Hello everyone,

While looking into various channeled material, I've come across a recurring theme that is honestly confusing from every way that I think about it, and that is the idea of "no time" or "simultaneous time", in which the past, present, and future are all homogenized into one. I know that this was discussed a bit in my thread back in March, but I was hoping we could discuss it a bit further and delve into the implications. My first concern is resolving the conflict between simultaneous time and free will, partly because if the future is already occurring, then the events leading up to that future must occur in order for it to occur, thus bringing determinism back into the mix. My second concern is the notions of sequential order, motion, progression,and change in the afterlife. None of these can occur without some sense of time, so this leads one to believe that the nature of the afterlife is static. The best way that I can reconcile these issues is to look at it from the realm of probabilities. For example, the future "exists" as probabilities which may or may not actualize in accordance to one's freedom of choice, and (this is more my personal hope) the past "exists" as probabilities as well. The model I have just proposed, however, also takes in the fact that consciousness exists outside of "time", but still experiences the phenomenon of growth via the exploration of the various probabilistic timelines. At that level, the sense of temporal order still exists, but simply as "I was at this level of growth, but my exploration caused me to rise to this level of growth." Personally, this makes more sense, because it eliminates another problem of multiple selves spread throughout timelines all existing at once.

I realize that the very nature of this problem is incredibly convoluted, and this model that I've thought up is probably riddled with holes, but it makes some sense to me at this time. I was hoping you all could give your opinions on the matter and perhaps help me see a simpler explanation than the one I've proposed.

Reminds me of a story I've told before so I apologize in advance to those who've already know it.

Anyway my mom's nephew was a customs official at an upstate NY town near the Canadian border.  One day as he was relaxing on his front porch, which was located on one of the main roads through town, the scene suddenly shifted.

Instead of the usual traffic going by, the road was now cobblestones and the traffic, instead of cars, consisted of horses and carriages.  Passersby were dressed in early 20th century clothes.

According to her nephew, it wasn't just a visual thing.  He could clearly hear the sound of wagon wheels clattering on the cobblestones, the smell of the horses, and the laughing and yelling of kids.

He swore he was not asleep or dreaming, the scene lasted only a few moments but it was a totally real experience.  He was transfixed, unable to process what he was seeing and hearing.

Then the scene gradually "dissolved" and once again the normal traffic resumed as it had prior to his experience.

For years he had kept the story to himself.  It wasn't until he retired that he told family members.  I'm sure he was concerned that it might jeopardize his job if such a story came out at the time.

Assuming it wasn't a lucid dream, the question is whether this was an example of simultaneous time.  And if it was, the question then raises many other questions as well as possibly answering other riddles.

For example, if past/present/future time is really all One Time, it might explain how some people are able to predict or foresee future events.  Maybe they already took place and somehow a "window" becomes open under certain circumstances.

The more interesting question is whether an event in the "past" can be altered and "future" events be changed accordingly (the so-called butterfly effect).

This gets into the "Seth" material and others that claim anytime a decision is made whether big or small, it sets up a whole new probable reality wherein both decisions were made and the consequences of both decisions play out.

I decide to marry A rather than C, and although I am now living a life with A, there is another dimension where I'm living a life with C.  Or I leave the house after deciding I want to see a certain movie and am killed in a traffic accident.....on the other hand I decide to stay home instead and both scenarios then play out.

As Yogi Berra once said, "when you get to a fork in the road, take it."  Exactly!  The world of probabilities explained in one sentence.

For those who are interested in this sort of thing, Jane Roberts wrote a fascinating book called The Education of Oversoul #7.  Used books are still available from Amazon at low prices.

I am not a fan of Seth, but this book was not channeled and whether you accept her version of the elasticity of time or not, it sure makes for entertaining reading!

R

First of all, I can't say that I have this time thing all figured out.

Second, I'm not going to go by what channeled sources have to say about it.

That said, much of what Doc said about Tom Campbell's views seems correct to me.  My feeling is that we always live "now" and now is always going to be here even if we are aware of all moments of time during now.

It is hard for me to believe that we will reach a point where we can never have a new thought because all such moments have already taken place. As long as we always exist now, we can always have a new thought. It is more of a matter of reaching the point where as Tom Campbell suggests (as paraphrased by Doc), we can have a lot more thought while non-physical than while physical. We might experience an entire century in an instant.

Regarding space, since God can never be separate from a part of himself, space can't be an absolute limitation. It is a matter of how much we limit our experience of all that is.

By the way, I listened to a Tom Campbell video and at one point it seems as if he stated that parallel universes don't exist in the way that some physicists and some channeled sources state. Rather, different possibilities exist. A possibility doesn't have to become a reality simply because it exists. Through our free will we decide what possibilities manifest. My feeling is that this interpretation is correct.

Even if time were simultaneous this wouldnt mean that free will doesn't exist, because a chronological sequence could be seen that is based on a large number of now-based decisions.

The best way to answer the time related free will question is to ask ourselves "how do we feel right now?" "Do I feel the freedom of choice that exists within me right now?"

Albert

P.S. Since Jane Roberts was able to write the Oversoul books Roger referred to without Seth's help, and since she wrote science fiction and ESP books before Seth supposedly came along, perhaps she could've written Seth books without the existence of an actual Seth. The accuracy of such books might be based on what Jane and her husband were able to come up with.

I agree on all points, Albert.  My gut feeling, which I'm trying to listen to more, tells that consciousness uses time as a tool through which it can explore an infinitely vast range of possibilities. Perhaps the theory of simultaneity and my idea are saying the same thing in a different manner, but I just find it hard to wrap my mind around multiple "mes" running around doing the exact opposite of what I've done 
recoverer wrote on Apr 19^th, 2014 at 1:03pm:

Valid point, it also undermines any weight a decision carries. "good" choices are taken simply out of personal gain, and any sense of choice becomes a series of hoops through which we jump in order to achieve our best personal outcome, which seems a bit lopsided in a system that seems to look highly upon selflessness and achieving the best possible outcome for all involved parties. I'm not trying to slander the idea of multiple selves by any means, but I can't overlook some of its implications.
recoverer wrote on Apr 19^th, 2014 at 1:53pm:

As to the idea of multiple "mes", etc., my take on it is that there may be different digital data streams out there that we can explore, that are parallel to our own reality, but that they are not part of our own.  So, I very much doubt that there are a dozen versions of me, you or anyone else in earth-school physical reality. 

It seems clear to me that we can explore probabilities and possibilities in the right consciousness frame of mind, but that these frames or streams must be different from our own physical reality.  But some who experience NDEs or astral travel, etc. may not understand that they are exploring a divergent stream, and assume that it must relate to what they know to be real.

Thanks, Bruce. 

I think that makes much more sense.  Otherwise, timelessness seems like insanity.  You know, I am currently reading a novel on my Kindle.  While doing so, I remembered an interesting passage from the first chapter.  I scrolled back from the 10th chapter to the first, and then, after satisfying my curiousity, I scrolled forward again to the 10th.  On rare occasions, if something piques my interest, I jump ahead and then reverse course and go backward. 

Now the novel is still in the sequence in which it was written.  My ability to rewind or fast forward in no way changes the logic or the overall meaning of the novel.  But due to the nature of the Kindle, or my ability to change perspective, I can travel backward or forward along the data stream, or choose a linear approach to reading. 

I venture to say, that freed of a human body and constraints of the earth physical world sense of time, we have choices to change perspective (as Bruce mentions) and view things from different angles.  But this doesn't have to imply insanity or senselessness.  Sequences of events still exist, but our perpspective and perceptual abilities have greatly expanded.

Thanks again.

M

Bruce,
This view is actually one of the only ones I can comprehend, and I especially enjoy your mention of experience, which I see as an intrinsic function of consciousness that escapes the bindings of our notion of time. For example, when you return from your journey to analyze the building of the pyramids, you bring back with you an amount of experience that wasn't previously there, and as a result, your consciousness has grown larger than it would have been had you not decided to take the journey in the first place; the same goes for Doc's kindle example, where his deeper analysis provided him an overall growth in experience. This notion allows for a rudimentary sense of progression in both our time bound earth experience and our experience over There, and seems to clear up any need for multiple selves. I do believe, however, that experience can be "forgotten", or hidden away for the duration of something that a person would want to see through completely new eyes. In fact, the main application of this concept of temporary forgetfulness can be observed in our experience of Earth life.
Bruce Moen wrote on Apr 20^th, 2014 at 4:02am: