The Reality of the Illusion of Time

Recently, as I strolled along the short stretch to my strength training session, I aimlessly took in the row of tatty shops and shabby buildings along the route and passed an off-street, in which one of my sisters used to live, around thirteen years ago.

I’ve walked past that road a million times, but that day, I mentally pulled down a memory of a particular visit to my sister. After we had said our goodbyes, my daughter and I had climbed into my car and when I turned the ignition, the damn thing wouldn’t start. It was dead.

My motor breakdown cover hadn’t included Homestart — and so I recall it felt like a near-on blessing that my car had played up at the very correct distance away from my home, where I was covered from, as stated in my policy schedule. The mechanic arrived a short time later and was able to diagnose an underlying problem that had been undetected until that day, and he was able to bring my car back to life.

And so, what struck me with overpowering clarity, as I thought over that distant scenario, was not just the serendipity of how so often, events connect perfectly in our lives, but that — that day — all that time ago, felt palpably current, as I looked over at where my car had been parked that day fourteen years back.

The distance or time of all those years just fell away, and I was exposed to a cabalistic timeless consciousness— a continuum of a now, a present moment, forever as it is — just now. There was no past or future — it completely dissipated in my mind.

As I contemplated from this esoteric stance if time was, in reality, an illusion, a scripture popped into my mind — one that has stayed with me for decades, as its mysticism had always fascinated me:

‘But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 2 Peter 3:8

This scripture’s time-bending notion intrigued me even more, and its concept brought my thinking to the Sci-fi movies I had watched. Particularly Interstellar, an absolute favourite of mine, in which the protagonist, Cooper, loses 23 years in gravitational time dilation during a two-year trip to a planet that was close-up to a wormhole.

Time dilation is a real phenomenon, caused by gravity and motion, explained here. The idea that time is indeed changeable, and, as an example, in one of the film’s scenes, every hour on Miller’s Planet equated to seven Earth years. The scene captivated me with its mind-bending portrayal of this phenomenon.

I had always presumed that time’s illusion related to how the Earth’s orbit differed from the other planets of our Solar System. I grew inquisitive to try to understand if time was a social construction and did not truly exist, although ‘why do we age’ came to mind? All we know is that all life form has a beginning and an end, with a predetermined biologically controlled process.

And of course, mankind instinctively yearns to measure life events, our past, and moments so that we can add meaning to our lives. What is life without meaning? And so bound by linear time and space, we inherently track time, even before clocks were invented. We used Sundials, Obelisks, sand-glasses, Water clocks, Candle clocks, Pendulums, the sun, and stars. We measure and instill order, live by seasons, and manage our time with precision and rules.

I naturally have a deep thought process, and although I am far from being an academic, last week I was conscious of a supernatural veil peeling back as I considered the theory of time, and why we take it for granted, without thought, that it's the only reality. It has been ingrained in us to live by the ticking clock, but what if it isn’t an actuality?

I agree that time flows, is directional, and constantly updates itself. The future is yet to come — and the past is a permanent dimension. We all believe this instinctively, and yet science and physics disagree; their research suggests that time is not an absolute or universal measurement. I knew I was on to something that day!

Between 1905 and 1912, Albert Einstein made several significant discoveries, including the Theory of Special Relativity. I have added a short reel in which Neil deGrasse Tyson explains:

"The special theory of relativity was based on two main postulates: first, that the speed of light is constant for all observers; and second, that observers moving at constant speeds should be subject to the same physical laws. Following this logic, Einstein theorised that time must change according to the speed of a moving object relative to the frame of reference of an observer. Scientists have tested this theory through experimentation - proving, for example, that an atomic clock ticks more slowly when travelling at a high speed than it does when it is not moving."

Final thoughts

After an extensive amount of research, I concluded that my head just wasn’t equipped to digest the equations or the physics, even in the simplest of videos and websites. Physics isn’t simple. And I wasn’t surprised, yet my intentions were intact.

What I have learned from my mysterious epiphany of time not being a complete reality, apart from feeling more serene, is that I don’t wish to get caught up or be a slave to my past, as I have more than often felt remorse over many episodes.

And I don’t often focus too far ahead either, so I am not a hostage to my future — although we all want to be secure in our winter years.

I now know that time is an illusion, and when I reframe difficult circumstances, it helps me look at life with more wonder and expectations.

I have to add that I am so happy that Einstein’s findings helped synchronise the network of GPS satellites orbiting the Earth, as I am more than rubbish at directions and reading maps. Thank you, Albert.

"Time is basically an illusion created by the mind to aid in our sense of temporal presence in the vast ocean of space. Without the neurons to create a virtual perception of the past and the future based on all our experiences, there is no actual existence of the past and the future. All that there is — is the present.” 

— Abhijit Naskar — Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself getting lost

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