Time and Space: A Brief Journey

A few nights ago the Boy and I were discussing astrology, time, the metaphysical, culture, and other heady topics.  We lounged about on a very pretty well-made bed (courtesy of moi) and got lost in an elaborate web of exchange that stirred something up in my brain.  For the next few days, all I could think about was this mysterious concept of time: events, past and future, and how they are connected.

Specifically, the strange event that occurs when we have a thought about something or someone (more often someone), and then a day, a few days, a week, or months later that thought manifests in reality.  Say, you have a sudden thought of an old coworker or friend, one with whom you haven't spoken in months or years, seemingly "out of nowhere."  Then soon after, you bump into that person in the grocery store, at your job, on the street, and this occurrence feels uncanny.  It feels like you predicted the future.  

Why do our brains do this?

Why does this happen more often than many folks would like to admit?

Because it DOES happen quite often, doesn't it?

Are we predicting the future?  Or, are we making the future happen just by having the very thought itself?

I have a theory.

*ahem*

We tend to think of time -- the measure of "finite duration" by which we measure "sequential relations" -- in terms of specific events or places, either in the past or future, on a timeline, distinct and disconnected from other moments at different times and places.

Two years ago, I was living in ____ and doing ____.

Yesterday, I did ____.

Tomorrow at 2:00 I will be ______.

Right now, later, two days ago, in a week, etc. I will be _____, was going to _____, wanted to be _____, etc.

Yesterday at 2:00 is somehow different, separate, and apart from five years ago at 6:00, as if these two moments exist independently of one another.  However, these two moments in time are actually connected by an infinite number of other moments, hooked in a big long chain, directly linking one moment to the other.  A simple concept in geometry illustrates this very well: two points on a plane are connected by one line, while the line is actually an infinite number of points.  The points are distant and distinct, but directly connected on the same plane.

Also, like water molecules in a pond. A molecule at one side of the pond is a different molecule than one at the other side, each separate and distinct.  But, these two events are not separated by nothingness and void.  Rather, they are linked continuously by many chains of other molecules creating a stream, a blanket of continuity. Distinct and different, but not disconnected.

Time behaves in the same way.  All moments at different times and places are but an infinite number of interconnected moments with no gaps or holes, simultaneously existing independently and dependent upon one another.  Thus, "past" and "future" are indistinguishable. 

Future events are seamlessly connected to the present, to the past, to the distant past.  Future events are not made of something different than current or past events, but are merely further out on the “chain” of time’s continuum -- opposite, or "further from," past events.  Whether or not the time is now, yesterday, or tomorrow is irrelevant. 

If this is the case, that the very construction of tomorrow's moments and yesterday's moments are the same, then it doesn't matter much that tomorrow's events have not happened yet.  They will, certainly, just as yesterday's moments have, but we merely have not experienced them yet.

Returning to the original idea of uncanny occurrences, I am inclined to think we are not experiencing a premonitory event, that the thought of a person or event does not cause that person or event to materialize later.  Nor are we predicting the future, saying with certainty that an event is going to occur.

Instead, the future event -- bumping into the person we were just thinking about, experiencing a moment that we had a very distinct dream about a few days prior, receiving an email or text message from someone we thought about months ago and then forgot -- has already occurred in time and space before we experience it.  Because the event has already occurred even at the moment of its inception, having the sudden thought "pop into our heads out of nowhere," we are experiencing a memory of this event from the future.  Our future selves know of this encounter, moment, thought, manifestation in reality, and we reference the memory of the occurrence before we experience it in present time.  The event hearkens "back" to us a reference that travels through the continuous stream of interconnected moments between then and now, like traveling on a road between two faraway cities. It seems uncanny because the referenced event hasn’t occurred yet, but in reality it has already occurred and we feel its ripple.

Like I said, a theory.  But it delights me.