Borealism V: Laws of Nature Series
EP. 2 Light, Time and Meaning | The Bentov Time Test
Caught in the amber of a moment
In the early fall, something cool happens to the lake water — it becomes heavily saturated with particles of all kinds, so much so that it changes the perceptual experience underwater in quite an interesting way.
The lake becomes potent with pollen-like fibers from the unobserved fields of seaweed; with grains of wood and stone that have been eroded from the shorelines confining it; with acidic bits of matter from the teal pines all around, along with all of the other oils and spores of the surrounding woodlands.
The potency of all the particles is such that the rays of light pierce pretty vividly through the cold emerald dark that fades into obscurity below. Almost like a thick smoke, the density of the water blurs the perceptual lines between liquid, solid, gas, space and even time, as the photons of light from the sun above float inanimately suspended.
These particles of light travel 150 million kilometers through the black waters of space to reach us in just over eight minutes; other than affording an interesting perspective on time, they also give us the gift of visual navigation through space and, most meaningfully, they allow for the potential of life as we know.
It hadn’t always been this way.
The light from our younger and weaker sun meant little for our planet until it began to be photosynthesized by adaptively clever forms of biological vegetation. A few billion years ago, our planet would have been totally dark and uninhabitable, eerily noxious and archaically lethal.
Eons of evolution, churning through time, have allowed us to be able to not only see, but to live off of the photosynthesizing byproducts that gave us breathable air.
That we can even understand and appreciate this timeline of evolution — that’s where the venerable variable of meaning comes in.
The past, present and future are all causally intertwined with meaning; every event occurring in time, linked intimately with future potentiality.
Like light, time also means everything to us, but in a different way: it allows for everything to have meaning — objectively as much as intuitively.
Our ability to use time as a measurement allows us to understand our relative place in reality and, more critically, to make sense of the world we inhabit.
More surprising yet is the way that we can subjectively feel time.
Time is considerably subjective; it moves slowly for those who have too much of it and quickly for those who can’t have enough. It means different things to different beings, and it shines each subjective causal journey in its own unique light.
The seasons denote this subjectivity: the way that the sun flickers atop cresting waves seems different in the fall than in the earlier portions of summer — somehow more viscous and reflective; the primal rush ahead of winter amongst organisms can be felt, with each dwindling hour of daylight growing more precious than the last.
At lake bottom, where the photons dance around the shallower parts, boulders are scattered about, abandoned by nomadic glaciers that have long ago melted; impressions through time in a language that’s barely understood within the parameters of our own perceptive ability.
The cycles of seasons and ice ages, the shifts of tectonic plates and clashes of continents, the flipping of magnetic fields and precessions of equinoxes — we’re still figuring this all out.
Floating under the surface of the lake, watching the light photons trickle down through the thick water, time has stopped for me completely — as it always seems to do in those more meaningful of moments.
It’s within these very moments that time seems most malleable, bilateral, and non-linear.
Such experiences have prompted me to form a question that I’ve habitually come to throw at any relative specialist on the subject: what is the shape of time?
I’ve gotten some pretty good answers back, from circles and spirals to torus loops and tesseracts, but none have so far proved more insightful that which came from a particularly deep thinker on the subject, Carlo Rovelli, who told me:
When I study relativity, my image of time is a huge net with different temporalities flowing independently along the ropes of the net. When I think about quantum gravity my image is like an immense see of flashing dots. When I think at the years of my life, time is like an ellipse with the summer in the upper half and the winter in the lower half. When I think at my life, time is like a line moving up, vanishing in the distance. When I think at eternity, time is a single flash of light. When I think at the universe, time is a direction in each point of a large sheet, when I think at the present moment, time is like a collection of presents…
The Bentov Time Test
An interesting experiment that anyone can try at any time, one that reinforces the concept of time’s malleability in correspondence to the passing of a meaningful moment.
From Itzhak Bentov’s Stalking the Wild Pendulum:
… I have designed an experiment that is within easy reach of practically anybody who wants to experience this change in time, at least in a minor way. It does not require any training or any drugs. The only thing we need is a clock with a second hand or a wrist watch with a fairly large dial and an easily visible second hand.
Step 1. Relax. Position the watch in front of you on a table so that it will be easily visible without any effort through half-closed eyes.
Step 2. Look at the watch in a relaxed way and follow the second hand. Try to absorb and remember the rhythm at which it moves. All this has to be done quite effortlessly.
Step 3. This is the crucial step in the experiment. Close your eyes and visualize yourself engaged in your most favorite activity. This visualization has to be as perfect as possible.
For instance, if you visualize yourself lying on a beach in the sun, you have to be there — all of you. Don’t just think you are there, but feel the warmth of the sun and the texture of the sand; hear the sound of the waves; use all your senses.
4. When you feel that you have stabilized this visualization, slowly open your eyes just a bit. Don’t focus on the watch, just let your gaze fall on the dial as if you are a disinterested observer of this whole affair.
If you have followed the instructions properly, you may see the second hand stick in a few places, slow down, and hover for a while. If you are very successful, you’ll be able to stop the second hand for quite a while.
To some people this is a shocking experience. The moment one feels shocked, the second hand accelerates and resumes its normal speed…
…In the instructions, it was suggested that you transport all your sensory and reasoning apparatus to a different point in space and time — to “the beach.” When this is properly performed, your physical body has for all practical purposes displayed a temporary “death”; that is, your physical eyes did not register the physical reality around you (nor would your ears).
Your senses were registering a different reality, which occurred in the past. Therefore, you have experienced a tilting of your subjective space-time coordinates by a certain angle X to the objective frame of reference.
To those who managed to slow down time by a certain amount, the angle X was somewhere between 0 and 90 degrees, while for those who managed to “stop” time almost completely, the angle came close to 90 degrees. At that point their subjective space axes were pointing into the objective past, and the subjective time axis into objective space, while objective time required for the operation was diminishing rapidly.
Therefore, persons who managed almost to “stop” time (these will be invariably creative types) could not only go to a nearby beach but to any place in the universe within the time that it would have taken them to visualize their destinaion. This is because they have projected their sensing and reasoning apparatus or their “observer” at practically infinite velocities to the wanted destination. It is creative visualization that can take them there.
Visit www.borealism.ca for more content, or to read the full interview with Carl Rovelli
Stalking the Wild Pendulum by Itzhak Bentov — free PDF here
