (observer) and he is the source of the information. How we interpret and store the information may differ but we all see the same message.

http://sciencefocus.com/qa/time-real-or-illusion

[StellaB]

Only that what is abstract and not concrete is relative to perception.

Time is relative to perception, as is the truth.

Science cannot agree on a definition of the truth.

There are at least five truths.

The truth you tell yourself about yourself.
The truth you tell someone else about you.
The truth you tell yourself about someone else.
The truth you tell someone else about them.
The truth you tell everybody about everything.

When we look at a clock and use it as a guide we can all agree on how long an hour is.

Ah but when you ask someone to estimate how long an hour is to them without using a clock, that's when we start to differ.

[Anatta]

Our physical world changes in a constant manner that is predictive. It is apparent we are all meant to witness the same messages. It is us who perceive and interpret the messages differently. That is the non-constant in the equation.



Many people may not believe in God but in the beginning God said let there be light. He spoke it and when you speak something you have a destination in mind to hear your words. We are the destination (observer) and he is the source of the information. How we interpret and store the information may differ but we all see the same message.

Kia Ora Peky,

As this really got anything to do with Buddhism ? But any way...... 


" The concept of Time is the brain's[or Mother nature's] way of preventing everything from happening at once !"

John Archibald Wheeler,


Everything that has and will happen is happening 'NOW' There's "No Other Way!" to experience true reality...


Quote/s
Buddha said "Life is ever changing, moment to moment. The only constant is change". So if the world is constantly in flux, hurtling towards unpredictable possibilities, and since the past is irrevocably gone, then all we have for certain is NOW! So why not cherish what we have? Why not live in the moment?

The mind, which was pure and uncontaminated at birth gets contaminated or conditioned due to the activation of 'kilesas'[ mental states that cloud the mind and manifest in unwholesome actions.], resulting from continues external contacts with the sense organs. This conditioning is so strong that the mind would get accustomed to the process and accepts time as the primary factor for its function. In the process, the mind would lose its original pure quality, which would have lasted only a few months since birth. With the conditioning, the 'present' gets clouded by the past and thereby deny experiencing of the present timeless moment. Instead, mind identifies objects within the time frame with 'Names' and 'Forms'. This is the delusion resulting from ignorance (avijja) .

However, this 'ignorance' is quite different to the traditionally understood ignorance. It is simply the inability of the mind to see its own process. This ignorance that caused the conditioning to start with now dominates and would last throughout our life. We experience the natural outcome of this process as real at every moment in our life, i.e., we are forced to view the world through the window of this ignorance.

Maintenance of mindfulness is essential to experience the simultaneous arising and ceasing, the reality. It has to be a continuous mindfulness. Once the mindfulness as a non-self has reached maturity, then the ceasing (nirodha) of a thought will be experienced within the arising (samuda) through wisdom at an unexpected moment. At that moment the Four Foundations of Mindfulness is completed, cessation of perception and ending of the mind experienced on realisation of ceto vimutti, non-existence of a self realised, four Noble Truths realised and enter in to the Noble Eightfold path.

This is the vision and dawn of the wisdom or Buddhahood, which does not die. In fact it is the freeing from a thought for a moment. In the next moment cause and effect activates as before, but having realised the non-existence of a self, the mind process activates with wisdom and does not lead to personalisation. The Awakened one lives in the conventional world with wisdom until the physical body decays and dies. Because the 'self' was given up or depersonalised completely upon awakening, there is no identification of the self with the physical body anymore, and there is no self to grow old, fall sick and die.

Shakespeare said "I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space." Well, we're all bound by the constraints of time but if we learn to live in the moments, instead of the years; then we can come one step closer to that Buddha nature that lives between 'Tick' and 'Tock'!"


Metta Zenda

[MadelineB]

The comparing of constant change vs. the unchanging, of mundane vs. transcendent, of temporal vs. eternal, is a typical contrast in western philosophies and religions. Two concepts are abstracted and set at odds with each other.

At the very least, a more typically eastern view would ask whether anything changes constantly, or if the illusion of change is created in part by perception bias; we notice change, we fail to notice nonchange, so we see change everywhere, when change is rare and always flows from the deeper nature of the thing

There are as many Buddhist approaches to time as there are Buddhists. Probably more, since holding more than one approach to any given subject "at a time" is a Buddhist hallmark.

My own view points are simple.

Is time real? Yes.
Is it an Illusion? Yes.
Is it more real than other things that we perceive? No.
Is it more illusory than other things that we perceive? No.
Does it exist without perception or measurement? As much as we do but no more.

Time (as a concept) is a tool, a useful tool for doing useful things and thinking useful thoughts.

Change happens, but so does nonchange, and if time is to have any meaning it must incorporate both phenomena without prejudice.

Time as a REAL THING THAT IS SO REAL THAT IT IS ITS OWN THING quacks like a duck, and everyone knows that ducks are illusions.

[Nero]

Time is a social construct to punish the chronically late (not to mention the procrastinators like me right now.)

[Ms. OBrien CVT]

The Doctor explains how time works.

[Anatta]

Time is a social construct to punish the chronically late (not to mention the procrastinators like me right now.)

Kia Ora NSFA,

But I like it 

Metta Zenda

[Jamie D]

Time is a fundamental property of nature.  It is quantifiable and irreducible.

[Anatta]

Time is a fundamental property of nature.  It is quantifiable and irreducible.

Kia Ora Jamie,

True....
Quote from an old thread

Does a clock tell 'time' ? Or are we just measuring the 'space' between its hands - the space between objects?

I read somewhere that time is just a concept we humans use to measure the space found between objects...

Over the years we have been conditioned to believe that time really exists, however time [so it would seem] is just the mind's 'gap filler' for the space in between things/experiences...

Metta Zenda

[Anatta]

The Doctor explains how time works.

Kia Ora Ms O,

Have you got the Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey ?

Metta Zenda

[Ms. OBrien CVT]

Of course.   And my sonic screwdriver and my towel.

[Anatta]

The comparing of constant change vs. the unchanging, of mundane vs. transcendent, of temporal vs. eternal, is a typical contrast in western philosophies and religions. Two concepts are abstracted and set at odds with each other.

At the very least, a more typically eastern view would ask whether anything changes constantly, or if the illusion of change is created in part by perception bias; we notice change, we fail to notice nonchange, so we see change everywhere, when change is rare and always flows from the deeper nature of the thing

There are as many Buddhist approaches to time as there are Buddhists. Probably more, since holding more than one approach to any given subject "at a time" is a Buddhist hallmark.

My own view points are simple.

Is time real? Yes.
Is it an Illusion? Yes.
Is it more real than other things that we perceive? No.
Is it more illusory than other things that we perceive? No.
Does it exist without perception or measurement? As much as we do but no more.

Time (as a concept) is a tool, a useful tool for doing useful things and thinking useful thoughts.

Change happens, but so does nonchange, and if time is to have any meaning it must incorporate both phenomena without prejudice.

Time as a REAL THING THAT IS SO REAL THAT IT IS ITS OWN THING quacks like a duck, and everyone knows that ducks are illusions.

Kia Ora Madeline,

"Form is Emptiness-Emptiness is Form !"

Metta Zenda

[kelly_aus]

To quote Douglas Adams, 'Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.'

And yes, I know where my towel is.

[Jess42]

Someone with a great mental capacity once said that the past, present and future happen or are happening simultaneously. If you sit and really think about it, the present is all that we physically exist in, the past and future both are only mental events. We "remember" the past, and "dream" the future. How many people I wonder can remember the future? I know we have all experienced Deja Vu at one time or another.

Linear time as in a beginning and an end, I believe is just an illusion tied to minute cycles and much greater cycles of the movement of heavenly bodies. Our perceptions of time, minutes, hours, days, years and so on is tied solely to our planets rotation and revoloution around our home star. One day on earth is different than a day on Mars. It's all relative as to what planet your on.

Einstien theorised that the closer to the speed of light one achieves the farther into the future unchanged by age that person would become. What happens if we can acheive a speed beyond 186,000 miles per second? Do we go backward into the past?

We do know that gravity bends light. This was discovered during a total eclipse that a star was visible next to the sun that should have been blocked by the sun. The light from that star was bent by gravity by the sun and was visible. Does gravity effect time? Outside of a gravitational field such as a solar system or galaxy does time even exist? If gravity bends light, is what we see of our universe an actual pysicality or is that too just an illusion warped by gravity?

Me personally, I think time is an illusion to measure mankinds deeds. I don't neccisarlily believe in the Big Bang theory as much as I believe what is has always been and will always be. I believe that the Big Bang is just another explaination of mankinds incessent need for a perception of a beginning and an end. And yes, I know at this point in time ( pun intended) that the Universe is seemingly expanding. And yes I know that stars die and are reborn but that is just another great cycle.

[peky]

kia ora fellow time travelers   

Australian writer and physicist Paul Davis has called time Einstein's unfinished revolution. Einstein was
first to introduce the concept of slowing of time with motion and in gravity. He was also a proponent of block
universe view of time in which past present and future all coexist together laid out as a dimension on a time
line.  The Greek philosopher Aristotle had speculated that time may be related to motion; he however added
that motion could be slower or faster but not time. Aristotle did not have the privilege of knowing about
Einstein's relativity in which time also becomes amenable to change. Similarly when Einstein published his
theory of General Relativity and proposed the revolutionary idea relating time to curvature in space he did not
know that the universe was expanding. This discovery by astronomer Edwin Hubble came thirteen years later.
One of the most dramatic aspects of the universe is that it is expanding and the presence of motion, forces and
curved space-time happens in the expanding space. 

      The two main concepts of time are presentism and the block universe view of time. In presentism view of
time only present is real while past and future do not exist and passage of time is just an illusion. Presentism
may appear more intuitive however the block universe view is more popular among physicists and is supported
by heavy weights in physics like Einstein. In block universe view time is laid out as a time-scape. This is based
on theory of special relativity and an interpretation of Lorentz transformation equations called the Rietdijk–
Putnam argument. Physicist Roger Penrose advanced another variation of this argument called the Andromeda
paradox. These paradoxes and anomalies arise from lack of simultaneity due to Einstein's postulate of
constancy of the speed of light in theory of special relativity. There is no free will in the block universe of time.
All times in past and future already exist. There is however no explanation of lack of visitors from a futuristic
technologically advanced civilization. Block universe also cannot explain what causes us to move through time
towards the future and why we cannot willfully move back and forth through this time-scape.  Neither of the two
views on time can explain what time really is and what the cause of time is.

http://www.timephysics.com/


Metta Peky 

[peky]

Time appears to be related to change which is apparent to us through presence of motion and forces at
macro as well as micro level. Present is like a sharp point of a recording needle and it gives us the most real
feel of time.  Present does not have a measurable duration although we can measure the passage of time. Past
and future are durations that can be measured although they cannot be accessed. This suggests that our
perception of time as past present and future may just be an illusion created by our mind as it tries to make
sense of changing world around us.  Similarity in the time characteristic of past present and future in fictional
stories as well as real historic events  again points toward past being just a memory.

Interesting, time is a biological construct, and more important the "mindfulness in the present" is but an illusion...

food for thought.....

[Jess42]

Have you ever really noticed the passage of our percieved time. When you are interested in something or having a good time or conversation with someone, the minutes fly by. When you are bored or uninterested or just waiting for something, the minutes, hours and days drag by. The same amount of time goes by, the planet don't change the speed of it's rotation, but we percieve either a faster or slower movement of time.

[peky]

Have you ever really noticed the passage of our percieved time. When you are interested in something or having a good time or conversation with someone, the minutes fly by. When you are bored or uninterested or just waiting for something, the minutes, hours and days drag by. The same amount of time goes by, the planet don't change the speed of it's rotation, but we percieve either a faster or slower movement of time.

yes, our perception of time is relative to many things (drugs, emotional state, etc)

The point of this thread was to bring to the table the idea thats since the true perception of time is present or future, as the present is but an illusion, then we can say that we live in the past while projecting ourselves into the future

[Anatta]

Interesting, time is a biological construct, and more important the "mindfulness in the present" is but an illusion...

food for thought.....

Kia Ora Peky,

Life is but an illusion [including time & mentally constructed gods]...And mindfulness is just the unpolluted awareness of this....

However if one has not 'experienced' mindfulness in its pure form [non-self]  then of course, in the conventional sense, mindfulness would seem like an illusion...The past is an illusion and so is the future and to speculate on what one has yet to experience ie mindfulness [a future event] is having to use ones imagination which is just an 'illusion'...

"Awareness is fundamentally non-conceptual - before thinking splits experience into subject and object. It is empty and so contains everything, including 'thought'. It is boundless. And amazingly , it is intrinsically 'KNOWING' !" 

More food for thought , but remember "Thought itself is the thinker!"

Now "I" could be wrong but only 'time' will tell....

Metta Zenda

[Misato]

Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin, into the future.