So how exactly do arhants experience time?

So how exactly do arhants experience time? Sha-Man! Geoffrey 1/26/24 11:04 AM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Chris M 1/26/24 11:14 AM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Chris M 1/26/24 11:16 AM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Sha-Man! Geoffrey 1/26/24 11:20 AM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Sha-Man! Geoffrey 1/26/24 11:24 AM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Chris M 1/26/24 11:50 AM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Chris M 1/26/24 11:59 AM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Siavash ' 1/26/24 12:08 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Chris M 1/26/24 12:14 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Adi Vader 1/26/24 12:18 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Siavash ' 1/26/24 12:52 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Siavash ' 1/26/24 1:03 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Chris M 1/26/24 1:24 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Chris M 1/26/24 1:56 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Siavash ' 1/26/24 2:01 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Papa Che Dusko 1/26/24 2:15 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Siavash ' 1/26/24 2:36 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Chris M 1/26/24 3:42 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Chris M 1/26/24 3:26 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Siavash ' 1/26/24 4:04 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Chris M 1/26/24 4:08 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Jim Smith 1/27/24 10:47 PM
RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time? Will G 1/28/24 5:58 AM
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Sha-Man! Geoffrey, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:04 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:04 AM

So how exactly do arhants experience time?

Posts: 366 Join Date: 10/30/23 Recent Posts
So when Daniel describes 4th path, he talks about centerlessness, agencylessness and "this is it". And in seeing that frees, rob talks about how time itself is a fabrication. So, if this is it, like this moment of experience is all there is, how do fully enlightened folks see time? Like does it arise and pass? Does it not exist?
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Chris M, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:14 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:14 AM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

Posts: 5183 Join Date: 1/26/13 Recent Posts
The sense of time passing is as it always was. It's like everything else - there is deep, felt understanding and real time realization that time, space and all other objects are being fabricated by the mind. Yet the moment to moment experience remains but with less pull, connection, agency or ownership.
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Chris M, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:16 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:16 AM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

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The faster we disabuse folks of the notion that awakeness is some mystical way of being the better off we'll be. People get stuck on these fantasies about awakening and waste time pursuing them.
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Sha-Man! Geoffrey, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:20 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:20 AM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

Posts: 366 Join Date: 10/30/23 Recent Posts
You do hear people like adyashanti say shit like

Now imagine that you stop to sit on a bench in the park.
As you sit there everything stops, absolutely stops. Your mind
is so still and quiet that you can hear dust particles floating in
the air. Suddenly you are falling, and falling, and falling. There
is no ground below or sky overhead, just a crushing thunderous
silence, racing faster and faster. You suddenly realize that it’s go-
ing to kill you, rip you limb from limb and explode your lungs
into dust. There’s no way out, no possible means of survival. And
so you do the only thing there is to do.
Surrender.
All goes blank and empty, more empty than limitless space.
Prior to life and death, you blink out of (or is it into?) ex-
istence. Timelessness is all there is, all there ever was, or could
be. Eternity reigns supreme, and is radiantly present in every
particle of being.
Something unborn and undying stirs to life and opens its
eyes—your eyes. You or It is still sitting on the park bench.
It is smiling, radiant, and content. A little girl on roller skates
passes by. The sun glitters through the aspen leaves as an old man
smokes his pipe on a footbridge crossing over a stream that feeds
into a pond filled with goldfish.
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Sha-Man! Geoffrey, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:24 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:24 AM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

Posts: 366 Join Date: 10/30/23 Recent Posts
And my irl friend recently claims to have become an arhant after doing the first three paths in theravada, and then the 4th from dilluo, and he says shit like that too...
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Chris M, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:50 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:49 AM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

Posts: 5183 Join Date: 1/26/13 Recent Posts
I had experiences more like that during second and third path. I think those events are somehat stage related. Also, if you practice jhanas you can have very blissed out, psychedelic like experiences. But those are not, repeat not, what moment to moment experience is like.
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Chris M, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:59 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 11:59 AM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

Posts: 5183 Join Date: 1/26/13 Recent Posts
Yeah, reading that passage by Adyashanti is interesting. He's describing an experience that's quite real but he seems to me to be embellishing the rapture-like nature of it. But those are states and experiences. I wish prominent teachers would emphasize that part, too. 
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Siavash ', modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 12:08 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 12:08 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

Posts: 1684 Join Date: 5/5/19 Recent Posts
Do we experience time at all!?
Is there such a thing as time?!

Don't know about you, but I can't find it!
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Chris M, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 12:14 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 12:11 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

Posts: 5183 Join Date: 1/26/13 Recent Posts
Don't you wear a watch, my friend?

​​​​​​​emoticon

My experience of time is a series of very short snippets of sensory perceptions knitted together to be made to appear as an uninterrupted flow. Is that what you meant, Siavash? Or?
Adi Vader, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 12:18 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 12:18 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

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Space has rupa, sensorial materiality. The mind can take space as an object. In and by itself we can sense less space or more space

Time does not have rupa. The mind cannot take time as an object. Without cues we cannot sense less time or more time.

People dont experience time, they experience urgency or passion or 'raga' for something abstract. This is the fetter of arupa raga. Passion for the abstract. The creation of a self as triggered by an abstraction.

​​​​​​​Those who are free of arupa raga are free of the passion for abstractions but are perfectly capable of dealing with them. They work faster when the deadline is near, just like anybody else emoticon
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Siavash ', modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 12:52 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 12:52 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

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Chris,
No, I don't wear a watch emoticon .

​​​​​​​As far as I understand, we just experience sensations, oh, not sensations, only movement and stillness, time is just a label. Yeah, we experience that label as a visual or other kind of movement.
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Siavash ', modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 1:03 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 1:03 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

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And I think the perception of time is a sub-part of the perception of space. Don't know about others, but when I perceive past or future, what separates them, is their spatial characteristics. Past, becomes a perception of space, some images,usually perceived behind the head, future, as some images in front of the head. Near future and farthur future only differ on the size of the images that is created. And those images are dependent on the current space, like if I go to another room, the perception of space changes, so the perception of time changes, and the perception of distance changes.
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Chris M, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 1:24 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 1:20 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

Posts: 5183 Join Date: 1/26/13 Recent Posts
There is psychological time. That's what the mind constructs for us so as to make some sense of what we experience. There are also various types of time, but we can have that discussion another, ahem, another time.

Siavash, you know that physicists agree that time and space are inseparable. The Special Theory of Relativity, and so on.

​​​​​​​
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Chris M, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 1:56 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 1:55 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

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Question: we can experience the passing of different lengths of time. I can easily tell you that I spent about five minutes waiting to see my dentist as opposed to having spent about an hour waiting. So for someone who does not experience time, what do you call this size perception? It's either bigger, or smaller, kind of just like space.
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Siavash ', modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 2:01 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 2:01 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

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Chris M
Question: we can experience the passing of different lengths of time. I can easily tell you that I spent about five minutes waiting to see my dentist as opposed to having spent about an hour waiting. So for someone who does not experience time, what do you call this size perception? It's either bigger, or smaller, kind of just like space.

Chris, what I notice about the comparison of different length's time, is that a distance is calculated between two thought forms, one seemingly coming from an "older" memory, the other a recollection of the most recent memory. Then the question becomes, what differs two memories in terms of time? IS there a difference between the images of my house from 1 year ago or two years ago? Or we remember it by some emotion that is linked to that images, and that emotions changes the distances, sizes, wights, and whatever we call these qualities. Or what is the difference between the perception of next week, and two weeks from now? Just thinking outloud emoticon .
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Papa Che Dusko, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 2:15 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 2:15 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

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Is there "time" without memory? Is memory a bad thing? As it collects from stuff long gone. Can I trust my own memory? Could my memory be false? We say there is ONLY NOW-ness so I can't go back in time to re-check the memorised stuff so to validate it. So ... could all my memory just be some stuff downloaded and it actually never even happened? But it feels "real" it feels like "my memory" from "my life". What if it actually never happened and Im but only ever just born-dead or dead-born? What if I am the owner of NOTHING AT ALL. What if I am in none of THIS?

This is when the Zen master executes the kyosaku! Snap! Snap! Snap! "there is time for you! Want another one?!" 
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Siavash ', modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 2:36 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 2:36 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

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But, the memory itself is a fabrication based on time, right? Which is a fabrication/conditioning based on space, which is a fabrication based on what? The amount of clarity in sensations? What ones gets if they deconstruct space?

And I think intention is a fabrication that relies on time/space. So to move beyond these fabrications, there would be nothing but nothing,... I guess!
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Chris M, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 3:42 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 3:25 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

Posts: 5183 Join Date: 1/26/13 Recent Posts
But in that way, Siavash, you do experience the passing of time. Even to the point of being able to interpolate the size of periods of time's passage.

I'm a vipassana meditator and my comments on how time is experienced are based on observations of the smallest fragments I can observe. It's in that way that I see the passing of time is constructed of very small snapshots of experiences. In the end, I think that's more or less what you described. 
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Chris M, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 3:26 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 3:26 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

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And yes, everything is fabricated!
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Siavash ', modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 4:04 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 4:01 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

Posts: 1684 Join Date: 5/5/19 Recent Posts
 Yes, we are in agreement I think, just differences in languaging.
My point was, time is just another fabrication, like all the rest of fabrications, and why should we think there is any thing different or special about it.
Time, space, good, bad, heavy, light, right, left, sweet, far, close,...., I think they are all the same in the sense that they are a group of sensations, or knowings, that we differentiate them by a label, to be able to communicate, and navigate the world.

And I think the way we measure time, or the distance in time, is heavily dependent on mind-states and emotions. Let's say someone is looking for a flight ticket and not finding at the exact time that he wants , because he should travel to see his beloved sister's newborn baby a month from now. And 3 days from now he has a meeting, not an important one. He may perceive that one month closer to now, than the 3 days. Also I am curious how this distance of time changes when we change our physical location. So, what would be the difference between perception of that one month and the 3 days, when he is inside a car, driving at night, and when he is in an open field in early morning with clear sky and bright sunshine?! 
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Chris M, modified 3 Months ago at 1/26/24 4:08 PM
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RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

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Yes, psychological time. 
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Jim Smith, modified 3 Months ago at 1/27/24 10:47 PM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/27/24 10:47 PM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

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Sha-Man! Geoffrey
So when Daniel describes 4th path, he talks about centerlessness, agencylessness and "this is it". And in seeing that frees, rob talks about how time itself is a fabrication. So, if this is it, like this moment of experience is all there is, how do fully enlightened folks see time? Like does it arise and pass? Does it not exist?


This is not exactly what you are asking, but I suspect our perception of time is influenced by the fact that the brain is a physical system subject to the second law of thermodynamics (entropy always increases) and that causes us to see time as asymmetrical.

But there is a lot of evidence that conscious is not physical. And some of the founders of quantum mechanics, including Nobel prize winners, believed that the exientific evidence from quantum mechanics shows that consciousness is fundamental and that matter is produced by consciousness. Other scientists including Nobel Prize winners also beieved the scientific evidence from cosmology, the big bang and the fine tuning of the universe shows that the physical universe was created by consciousness.

In the afterlife, where we would not be subject to physical laws we would experience time differently.

Some living people have experienced consciousness without the influence of their physical brain. This happens sometimes to people who have Near Death Experiences, but also sometimes when people are meditating. 
Will G, modified 3 Months ago at 1/28/24 5:58 AM
Created 3 Months ago at 1/28/24 5:58 AM

RE: So how exactly do arhants experience time?

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I think for a lot of people the experience of time depends on the sense that there is a flow of events that they and everyone else are in some sense subject to, which means they are constantly mentally referring to this abstract unstoppable arrow and thus seeming to experience the pressure it exerts on them. But that pressure depends on the sense of separation: without it you just have constant flux. Its like if by power of abstraction we were constantly creating a river bank on which to stand on, that felt really real. At some point when the abstraction is fully seen for what it is, just a kind of thought, it really does lose some of the power and grandeur it once had, and arguably stops being experienced as a force, and more like the mental reference point it actually is.

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