A Further Refutation of Time
What is the relation between events in time? Surely, the relation must
be causal, with previous events causing succeeding events to arise. It
is inconceivable that any event could arise without a cause. Yet, my
subjective observations have led me to believe that another relation
also adheres to events in time, connecting events with no apparent
linear causal connection. With the passage of years, a certain
metaphor, limited but apt, has congealed in my mind, representing my
suspicions as to what is really going on here.
Consider a reel of movie film. Each frame represents one instant of
time. As the movie is played, one frame at a time is projected, and all
the others are stored up in reserve, either waiting to be played, or
already having been played. Thus, there are two ways of conceiving what
is going on. First, and most obviously, is the experience of watching
the movie, in which the successive frames present a coherent story,
with events in previous frames causally determining what appears in the
succeeding frames. This is how time is generally experienced. Yet this
method of consideration is essentially illusory, the result of a
superficial fascination with a clever mechanical trick. A judicious and
circumspect observer would be compelled to conclude that the frames or
moments of time could not simply appear out of nothing and disappear
back into nothing. The frames must exist in some way before being
projected, and continue to exist after being shown. This wiser mode of
consideration conceives of time as something of a bulk nature,
something coiled up onto itself like an ammonite, something existing
largely somewhere else, somewhere that cannot be shown on the screen of
the moment. This occult locality, and the bulk nature of coiled time
are implied by the nature of the entire dynamic of what is going on.
It is specifically the coiled nature of time that allows us to infer
its bulk, unexpressed existence. In a reel of movie film, there are two
ways in which the frames can relate to each other in space. First and
most obviously, the frames are related successively, one after the
other. This is how the movie is “supposed” to be experienced. In our
metaphor, this relation is the normal, causal relation between events.
Now imagine that a long, sharp hatpin is thrust longways through the
coiled reel of film. The holes that this pin might create would be
unrelated to each other in terms of the successive, conventional nature
of the film. Looking at the film as it was being played, the spacing of
these holes would appear meaningless and random. They would, however,
have a certain pattern, but one that would be impossible to note,
unless the observer had the concept of the coiled pre-existence of the
spooled film. Even then, the pattern would be exceedingly difficult to
discern, because the intervals between the holes would vary, being
smaller near the end of the film, where the frames were more closely
coiled up.
Imagine furthermore that our poor, tortured roll of film, aside from
being impaled by numerous sharp pins of various lengths and diameters,
is made of an ancient, long-superceded material, quite vulnerable to
fungoidal decay and corrosions of various sorts. Being stored under
poor conditions, these forms of decay run rampant in the frail spools,
creating numerous distortions and grim darkenings visible during
projection. These artifacts would, like the hatpin pricks, relate to
each other in ways that would only make sense to an observer cognizant
to the coiled pre-existence of the film. Otherwise, they would seem to
be random distortions. A single patch of mold, growing over a section
of the reel, would produce a visible result in time as the film was
projected.
If our observer was very clever, he could tell you all about the patch
of mold, simply from the distortions it caused in the movie. But, even
if he were not hopelessly caught up in the drama of the movie (which he
almost inevitably is) his cognitive capacities would be grossly
insufficient to perform the requisite calculations. If he were to start
to tell his fellow moviegoers about his suspicion that the entire movie
exists as an unexpressed coiled bulk, he would doubtless be hushed down
with extreme annoyance, and perhaps, if he persisted, even kicked out
of the theater for interrupting. In this theater of life, I believe
many have been so ejected. Even if he were to match cunning to his
insight, and anticipate this bother, by limiting himself to tactfully
whispering to a few chosen fellows, after the occult fashion, it is
exceedingly unlikely that they could be made to understand, so
compelling is the continually unfolding drama on the screen before
them. The brilliant colors, the sticky, addictive emotional drama, the
antics of the glamorous stars and heroes, conspire to render the true
nature of what is going on in the theater difficult to grasp.
To complete the metaphor, what are these pinpricks, darkenings and
distortions in the film of our experience? What are these acausal
relations that allow us to infer the coiled nature of unexpressed time?
They are the meaningful coincidences, such as cannot have failed
present themselves to all observant persons. The most commonly
experienced ones relate to words or numbers, which appear with an undue
frequency, or crop up in strange runs. These types of synchronicities
are probably no more common than other types, but are most easily
noted, because of the defined nature of words and numbers.
A typical example occurred at my university, shortly before I
graduated. During my last year, probably the most prominent and active
student was named, shall we say, Harold Turner. After I left, I was
surprised to learn that my alma mater had acquired a new president,
named Harold Turver. This anomaly aroused my suspicion that, for some
hopelessly inscrutable reason, invisible occult mechanisms had decreed
that someone named Harold Turner/Turver must be raised to eminence at
that locality. Charles Fort famously noted the mysterious
disappearance of several prominent people named Ambrose at one time.
“Was somebody collecting Ambroses?” he quipped. All sorts of curious
fatalities relating to names and numbers feature in the mundane details
of history.
A second species of common synchronicity relates to heightened extremes
of emotion correlated with love and death. The state of being in love
frequently causes cascades of coincidence to pour over the smitten,
drooling victims, while the death of a relative or friend is likewise
often correlated with unusual synchronicities.
The ancient discipline of astrology, with its numerous cycles and
intricately nested spheres, seems to intuit this view of time. I was
prompted to write this essay by a friend who noted that the recent
crash-landing of an airliner in the Hudson river occurred almost 27
years to the day after a similar famous crash in the Potomac. The 27
year cycle, that of the planet Saturn, will of course be familiar to
devotees of astrologic explanations.
Such observations have fostered in me the strong suspicion that what we
experience as time is something like a fleeting, artificial projection,
the result of an unspooling, hidden mass through some sort of
mechanism, which must be fearsome and inscrutable beyond our
comprehension.
The
movie projector, with its reels of coiled celluloid, can only represent
the most feeble and distant echo of that machine, whose ponderous and
labyrinthine workings must remain eternally invisible to us. Its
uncountable reels and running tapes form a coiled, seething nexus,
where cogs vast or minute beyond perception spin endlessly in a
torturously complex and infinite spasm.
Is it really possible that the entire universe exists only in this one
instant, and that its immense history lives only in its effects on the
now? Perhaps so, but I suspect not. As we sit here, pinned to our seats
and helplessly subjected to the unceasing display of time, any dreams
we may entertain of reversing the film, or of speeding it up, are idle.
Our minds themselves are part of this unhalting projector. But though
our attention remains fixed on the film, our awareness perhaps can
extract itself in some fashion from the glowing theatrics, and drift in
hidden ways to the vast spools, where all time and history exists
intact, coiling up onto itself while remaining fixed on an axis whose
center is still.
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