Does Time Exist?

You addressed it already a little bit this morning. I was thinking on the aspect of time. What is time? I remember I laid in my bed and the Big Bang Theory was becoming popular and I said to myself tonight I'm going to solve this when time started. So I laid in my bed and said okay then there was the Big Bang, but what was there in front of it? There was another moment. Behind it. Before it. Before it, yeah. Before it. And then I went back and I went back and it could drive me crazy and then I said okay let's try the other way around. Go to the future and okay there must be an end of the time. What's that? There's somebody standing and this is it, stop. So I could not solve this. Then I remember when I'm listening to your talks on YouTube and you say well in fact there is no time. So there is this dilemma with me and you addressed it a bit this morning but I could not catch it. In one view there is no time and in the other view time is infinitive. So how to solve this problem? Well go back to when you were lying in bed as a child wondering what took place before the big bang and then how long will time go on for. So you're lying in your bed, it's dark, you're wondering about this and what happens next? You fall asleep. Yes, I fell asleep, yes it was a good way to fall asleep. What happened to your experience of time when you fell asleep? It vanished. It vanished and then you woke up again in the morning and time began again. The next night you fell asleep again, time vanished, the next morning you woke up again, time began again. Could there be some connection between your falling asleep at night, in other words the disappearance of the activity of your mind and the cessation of time and the next morning the renewal of the activity of your mind and the appearance of time? Could there be a connection? After all every single night of your life time has disappeared when the activity of your mind ceased and time reappeared when the activity of your mind began again. Is it possible that there's a connection between the two? Could it be that time is eternity filtered through the prism of our finite mind? In other words that time is what eternity looks like when it is viewed through the lens of the finite mind? I'm missing it, sorry. I'm missing your point. You understand that what I call mind, the movement of mind, thinking, feeling, perceiving is the activity of consciousness, that it is conscious just as a movie could be said to be the activity of the screen, so our mind, that is thinking and perceiving, could be said to be the activity of consciousness. And just as when the movie comes to an end, the movie, a landscape appears in the movie, the time and space in the movie, when the movie comes to an end time and space that appeared in the movie also comes to an end and you're just left with the flat screen. When the movie begins again time and space begin again, the movie ends, time and space vanishes and you're left with the flat screen. Could it be that consciousness is the flat screen, although it is a dimensionless screen, but let's say consciousness is the flat screen and the activity of consciousness is what we call mind or experience, thinking, feeling, sensing, perceiving. In other words all of this is the activity of consciousness. And just as time and space come into apparent existence when the movie begins and they disappear when the movie ends, it is also our experience that time and space, this is not an analogy anymore, this is in real life, time and space begin when the movement of our mind begins, that is when thought and perception begin, but when thought and perception come to an end time and space come to an end. When the activity of our minds come to an end only pure consciousness is left, that's the screen and the screen has no dimensions, it is flat. The dimensions in the movie, the time and space in the movie, are an appearance of the two-dimensional screen, the three-dimensional landscape, it's not a real three-dimensional landscape, it's really a two-dimensional screen. The landscape is just what that two-dimensional screen looks like when the movie is playing. Now could it be that the time and space we experience in the waking state is just what infinite or zero-dimensional consciousness looks like during the waking state, that is when the mind is active, when thinking and perceiving are taking place. Just as when you watch the movie, a two-dimensional screen appears as a three-dimensional landscape, could it be that zero-dimensional consciousness appears as the three dimensions of time and space that we experience in the waking state when the mind is active? In other words, could it be that consciousness, that time and space are what consciousness looks like when viewed through the limitations of thought and perception? After all, that is in line with our experience. Let me give you one more analogy, the dream analogy. When you have a dream at night, you dream that you take a journey, you go to California for three months, so in your journey you travel 10,000 miles and it lasts three months, your trip. When you wake up in the morning, you look at your clock, it's a minute later than when you last looked at it. How much time and space did the dream take up in your mind? None. So what actually takes up no time and space in your mind appears as time and space in your dream, but it is your mind that appears, that takes the shape of this three-month journey across 10,000 miles. But if you look, what was the size, how much distance, how much space does this dream take up in my mind? It doesn't take any space in your mind at all, there's no space there, it doesn't take any time at all, and yet in the dream it took three months. So it's only from the perspective of the character in the dream, the character that traveled to California, from the perspective of that character, the dream character, time and space are real. Time and space only appear relative to the character in the dream, but to you, the only one that truly is asleep in your bed, there is no time and space. So for consciousness there is no time or space. Time and space is consciousness refracted through the mind, refracted through thought and perception. Now thought and perception, remember, are not something other than consciousness, they are the very activity of consciousness. So consciousness refracts itself or manifests its own dimensionless presence in the form of time and space through the activity of thinking and perceiving. And again, this is consistent with our experience. Do we actually experience time? Have you ever visited the past or the future? Has anyone here ever left what we call now for a moment and actually gone to the place we call the past or the future? We've never found this place. But it has been there. I'm studying my ancestors. It has been where? Where is the place the mind has been other than now? In what time has the mind existed? What is your experience of the past? Go there now, just for a moment. Leave the now and visit the past. Come back and tell us about it. I saw some dinosaurs. When did you see them? In my mind. When? One second ago. But what knowledge do you have of one second ago? When you saw the dinosaurs, you saw them, it was now. Since we've been sitting here, just during this meeting this afternoon, how many nows have you experienced? One. And how fast is the now moving through time? Is the now moving through time? Is that your experience? Or is the now stationary? It's stationary. It's not going anywhere. Has it come from somewhere? No. The now hasn't come from somewhere. It's not going anywhere. It's stationary. You've only experienced one now during this meeting. How many nows in your life have you experienced? Not only one. Only one. Maybe there is only one now. Maybe this is the only now there is. Not a moment in time, but eternity. The ever-present now. Not in time. It only appears as time when it is looked at through the limitations of the finite mind. The finite mind imposes its own limitations on everything that it views. It's like somebody wearing orange tinted glasses. Everything you see, remind me your name. You see, he doesn't even know he's wearing orange tinted glasses. He thinks it's the room that is orange. It's not. He's forgotten he's wearing orange tinted glasses. Remind me your name. Raymond. You see, Raymond sees everything through his orange tinted glasses. He's become so accustomed to seeing everything through his orange tinted glasses that he doesn't realize he's wearing them. And he thinks that we are all various shades of orange. He thinks the orange is out there. It's not. The orange is in the medium through which he is perceiving us. Well, time is not out there in reality. Time and space are not out there in the reality. They are a reflection of the medium through which we perceive. Now, what is the medium through which we perceive? Thought and perception. The finite mind. Everything appears in accordance with the mind through which it is known. If our minds were configured differently, if Raymond was to put on blue shades, we would all be tinted blue. If our minds were configured differently, if our minds were capable of experiencing in five dimensions, surprise, surprise, we would see a five dimensional world. And we would think that the dimensions existed out there. No, they are the filter through which we perceive. But what is out there? This is not a good analogy. Imagine that Raymond was looking at snow and the snow is tinted orange, but that the snow itself has no color. Likewise, reality itself has no form. It is dimensionless consciousness. It is only the limitations of our own mind that give it its temporary name and form. Its limitations. Does that solve the problem of time for you? I have to digest it in time. Thank you.