What is "now"

Lucid Lounge
1

I’ve been thinking recently about our concept of time, more specifically about our concept of “now.” what exactly is “now”? To me, it seems, there is no now. If i attempt to reflect upon the now, its no longer the now. If I try to just “exist” in a specific moment…I can’t… If time is infinent…then it would be impossible to measure time because “now” is infininetly small…but infinently large at the same time…It’s very difficult for me to comprehend. I later read Siddhartha, and took notice of Siddhartha’s ultimate conclusion, that “It seems otherwise because we are prey to the illusion that time is a reality. But time is not real, Govinda; I have experienced this time and time again. And if time is not real, then the span that seems to lie between the worl of eternity, between sorrow and bliss, between evil and good is also an illusion.” “What do you mean?” asked Govinda uneasilty. " LIsten well dear friend, listen well! The sinner that I am and that you are is a sinner, but someday he will be a Brahmin again, some day he will achieve Nirvana, he will be a Buddha. And now listen: This 'someday’is an illusion, is merely a metaphor! The sinner is not on the way to becoming a BUddha, he is not innvloved in a development, althought our thinking cannot imagine things in any other way. No, the sinner now and today, already contains the fuutrure Buddha, his future is fully here, you must worship in the sinner, in you, in everyone, the developin, the possible, the hidden BUddha. …No, the world is perfect at every moment, all sin already contains grace, all youngsters already contain oldsters, all babies contain death, all the dying contain eternal life. …in deep meditation it is possible to eliminate time, to see all past, all present, all developing life as coexisting, and everything is good, everything perfect, everything is Brahma…"".

Yeah, it kinda keeps going but its message states that the past, now (or called present), and future are all part of a single, eternal NOW…So what do all of you people think?

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Now is a state of mind and a state of being. Now is an infinitecimal time by mans law, but infinate in that of nature’s.

Man has such a simple mind and states that the now, is this point and the immediate past.

Now is forever and forever is now, one cannot fathom what now is when looking at it through the eyes of science and mans understanding of it, such a linear and limited view.

Time is infinate and infinatecimal, open your mind and let enlightenment reach you, go to a place where a single second can be a whole lifetime. Now is all there is and all there ever will be.

Now is the past as it is the future, everything and nothing exsists now.

3

What if we had perfect 100% memories of all past events. What if the future is already known and we have a perfect “memory” of it?

That would give a whole new meaning to “now”.

4

As I am writing this post, “now” is 8:37am. :neutral:

5

We only know of now as what is not past and what is not present. If you look at your thoughts, you will either be thinking of what has happened before in your life, some moment you can remember, or what you will be doing in the future. We cannot think of now very easily. Time is made of infinitely small pieces, all flowing into the one after, and the one after that. If we can ride that wave, sit on the crest of all the nows, not worry about what has happened in the past or think about consequences, then we are truly living in the present.

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Nice one foolish! :smile:

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How can time slices be ‘infinitely’ small? If that were the case, time would never progress, because no matter how many of these time slices you have, adding them together will still get you an infinitely small total. Makes you think. :smile:

8

“Now” is the moment right after you say ‘Now’ when the guy next to you hits the button/pulls the lever/etc.
It’s the time immediately after you say or hear or think the word “now”. :wink:

9

according to the scientist Julian Barbour Time doesn’t exist.

The only thing that exists is now. There was a really interesting documentary about that here in holland.

here is the page where you can view the documentary:
vpro.nl/wetenschap/index.sht … 09+2380593

click in the left menu below “video” (orange bar) on one of the tv’s. The top one is for fast connections, the bottom one for slow connections.

10

You can also find interesting time theory in Conversations With God by Neale Walsh.Not only interesting but amzingly simple,logicall and understandable.
Explaining it here would take too ling…in general it says that time is just a made up thing,it does not exists by itself.Its just a perspective…going few km up in space for example chnges perspective…time flows differently.
I highly recommend this book not only for this reason:)
take care

11

hey, another CWG reader! I love those books, it has given me so much inspiration and recognition! Anybody else out there who read those books?
(don’t worry i’ll split this topic while we go off topic here :wink: )

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CWG! I’ve read it quite a few times! That book saved me from my 20-year upbringing of close-mindedness. It truly opened my eyes and freed my mind. I would recommend it to everyone and anyone who is Searching. Also recommended, “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. :smile:

13

My Mum is training to be a yoga teacher at the moment, so we have loads of books on topics like this all over our house :tongue: Actually yogic belief says that time doesn’t exist too.

To Atheist; perhaps that is why time does not exist…

If nothing happened in the universe, if all particles were perfectly still, would there still be time??

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Now is the moment of recognision, speaking from consciousness.

In physics the latest ideas are like mine that time is quantified so there is a smallest moment of time…and thus a now! lol.
But remember there is no time dimension on its own…spacetime…its a whole.

Jeff

15

Actually, this ain’t fully true. Suppose you divide 5 seconds into infinitesimal small slices. The amount of slices would be infinitely huge. But when you add all these slices together, you always get 5 seconds. The explanation is pure mathematical…
But then there’s another problem. You can’t divide time (nor space) into infinitely small pieces, because this could give false impressions (time seems to slow down if you divide it into smaller and smaller pieces). That’s the reason why the paradox of Zeno (about Achilles who could never pass the tortoise during the race) seems so difficult to understand.

Sure there will be time. If all particles would be perfectly still, everything will be at the temperature of absolute zero (0 Kelvin, or -273.15°C). “Everything” means only the particles which have mass.
Entropy would be zero, so there isn’t ANY chaos. Practically however it’s IMPOSSIBLE to reach this state (particles can NEVER be perfectly still and it would contradict to some fundamental principles of physics).
The concept of time is related to the speed of light: the faster you go, the slower time flows. Light consists of photons, but they don’t have a rest mass. Thus, light and waves would continue to act normally.
Time has nothing to do with a certain temperature… If it would be true what you’re saying, then time would go faster during the summer when it’s hot (particles are moving faster then), and would slow down during winter when it’s colder :smile: Thát would be cool!

While Eastern philosophies are talking about the Eternal Now which contains both the past and the future, Western science denies the existence of an exact observable Now: we simply cannot experience Now because we’re bound to the limit of the speed of light. We always look into the past. When we look at a star at 20 lightyears distance, we’re seeing it 20 years in the past. When we look at another person, we don’t see him/her as she is NOW. We see this person as he/she was about a millionth of a second ago. This is still in the past. Even when you’re thinking or perceiving the world, you’re living in the past because the sensory input or thoughts first need to go to the brain through neurons. Everything you perceive always takes time. Now is always beyond our reach. Well not always… With extensive meditation you could overcome the illusionary boundaries of time and reside into the Eternal Now.

16

If the number of slices was infinitely large, then you simply couldn’t add them all together. That’s why infinity is impossible, and absolutely nothing in the universe can be beyond measurement. Anyway, even if we stay within theory, your example still doesn’t work. You can’t divide anything an infinite number of times, and that’s what my initial point was based on.

That’s where my other long-standing puzzlement comes in. Look around you… everything is moving at a noticeable rate. However, exactly how many ‘stages’ of movement occur between any particular time unit? What’s the smallest amount anything can move? Certainly it can’t be infinitely small, or else (as with time) nothing would move at all. There must be a minimum amount of space that can be traversed, but how small is it?

There was an article linked on the forum a few months ago that described this dilemma. Basically, how can any arbitrary point in space (a point being infinitely small) exist at a different position to any other point, given that an infinite number of infinitely small points separate the two? Certainly an interesting thought.

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Tomorrow never comes, Yesterday never was.

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Are you saying there are time quanta? I’ve never heard of this, any links by chance? I can’t even conceive of a quanta of time. Then again, I don’t buy the whole time is relative thing either, even though I’ve derived the equations. :peek:

19

I agree With Atheist here that infinite is just an idea of mankind…nothing more nothing less. In reality I dont find infinite logic because physics is more complicated then math. In real life when using infinite, you never could use a practical scale thats to name one thing.
But if you really want some logic then listen to this…

Einstein has explained that with every impulse and energy transformation a smaller amount is lost in the form of a gravitational wave!
ok supose i got an infinte small particle then, when that particle goes through an impulse or energy variation it would have to give a gravitational wave that has less energy then an infinite small amount of energy mmmm no that aint possible anymore.
Meaning an infinite small particle wouldnt exist to us simply because it wouldnt have any energy contact with us.

About that smallest amount of time…
With every change of energy and impulse a gravitational wave is lost.
And such a change we call time because else there would have nothing changed and all would still be the same.
So if i take a smaller amount of time…all gravitational waves have less energy…well you cant go any smaller then a graviton the smallest quantum of gravity so a graviton pulse would be the smallest moment of time…lower then that and nothing would have changed. So it looks like spacetime is quantified and not a whole piece but made of blocks. A quantified spacetime, well at least at this level of spacetime that is because it sure could be more dimensional then we are aware of.

I agree, surely an interesting thought! :wink:

Jeff

20

Perhaps I didn’t mention it properly, but the example I gave about dividing 5 seconds into infinitesimal small pieces was pure theoretically. I agree that this is only an tool for mankind to handle with infinity (the infinity symbol, see the avatar of Timeless_Soul :wink: ). The theoretical division of space into an infinite number of pieces is the underlying principle of mathematical integrals. Sure they don’t exist irl, but they are a tool to be able to calculate the surface of complicated 2D or 3D objects. Integrals can be found in almost every science. Without this mathematical infinitesimal division, science as we know it today wouldn’t exist.