I don't actually know Caroll's work, though I know
of him - I'd appreciate a summary regarding time, if you've got time
(Any free online book resources also hugely appreciated - not to do people out of an income but my connection rivals a snail on valium and posting out to here costs more than the book! - I found a
personal view :p )
Anyhoo. I read something once in
Australasian Psychiatry, that changed the way I thought of time for ever:
“The Aboriginal concept of time differs from the Judeo-Christian perception of time in that Aboriginal people do not perceive time as an exclusively 'linear' category (i.e. past−present−future) and often place events in a 'circular' pattern of time according to which an individual is in the centre of 'time-circles' and events are placed in time according to their relative importance for the individual and his or her respective community (i.e. the more important events are perceived as being 'closer in time').”
I thought about this for a long time and it lead onto other musings, but I've never been able to shake this short little passage lol
From experiences in both 'natural' (oooh, such a loaded word
) dreamstate and entheogenic, I know time to be highly malleable and subjective. If it exists at all, it is not as the construct we often perceive it to be - but this, of course, will come as absolutely no great shock to any occultist
Age certainly exists - but are age and time 100% intertwined? I used to think so, I don't think that I do anymore. I'm still thinking about it
What if the entire birth, life and death of everything we conceive, perceive and believe is but a flashing moment of 'relative importance' in the mind of something much greater - but I'll blather on about memory at a separate point.
The point at which my belief in time travel breaks down is the point at which I stop believing in time.
The concept of time travel in days, months, years, generations - how terribly measured. Perhaps everything is happening now. Perhaps time is but a series of measurable events. I don’t know, quantum physics aside (and it ain't my forte), from perhaps a wishy-washy wobbly feet kind of stance (because I ain't well enough read), I think time travel happens all around us quite continuously in subtle shifts but I think the movie and science-fiction notion of it, much like the Hollywood depiction of Vodoun, is so dramatic and tantalising as to rob our own purses of something greater. Tree, barking, wrong perhaps?
But, I'm afraid, other than voicing my concerns about such things, I can't offer much constructive on the matter, it's still working its way through my brain. There is time and there is time, one is 'real' and one is dream, just like there is tree and there is 'tree', one is 'real' one is spirit. So perhaps we can travel through 'real time' dramatically, like we so often travel through dreamtime subtly. The eighty-year old with altzimers talking to her son like he were her long lost brother who died in the war - now that's an incredibly time machine.
Only the visible question of age bothers me, and that I'm still thinking on
Marion.
REFERENCE:
Janca, A. and Bullen, C. (2003) ‘The Aboriginal concept of time and its mental health implications’, Australasian Psychiatry, Volume 11 (October 2003) p.S40
