embracethevoid
Rising Star
I can explain the apparent linearity of time or try to anyway.
Given first cause and now, we can trace a linear set of cause and effect from here to now.
What I think he means is that there's no such thing as a timeline. There is no such "time" as 20/09/2011 existing in "space". Space does not pass through time, nor does time pass through space. Rather, let's suppose it's 10/05/2056 and we have a Universe Reconfigurator 2056™. If we now use our newfangled gadget and take every single unit of energy in the universe and arrange it exactly as it has been arranged on that fateful 20/09/2011, it will suddenly be 20/09/2011 all over again! Boom went our universe reconfigurator (I'm sorry your future wife and kids didn't make it), but at least it reminds us what's important, that Now truly is all there is.
This is because in spacetime, there are two ways things can be separated - spacelike and timelike (read the wiki page on "Spacetime" for a description far better than I can muster). To expound, the sun is 8 minutes away from us at lightspeed. However, the sun exists NOW and we exist NOW. With each "tick" of time, the next wave of information packets (typically photons) hit their destination. So in one tick of time, the earth will spin around the sun a certain distance. Across that same "tick", the sun will move relative to the stars. This creates the appearance of an Earth orbiting the Sun, moving around the galaxy. Keep in mind the concept of spacelike separation - nothing "here right now" really "causes" this all to go at once. However as we go back in time, there are less events and hence less causes and effects, until we return to first cause. Which is literally pulling ALL the strings. It's like two people clap at the same time, you couldn't say one caused the other to do it. But first cause made them both do it
And I suppose, that's what AKL means by the idea that things are not proportioned over time, they simply are proportioned. A "tick" of time is the same throughout the cosmos. The "length" of a tick is fixed relative to the "length" of a "segment" of space, that's how things are proportioned.
Now, here's a conundrum. We ARE in a dream, but it's not our bodies dreaming. It's simply what we think is "first cause" which simply is "us" all the way back in "time" when it was a lot simpler, when there was no "us" because there was only ME, I am that I am, etc. Understand? We're literally bits and pieces of an etch a sketch. But the etch a sketch itself is not a dream. It's all you are. There isn't any "higher" reality to wake up to, because that would also be You.
So in a very real sense, time is linear. But in another sense, there are a metric fuckton of linear timelines that placed together produce worldlines (1+1D), worldsheets (2+1D), worldvolumes (3+1D). To transcend time is much easier than you think. All you need to know is how space and time are "shaped". Now, there is no beginning or end to "time" simply because the observer arises with the beginning and dies with the end. But You are beyond the observer, don't forget that.
Given first cause and now, we can trace a linear set of cause and effect from here to now.
What I think he means is that there's no such thing as a timeline. There is no such "time" as 20/09/2011 existing in "space". Space does not pass through time, nor does time pass through space. Rather, let's suppose it's 10/05/2056 and we have a Universe Reconfigurator 2056™. If we now use our newfangled gadget and take every single unit of energy in the universe and arrange it exactly as it has been arranged on that fateful 20/09/2011, it will suddenly be 20/09/2011 all over again! Boom went our universe reconfigurator (I'm sorry your future wife and kids didn't make it), but at least it reminds us what's important, that Now truly is all there is.
This is because in spacetime, there are two ways things can be separated - spacelike and timelike (read the wiki page on "Spacetime" for a description far better than I can muster). To expound, the sun is 8 minutes away from us at lightspeed. However, the sun exists NOW and we exist NOW. With each "tick" of time, the next wave of information packets (typically photons) hit their destination. So in one tick of time, the earth will spin around the sun a certain distance. Across that same "tick", the sun will move relative to the stars. This creates the appearance of an Earth orbiting the Sun, moving around the galaxy. Keep in mind the concept of spacelike separation - nothing "here right now" really "causes" this all to go at once. However as we go back in time, there are less events and hence less causes and effects, until we return to first cause. Which is literally pulling ALL the strings. It's like two people clap at the same time, you couldn't say one caused the other to do it. But first cause made them both do it
And I suppose, that's what AKL means by the idea that things are not proportioned over time, they simply are proportioned. A "tick" of time is the same throughout the cosmos. The "length" of a tick is fixed relative to the "length" of a "segment" of space, that's how things are proportioned.
Now, here's a conundrum. We ARE in a dream, but it's not our bodies dreaming. It's simply what we think is "first cause" which simply is "us" all the way back in "time" when it was a lot simpler, when there was no "us" because there was only ME, I am that I am, etc. Understand? We're literally bits and pieces of an etch a sketch. But the etch a sketch itself is not a dream. It's all you are. There isn't any "higher" reality to wake up to, because that would also be You.
So in a very real sense, time is linear. But in another sense, there are a metric fuckton of linear timelines that placed together produce worldlines (1+1D), worldsheets (2+1D), worldvolumes (3+1D). To transcend time is much easier than you think. All you need to know is how space and time are "shaped". Now, there is no beginning or end to "time" simply because the observer arises with the beginning and dies with the end. But You are beyond the observer, don't forget that.