Well, IMO, it (time) is strictlty a mental phenomena. Any configuration of matter could be recreated if someone had the skill. Every atom could be put back where they were 10 minutes ago. This would erase so called time for all the objects that were thus put back to the state they came from. But all that had occurred was the repositioning of objects in space. The fact that I cannot replace every atom in the universe does not argue against the logical possibility. The uncertainty principle would cause the bingo balls to bounce differently next time around, but that too seems irrelevant. Where is the medium? Surely, if there was a substance that imbued all existence , we would have had some clues by now. No, it is only a conception of movement. Time is the movement of energy (by which I mean the fundamental positive and negative energy that is the ground of everything). As energy moves, relationships are perceived by conscious creatures. It is only because of memory that we are compelled to imagine a direction to these unceasing changes in position. Without memory, there would not need to be any sense of direction. If I immediately forgot each successive state I experienced...how could I possibly experience what we call time? Change would simply be different, not directional. It is because we retain each state of awareness in memory that the illusion of direction is created.
We recognize change (movement) and we call it time. But this is only an interpretation. If all movement was prevented there could obviously be no time. Isn't all movement or change just as much backward as it is forward? We have already agreed that we cannot recreate something exactly as it was (yet). But because I remember a particular configuration or state, I put the next state into a direction away from that space when really it is in the same space and it is neither forward nor back, but only different. All movrment occurs within the same space, so why do we separate space from space? Like I said, if you put all the atoms back where they were, the future is ERASED. ALL the atoms means every single wave of every thing--known and unknown. Thbe author's future memory is gone and the participent simply begins at the same time that he/she left a few minutes past. So when change is reversed, so is the perception of time.
I'm not sure I believe all this. But I saw a performance of Vivaldi's Il Favorito at a Baroque concert the other day, and the background playwers had stopped time while the lead ran back and forth through time...so you figure it out. |
