Oh, damn! That title is already taken. OK, I cannot compete with Dr. Hawking, nor do I wish to. My approach is less knowledgeable, less scientific than his. Mine is primarily experiential.
First, if I'm to talk about time, a definition might be helpful.
From an online dictionary:
TIME:
1. A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.
2. An interval separating two points on this continuum; a duration: a long time since the last war; passed the time reading.
3. A number, as of years, days, or minutes, representing such an interval: ran the course in a time just under four minutes.
4. A similar number representing a specific point on this continuum, reckoned in hours and minutes: checked her watch and recorded the time, 6:17 a.m.
5. A system by which such intervals are measured or such numbers are reckoned: solar time.
Is that helpful?
I thought not.
When I was a kid, I used to lie awake at night speculating on what time was. Dad said that would drive me bonkers, no one understands time. He might have been right. I read H. G. Wells science fiction classic,
The Time Machine. (As an aside, that opened a lifetime love of the science fiction genre) He called time a dimension
OK, definition time again.
DIMENSION:
1. A measure of spatial extent, especially width, height, or length.
2. Mathematics The least number of independent coordinates required to specify uniquely the points in a space.
3. The range of such a coordinate.
4. Physics A physical property, such as mass, length, time, or a combination thereof, regarded as a fundamental measure or as one of a set of fundamental measures of a physical quantity: Velocity has the dimensions of length divided by time.
I think the one from physics is most operative here. Now I am in deep waters. You know much more about physics than I do, so please just humour me, dear friend.
After reading The Time Machine, I started picturing time as a line, a number line. Could it possibly gain another dimension and curve on itself, with the intersecting points making present and future, or present and past into a single point? Does it maker any sense at all to reference time in terms of spatial dimension. Or is this a gross misuse of the venerable number line?
Somewhere along the line, I came to think of time as having three dimensions, past, present and future. This set the stage for what I experienced in an altered state of consciousness, which I will refer to as a Spiritual Experience (SE) for lack of a better term
Now, back to the mundane. Look at some object that has three spatial dimensions, say your dominant hand. It occurs to me that I don't know if you are right-handed or left-handed, so I'll picture both below. When you look at, you see those dimension, length, width and depth, but you do not - cannot! - see them as three separate properties, you see them as one organic whole, the length, width and depth each distinct and yet inseparable. Are you following me so far? Of course you are, we haven't gotten to the difficult part.
Now we get to the difficult part.
You most likely see your hand in only one dimension of time, the present. Now you need to use your imagination. Imagine looking at your hand and seeing it as it was when you were a foetus, a baby, a child, a teenager. Now, return to the present and, in your imagination, travel in the opposite direction, see your hand in ten years, then as an old person. If you have the nerve, see it as dead and decaying.
If you are following me now, we can move on to the really hard part.
Imagine seeing those three dimensions of time as an organic whole, each distinct and yet inseparable, past, present and future all existing together, so when you look at your hand, you are not seeing our usual three dimensional hand, but rather you are seeing a six dimensional hand.
Now imagine seeing the entire spacetime continuum in that way. That is my view of maya (the spacetime continuum) - when I am aware of maya at all - during a SE.
I am aware that this must sound science fiction, and I suppose it is. It is also something I have experienced and continue to experience occasionally.
And that is my explanation of the three dimensions of time, as best I can give it right now.
Now as I don't want to disappoint, here are parts of my three favourite time
songs, with links to the complete songs.
A Hazy Shade of Winter: (edited)
Simon and Garfunkel
Time, time, time, see whats become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
Hang on to your hopes, my friend
That's an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, its the springtime of my life
But look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
Look around, leaves are brown
There's a patch of snow on the ground...
TIME IS ON MY SIDE: (edited)
The Rolling Stones
(Meade)
Time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side, yes it is
You're searching for good times
But just wait and see
You'll come running back (I won't have to worry no more)
You'll come running back (spend the rest of my life with you, baby)
You'll come running back to me
Yes time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Oh, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
I said, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Oh, time, time, time is on my side
Yeah, time, time, time is on my side
Time In A Bottle: (edited)
Jim Croce
If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that Id like to do
Is to save every day
Till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you
If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
Id save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
Ive looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
Through time with
