no doubt
the base principles of belief
Reading time...
Belief is a form of thought that does not rest on evidence. Belief is neither rational nor factual. And belief includes not only religious faith, but also political convictions, ideologies, and various kinds of ideas and habits that are usually called 'superstition' and 'magical thinking.'
With "belief" I do not mean thoughts like believing that Tokyo exists while I've never been there or believing it's cold outside now. Those thoughts are easily verifiable and become knowledge as soon as one checks them out.
Belief in all its unverifiable forms is made possible by an underlying complex of interconnected convictions, formed during human evolution and assimilated during early childhood, which I call the "original principles."
In particular:
- The belief in an identity that is separate from knowing — an "I" or "ego' that locates itself in an "inner world" and thereby projects an "outer world" as well.
- The objectification and naming of the flow of impressions into separate, enduring things — both psychological (thoughts, feelings) and physical objects.
- The belief that the self is powerful and responsible, capable of manipulating the stream of experience — the so-called "free will."
- The belief in passing time, with a causal past and a future that can be planned.
Presumably, these original principles are the result of the evolution of the human animal, and this evolution is recapitulated during the upbringing of a human infant into an adult.
The Separate Self
The belief in a fixed, unchanging center in our experience, separate from the rest of what we experience, may be the most widespread and deeply rooted belief of all.
This belief arises at a very young age, usually through identification with one's mirror image and/or with other bodies—children and adults— and reinforced by parents and caregivers.
In this way, Marieke gradually comes to believe—gently indoctrinated—that the image in the mirror is an image of herself, including a head that is imagined to be in the place where previously only perceptions were happening. And she learns that she resides in that head, looking out through the eyes, and that what she perceives is happening outside of her (the same goes, analogously, for hearing).
As a child, you notice that thoughts and feelings only appear near this body—your body. You cannot perceive other people's thoughts. You cannot feel what someone else is feeling. You can keep your thoughts secret. So it seems there is a kind of private domain in which your world of thoughts and feelings takes place. This leads us to believe that I am in here as the subject, with my subjective thoughts and feelings, while the so-called objective world happens outside of me.
Marieke has become a thing among other things, things that don't belong to her.
Where others see a head—and where I see a head in the mirror—right in that spot, if I look honestly and without preconceptions, I don't see a head. And when I touch that spot with my hands, there are no actual things like a nose or cheeks, but rather vague tactile sensations. We've learned to interpret those sensations as nose and cheeks. We've learned to identify with the image we see in the mirror: “That boy over there is who I am.” Who we are to ourselves gets forgotten, and we walk around in a world that plays out outside of us, instead of as the knowing that we are. We feel that something has been lost, and we do everything we can to fill that emptiness—with money, relationships, a search for enlightenment or happiness, whatever.
In truth, there is only one undivided experience. There is no dividing wall (or head!) between my thoughts and the computer screen I am perceiving. Experience is singular. My attention may go to my thoughts, and then shift back to the screen where these words appear. I don't feel that I cross a boundary in doing so. It's one smooth, continuous flow. An "external" world outside of experience may not exist at all. In any case, we simply cannot know if it does. And if there's no external world, there can't be an internal one either.
The sense of self is just something that happens in the moment, and a moment later, another sensation takes over and the sense of self fades into the background.
Some spiritual traditions aim for the complete eradication of the self, including the feeling of being a self ("nirbīja samādhi"). Even if that were possible, it wouldn't be desirable—it would probably be a disorienting, psychotic experience, or else manifest as a complete absence of any awareness of the surrounding world.
But fortunately I do exist—of course! Not as something fixed since birth, making up my unchanging identity as a living being, a person with a fixed name, an (immortal) soul, and so on. But rather as a point of view, a self-reference, a way to indicate this body and this personality in relation to other bodies and other aspects of the world I find myself in. Beyond that, I experience myself as a continuous stream of changing sensations.
Yes, this body and the memories it carries show a kind of continuity. And there are character traits, perhaps embedded in the DNA of this body, that are still present. I still notice a kind of fundamental shyness in how I interact with people, and a hypersensitivity to impressions. I feel more or less the same as I did yesterday, but I barely resemble the person I was a while ago—let alone the teenager or child I once was. I have different interests, different beliefs, different values, a different taste in music, and so on.
In fact, the self or "I" is no more than an orientation point—a unique point of view. We tend to think that myself is something much bigger: the complete story from birth until now, under the same name, as the same person. But if you look closely, you can see that "myself" is constantly changing.
“The use of the word "I" seems unavoidable. But notice that the word "I" doesn't refer to anything fixed, but to a stream that defies all description and can never be pinned down or forced to behave in any particular way.”
“When we think we are a particular thing with a name, we see ourselves as a cork in a stream. What we fail to realize is that there is only flowing. What we consider something special has, from the very beginning, only been movement, change, and flow... It's not that the universe consists of countless objects in motion. There is only flux. Nothing floats (or can float) in the flux, like a cork in a stream; nothing arises or passes away. There is only flowing.”
The Emergence of Separateness
The feeling of individuality and of being separate from others is a complex psychological phenomenon that likely developed over a long period of human history. While it is difficult to pinpoint specific evolutionary changes directly linked to this sense of separateness, we can make some well-grounded speculations based on what is known about human evolution and social development.
Early humans lived in small, close-knit groups in which cooperation and social bonds were essential for survival. These groups were typically organized around kinship, with individuals having strong ties to family and immediate community. In such a context, the feeling of belonging and being connected to others was crucial for group cohesion and collective survival.
As human societies grew more complex and began to expand, new challenges and opportunities emerged. The development of agriculture, the establishment of permanent settlements, and the formation of larger communities necessitated more complex social structures. This transition likely brought changes in the dynamics of social interaction and the emergence of more diverse roles and identities within societies.
With the growth of societies, there may have been a gradual shift from relationships primarily based on kinship to broader social networks. As individuals came into contact with more people outside their immediate family circle, they increasingly encountered individuals with different perspectives, interests, and goals. This broader social landscape may have contributed to a growing awareness of one's own individuality and separateness from others.
Moreover, the development of language and the ability to communicate abstract thoughts and ideas played a crucial role in shaping human cognition and self-awareness. Language allowed for the exchange of information, the transmission of cultural knowledge, and the creation of complex social narratives. It gave individuals a means to articulate their thoughts, desires, and experiences, fostering a sense of personal identity and self-expression.
The emergence of complex societies also brought with it hierarchies, social roles, and divisions of labor. As individuals took on specialized roles within their communities, they may have developed a stronger sense of personal identity associated with their specific functions. This differentiation of roles and responsibilities likely reinforced the feeling of separateness from others.
The division of roles in a complex society also encouraged the naming of individuals—just as we name apparent parts of our experience. This, of course, greatly facilitates communication. But the shadow side of this development is the rise of loneliness and alienation.
Childhood Conditioning
How is it possible that we mistake ourselves for a thought, a belief, an image?
It's not really our fault. From an early age, we are conditioned to identify with a body, with a name, with an idea of being someone among other someones.
This conditioning is subtle and nearly inescapable. Parents and caretakers usually refer to the child using their name, as if that name refers to a central "someone" inside the child. We learn to see ourselves as objects among other objects, located somewhere inside our head, behind the eyes. This narrative of selfhood is constantly reinforced by our environment: by language, by education, by comparison with others, by approval or rejection.
This development is perfectly understandable and even necessary in a social context. It's not that it's wrong—only that it tends to become unconscious. What was once a useful convention becomes a seemingly unquestionable reality.
By the time we are adults, this conditioning has become so deeply ingrained that the idea of a separate self feels completely natural and self-evident.
The Headless Way
Somewhere in the early 1980s, I came across a little book with the peculiar title 'On Having No Head', by a certain Douglas Harding. I no longer remember how I got hold of it—maybe through "Au Bout Du Monde" in Amsterdam? There's also an article about it in that fantastic book 'The Mind's I' by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
Harding describes how at a certain moment, during a hike in the Himalayas, he suddenly discovers that he has no head, and that the space where he previously assumed his head to be is instead filled with the surrounding scene. In his words:
“To look was enough. And what I found was khaki trouserlegs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in - absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head.
It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been, was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness, vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything — room for grass, trees, distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.”
I myself have only had one experience of headlessness, and that for a very short time. I was standing in our garden in Lier, looking around in a relaxed way. Suddenly, the illusion of having a head on my shoulders disappeared, and I experienced the world in 360 degrees. The rest of my body became part of the visual field, unfolding here at zero distance. A moment later, the "normal" feeling returned.
The headless seeing can be practiced, and Douglas developed many simple experiments to do just that. You can find them on the website of The Headless Way, a site I actually designed myself as one of my first exercises in web design, sometime in 1997 (although it looks quite different now).
One of the simplest experiments is the following. On the Headless Way site it's called the "Pointing" experiment, where you first point with your finger at objects in your environment, including parts of your body, and then finally point to the place from where you are looking—where others would see your face—and then try to describe what you see in that direction.
The pointing experiment can be very revealing and unsettling when done in a mind that is not prejudiced. So suspend your judgments for the duration of the experiment and try to look with an open mind.
The following text comes from the book 'Liberation IS' by Salvadore Poe, who describes a similar experiment:
“Now, keeping your eyes straight ahead, and without using imagination or memory, in your own direct visual experience here and now, do you have a head? Take a moment to look.
What proof or evidence in your own direct visual experience right now indicates that there is a head? There might be a little bit of vague shaped colorin your view. But does that say nose? Take a moment to look.
And furthermore, in your own direct experience right now, do you have two eyes? Or is there just open space? Without using memory, only in your direct visual experience here and now, can you say you have two eyes? Look and see now.Right now in your direct experience, there are shapes and colors, but without the knowledge of what those are, can you say that you have a head or a body? Look and see.
If you say you have a head, then you are obviously using memory, thoughts. So be clear: in your own direct visual experience, right now, do you have a head?”
Enlightenment Intensive
Another practice, usually done in a group setting, is the Enlightenment Intensive. This format was developed in the 1960s by Charles and Ava Berner and works as follows:
Each day of the training includes ten to twelve periods of 40 minutes, during which participants work in pairs, rotating partners. One partner gives an instruction—chosen either by the participant or the master/facilitator—often referred to as a koan. The most common instructions are "Tell me who you are," "Tell me what you are," "Tell me what life is," or "Tell me what another is." One partner gives the instruction to the other and listens attentively, without reacting in any way. The "talking" partner searches for a direct, experiential answer and reports it to their partner. This continues for five minutes, after which, prompted by a bell or small gong, the roles switch: the speaking partner becomes the listener, and vice versa.
After 40 minutes, there is a short break before the session resumes with a different partner. When a participant has a direct experience of great clarity, they may present their insight to the master/facilitator. The participant then continues, either with a different instruction or with the same one. On the final day, there may be a session aimed at supporting the integration of the experience into daily life. A follow-up meeting may also be held after several days.
What tends to happen when answering a question like "Tell me who you are" is that, at first, trivialities are shared—name, profession, gender, and so on. But gradually, the answers begin to deepen, until eventually it becomes impossible to answer at all, simply because it has become clear that the ultimate identity cannot be known. There is only silence. There is only the wordless experience of being, the knowing of the moment. The sense of "myself" is embedded in the rest of the stream. I am that stream.
Other Ways of Experiencing Wholeness
A website like Liberation Unleashed can also be helpful in seeing through the illusion of a separate, autonomous self.
Another way to experience non-separation is by walking—or even better, driving a car. Normally, it feels like you are moving through the landscape, but the experience can also be reversed: the landscape moves through "you" and disappears, while "you" remain unmoving as conscious experience, as knowing.
Alan Watts offers the following guided meditation in a 1969 seminar:
“Let's suppose that you are now babies again. You know nothing. Don't be afraid—everything you know can come back later. But for now, here is our awareness. And let's assume you have no information about it and no words for it, and my talking to you is just sound. Try not to do anything about this. Don't try.
Because naturally, out of habit, certain tensions persist in you, and certain ideas and words are constantly drifting through your mind—just like the wind blowing or clouds moving through the sky. Don't worry about them, don't try to get rid of them. Just be aware of what's going on in your head as if it were clouds in the air, or the crackling of fire. No problem. All you need to do is look and listen without naming.
And if you do name, just let it happen—just listen to it.
Now, you can't force this. You won't succeed in deliberately stopping thought or naming. What this shows you is simply that the separate "you" does not exist. That's not a defeat—it's not a sign of poor meditation practice. The fact that it goes on by itself only shows that the individual, separate "you" is a fiction of your imagination. So, you are aware, in this moment, of a happening. Remember that you know nothing about the difference between you and it—that hasn't been told to you. You have no words for the difference between inside and outside, between here and there, and no one has taught you that what you see in front of you is near or far. Look at how a baby points to the moon. You don't know. That's why it's here. We just call it that.
And when you feel it—the happening that includes absolutely everything you feel—well, whatever that is, that's what the Chinese call Tao, or what Buddhists call suchness, tathātā. And it's a happening. It's not happening to you—because where is that "you"? You—what you call yourself—are part of the happening, or an aspect of it. It has no parts; it's not a machine. And it's a little scary, because you think, "Who's in control here?" Why should there be anyone? It's a strange idea we have that processes need something outside them to control them. It never occurs to us that processes can govern themselves. Even though we say to someone, "Control yourself!".
To even imagine self-control, we always split a person in two—so there's a "you" separate from the "self" that must be controlled. But how can that work? How can a noun start a verb? Yet it's a fundamental superstition that it can.”
The existence of an ego—the sense of being a separate individual—is not something that must be condemned or fought. The ego has a function and is necessary to operate in our society. But it's helpful to realize that this feeling doesn't represent the factual truth of our existence. It can be deeply liberating to occasionally experience that the stream of experience is one, and that I am that stream of feelings, thoughts, and perceptions.
Stable Objects
In addition to the belief in a separate, autonomous self, there is the belief in a subject that perceives objects—separate, independent, and lasting things. These can be psychological entities, like a particular feeling or thought—things from the so-called "inner world"—as well as things from the so-called "outer world."
Take an apple. On the table in front of you is a basket of apples. No problem: you grab one. But what exactly have you grabbed? An "apple"? When people read this sentence, they usually hear the sounds in their head that make up the word "apple." The sentence can also be spoken aloud, and then the sound is heard externally. So, there is the word "apple," the inner sound of the word, the external spoken sound, and there is the "thing" now held in your hand—the apple itself. There are more "apples" in the basket. They're all called "apples."
But what is an "apple"? The things in the basket are not letter combinations or sounds. They are entirely different things. The object we're now holding has nothing to do with that. This apple differs from all the others, and yet we call them all "apples."
If we leave the apple on the table for a while, we'll see that it changes. Slowly, the shiny fruit transforms into a pile of brown mush. Later still, even that will have vanished. Where is the original apple now? (In fact, nothing is ever truly lost—only a rearrangement of atoms takes place.)
Before we held the apple, it had already gone through an entire history. It grew on a tree from a blossom. That blossom grew on an apple tree, which itself grew from a seed inside another apple, and so on. The history of the apple tree goes back at least 13.8 billion years to the birth of the universe—if it had a beginning.
So the apple we're now holding is not an autonomous and permanent "thing." In fact, nothing seems to exist as an independent, lasting entity. Everything is constantly changing in one ongoing stream. “You cannot step into the same river twice,” the philosopher Heraclitus said, about 2,500 years ago.
By naming everything around us, we try to hold onto something. We turn it into a "thing," a concept. This is very handy in communication. You immediately know what's meant when someone asks you to grab an apple from the basket. We don't only do this with apples—we do it with people, too. My name is "Ton Haarmans," but what am I really? Before long, I too will be a pile of brown mush, and also my origins go all the way back to the Big Bang—or perhaps even further.
To give something a name, an identity, is nothing more than a magical gesture—a spell, really—that hopefully facilitates communication, but otherwise says nothing about what a phenomenon actually is. And it can't, because the phenomenon has no inherent, stable identity, no essence, no permanence.
And the same is true for myself—for who or what I am. I do not exist. I therefore have no power. At the same time, I obviously do exist, just like the apple, and I seem to make decisions. It's not that I or the apple don't exist—but not in the way we usually think something or someone exists: as something with a stable and fixed identity, separate from the phenomena around us. Everything flows, everything is the flow—"Panta Rhei," or as Buddhism says: “everything is "empty".”
“At the same time, it would be foolish to deny the apparent reality of chairs and tables, or of you and me. But none of these apparent "things" can actually be grasped. We can't truly say that what appears here is something—nor can we say it is nothing. It simply cannot be captured in a conceptual formulation. Permanent, impermanent, flowing, flickering, still, changing, unchanging, ever-present, ever-changing, self, no-self, unity, multiplicity—none of these descriptions hold up under close inspection. Reality itself simply defies conceptual capture.”
The fact that we can recognize patterns in what at first seems like an undifferentiated chaos in our field of perception is, of course, extremely useful. I remember some time ago I was teaching computer skills to people in their 80s. The desktop of a computer looked very different to them than it did to me. For instance, I saw clickable icons. They didn't. They just saw a mix of colors on the screen. For them, it was one undifferentiated image, in which the icons couldn't be distinguished as separate "things" that you could interact with.
I imagine that's also how a newborn might perceive the world: without recognizable forms with meaning, without any distinction between foreground and background. Apparently, a learning process occurs in which the world, as we adults see it, gradually takes shape.
At a certain point, distinctions start to be made, and suddenly there's a difference between foreground and background, or between areas of differing color, or between an "inner world" and an "outer world." I imagine this is similar to when a hidden object suddenly appears in an "autostereogram"—one of those images that at first seems like a random pattern of dots but then reveals a three-dimensional object once you see it the right way.
Words like "table," "sound," "thought," and "emotion" are just convenient labels for constantly changing phenomena, not actual solid or fixed "objects." What seems to persist is only the word. And because we keep using the same word, we believe we're dealing with something that stays the same.
The Belief in Free Will
We all think we could have done things differently than we did, and that we have a choice in what will happen to us in the future. But is that really so?
The belief in a powerful self is especially evident in the magical thinking that, by wanting something badly enough, you can compel the universe to give it to you. Think, for example, of phenomena such as "The Secret", "Avatar", and the "Results Course" by the Natale Institute.
Our belief in "free will" also originates in early childhood, as children are confronted with making so-called "good" and "bad" choices.
Moreover, that child has been indoctrinated since early on—both explicitly and implicitly—about good and bad choices. Implicitly, because being punished for "bad choices" logically implies that one could have done otherwise by choosing differently. As a result, the child's sense of "I" has come to regard the notion of free will as axiomatic—completely beyond question. Thus, information that confirms and reinforces this belief is easily accepted, while any information that suggests the contrary will be blocked, ignored, or simply forgotten.
“The early human being will have noticed that sowing leads to harvesting. But harvests sometimes fail, even when you've done your best. Maybe you did something wrong? Maybe there are other forces at play, and you'd better keep them on your side?”
Neuroscience and "Free Will"
Suppose I've decided to take a sip of my coffee. What exactly has happened? And could I just as well not have done it?
Let's look at what science, particularly neuroscience, has to say about this. See, for example, the detailed article 'Neuroscience of free will' on Wikipedia.
Nowadays, using fMRI, researchers can observe what happens in a living brain before, during, and after a subject performs a certain action—like making a fist or taking a sip of coffee. It turns out that unconscious brain activity already begins up to 7 seconds (!) before the action is actually carried out, while the thought or feeling of wanting to perform the action only arises later—sometimes even after the act itself.
See also this interview with the famous neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás.
In other words, entirely unconscious processes have already determined that I will take a sip of my coffee, even before I consciously seem to decide to drink. The so-called "decision" comes afterward. That also means that once the action has occurred, there is no real sense in which it could have not occurred.
I also notice that I have absolutely no idea what I will be thinking or doing in a minute or so. Thoughts and actions just happen. Letters appear on the screen. I "hear" the words I want to type in my head. I don't know how they got there. I didn't "decide" them. And even if I did, who or what decided that a decision would or should be made? That so-called decision simply appears too.
And when you think about it, it's clear that every event depends on and is caused by a practically infinite number of factors (including genetics, upbringing, culture, the actions of others, the weather, natural forces, ad infinitum) that are active here and now, but likely originated in the Big Bang—or even further back.
The feeling of having free will is like the feeling a child has at the steering wheel of a vehicle attached to a merry-go-round. It seems like "I," the personality, am steering, but it is the cosmic carousel that determines what happens at any moment—and I, as the experience of this moment, am the universe.
In other words, the personality—the "I"—claims control and says: "I chose that; I could have chosen differently." But in reality, what happens arises from the interplay of infinitely many factors. This doesn't mean that "I" am merely a passive puppet. I am the whole happening.
What happens doesn't happen by you—it is you. Decisions are made. By no one. Or, which amounts to the same thing: by everything at once.
My sip of coffee, right now, is inseparably and causally linked to everything that is happening in the entire universe at this very moment. In fact, no one is personally responsible for their behavior. Not me, not you, not anyone.
“There is no entity, no little "decider" in my head, standing apart from the unending stream of perceptions, feelings, and thoughts, that can make a choice. That imagined entity—the little decider that some people imagine to be their "real I"—isn't real at all, but a ghost in the machine.”
We cannot, at any moment, be anything other than who we are. But keep in mind that "understanding something" is also something that happens—and thus influences everything, including our behavior.
So it might be that when it's truly understood that everything happens when it happens, and nothing could have happened otherwise—a relaxation sets in, which allows you to embrace whatever happens, also known as your "fate" or your "life":
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different—not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear what is necessary, still less to conceal it—all idealism is weakness in the face of what is necessary—but to love it.”
Passing Time
Another deeply ingrained belief is that of a linear, passing or ongoing time, which seems to pin our current experience to a flow of moments—some that are already gone, and others that are still to come. In doing so, we forget that what we call the past exists only as memory, and that expectations for the future are likewise just thoughts that arise in the one, ever-changing present moment. The past exists only in memory, giving rise to knowledge. The future consists of everything we do not yet know. In truth, there is no past, no future, and not even a present. You cannot capture the present—it has already changed.
Of course, everything that has happened really did happen—but even that happened now, just as whatever occurs tomorrow or in the next second will also happen now (so I won't be throwing away my calendar anytime soon). In THIS moment, the entire history of the universe unfolds. In this moment, we can look at stars and galaxies that are billions of years old. The Big Bang is happening now. This moment of my experience is, always, the origin.
This illusion too—this belief in passing time—is difficult to see through. We live by the clock and our schedules. And yet we also know that ten minutes in a dentist's chair feel very different from ten minutes in the arms of a lover. The experience of duration is purely subjective. In a dream that lasts thirty minutes by the clock, entire days may pass.
The 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant saw time (and space) as a priori subjective forms of intuition that structure our experience. He argued that time is not an external entity, but a necessary framework through which we perceive and understand the world.
For Kant, time is not derived from our sensory experiences, but is rather a fundamental aspect of our mental faculties. It is a pure intuition that exists within us and allows us to order and arrange our perceptions. Time, according to Kant, is a universal and necessary condition for the possibility of experience.
Kant made a distinction between phenomena—objects of our sensory perception—and noumena, which are things as they are in themselves, independent of our perception. Time belongs, for Kant, to the realm of phenomena and is a subjective framework imposed by our cognitive faculties. It is not a property inherent to the noumenal world.
In modern physics, too, people are beginning to question whether time exists at all:
“This distinction between past and future is not present in the basic grammar of the world. It only arises because we have an inaccurate view of reality.”
Time is often treated as a kind of fundamental substance. But the more scientists study time, the more it appears that the idea of time as a substantial property of the universe is inaccurate. We create a sense of passing time in a world where time, physically speaking, may not exist. This relativizing effect of time is consistent with what scientists have observed at the quantum level. When you study the behavior of the smallest physical entities in the universe—as Carlo Rovelli does in 'The Order of Time'—you quickly discover that there is no evidence for time.
Instead, quantum physics suggests that the feeling of an ordered, flowing time may well be nothing more than the result of our human perspective. We simply cannot register all the quantum fluctuations occurring at any given moment, so our interaction with the world is partial; we perceive a blurry version. In a world without time, we seem to create it—and that process is deeply personal.
Carlo Rovelli:“A major part—the most important part—of the way we experience this feeling of flowing time has to do with our emotions. We do not have an emotionally neutral relationship with time. Time passes and takes things away from us; it gives us life and takes our time away. There is therefore a strong emotion connected with time.”
But this poses a great challenge for physics. If the entire goal of science is to explain the world in the most objective way possible, how do we deal with this idea of time as a largely emotional construction?
“In science, we try to get rid of emotions—but in doing so, we fail to understand what time is. Understanding time largely becomes understanding how we work—how our brains and our consciousness work—and that is why the problem of time is so fascinating.”
John Archibald Wheeler:
“No space. No time. Heaven has not handed us the word "time". Humanity invented it... If there are problems with the concept of time, they are of our own making... As Einstein put it: "Time and space are modes by which we think, and not conditions in which we live."”
Knowing is timeless. In pure experience, there is only the changing Now.
