Time Past and Time Future are both….

8 thoughts on “Time Past and Time Future are both….”

1. In your ear, so not a soul in the Court will hear – ‘as you said, they can’t face the possibly of having been wrong all along. They only see their own reflection in the glass ceiling, they won’t bet on what they perceive as illusion. Most people like collectively approved facts they can invest in, and it’s usually money that makes facts. If I had funds to spare I’d publicise Involution to the point of irresistible, bloody bumping-into-fact.’

   Googling Philippa’s dilemma, I came upon this: Odysseus was forced to choose which monster to confront while passing through the strait; he opted to pass by Scylla and lose only a few sailors, rather than risk the loss of his entire ship in the whirlpool.

   Back to the point, publically, as appointed Jury foreman/human/woman/manwo, after having entranced my colleagues, I’ll stand tall and do the soap speech, ‘Don’t condemn this book, it is ahead of its time. It contains a secret only a minority can afford to recognise in the present climate, a secret that will improve the intelligence of humans and enrich this planet. And one day soon you can claim this was partly due to your wise judgement.’

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   1. I don’t normally do the ‘hugs”kisses’ thing but here I am tempted! So Sophia can I take that as a majority verdict? Speak up, you others, or nod your heads! More luscious gossip to reward you for a ‘Yes’. Avanti (in a week or so).

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2. Hi Philippa: I don’t have time to comment more thoughtfully and at length right now, being in traveling mode, presently in Chicago all discombobulated with family, but I watched the fascinating clip you posted here and read Ashen’s (as usual) excellent comment. Each of us cutting a slice off of the bread-loaf of space-time, past, present and future in fact an illusion, the bread-loaf being in reality an organic whole. It brought to mind Brian George’s eloquent comment on my blog about his understanding of the labyrinth: “There is one path, and there is no way to get lost. At the same time, we must go out in order to go in and back in order to go forward. Just as we are nearing the center, we must swing way out to the circumference. To extend the topology a bit further, we must go down in order to go up. This means that all of our positive and negative experiences are very intimately bound together. From a linear viewpoint, we tend to think that our experiences are either good or bad, that something is either a virtue or a vice, a strength or a weakness, and that significant punctuations in our life’s rhythm are either a blessing or a curse. If we contemplate the implications of the topology of the labyrinth, we may come to realize that our understanding of such opposites may be limited, at best. Appearances to the contrary, our lives have an overall shape, and it is up to us to figure out how all of the contradictory elements fit together. Is there really any difference between an obstacle and a door? The very thing that seems to block us may be the key to our transformation.”

   Poetry at the height of its intensity, freed of constraint, becoming profoundly or sublimely musical, is interesting to consider in relation to quotidian usage of words and language, which doesn’t fly or “time travel” but ambles along or even crawls. Quotidian language operates in large part linearly and under the illusion of “Man-made” time – past, present, and future. Much of society and the workplace is arranged around this Man-made understanding of time. Poetry carries in itself, in the fullness of its unfolding, the human mind breaking through its casing, opening like a seed and sprouting, ascending and flourishing, the understanding of space-time described in the clip you posted, and which correlates to Brian George’s understanding of the labyrinth.

   A clash, a wandering in the wilderness, is inevitable for all artists, thinkers ahead of their “time”, or anyone who unfolds into the distant future, which circles around to the distant past and connects in the eternal Now, all of it understood as a whole. The understanding is hard to maintain at all times, and causes severe difficulties on an intimate, interpersonal level. Franz Kafka diary entry, January 16′ 1922: “…breakdown, impossible to sleep, impossible to stay awake, impossible to endure life, or, more exactly, the course of life. The clocks are not in unison; the inner one runs crazily on at a devilish or demoniac or in any case inhuman pace, the outer one limps along at its usual speed. What else can happen but that the two worlds split apart, and they do split apart, or least clash in a fearful manner.”

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   1. If you are so eloquent in travelling mode John, you’d better just keep moving! A very nice extension of the implications of that film, tying in Brian’s labyrinth and poetry as somewhat free of linearity, even while obedient to the constraints of word usage. Joe Linker posted a comment about ‘The Fall was into Language’ which was most apt in the light of yours above.

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3. Your conclusion is a misreading and misunderstanding of the video. It is not that the future exists and is determined for us, but that slice of the now cuts across the loaf and takes time to travel. The future is much as we think, an infinite number of possibilities that have not yet been actualized. See http://heliosliterature.com/2015/03/20/infinity-and-the-mobius-universe/

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4. Granted it was carelessly expressed Ken. What I meant to imply was that the actualisation (of thought) does take what we think of as ‘time’ but the thought that creates is already latent. The trial of the book has been to illustrate the pre-disposition of witnesses whose conclusions arise from the ground of what each already believes. I have watched your excellent ‘infinity and the mobius universe’. Increasingly I find that intellectual or conceptual images although vivid and creative only change the understanding of those again ‘pre-disposed.’ to grasp them.

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5. John Docus, discombobulation is a wonderful thing, and yet, although I feel lacking in it at the moment, maybe I won’t be yesterday, as I may well have done tomorrow… Now!

   One of the things I tend to dislike about scientific experimentation is that, over ‘time’, it tends to turn inward on itself, and, in doing so, draws down the hatches. And, ‘before long’, it can no longer see the wood for the trees. ‘Scientists’ – or those inclined to such tendencies – tend, then, to become indignant about how the rest of us are sometimes able to dismiss certain ‘discoveries’ for possessing, quite naturally, a view of the larger picture. I noticed that someone’s view was dismissed by the author of the youtube clip for merely having stated that there is no such thing as time. And there lies a great irony – a human concept, by the way, is irony – in such a dismissal, and not only for the fact that ‘time’ is also no more than a mere human concept…. as is the universe. Think about it.

   To add my piece, then, as a member of the jury, I’ll say that as far back as I can recall – way back, to wearing shorts as a child; or is this still with me, as it will be tomorrow? – my father would tell me – or does he still? – that there is no such thing as time; that there is only now. I believed him then, I believe him ‘now’, and I think I always will.

   But let’s face it, it makes for fascinating research, and again always will. Furthermore, I trust my dear friend Philippa to go about the subject in a much finer manner than a dry, scientific approach, and, yes, we ARE a chosen few, privileged to read her work – you, Philippa, you!

   I for one will be buying the book and reviewing it – no freebies, Philippa, thank you.

   As for the idea of ‘time’ being a misnomer or misconception – at least via the human concept of past, present and future – I’ve always believed Kurt Vonnegut was saying just that in his Slaughterhouse 5…

   Over to you.

   Brilliant stuff, Phillippa.

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   1. Thank you Chris for the vote of, not so much confidence, but belief. I think my attempt to rub the lamp and watch the genie rise will always be open to caveats and carving, if not carping. If I were claiming any authority that would probably worry me. I merely hoped to divert with an alternative journey, and let it ring true ( if it does) melodiously (if it does) or provoke others to sharpen intellectual knives and do better.

      One can hardly claim authority across the spectrum of history, philosophy and quantum theory. I just perceived a pattern that implied ‘Akashic’ memory, and memory’s recovery and in that recovery’s transfer perhaps the explanation of time, creativity, and other seeming divisions (Soul/Reason;Mind/matter; Man/God (or consciousness) NOW lies in the hinge between thought and creation or manifestation.

      I will be happy to be proved wrong, less than punctilious, or bettered by refinements. I simply delivered a kind of vision, and irritated a fair few in the language I chose. As will be evidenced in the next trial session!

      Thank you for joining us on the hard benches.

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