Does the past exist?

Originally posted by Joseph Knecht
Well the multitude of angles says alot itself. The past for the calahari bushmen is probably so alien to people who share say... the past of china. And vice versa. To me the angles denote not one, but many pasts.

Agreed, but I was more thinking along the lines of, not so much one's perception of events, but the actual events not happening. Such as WW1, the holocaust, the discovery of dinomite, JFK shooting, man going to the moon...things like that.

Here is another idea! What if the past does not exist in a fixed way? What if it is only our memories of the past being remembered in the now (simple recovery of data) that leads us to buy into the illusion that the past actually happened in that singluar way which we recall it. Wait! Don't lock me up just yet. I am just posing strange ideas to further the discussion.

*Slips out of my devil's advocate suit*

Each individual person creates their own philosiphy of time through experiences and events that occured within their physical and mental state. Different people experience time differently than others. The past is simply one's recollection of events through their own perspective.

This is where it gets really exciting... If the past exists in your mind, then you can change it.

What if later in life, you get an new insight into the B.B. gun your father gave you for christmas when you were 12? You would then see the past from a different perspective, thus changing your recollection of the past. Ergo, the past has changed.

A logical argument would be: The past hasn't changed , my perspective has changed. But being that the past is your perspective on events that have occured....

Your sister who got a strawberry shortcake that year has a different recollection of the past. Though if she shot you in the leg with your bb gun for pulling her hair... the bb gun might predominate both of your recollections of the past of that given christmas.

This might then lead one into the argument: THERE WAS A BB GUN that year. But... the couple living five houses down from you has no christmas memories of a BB gun that year.

Thoughts...

not so much one's perception of events, but the actual events

That's what I'm saying Jonna... If one was a Mbuti Pygmi, they might have absolutley no idea that JFK was shot or who even was. You have to have a common perciever to agree that 'something' occured. I think this common perciever is rooted in the collective conscious. Collective of course being relative to who's percieving.


As for your second hypothesis:
That would mean that your memory bank is being CONSTANTLY updated to fool you into new memories, which is a frightening thought indeed. Who's the trickster?

Your time and all time is relative to your own personal perspective. You can learn about the past and see artifacts that prove that the past actually happened, but what I remember and experience although perhaps similar are different from what anyone else experiences. Therefor e time is relative to each individuals perceptions.

Originally posted by JON
Your time and all time is relative to your own personal perspective. You can learn about the past and see artifacts that prove that the past actually happened, but what I remember and experience although perhaps similar are different from what anyone else experiences. Therefor e time is relative to each individuals perceptions.

try and imagine that the only thing that keeps these artifacts from flying apart is the memory of them. think that there is a field of THOUGHT which shapes the field of ENERGY. if this were the true model of reality, then artifacts are just memories.

[Edited on 23-3-2004 by billybob]

we are the past. the future has already occured and people from the present are now visiting us from the future. the aliens and ufo's are us in the future, because humans are knuckleheaded and got lazy and greedy and screwed everything up. that is why the future foolz are comeing back here to try and figure out how to correct the jackolantern screw up.

read this this dude is talkin' about what is going to happen in the future to lead to the present.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

�Time� is a type of free energy we in the3dimension use.
The other dimension where the time energy doesn�t exist we can take a shortcut of no time to other places in the 3dimension.
But we would not be in the future we would only be cheating.

This here is a nice explanation of how time around us works...Interesting read!!!

www.wisdomsdoor.com...

we are the past. the future has already occured and people from the present are now visiting us from the future

This angle has been theorized much. If one believes in prophecy or pre-ordination, then this would make sense. I always like this angle with the 'greys'.

But that would also make us like actors in a film, stuck to our roles, and to our lines. Doesn't leave much for freedom. Ever see 'The Purple Rose of Cairo'? It's a movie about a character in a film who gets tired of cinema life and decides to leave the silver screen for the 'real' world. Just made me think of it...

The Bandit:

Interesting Link. From what I could surmise:

It seems 'time' reality is shapeshifting itself enough to continue to be reality. All possibilities always meeting at the correct vortex, for the correct 'time'. It will flow forwards OR backwards to sustain itself. It's almost self-preserving, and self-corrective in a way; Any of the possible futures will always correlate to any of the possible pasts, to create the present. What is your take on the reading?

This might lead one to the question: Is reality aware of itself? Working definiton - Reality being the conglomerate of infinitely many possiblities, coordinated at a given moment. It seems to like it's reflection, but there are the 'blind spots'.

everything is possible. lets take a look at this picture of a meadow full of solid blooming daisy like flowers. now focus on one individual flower and then one individual petal. this petal is made of a thin layer of paint on a canvas. so now look at one individual little speck of paint which is the doorway/gateway to anywhere and everywhere in the universe. through these particles which make up the blue paint every imaginable possibility is accessible. all parallel universes, hospitable and inhospitable planets, the past and future, and nows of infinite galaxies are all right there awaiting you just on the other side of the door. this is no special picture. infact everthing is also accessable from every pixel on your computer screen. same with any picture, screen, or flower.

all you have to do is allow for the enlightenment to fill you with any of these other locales and allow the the Light to reflect the reality of whatever destination or time you choose. super transport. some sacrifices may be necessary and there is no gaurantee that you will ever make it back. that is why i am still right here

peace out

The FUTURE has NOT happened. If it had then there wouldn't be any different possiblities because it would all be predetermined! The past AND the future all have infinite possibilities, but then each of the POSSIBILITIES has its own PROBABLITY, the probability of somthing happened may cancel out the probability of something else happening, or it may re-enforce it. If it can happen then it is compulsory that it will happen and it WILL happen. When that thing happens, we ALL see it from a different perspective, which gives us our MEMORIES from the past. But there are ALOT of things happening every single moment, everything that could happen will happen, but each has its own PROBABLITY that it will happen then.

Even if you were a million miles away from earth, and then half the world population died, those people on earth would have that as their past, the person a million miles away wouldn't but it still DID happen, same if that guys spaceship blew up, the people on earth wouldn't know but he would and it would become his past.

[Edited on 27-3-2004 by quiksilver]

Umm. OK. This is kind of hard to understand. Right now we are in the present. By the time you read this it will be the the past to me. You aren't going to read this until the future though. Now, I can't change the past, no one can. So right now is the present, it is also the past and the future. So, I can't change the past. But this is the past, it is also the present, so, I can't change the present. A year from now this will be the past. I can't change the past.

In conclusion, I'm dizzy and I can just keep going. Pretty much, everything is happening, has happened and will happen all at the same time. This also has to do with the illusion of free will.

Here's a thread that's kind connected; www.abovetopsecret.com...

quicksilver my brotha you are on the right track and with your intelligince surely you will be able to see that indee the future has already happened and NO IT DOES NOT LIMIT OUR FUTURe


look at two snakes crawling throught the grasss

each a reflection of the other but closer, like twins, like siamese brothers as ther pathes continue to cross one anothers with every s curve. put this on a globe or sphere to what will the pattern adhere?


ok do i sound dumb, retarded mongoloidish
i wish you were by my side i surely show the picture to make you believe.

as the snakes cross it is the present.

and they are brothers yet enemies and mirrors of one another and the future has already foretold that there pathes will continue to intersect forever and ever and ever and ever my brotha

and infinite are the possibilites



the fact that future has already occured in no way limits the present or past and this is for SURE



[Edited on 123131p://3112u by panchovilla]

but surely it would limit it because what is going to happen has a 100% chance of happening so then there would be no meaning for infinite possibilities? and it would drown out all the other possiblities from having probabilities.

Maybe there are preset probablities in the end, because of all the others, they have been cancelled out or re enforced to give a limited number of possibilities so those possibilities could be our future, but right up to when they will come into effect, right before they 'exist' they are all possibilities and then the one with the greatest probablity at that moment (because all the future probablities would have been affected by the past probabilities) will happen.(then we all see it from different perspectives and we store it in our memories and it becomes our past).


[Edited on 27-3-2004 by quiksilver]

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.)

The past does not exist. The Langoliers ate it.

I have experienced several kinds of "time".
1. When I moved to AZ, I was aware of living THREE lives at once! In the first, I was a retiree, living in AZ , as a regular woman. My boyfriend was living elsewhere.
2. In another life..at the SAME TIME....a different parallel life, I was married to my boyfriend and had the kids, white house, picket fence, etc.
3. In this parallel life, I lived UNDERGROUND with the husband-boyfriend and we were living with ETs, helping them!
I finally got away from the other 2 lives, and just concentrated on the obvious one....as a retiree living in AZ.
Then there was a time when an ET showed me 2 time lines....mine and a man's line. He showed how he could take me from 1982 and the man from 1988 and put us together in a neutral place like a spaceship.
Then recently, getting a DVR, I see life could run like a DVR.....viewing the past, while the present continues on anyway.
Fascinating!!

things i wanna try out here: the body as a whole exists in the now. obviously as a whole it cannot seem to travel at light speeds less it meets disintegration. but what is it made out of, energy, pieces of energy that vibrate at their own level, which im sure are at least as fast as the speed of light. so when we say time is relative, to what? things as a whole or to what its composed of? somehow we are balls of condensed energy that move at incredible speeds. what condenses it, holds it together? the mind, conciousness? then yet how fast is the mind or conciousness? i dont think this is measurable yet. so in theory, you could say that the body as a whole is in this NOW, subjected to leave the past and head into the future. yet the mind can be in all at the same time, it can recognise the "past" and imagine/even predict the future. so one could say that the mind/conciousness is infinite/eternal, or that everything that has ever happened, that is happening, that ever will happn, is happening only and ever so much in the NOW. i personally thing that because we are still mostly into 3rd density reality, we still need opposites, and things that are relative to produce so called "experiences", a phase to grow and move on, but to what, something else? hot - cold, evil - good, they're all there, so that we can experience one and the other alike, less it would all be just one thing, you couldnt describe it further, it would just be IT. we do this with time, hence why it does not exist, well in a sense anyways. nothing in this world would work as it does if we did not choose to relate to the past or future, what we've done, or where we're going in life. if it was all happening, you wouldnt have anywhere to go, it would all be there. everything you'd ever want and would hate to happen would all be happening at once, thus it would then all negate, and you would just BE. holy crap where am i going with this. chew on some of this for a bit, i sure have been.

Originally posted by NotTooHappy
Umm. OK. This is kind of hard to understand. Right now we are in the present. By the time you read this it will be the the past to me. You aren't going to read this until the future though. Now, I can't change the past, no one can. So right now is the present, it is also the past and the future. So, I can't change the past. But this is the past, it is also the present, so, I can't change the present. A year from now this will be the past. I can't change the past.

In conclusion, I'm dizzy and I can just keep going. Pretty much, everything is happening, has happened and will happen all at the same time. This also has to do with the illusion of free will.

Here's a thread that's kind connected; www.abovetopsecret.com...

ack, thats what happens when you get carried away and dont read the entire thread before a post, but anyways nottohappy, you seem to get where im coming from

Well, this is an extremely complicated question which we can only theorize of. I partially agree with those who say that the notion of 'time' is an invention of mankind, but I also partially agree that time has the capacity to create infinite stemmed dimensions which, with the proper technology and conditions, can be ventured into.

Of course, though, anyone who says they know the true and only answer is only guessing.

It's more like 'did' the future exist?

We cant ever know if the past existed without actually going there i suppose but then that would just be another series of events that would have been the future, which would have been our now.

The question is, does the future exist??? Is it all predetermined? Because the past isn't going to happen again, but does it shape our future or not? I reckon everything is already predetermined, meaning we have no free will, but does it matter because we don't know whats predetermined and whats not.

If that photon had been going faster than the speed of light wouldn't they have detected some of that Cherenkov Radiation?


You should be able to slow time if you go faster, i.e. near light speed, but only to yourself since their is no universal time. You cant change the direction of time, but you can go at a abit of an angle to it so that time may run slower for you and faster for others so that it would appear that you travelled into the future, but really youve just allowed others to go through time faster than you have.