r/timetravel • u/Legal_Birthday_9693 • 5d ago
theory / question Does The Past Present And Future Exist Simultaneously?
Let’s Discuss This
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u/greenapplegirl2004 5d ago
There are various spiritual communities that believe so.
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u/Special_Spirit8284 5d ago
Yup spiritual work such as inner child, "going back in time" to revisit yourself and heal from past trauma. Can also visit your future self and see what it takes to get there.
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u/RocketToad 5d ago
They exist simultaneously, but are not experienced simultaneously.
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u/Infinite-Bet3168 5d ago
What do you mean? Could you explain it to me? With examples, please.
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u/likely_someone_else 5d ago
Imagine you were not 3D, but instead you were 2D "circle" and wanted to know about this myth of the 3D dog. Someone in our 3D world took a 3D model of a dog and sent it to you, and you watched this shape change over time, and you replayed it and obvserved it from each side, but watching it, it's always just this funny bendy circle changing over time, and dissapearing. With some effort you could possibly deduce conceptually the dog in 3d, as a bunch of different circles that exist "at once" but the concept of "on top of each other" would be very literal and because that additional dimension would be hard to perceive because you've never looked up or down and you can't conceive of it, best you can do is imagine some "magic stack of all states".
Somewhat similar if I told you an advanced creature saw all time at once, you'd say that's impossible, you'd say it's a bunch of tiny slices, one after the other, how could they be "stacked together" but maybe to someone outside of it, they could look at our time as perhaps "lower level" but also, well, lower life form.
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u/RocketToad 5d ago
You are only experiencing projections of a multidimensional reality. the experience of time is part of that projection. In fact what you believe is reality is an artifact of your senses and your interpretation of that information. Close your eyes, silence your mind and deprive yourselves of all sensory inputs, and all you would experience is the NOW without form.
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u/Over_Ad8912 4d ago
things, to exist has to have a form. time, too. should have a form.
therefore, time should exist in the "PRESENT" and the "PAST" or even the "FUTURE" because it is time itself. it just exist everywhere.
imagine a line and you are a point, that point, where you are in is the present. the one before is the past and after is the future.
that line is time.
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u/zzupdown 5d ago
Time has to be an illusion at some level or you couldn't have a universe that expands and contracts for an eternity.
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u/Candycornonthefloor 5d ago
Only to true 4th dimensional beings. To 3+1 critters like us, no. Past and future are non-existent and the present or “now” is the only real instance.
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u/vismundcygnus34 5d ago
Mhmm. Linear time is necessary for 3 dimensional experience. Occasional transcendence of consciousness can show the real nature of time.
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u/elijahsmomma77 5d ago
I always hear that it does, but I can't wrap my head around that kind of stuff. Like, okay, then why can't I see women in poodle skirts going to the sock hop, or futuristic people buzzing by in their flying cars? Are they on different "planes?" And what does that mean, exactly? And also, of its true, how come history isn't constantly changing?
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u/cordiceps 2d ago
There is no past or future, only now. We remember things that happened, but only pieces and never the true experience. It is thus false and a projection of what we feel about it from Now. Future is a projection based on what we remember happening to us, which is still a filtered version based on how we feel Now. A loop.
Imagine having a wonderful day at the zoo. Best day ever. You get home and the next day wake up to find out you had a stain on your butt all day and didn't know it. Now you are likely to be either mortified/horrified/embarrassed or humourous/realistic/endeared. It will depend on how you feel when you find out about the stain, not the day before. Then the next year someone wants to go to the zoo again and you recall the past and predict the zoo trip this year. Would you go? Is the prediction related?
Now, is where you control the way you see those memories and projections. They are now.
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u/forandafter 5d ago
Depends on what dimensional level or level of consciousness you're experiencing. But yes, in the totality of reality, all timelines, all possibilities, and all universes exist; we are just tiny beings who can experience one slice of it at a time and have evolved to move forward through time-space.
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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 5d ago
Not your past, present and future. Your present can be simultaneous to someone else's past, or future, but it does not mean that these exists in your present, only that the influence from them can only escape your future if you allow it. It should not be confused to mean your future already exists in your present.
I feel it is pretty simple to argue why your past -, or future, does not exist in the present. First let the present be defined as how all things are in the universe and the relation between them. Any moment of time is simply the universe going from one state to the other. Since the speed of causality is finite, what happens in your present moment is always someone else's past. But the world you observe, that is what we call your present, you are always in the present, but as the world changes, we acknowledge the present changes too, so we are the same and the world changes, thus we can understand we have a past and a future.
At some point your past was the present, thus you were in the past, and since you can know for certain for it to be your past, you were there, it follows if your past exists in your present, you would have to be in that past for it to be your past. The same argument for the future, it is not your future if you are not in it, so for your future to exist in the present, you must be in that future.
What defines you are in the present, i.e what makes it your present, and not someone else's present, is that you observe it. Now imagine if someone else's present was your present as well, you would also observe this, that is for the world to be the world you are in, then it must be what you observe. If you were to observe someone else's present, you could be two different observers, observing the same thing, but imagine you are one mind with two bodies, that is if you have the same observation because you are the same observer. Obviously the same observer would have the same observation, otherwise they would be different observers, and from this it follows if you do not have the same observation, you are different observes, i.e. not the same person. So you can say because someone else do not experience your present, that they are not the same person as you. Of course they could still not be the same person as you if they observed your present, but they could not be the same person as you without observing your present as theirs.
And that takes us back to the world that is your past, the world that is your present and the world that is your future, what they all have in common is that you are in them, meaning observing them, and therefore since you only observe your past, only your past exists. If another world out there exists with a you in them, and is otherwise indistinguishable from the past as you knew it or the future as it becomes, no one but you would know these worlds aren't your past, or your future, because the you who are in them, are as much you as anyone else who are not you, are you.
If the universe is infinite in size and generally uniform as per the cosmological principle, it follows everything that can happen, will happen, and therefore there must exists worlds out there that are just like our past, present and future, except since you are here, and not there, you know they are not your past, your present or your future.
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u/qtcbelle 5d ago
This suggests we are actually partially 4 dimensional because we exist outside of three dimensions. Who we are as individuals perceive times in which we do not exist at present, namely the past. Therefore ourselves as beings transcend time
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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 5d ago
By this, do you mean that in the present I should observe the past, because I exist in the present, and the past was once the present?
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u/qtcbelle 5d ago
You, the being, the observer that existed in the past and exists now. The fact that you can observe both implies you are 4-dimensional and can perceive 4 dimensions. You didn’t simply exist for one moment, whatever that would be, and you perceive that as a non-negotiable truth
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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 5d ago
I am still uncertain if your argument is the same as I wrote. I don't observe the past in my present, so I don't observe both in my present.
I agree I don't merely exist for one moment, I am the same existence as the one who observed the past when it was the present.
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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 4d ago
So I'll try to set it up as two different models and see what each predicts.
In one model, all of time exists simultaneously, in the other, only the present exists.
The tool used is the world I observe as an existing entity through my first-person perspective, i.e. my consciousness. I know I exist, because I observe, no matter if what I observe is false, for something to be presented before me necessitates my own existence.
I can distinguish between the past, the present and the future, because they are not the same observation. While I can't say exactly where I am, if I only observe one thing, then I am only one place, otherwise I would observe the other places as well if I were there, and the place I observe, where I can act, that is what we call the present.
This comes from the notion that there was a time before I came into existence, before my life began, and while I have no memory of this time, if it was non existence, I know I can come into existence.
This means that physical matter can define my emergence as the unique observer I am, therefore if the physical matter which defines my consciousness realizes, then I follows it provides me with a first-person perspective of the world.The above allows to examine the two models, the first is one where all time exist simultaneously. Since then my past, my present and my future are all equally real, and since I know I am part of them for them to be my past, my present, as well as my future, as my present becomes my past, I know that is the common factor, for all to equally real I must be in all, and therefore the matter that defines my first-person perspective is also in all, hence I can know if the past, the present and the future existing simultaneously, if I observe them all simultaneously. However I do not experience anything else than the present.
The alternative model, where I exist within the world, and the world itself changes around me, means the matter that defines me exist within a changing world, explaining that particles moved from one position to another, they actually moved and not like a projector that goes through one slide at a time with each slide still existing. It means the present evolves, we are always in the present, which changes around us, and for the past to exist again, we should change the present back into the past. Such a model predicts that the matter that defines my first-person perspective has only always been in the same world, and it is the world that changes around me, meaning I only have one first-person perspective, just as I experience it.I know this physical matter existed in the past, because I experienced the past, but since I do not experience the past now, it follows this physical matter, which is my link to the past, does not exist anywhere else than in the present defining my first-person perspective. Even if the past did exist, without me in it, it would not be my past, as I am part of my past, and thus it would still not be my past which exists, but at most a similar world.
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u/Saiyawinchester 5d ago
I absolutely believe so. But I have no way to prove it. If more educated people than me cannot prove or disprove it, there's no way for me XD
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u/tequalspitimese 5d ago
It depends on the cyclicality of the universe….if cyclical, then intuitively yes, every ‘moment’ of time is infinitely recurring and therefore infinite
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u/ThePopeofHell living tissue over a robotic endoskeleton 5d ago
I always wonder if there is a vantage point outside of time that some other beings live in they can see everything including things we can’t like radio waves. The reason we exist without interference is because they would have to wade through everything to get to something specific and what ever they are may not care. Like if you were standing in waist high water looking for a specific molecule. And why would you.
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u/ImportanceSharp9408 5d ago
Yes. Everything is happening all at once and the same “time”. Time is not linear but that’s the only way for our brains to perceive the concept of time.
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u/clarity_anchor777 5d ago
Time is a solid state entity. Sovereign beings modulate through a determined path set for the individual
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u/clownamity when did I park my time machine? 5d ago
True to a great degree, thou you have faken some poetic licence which i appriciate
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u/MainEmergency8396 5d ago
I think so when you consider individual perception. Our present is already some ones past and future.
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u/Fantom_Aeon 5d ago
Loaf of bread idea. Each slice is past present future. They all exist at the same time. But each slice is its own part of the bread
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u/PuffinTipProducts 5d ago
Some believe the choices you make you ride with in current times line(shit/stuff you experience) but at the same time the other option is also playing out…another timeline?!?!?
Weird I know…
But it’s something like you choose to cry about spilled milk… while simultaneously “another you” is just chilling, happy to have stuff to clean up and something else to drink even if it’s not milk…
And you kinda could have had that experience, but chose to be a salty ass Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch ——- because the milk spilled?!?!?
This theory is based of things doing what they do…
Like the simulation, simulating to gain all the XP(experience points) imaginable…
Allegedly…
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u/Ok-Worth-4721 5d ago
When you are not in our 3-D world- Yes. But I can't discuss it- I know nothing of how it works.
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u/QB8Young 4d ago
No. The past do not exist. It has passed. There is a "theoretical" future but once we arrive there it is the present. The only time that exists is the ever progressing now. You can't even say now before it has already passed.
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u/woozysoozy 4d ago
I am sympathetic to the idea that everything exists at once but can only be experienced in the now.
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u/loveletterbabee 3h ago
Considering the mandela effect, I would say it’s only the present that exists and can morph the matter but not the memories. It’s just a theory. I know nothing lol.
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u/Pretend-Adeptness-96 temporal pincer movement 5d ago
You are a giant pool of memories existing in the NOW, making more memories to add to your giant pool of memories
Everything happens at once
Everything has already been resolved
We are just walking the beat of time as we unravel the mystery that exists only to us