Special theory of immateriality: Ruickbie #28

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies:  The observations presented here allow two hypotheses: 1) that consciousness can exist independently of the physical body; and 2) that consciousness can seemingly operate in a state outside our everyday experience of space and time. The first does not violate any ‘laws’ because we have no laws of consciousness, although it does contradict our expectation that consciousness is dependent on the brain but is explicable if we use the alternative “reducing valve” model.

Herman Minkowski             

The second does not contradict any laws because physics has shown that our everyday experience of space and time is not an accurate one. Physics now operates on at least a four-dimensional understanding of spacetime (Einstein–Minkowski). As cosmologist Prof. Bernard Carr has pointed out, there is plenty of “space for psi” in current physics; however, here we are looking for a model of spacetime that could accommodate the view of consciousness and reality revealed in this paper. Under certain conditions, consciousness demonstrates the ability to transcend space and time as we ordinarily experience it, so as well as another location for consciousness, we also need another time, or another understanding of it.

Near the end of his life, Einstein famously wrote that “The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” The problem persists: the British physicist Paul Davies also confessed that “To be perfectly honest, neither scientists nor philosophers really know what time is or why it exists.”

Cambridge Professor of Astronomy, Sir Arthur Eddington coined the phrase “time’s arrow” in 1927, meaning simply that physical things have a necessary and unavoidable direction of change from one state to another that cannot be reversed. This is essentially our experience of time. However, the fundamental equations of classical physics (such as Newton’s laws of motion) do not distinguish between past and future, they are time-reversible, and what we call the present “has no proper place in the temporal of physics at all,” according to the Slovakian astrophysicist Metod Saniga. What physics does is quantify points on the time dimension – it takes no account of subjective, experiential time, the time that moves constantly forwards, the so-called arrow of time.

As Prof. Utts has pointed out, after studying the research data for her official report on Project Star Gate, “Physicists are currently grappling with the concept of time and cannot rule out precognition as being consistent with current understanding,” and that “distance in time and space do not seem to be an impediment” – exactly the conclusion I came to in my analysis of Scott’s WWI traveling clairvoyance experiments.* But the question of time does not only relate to precognition because, as we have seen, precognition can apply to a range of sensory experiences that are experienced directly by consciousness, not the senses, meaning that what we are talking about here is not some ability of consciousness, but consciousness itself.

We have seen examples where an observer in his present sees an apparition in its past, and even where an apparition sees the observer in its future, then this must logically lead to the premise that time exists in its entirety all of the time, that is, time is not just the movement of physical objects through space (change), but a thing in itself. This itself seems counter-intuitive, but modern physics can support such a possibility.

Albert Einstein’s mathematics teacher, Professor Hermann Minkowski, argued that the past, present and future co-exist ‘at once’ in four-dimensional spacetime, where time is itself a dimension in addition to the familiar three spatial dimensions. This was the basis for Einstein’s theories of relativity. In contrast to our generally accepted idea of time being absolute for everyone, within these four dimensions, observers moving relative to one another will have a different experience of what is happening now, that is, their experience of time will be different. Thus, an observer moving faster than another could experience as ‘present’ what is for the other ‘future.’

This four-dimensional “block universe” in which time exists all at once would allow an external observer (e.g., in the higher dimensional bulk) to see past, present and future, just like someone experiencing an NDE life review or life preview, or someone having a premonition. But how could this be possible? 

* See Ruickbie excerpt #14.

 

Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.