Tuesday, December 16, 2014
F: 8 am.
[Charles had asked: “Is there time? What does [Rita] do? Where is she? What about reincarnation? Is she thinking about it? Who or what comes back?”]
F: So, Miss Rita, as we were saying, “is there time?”
R: Separation of states, rather, as I said. Let me explain.
F: Well, I should hope so!
R: You are familiar with the humorously stated “time is what stops everything from happening at once. There is truth to that, said indirectly which is pretty nearly the only way it can be said. An analogous statement is, “space is what keeps everything from happening in the same place,” which may make it easier for some people to understand the previous statement.
The conditions of 3D life make it easier to intuitively understand the nature of time by comparing it to the nature of space, because space does not include the element of compulsion that time does when experienced in 3D. Unless you are in a vehicle being driven by someone else who is inflexible in sticking to a route you have had no say in determining, you never experience space in the way you always experience time. That is one reason why people who have an experience of life on the other side return reporting that “on the other side there is no time.” It would be a bit more accurate to say, “on the other side there is no compulsion, no compulsory movement of time in a given direction.”
F: I could feel myself bucking, as I tried to bring that through. I want to know what you mean, but a part of my mind is trying to edit, to be sure the message “makes sense.” So, since I’m not sure if I interfered with the message, I’d going to ask it again, or rather, I’ll merely ask, did anything you meant get distorted in the process?
R: More than the whole process normally does, you mean”
F: Very funny. I have never figured out how to express that feeling of amusement from the other side. I used to put in (or hear, or experience) “we smile.”
R: Nothing wrong with doing that. I suggest that we continue even when you doubt yourself, or when you struggle with an answer, and rely on consistency over time. just as in any cross-examination, apparent contradictions will either reveal themselves or will be resolved by context. You remember how often “the guys” did that for us. Now the roles are reversed, and it is up to you to object, and up to me to provide feed to explain. I say this mostly for the benefit of those who are beginning to experiment. As you know, at the beginning of the learning process, it would be easy to become discouraged by what seems like self-deception.
To resume: In 3D life there is no compulsion to proceed in one geographical direction, at an invariant pace. Instead, you have freedom to move around, change directions, hurry or lag or stay still. Time in 3D offers you none of these freedoms, and so referring to your experience of spatial movement may be an easy way to hint at the nature of life within time when time does not have the element of silent remorseless compulsion.
Again, remember. There is no “other side” per se. There is one reality, the same reality you partake of when in the body, but perceived differently. It isn’t that the nature of time changes, it is that the way we live in time changes. It is that our experience of time changes.
F: Suddenly for the first time, I get something I was told a long time ago. The guys told me – us, maybe; I can’t remember when it was – to think of successive moments in time as existing next to one another. They were not only telling us that all moments of time exist; they were saying why!
R: That’s right. if you could envision moments of time arrayed like any geographical analogy you care to use – city blocks, one leading to the next, say, or trees in a woods – you could see that moving from one street or tree to another doesn’t destroy the one you left, or bring into being the next one you come to. But if something were forcing you along a straight-line route, with no return possible, it would seem like it.
And – this may be important to some – the first step in overcoming the illusion that past time ceases to exist and future time comes into being is to envision the possibility. In our day – your day now, I suppose I should say – it no longer serves to say “on the other side there is no time” because it provides no image or even concept for the busy mind to grasp and gnaw. New explanations for new circumstances, and new times are always providing these new circumstances.
F: And of course your explanation is shot through with shorthand expressions like “the guys,” “the other side,” and can’t help being so.
R: Again, to force a picture into fewer dimensions is to either distort it or – with luck and application – invent or employ the equivalent of the technique of perspective.
So – to go back a few paragraphs – separation of states. Envision all moments of time as snapshots, arrayed in the order they were experienced. If that is my world now, it is your world now. In other words, for it to be true where the distortions of physical existence are removed, it must have been true all along, regardless how it was perceived at the time.
Even that last sentence, “at the time,” should make it more obvious that life isn’t the way it is experienced, because if it were, —
F: Sorry, got tangled.
R: The difficulty – one difficulty of many! – is that what I am asking you to do contains a contradiction. I say, envision an array of snapshots, yet each “snapshot” is not a snapshot but is itself a movie, or so it has to appear to you in the body (“within time” as they say) because otherwise you can’t get a sense of movement. If life is a series of still photos, how can any of the photos differ? In other words, where does the possibility of movement come in?
F: Yes, I have felt that question, not quite so clearly.
R: Zeno the stoic posed it long ago in his conundrum about Achilles being unable to pass the turtle because at any moment in time he is still x amount behind it, even if a diminishing amount.
F: I never could look at that as any more than playing with words and with logic.
R: He wasn’t attempting to persuade you that a man can’t catch a turtle, but that the way we perceive time must be faulty.
F: So how do you resolve that paradox? I can sense time as a series of stills that do not go out of existence. I can’t quite see how – in that analogy or description – anything can change.
R: The answer is that the pictures don’t change, the observer brings the perception of change by movement over the pictures.
F: Oh!
R: Connect a couple of dots, does it?
F: Can I try? Let’s say that when all-that-is sprang into existence (a puzzle in itself, but we’ll look at that later, I hope) all possibilities exist, as I have often parroted, thinking I understood. Let’s say they exist as an array of cards, each a slightly different situation. The observer/experiencer/person-in-3D chooses to hop from card to card in whatever direction he or she chooses at any given moment – any given subjective moment choosing among objective moments, I guess, which is how we “create our own reality.” It is how we chose what we will become. It is how we can create the mind or soul that can become a strand in another later on – that is, next in line subjectively. This implies different levels of –
Whew, too much to hold.
R: Yet it was easier for you to put that out without having to ascribe it to me or to any external mind, thus removing one layer of difficulty.
F: Would you sum it up and/or correct it, then?
R: The critical insight is the realization that there are two pieces to the puzzle. One is the “objective” situation – the endless array of potential moments, or, to be more careful, the endless array of moments that may potentially be experienced. The other is the “subjective” experiencer. Without the two, it can only be static, not dynamic. It is the ability to choose that creates the unique pattern, and that must be at a different level, or it would be enmeshed in whatever moment.
F: Take that, Zeno!
R: Nonetheless, you owe him a debt, or would if his paradox had been the factor that enlightened you to the situation. You haven’t really grasped the nature of it, nor need you. But a certain kind of logic-driven mind may find it a potential exit from the trap of appearances.
F: Enough for the moment?
R: It’s always your choice.
F: Thanks as always.