Last night I had the chance to rewatch the film Arrival, which I had seen years ago. I just didn’t appreciate how relevant it was to understanding what time is.
In the movie, the aliens which arrived were discovered to have a different sense of time than human beings have–in fact, they had no sense of time. They lived entirely in the Now. That’s why when Abbot dies at the end, Costello the other alien says, “Abbot is death process”. The aliens can make only “is ” statements.
The writers and producers who came up with this are on the right track in my opinion. Unlocking the secrets of the universe will occur when discover for ourselves that time as we experience it is not the way time is. I know this from my many spiritual experiences and out of body travel. Time always acts in weird ways when I am having those “transcendent” experiences. The word “transcendent” literally means “to rise above”. Rise above what? To rise above time, which is to no longer be subject to time as we know it.
To me, our reality exists as a collection of Now-existing moments, which are unique. As such, scientists have proven that literally anything can happen at any moment (and sometimes does). This is because each Now moment contains infinite possible outcomes. Then we move to the next Now moment, and the next. We think of them as sequential, but they are not. At any one point in time, there is literally only this Now moment.
