The Nature of Time -- Psychological Time

We are now in a new year and I am going to focus the content of my posts on the nature of time and the type of dreams that Edgar Cayce called visions. The title of my book (The Man Who Sees Tomorrow in His Dreams) clearly suggests that I believe we can see the future in our dreams. However, before I discuss visions, I need to provide some background so there is no confusion about what I mean when I write about time and the future.

There are really two main aspects or approaches to time: psychological time and physical or scientific time. In this post, I am focusing on psychological time. By psychological time I mean a person’s sense of the duration of an event. This is very subjective and appears to change with one’s age. When I was a boy, I used to walk by a neighbor’s house on my way to and from school. A man who lived there was retired and often sat on his porch. I would stop and talk with him about a variety of topics. One day I expressed some unhappiness about how long the school year seemed. This brought a quick response and a bit of a lecture from him. I’ll never forget how he described his life as now flying by compared to his younger years. He said that each new decade passed faster than the previous one, and now years seemed to pass in an instant. Now, in my retirement years, I can appreciate his observation. There seems to be an acceleration in time as I age.

However, regardless of the sense of duration of events and passing of days, the common perception is the future does not exist until we encounter it. The activities and events for next week do not exist until that calendar time arrives, and I live the week. Time has a certain flow to it and the future appears to be unknown until we reach that point in time. I may plan certain activities ahead of time, but how the week actually plays out is unknown. This is the common belief. But is it correct? In the weeks ahead, I will attempt to cast doubt on this common belief and show that time is more like an illusion that serves a purpose in our daily lives, but does not provide an absolute even for scientist.

Yesterday I took a brief nap around 5:00 pm. While napping, I dreamed I was with a man who was once my boss. He said, “I see you just talked with Debbie.” I was surprised and said, “No, I haven’t spoken to her for at least six months.” This was the beginning of a much more involved dream and I am not going to relate the remainder. However, a short time after I awoke, the telephone rang and it was my niece, whom I had not spoken to or heard from for at least six months. What is interesting is that her job is in HR. The woman, Debbie, mentioned in the dream, also works in HR. So perhaps we have telepathy and precognition both at work here. And on another level the event I experienced in time, her telephone call, already happened prior to my physical experience.

My next post will deal with physical or scientific time, which definitely casts some doubt about veracity of the common perception of time.