Are past lives really past lives if there is no such thing as time

[Guard]

I had this discussion with ChrisL yesterday. Basically he was saying that everything that has ever happened and ever will happen has already happened in one instant. We are simply viewing it from the level of experiencing it. Like the next life you choose to experience after this one could be 400 years in the past. So if that wasn't heavy enough. He then asked me if I've ever experienced deja vu. I said yes...many times. Like when you have been doing something like driving a car and looking at the clock while you are driving and the car in front of you. And then you swear you have seen that before exactly. Like you are watching a re-run. And I was like...are you saying we experience deja vu from experiencing this same life before? He just laughed.

[Angela]

You might enjoy reading The Seth Material, Seth Speaks, and The Nature of Physical Reality -- there is some very interesting stuff in there about "the spacious present" and our creation of our experience occurring as spread out over time.

[James81]

The Conversation with God books touch on this idea in some depth (especially in Book 1).

I'm trying to remember how he put it, but it was something like:

"Everything that has happened will happen, everything that will happen, is happening now."

And then it goes on to say that instead of thinking of time as a linear or a circular thing, think more of it as pages in a book. All pages of that book exist simultaneously (comprising of one book), but each page is a separate story. So, in that vein, it would be that past, present, and future are all happening at one instant, but each page is an "instance" in time where there appears to be separation.

[joelr]

Originally Posted by Guard

I had this discussion with ChrisL yesterday. Basically he was saying that everything that has ever happened and ever will happen has already happened in one instant. We are simply viewing it from the level of experiencing it. Like the next life you choose to experience after this one could be 400 years in the past. So if that wasn't heavy enough. He then asked me if I've ever experienced deja vu. I said yes...many times. Like when you have been doing something like driving a car and looking at the clock while you are driving and the car in front of you. And then you swear you have seen that before exactly. Like you are watching a re-run. And I was like...are you saying we experience deja vu from experiencing this same life before? He just laughed.

Time is real. It is "something" we just don't know exactly what. In a measurement way if you want to define a location you have 3 spacial coordinates and 1 of time.
Meet me in Central Park (a 3D location) at 1PM (a time location).

In physics that time measurement uses a complex or imaginary number (i).
Imaginary numbers don't always stand for imaginary things but they can sometimes stand for abstract things and sometimes more physical potential things. In this case we just don't know. I think it's very strange personally. I can't make sense of the whole thing

The description you give is called "block time", a 4D block of time where everything has already happened.

I 2nd the Seth books recommendation, Seth gives a description that goes beyond the block time model into a mind-opening expansive description of time.
Seth's description actually fits pretty good if you plot coordinates on a graph.
The 3D location part is easy to get but time is extended into the complex plane which gives it a high degree of freedom. Much more than we experience.


Hawking thinks time may have originally been a 4th dimension of space. So if you go really far back in time you eventually arrive in a timeless 4D universe.
What a crazy mystery!

[Guard]

Block time is one way of approaching the problem of the nature of time. Its name is derived from its description of spacetime as an unchanging four-dimensional "block", as opposed to a three-dimensional space that changes as it moves along a time axis.

In the conventional concept of how the passage of time operates, time is divided into three distinct regions; the "past", the "present", and the "future". The past is generally seen as being immutably fixed, and the future as undefined and nebulous. As time passes the current present becomes part of the past, and part of the future becomes the new present. In this way time is said to pass, with a distinct present moment "moving" forward into the future and leaving the past behind.

This model of time presents a number of difficult problems, both philosophically and in terms of current accepted scientific theories. For example, special relativity has shown that the concept of simultaneity is not universal, with different frames of reference having different perceptions of which events are in the future and which are in the past; there is no way to definitively identify a particular point in universal time as "the present". Furthermore, there is no fundamental reason why a particular "present" should be more valid than any other; observers at any point in time will always consider themselves to be in the present. Even the concept of "time passing" can be considered to be internally inconsistent, by asking "how fast does time pass?"

Block time overcomes these various difficulties by considering all points in time to be equally valid frames of reference, equally "real" if one prefers. It does not do away with the concept of past and future, but instead considers them as directions rather than as a state of being; whether some point in time is in the future or past is entirely dependent on which frame of reference you are using as a basis for observing it.

Since an observer at any given point in time can only remember events that are in the past relative to him, and not events that are in the future relative to him, the subjective illusion of the passage of time is maintained. The asymmetry of remembering past events but not future ones, as well as other irreversible events that progress in only one temporal direction (such as the increase in entropy) gives rise to the arrow of time. In reality, there is no passage of time; the ticking of a clock measures durations between events much as the marks on a measuring tape measures distances between places.

Block time has implications for the concept of free will, in that it proposes that future events are as immutably fixed and impossible to change as past events (see determinism).

Block time makes two assumptions, which are separable. One is that time is a full-fledged real dimension. The other is immutability. The latter is not a necessary consequence of the first. If random changes are possible, the result may be indistinguishable from the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Augustine of Hippo wrote that God is outside of time—that time exists only within the created universe. Many theologians (especially Catholics) agree. On this view, God might perceive something like block time, while time might appear differently to us finite beings.

[wstein]

Past lives are past (from your perspective) only if they occur in the same universe. As time is local to a universe (not all universes have time) there is no relation of time in one universe compared to another. Strangely, as a time limited being, there seems to be a present time in those other universes. Returning visits to a universe without explicit time travel with be at a time after your previous visits. Though the rates of time passing are not the same, time does seem to progress in all universes. This apparent time arrow is a limitation in your awareness, not inherent to the universes themselves.

If you are a timeless being outside a universe then 'time' has already run its course. The progression of events that you call time remains, but there is not anything remaining to happen.

Thinking about time paradoxes can kill brain cells so do it sparingly..

[bluedragon]

I think past, present and future all occur within Life, within Consciousness. That doesn't mean they are not real, they are just not objective. Form is empty, and emptiness is form. There is no duality.

[pianoperformer]

To Aristotle, the concept of time was just the measurement of change. In that view, the only real thing would be the present. The future is only imagined and the past is out of scope.

Of course in modern philosophy some hold a very different view. It's hard to tell what is correct.

I do maintain that we have free will, whatever the paradigm of time that one accepts. I would agree that God sees it as a timeless block, but would say that our free will dynamicly affects this whole, through every little decision we make. To say otherwise is to deny our rationality, or to give no meaning to our rationality, since we can't choose freely anyway.