Death, Consciousness, God, Time, Afterlife, and This Life: 

Time

Our common-sense concept of time is that the past no longer exists and the future has not yet come into being. However, if neither the past nor the future exists, the present moment perishes as soon as it comes into existence. If we think of the present as a point separating a no-longer-existing past and a yet-to-exist future, the present changes instantaneously and repeatedly from the unknown future into the known past. We experience this as a “flow of time.” 

We do not, however, truly experience the present as a point. There is a sense of duration to the present, though a short duration, what we can call the “fuzzy present,” or what the philosopher William James called the “specious present.” Certain drugs and experiences can make the fuzzy present seem to go more slowly or more quickly. But we nonetheless experience one fuzzy present after the other, whatever the subjective experience of those presents.

If all that exists is the fuzzy present, then what happened to the fuzzy presents that now constitute the past? For me, yesterday’s presents existed yesterday, but now they exist only in memory, and my future presents exist only in imagination. I hold up five fingers and say “five.” That present disappears as I pull in my thumb, leaving four pointing up. I know that my future presents will include three fingers, two fingers, one finger, and no finger.  I pull in the fingers: three, two, one, none.  Each expected present comes into existence and then ceases to exist. 

The presents that I experienced seconds ago are gone. But where have they gone? And what brings our successive and quickly dying presents into existence in the first place? When I hold up four fingers, I know that a future present will have me holding up two fingers, but this future present does not exist when I hold up the four fingers. 

It seems absurd  to think that nothing exists except the present moment of each person on earth and that each of those billions of present moments ceases to exist as quickly as it comes into existence.

Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which has a mountain of supportive empirical evidence, provides a way out of this conundrum. Special relativity makes two assumptions: (1) the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference (i.e., not accelerating - constant or no velocity); (2) the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all inertial observers. In solving some problems (e.g., detecting the earth's motion through the hypothesized "ether"), relativity theory made predictions that were disturbingly paradoxical. Consider the following from a book on relativity by the famous twentieth century mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell:

Let us suppose that you are in a train on a long straight railway, and that you are travelling due east at three-fifths the speed of light. Suppose that you measure the length of your train, and find that it is a hundred yards. Suppose that the people who catch a glimpse of you as you pass succeed, by skillful scientific methods, in taking observations which enable them to calculate the length of your train. If they do their work correctly, they will find that it is eighty yards long. Everything in the train will seem to them shorter in the direction of the train than it does to you. . . Suppose you see out of the window a man carrying a fishing-rod which, by his measurement is fifteen feet long. . . if he is pointing it along the railway, it will seem to you to be only twelve feet long. All lengths in the direction of motion are diminished by twenty percent, both for those who look into the train from outside and for those who look out of the train from inside. (1) [emphasis added - similar seemingly paradoxical results occur for time and mass]

In 1908 Hermann Minkowski resolved these paradoxes by combining space and time into a four-dimensional spacetime continuum, a conceptual framework that helped Einstein develop his general theory of relativity several years later. Motion in four-dimensional spacetime is an illusion: there are only events (points in four-dimensional spacetime) separated by intervals (the distance between events/points). Motion is a line, sometimes called a “worldline,” with changing space and time coordinates. At time t an automobile is at spatial coordinates x, y, z. At time t’ the automobile is at spatial coordinates x’, y’, z’ and we say, for example, “at 1 pm (time t) the car was in front of Philadelphia City Hall; between 1 pm and 3 pm the car was located at various spatial coordinates between Philadelphia and New York; and at 3 pm the car was in front of New York City Hall (time t’).” Remaining in place is a line that does not change space coordinates but does change time coordinates, e.g., a car parked in front of Philadelphia City Hall between 1 pm and 3 pm. If something begins at certain space and time coordinates, e.g., my conception, and ends at certain space and time coordinates, e.g., my death, the entity has a finite worldline in spacetime. In this sense spacetime is eternal, a fixed “is” of events we call past, events we call future, and the present moment. Thus, the universe is an intricately complex geometric pattern of spacetime events, not causes and effects passing through time. 

Despite this explanation, time retains puzzling qualities. If I am moving in a car on a highway, I seem to be able to see the space behind me and the space ahead of me. However, I cannot see the past moments behind me nor the future moments ahead of me. Why can I not perceive across the time dimension? I seem to perceive time only in the immediate vicinity of the fuzzy present moment, a fuzzy point along the time dimension.

In fact, I do not see an expanse of space. I see an expanse of spacetime. Suppose a light 1 kilometer from me pulses at time t, according to the watch of the person who activates the pulse. I do not see that light at time t, for it takes 1/300,000 of a second to reach me, since the speed of light, typically denoted by “c,” is about 300,000 kilometers per second. When I see a light pulse 1 kilometer in front of my car, I am not seeing that spatial expanse at time t, when the person who initiated the pulse says it occurred. I see it as it was in the past. If the light pulse occurred at time t, I would not see it until t + 1/300,000 of a second. Thus, I am not instantaneously seeing an expanse of space around me; I am seeing that space as it appeared in the past, i.e., the distance to the point in space divided by the speed of light.

The upper limit of the speed of light determines not only light, but any “causal” connection, for no physical communication can travel faster than light. Thus, every point in spacetime can only be influenced by, that is connected to, points denoted as “past.” Everything I perceive is in the past. Even when I touch my dog, it takes time for the electrical impulses that determine sensation to flow from my fingertips to my brain. That is one possible explanation of why time seems to “flow” from past to present to future. And that is why at time t, I cannot see what I was doing one second in the past, i.e., at time t - 1 second. That is also why the time dimension is sometimes represented as ct. One second of time is the equivalent of 300,000 kilometers of space. The light photons that my body reflects at time t travel away from my body (a point/event in spacetime) at the speed of light. At time t+1 second, those photons are 300,000 kilometers away from my body, so I do not and cannot see my body one second in the past.  Thus, each of our presents, our points in spacetime, is a fleeting and isolated world unto itself.    

My consciousness of succeeding presents, then, is like a string of adjacent lights along my worldline, each light being aware only of its own immediate fuzzy present, its present memory of the past, and its present imaginings about the future. None of these points of light perceives the other points of light on the worldline. Each is a solitary experience, which memory links to past presents. 

I said earlier that the points may have been influenced by points in the past, but not points in what we call the future. "Influence," however, is not the correct word. It is a time word, for it implies a change. But there is no change in the four-dimensional spacetime. There is only pattern. Hence, I should say that each of the lights along my worldline may relate in some way to other lights. My experience of the four-finger moment relates to my experience of the five-finger moment because during the latter moment I willed what I would experience as the pulling in of my thumb. In a similar way, my experience of the four-finger moment relates to my experience of the three-finger moment because during the former I willed the pulling down of another finger, and during the latter I remembered the experience of four fingers. Each present moment makes us think there is cause-and-effect. But if I lift myself "above" the present moment I can imagine a string of 3-D photos of myself sitting at my desk at different moments extending up into the sky, which substitutes for my inability to visualize a fourth dimension of time. The alpha-to-omega of the universe, then, is like a painting on a four-dimensional canvass. It is simply "there."  

An article dedicated to Minkowski includes quotes from distinguished scientists. These may help the reader better grasp the concept I am struggling to explain:

The objective world merely exists, it does not happen; as a whole it has no history. Only before the eye of the consciousness climbing up in the world line of my body, a section of this world “comes to life” and moves past it as a spatial image engaged in temporal

transformation. (2)

There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes [. . . ] one does not think of particles as ‘moving through’ space-time, or as ‘following along’ their world-lines. Rather, particles are just ‘in’ space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once, the complete life history of the particle. (3)

Time for inanimate objects is different from time for conscious creatures. A patch of snow knows nothing of past, present, and future, yet we conscious creatures can watch the patch develop in a snowstorm and gradually evaporate over time as our successive presents disappear into the past along with the evaporating snow. The patch of snow becomes smaller and smaller. And then at some point the patch is no more. Its worldline is complete. The patch does not experience time. It exists eternally in spacetime as snow that accumulates along the time dimension and then gradually becomes less and less along that dimension. The patch begins to exist at t, x, y, z and fades out of existence at t', x', y', z'. That's it: an alpha-to-omega worldline of an unconscious entity, a tiny piece of a four-dimensional "painting" on a cosmic canvas. 

My presents, on the other hand, seem to flee from me as rapidly as they arrive. An eternal “is” certainly does not characterize my experience.

Is there an unbridgeable difference of perspective between conscious beings relating to time and inanimate entities relating to time? For the latter, relativity speaks simply of four axes, x, y, z, and t, and worldlines within this coordinate system. Consciousness of time, however, seems to be a fly in the ointment. 

Is there a way to reconcile the "isness" of four-dimensional spacetime with the conscious experience of time flowing?

In relativity’s four-dimensional universe, a “block universe” as it is sometimes called, causality, as noted, is merely a pattern in spacetime. Imprisoned in experiential time, we explain order – we account for patterns – with time. We say, “A causes B,” which means that A, which “happens” “first,” imparts something to B to explain why B “happens” “after” A. We put a match to a firecracker, A, and then we witness an explosion, B. 

Observed from God’s vantage point, however, there is no change, only pattern. God “sees” all of spacetime in one “glance,” one “now,” one eternal “present.” There is no mysterious “cause” that passes from A to B. What we call causality is merely repeating patterns in the astoundingly complex geometry of the four-dimensional block universe, the cosmic canvass on which God "breathed" His creation.

When in our time prisons we discover some of these patterns, we pull them into our time-bound experiential world and falsely lay claim to understanding. We derive equations, for example, to show how planets revolve around the sun. So accurate are these equations that we can send tiny rockets from planet to planet across billions of kilometers of space. Time permeates these equations. However, it is the time of our experience, not the eternal “is” perspective of God. We haven’t understood the matter. We have dragged it into our temporal world and cupped it with our silly hands, oblivious to the reality that it is in God’s hands. 

This is what sometimes makes religion recoil from science. Religion does not frown upon equations, especially those that can result in benefit for humanity. Religion – thoughtful religion anyway – objects to arrogance, to the cupped hands holding shadows while proudly proclaiming deep understanding, a pseudo-understanding stripped of consideration of the possibility of God, let alone reverence for Him who holds the universe in His hands.

If one rejects the notion of God, one will dismiss my speculations and explain the experience of time as a psycho-neural phenomenon, something that arises from brain events. An animal is at a point in its worldline where danger, e.g., a growling tiger, is nearby. That organism’s worldline is more likely to extend in spacetime, i.e., the animal is more likely to “survive” (a time word), if in the present moment (a particular point in four-dimensional space) it can imagine possible “futures,” one of which is an escape action. Perhaps the experience of time developed in brains because certain regularities in the four-dimensional block required other regularities (time consciousness) in order for the life pattern to proliferate through the spacetime of the block world. 

If one assumes God, however, other speculations come to mind.

Perhaps consciousness exists in its own dimension – a fifth dimension? The consciousness dimension in this formulation may be a compacted dimension curled around the time axis, as the now abandoned string theory posited about extra spatial dimensions decades ago. (Perhaps the degree of curling determines the “duration” of the fuzzy present?) Or consciousness may be a fifth-dimensional “line” that is coterminous with each conscious creature’s worldline. Each point on this fifth-dimensional line is the experiencer, or the “witness,” being conscious of a point in time along his or her worldline.  

Perhaps this fifth-dimensional consciousness is one’s soul? Perhaps incarnation refers to a conscious “experiencer,” or “witness,” linked to the four-dimensional spacetime universe of what we call the “material world”? Perhaps the experiencer, the soul, both affects and is affected by the so-called material universe, including a particular human body? Or perhaps the entanglement of the fifth-dimensional experiencer and the four-dimensional spacetime is complete, a one-to-one correspondence that gives rise to the misconception that “material” processes somehow cause the nonmaterial consciousness, a five-dimensional revision of the idea of mind-body parallelism?

Speculating about a fifth dimension may help us understand how an eternal God can be transcendent, i.e., exist outside of spacetime, while being immanent in the spacetime universe He created. So that we can visualize the concept I am advancing, imagine reducing the three dimensions of space to one dimension. One thus has a two-dimensional spacetime consisting of perpendicular lines on a flat surface, one line of space and one of time. Imagine a three-dimensional surface hovering above our two-dimensional spacetime. Such surfaces have been called branes. Lower the three-dimensional brane until it touches the two-dimensional spacetime such that every point in the two-dimensional spacetime touches a point of the bottom surface of the brane. If we analogize the brane to a God who exists outside of our world’s spacetime, that God is nevertheless present at every point of spacetime. Thus, God is omnipresent and immanent in the two-dimensional space time, while simultaneously transcending the spacetime universe that He “created” because the “god brane” is three-dimensional and our illustrative spacetime is two-dimensional. I put “created” in quotation marks because it is a time term, and God is not subordinate to time. Indeed, God created time, created in the sense that he “willed” it or that, as “the Word,” He “spoke” time into existence. [One might also imagine another two-dimensional spacetime plane on the other side of the three-dimensional God/brane, a "new heaven and new earth" where people with spiritualized bodies mirror and reflect God's infinite love.]

We may also contemplate another analogy in which God is a point hovering above the two-dimensional spacetime universe. Emanating from that point is a potential infinity of lines with each line connecting to a point on the two dimensional spacetime. Again, God is transcendent and immanent. Eternity touches each moment of our lives and each point in spacetime. 

Our analogy of a point or a brane and a two-dimensional spacetime, however, does not explain why creatures in spacetime experience only the present moment. I propose that our point-like experience of time is a gift from a merciful God. Let me explain. 

Whatever time’s true nature, the conscious experiencer has the capacity at every conscious moment to imagine possible future actions, however insignificant, and to choose from among those options. I open my refrigerator door and consider taking an apple, an orange, or a plum. At that moment, each of these fruits is a possible choice. As soon as I choose, however, only one of the possible futures imagined in the fuzzy present can become fixed in the past. I choose an orange. 

God, who “sees” the four-dimensional universe from the still point of his eternity, “knows” my options and my choice without determining my choice because he gifted free will to me. (God permits me to be responsible for the "paint" in my tiny piece of God's four-dimensional cosmic canvas.) He sees the choice possibility function, to analogize to quantum theory. I collapse that function by choosing.

This line of reasoning leads to the hypothesis that at every moment of every person’s life, God “imagines” a future in which each human being makes the first in a chain of right choices that would bring healing to each person and to the world. God allows all these choices because He has a benevolent will for each of us at each moment of our lives, especially when we must make a moral choice. 

If we all acted according to His will at this moment and in subsequent moments, the world would show a pattern of brokenness gradually leading to wholeness, to healing. However, sinners that we are, we repeatedly make wrong choices and miss the mark. Yet after every wrong choice of every person, God, in His infinite patience, mercy, and wisdom, projects another plan that yet again calls each of us to make choices that move in the direction of His love and light. God enters into and shares our temporality by “touching” each moment of each person’s worldline and pointing the way to Him at each of those moments. Thus, God does not will us to make a mess of our lives. But at every moment, he is pointing us to a pathway out of that mess. By listening to His call we enable God to lead us toward Him.

Of course, God’s infinite wisdom enables Him to incorporate our sinfulness into His “planning,” His providence. God, for example, “knows” that if He calls a young woman to the convent, the young woman will not heed the call. So God calls her instead to work for a religious charitable organization, which the young woman does. We play checkers, while God plays n-dimensional chess in which time is one of the chess pieces, not an independent entity.

To recapitulate: the four-dimensional universe that “is,” i.e., the block universe, exists in God’s eternal “now.”  Conscious beings – certainly humans and the higher animals and perhaps lower forms of life – experience “now” as sequential, fuzzy points of spacetime, rather than an expanse of spacetime, which is God’s “experience,” using that noun analogically of course. Why did God make us this way? Why were we not made to perceive expanses of spacetime, to experience an eternal now, which some theologians speculate may be the experience of at least some orders of angels and may perhaps be the experience of beings in heaven? 

If God made us such that we experienced our existence as an eternal now, we, lowly creatures severely lacking in wisdom, would choose unwisely. Like angels in Christian theology, we could make one, eternal choice to turn toward or away from God. Unlike angels, however, God created us with insufficient wisdom and self-control to make an eternal choice for the Good. Therefore, we would all be inclined to turn away from God. Perhaps, this is one way of conceptualizing  “original sin.” In short, we are too dumb and self-centered to be granted the eternal now perspective.

Our experiencing time as fuzzy points, rather than an expanse, may, then, be part of God’s plan of redemption, an expression of God’s mercy. God, the infinitely creative “artist” overflowing with love, has perhaps made worlds that we know nothing of. In some of these worlds, God’s creatures may experience an eternal now. Our world happens to be one in which God gave self-conscious, weak creatures – i.e., us and perhaps other intelligent species in the universe – the gift of free will, the capacity to make choices emanating from the whole of their beings, which includes their unconscious as well as their conscious mind. These choices, however, are not one-time choices in an eternal now. Because we experience time as fuzzy points, we are blessed with a multitude of choices, a lifetime of opportunities to turn toward the God who mercifully calls us again and again, even as we foolishly turn away from Him again and again. (Perhaps Hell exists in time because Satan and his brood are mercifully granted never-ending opportunities to turn toward the light, from which they recoil in stubborn self-centeredness?)

Ultimately, our choices determine our worldline in God’s eternal now and who we are in this world. Fortunately for us, God has gifted us with scripture, miracles, holy persons, conscience, beauty, reasoning, and His son, Jesus Christ. Through Jesus, God redeems a fallen world, which would have remained fallen despite His repeatedly calling us to turn toward His light. Jesus is God’s ultimate act of mercy and a model of how we should live. Jesus is the eternal now of God fully entering our fuzzy-point experience of time.  

Because the eternal lovingly touches the temporal at each point of spacetime, on rare, meditative occasions, humans in the temporal world may glimpse the eternal, may leave the fleeting temporal present and feel the benevolent touch of the eternal now of God.

For most of our lives, however, we muddle through our fuzzy point presents that only occasionally consist of a mystical experience or a communing with beauty that elevates us. As our consciousness pulses along the worldline of our mostly hum-drum lives, we make choices to direct our gaze toward the light or toward the darkness. When we die, our worldline in this world is complete. Some saintly people have worldlines that shine brightly, for their gaze was mostly turned toward God’s light. Other worldlines are dark and reveal lives full of anger, envy, despair, malice, and selfishness. Many have pockmarked worldlines with light and dark segments. In today’s prosperity sphere, worldlines tend to be gray, like twilight, revealing lives of stability, comfort, and pleasure with only rare glances either up at the light or down at the darkness. Because they posit no-god, our world’s rulers view light-filled worldlines as illusions and dark or pockmarked worldlines as avoidable unhappiness. Our rulers deem stable, gray worldlines the best that human beings can hope for.

Are they correct? That depends upon what happens at the end of our worldline.

Notes

(1) Russell, B. (1958, 1959). The ABC of relativity. New York: Mentor Books (by arrangement with George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London), pp. 53-54.

(2) Weyl, H. (2009).  Mind and nature: Selected writings on philosophy, mathematics, and physics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 135. Quoted in: Petkov, V. (2012). Space and time: Minkowski's papers on relativity. Montreal: Minkowski Institute Press. Available at https://www.scribd.com/document/407529250/minkowski-papers-pdf, p. 36.

(3) Geroch, R. (1978). General relativity from A to B. Chicago: University of Chicago, pp. 20-21. Quoted in: Petkov, V. (2012). Space and time: Minkowski's papers on relativity. Montreal: Minkowski Institute Press. Available at https://www.scribd.com/document/407529250/minkowski-papers-pdf, p. 36 

Next Essay: Afterlife