EINSTEIN - TIME IS NOT REAL FOR THERE IS NO REAL CHANGING

People point out that we know very little. Take time. We have no direct knowledge of it. We only have the present moment. We only experience that. We never experience time. So the evidence that time is real is circumstantial.

Albert Einstein worked out that we have a sense of time passing and that this sense is misleading. In fact, it is as true to say that if you are drinking coffee now that you are emerging from the womb now and are also already dead at the age of 85 or whatever.

This gave him great comfort. He believed that his dead loved ones and friends were dead in terms of our experience of time but alive timelessly.

He did not think he would meet them in time again.

If it were possible to meet them timelessly there would be no communication with them for there is no time.

It is said that we would just be staring at them in an immobile state and this would be terrible for us if we loved them and wanted to talk to them and hug them.

But if we are immobile ourselves we won't see it like that.

Where is the illusion of time passing when all that happens?

The only way to make sense of the data is that what happens in our lives now is permanent and eternal and timeless but the illusion of time passing goes on. We exist in eternity. We die and cease to exist in time. But the time between the first moment of our existence and death is still there. The illusion is still there. What you enjoy in life will be enjoyed forever.

People make a big deal about the meaning of life. But what they ignore is that the meaning of the past does not matter. The past is over as far as experience and living our lives goes. And the future does not exist yet. So what we have is the present. We need to find meaning in the present only and leave the past and future to take care of themselves. To love the present moment just because it is the present moment is to be the only real goal. To say you need God is to deny and oppose this truth and have people becoming enslaved to religion in order to try and make some sense of their lives. It is like when you are having people walk miles and miles to get a coffee when you can make it yourself for them. It is cruel and they will become desperate and fearful to hold on to the little meaning they glean.

Einstein's view of time puts eternity before God. God by definition cannot come first in our hearts so he is not really God for us. It calls us to be practical atheists at the very least.

Einstein loved the doctrine of timelessness. It made him feel close to his deceased loved ones and friends.

It meant he could sense their presence and know it was real. He could feel it. He could sense them enjoying a beer not in terms of them having a beer in the spirit world but in terms of them being in the pub with him years ago. He honoured their past and the past he shared with them. He made it present.

Bereaved people may report sensing the presence of the departed one and their love and they feel they are alive again and perhaps boiling an egg or singing - they tune into what the person was doing when alive.

It is better to honour the past for it is unchangeable than to wish the person can live on after death for there is the risk they might not live at all or have a terrible life. They might change too much so that they can no longer be your friends.

Einstein's doctrine means that if you have a loved one who begins to hate you, you can enter into communion with the friendship you shared and make it present. You will never lose sight of the person's value if you try that. You will not let what they are now destroy that.

Some say, "The present is a meeting between past and future. The present moment contains a bit of the past and a bit of the future. A moment is both the past and the future. Existence is supernatural because it is impossible for something to be both past and future." This argument would imply that nothing makes sense when it comes to considering creation or time or eternity. Even the supernatural cannot reconcile a contradiction. What has been cannot be what does not exist yet. The argument would imply that talk about God is meaningless. It would mean that when you die you are both dead and alive at the same time! The absurd conclusions mean there is something wrong in thinking that the present is a mere meeting point between past and future. The answer is that it is not a meeting point - it is just the present. It is not the past or the future.