Is time real?

[mary isaak]

Hi everyone,

I heard that time is a mind concept and that it does not really exist.
This idea is hard to understand for me, because I experience events as happening one after the other. Maybe the order is different for different people, it is relative but still exist.

Thanks

[iamthat]

We could say that time is the measurement of change, the apparent interval between two events arising in consciousness.

We inhabit a world of form, including our inner mental world, and the nature of form is change. Thus we experience a succession of events and time is very real.

The Self, our true Being, is changeless and thus does not experience time. There is only the eternal Present.

I would consider myself as a practical Advaitist. Time may be an illusion from a higher perspective, but to say that time does not exist is denying the actual experience of everyday physical existence.
As you say, it is relative.

Peace

[mary isaak]

Thank you very much for explaining Iamthat, I understand.

Originally Posted by iamthat

Time may be an illusion from a higher perspective

I think what I can not get it this higher perspective. I can only see time from the physical world point of view. And I think that is why I cannot understand what is meant by eternity.

Thanks!

[eputkonen]

The past only exists as a memory.
The future is only imaginative speculation.

When the mind is silent and there is no thought..."now" is all there is. There is constant change...nothing is static or unmoving. We make up an interval for the "time" it takes something to move from there to here (referring to memory)...but in actuality...everything is only ever-here and ever-now.

[ayar415]

Originally Posted by eputkonen

When the mind is silent and there is no thought..."now" is all there is.

"Now" is the present. There is no present without the past and the future.

I will have to give you a failing grade for this answer.

[ayar415]

Originally Posted by eputkonen

When the mind is silent and there is no thought..."now" is all there is.

Is the mind ever silent? Wishful thinking is thought in action.

[eputkonen]

Originally Posted by ayar415

Is the mind ever silent?

Of course.

[ayar415]

Originally Posted by eputkonen

Of course.

What is it like when the mind is silent and cognition stops?

[eputkonen]

Originally Posted by ayar415

What is it like when the mind is silent and cognition stops?

When the mind is silent, there is no mental chatter. No labeling, critiquing, judging, comparing, or other compulsive or conceptual thinking.

There is just the feeling/experiencing of the moment...without comment in thought.

[Ewwerrin]

Originally Posted by ayar415

What is it like when the mind is silent and cognition stops?

You will experience ever expanding extacy and bliss to the degree that you are willing to allow it. However, these will translate into perspectives and thoughts of inspiration, that is vibrationally in alignment with your greater non-physical pure positive source consciousness.

So when you stop offering thought, you will receive thought from your Source of being. The only way to know if you are receiving from Source, is by the way you feel emotionally, as you are receiving the thought.

Stopping all thought, such as in meditation, is a universally practical and effective permission slip we give ourselves to come into alignment with our own true infinite nature of being.

You will always be free to still choose to think thoughts and hold unto perspectives and expand into perspectives that are more limitting in nature.

However you think/focus is always up to you, even when it seems that you are not in control of your own thoughts. It requires one to perceive it that way in order to experience it that way.

There is no right/wrong way, because there is no goal and existence is infinitely unlimitted and capable of supporting infinite perspectives and also perspectives of infinite variety. You co-create your perspective not just with physical perspective but also with your greater non-physical consciousness. And stopping thought, such as in meditation, is a way to allow the natural inseperable connection with your greater non-physical Source Consciousness, to be more fully naturally, effortlessly and joyfully realised, by your physical extension that you call human body, for the joyful life experience that you came here to live.

Your greater non-physical consciousness exists beyond time and space, and that is why you, in essence, as all in essence, exists beyond time and space. That is why it is always unnecessery to use any condition as an excuse to suffer. Because such limitation will never truely exist, and so it is allowed. Because there is no harm done to the indestructable nature of your being.

So meditation also helps one become more emotionally sensitive to the perspectives one is choosing to expand upon, so that choosing suffering no longer becomes a habbit, but a choice that one is then more aware of their choosing of it, making it no longer necessery to keep choosing it. And what is then allowed to remain is of your natural infinitely blessed nature of ever expanding being and eternal joyful effortless becoming.