Understanding ‘Now’ and the Non-Existence of Time
April 25th, 2007 by Ken D
Be in the Now; There is only now; Everything that happens, happens only in the now; Be mindful of now; Bring it back to now; Now is all that exists (’past’ is dead, future hasn’t happened)
But what exactly does it mean? What is ‘the now’? How do we experience now? Why would I want to ‘be in the now’?
Note: For the remainder of this writing I use Now as the standard to represent ‘the now’ and ‘now’. I thought the single quotes would get tiring to the reader.
I never heard of the concept of Now until I started reading spiritual based personal development books in my early twenties. I read a few books that talked about being present in the moment but I always equated that to just paying attention to what was in front of me.
About two years ago I discovered there is a difference between being present and the concept of ‘now’. I think the idea of bringing your attention back to the present moment is self explanatory, although it can be very difficult to do consistently. For this post I’m going to focus on the concept of ‘now’.
I looked at my life as a string of present moments, one following the next in a linear progression forward. The moment I was in, was Now. When that was replaced, it went into the past. The next moment in line was my future. This model of time was like a film of individual frames; one frame giving way to the next.
The problem with this thinking was I couldn’t find the transition point from one moment to the next. It seemed there was no defining point where one moment ended and another one started. In an attempt to get around this I started splitting the moment of time into smaller and smaller segments. I could imagine making the increments extremely small, but no matter how small I made them, there was always a beginning and an end. I had a problem with this model and I appeared to be moving in the wrong direction.
Then one day I started thinking in a new direction. The problem I was having was sandwiching Now between the past and the future. I was sticking something that is real (Now) between two things that were not (past and future). The past is dead (see note 1 below) and the future never occurs. We imagine a future and recall a past; but this occurs in our mind right Now. It all happens in the present moment. We don’t actually go back into the past or move into the future when we think about them. We never leave Now. Another shift in my thinking was Now could not be represented by a slice of time because it had no beginning or end; it wasn’t connected to time at all.
What I needed was a paradigm shift. I needed to divorce my concept of Now from time. There are a number of ways I started to look at Now which represented this new way of thinking:
- Now is like a movie screen. The movie plays on the screen but the screen remains untouched and unmoving. The full film of our lives plays out but the now always remains the same.
- Now is like a stage. We move around and live life on top of that stage but the stage never moves. No time passes; things change on the stage but the stage is static.
- We are just moving around in the ’substance’ of Now.
This line of thinking was a completely different way for me to see and understand the concept of Now. Instead of having Now attached to time, I managed to see it as a static state of being. Obviously the examples I gave above are merely pointers to this new perspective and don’t represent the actual Now.
From this point of view I arrived at some new conclusions:
Time doesn’t exist. Time is only a concept. It is just a unit of measurement. Like an inch or a foot is used to measure distance, time measures the relationship between events. You can’t hand me an inch or physically give me a unit of time. They are merely concepts or ideas, not physically real objects. (There are some schools of thought which argue this point. See Time for an interesting read)
Now is eternal. It doesn’t start and stop and start and stop, one segment of Now following another in an endless march forward. It has no beginning and no end because it always is Now; from this we can say it is eternal.
e·ter·nal (i-tûr’n?l) (Definition from thefreedictionary)
Being without beginning or end; existing outside of time
Continuing without interruption; perpetual.
Something timeless, uninterrupted, or endless.
Now is a static condition. Everything we experience including the passing of time and the movement of objects occurs inside the Now. The dynamic motion of life exists inside the static condition of Now. The clock hand moves, your body changes, trees rise and fall. There is an appearance of time but it all occurs in the now. It is a static condition that just is. We have been so conditioned by a time-bound model of reality that we can’t see it is only an illusion. It takes a tremendous effort to break the momentum that has been built up in order to see reality as it is.
So What’s The Point?
Soon after I wrote the first draft I was speaking to my wife about it. After a while, she looked at me and asked, “So how does this benefit your life?” I had to think about this because if it has no benefit in my life then what’s the point. These are few things I get from this kind of thinking:
- Another example of how a seemingly concrete idea/belief/concept is actually an illusion upon closer inspection
- This thinking yielded a realistic example of eternal
- A deeper understanding of what Now is and how it relates to my life
- I always find benefit in flexing my brain to understand abstract concepts
- Ammunition to go out and confuse family and friends. Just look for the glassy eyes as you run through the explanation
I think the main reason for writing this article is to share the different perspective I arrived at to see the Now from an entirely new direction. The goal is to experience the now, not merely understand it. Understanding can help point the way to experiencing but it is no substitute.
My updated understanding has given me the ability to better experience the Now. Rather than only bringing my attention back to the present, I feel an expansion which occurs as I sense the all-encompassing nature of Now. What I am trying to say about the experience is a very difficult point to convey. It is similar to trying to explain a color or the flavor of an orange. Each one is fundamental and impossible to explain without using the concept in the explanation itself. It’s just one of those things that need to be experienced by each person on an individual basis.
The problem is we are so conditioned to make everything time-based that we have a hard time removing ourselves from the concept to see what is really going on. If it is always now, and the now has no beginning and no end, where does that leave room for time?
I hope this helps you understand and experience the Now from a different perspective.
Further Notes and Food for Thought:
1. I understand the limitations of writing this article: past is dead - implies the past is real; past does not exist - implies past is not real. There seems to be a flipping between time-bound and non-time-bound perspectives of reality. I’m not sure how I can remedy this because even though I can logically see there is no past or future, there is an appearance of a past based on my ability to recall thoughts and positions I have held prior to my current one. There is a motion which is occurring as I live my life, but it always happens in the now.
2. Some of the cycles we use to measure time: the rotation of the earth, the moon orbiting earth, the earth circling the sun; these don’t indicate the presence of time. They are just motions and changes in position. Even a sun dial is just a measurement of the position of the sun relative to the earth. It is our thinking that relates that to time.
Before there were clocks the conversation went something like this: “Meet me at the apple tree when the moon rises over the top ridge of the mountain.” Where is time there? It is positions of physical bodies. When man invented the concept of time, he said, “When the moon rises over the top ridge of the mountain, it is 10 pm”.
If it’s always now, and it has no beginning and no end, then the Now must be a static state. All the appearance that happens inside the Now are dynamic. So when I walk across the room there is no time passing; although there is an appearance of time from the time-bound perspective. I am only moving from point A to point B inside of the Now. No time necessary.
