The notion of time is one which intersects at all points between mythology, religion, philosophy, science and beyond. Despite our knowledge, which we believe to be objective and quantifiable, it manages to elude us, and will continue to likely until the end of all things.
But you see there, even in that assumption above, I saw things progressing in a linear form, from beginning to end, in a sequence of causality which can be determined if traced in reverse. Yet, this is a current understanding not one which seeks to understand time on the level playing field of its own existence.
Heidegger, who I seem so fond of mentioning on this page, believed us to be temporal beings, our form of existence--the very crux of his early efforts--is reliant on our relationship with time, or rather with our coexistence with time. He believed us, essentially, to be time, our form of being constituted of time, and us followed forever by time, bound to and by it.
This I believe to be true, though perhaps not in the form Heidegger originally proposed the description. I believe us to be mechanical--not necessarily in the same funxion as a computer or drill, but rather as a machine, a totality of processes; for this to be grasped, one must understand what a process is in essence. A process, put as simply as possible, is a sequence, and as of such, it is something which is both allowed for by the passing of time (linearity) and whose very existence confirms that very linearity, that mechanical movement of time. Humanity, being mechanical, being a collexion and culmination of processes, and a human individually being this too, is a machine tied with linearity. The only way for us to be nonlinear would be to be nonmechanical, to share within us no processes, nothing that requires the movement of time to create, to be unchanging.
This very fact is the reason we will never fully grasp time. Simply, we cannot confront time on the level of its own existence, a nonlinear, a 4d, a modal form of time. It is not allowed for in the fabric of our being.
Let us think of a convergence, a place (thinking spatial may be the incorrect conceptualisation but it helps to better understand theoretically) where all time occurs simultaneously. As this is the case, it would stand to reason that space either stands still or also converges at such a place. The convergence: a spot of all time and all space.
Now place a human there, a machine. When did they arrive? Assuming all time is occurring at once they must have always been there. There would be no point of arrival because that would suppose a moment before the next. Already we have run into a complex form of thinking.
Next let us suppose this being stays there (as pointed out, they couldn’t leave as that would mean they were never there originally). In all likelihood, as seen through our very conceptualising of such a space, they would perceive time as moving linearly, no different to the mechanical reality which they hail from.
Us being the omniscient presupposers know this to be false. So why would they observe the convergence in this way? Well, they are bound by their form of being. A 2d creature (supposing there was living 2d existence) could live in a 3d space but only in a 2d fashion; they could never appropriate the third dimension to their means nor grasp to fully understand it. Much is the same with the placement of a 3d form of being into 4d space.
We already exist in four dimensional space, yet we are unable to move around in a four dimensional fashion, in the same bounds as the 2d creature in 3d space. We claim to understand time but we only understand it from a three-dimensional perspective, and being processes this is all we will ever understand time as.
Put yourself into the convergence. Would experience all of time at once? What would that feel like? How could you begin to understand it? All of our conceptions and dreams of such a scenario reduce it to a sequence (mechanical linearity) of images, thus experiencing all of time no different to experiencing partial time. So what would it feel like? Could it be processed? Is there a chance for the three-dimensional form of being, our form of being, to one day move into a four-dimensional form?
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