Does the past exist?

What is the past? Is it a real object that can be changed and proven? Or is it an abstract creation that exists only in documentation and memory? If everybody remembers the same thing, whether it really happened or not, it is the past. (I took this straight from 1984, I think it still should be discussed.)

As a thing I would have to say........ No

I would say the future doesnt exist either.

There is only the Now.

Originally posted by Amuk
There is only the Now.

But is there Now? "Now" only exists because of time, and time doesn't really exist as it's just man made from light. It's a mind bender.

But is there Now? "Now" only exists because of time, and time doesn't really exist as it's just man made from light. It's a mind bender.

Now exsits because you are here to experience it.

You are not in the past, and never were, it was also the now when you were there.

the future is the same till you get there it does not exsit and when you are there it is the now, not the future.

There is only the now.

The past no longer exists and the future has not yet happend. Therefore only the "now" exists.

The past is prone to distortion by those retelling it and the future is filled with variables that have yet to be played out.

So all that is known to exist only does so in the now.

Example a car might exist right at this moment, but in one second from now a terrorist will trigger a massive car bomb vaporizing the form that you would recognise as a car. Thus the car only existed "then" for when it is time to be in the "now" it is no longer.


[Edited on 19-3-2004 by robertfenix]

so wot ur sayin here is time doesnt exist and the only thing that does is this moment.

or have i got lost, this is so confusin

now is what exists but not the now that one thinks of as being the now. that now also encompasses the future. the true now has already happened by the time you consciously recognize it so it is the past.... so in a way , you can say the immediate past is what is real. you have to be very in tune with yourself and surroundings in order to experience the true now...in the zone ..so-to-speak. hows that for zen answer

So what IS this "NOW" anyway? If the FUTURE is only in potential, and the PAST is only in memory, and the NOW is the only form of "existance" that we seem to really experience, then perhaps by understanding the NOW we could understand how to jump into the future, and into the past?

Perhaps the "NOW" is only a focus point? Like an mp3 player that plays an mp3 file and has a tiny little arrow that follows along with the song, representing the "now" of the song you're listening to. This arrow represents your FOCUS point on the song, and it's easy to skip ahead or backwards in the FOCUS point. The song remains the same, it's just you're focusing on a different part when you skip to another part. Perhaps "time" is the same way? In the sense that, it does not really exist, and EVERYTHING that is possible exists in the infinite NOW, like the entire mp3 song already EXISTS all at once, until you decide to focus on any part and "listen" to it in a steady progression. Perhaps the only reason we perceive a thing such as "time" is because we took the mp3 file (the infinite NOW of all possibilities that could ever possibly exist) and zoomed in on a particular area of it.

Now, the difference between reality (all that exists) and an mp3 song, is that an mp3 song is limited, but reality most likely has no limits at all. The correlation, however, can be maintained, and the mp3 file seems to be a nice analogy.

Any thoughts on this? Thus far this view of "time" seems to make sense to me. Also, this may explain why time doesn't have to EXIST, but we can perceive it anyway. EVERYTHING simply exists simultaneously, but we decided to view it in a steady progression...

This seems to be a plausible theory... does this make sense? I think I did a rather clumsy job in trying to get this thought across...

Originally posted by AttackHippo
What is the past? Is it a real object that can be changed and proven? Or is it an abstract creation that exists only in documentation and memory? If everybody remembers the same thing, whether it really happened or not, it is the past. (I took this straight from 1984, I think it still should be discussed.)

I think that the past is memories stored in our brains and over the collective human consciousness as well. The past is now. The past is latent on our plane, which is now, so it may be possible to alter it by a time travel.

Whether something really happened or not, it is the past when everybody remembers it. How do we know if the past is not just implanted thoughts? If one person witnessing this collective human event loses the memory of that past event, does this mean that the past does not exist because that one person lost the memory? The past is the whole of humanity's consciousness combined stored in a different reality in the now, this is why Psychics can access that collective human past.

Originally posted by AttackHippo
What is the past? Is it a real object that can be changed and proven? Or is it an abstract creation that exists only in documentation and memory? If everybody remembers the same thing, whether it really happened or not, it is the past. (I took this straight from 1984, I think it still should be discussed.)

Umm...Well do you remember when you were 6 years old? or 8 years old? Do you remeber your birthdays? Feeling touching...? Well that is the past. So in fact the past is real; it's just really hard to travel back in time.

The past is a tool to explain the present. Everything that happened in the past can prove everything that is now. Our understanding of the past is our understanding of the present. So, if it was possible to know everything of the past, we would know everything about now, and because now will become past, which builds up to the future, we would know the future. If now exists, and it depends on the past, then the past must exist too. In my opinion, past, present, and future are all real and concrete.

the future does exist now. how else could one see into the future? i have been able to 'feel' what would happen in the future; the future exist now and some people can see into it and others can feel things about it. the past exist now. there are some castles and other places in england where you can actually see the past occuring now. like nights and carriages riding down the street and out the castle over the moat for instance.

also there are psychics that are employed by numerous police forces across the good ol' us of a to see into the past to help solve crimes in the present. this, in my opinion is not disputable.

is time travel possible? yes, but it is an extremely BBAADD!!!!!!! idea. it is ok to look at or into the future or the past, but to actually go there is foolish IMO.

and surely yall have heard the school of thought that all this ufo and alien activity is merely us revisiting ourselves from the future?

or what about the us military experiment where supposedly they have actually created a time travel machine , oh crap , not sure if i am getting this mixed up but somehow either they ran into ship that was in the past while they were in a ship in the present and some seamen got imbedded in the three foot(or however many feet) steel wall?

in my mind there is no doubt that future presently exist and dido with the past.

i know yall have seen the stuff about psychics being employed by various police agencies. if this is true, you can't believe everything you hear

, but if this is true it is proof that the past exist presently, because some people, if not everyone, are/is capable of seeing into the past.

So what IS this "NOW" anyway? If the FUTURE is only in potential, and the PAST is only in memory, and the NOW is the only form of "existance" that we seem to really experience, then perhaps by understanding the NOW we could understand how to jump into the future, and into the past?

I dont think so for the simple reason that they do not exist.

Say you get into a rocket and travel at close to the speed of sound there by traveling into the "future".

Are you in the future? No. You are still in the NOW for you.

Even if you had a time machine whenever you went it would still be your NOW. Period.

The past is gone. The future not only doesnt exist it never will, it will ALWAYS be the now, and has always been the now.

So as much as I hate to agree with you in a way you are right about everything happining at once because there is ONLY the now.

the probability of the past forms the now.
the probability of the future also affects the now(think stock markets or hunting/gathering as an analogy. the physical enviroment is shaped according the the anticipated needs of the physical creatures, and interactions of physical objects moving through time and their probability moving backwards, i.e. in the distant future, the probability of an event is infintisimal, or impossible, even. once it's has happened, the probability is one hundred percent).
or not.

I tend to think the Langoliers eat up the past. Seriously though, what if the Creator specifically designed the universe so that the "past" IS just a memory? That way, we can't go back in time and f' it up (which means we couldn't travel back in time to begin with).

Then again, if we can go back in time, I'm all for the parallel universe theory. That theory being, if someone were to go back in time in "their" universe and change something, it would create an alternate universe so that it doesn't screw up the previous one's "timeline." That of course lays down the possibility that there are an infinite amount of parallel universes. Its a brain teaser more then anything else.

[Edited on 3-19-2004 by EmbryonicEssence]

dang my memory is bad yea what embryonic essence said. i believe that there are infinite parallel universes. so in some of versions it doesn't get jacked up, if you time travel. but since they are infinite versions their are also versions in which it does get ALL JACKED UP!!

so i gues time travel is not a BAD idea after all

or then again what if you are in the version were the time travelers don't get their own new parallel universe.
and people start hittin' into stuff that otherwise wouldn't have been there. brain tease is right.

I'd think if their "past" got screwed up, their "future" would also change; In this regard, I don't think they would remember it. The people/animals would also change, which means they would never had known that the past did get changed. Its kind of weird to think that maybe our past has been changed, but we don't know about it, because we have also changed according to the previous changes. These really are brain teasers. Thats why its so hard to really believe that you can change the past, lol.



[Edited on 3-19-2004 by EmbryonicEssence]

Originally posted by EmbryonicEssence
I tend to think the Langoliers eat up the past. Seriously though, what if the Creator specifically designed the universe so that the "past" IS just a memory? That way, we can't go back in time and f' it up (which means we couldn't travel back in time to begin with).

Then again, if we can go back in time, I'm all for the parallel universe theory. That theory being, if someone were to go back in time in "their" universe and change something, it would create an alternate universe so that it doesn't screw up the previous one's "timeline." That of course lays down the possibility that there are an infinite amount of parallel universes. Its a brain teaser more then anything else.

[Edited on 3-19-2004 by EmbryonicEssence]

As far as parrallel universes go, if a guy goes back in time and changes stuff, he'd create a parallel universe. So it wouldn't have any effect on this universe would it? If every time we changed the past it created an alternate unverse that didn't effect us there'd be no point in going back in time.

Originally posted by Amuk

So what IS this "NOW" anyway? If the FUTURE is only in potential, and the PAST is only in memory, and the NOW is the only form of "existance" that we seem to really experience, then perhaps by understanding the NOW we could understand how to jump into the future, and into the past?

I dont think so for the simple reason that they do not exist.

Say you get into a rocket and travel at close to the speed of sound there by traveling into the "future".

Are you in the future? No. You are still in the NOW for you.

Even if you had a time machine whenever you went it would still be your NOW. Period.

The past is gone. The future not only doesnt exist it never will, it will ALWAYS be the now, and has always been the now.

So as much as I hate to agree with you in a way you are right about everything happining at once because there is ONLY the now.

Point taken. However, the passage of YOUR "now" in relation to other people could possibly be altered? For example, when you reach the speed of light, the theory is that time will stop, but only relatively. So, everybody's NOW will remain the same in their perception, and YOUR now will remain the same in your perception, but when you look at everybody else from YOUR point of view (as you fly past them at the speed of ligt), they would seem to be "frozen". You could then travel for what FOR YOU would be a million years, at the speed of light, and when you return, ZERO TIME has passed for everybody else. This is the theory, that time is relative, or at least NOW is relative and depends on perception.

So, perhaps the now doesn't really exist except when perceived by somebody. This is also (possibly) true about passage of what we think is time. For example, when you fast-forward a videotape in your vcr, the "time" for the people in the tape would be normal, but YOUR perception of their "time" seems to be that it has sped up. If you were inside the tape, with those people, and could look outside the TV into the room of the guy with the remote, you'd see the guy in SLOW MOTION instead.

This is just an analogy for the relativity of "time", and the fact that it doesn't really exist, it's only an interpretation of what appears to exist based on individual perception - and that in itself isn't that hard to understand, and others on this site have already said anyway.

So perhaps, to travel into the past, one would simply have to sort of focus on different points of the NOW, because ONE of those points was DEFINITELY our past. When you can have a machine that can focus on this and put you inside that "time", it would then be next to impossible to simply LIVE in that past and eventually come back to the PRESENT from which you came, as the CHOICES of the people will not necessarily (and most likely not) be IDENTICAL to what they were last time. However, you COULD return to that EXACT SAME PRESENT from which you came, if you could use the same machine that can focus on the "specific pattern" of that exact point in the NOW, and simply transfer you there.

The question is, how does one alter the past, and then travel to the present to see your alterations? Well, it may seem like it's the same way... focus on the "pattern" of the reality that constitutes the reality that includes the alterations that you've made... although there could be infinite possible realities in the "future" that may ALL be different, yet ALL include that same alteration that you made - like burying a coin in a secret location. In fact, you may not even have to DO the alteration yourself, but rather PRETEND that you did, and then travel to the future where your alteration exists.. because in ONE reality you DID do this alteration, therefore the possible future that includes your alteration DOES already exist anyway.

Ah... this is doing my head in. I hope it made SOME sense..


EDIT: This does not seem to then be a TIME MACHINE at all, but more of a reality machine. It creates a reality and transfers you to it. If you manage to build a reality (like in your imagination) that is IDENTICAL to our past, then what would be the difference between our actual past, and that reality? Well, NONE, if they are identical. So you're not really traveling in TIME, but you're simply accessing different realities in the infinite NOW of infinite possibilities.

Oooh now the idea that time doesn't exist makes PERFECT SENSE (after I wrote the above paragraph)... at least to me. Alright, well I see it more clear now than before at least.

[Edited on 19-3-2004 by lilblam]

Originally posted by panchovilla
dang my memory is bad yea what embryonic essence said. i believe that there are infinite parallel universes. so in some of versions it doesn't get jacked up, if you time travel. but since they are infinite versions their are also versions in which it does get ALL JACKED UP!!

so i gues time travel is not a BAD idea after all

or then again what if you are in the version were the time travelers don't get their own new parallel universe.
and people start hittin' into stuff that otherwise wouldn't have been there. brain tease is right.

does all this logic seem somehow familiar? it sure does to me. it's like the more i can imagine the geometry and possibility of infinite possible universes, the more it seems like i already knew.