In case the memo hasn’t reached you yet: time is an illusion.
Yeah, not kidding.
I know, I know, by now this is old news.
Yaaawn.
Everyone seems to know time is an illusion. Even your religious relatives don’t consider it heresy to meddle with the concept of time.
Yes, that’s right. Time is lying on the floor, beaten, and your relatives are kicking it. You almost can’t believe it. But then again, good for them.
Time is one of those buggers that has weaseled itself into the human experience and set up permanent camp. The reason why it can do that without the landlord minding is that it’s pretty useful. It’s what makes sure all the children are on time and play dates are not missed.
You might wag your finger now and say that time is not a complete illusion. Things are moving, changing — the sky’s color, your skin’s texture, your favorite song. So time is simply the concept we use to describe and measure and categorize this very real movement.
So what you’re telling me is that time is only a half-illusion.
A complete illusion is a holographic image appearing out of nowhere, nothing conjuring it. A half-illusion is a holographic image being projected from a high-tech device hidden behind a rock.
A complete illusion doesn’t have an identifiable source. A half-illusion does.
Okay, now the only question left is, do I agree with your verdict that time is a half-illusion?
Sure. Kind of.
Yes, we can say that change is real. So change is the high-tech device projecting the holographic image. Change is changeless — the only constant. We don’t know anything but change. Some might say that there is this changeless part amidst all the change and that’s the real part.
While this is alright as a stepping stone, it still makes a distinction between change and not change. But change doesn’t have an opposite, as Marcel would say. A conceptual opposite, sure. But an immediate experiential opposite, nope. And why is that?
Because change is the immediate experience.
The changeless is change; the change is changeless.
It might sound like a contradiction but it’s actually the dissolving of a contradiction. I did all the negating and double negating to indicate that we’re speaking about something unspeakable.
Anyway, so if we want to use the word time to indicate the lack of standstill in experience that is fine. In the conceptual world of our shared humanity, shit happens — suns rise, waves crash, we die.
What I mean here is time represents the duration of an appearance. That is what we might call cosmological time.
Time in this sense isn’t a problem at all. If there were a standstill — no suns rising, no waves crashing, no we dying — nothing would appear and we’d be done here. Klappe zu, Affe tot. (The literal translation for this German idiom is “Flap shut, monkey dead.” It means something like “Curtain down, show’s over.”)
The Problem of Time
In what sense is time a problem?
In the psychological sense.
Most of us think in temporal contexts all day long. We think about the past and we think about the future and we think about how the past will affect the future and we project our fulfillment and happiness onto the future and we think about how the past is to blame for the present, etc., etc.
This kind of thinking inevitably creates an entity that moves through time. And when you’re an entity bound to the concept of time, then everything is awfully linear. To get from A to E, you have to pass through B, C, and D.
But if you don’t create this artificial limitation, then your experience can move in a wholly different way — non-linear. Then you open the potential of a wormhole taking you straight from A to E.
You might be skeptical about what I’m saying here. It all sounds too… magical? unrealistic? crazy?
It might seem abstract but I’m sure you’ve experienced moments of this. You suddenly got what you wanted in a way you couldn’t have foreseen and without all the parts you thought needed to happen first.
—
Let me insert an example from my own life:
About 2 years ago I traveled to Colombia and I wanted to ride motorbikes. I had ridden bikes before so I knew how to ride and I knew that it was great fun.
The issue was I had no money to buy or rent one long-term. I also had no motorbike license.
At first glance, these seem like substantial hindrances. But I didn’t worry about how I could make it happen. I’d seen before that when I stop insisting on the ‘how,’ things unfold in ways I could never predict. I treated it as a done deal and let higher intelligence sort out the details.
So I stopped thinking about it and enjoyed my travels. At some point I was chilling in this little restaurant in the jungle with a friend I made. She was browsing a volunteering website — people can volunteer in hostels and other local businesses for room and sometimes board.
I peeked at her phone and saw the image of a motocross. I kindly asked her to unhand her device and let me see.
A motorbike rental and tour service was looking for help with website and SEO stuff for room and motorbike. I can help! is what I thought. So instead of signing up for this website, I unearthed the location, went there, told the owner I could help, and without a second lost, he gave me a bike and place to sleep and months of motorbike adventure across Colombia unfolded from there.
I rode different kinds of bikes into all kinds of places. Helped out with the business. Was taken on epic tours. Learned about motos. Made new friends. Had a fun time.
Imagine I had insisted on the steps that need to come first: make money, get license, find rental/seller, and probably a bunch of other bureaucratic and administrative tasks.
This is just one example of many. I’m telling this story not to flex but so that you may recognize similar unfoldments in your life.
And as you can see it’s not a story to prove that time doesn’t exist. Obviously, every story needs the time element to tell itself. The point of this story is to show that our notions of time and linearity don’t always match the actual unfolding of events. And the looser your notion of such temporal things is the more possibilities are available.
—
I’d never try to talk anyone out of their skepticism. I’m also not encouraging to battle time like it’s some enemy. That’s what most of us do in daily life — always running against the clock.
What I like to do instead is take my magnifying glass, and hold it against the subject at hand — in this case time — in such a way that the sun’s rays are funneled into a laser-like beam, until the subject — still time — bursts into flames and burns until there’s nothing left but ashes.
So yeah, let’s do that.
Time, in the way we think about it 99 and then some % of the time, is a concept. Every concept has its counterpart, which in time’s case is eternity. And interdependent counterparts can’t have a separate existence.
To let myself make the point, all in good style:
“To put it differently, what we are is eternity (awareness) that is aware of time (appearance). But eternity and time are not different from each other. So what we really are is the absence of both, which is not different from their apparent presence.” — from, Finding the Truth of You
Time can be a conceptual prison like no other. And not only for spiritual seekers who put all their divine eggs into the hopefully-I’ll-be-enlightened-in-the-future basket. But also every other human who has a dream or a goal and assumes they know all the necessary preceding steps for the dream or goal to fulfill itself.
If you want a shortcut, I have good news for you.
There is no shortcut.
How is that good news?
The good news is in why there is no shortcut. There is no shortcut because there is no time. Shortcuts depend on the concept of time. If that isn’t the shortest cut ever, then I don’t know.
What Is Time? No Really, like What Is It?
Sure, the you you think you are might be subordinate to time for the simple reason that the you you think you are is created in thought. The moment you think about you, you have conjured time — thinking creates time.
You are creating time by creating yourself.
And when your identity is tangled up in thoughts it’s also tangled up in time. You’re creating mental sequences of events and putting yourself inside these events. Depending on your specific thought entanglement you might feel stuck or like time is moving too fast or slow or or or.
If you cease thinking for a moment, then where or what is time?
There is only this flow of experience. Does the question, “How long is this flow of experience?” make any sense?
It would only make sense if there was another flow of experience. Is there another?
The interpretation of this flow of experience or the cutting up of this flow into multiple flows happens only through conceptualizing and isn’t part of the immediate experience itself. Of course the interpretation or the cutting up doesn’t change anything about this flow or actually cuts it up; it just creates bite-sized parts so the mind doesn’t choke to death. Let it choke.
It’s all really straightforward.
Right now, in your direct experience, try to find time. Don’t point at the clock. Don’t describe events that “prove” its existence. Try to find it in its pure essence, not in its apparent effects. Like, what is it?
Of course you will fail to find it. You can look under every thought, every sensation, every event. Heck, you can even look under your bed. (Bonus points if you do it for every thing.) All you ever find is the devastation in its wake, but never the thing itself. Why?
Because it doesn’t exist in the way we think it does.
Now it’s just a matter of facing the implications and ramifications. Those can be quite intimidating. Some of them seem rather naughty.
For example,
No time means the past and the future and even the present don’t exist. Which means nothing but this immediate experiencing exists.
No time means no separate entity existing in it.
No time means no space because the perception of 3D space depends on a 4th dimension called time.
No time means cause and effect aren’t absolute.
No time means that everything you’ve ever sought can only be here and that your spiritual quest is over and all promised spiritual boons are right here.
No time means this, here, now is all that is and is absolute perfection.
Contemplating this is like hopping into a fun water slide that turns into an endless free fall around the first corner. Make sure to hold on to your hat.
There are benefits to loosening time’s conceptual bind. One has to sprinkle one or two grains of salt onto it. But yes, life can change in interesting ways.
Nonlinear Living
Many of us have very linear ways of going about life and getting the things we want. Linear thinking is useful at times but often it’s limiting. It is limited by a fixed view of the sequence of events. Remember our earlier mention of wormholes?
In linear thinking you have to start from A, and to get to C you have to pass through B.
In nonlinear thinking you don’t even have to start at A; jump right to Y, or 36, or potato salad.
Linear thinking tells you to have your castle you have to erect it by placing one stone after another over a long time, hopefully resulting in the perfect castle. Nonlinear thinking tells you the castle already exists, potentially around the next corner.
A lot of things become possible in unexpected ways when you stop insisting on them having to unfold a certain way. (I hope my motorbike story was a good example.)
Before you reject this as some unrealistic wishful thinking, think about what I’m trying to point to here. If time doesn’t exist in the way we assume, then it makes sense that things don’t always have to unfold in a predictable, linear way. Sometimes, events seem to “break the rules,” not as anomalies, but as glimpses into a deeper pattern we rarely notice.
What if these events aren’t exceptions but a natural consequence of a more flexible reality?
Everyone, including you, has experienced the consequences of a more flexible reality. We have experienced odds- and reason-defying moments. What we usually do is explain them away as once-in-a-lifetime events. Sometimes we even completely overlook them. Why would we do that?
For two reasons:
- It allows us to explain away something we don’t understand (the odd-defying moment) with something else we don’t understand (luck).
- Somewhere deep down we feel like we’re not worthy to deserve unearned blessings so we have to treat them as an exception, a gift of divine providence.
I’m not saying try to wield the timeless like a tool for your personal gain. What I’m saying is, pay attention to these moments more closely. Stop using time to condition the timeless and then watch what happens.
What if miracles, synchronicities, manifestations aren’t quirky little bugs in the system, but glimpses into a deeper, more fundamental way of being? What if those are invitations to open up your aperture and allow a more subtle and nuanced and magical view of things in?
Many ancient and modern mystical teachings do not talk only about how to awaken from the dreamstate we call our lives but also about the mechanics of this dreamstate. And removing the linchpin that is time is useful for both of these endeavors.
Instead of projecting the thing you desire — happiness, freedom, love, enlightenment, etc. — into the future, which doesn’t exist, claim it now in its experiential essence. Suddenly, the desired things might show themselves in surprising ways without the many preliminary steps your mind was convinced were needed.
You might also stop wanting things so much because what is there to want that isn’t here?
Everything is here. Where else would it be?
Think about this statement until it clicks: Everything I need is here.
As much as I try to be metaphysically accurate in talking about this stuff, it’s not just something to talk and think about. It’s my experience and it’s your experience. It’s existential and true existential thought is experiential. If it isn’t experiential, it isn’t existential.
So the invitation here is not to join your relatives and start kicking time (not the worst family-bonding activity though). It’s not to see time as an evil limiting force you must overcome for your life to make sense. The invitation is to see time for what it is — a concept unfolding in awareness — and see how this affects the quality of your life.
You can’t think time to death. But right now you can step out of it.
And by stepping out of it, you’re stepping into the endless moment that harbors all possibilities.
Luka
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