Some have said that if you would keep your mind in the present moment (Now) that you would age a lot slower.

But I read about a case where a woman went insane and lost her short term memory after losing her lover in an accident. She thought she was 20 some years old every day. With the passing of many years, it is said that she never looked any older than 20 something. Even when she was in her 70's.

Her belief kept her young.

I just don't see the point in calling something that has engagement with space illusion.

An illusion is something that appears to engage in space and time but does not, its a trick. So I am not arguing against reality being strange, but I am arguing against using that word.

That word just confuses the topic IMHO.

If you want to get all metaphysical then there is really nothing we can say that will prove it is or is not real. No way to falsify the claim that we live in the matrix, brain in a vat ect.

So I tend to focus on reality itself, and in this universe space, time, and movement exist and due to the consistent interactions its clearly not a trick.

Sure . . . I wonder if its working for Deepak Chopra. He makes a very similar claim in one of his books.

It seems strange to me that you feel I am "getting all metaphysical" (... as if that were a bad thing.) ..because I really do try to keep my thinking along the lines of science, although not your hard core popular notions of science. It crosses over to what I term as "spiritual technology" at some point.

I just got a book in the mail today by Julian Barbour but I have not started reading it yet. It is about the non-existence of time, called "The End of Time." I have read some of his scientific papers and found them a bit dry and a little off track in the sense that he hints at what I am saying but seems unwilling to cross over from hard science to "metaphysics" or unprovable stuff. I don't blame him, after all, he is a scientist and he is probably afraid of losing credibility.

I sent him an email and he answered it. This is what he told me:

"The film on YouTube, like my book The End of Time, remains rather conservative in that I accept much of the viewpoint of modern physics. I do contemplate more radical ideas, some of which tend in the direction you advocate. However, it is a long job to turn them into a scientific theory, which is my aim. At the moment, I believe science has only scratched the surface of things and that there should be a much richer science that becomes indistinguishable from art. I hope that reassures at least about my aspirations. But: ars longa, vita brevis."

As far as what is 'real' and what is 'illusion' I agree. We the observers are actually the ones who decide that.

I don't like calling 'time' an illusion either but I don't know exactly know how else to describe it. I wish there was another word.
Time is a self constructed way to measure the process of conscious perceptions and experiences that we have in relation to each other within the matrix we have collectively constructed.

We invented or manifested time and space for our own purposes. That seems very strange and metaphysical but if you compare it to how we manifest space and time in our own dreams it is similar to that.

I dream of mountains, space, stars and sky. I dream of cities, buildings and people. And yet, when I wake up all these things are gone. Where did they go? How did I create them in my dream? Some of my dreams seem very real, with real people and real space and real time. Yet they are non-existent upon awakening.

Most of the time while I experience my dreams, I seldom think of my "real" self sleeping in my "real" bed.

I wonder if there is another real self that I don't think about. ... somewhere.

I think too many people waste time thinkin about that stuff. If you don't know what time it is, just look at the bottom right corner of your screen for gawds sake

it is derivative

You are so funny.

I'm also reading a book called "The Fabric of Reality." by a leading scientist named David Deutsch.

Einstein himself said that time does not exist, so Julian Barbour isn't saying anything new really.

I find it all extremely fascinating.

And I do know what 'time' it is. I was up til 3:00 a.m.

My interest in the nature of time stems from two very real personal experiences where real time seemed suspended and yet my mind and thoughts proceeded as normal. I call it "time stalling."

I've also had the subjective experience of time stopping, many times. During one of those situations, I was paying careful attention to the nuances of the sensations of my beating heart. There is a multi-stage series of sensations which are repeated with each hearbeat, I could break it down into a dozen or more stages. By my 'normal' sense of measuring time, it seemed like one of my hearbeats took several minutes to complete, and during the 'rest' period, it seemed that time stopped completely.

Before jumping to the conclusion that this experience had anything at all to do with changes in the flow of time itself, I first looked at the nature of human perception. This was long ago, and I forget the details - but there is nothing really surprising in this experience. Neurologist and psychologists have something of a grasp on this, and all one has to do is research the subject to understand that there is a pedestrian, materialistic explanation for this subjective experience.

There is no reason to suspect that the actual pace of time was changed - unless one is married to the idea that their subjective experience is absolute and inviolate.

Me either, I think with complex topics like this our language defies our best efforts so we grab words that may not fit exactly and then explain the differences.

I have enjoyed this topic!

Yes I understand what you are saying. In my time stalling experience, although it seemed like time had stopped, I somehow knew that it was all in my own perception. My observation and perception of the infinite situation of "NOW" was greatly increased or enhanced.

One of the experiences was during a fall from a jungle gym when I was a child. Time seemed to freeze at a point where I was a few inches from the ground. During that 'time' I had many thoughts that would normally have taken me five or ten minutes to process. There came a point when I was thinking that I was trapped or frozen in time inside of a stone-like structure that was my physical body. I searched for an exit but could not find one. All I could find was darkness. So I returned to the outer perception and then time resumed to normal. I hit the ground.

It hurt.

Ouch! That reminds me of a time that the front tire of my bike dropped into an un-marked construction-pit in an un-lit sidewalk. I know the whole thing happened in a second or two, but time seemed to stop as I sat there, halfway through the wipe-out, thinking "will it ruin my laptop if I roll to the right? its nice that there's nothing more dangerous here to hit, besides pavement. will it break my ankle if it gets trapped in the frame? does it matter if I scrape up my hands? right, smooth pavement, my hands are safe..." etc etc.

I felt like I was on drugs, both during and after. Different kinds of drugs, and I liked it.

My thoughts, as I was about to land on my hands and knees were, "will I break my knee caps? Will I be crippled for life and have to be in a wheelchair? ...Lets see if I land just so, and distribute my weight evenly, maybe I will not be injured so badly.... gee, I wonder when I will hit the cement below? I wonder if I will stay frozen like this forever... if so, I need to look for a way out of this place.. I wonder what's inside here.... I wonder if there is an exit... only darkness, I don't like that... I would rather break my knees....then, okay, I'm ready... here goes, this is probably going to hurt...

Very strange...

The other experience was even stranger. I was driving my father's pickup truck and I had my little brother with me. He was five years old. It was before seat belts. He was standing in the shotgun seat next to me.

I was on hwy 50 and about to make a left had turn across the medium. A truck traveling an unknown high speed was passing me on the left but I did not see him when I looked in the rear view mirror because the second I looked he was in a blind spot. I was about to turn right in front of him.

Time stalled. During that 'time' I saw a vision of the horrible crash that was about to take place. It came to me in my brain like a flash. It came not just once, but about ten times! "Bam!Crash!" It was a horrible mess. I pity the people who would have had to scrap us up off of the pavement. After seeing that vision ten times I had a little argument with myself.... I actually heard my inner voice say (to myself I guess..) "Hey, I looked in the mirror, and there was no one coming!"

Then, I heard my own voice (of reason?)answer. It said "Well, it wouldn't hurt to take a second to look over your shoulder would it?"
I said, "No, I guess not."

Then time resumed to normal. I looked over my left shoulder and the time it took to do that, the truck zoomed past. Needless to say, my heart was beating pretty fast. My little brother did not realize how close to dead he had been at that moment.

It was not my 'time' to die either I guess.

You have a 'shotgun seat'? Cool.

Time is spherical from the point of 'now'.

Whichever way you look from the center of your 'now' time extends away from you in the reality you see.

Time bends around the 'event horizion' of the 'singularity' that is your ability to understand at the moment where 'now' occurs.

What time is it 'now'?

That's what us hics call the right front seating area.

Very interesting.

Are we, the observer, the singularity then?

I was visualizing something with a bullet proof barrier, gun slots...possibly rotating.

Well I don't like to brag about that....

We each are a 'mote' within.

The singularity is the entire human conciousness (of which each is but an atom)