As if the word “time” isn’t causing enough confusion already we now have people who speak about vertical time opposed to horizontal time. Horizontal time is how we experience existence. It has a beginning, duration and an end. Vertical time is where all of existence happens in the same instant.
Before I show you how confusing time is, let alone vertical time, I will first give you an analysis of the word “existence”.
Existence, as I see it, has 6 components:
- Time
- Space
- Energy
- Matter
- Form
- Event
These 6 components do overlap each other to quite an extend. Time creates space and space creates time. Energy is basically a wave form that contains space and time. Matter is condensed energy. Form is shaped matter or energy. Event has all 5 other components in it.
Time is only one of the components of existence. All 6 components are required for existence to exist. Without any of them there can be no existence.
This is what I want to pose as a thesis. It is not necessarily correct. But it could be correct. It feels right to me, at least.
What is so spooky about time?
Time is the duration of an event. Time therefore introduces persistence. So far nothing spooky.
Here another thesis:
The past, present and future are needed for time to exist.
In the physical world there is no future as future is still to come. In the spiritual world (the world of thought form) there are only probable futures depending upon decisions. The past can only exist in thought form as it already happened. For that reason the past plays no part in the physical world. What remains is the present moment as a part of the physical world we might conclude.
However, the present is a moment. A moment is a unit of time. It is an event. In other words it must have a beginning and an end. The present moment as a unit of time is partly pastime and partly future time somehow separated from each other.
Let us take an extreme example. Let us take a nanosecond. Probably the smallest unit of time in existence. When we consider ourselves to be in the middle of the nanosecond before the middle point would be the past and after it would be the probable future. The middle point would be the present.
Is there a point in the middle of a present time event that doesn’t contain time? I believe there is.
What if there is no present time. How could the physical universe exist? What if past and future are just separated by the present, the present not being a moment but a barrier between past and future? It would mean that only the spirit world can exist. The physical world without the present moment could not exist. If that isn’t spooky I don’t know what is.
If my reasoning is correct we live in the spirit world (the world of thought form) but we think we live in a physical world (the world of atoms and molecules).
Vertical time is even spookier as that implies that only the present moment exists. All happenings occur in the same instant. That means there is no event as an event is linear in structure. An event has more than one moment that follows upon each other. That is what makes it an event. It has a story line.
If the spirit world would happen in vertical time, as some people tend to believe, the spirit world could not exist either. Existence implies an event and events imply time and time implies at least past and future. Both past and future are events with a story line.
When all of existence past, present and future happen at the same instant, which is to say in the same unit of time it would mean that there is only one unit of time. This unit of time then contains all that has passed and all that is to come.
What is probably missing in this reasoning is the element of viewpoint. A viewpoint is not only a point from which we can view things it is also a point from which we create things. We have created our past and from that past we create our future. The process we call creation is what we can see as present time. In that case horizontal time and vertical time could exist in both worlds.
I don’t know if this does clarify time or existence in general to any extent. I don’t even know whether you can clarify these things. It seems an unsolvable riddle to me.
Please tell me where you think I am wrong. If you honestly think you can shed some more light on the mystery we call time it will be much appreciated.
If you want a deeper understanding of life and what I think of it you can read my free e-book “My philosophy about life”, available on this website.