Can We Train Our Minds To Ignore the Concept of Time?

Title pretty much says it all. Seems that if this could be done, we would gain "future sight" and "past sight". Many threads here have addressed the seeming impossibility of the existence of time or that time must be a construct created by mind, heredity, etc.

How would we override this brain or otherwise innate setting?

reply to post by samstone11


Thank you immensely for posting this! I have often wondered the same thing myself. I'm sure it's possible because I think we do it accidentally sometimes. I'm just not sure how to do it on purpose. I really look forward to seeing what others have to say!

During meditation maybe it happens. But if you actually observe it or announce it to yourself, then you are back into observing time. I think you need to not observe time passing. I remember as a child it seemed like summer vacation was forever. A week was a long time. A day lasted a long time. A ride to grandma's house was a long time. I didn't have words or a concept of time like I do as an adult.

If people could think about time like children do, then maybe time would slow for them again. Children don't really know or understand time and are taught what a second is, what a minute is, what an hour, day, week and year is. We then start to understand how it feels for certain amounts of time to pass. We start to observe it more and more.

But if you try to remember back when you were a very young child, maybe you can relearn to think about time as a child does. Children really are more into what is happening in the moment. The past and future really don't mean as much.

I draw a distinction between the preoccupation with time, and the ability to transcend it.

I find that when I am in nature, or in rural parts of third world nations I forget time. I look to the sun to estimate the time left for work, but do not let it rule my day. If I do not finish my task, or have enough light to complete something I will do it tomorrow. I do not get stressed, or controlled by the time I have. It is a tool to organize your day, and not a cage to control your day.

The ability to transcend time is more difficult. It ties with the ability to observe the physical body we reside in, and the recognize the limitations of rules we have created surrounding the material world. I have not been able to dissect my identity, or move away from sensory perceptions. I believe that once you move beyond your created identity, sensory ways of knowledge, and programmed modes of thinking everything changes. I think once you have reached this state the distinction between today, yesterday, and tomorrow begin to blur.

In a way, you can sort of not notice the passage of time, yes.

A good example is that this happens naturally anyhow
Remember when you were a young child...how a year was obscenely long..saying to a child you can have something in a year might as well been telling him its a billion years.

As you get older, out of school, and in general life, a year passes by pretty quick.

As you get properly old, years pass like days..perspective distorts. Time is still doing its linear thing, a second takes a second, but our mind starts losing the childhood perspective of time.

I imagine you can distort your perspectives prematurely and have years pass by without feeling the linear aspect...but I would think that would suck. look into the mirror and see yourself, then what feels like a few days later you notice you aged 20 years...

I would like to slow down time (at some points) and experience the childhood perspective of time now and then...especially in good times.

and in bad times, experience a 100 year old person's perspective

I can't imagine a way for a time-centric collective of events (the corporeal body and brain) to transcend the time-centric nature of itself. Even psychics don't really do that. Not even the real ones.

What they do is tap into the environmental residual information collective and unconsciously pick out data that allows them to calculate the likely trajectory of a specific circumstance that has yet to resolve. Let's say that a train will be running on a stretch of tracks, and the informational continuum contains the fact that there is severe deterioration within the mechanism that controls the switching along that stretch of tracks, and has been neglected for quite a while. No one knows this, but the fact that this deterioration exists is a fact that does exist within the whole information continuum, and if accessed, that fact would be key to being able to predict that an accident is not only likely, but possibly imminent - given a specific set of contributing factors (extremely low temperature or other environmental stresses, a fast moving passenger train rattling the unit housing one last time to cause the unit to fail, a freighter scheduled to be in the vicinity at a specific moment that allows that unit's failure to put it on a collision course with the next passenger train - all facts collecting within the environmental information collective - informational continuum - and available for a brain that is capable of accessing it as if reading it off a blackboard.

The data is translated by the psychic's conscious brain, often a little garbled but sometimes quite clearly, and the brain itself does what a baseball outfielder does with the trajectory of a fly ball - it tracks that trajectory and predicts where that trajectory will end. In the case of the baseball outfielder, he makes sure his glove intersects that ball's trajectory. In the case of the psychic, he/she calls the railroad dispatch and tries to get someone to shut down the rail line so that an accident doesn't happen.

Neither is transcending the impact of time. Both are simply using the data available to calculate the impact of time on a clearly defined trajectory of progressive events.

No, we can't train our minds to ignore time, but we can train our minds to become aware of ways of accessing residual information, and to learn how to calculate causal trajectories in order to better predict where those trajectories will intersect with our own trajectories. That's even better than ignoring time. That's working with time.

reply to post by samstone11



well unfortunately i just googled "hot to overide the concept of time" and nothing comes up that sticks to what i want to see except this thread ahhaha well i guess google cant always give you answers >.<

you can if you are some kind of recluse otherwise no you can't if you interact with people. The entire human race works on time. How would you meet with people? How would you go out and buy yourself groceries? Don't get mad at the store if they aren't open at 3 in the morning ...

hell even growing your own groceries depends on time. How can you ignore it being time to water your plants? " hey its time to water my plants they haven't received water in a long time"

Being that our thoughts (mind) are the product of movement, and movement is perceived through time, I do not see how this would be possible.

Yes, in deep meditation there is the possibility to "ignore the concept of time", but that is only because "deep meditation" correlates to a state void of thought/mind, thus meditation is a state void of movement, thus meditation is a state void of time.

reply to post by SaturnFX

You reminded me of inadvertent self hypnosis. The times we miss our exit on the freeway because we have become lost or fixated in another thought. That sort of thing. You are definitely right, but short of deep meditation or placing yourself in some form of harm's way, I am still curious if it can be controlled to an extent that enables us to move more at will through it.

Time cannot be simply forgotten because it is mans way of marking the seasons. We cannot stop the seasons from happening can we? The only way I see to stop or slow time is to stop or slow the earth from going aroung the sun. But if we did that man would just reinvent another way of keeping time.

As to the seemingly faster passing of time as we get older, think about it this at 5 years old one month is one sixtieth of your life at 10 it is one hundred twentieth of your life. As you get older the length of the month has not changed just your perspective of it keeps getting smaller.

I continuously contemplate why our existance on this rock is so fleeting in the grand sceme of things.

reply to post by samstone11

I am still curious if it can be controlled to an extent that enables us to move more at will through it.

Now this is possible. It can be done by training your mind to remain focused or attentive on only the 'Now' moment. 'Now' means no past, no future, without time. Knowledge is memory, meaning 'past', so to live in society and survive you must resort to the 'past' from time to time, but can one remain in the 'now' when knowledge is not needed? This, I believe, is what we do as children. We remain closer in the 'Now', enjoying/accepting all that we are currently aware of, and thus time seems to be almost non-existent.

Meditation is this training.

reply to post by LifeIsEnergy

It can be done by training your mind to remain focused or attentive on only the 'Now' moment.

I agree that this is the way to flow with time rather than be dragged unwittingly along with it.


Hm, I was going to add a lot more, but I got lost in the moment...lol

The mind itself is a construct of time. A thought requires a beginning, a middle, and and end. If you were to close the loop, then the thoughts would cease, the mind would cease, and we would simply "be".