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Martin Cross |
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Let's take a brief look at non-linear
thought.
I'm not talking about seeing the future or
telepathy or hypnosis; let's take a much more prosaic example we are all
familiar with: dreams.
Now, in a dream we have certain experiences which
are very common: falling, size (things being very large or small), amounts
(there being a great deal or an impossible lack of something), experiences of
horror and wonder, and of course sexual experiences. All except the last are
well encompassed by a work like 'Alice Through The Looking Glass'.
Yet, one of the most interesting things about a
dream is the loss of the sense of time passing. It is explained in one way
simply by saying that you are aware rather than conscious, but this is overly
prosaic. What does it really mean?
Maybe we can widen our understanding by comparing
our human experience with earlier human and non-human experience of
dreaming.
For instance, lower forms of non-human life -
which we all arguably once were - are restricted in the senses that they have
compared to we human beings. Perhaps it could therefore be the case that
dreaming, and also the experience of being dead which we hypothesise, can be
explained by an increase in sensory experience - an increase in the number of
senses.
When we look outside we see (simplistically)
three dimensions: similarly, when we look inside, into the mind, as explained
earlier elsewhere, we see three dimensions. This gives us a total of six
dimensions - and this only occurred to me recently - these can inductively
be taken to map onto our six human senses: sight, sound, taste, smell, touch and
balance. So, you can mix and match the six senses with the six dimensions, inner
and outer. At any point in time you can 'explore' inner or outer with any or all
of your senses. Please stay with me for this, if you can. I won't explain
further for the sake of keeping it manageably brief!
One of our key senses is vision. Our vision is
the basis of much of our art and we are able to envisage in three dimensions (ie
with perspective), and in colour. It is these which are very recent evolutionary
developments. Many animals don't see in colour. Colour in human art is thought
to be a recent development. Balance as a higher sense really developed when we
left the trees; and perspective in art was a development of the last
millennium.
If our senses have been developing thus far,
could they not be continuing to develop?
Newton shows that light is
actually made up of seven dimensions.
Could it therefore be that when we are thinking
non-linearly, ie in dreaming or in death, we are perceiving primarily the seven
dimensions of light - and it is the overloading of our perceptions with seven
dimensions instead of six that creates in us a non-linear
experience.
My father's house has many rooms, as it is
written. I'm not suggesting the number is limited to seven; I'm only suggesting
that an increase to seven would be enough, and light is a new experience when we
have no eyes, but operate on a non-physical energy plane...
Just a fun idea,
maybe.
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| Tue Sep 04 19:23:19 2007 |
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Dr Mary Jones |
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Interesting speculations. Is dreaming a case of 'sensory overload' which may be regarded as such when we are awake because we cannot understand it- i.e.reflecting on it when we are awake, it seems like a computer programme that has gone haywire ?
It may well be that when dreaming and its dimensions are further understood, we shall not only understand them but be able to manipulate/programme them and use them to our advantage. |
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| Fri Nov 09 10:41:49 2007 |
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Martin Cross |
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It is a good question. Deja vu is an uncanny
experience. You get that weird feeling, just for a short while, and then it
stops. It is different from recognising a place that you have never been to. It
is more like 'groundhog day'. As if you have lived that bit of time in your
life before.
I agree with you that other explanations don't
seem to get to the heart of it? One recent one I read was a physical
explanation, of some time-delay between the different senses. But that doesnt
explain why you would think I *remember* this, does it?
It may be helpful to bear in mind how the brain
works, though. Dr Edward DeBono wrote a book called 'The Mechanism of Mind', in
the sixties, which I think is well worth reading. He thought of the brain as a
surface, one of its jobs being to record patterns, and these are what the
surface does, to make memory.
Now, what if you have a dream, and in the dream
you think backwards? That is, with non-linear thought, you can still think
linearly - such as with a dream fragment that makes sense later - but you can
also think linearly, *in reverse*. Even if only by pure
chance.
I had a brief interval of deja vu not too long
ago at work. Work is one of those places where you spend a lot of time and a lot
of very similar things keep happening, but you probably dont spend too much time
thinking about them. I can well imagine these could have cropped up in a dream
and before the dream faded, what was happening at work was similar enough to
trigger off my memory.
If things start happening to you that are like
you remember from a recent dream, in the normal order, then you will simply
think "This makes me remember dreaming about...", but it is only work. You wont
be interested. But if your dream happened in reverse, you are going to think,
that's weird...
It's like this, suppose you take a book you read,
and still remember, and start reading it, but from the back. At some point, you
are going to recognise what you are reading, probably with a bit of a
shock.
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| Tue Nov 20 19:29:59 2007 |
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Martin Cross |
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Lucid Dreaming is a nice catchphrase.
What makes me say that? Well, take an alternative to it: the idea that
some dreams are so believable that when you wake up, you have to remind
yourself they are not true.
I had one like that only this week. (An otherwise nonsense dream about
receiving lots of little packages that were wrongly delivered). It took
me a good few moments of being awake to remember that the generally
anxious feeling I had got might be real, but the dream wasn't.
Rather more distressing is when you dream a loved one is still alive,
and then wake to find out they aren't. I can still remember one dream I
had like that, even after all these years, the feeling was so strong. "Lucid dreaming" seems plausible, but may not even be true. To be
half-awake and trying to wake up fully is one thing, but to actually be
fully asleep and know that you are dreaming... well, like I say, it may
be true.
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| Fri May 09 2008 |
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Martin Cross |
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It turns out it was not entirely acute to wonder if dreaming is non-linear thought. It is more probable that dreaming is like hypnosis.
It seems that, when hypnotised, one voluntarily adopts an orientation (it has been termed) similar to being asleep. "Lucid dreaming" is a term which might best be applied to the hypnotic state. In the waking state, we generally accept that feelings are determined by belief. When hypnotised we appear to be able to adopt the opposite state, where feelings (and suggestions) determine belief, without apparent discomfort.
At the start I mentioned telepathy as well as hypnosis. Although there can be little doubt that one's mind 'contains' (is co-incident with) the minds of other people, it is a matter of conjecture whether those are the minds of other people that we know, or whether these are the minds of our ancestors.
The latter does seem far more likely to me, since the relationship with those who have gone before us would be analagous to one's relation with the 'hero' when watching a film. It is notable that this immersion in film is a completely universal, and completely modern, experience.
Although the initial idea, or provocation, has had to yield. there has been a real benefit in the new and better understanding of hypnosis.
What did fascinate me was the potential for greater cooperation given a greater understanding of these agencies - if not non-linearly then how about laterally? Indirectly? Rather than turning it to our advantage it would be wonderful if this could have been to everyone's advantage.
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| Wed Oct 01 2008 |
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Annie |
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I'm pretty basic in my views of these things, but i think what you're saying is still pretty interesting. Would you agree with people when they say that they fourth dimension is time travel? It's just something I heard, I was wondering what the rational for that would be? |
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| Tue Mar 31 20:02:39 2009 |
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Martin |
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Hi Annie, thanks for your kind words. I'm glad to be asked your question.
I think that travelling backwards in time is not really possible because the past is not real in the same way that the present is real. This is what people used to think, before H G Wells. The good reason for that was that nature seemed cyclical, from the seasons to the big solar events. The precession of the stars which I read about in Graham Hancock's books was about the only way to tell that time was passing on the grand scale, and that repeats itself every 26000 years.
We think we have gone back in time to the start of the Universe and Physicists call this a Big Bang. It is this starting point which leads to the idea, or rationale, of time as a dimension. But is that right?
Let's look at the future to see why it might not be. For example, looking into the future, I think that at some point I am going to meet God. Nothing surprising about that, I know. Lots of people believe in God. Do you think you are going to meet God? I hope so. The point is, we are not going to meet Him at the same time. And that is a difference between me, you, and the people whose lives were spent in the past. As I say elsewhere, you or I might be coming back to live on Earth as a plumber or nurse. But Michelangelo is not coming back. His time is up and he is with God, now. It is a plane of existence that is not visible to us. And I find that even more exciting than time travel.
Others might find time travel far more exciting than I do, but you are right to be sceptical I think, Annie. It is scepticism about the Big Bang model, and belief in a better explanation that might lead you to come up with different and better answers to the best questions, such as what is the shape of the Universe?
Thanks again for your question.
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| Sat Jun 13 2009 14:23:35 GMT+0100 (GMT Daylight Time) |
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Martin |
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Hi again Annie, about your question. It is something I have still been thinking about. Have you? Time is not, in any sense, a dimension. Truth is a dimension. What does this mean? OK, let's see. Time is not a dimension, because one can't go forwards and backwards in it. I know that time looks like a dimension, and we are told it is by physicists, but that is what this website is all about. There is a fair amount written about Einstein's theories given that time is not a dimension, if you want to know more. Really, time is just the name we give to experience. You can't go 'backwards' in experience, just like you can't go backwards in time. It looks as if a clock or calendar could run backwards very easily. But it also looks as if a computer is intelligent or a movie real. We do not imagine these things to be alive just because they look intelligent and real. Follow this through and I think it shows that Plato's idea of a cave is an over-simplified idea of truth. You remember he wrote about the truth as shadows cast from the fire onto the wall of a cave? According to this, all we can ever see is a poor reflection of the 'higher' truth. I don't like this, for the same reason that I don't like the description of Heaven as 'a land of milk and honey'. Two thousand years ago, that was fine. Even now, it is a good kids description. But not for us. Not when it discourages we grown-ups from thinking any further. Truth is a dimension.To apply this to Plato's analogy would be to question the idea of walls in a cave. It might lead us to think instead of a room. From there it is inevitable to consider rooms, as in a series of rooms or caves, rather than one cave for everyone. And at this point, we are approaching an understanding of truth as a dimension; as a series of rooms; like units. This isn't the same as relative truth, by any means. Rather, it is a congruence of Platonic thinking and religious thinking. 'In my father's house there are many rooms', it is said. These rooms are like the 'units', if you care to imagine it in terms of a dimension. So, Plato's original argument is in modern life divergent with higher truth, where this is convergent to it. This is a sure sign that we are on the right track. With me so far? I hope so, because we can do something with this. So is truth really a dimension? Isn't it a bit like time? We cannot go backwards - the truth is marching on - any more than we can go backwards in time. Our race is constantly learning - it is called science. A disaster, such as a planetary catastrophe, would put our march on hold, but it would not stop it. And we can't uninvent science, just like we can't recreate an original Michelangelo. But if you think about this a bit more, you might realise that philosophy - the very thing Plato stood for - has already given us 'rooms' in our academic study. So, maths is a 'room', and it is separate to the 'room' of physics. An even better example is the 'room' of music. Notice that the room of music, like its partner room of acting, is not one that can be entered other than by experience. In other words, the truth is exactly like a dimension because it has these observable units, and actually we are moving forward along the dimension simply by thinking, as I have been thinking the last three months. Some of us are moving along the dimension in our own right, others are stationery in their own right, but moving along the dimension with the rest of humanity. Provided of course that humanity is moving forward. Do you think it is? Well, that is a provocative or rhetorical question. For me, this is the reward - understanding - for thinking more deeply and not just taking what other people say for granted. |
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| Sun Sep 20 18:11:05 2009 |
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Martin Cross |
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Richard Feynman is one of the most famous physicists of the 20th Century of course, but he also wrote for the layman, as a teacher. That’s how I happened to read a book of his (QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter) which observes that experiments made at different points of time t0, t1, t2, etc. clearly show sub-atomic particles and events reversed in time, happening at t2, then t1, then t0, etc.
The particle appears to have travelled in time, as effect precedes cause.
Yet, time-travel is an impossibility. It would mean I would meet myself – or my father. How do we resolve this paradox? How can we understand time, in a way that includes this phenomenon without it being a dimension?
The watch on my wrist shows me the time of day, the day of the week, and the day of the month, but it does not show which month it is. For that, I\'d need an electronic watch, to keep track of the day and the year. If I was on a desert island, with no battery, I could learn to tell the date from the stars. In ages past, that is how people have agreed what date it was. Knowledge of the Zodiac arose through studying the passing of time.
The Zodiac partly repeats every year so that everyone born in August is Leo, like me. All stars visible with the naked eye from Earth are within the Milky Way galaxy. It takes about a quarter of a billion years for Earth to rotate once around the Galactic Centre – a Galactic Year – but the Zodiac of visually familiar stars repeats itself after only 27,000 years. There is no clock other than the one we make, so if we take away every external measurement of time, what tells us that time is passing? That is, can we tell that time is still passing, or might it seem as if time were repeating?
There are times when I am awake that time seems to slow down, and times when it seems to speed up. Fortunately I know logically that these are subjective sensations. I do not need a watch to tell me that time is passing at a steady rate. It is easy to tell that time is passing while I am awake.
It is much less easy to tell, while I am asleep. I have no real perception that time has passed after I awaken from sleep. The memory of dreams may be a clue, but in dreams, when I am falling asleep, I never feel that less is happening, it always feels like more is happening. My theory about why we do not remember dreams is not because they make no sense and are too difficult to recall, it is that too much happens too fast. Instead of cause and effect chained together, it seems like causes have multiple effects and effects have multiple causes. The dream overwhelms recall.
When you see it like that, travel into the future along a dimension of time becomes less interesting. Travelling forward in time does not need a time machine, just suspended animation.
We are all getting older. There are physical changes both outside and inside the body which show this, and eventually we will all die. Yet that is intellectual knowledge. Internally, I don\'t feel old. I don\'t feel a particular age. I don\'t know what dying means. The human race will go on and I feel so will I, I believe. But if I had no watch, I would still be accumulating experience. It is the steady accumulation not just of experiences, but of experience itself, which tells me that I have lived out a life. When I was young there were many things I did not know. Whether it is falling in love, qualifying for a degree, or starting a business from a hobby, experience changes us permanently. We become defined.
A real time machine, so to speak, would be one in which I could go back to not having had the experience I do have. I do not feel any older. I do not feel any particular age. But I do recognise the many differences that experience has made to me, and whilst going back to the beginning would in one way be a new start, in almost all other ways, and in all the ways that matter, it would not be something I would want.
This gives me a sense of purpose to go with the sense of time passing. Although my life will end and perhaps a different life begin, the human race of which I am part is greater than death and has a greater purpose to which I contribute. The sense of purpose through experience is my proof that time is not cyclical and repeating. It matters.
I can imagine replacing the \'magic\' of time-travel with a science I might call \'experience-travel\'. Time-travel looks like fun and might be something I would want to do. Experience-travel is a rather different proposition. It seems much more like a one-time choice: a stark choice of whether to forge ahead for good or ill, or start again completely. If I had regrets about the way I had spent my life then I might be tempted by an offer of a completely different life. But if I am proud of the efforts I have made, and particularly if it was difficult at the time, then I\'d be very reluctant to give up my hard-won experience, as indeed I am.
What is the best way to understand time? Is it indeed a solid, tangible fourth Dimension? Is it \"a flowing stream that you can never step into twice\"? Or is it external at all, is there such a thing as \'time\'? I\'d like to argue for a new understanding that embraces all of these, but replaces them with a new metaphor. One which we can recognise subjectively well enough that it makes for a useful contra-posit when we get onto an objective shape for the Universe.
If we look at time as if it were a tree, then the past might be the solid, tangible trunk at the centre of the tree, with the future the infinitesimally spreading, but bounded canopy of leaves and twigs.
The trunk does not extend upward forever and there is not only one future. We do not believe in a future that is predetermined by the past - it is not pre-destined. Neither does the canopy extend outward infinitely. We do not believe in a future that is entirely divorced from the past. God does not play dice, and we believe in destiny, whatever name we give it. If my destiny branches in front of me like an Ash tree and your destiny were more like an Oak tree, we would not argue that one was better than the other.
It is a significant discovery that there are parts of the Universe which are further away than they should be according to the age of the Universe. The Universe is 14 billion years old, but 46 billion light-years wide. In the tree metaphor I understand this to mean that the past is not a single trunk, breaking suddenly into a canopy of leaves, but one that branches first. Those parts of the Universe that are now so far away were once closer, everyone agrees. They are no not reachable in this Universe even if one could travel indefinitely at the fastest possible speed. Time really does have all three elements that we associate with a tree: the trunk, the branches and the leaves.
We presume to think that time started at time 0. In fact, this has led us to make the mistake of thinking that time did, in fact, \"start\"; that there was a \'Big Bang\' - which then ended. This is just like looking at a tree and thinking it stops where the earth begins. Just as significant to the tree as the leaves are the roots underground, without which it cannot survive. The Big Bang never ended - it is still going on. That is *simpler* than the idea that it ended, not more complicated, and it corresponds in our visualization to the roots of a tree of time.
How do I relate a tree to Feynmans experimental observations? Approaching the tree from the other direction, top down, what we see is very different: a sea of branching twigs and stems, seemingly expanding into ever thicker sticks and branches, from the very small to larger and larger. I mentioned his book, QED : The strange theory of light and matter, where Richard Feyman describes the series of measurements he makes on a subatomic particle. Each measurement gives a two-dimensional measure of movement (the x and y of a hypotenuse) which he then simply adds to give a final position, collapsing the dimensions (in my words). Imagine you are an ant on a leaf trying to get to another leaf. Now, the random short branching out from the thinnest twigs and stems requires a ‘dance’ for you to navigate from any 3D position to any other 3D position on the tree; a dance through many smaller Dimensions as I may think of the twigs. If the ant were smaller than an electron, and the twig thinner, then the tree would better approximate Feynman’s observations than a river or a path. In fact, the reference to a \'dance\' is Feynman’s preferred description of what, to me, is clearly a movement through poly-dimensional space.
We don\'t need to prove that at some point the three-dimensional cause-and-effect Universe becomes the multi-dimensioned, quantum Universe, since we simply observe that it does. The sub-atomic particle appears to dance because it moves through a series of pathways, each of which is a separate dimension, like the dimensions being created/discovered to reach Strange. And on the smallest scale, time turns out to be one of those dimensions; but on the smallest scale, only.
The great strength of a river or a path may be as a comparison to the flow or travel of time, but this is true of the tree as well. A tree grows outward at the same time as upward. It is, in some ways, born fully-formed, becoming more like itself with each year that passes. We are so used to thinking of time as a mechanism that it is extremely useful to be reminded it may be thought of like an organism. The Universe may well be 14 billion years old, but that doesn’t mean that every year has to be exactly identical with every other year, in human terms. It is, after all, always ‘now’.
We don’t necessarily need a better visualization than Einstein’s and even if we did, a tree might not be it. Einstein’s great achievement was in showing the inverse relation between speed and time. If you are stopped, time travels forward at maximum speed. As you move, and your velocity approaches the speed of light, external time moves slower and slower, until you reach the limit of light speed, and it stops. But this is not really a fourth dimensional view of space-time as a uni-dimensional view of it, just as when we talked of ‘going forward’ being the opposite of, not going backward, but standing still.
Trees do live a very long time, but they do not live forever. The oldest individual trees that we have found have lived for thousands of years. One can see that a tree deserves respect for the life it lives out, just as does animal life. In the same way, the purpose of time is not itselfd. The tree of time is not immortal because (if you choose to believe in Him) then God is obviously not here yet.
He must be coming. |
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| Mon Jul 13 2015 19:58:50 GMT+0100 (GMT Standard Time) |
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