This is how I envisage time...

We are standing on a huge sphere, alone, and infront of us is a doorway, we can see through this doorway to a long road stretching out into the distance on the other side of it...so we walk through the door and walk the road because there doesnt seem to be much else to do right?

We walk this long pathway until we come to the same door yet we are on the other side of it.

Now are we in the past, are we in the future? or both? and it was just the journey that confused the sh*t out of us?

Whoa that's umm.. in depth. So what you're basically saying is that we keep walking round to the same door? That doesn't make sense because in OUR being we only ever live the same moment once, not that there isn't a seperate plane of existence in which we are living the same moment again.

No its symbolic, its an analogy used to describe how I think time works. In a way yes we only experience a moment once, as in our physical body does, but when we start going into the concept of perception and even astral, we're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy.

See the journey as your entire existence, and not just this incarnation, as I have mentioned in other posts, time was only ever devised as linear as a scientific constant that often defies that constant even in its linear format. Look at the effects of EMF on that constant, areas of intense electro magnetic fields have been known to stop clocks and watches, and cause people to lose even hours of time (often blamed on aliens by the frightened witnesses) and this is just a PHYSICAL manifestation let alone spiritual. This is why I use the sphere analogy, see? what seems to us to be one point in time, that point always has variables, and it is never totally clear where we are..

As I struggle to understand the underlying defining principles of duality and the physics of reality and time, I come more and more to believe that what constitutes "us" as self-aware cells is a process and not a physical thing. This process (one self-contained, self-referencing process for each of us) has what we perceive as time as an intrinsic characteristic. I liken our paths through the cosmos as tapestries that record our thoughts and observations, however imperfectly since we are imperfect observers. But we are not the tapestry; rather, we are the result of the weaving of the threads into the tapestry, the self-weaving process itself. If the weaving process is interrupted, so is our perception of time. When the weaving re-commences, so does our experience. Reality is composed of the infinitesimal moments that make up the weaving process.

I differ slightly with you, Henge Witch, on experiencing moments. I don't believe we ever experience a single moment, but experience the differences between moments, with special emphasis on how contiguous moments affect each other, and are derived from each other.

Imagine if all of the moments of your life (not your memory, but your "world line" of existence, past and future) could be shuffled like a deck of cards and stacked out of order. Would you cease to exist, lost in the white noise sea of illogically connected moments, or would you still experience a logical existence of passing from one moment to the next, defining yourself out of the chaos? If only I could devise an experiment to test this!

So do we ever pass through that door. or are we always standing at it?

It seems to me that as soon as something is happening, it's already happened- so say we're standing behind the door in the present, and the future is the other side, all's that can happen when we walk though it, is that we're back, behind the door, in the present and the future's about to happen as we walk through the door, but before we know it we're at the door again....

So yeah we really don't know where we are.

My take on time is it's something nonlinear, but our corporial existence forces us to travel a linear path, without ever knowing where time meets it's end or beginning. Time could be a loop, it could be there is no future and no past, just items and plotdevices that suggest so and history made up. So time doesn't cover a lot of generations but only the illusion of it. A bit like Dark City.

People seem to be confusing time, which is linear and sequential, with the interpretations peoples' imaginations and perceptions put on it. If you take the instant of the big bang as the time when time either began, or was reset, we can trace time from then to now and place events linearly along it. Another analogy. Take a baby. Time can be measured for that individual from the time of conception to the time of death. No one ever expects the child to grow younger, or even stop aging. That's because time and its effects are linear. The confusion comes from two concepts.
1. That it might be possible, given a certain level of technology and the expenditure of enough energy to step around, or through, time in some way. A variation of this is the belief that some people through non tecnic abilities may be able to do the same thing in body or spirit. Both of these may be remotely possible, although at the moment almost all the examples "recorded" are of the latter form.
2. When people overthink issues, especially ones where they only have an inkling of the physics behind them, they tend to practice a form of wish fulfilment and can create all sorts of possible scenarios. If these are supported by like minded people, a culture of belief can grow up which can be very hard to dispel. At it's extremes, this is found in religious cults whose members follow the leader to their own very real apocalpse, while trying to avoid one which only existed in the cultists' heads.
An EMP may stop clocks. That doesn't mean it stops time. When we are unconscious, time stops for us. That doesn't mean time stops full stop. Time is not a construct of our mind. It exists independently of us . The ideas expressed here seem very similar to the belief that reality is somehow tied to us as an individual. Sorry, reality exists independent of us.
That doesn't mean we can't have a damn good time messing around with our perceptions of realities (and those of other people) if that is our bent. However, if we don't maintain a very strong perception of actual reality, we can get in serious trouble.
People don't like to face up to the fact that while we are alive, and our minds are functioning, we are potentially capable of any possibilities, but once we are dead thats it, zip, nada. The mind and all the constructs of it are created by the organism known as our brain. Once that ceases functioning, for us its over. Thats the way the universe works. Get over it and enjoy the experience of life. If you wish, have faith that you may be reborn/resurrected in some other form, but understand that its not going to be anything like the life you have had this time round.

Interesting topic Henge_Witch. One of the concepts going around these days is the idea of so called parallel universes. If I understand it correctly, these other parrallel "worlds" are sharing our space but we cannot sense them. I like to think that time travel will be possible one day. Who knows what the future will bring.

Time is a physical phenomenon which actually happens, not a god forsaken door and road.

Nice way to look at it, well done, something to take to my bed and dream on…

Its like this for me, time is most definitely of a spherical construct rather than just circular. But to answer your quest, its hindsight leads to insight and when you marry these two you receive foresight.

So a journey leaves a path, if you walk that path many times it could venture into a road so what lies behind ultimately lies in front, every now and again just take stock of where you are within that journey.

Six and half billion paths, six and half billion individual universes all existing within the same time all paths taking us in different directions building up the sphere of time…..

hmmm, I like this thinking, yawn, to bed me thinks….

First if you walked through the doorway and walked the path straight around the ball you wouldn't be on the otherside of the doorway you would be right where you started before you walked through the door onto the path

Time is more of a tubed ring. Water flows one way and to be able to travel back you would have to push the tide making all the water to flow opposite direction. You can leave the tube and go back to a certain period but that would result in death because a human(spirit whatever it is) cannot exist in that realm since it does not exist.

Also time is not a sphere of any sort. It plays heavly on gravity and the person who is experiencing it. Things appear more faster for people who are in a deep gravitation force. A b lack hole for example. If you are in it time appears faster due to you are lower in the dimension then the rest. If you are on the normal level the people in the black hole appear to go extremly slow. This is because space is a flat sheet. Think of two people holding a blanket. Put things on that blanket and it begins to have indintations. The larger the indentation, the more gravitational force. If you were to be on the bottom of the hole and look up you would see people born and die in seconds while they see you still as a rock.

If its time travel you want then this is how it works but cannot be done by modern day tech and if you were to travel back in time the first even picosecond you where there would destruct the earth, universe, and everything because everything you came from would be changing rapidy every breath you take.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/time-travel.htm

[quote name='Henge_Witch' date='May 4 2006, 09:56 AM' post='1174014']
No its symbolic, its an analogy used to describe how I think time works.

Your analogy is a good one, as it helps to visualise the nature of time.

Henge Witch has a Serious point and...

"In a way yes we only experience a moment once, as in our physical body does, but when we start going into the concept of perception and even astral, we're not in Kansas anymore Dorothy..." a GSOH!

I think we define time more than we perceive it. We say it is blah o'clock on blah day in blah year. Matching henge witch's idea, we give that definition of ticking time a circuitous route from 12am to 12pm and back to 12am again. Yes, we go through the door and back to the same door, twice a day on the face of a clock, yet hopefully seeking a Looking Glass to somewhere else.

I intepret Henge Witch as saying that the state of all energy in the entire universe will be different on each occasion we reach the same old defined time/door again, "yet we are on the other side of it", but it's the same old door, the same old lack of explanation. Defined time helps us scratch at a loose memory of a past state of all energy. Henge Witch, are you an existentialist, "standing on a huge sphere, alone"? We are islands, no, universes, on our own. Lets be grander than Sartre.

As Baal describes using black holes, actual time is an expression of the density of energy, hence energy is what we call time and as we are a certain form and density of energy, time appears to go at a certain rate. What happens if you intensify energy enough? Do we come to a stop beyond the event horizon of a black hole or do we fling open the door and slip like soap through to something even more confusing?

Mr Walker wrote

"2. When people overthink issues, especially ones where they only have an inkling of the physics behind them, they tend to practice a form of wish fulfilment and can create all sorts of possible scenarios. If these are supported by like minded people, a culture of belief can grow up which can be very hard to dispel. At it's extremes, this is found in religious cults whose members follow the leader to their own very real apocalpse, while trying to avoid one which only existed in the cultists' heads."

Mr Walker, are you talking about scientists or laypeople? I think I know which, but I dispute the distinction. The universe is for everyone to explain, physically and intellectually.

Explorer, I love that remark "are you talking about scientists" that was a good one. You are absolutely right ,scientists don't see themselves that way at all but looked at in a different context that is exactly how they appear. Plus, without knowing what happens after death who's to say those nuts (cult people) don't get exactly what they expected when they die.... Everyone would agree that no one can ever completely understand a situation from another persons perspective. We may see, hear and feel the same but we perceive things individually, especially reality. Two people may completely agree on reality on the surface but under interrogation will have many differences. No one person can say what is actually real to another person. What is for sure is that people who make blanket statements for everyone else are the ones who are furthest from the truth ( Mr Walker ," once we die that is it " ). I didn't realize you had been there and done that ...... Did you take pictures ? Do you have soil samples? Any eyewitnesses ? Some may argue there is as much evidence of something AFTER death than there is of actual life.... WHERE"S YOUR PROOF ?????