I’ve been contemplating time lately. It seems that time doesn’t exist. It is an illusion. For time to exist there has to be a yesterday and a tomorrow that are distinct from Now. I’m not sure there is. If we remove the passage of what we understand to be time from our understanding what are we left with? Now. It is always now. It is never tomorrow, nor is it ever yesterday. The only thing we can prove is now. It is a state. In a known system, Now could be defined by the precise positioning of matter and energy inside that system. This includes directional energy. For instance my Now may include directional energy, force, carrying my finger towards the period key on my keyboard. But in an infintesimally small moment of time, the Now, that force is the expression of a state of force. The Now itself does not include motion, because for motion to exist time must exist.

The interesting thing is that we deduce the next moment, the next frame of our existence by understanding the directional forces (intertia) at work in the Now. We observe the past by deducing the directional forces that must have been in place to prepare our state to manifest the Now.

This is all speculation of course. The fact is, Time does exist. Now, State, is constantly changing. I suspect that Time is inherently a function of life, that all motion is an expression of life. Death, perhaps, is simply the absence of motion. Certainly that is how we attempt to define it today. We are dead when the heart stills, when the neurons cease to fire, when the energy of our form has dissipated. Of course we live on. Our physical form is broken down and carried back to the natural world. Our bodies do not stay still. And physics tells us that the energy of our life has to go somewhere. That animating force dissipates, but the force itself can not be destroyed. The only real death is the absolute binding of our energy. The absence of time, of movement, of force.

(On a related note, this ties in interestingly with some of my previous thoughts about the Arthurian legends. Arthur as the Warrior against Time, attempting to bring it to a halt, may in truth attempting to bring absolute death to the world.)

So thinking about time, about stillness, about death, I wonder that we spend so much of our now thinking about yesterday and tomorrow. I’m not convinced that this is wrong or bad, but I find it curious. The primary function of thoughts of the past or future is reconciliation and reparation. We want to understand, to reconcile our previous states. We want to repair the future, by which I mean we desire a specific outcome. Note that I say want. We desire reconciliation and reparation. We look to the future and the past out of a desire or a need.

What is that desire? Where does it come from? How does it manifest in the now?

By default I operate on the assumption that Will, (which fuels desire) transcends time. But ignoring the possibility of transcendence, how can we operate with our emotions, our desires, inside of the Now? Can desire be summarized by State in the Now, as a set of rational forces in potential? Is my desire, that state, simply a neurological pattern of forces?

What about our memories of emotions? Are they the reflection, the remains of previous states? Lasting impressions or lingering patterns of a prior state?

The simple answer is yes. Emotions are as illusory as time. They are a function of forces inside our state. However, is emotion the prime mover of that state? What started all the motion? Was it an inevitable consequence of super-dense matter, or was it begun by some primal emotion?

I ask, because if you think about it, our emotions are what connect us throughout time. In the Now, we have a single state, a rational composed set of forces that can be understood. We can perceive the outcome of those forces, but without engaging desire, we have no influence upon those forces. Without desire, without will, those forces will simply cascade through successive states without any further change. The forces that drive will though, those introduce the true element of chaos into the equation, because those forces influence independent action. A directed application of force instead of the consequential.

And that’s what it comes down to. It is easy to believe that free will is an illusion, that we are all the product of cause and effect. That our state ultimately determines our proceeding states. And perhaps that is true. But we aren’t functioning in a closed system, or a singular system. We are functioning in an infinite universe with multiple systems of force interacting. This is the fundamental truth of chaos. the forces of the physical realm are easily understood (relatively). This is why our physical science is so advanced. However, the metaphysical forces, the psychological forces, the spiritual forces, are not so easily defined, let alone understood.