Expert: Bob Waxman - 12/8/2011

Question
Hello there

I have just started to discover, thankfully, Edgar Cayce, and am currently reading Many Mansions by Gina Cerminara.  I read briefly somewhere that he believed that past, present and future are coexisting and I wondered if you knew any more about this hypothesis and also where (in which publication) I could get more detailed information on this thoughts about the nature of time.

Many thanks

Lucy

Answer
Hi Lucy,

Thank you for your question. The concept of "simultaneous time," which connotes past, present, and future - all co-existing - is highly controversial. There is not much scholarship on this topic except for a few speculative articles that I would not recommend. However, a book by astrophysicist Paul Davies entitled, "About Time" offers interesting insights into this purported phenomenon.

Personally, I have a hard time accepting this theory because the "now" moment has evolved from specific thoughts, words, and actions of the past, which are culminating into future moments. Consequently, the "now" moment is evolving into future moments of many choices and possibilities that are yet to be determined.

Alternatively, I think there is a strong case for the theory that there is no "present time." For example, as soon as you say, "it is the present" - THAT moment has already past, and you have moved into the future.

So, my view is "the past" is the time you spent reading this note (so far) - and "the future" is waiting for you to read the next sentence. However, there is not necessarily "a present" that can be isolated into a certain moment.

Additionally, if you like Jane Roberts and the Seth Books, the following information is posited on this subject:

"WHAT IS THE NATURE OF TIME?

Time as you experience it is an illusion caused by your own physical senses. They force you to perceive action in certain terms, but this is not the nature of action.

The apparent boundaries between past, present and future are only illusions caused by the amount of action you can physically perceive, and so it seems to you that one moment exists and is gone forever, and the next moment comes and like the one before also disappears. Everything in the universe exists at one time simultaneously.

The first words ever spoken still ring through the universe, and in your terms, the last words ever spoken have already been said. The past, present and future only appear to those who exist within three-dimensional reality.

The past exists as a series of electromagnetic connections held in the physical brain and in the nonphysical mind. These electromagnetic connections can be changed.

The future consists of a series of electromagnetic connections in the mind and brain also. In other words, the past and present are real to the same extent.

You take it for granted that present action can change the future, but present actions can also change the past. The past is no more objective or independent from the perceiver than is the present. The electromagnetic connections were largely made by the individual perceiver. The connection can be changed, and such changes are far from uncommon. These changes happen spontaneously on a subconscious basis.

The past is seldom what you remember it to be, for you have already rearranged it from the instant of any given event. The past is being constantly re-created by each individual as attitudes and associations change. This is an actual recreation, not a symbolic one. The child is indeed still within the man, but he is not the child that "was", for even the child within the man constantly changes.

Difficulties arise when such alterations do not occur automatically. Severe neurosis is often caused precisely because an individual has not changed his past.

A change of attitude, a new association, or any of innumerable other actions will automatically set up new electromagnetic connections and break others.

Every action changes every other action. Therefore, every action in your present affects actions you call past. It is possible to react in the past to an event that has not occurred, and to be influenced by your own future. It is also possible for an individual to react in the past to an event in the future, which in your terms, may never occur.

Because past, present and future exist simultaneously, there is no reason why you cannot react to an event whether or not it happens to fall within the small field of reality in which you usually observe and participate.

On a subconscious level, you react to many events that have not yet occurred as far as your ego's awareness is concerned. Such reactions are carefully screened out and not admitted to consciousness. The ego finds such instances distracting and annoying, and when forced to admit their validity, will resort to the most far fetched rationalizations to explain them.

No event is predestined. Any given event can be changed not only before and during but after its occurrence.

The individual is hardly at the mercy of past events, for he changes them constantly. He is hardly at the mercy of future events, for he changes these not only before but after their happening. An individuals future actions are not dependent upon a concrete finished past, for such a past never existed. The past is as real as the future, no more or less.

There is a part of you that is not locked within physical reality, and that part of you knows that there is only an Eternal Now. The part of you that knows is the whole self, your inner and outer ego #all that you are#.

From within this framework you will see that see that physical time is as dreamlike as you once thought inner time was. You will discover your whole self, peeping inward and outward at the same "time", and find that all time is one time, and all divisions, illusions."

I hope this information has been helpful for you...with best wishes, Bob Waxman






Reference:

http://www.spiritual-endeavors.org/seth/Andy4.htm