The CIA On Time Travel

[Ninurta]

As cool as time travel would be (me personally, I'd go straight for the cretaceous period and check out some dinosaurs....or maybe get some front row seats to the battle of Thermopylae....or see who really killed JFK....too many choices, I'd probably just be unable to decide)  I just can't reconcile how it would be possible.  Is time a tangible thing that can be traversed, is it even linear?  Is it just a man made unit for structuring out the days and years?  It's basically trying to traverse existence, can't get my mind around it.  Guess that's why I'm not a physicist.

No, time is not linear. Everything that ever was, or ever will be, IS, right now. All instants exist in this instant, It's not a matter of "traveling through time" - that is a linear concept that conceives of time as being linear.

What you have to do is tune your "self", the non-physical part of "you" that makes you uniquely you, to be in phase with the instants you wish to observe. That's tougher than it sounds, and it sounds pretty tough.

I compare it to frames on a film reel. The entire reel exists all at once, and every frame on it exists, all frames at the same time. It's a matter of tuning in to the specific frame you want to view.

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I think I see what you're saying.  There is only this existence, this very now, that all events have happened in, as if time doesn't exist?  

That's what I struggle with.  Relatively, dinosaurs existed a long TIME ago.  The battle of Thermopylae was a long time ago.  Conversely, tomorrow, in the future, I WILL wake up and get ready for idiot hell that is my job.

I see what you and Fin are saying about a film reel or book, but those are tangible things that were created, they're accessible.  Where is our reality tangibly recorded that it can be accessed?  Through meditation?  How do you tell what's time travel and not vivid imagination?

All of our yesterdays are gone, all of them. None onf our tomorrows have come. None of them - and they never will. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and my breakfast yesterday morning are on the same level as far as access is concerned. I can't reach out and touch either one in this moment, using time in the usual linear manner.

All we have normally is right here, right now, and the instant I typed that comment is as gone now as the instant that the Chixlub Asteroid contacted the surface of the Earth. I will never wake up tomorrow, because the instant that instant "gets here", it is no longer tomorrow - it is only "right now".

"Right now" is all we have. the trick is to tune into the "right now" that you want to observe, because everywhere and everywhen IS "right now". "Reality" is "tangibly recorded" in the quanta of the universe. It's a matter of getting in phase with it in the instant you desire to observe or interact with.

Does it really matter what is time travel or vivid imagination? What would objectively change in either eventuality?

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