Breaking Free from Time’s Illusion:
A Radical New Way to Live
Introduction
We all experience the progression of time. It is something that no one can avoid. Time passes, and nothing, and no one, can avoid or evade it. We are trapped, or better said, bound to time.
Throughout history, many philosophers have been intrigued by the nature of time. It fascinates me as well. But we have poorly defined what time is.
Time, and the perception of time in the human brain, are different.
We perceive time as linear, with each passing moment coming from the future, passing through the present, and remaining in the past. It flows continuously and always in the same direction.
That is the perception, but is this really true?
The laws of physics, the equations that govern our universal reality, are symmetrical with respect to time. It doesn’t matter to them, whether it is past, present, or future.
The way time flows does not affect or influence them. But our experience of time only flows in one direction.
What is the arrow of time?
The arrow of time only indicates the direction in which we perceive time. But that arrow of time does not really exist.
Yesterday no longer exists.
We say that it is in the past, but the truth is that it is not in any specific place. It is only stored in your mind as a memory of yesterday. But it is like a photograph of what existed; it is not real. It no longer exists anywhere in the universe.
We perceive time as something linear, because we measure it that way.
Before we started counting years linearly, we remembered the relationship between big or traumatic events. There are writings from Ancient Egypt that speak of events that occurred three summers after a massive flood, or five times around the sun after the completion of a pyramid.
Events were placed in memory consistent with emotions.
You probably also have events you remember exactly, marking a before and after. But you don’t know in which year those events happened before or after.
Time is taken as an absolute and linear reference. We perceive it that way, and we create a system that way. But time is not linear, and it is not constant.
Basically, time does not exist, only our perception of it.
Albert Einstein already proved that time is not absolute. It varies according to our speed and place in space. Time is personal and relative to each living being.
A mouse has a life expectancy of 2.6 years and an elephant has a life expectancy of 80 years. In absolute terms, the elephant seems to live longer, but all mammals have the same heartbeat expectancy.
We could say that they have the same life expectancy, measured from their point of view. The mouse, having the fastest metabolism, uses its heartbeat in a shorter period of time. But the number of times it eats, sleeps, and reproduces is the same as any mammal.
In our linear time system, that life expectancy is not the same.
Basically, each living being has its own experience of time. Time is relative; that was already demonstrated by the theory of relativity. It is not something constant in the universe.
The problem is that we continue to imagine time as a constant, and we link our lives to that line, which in reality does not exist.
Time exists only in our imagination.
Time travels neither to the past nor to the future. Time moves nowhere, because it is always the present.
Everything in the universe, including us, is deconstructed and rebuilt faster than the speed of light, and so the universe can continue to expand.
Everything is energy. There is no such thing as material. We only perceive it that way. In this way, changes in reality occur as we move along with the universe. After all, everything is energy vibrating at different frequencies.
Linear time is simply a construct: a definition in our mind to put events on a straight line (which we call time) that does not exist in the universe.
The only thing that exists, are the memories of a present in our minds. But those memories are not linear either. We don’t remember a day, a week, or a month.
We remember moments. We remember sensations.
What binds those moments together is our presence. And, because presence, our observing consciousness, is constant, fixed, and immovable, it seems like a straight line. There is no pause in our perception of time.
That would mean dying.
In those moments of the past, nothing can be changed. Where we can change something is in the future.
The past itself does not exist either. Only memories exist. But each memory is unique to the viewer. We could conclude that if 8 billion humans observe an event, there are 8 billion different histories.
But how can this be, if it is one and the same event?
That event no longer exists. It only remains in the memory of those who witnessed it. Each brain processes the information captured by the eyes differently.
This is what we call history. History is not immovable or fixed. It is only a personal interpretation of events as seen through the eyes of a viewer. The word says it all: “history”. His story. Which means: his account of incidents or events, his version of what happened. It is not absolute, or something real.
Those events no longer exist. The only thing that remains is a witness account.
But what if those witnesses also disappear?
It happened several times in the past. They burned all the books on a subject and it disappeared from our collective memory. History is manipulable. It is an invention, a collective story.
Since the future does not exist, we can create it as we wish, at least for ourselves.
For that, you have to deconstruct the expectation of a life imposed by a fictitious line. You have to finish your studies and start working at a certain age. Get married at a certain age and reproduce.
All those things are imposed by our environment and society in which we live. There is a collective identity in the minds of humans, which keeps us together, but it is not real. They are just collective constructions.
Those normative ages change with societies. Expectations are different. That also indicates that it is not something absolute, linked to life, or some existing constant.
The only thing that exists is the present.
There are two ways to describe it. From the universal perspective and from the point of view of oneself.
The first I call the infinite universal present. The present is difficult to explain. But, to give you an idea, it would be like dividing 1 second by 1,000,000,000,000,000. It gives a number close to 0 seconds. That would be the manifestation of the present in the universe.
That is what I consider the infinite universal present, that moment where particles are appearing, disappearing, and reappearing. An incredibly small moment, so brief it’s essentially timeless, it forms our time. A constant state of change at the quantum level. A universal constant that exists regardless of our perception of time.
Universal, because it’s tied to the universe. It is infinite because it is infinitely tiny, outside of time.
It would be the smallest change possible. A particle disappears and reappears faster than light, causing the universe to expand.
This information aims to help you understand how the universe works.
And to become aware of how we interact with it, and to realize that time does not exist.
To define the present, from a usable point, I define it as today. It is always present.
All the events of today are stored in our brain every time we go to bed.
When we sleep one night, what happened that day is recorded and becomes part of the memory. It passes from the present to the past. Yesterday’s events are stored in memory.
The brain processes today’s information differently than days from the past. The system it uses to store these ideas, or events, is not linear. The information is from the present or in the past. To the brain storage system, yesterday, and a year ago are the same.
Our mental constructs keep those events separated with a linear rule to measure them.
You can think of a happy moment in the past, think of it as if it happened yesterday, and remember it more vividly. Another exercise you can try, is to travel in your mind to a moment in your past, and feel those experiences again. You can use happy and sad moments to practice.
When you cry remembering a sad moment from your past, you are time traveling within your mind and emotions. You can also learn to feel again the happiness from experiences.
Human beings evolved for millions of years, and time management systems didn’t.
The human brain created them to explain the universe in which we live, to create a relationship between our constant consciousness over a lifetime, our mental construct, the ego, and what we observe in the universe.
Conclusion:
The big problem with time is that we see it as a constant, tying our lives to a rectilinear construct that isn’t real. This creates a strong sense of mental construction, our own egos. But science has proven that time is relative to the person experiencing it.
Time is not an immovable universal constant.
Grasping this idea allows you to let go of mental constructs that limit you. That’s why I don’t celebrate my birthday — time says nothing about me or my soul, only my body on Earth.
If time isn’t constant, what is? The only constant is our life — this life, in the present moment. It feels illogical to reason that time isn’t linear because we’ve thought this way our entire lives. Humanity has for thousands of years.
But freeing yourself from time’s bonds opens new possibilities. You can imagine your future and get there whenever you want. The present is the only thing that exists. Everything else is a mental construct limiting you in an infinite present universe.
To be more present:
- Practice mindfulness, practice being in the moment, focus on your breath, your surroundings.
- Question time-based assumptions — do you really need to do things by a certain age?
- Remember — your past is just memory, it is not important, your future is. You can use imagination to create it, while focusing on the now that is real.
Embracing this view might seem strange at first. But it can lead to a more authentic, free way of living.
You’re no longer bound by artificial timelines.
You’re free to experience the infinite universal present — the only reality there is.
Some excerpts I have use from the chapter, What is Time? From my book, “One Theory About Everything, The Natural Philosophy of Life and Love,”
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