Time and Eternity: Creating "Time Objects"

We know that "Eternity isn't just a long long time":  it's not time at all.  Eternity is timeless.  Eternity isn't a measure of time, it's outside of time. 

Time doesn't pass in the eternity:  eternity is always Now, and Now is always eternal.  "Now" isn't a split second of time between past and future;  it's the place outside time in which past and future reside.  Now is bigger than time.  The place where time doesn't pass -- the eternal Now -- creates and contains time. 

"Now" -- eternity -- is the place outside time where time is made. 

In the place outside time, there is no past or future.  Any specific series of events -- this then that, first, second, third, before and after -- lose their sequence when viewed from outside:  they are all together in a single unit, all individually represented but not strung out in order.  The beginning and the end and the middle are right there together at the same "time".  All the events exist "at once".  They are a single object:  a "time object".

A time object has attributes:  how long it takes (how much time it includes);  what event happens first, what happens next;  which thing seems (from inside its time) to be a cause, and which seems to be an effect, and on and on -- all these are attributes of the time object as a whole.  All these attributes exist equally "at once", since the time that it takes the individual events to happen sequentially is just another attribute of the time object as a whole.

Since there is no "before and after" in a time object, there can't be cause and effect, either.  Cause and effect needs there to be time, in order to make any sense at all:  in the normal world of time, event A can cause B only if A comes before B (even by a tiny amount).  If (by being outside time) we can see them both exist together, and neither exists before the other (because they both have an existence in a time object, outside time), we can't say one causes the other.  In their normal time, A comes before B and causes it;  when viewed from outside time, they both exist together, neither exists before the other, and there's no causation.


Time objects don't form themselves.  In normal time, things happen, but they don't always get assembled into time objects.  Time objects are created by conscious observation -- by someone intentionally looking at them.  But in order to make a time object, one has be outside time, to do the looking.

From outside time, it's possible to create and form a time object by setting its parameters:  choosing a beginning time and an ending, observing a set of actions in that time, deciding on a result and a cause.  Creating a time object with all its attributes is what entangles those attributes so that they all exist together.  Once entangled in an object, the effect exists before the cause gets around to causing it, the end result is known at the beginning, and unrelated events at different places are all mixed into each other.  Once a time object is created, everything in the object exists together, inseparable.  But it takes the attention of a consciousness to make a time object.  (Science experiments see this as an observation "collapsing a wave function", and those experiments show the same non-causality we would expect of time objects:  conscious intentional observation can affect past events.)


Being outside time might not seem normal to us, but that state of consciousness is not completely unknown:  we call it a "religious experience".  It can come with a clear conviction of being one with everything, of oneness with another person, or with nature, or with God.  There is often an overwhelmed sense of bliss and universal love.  Or it can feel like openness, an understanding that anything is possible.  Sometimes it comes as a complete and certain knowledge of things that can't normally be known, such as seeing a series of events all at once, even the parts that haven't happened yet.

But being outside time doesn't have to involve a religious experience;  it can be even more common:  when we get so passionately immersed in an activity that "time stands still" and the world seems to slow down and stop, or maybe "time flies" and we suddenly find it's hours later, we intuitively understand that we've been messing with normal time.  Stopping time is the goal of some kinds of meditation, and the side effect of some kinds of psychoactive drugs.  And there are powerful kinds of wishing, dreaming, visualizing, praying, imagining, even predicting, that can all involve crossing over into timelessness, even for a moment.  So all these normal activities, when done with deep intention, can create time objects and so transcend time, cause and effect, and other normal laws of nature.


Of course, "outside time" isn't just outside time;  it's outside spacetime.  So just as there is no time in eternity, there is no place either (at least in the way we normally think of place).


That we can live partly outside time isn't surprising; in fact, it would be astonishing if we couldn't.  Here's why:

We know that a person is a physical body but also a non-physical spirit or soul.  The soul comes into a body, keeps it company for a while, and then leaves.  A soul that has no body is obviously outside our normal physical reality:  it lives in the "place" we've been calling eternity.  But a soul doesn't quit living in eternity while it's with a body;  a person's body is in the physical world and their soul is in the eternal world, their whole life.  We all live in time and outside time, all the time.  When a person is "being" their spirit, identifying as their spiritual "higher self", then they are outside time.


This all has nothing to do with religion.  There's plenty of scientific evidence that our four dimensional spacetime isn't all there is, that time is not such a fundamental basis of all physics as we thought it was.  And there's plenty of incontrovertible proof that a person is more than the physical body, that a person can do things and have an existence which is not allowed by the four dimensional limits of a body.  So if science studies what is, then this whole discussion is squarely in the realm of science, as well as spirituality.

True, some religions have tremendous insights into this subject matter, but many do not.  Those that do, however, take the experience of living in eternity way way beyond intellectual knowledge:  those mystical religions reveal a practice of transcendence far beyond simply living outside time, a way of being which is unavailable to understanding.

To the God of my god
The Presence that cradles time
Love beyond love
Understanding beyond wisdom from all error
Source of the source of my courage
Untouchable health of a healer's healer
Untouchable life of a death
Bliss beyond joy
Life of the life of my life:
I say only
(simply)
Amen!