The conception of time as a line is so common that there is a word for it, "timeline" even.



He also says in the "General Remark on the System of Principles":



Conjecture: time is not limited to one dimension.

Evidence, article 1: the classical conception of eternity. To perceive an eternal now would be to perceive all of sempiternity at once. But sempiternity is only an infinite succession of finite nows (all that is the present) that together constitute an infinite line through time. Dimensional perception works like this: if your perceptual apparatus is itself n-dimensional, you can perceive n-1-dimensional space (this is the impression I get from everything I've read of the book Flatland). So a temporally two-dimensional vision would see not just points (nows) but entire lines of time. Eternal perception, then, may be considered as equivalent to temporally two-dimensional perception.

Article 2: physicists allow that time may be multidimensional. See http://physics.usc.edu/~bars/homepage/Time_gains_an_extra_dimension.pdf for a good overview of this allowance.

So is Kant right (and wrong, technically)? Is it possible to think of time as more than a line? Suppose, even, that it is more than a line. Suppose it's three-dimensional. (There is an oblique reason for me, personally, to suppose this, but for now, just grant the premise for the sake of a sorta thought experiment.) Then there are structures in existence made out of timelines (the lines of temporal awareness or of world histories, arguably), structures that look exactly like certain geometrical patterns in space would.

Here's a less-arguable-for idea (forgive that not-so-ideal turn of phrase): suppose that some of these 3D-time structures look like, say, living things. Humans, things with wings, whatever. And suppose these "move," or have their own lives, lives that involve events and, therefore, moment-to-moment transition. Then suppose that those changes in turn get reflected into another threefold isotope of space (the timeline-like order of these changes adding up to 3D structures of another order), and so on.

I came up with this notion after dealing with psychedelics both in my own life and through years of research on the Internet. I was trying to make sense of this sense of reality being "layered" or having "levels," not just levels of attention in description (levels of detail) but of substance (or something). I also was familiar with the ancient faith in "planes of existence," a faith traceable to gnostic Christianity and mystical Judaism (or Buddhism) and apparent in a game like Dungeons and Dragons or poetry like Dante's Divine Commedy. Now a plane could just as well be thought of as a dimension, wherefore a higher plane is just a higher dimension of space and time, not some domain of exotic symmetry thereto. But in D&D, for instance, the facts on different planes all appear 3-dimensionally, which accords well with the proposition of an iterated base geometry for each plane in its entirety. (In other words, a plane may be by definition a set of three dimensions of space-like realities.) And I know many reports of DMT use indicate a literal hyperspatiality to the experience, but my only comparable self-knowledge would be of the effects of salvia, and as geometrically warped as that knowledge was for me to acquire, even the "space" I broke through to was still a realm of length, width, and height, but not a fourth vector. And it's not absolutely clear to me from the reports I've read that DMT breakthroughs involve seeing angles that actually transcend 3D spatial configurations (as opposed to seeming to, as in representations of Calabi-Yau manifolds or Klein bottles).

For now, I'll leave the last word to Kant again:

Dear Ripheus23.

Man, you are blowing my mind. I studied philosophy in college, and I am ashamed to admit that I could not read Kant. Nevertheless, I did take a course entitled the philosophy of history (as compared to the history of philosophy). The philosophy of history takes into consideration the contemporaneous Zeitgeist of the historian. For example, today's historians stand on the shoulders of giants, and are privy to all the histories that have been written, at least in Western civilization, since Herodotus and Thucydides.

Furthermore, each had his own point of view. For example, Aristotle considered man as a political being, and considered man as a city (polis) dweller. Marx considered man as an economic being, whose priciple stage of action was the Class Struggle for material goods and services; each saw the world through that lens.

The most common historical point of view is linear, but Giambatista Vico perceived history as cyclical. (He was burned at the stake for his heretical views.) And Wilhelm Dilthey, following Kant, perceived history as a spiral. Eschatology is, I suppose, derived from Aristotelian teleological thought: that there is a beginning and an end, Alpha and Omega.

My math background does not include Calabi-Yau manifolds or Klein bottles, but I am familiar with Flatland and Everett's so-called Many Worlds Interpretation, in which each moment is sliced off into infinite possibilities depending upon the universe of conditions comprising each point in time, and the infinite potentialities of each decision be every participant Observer. Everett's interpretation implies infinite worlds from infinite points of view, each depending upon the universe of quantum conditions defining each moment. Just as with E equals MC squared and speed equals distance divided by time, the implication is that time and space are inextricably bound - irrevocably related and thus, in effect, equivalent. Planck's length and Planck's time, each tiny units of measure, are also equivalent.

Welcome to the Nexus. You have my vote for promotion, and I hope to learn much from you.
Spangles

So this post opened my mind today...
i woke up 4:00am something and started to read...
it led me to explain to myself my TOE and how it can be related to a timeline...
i took a shower and decided to vape some of what i believe to be dmt in my pipe...
i did not make it to hyperspace but as i closed my eyes i started to watch as the visuals unveil themselves. i continued to smoke what i had realizing how i was unlocking my mind until there was nothing left... came back and checked out what was new. ha

so here is my TOE...
this is the first dimension --> . <--
this is space it is all expansive infinite there is no end and no beginning it always was and always will be.
There are many of these SPACES but we live in this one =]

--> - <-- that is time first/second dimension very possible that it is just as infinite as space it always was. The timeline.
Now we have Space/Time. The dimensions evolve from here.

--> X <-- our third dimension is matter 3 dimensional objects. all the particles that exist in space/time belong in this dimension.

--> * <-- Our fourth dimension is our consciousness it is what brought particles together in the first place. GOD this is where things just don't make sense. My fourth dimension created my third dimension... they might just be out of order but the fourth dimension is more complex. What comes after this we can only imagine... Maybe the 5th dimension is another "plane of existence". Math seems to show us the possibility of their existence. Calabi Yau and the likes.

Infinity is hard to grasp for most people, but nothing could exist without it... there will always be the question of what came before if it wasn't always there to begin with. Just thought i could share.

Now i don't understand how time could be multidimensional. a 3rd or 4th dimensional version of time... it makes about as much sense as "flatland" to me. i don't believe in it but cant deny its possibility. I believe in the layers/levels of reality. A higher plane of existence i would just make sense of as being a higher level dimension. Why do we have to over-think everything?

The temporal state in order to be experienced as linear must be a singularity.
I have posted a lot about this topic here and elsewhere.

Time as we know it is an artifact of the perception of a constant state, or singularity.

Infinity is an artificial concept, the instant, the now, this is closer to the actuality.

We measure distance in units of time for a reason, in terms of the singularity we are temporal and spatially relative to events we perceive as being in the past. Units of time are a form of distance as well, a form of spatial distance, but the field of time has polarity, ergo it's linear perception.

At least this is my understanding, as wrong as it may be.

In this time as a field does have three dimensional aspects, singularity, linearity, depth and then temporal relativity, which is the fourth dimension. But the field is polar, this does not mean that the other side of the field contains time that goes in reverse, it is more like isomeric time.

There is the point origin, we perceive it as an ultimate origin and term it the Big Bang, but in a sense it is ongoing and now, we are just relatively downstream from it in a temporal/spatial sense. We see it as in the past, but it is in the present, just in a different time field location relative to the field, which can be seen as an analogy to a magnetic field, it has polarity, but is not flowing like a form of radiation such as light or heat. Much like the field of a magnet, it is polar and thus one can flow easily with it in one direction, but it takes force to move against it, in the case of time the amount of force required to move towards what we perceive as the past is a tremendous amount of energy.

This should be somewhat self evident, due to the moment of now being a singularity.

Thanks to everyone for the constructive feedback. It's good to know I'm not just whistling in the dark...

Some personal caveats: like Richard Strassman, I am no physicist. However decent of a job I can do at handling the concepts behind modern science, I have to approach those concepts as a philosopher, not a mathematician or a scientist. The best mathematical proof I've independently arrived at has to do with division by zero (since division is iterated subtraction, you can explain the problems with division by zero by referring to this iteration), and I'm sure that someone else somewhere already came up with it. In the future I'm going to refer not to Einstein or Planck in defense of my theories, but Anselm of Canterbury and John Rawls (among others).

And @ Spangles: I would never have expected a reference to Giambatista Vico in a reply to anything I wrote, and although I know of the guy more by name than by the content of his thoughts, still, I very, very much appreciate the reference.

Linearity is largely an artifice of our number use in my opinion.

Consider the mathematical aspects of instantaneous events, for example if you traveled from point a to point b instantly, what is the velocity? Mathematically is is zero, but not absence of rate of travel zero. It is actually infinitely fast, which cannot be described in terms of linear numbers.

An instant singularity has properties of both zero and one using our number system, and thus appears paradoxical mathematically, despite not actually being so.

I like what you're saying although, from my own perspectives it still involves a use of language or perception of an "it/or/is/thing/object" in general, saying time is something. We created time to describe a function of observation, yet in my observations with DMT and through meditation thus far, I can only conclude that time is the word we use to describe the notion of permanent state which is the impossible in an ever changing moment. Their is no time, there only appears to be a time, like there appears to be many variations of shape or number, when in reality they are all the same experience just viewed from different perspectives.

Can there perhaps be both shape and shapelessness? Form arising because formlessness exists?
That form exists, and formlessness exists, that time exists because timelessness exists?

That diversification of from does exist, because oneness also exists?

That the reality and the illusion are both correct, and not exclusive to one another?
That the ultimate illusion is the perception it must be one and not the other?

I think this is probably most accurate. Time is simultaneously linear and cyclical, but it depends on how we choose to examine/process it. It's sort of like how you can look at a triangle and it can be perceived as three distinct lines (linear/analytical/left brain) and it can also be perceived as a triangle (wholistic/pattern/right brain). Just because you happen to be processing it one way at one particular moment in time, doesn't mean you can't switch back and forth easily. This is easier to think of with a triangle than with time, but I believe it's all the same. The same line of thinking applies to being one with the universe/God and an individual human being at the same time. Through one scope, we have the universe in its entirety and then we can also switch processing modes and see it as a culmination of its infinitely discrete parts (humans, plants, animals, galaxies, cells, atoms, electrons.....). Indeed much of the problems arise when we come up with one example, point to it and declare, well that's the way the universe (or whatever it is) works. Things exist in multiple states simultaneously.

I would say that for me at least, the answer to that is emphatically yes; a DMT breakthrough transcends ALL comprehensible spatial configurations.



This is why I maintain a fantasy list of people throughout history who I would most like to hop in a time machine and indoctrinate to the world of the molecule. Had either one of these fellows been properly introduced to a 50mg philosophy buster, they both would have gone to their graves whistling dramatically different tunes.

Thank you, Ripheus23 for a thought provoking thread that sails way, way over my head. Proceed to GO, collect $200 and enjoy the fruits of full membership.

My gut agrees with Global. Time is experiential. Special relativity describes a personal measure of time, and we experience time as a measure between two states in an irreversible process. But light, for instance, is timeless from our perspective. Photons don't age. They might be the very essence of the Mind beyond experience.

I concur with Art. I don't see how one can ascertain any kind of information involving something so ineffable - something that is practically impossible to put to words in the first place - via a trip report (collection of words) in the first place. From my own personal experience, the extra dimensions I perceive are largely spatial. The idea that time is somehow connected to the fourth dimension is I believe an old idea that everyone latched on to. I'm not saying that there aren't extra temporal dimensions. I'm simply saying that they are quite distinct. In the same way that we can have a zero dimensional point, one dimensional line, etc...we can also have a zero dimensional point in time (singularity), two dimensional time (linear time as we typically experience it), and so on.

This is where my thoughts have gone. Now technically, we know the individual moments of our lives "add up" to a line, but we only see the moments (unless déjà vu is when we temporarily chunk our perception of moments into a flash of direct linear intuition). So our temporal experience might be taken to be directly of points and only indirectly of a line. If our visual processing system were 2-dimensional re: time, we could see all the points at once, thus seeing the line directly (in the light of all eternity), in the same way that perceiving space from a 3D vantage allows us to see all the lines in a given polyhedron's face at once. (So if we were 4D re: space, we would see, without having to turn the chair or using mirrors, all the faces at once of e.g. a chair that's in front of us.) And if we could see from a third temporal dimension, we could see how different lines connect to form shapes. Then, if we could see even more "deeply," we would see how those shapes formed polyhedra, etc.

Is there a helpful analogy to be drawn between representations of tesseracts and the ineffability of DMT geometry?

I suppose I'm curious as to whether e.g. the Pythagorean theorem applies in DMT hyperspace. Do triangles look like triangles (if anything is even triangular)? Or is any use of spatial/geometric terms to describe that world analogical and not literal?

Colors, for example, are necessarily perceived as extended (having length and width). How well, or how poorly, do concepts like length and width apply to even the smallest patch of a breakthrough trip? Are even references to color in trip reports technically inaccurate?

The multidimensionality the way I interpret my visions is intrinsically tied to different planes often times. It's an inexplicable appreciation of depth and angles.



There is a hint of familiarity in the tesseracts as one can observe what appears to be the various faces moving through each other. Tesseracts are incredibly mundane and simple compared to DMT holograms. They may seem to have similar basic mechanics, but DMT holograms are "designed" in the most intricate and significant of ways. Tesseracts look like clumsy geometry.