One of the things that I think I said at the outset was that, throughout these explorations, we would be exploring not just techniques, or methods, or how one ought to think — but that we would be expanding our toolkit. Or ways of understanding. So that if we picked up a book — today we'll actually, we'll test it out. We'll pick up a couple of books, read what people have to say, and see what resources we have now, as ways of taking in what it is that they might be wanting to convey. And also, sometimes, when people are making pretty seemingly well-established statements — what are some of the ways we can be more independent in our own thinking, and have more of these valid options at our fingertips, even within the realm of rationality and science? So, yeah — let's play the pop quiz game.
There's a recent book out called In Search of Now, by Jo Marchant, who is a best-selling science writer. So here's the first question on our pop quiz: "According to the most trusted models of physics, now doesn't exist."
So what are we to make of it? I wish there was a back of the book where we could look up the answers. Because, I mean, yeah — it's hard to sway people if a well-known science writer says, "according to the most trusted models of physics, now doesn't exist."
And one of the tools that Dr. Wonchull Park offers is this way of approaching physics — which is not unique to him, but he brings it out. Because we can so easily get distracted by how we think reality should be. But at the end of the day, what is the basis of science — physics, as an empirical enterprise — is experiment. And yes, we've come, through theory and experiment, to where there's these mathematical models that capture what has been well-confirmed, in terms of Einstein's relativity — where the universe doesn't come with just one global, universal, God's-eye-view now. It just doesn't allow for a representation in that way.
So just because there's no universal now, it doesn't mean that I couldn't have a view that everything is a nowflow — you have to include the flow of changing in it — reality view. And I could actually live my life with that reality view. I could do Newtonian physics; I can even do relativistic physics. And I would never encounter a contradiction to that sense that that is a whole reality. Does physics say that that has to be the way reality is? No. Is it an option completely consistent with our best models from physics? Yes. And this is some of what motivates me to share this. Because, for those of us who are either scientists ourselves, or read up on science — we really can get that sense that, yeah, the talk about now is somehow deeply contradicted by what we actually know, more rationally and scientifically.
Ready for pop quiz number two? This one is fittingly called The Ending of Time. "Where philosophy and physics meet" — the subtitle got me all excited. I will say, I found it pretty short on the physics — but it is a fascinating conversation between Krishnamurti and physicist David Bohm. They began their conversation about: why is the human species caught up in all this conflict? And Krishnamurti's answer is that the contradiction, the conflict, is "between what is, and becoming what should be."
So we have explored some of the connections between — it's about managing change, and the self, or what we take to be the self, and where that can tend to make us feel separate on what it is we want. You know, we're here, and — present — and we are separated from something we want that happened in the past. But it changed. Or you've been brought into what we don't want. Or maybe even just anticipating — the worry, the fear of being brought into what we don't want. And the toll it takes on us to try and protect, to bridge the separations. So that we can control the future — so that we can manage change more on our terms.
Here, Krishnamurti is especially focusing on the future, but we can see how the past informs that: all of our knowledge, all of our experience, is informing us, is fixing that sense of what it is that we want in the future. Even if it's peace — even if he gives the example of nonviolence — even if it's love, even if it is acceptance: as soon as we put it with a "should" — it's conflict. "I am not, but I will be."
But here's the thing — it's only changing, just at a moment. In this reality view, there's 3D space and comparative changing. There's actually no finite change; there's just the changing. A changing that is inherent in being, right in each moment. So, inwardly or outwardly, that's all there is — and yet it can encompass everything. I really like that it's so big — when the self, and the I, also includes what should be, past or future. As we've talked about, that includes our story-past, story-present, story-future.
There's something so grounding about being able to just rationally understand, even before any feeling, that that could just be the way it is, and that a practice could be just about appreciating the way it is, a little more. Laying down the extra baggage, a little bit more. It's not any, to use Krishnamurti's words, it's not any becoming, in the fundamental sense. Because reality hasn't changed. We're not cultivating something, making something happen, making something different. We're just more perceiving the way it always is.
I feel like we still have just scratched the surface. This is the final one of this long series — the longest I've ever done — and I just keep on wanting to explore it some more.
No Time, No Problem?
An Honest Look at “Timelessness” in Physics and Living
What if there’s no time—and that’s not a problem for physics? What if there’s no time—could that be a solution for our suffering?
Rather than offering answers of what to think, this series offers ways of thinking that can move us past the pressures we put on ourselves: from the “should” of trying to “be present” to the “should” of being 4D spacetime worms to be compatible with relativity! Somewhere between those “shoulds,” I got stuck until physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park showed me how to think about nature simply, livably. Each session includes an hour-long meditation practice, where we get to try on different conceptions and perceptions of time to discover how equivalently valid options that physics provides can impact our levels of illusion and freedom. We’ll be reading together from a few sources—such as Wonchull Park’s Essential Reality & Time, Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji—to deeply question the role(s) of time in our lives. Looking forward to our discoveries.
Thank you for Being with Being.
beingwithbeing.org
mackenziehawkins.substack.com
