‘Time Relations Among Events…’
Investigations Into Relativity, Synchronicity, and Temporality
When rhapsodizing about elitist attitudes towards magic, SynchroMysticism, and one thing and another, Fortean researcher Michael Hoffman has periodically quoted an aperçu – evidently spun out of the orbit of Albert Einstein’s “relativistic” physics. “Time relations among events are assumed to be first constituted by the specific physical relations obtaining between them.”[1]
One might be tempted to relegate this maxim to a file folder under the heading “Mystifications.” But, let’s try to understand it. Or, frankly, since comprehension might be a bit too ambitious for non-specialists in atomic physics (me included), let’s try to apprehend it, anyway.
‘Sorcerer as Poet & Playwright’
Though, immediately, we need to hang a few provisos on even that pretension. Here’s one caveat. In answer to a question I had put to him, Michael Hoffman once wrote the following. A magical “working” is less like a mathematical formula and more like “a script, a story, [or] a play and …[t]he sorcerer – as poet and playwright – rules over this occult operation.”[2]
Ex hypothesi, we’d expect that such workings would be augmented with appropriate “casting,” props, scenery, and – of course – media attention. If you look, it’s arguable this is what you find.
For example, Hoffman thinks this artistic orientation is apparent – albeit officially “winked at” – in countless high-profile events (such as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy). In their Fortean classic King Kill 33, James Shelby Downard and Hoffman note the fact that “David W. Ferrie and Clay L. Shaw were habitués of the old ‘Storyville’ [red-light district in] …New Orleans”.[3] Underlining the former’s surname, the authors bring the operative joke to the surface: “…the …official assassination investigation” amounted to a Fairy Tale, er… Ferrie Tale[4] – get it?
To emphasize the point, another “Storyville” character in the same drama was one Gordon Michael Novel – “novel”: as in, a book-length fiction. In the vast assassination literature, the flesh-and-blood Novel is described as a “French Quarter nightclub” operator and a “handler of anti-surveillance equipment”[5] as well as – more honestly – a Central Intelligence agent.[6]
For an intro to the CIA tangle, see our video of 11/22/2023. But…Back to sorcerer-poets.
20th-c. French Surrealist Benjamin Péret, asserted: “there is a common denominator between the sorcerer, the poet, and the madman” adding: “The common denominator …can only be magic.”[7] Arguably, this link goes back, through Elizabethan England – to, in the memorable phraseology of William Francis Charles Wigston, Phantom Captain [William] Shakespeare, The Rosicrucian Mask[8] – back into antiquity (to characters like Orpheus and Hermes Trismegistus).
Magical Impressionism
In the twentieth century, magic (like most every other human endeavor) has been recast with the quicksilver of au courant “-isms,” such as individualism, liberalism, relativism, etc. – generating myriad idiosyncratic forms of occultism. American Religious-Studies Professor Arthur Verslius calls one such phenomenon “Immediatism.” It’s another huge topic. Here’s an example or two.
In Magick in Theory and Practice, Edward Alexander “Aleister” Crowley introduced the topic of “Barbarous names of Evocation.” These are “unintelligible words”[9] that are used ritualistically.[10] The self-styled “Great Beast, 666” drew attention to John Dee and Edward Kelley’s angelic language of “Enochian.” Crowley admitted that the “source[s]” of these strings have “baffled research”.[11] But he then remarked: “However this may be, it works” – placing emphasis on that final word.[12] Here, Crowley gives us a concise expression of pragmatism. For instance…
Douglas McDermid, in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, opens a pertinent article writing: “Pragmatism …claim[s] that an ideology or [a] proposition is true if it works satisfactorily…”.[13]
American psychologist William James, the older brother of novelist Henry James, and cofounder (with logician Charles Sanders Peirce) of pragmatism, held that saying something was “true” basically came down to saying that something is useful for someone and for some purpose.[14]
Or consider this excerpt from a writing of Zeena Schreck, daughter of Satanic-Church founder Howard Stanton Levey, a.k.a. Anton Szandor LaVey. We profiled LaVey in “Top 10 Occultists.”
In Demons of the Flesh, Zeena and coauthor (and then-husband) Nikolas Schreck said: “we take the …pragmatic view that any [magical] technique is merely a tool that …can be used …for the attainment of any [desired] objective.”[15]
Not every theorist is affected by these trends. And those who are affected are not affected equally. But the upshot, as ex-Blondie musician Gary Lachman notes, is that – in certain circles – occultists no longer fuss about ritualistic minutiæ. Many are now more hard-nosed and “results oriented.” They aim at increasing their net worths or finding “soulmates” – as opposed to, say, seeking Enlightenment for its own sake or getting to know their “Holy Guardian Angels.”
Whether this turn toward instrumentalism counts as “modernism” or “postmodernism” is debatable. As a first pass, we might think of particular practitioners (Lachman singles out “Chaos Magicians”) as trafficking in a sorcerous counterpart to artistic movements like Impressionism or Surrealism. The former was a 19th-c. affair, mostly associated with French painters such as Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, and others. The latter emerged out of “Dadaism,” in the aftermath of World War I. Its principals included French writer André Breton, Spanish painter Salvador Dalí, Jewish-American visual artist Emmanuel Radnitzky (better known as “Man Ray”), etc.
I’m not an art specialist. So, for a rough-and-ready contrast between these movements and the conventional styles that preceded them, let’s turn to the dictionary. We read that Impressionists “[sought] to capture …feeling[s] or experience[s] rather than to achieve accurate depiction[s].”[16]
And Surrealists “…sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind…” – with a special emphasis on the approximation or reproduction of dream states. For our purposes…
We’ll think about the Einsteinian dictum in an Impressionistic-Surrealist sense. We’re not aiming to exposit what a physicist would accept as an “accurate depiction.” We’re appreciating how contemporary, eclectic esoterics might appropriate relativity theory (or data from other branches of science – like quantum mechanics) to achieve an abstract, dream-like experience or “feeling.”
‘Induced Synchronicity’
Turn again to Lachman. Channeling Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, Lachman said, in Chaos Magic, rituals function as “induced synchronicit[ies].”[17] Chaos – founded by Peter James Carroll and Ray Sherwin – was inspired by British magus Edward Alexander “Aleister” Crowley, cosmic-horror pioneer Howard Phillips “H.P.” Lovecraft, & proto-Surrealist Austin Osman Spare.
Lachman also fit varieties of the “New Thought” movement into this milieu. Recall that Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking influenced 45th President (and, as of this writing, 47th President-elect) Donald John Trump, among numerous others.
Sometimes, the various currents (pragmatism, synchronicity, etc.) coalesce. A conspicuous example would be Australian self-help celebrity Rhonda Byrne (née Izon). Her best-selling 2006 book, The Secret, was arguably a repackaging of the claims of earlier writers such as (Oliver) Napoleon Hill, Vernon Linwood Howard, Prentice Mulford, Joseph Denis Murphy, and Wallace Delois Wattles. Byrne followed The Secret with two other titles: The Power and The Magic.
Byrne is, thus, remarkable for at least two reasons. Firstly, her work seems to give us a clear example of modern-postmodern spiritual pragmatism. The bulk of Byrne’s appeal lies in the prospect that disciples will learn how to reorder their lives for maximum preference satisfaction.
In The Power, Byrne wrote: “You are meant to have an amazing life! You are meant to have everything you love and desire. …You are meant to have all the money you need… You are meant to be living your dreams…”.[18] Etc., etc.
Secondly, Byrne presents her central principle – what occultist and New Thought writer William Walker Atkinson dubbed the “Law of Attraction,”[19] which asserts that your “…experience[s] …[are] a direct result of your thoughts” – against a backdrop of synchronicity. She writes: “There are no accidents or coincidences in life – everything is synchronicity…”[20] For Byrne: “If… you’re not alert, you miss the …synchronicities that are …directing …your life!”[21] However…
It’s more than guidance. Byrne quotes one Marie Diamond: “The Secret means that we are creators of our Universe, and that every wish …will manifest in our lives.”[22] In other words…
By recognizing that “thoughts are things” (Mulford) and that they have a mystical, causal power to shape your reality, you can bring about synchronicities. Howard called it “Mental Magic.”[23]
So… to Byrne, if “[y]ou’re reminiscing about a friend who moved away years ago, and then she arrives unexpectedly at your door”; or if “[y]ou can’t stop thinking about getting [a] phone call with [a] job offer, and [then] it comes the next week”; or even if “…you have a vision of a family member becoming sick, and then you hear that he has been taken to the hospital”;[24] in some unfathomable, yet powerful, way – all these events were created by your thoughts.
Now… the question that some people might ask is: Just how is this supposed to work?
Realize that, for much of her audience, it’s likely that this question doesn’t really matter all that much. That’s the legacy of immediatism, pragmatism, and the like. Just gimme! Who cares how? And… so what if it doesn’t work every time?! Practice makes perfect. Yakety-yak.
As Crowley once stated: “[N]one of us dismiss our servant science …every time the telephone gets out of order. The telephone people make no claim that it always works …Divination, with equal modesty, admits that it often goes wrong; but it works well enough…”.[25]
Obviously, this “as-long-as-it-works” attitude isn’t just relegated to readers of The Secret. Magical techniques are to the would-be magician what the telephone is to the would-be sales- person: merely tools of the trade. Spellcasters need not concern themselves with how the rituals work, any more than telemarketers need to understand the difference between the “tip” and the “ring” in old phone wiring, or the ins and outs of Code-Division-Multiple-Access cellular tech.
Closer to home, many people take their prescriptions just to feel better. If the treatments “work,” then – when it comes down to it – who cares what biology, chemistry, or psychology explains it?
Can It Be Explained?
But, let’s say you’re curiouser than the average American. Byrne’s theorists offer the following:
“Time is just an illusion. Einstein told us that. If this is the first time you have heard it, you may find it a hard concept to get your head around, because you see everything happening – one thing after the other. What quantum physicists and Einstein tell us is that everything is happening simultaneously. If you can understand that there is no time, and accept that concept, then you will see that whatever you want in the future already exists. If everything is happening at the one time [sic], then the parallel version of you with what you want already exists!”[26]
Let’s spend some time with this (no pun intended) and try to grasp the proposed explanation by sticking a toe (or two, or three…) into these – admittedly deep – philosophical waters.
2 Views of Time (in Philosophy)
Here’s a bundle of questions to start us off. Is the present moment “privileged”? To put it another way, is there something special about what is happening now? Relatedly, does time really flow or move? By way of answer to these questions, two philosophical camps have emerged.
The first camp holds a position that, following 19th-20th-c. British Idealist philosopher J. M. E. McTaggart, has been called the “A Theory of Time.”[27] In the A Theory, the present is privileged. Accordingly, one popular variety of the A Theory is – appropriately enough – called Presentism.
Strictly speaking, the A Theory and Presentism aren’t identical or synonymous. But, we’re just going to ignore this complication and continue on our merry way.
To the Presentist, what’s happening now is special. Special how? What’s happening now really exists. What happened in the past did exist – but it doesn’t exist any longer. So, for example, on the received view of paleontology, dinosaurs used to roam the earth – from the Triassic to the Cretaceous Periods, roughly 252 to 66 million years ago. Dinosaurs don’t roam the earth now. Though, contrarians like Charles Fort, or cryptozoologists like Loren Coleman may beg to differ.
Additionally, to the Presentist, what happens in the future will exist – but it doesn’t exist yet. Humans may someday have intergalactic spaceships and colonies sprinkled around the universe, Star-Trek style. But we don’t have that kind of technology now. Though, again, cynics like Stanley Kubrick or troglodytes like the legendary “Ned Ludd” may demur.
Our point is simply that, to the Presentist, “tense” – and let’s keep it simple and just speak about the familiar past, present, and future – tense is a genuine and objective feature of reality. So, the A Theory is sometimes also called the “Tensed Theory” of time.
Moreover, to an A Theorist, the passage of time is real. Events and things really are marching into the future, from the past, through the present. Or, if you like, future potentiality is becoming actual in the present, and fading into the past. But, from whichever direction you wish to view it, reality is in process on this view. And, as if we didn’t have enough vocabulary already, the A Theory may be called the “Process” or “Dynamic” view of time. But… we’ll stick to Presentism.
In contrast to the A Theory – still according to McTaggart’s nomenclature – is the “B Theory.” To B Theorists, the present moment is neither privileged nor special… in metaphysical terms. Tho, it’s important to note that what we mean by “metaphysics,” here, is the study of what exists.
For more on often confusing vocabulary words – like “metaphysics,” “occultism,” “spiritualism,” etc. – see “10 Words of Power.”
We’ll call this Presentist alternative “Eternalism,” after an important version of the B Theory. However, we have to attach a similar proviso as we did when introducing the former as a synonym for the A Theory: namely, Eternalism is not the only variety of the B Theory on offer.
That wrinkle aside, according to Eternalism, all moments of time – whether “past, present, or future” (quote, unquote) – have the same status, ontologically. According to Eternalism, “all events, no matter when they occur, are equally real.”[28]
You might get a grasp on this (admittedly tricky) idea by way of another tenet of Eternalism. To the Eternalist, space and time are relevantly similar in an important sense; namely, an object’s reality is unaffected by its location. For example, the Taj Mahal is in Agra, India. I’m not in Agra. So, the Taj Mahal isn’t spatially located where I am. From my standpoint, I could not truly say, “The Taj Mahal is here with me.” But, obviously, the fact that the Taj Mahal is not “here” doesn’t mean that the Taj Mahal doesn’t exist at all. It exists, all right – just over “there,” in India.
Similarly, brachiosaurus allegedly lived 161 million years ago. I didn't live 161 million years ago. Therefore, brachiosaurus isn’t temporally located when I am. So, I can’t say, “Brachiosaurus is with me now.” But, the Eternalist argues, the fact that there are no brachiosaurus “now” doesn’t mean that brachiosaurus doesn’t exist at all. It exists – back “then,” in the Late Jurassic Period.
To the Eternalist, “here” and “now” function only to identify a speaker’s location in space and time. The words have no implications for an object’s existence. To the Eternalist, then, it’s true to say that brachiosaurus exists – just as surely as the Taj Mahal – even though both are hard to detect. After all, we exist here and now; whereas, they exist there and then. …Get the picture?
Another way to say this is that, while the apparent passage of time is important to us, psycho- logically, that doesn’t tell us anything about the way the world is objectively, in itself. To the Eternalist, the passage of time is merely a feature of our subjective experience of the world.
“[T]ime, to the Eternalist, “is essentially tenseless.” Past, present, and future, merely reflect our ways of perceiving and talking about the world. If there were no human (or other sentient) observers, there would be no impression of flowing time or of tense.
By the way, the debate between Presentists and Eternalists is still ongoing. But, really: What’s to discuss? Isn’t it uncontroversial that Presentism is the common-sense view and that it comports with our experience of time? How could we ever have enough reason to displace it?
Enter Albert Einstein
Despite the presumption in favor of Presentism, Eternalism got a boost early in the 20th c. from relativistic physics. Still trying to keep things light and impressionistic, let’s just say the following.
Arguably, when German-Jewish theoretical physicist Albert Einstein formulated the Special Theory of Relativity in 1905, he didn’t initially take a position on the issue we’re concerned with.
However, soon after the publication of Special Relativity, Polish-Jewish mathematician Hermann Minkowski suggested that reality is four-dimensional. According to this idea, usually designated “Minkowski space,” reality has three spatial dimensions – height, length, and width – as well as one temporal dimension. In other words, for Minkowski, time is the fourth dimension. As an aside, four-dimensionality reverberates throughout the occult – not least in the “hypercube” (a.k.a. the tesseract) which appears in several Marvel Comics movies. So… Hold that thought.[29]
Picking back up, “[a]ccording to some philosophers and scientists, our ordinary conception of time …must be replaced with the space-time theory, according to which time is like space.”[30]
Perhaps the next obvious question is: Are we supposed to take Minkowski literally? You might be thinking: “Well …what other way could we take him?” And one possibility, going back to our discussion of pragmatism, is that we could try to understand “4D” talk, instrumentally.
Here’s an example. We sometimes hear claims such as: “‘The average American family has 2.4 children.’ [But o]bviously, …there is no family that has [precisely] 2.4 children. …[Therefore, you could say that] there is no such entity as the average American family… However, the construct of ‘the average American family’ …[could still be] useful …[, e.g,] for economists”[31] nonetheless.
Another illustration comes from the study of atoms. The “Bohr Model,” named after Danish physicist Niels Bohr, represents atoms as miniature solar systems. There is a sun-like nucleus in the center; electrons “orbit” it like planets. This has now been supplanted by representations deemed better informed by quantum mechanics. But, even though the Bohr model isn’t literally true, it still usefully introduces the basic subatomic particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons.
So… you could hold that what is now called “Einstein-Minkowski spacetime” is just a fiction: like the “average American family” or the “Bohr Model” of the atom. And at the same time, you could still maintain that it’s useful for physics. But, that’s not what Minkowski said. For his part, he “took… space-time ontologically: it was not merely a geometrical representation of the world of space and time as described by Einstein’s S[pecial]R[elativity]; rather it was the world.”[32]
Moreover, as soon as Einstein “encountered Minkowski’s …formulation of …[Special Relativity] …, he [himself also] became an outspoken realist concerning space-time…”.[33]
With Einstein onboard, Eternalism – the idea that the world really is a four-dimensional mashup of space and time – was (in some quarters) able to overcome the preference for Presentism.
One way to think about this combination – call it spacetime – is that it’s a gigantic, changeless aggregation of everything that (from our time-bound perspectives) has, does, or will ever exist.
In this picture, reality behaves like a single, “4-dimensional object”.[34] This object, sometimes called the “spacetime manifold,” is – accordingly – literally a collection of everything that exists.[35]
It’s on account of this that Eternalism is also sometimes called the “Block” view of spacetime.
‘Time Is an Illusion’?
Let’s go back to Rhonda Byrne. According to her, “Einstein told us”: “Time is just an illusion.”[36] Then she adds: “If you can understand that there is no time, …then you will see that whatever you want in the future already exists. If everything is happening at the one time [sic], then the parallel version of you with what you want already exists!”[37] Her summary is a bit puzzling.
As we have seen, if future circumstances exist, then this implies – or requires – an Eternalist view of time, according to which all times are real. After all, what “you want in the future” can’t “already exist” – strictly speaking – unless the future is “out there” somewhere in reality.
The thought is that, to give credence to this, you need only turn to Einstein, Minkowsi, and contemporary scientific developments like Relativity Theory. To Einstein and Minkowski, all times – and all places, for that matter – are sprawled across the complex, four-dimensional geometry we call spacetime. Objects, including future-you (allegedly with everything that present-you desires), are located somewhere within the spacetime “block.” So far, so good.
But, for Einstein and for philosophical Eternalists, time remains a real, objective component of the world – albeit one that must be redefined or restructured. After all, in their picture, future-you and present-you occupy two different, equally real space-time locations.
Both of these “yous” exist. Where each “you” exists is expressed by spatial coordinates. But where you are changes over time. Therefore, to find one of these “yous” within the block, we need to do more than just refer to a place. We need to refer to a time. Here’s an analogy.
Suppose that I found the long-sought-after secret to the treasure alleged to be buried on Oak Island, off the coast of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Suppose further that I wanted to share the treasure’s location with you, so that you could help me dig it up. It wouldn’t be enough for me to merely give you two coordinates – say, the latitude and longitude of the island. Anybody with access to Wikipedia can discover that the island lies at 44°30′49″N 64°17′38″W. Using that information, many treasure hunters have spent their lives excavating, turning up precisely nothing. The treasure isn’t on the surface; two coordinates aren’t enough to find it.
The actual location of the treasure – assuming there is one – would, ultimately, have to be specified in three dimensions to be useful. Specifically, we need to know its altitude or depth.
Similarly, if future-you, with all your goodies, exists already in the spacetime block, we would need four coordinates to locate you. The three dimensions of height, length, and width won’t cut it. To see where and when you future-you is, we need a fourth, time coordinate as well.[38] But…
Even if time is relegated to the fourth coordinate of a spacetime location, it’s hard to see how something so crucial can be dismissed as an “illusion.”[39]
“In the Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein determined that time is relative...”[40] Time is relative. Time isn’t an “illusion.”
Now, in one of his letters, Einstein did write that “the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”[41] In this, he seems to agree with the Eternalist. The illusion is the passage of time, rather than time per se. We experience time as if it were flowing, and think there’s a deep difference between past, present, and future. But, this is a feature of our psychology, not the world. In truth, all times are equally real – not equally illusory.
Yes, for the Eternalist, time is “static,” not dynamic. In fact, Eternalism is also called the “Stasis” view of time for this reason. But even static time – if it be such – is existing time. In short…
Neither relativity nor Eternalism seem to get you to the notion that time – in and of itself – “is an illusion.”
But, before we render our final judgment – and since we’ve come this far – there’s one more piece of data we should probably consider.
2 Views of Time (in Physics)
17th-18th-c. English alchemist, physicist, and polymath Sir Issac Newton was one of a handful of thinkers who have exerted an outsized influence on the modern world. For example, Thomas Jefferson,[42] considered Rosicrucian godfather and statesman Sir Francis “Bacon, [political philosopher John] Locke and Newton, …the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception.”[43] Jefferson further acknowledged the fruits of their intellectual labors “as having laid the foundations of …the Physical & Moral sciences…”.[44]
But Newton’s physics notably diverged from that which has been propounded in the 20th c. by relativity theorists. Namely, Newton was an absolutist or substantivalist about time and space.
“In the substantival …[view], space itself is a substance in which the objects of the universe exist and move.”[45] You could think of absolute space, in Newton’s sense, as an empty physical “container” within which physical objects reside.[46]
It’s possible to give “[a] similarly substantival description of time,”[47] in which time is a succession of “empty” moments serving as a kind of temporal container for events. In other words…
Newtonian absolutism, otherwise called “[s]ubstantivalism[,] is the thesis that space and time exist always and everywhere independently of physical material [i.e., matter] and its events.”[48]
The opposing view, called relationalism, arguably goes back to Aristotle, who thought that “there is no time apart from change”[49] and that time is simply “the measure of change.”[50] Relationalism thus denies that space or time have existence independently of physical events and objects.[51]
This is crucial. So, let’s bear down on it. One way to approach the distinction between absolute and relational space or time is via questions like: Would time exist even if nothing changed? Or: Would space or time exist even if there were no physical events or objects at all? If you’ve never considered these matters, it might be worth pausing just to “give it a think” for a moment.
“[R]elationists claim that time necessarily involves change, and …substantivalists say it does not. [On s]ubstantivalism[,] space and time provide a large, invisible, inert container within which matter exists and moves independently of the container. …Relationism …implies [that] space and time are not like this. It implies there is no container[;] so, if you take away matter’s motions, you take away time, and if you also take [a]way the matter itself, you take away space.”[52]
To put this last point differently: Relationism holds “that space is only a set of relationships among …physical material, and time is a set of relationships among … [physical] events…”.[53]
All this is of paramount importance for our topic. Therefore, let’s hear it once more, slightly rephrased: “a …relational description [of time is one] in which time simply is the changes in physical objects. ...[And space is nothing more than the] physical things [that] exist.”[54]
Once upon a time (see what I did there?) I traced a detailed examination of these sentiments to the 20th-21st-c. German-born, Jewish-American philosopher of science Adolf Grünbaum.[55]
Grünbaum’s 1963 tome, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time,[56] is dense. We won’t scrutinize it. But, I do wish to draw your attention to a few of its sentences. For example…
On pages 345-346, we read: “In opposition to the absolutistic conception of space and time ingredient in the Newtonian theory… Einstein espoused a conception of time (and space) which is relational by regarding them as systems of relations between physical events and things.”[57]
If you’re with me, you can perhaps see the pieces coming together – at least impressionistically – because Grünbaum is here expressing the distinction that we’ve just been laboring over. And, now… here’s part of Grünbaum’s next sentence.
“[T]ime relations are first constituted by the system of physical relations obtaining among events …”.[58] In case that’s not ringing any bells, Grünbaum recapitulates the idea on page 352. There we find him summarizing “…Einstein’s conceptual innovation regarding simultaneity” beginning with the following words: “The time relations among events having been assumed as first constituted by physical relations obtaining between them…”.[59]
Okay. Now that has to sound familiar? Right?! I hope so. Because it’s virtually identical to the quotation we find reproduced by Downard and Hoffman: “Time relations among events are assumed to be first constituted by the specific physical relations obtaining between them.”[60]
There you have it. Downard and Hoffman noticed – or supposed – that at least some contem- porary occultists have adopted philosophical Eternalism and a relational view of time, probably because those occultists believe or hope or wish that Einstein-Minkowski spacetime is true ontologically. And, because of this, said occultists have updated their instruction manuals and spellbooks with Relativity in mind. – at least… impressionistically or surrealistically, that is.
By the way… does relationalism provide the missing premises needed to conclude that “time is an illusion”? As we’ve seen, relationalism does hold that time can be “reduced” to relations among physical objects. So, if time can be eliminated as an absolute, stand-alone entity, then wouldn’t this be enough to make time an “illusion”?
I suppose that it depends on how high a standard you want to impose for something to count as “real.” As Noam Chomsky somewhere put it, “real” is frequently more of an honorific term than anything else. I don’t want to argue about the word.
Just bear in mind that, according to relationalism, space is likewise eliminated as an absolute, stand-alone entity. Therefore, we have equal grounds for saying “space is an illusion” as we do for saying similarly about time. Yet, although you’re free to take this route, people rarely do.
What’s It All Mean?
Just to be clear, by our lights – and from a philosophical / scientific-physical point of view – the jury’s still out on issues such as whether our world conforms to the A Theory of time or the B Theory; whether Presentism or Eternalism are the best representatives of these theories; and whether time is substantival or relational. None of these is “off the table,” academically.
Each of these views has its own prima facie merits and demerits. Presentism conforms nicely with our apparent, day-to-day experience; Eternalism has a robust cheering section in university Physics Departments. Without playing favorites, all we’ll say is that the pictures presented by each option are widely believed to be internally consistent, when they are carefully formulated.
At the same time, popular appropriations of these difficult ideas are not immune from going off the rails. In a few moments, we will get back to The Secret, and briefly register one or two concerns with some of Rhonda Byrne’s material. Before we do that, let’s make a few summary remarks about the Downard-Hoffman treatment of this admittedly difficult-to-understand picture.
For their parts, I doubt Shelby Downard or Mike Hoffman had the likes of Byrne – or her New Thought predecessors – specifically in mind (in the first place, anyway) when they quoted the Einsteinian time-relations adage. We need only look at the broader context in which it appears.
In Secret Societies…, Hoffman mentions the quotation in a section titled “Mystical Toponomy,”[61] where we read: “Mystical toponomy and alchemical cant language are part of a process which hinges on a marriage between action in time [or recorded history] and physical locations on the earth regarded as ‘places of power’ by the cryptocracy’s magical-geographical vision of the earth as a giant chess board, symbolized by the tessellated floor of Solomon’s Temple and the masonic lodge, and Alice’s vision of the world in Lewis Carroll's Wonderland ‘fantasy.’”[62]
The relativistic epigraph is likewise situated in King Kill 33,[63] where the “Mystical Toponomy” in view pertains to the JFK assassination. In that place, the authors “…chart a trail of symbolism associated with the 32nd degree [of parallel latitude] by means of [SynchroMystically important places such as] the Mason Road, Mason No El Bar, Tres Hermanas (3 Sisters), Shakespeare, Macbeth, MacBird, Johnson Mountain, Kennedy Mountain, Ruby Road and so on.”[64]
Let’s not get distracted by the flurry of detail, as fascinating as it is. For when we inspect the quotation itself in light of the supplied examples, we realize that what’s being asserted is quite remarkable. James Shelby Downard is to be credited with this breathtaking association. He was able to intuit a connexion between rarefied, ivory-tower debates on the cutting edge of the philosophy of physics, and pedestrian-seeming, ostensible irrelevancies like that there’s a little New Mexico town called “Truth or Consequences” lying along the 33°-degree of north latitude.
Stated succinctly, the deeply penetrating ideas, which have motivated untold, often illuminating symbol studies, might be distilled down to these. Firstly, the actors and locations injected into spectacular crimes (like the Kennedy assassination) really matter. And this is not just for the flat-footed reason that we wanna know Who done it?, Where?, and When? – as if we were guessing the combination for a cosmic game of Clue. Rather, the people and places constitute the physical objects used by these behind-the-scenes stage managers in their attempts to – as Hoffman puts it – bend time. (Hoffman elsewhere associates this effect with words like wicca, wicker, and Wikipedia. Well… maybe I threw that last one in there, myself.)
As a function of our magician-as-playwright dynamic, the physical objects and venues are props and backdrops, yes. But the addition of the broadly “Einsteinian,” Eternalist-Relationalist idea of time raises the stakes. Because, to a believer in a four-dimensionally structured spacetime, time relations literally reduce to the relations among physical objects. To put it differently, according to this application of (what’s being called) the Einsteinian dictum, spatiotemporality is nothing other than matter arranged a particular way. Alter the arrangement of matter, alter spacetime.
Mind you, we’re not saying that this “works.” But, we do suspect this (or something relevantly like it) to be the prevailing opinion among undercover esoterics within the beau monde. While Rhonda Byrne’s books may have solved her present-and-future problems with disappointment, frustration, and poverty – reportedly to the tune of some $300 million, according to Google – we’re interested in all those unsung self-styled poet-sorcerers whose even deeper pockets permit them to rearrange the globe (like their personal chess boards) for magical purposes.
Still, since Byrne’s published writings are both accessible and non-technical, let’s use her work (or her sources) to gesture toward directions in which this framework could be open to criticism.
Taking Stock
So, let’s think about “pop” New Ageism à la Rhonda Byrne. For all intents and purposes, Byrne is concerned with personal wish fulfillment. Say that present-you is feeling unfulfilled. Well, this is a problem no matter what view of time you hold, right? But Byrne seems to find the Eternalist picture somewhat helpful here. She wants you to think about reality, something like this. After all, she rightly observes – if Eternalism is true, then future-you (already) exists.
How does she know that, even given the resources of Eternalism, future-you isn’t as miserable (or even worse off) than present-you? This is where the “impressionistic” part arguably comes charging in. Here’s my best attempt to express her ideas charitably. Evidently…
Byrne wants you to suppose that, since future-you exists already, present-you can have full confidence that then “your” (future) fulfillment and happiness are inevitable – i.e., if future-you is situated, serene and content! At the same time, it seems Byrne believes that somehow your present acts of focused imagination and positive thinking make a difference to the future-you.[65]
Byrne appears to think – or, at least, assert – that present-you’s positivity results in a happy version of future-you (or, at any rate, a happ-ier version than you would get if present-you is in the doldrums). It even seems to some readers that present-you can somehow cash-in on any future bliss right now. Why is that again? Because… “everything’s simultaneous.” In this, Byrne seems to be saying that future-you’s happiness is (with enough optimism) available right now.
I think that this is close to the general conception she’s working with. And, on the face of it, there’s a bit of a chick-and-egg problem. In a few minutes, we’ll ask if Byrne’s hopeful beliefs are – in the final analysis – compatible with the Eternalist framework that she’s arguably wedded to.
‘Everything is Happening Simultaneously’
But first, let’s recall Gary Lachman’s aphorism that magic is (or can be thought of as) “induced synchronicity.” Google defines synchronicity in as “the simultaneous occurrence of events …”.
“Simultaneity,” of course, refers to events that “happen” or “occur” at the same time.[66]
Recall that, according to Byrne: “What quantum physicists and Einstein tell us is that everything is happening simultaneously.”[67] She proceeds: “If this is the first time you have heard …[this], you may find it a hard concept to get your head around, because you see everything happening – one thing after the other. …Einstein tell[s] us …that everything is happening simultaneously.”[68]
Let’s consider these three crucial words one at a time, starting with “happening.” In everyday speech, when something happens, we mean that unfolds across or over time. To put it slightly differently, if an apple “happens” to fall from a tree and clunk Isaac Newton on the head, then Newton goes from sitting peacefully to having an inspiring pain develop on his noggin. But…
For something like this to truly happen, in the ordinary sense, the passage of time must be real. If it’s is unreal, as Einstein and Eternalism hold, then – getting down to brass tacks – you might think that nothing “happens” (strictly so-called)… ever. Events just seem to happen. An analogy:
Imagine you work in an old-fashioned movie theater. You could pull out a canister of film and observe that each movie was recorded on a spool of celluloid. The spool consists of a series of frames, each of which displays a single, static image. To watch a movie, a film projector shines a light through each celluloid frame, onto a screen, as a motor advances the spool from one frame to the next. This setup gives the impression that onscreen images are moving and changing, even though the images are really motionless and fixed during the recording process.
If Eternalism is correct, then the whole spacetime manifold is as fixed and unchanging as the spool of film. Granted, somehow, human psychology is such that things appear to move – and the present moment “lights up” for us in a mysterious way.
But, as we’ve discussed, on Eternalism, these are all subjective matters. It’s our perspective on the world that makes it seem so. The world itself is – objectively – static and unmoving. After all, the spacetime manifold is a “block” of events that are – in their totality – a fait accompli.[69]
What we call “past” differs from what we call “present” and “future” only in terms of where (or when) it’s situated within the block. Their time coordinates differ (is all). Recall that Einstein called our belief that the past, present, and future differ in any fundamental respect a stubborn and persistent “illusion.” Sure, events in our lives are spread out over time. But none of them “happens” in the commonsense way.
Okay, so much for the word “happening.” Is Byrne correct to say that Einstein has “everything …happening simultaneously” in his conception of Relativity?
Evidently not. According to Einstein, “simultaneity” is relative to what’s called the observers’ reference frames.[70] Some events are “simultaneous” – for some observers, in some reference frames; other events aren’t. Moreover, different observers may have different reference frames.
The bottom line appears to be: No, not “everything” is happening simultaneously.[71] Worse still…
If everything were “happening simultaneously,” then literally all events would turn out to be synchronicities in a trivial sense. But, then, to riff on a line from the character “Syndrome” in Pixar’s 2004 animated film, The Incredibles: If everything is a synchronicity, then nothing is!
To put it another way, it would be nice to have a theory of synchronicity that preserves our intuition that there’s something special about these events. For example, it seems that they don’t always occur. So, when they do – the thought is – we ought to take note of them, treat them as somehow marvelous or even illuminating, etc. But, if synchronicities are partially defined as simultaneous events; and if – to Byrne – all events whatsoever are simultaneous; then all events whatsoever are also synchronicities. And that doesn’t seem special in the least.
If I’m umping, and it looks like Rhonda Byrne has swung and missed on all three words in her key phrase – “everything happens simultaneously” – then, like it or not, I have to call her “out.”
Does this mean that there’s nothing to the concept of synchronicity? If I thought that, I wouldn’t be making videos for this channel! No, I think it simply means that we need to search elsewhere than The Secret for an account of what synchronicity is. But are you really surprised about that?
‘Parallel version of You’?
In all honesty, if Rhonda Byrne’s work has given us an opportunity to think carefully about many ideas that are of interest to us (and it has!), then it – and she – deserves at least some credit.
And, truth be told, Byrne provided critical readers with much that may be thought-provoking.
Here’s one last example of that. She wrote: “If you …understand …there is no time, … then you will see that whatever you want in the future already exists. If everything is happening at the one time [sic], then the parallel version of you with what you want already exists!”[72]
In contemporary culture these days, there’s a lot of talk (and Marvel-movie dialogue) about things such as the so-called “multiverse,” “parallel universes,” a “world ensemble,” and the like.
Googling “define parallel version of you,” at the time of this writing, we find the following, AI-generated result. “A parallel version of you is a hypothetical concept that refers to another version of you that exists in a different universe. The idea is that there are other universes that exist alongside our own, and that in some of these universes, you may have made different decisions that led to a different life.”
The question of “parallel worlds” and, by extension, “parallel versions of you” within (some of) those worlds is another tangled knot. We won’t try to unravel it fully here.
Suffice it to say that I find it at least as difficult to be sympathetic to Byrne’s talk about “parallel yous,” as I did regarding her assertions about universal simultaneity. Frankly, I’m just not sure how to understand what she’s trying to say.
For example, maybe she means to talk about “parallel versions” of people in a sense similar to that offered by the late Australian philosopher David Kellogg Lewis. According to his “modal realism,” articulated in the book Plurality of Worlds, “[t]here are so many other [possible] worlds, …that absolutely every way that a world could possibly be is a way that some world is.” [73]
The problem for Byrne is that, for Lewis, “…there are no spatiotemporal or causal relations of any kind…” among possible worlds.[74] In other words, Lewisian worlds “are isolated. ...[Nothing that] happens at one world [can] cause anything to happen at another. Nor do they overlap.”[75]
So, put it colorfully. There are Lewisian worlds where I am richer than a Rockefeller. There are worlds where I’m living under a bridge. And there are all sorts of worlds in between. In fact, there are many, many more worlds where I have no resident “counterpart” at all.[76] But, for all this – no matter how hard I focus, however hopefully I imagine, regardless of how fervently I wish – no “parallel version of me” (in Lewis’s sense) has anything to do with me-in-this-world. Ever.
If this world isn’t a richer-than-a-Rockefeller world – for me – then my opulent Lewisian “twin” does me no good. (Unless we count the fact that his existence makes certain of my utterances true: such as when I say, “it is possible that I am rich.”[77])
Another false trail, from the standpoint of “positive thinking,” is 20th-c. American physicist Hugh Everett III’s idea of “Many Worlds.” Offered as an interpretation of quantum theory, the Many Worlds hypothesis was proposed in response to Werner Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle.”
Also known as “quantum indeterminacy,” Heisenberg’s concept has it that some subatomic events behave non-deterministically. For example, according to Heisenberg, particular facts about subatomic particles, such as their position and velocity, cannot be known together. When you measure one of these states precisely, the less precisely you can measure the other.
A pressing question in physics is: Is this indeterminacy metaphysical? – that is, does it pertain to the way the world itself works? Or is it epistemic? – that is, is it just a limit on what we know?
Without trudging further into this thicket, suffice it to say that Everett was trying to preserve the de-terminacy of the world. According to his Many Worlds thesis, when it comes to quantum events, every possible outcome actually occurs, thus eliminating the puzzle of why one outcome would occur but not another. But, clearly, not every outcome occurs in the observable world, leading Everett to suppose that quantum measurement causes parallel universes, or (the “many worlds”) to branch off from this world. In Everett’s understanding, our universe is continually splitting into innumerable permutations following every quantum event. Each copy realizes a different possible outcome. This produces a bloated ontology. But, to Everett, having countless worlds was better than saying that quantum events – in and of themselves – are indeterminate.
To be sure, there will be countless “yous” inhabiting the panoply of Everett’s many worlds. But, unfortunately, these multifarious worlds have no connexions with one another once they split.
And if you draw the short straw in some wave-function collapse, you’re S.O.L. So, lamentably, neither of these frameworks (Lewis’s or Everett’s) are especially fruitful for explaining the “law of attraction” in terms of philosophy or physics. Psychology is another matter.
However, there is at least one other sort of “parallel-version-of-you” talk that we should consider. And, yes, it takes us right back to earlier discussions of Eternalism, four-dimensionality, and the whole ball of wax. So, sorry to burst your bubble if you hoped this journey was over!
We have said a lot about Eternalism’s claim that all times are real. Just as “[o]bjects far away [from us] in space …are …just as real as things here on Earth[,] …[l]ikewise, objects far away in time are just as real as objects that exist now. Both past objects (e.g., dinosaurs) and future objects (human outposts on Mars, perhaps) exist, in addition to objects in the present.”[78]
However, there’s one other element of this picture – one that has been called “the core claim of four-dimensionalism.”[79] This is the notion of a temporal part.
To get a handle on this, start with parts that we’re familiar with. “Material objects take up space by having parts. My body occupies a certain region of space. Part of this region is occupied by my head, another by my torso; other parts of the region are occupied by my arms and legs. These …[various regions, considered individually] may be called my spatial parts…”.[80] And, taken together – setting aside the question of possible immaterial entities such as minds or souls – they constitute me – as you would encounter me at any given time. So far, so good?
Well… “The corresponding fact about time” – according to the Eternalist – “is that an object lasts over a stretch of time by having different parts located at the different times within that stretch. …These temporal parts are objects just as real as my spatial parts: my head, arms, and legs.”[81]
In this picture, then – over the entirety of her life – a “person …is the sum of all her temporal parts…”, just as – at any given time – she’s the sum of all her spatial parts.[82]
This means that, on Eternalism, future-you isn’t a “parallel version of you” – either in Lewis’s sense of being a possible way that you yourself could be or in Everett’s sense of being one of the untold inhabitants of one of the “many worlds” caused by quantum events.
Rather, future-you is merely one of your own temporal parts – the one that has time coordinates that are later-than all the earlier parts.
To grasp for a spatial analogy: Your head isn’t a “parallel version of your feet.” Your head is just the part of you that occupies the spatial location with the greatest altitude coordinate; whereas, your feet are the part of you with the least altitude (when you’re standing upright, of course).
Ordinarily, at any given time, when we talk about “your person,” we treat your head and feet as spatially distributed parts of one-and-the-same you. Similarly, if you want to adopt Eternalism, you should get comfortable talking about present-you and future-you as temporally distributed parts of one-and-the-same person: you – not a “parallel version.” Even worse, philosopher…
Adam Patrick “A. P.” Taylor “argues that four dimensionalism and the desire-satisfaction account of well-being are incompatible.”[83] Simply stated: “A desire-satisfaction theory of well-being claims that the satisfaction of one’s desires is what makes one’s life go well.”[84] We have been assuming that desire-satisfaction is a root motivation for much of Rhonda Byrne’s clientele.
Taylor invites you to suppose that, yes indeed, future-you has everything present-you desires. Even if present-you and future-you share the same desires, and future-you is well pleased with her situation, present-you will simply “not exist long enough to see [her] desires satisfied”.[85]
Remember: present-you and future-you are merely two of your temporal parts. They occupy two different regions of spacetime. Future-you’s triumphs have nothing to do with present-you.[86] In “4D”-ism, the region of spacetime present-you (tenselessly) occupies is unchanging. This is to say that present-you’s location in spacetime is unalterable. Given that present-you’s desires are unfulfilled, that’s the way present-you will remain, statically.
Taylor suggests “the four-dimensionalist… does better to reject the desire-satisfaction theory, while the defender of the desire-satisfaction theory does better to reject four-dimensionalism.”[87] Neither option bodes especially well for fans of The Secret. As to would-be time-wicking magi of a more globalist hue, we’ll have to revisit them later. – if the future isn’t an illusion, of course!
Let us know, in the comments, if any of this iss helpful. If you object to something – or have just plain had enough – let us know that as well. We’re open to viewer requests. And, please, don’t hesitate to propose topics for consideration. Left to ourselves, this is sometimes what you’ll get!
Appendix: Eternalism and Determinism
At one point, we stated that, on Eternalism: the “‘block’ of events …are – in their totality – a fait accompli.” Does this mean that the Eternalist is committed to “determinism,” or (roughly) the view that all events are inevitable? Not necessarily. It’s tricky.
For one thing, Eternalism and determinism seem to make different claims.
Textbook “[d]eterminism is the thesis that facts about the present plus the laws of nature entail the facts about the future…”.[88] On the other hand, Eternalism is a thesis to the effect that all times are equally real. Hence, it’s not obvious that they come down to the same things at all.
If Eternalism is true, it’s still an open question as to how the “early stages” of our lives are related to the “later stages.” The issue Eternalists are mainly concerned with isn’t whether earlier and later stages are or could be internally related to one another deterministically or indeterministically. Eternalists could arguably go either way on this.
Put colorfully, if determinism is true, then it’s not just the tautological que sera, sera, “whatever will be, will be.” Rather, on determinism, future outcomes will be what they must be: que sera, debe ser. (To be clear, though, we’re not arguing that determinism is true!)
Philosophical Eternalists, on the other hand, are concerned with the question of whether the present is different from the past or the future. They say that it isn’t. But, if Eternalism is true, then – determined or not – the later stages of our lives exist already. Whatever will be for us, already is – tenselessly, speaking.
By the way, while Einstein never clearly stated that time is “illusory,” he did expressly endorse determinism. According to Einstein’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, “Einstein was once asked …Do you believe that humans are free agents? …[H]e replied[,] ‘No, I am a determinist’…”.[89]
“Einstein …believed, as did [17th-c. Jewish-Dutch philosopher Baruch] Spinoza, that a person’s actions were just as determined as that of a billiard ball, planet, or star.”[90] Again, Einstein wrote: “Human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting are not free but are as causally bound as the stars in their motions.”[91] The point is: Einstein would likely have taken a dim view of The Secret.
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[1] James Shelby Downard and Michael A. Hoffman II, King Kill 33, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho: Independent History & Research, 1998, p. 11.
[2] Michael Hoffman, via email, Sept. 18, 2009.
[3] Downard and Hoffman, op. cit., p. 33.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Rosemary James, “List of Characters in Kennedy Assassination Probe: Investigation Fast-Moving Drama,” New Orleans States-Item, Apr. 8, 1967, [n.p.], <http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/G%20Disk/Garrison%20Jim/Garrison%20Jim%20Clips%20and%20Miscellaneous/Item%20011.pdf>.
[6] Lisa Pease, “Gordon Novel: Agent Against Garrison,” Probe, Jul.-Aug., 1998, p. 10, <http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files%20Original/G%20Disk/Garrison%20Jim/Garrison%20Jim%206-78ff/Item%2021.pdf>.
[7] Benjamin Péret, Death to Pigs, and Other Writings, Rachel Stella, et al., transl., Lincoln, Ne.: Univ. of Nebraska Press; London: Atlas Press, 1988, p. 198. He proceeds to say: “This [magic] is the flesh and blood of poetry.” <https://archive.org/details/deathtopigsother0000pere/>.
[8] W.F.C. Wigston, Francis Bacon Poet, Prophet, Philosopher versus Phantom Captain Shakespeare the Rosicrucian Mask, London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trübner, 1890.
[9] “Barbarous Names,” Thelemapedia, Aug. 7, 2005, <http://www.thelemapedia.org/index.php/Barbarous_Names>.
[10] Master Therion (Aleister Crowley), Paris: privately publ.; Lecram Press, 1929, p. 68.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] “Pragmatism,” IEP, <https://iep.utm.edu/pragmati/>. You might say pragmatists advance a metasemantic claim “…that the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it…”.
[14] “…Any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, saving labor; is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally.” Catherine Legg & Christopher Hookway, “Pragmatism,” Edward N. Zalta, ed., Stanford Encyclopedia of Phil., Summer 2021, <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/pragmatism/>; citing James, Pragmatism: A New Name for some Old Ways of Thinking, reprint ed., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1975, p. 34. James’s father (Henry, Sr.) was a disciple of Emanuel Swedenborg.
[15] Nikolas Schreck and Zeena Schreck, Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left Hand Path Sex Magic, [London?]:Creation Books, p. 119.
[16] Google: “define impressionism.”
[17] “Trickle-down occultism of the Alt-Right (The POTUS 45 Rises) by Gary Lachman,” watkinsbooks, YouTube, Aug. 24, 2018, <
>.
[18] Rhonda Byrne, The Power, New York: Atria Books; Simon & Schuster, 2010, p. 1.
[19] See Thought Vibration[:] Or, the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, Chicago: Library Shelf, 1908; archived at <https://books.google.com/books/about/Thought_Vibration.html?id=5GgMAAAAIAAJ>. Worldcat lists an earlier edition, Chicago: New Thought Publ. Co., 1906. However, firstly, I couldn’t verify this by (briefly) surveying Google Books and the Internet Archive. And, secondly, there’s conflicting information about whether Atkinson’s personal publishing enterprise – through which, I presume, he initially released the relevant title – was called “Advanced Thought Publ. Co.” or “New Thought Publ. Co.” However, Atkinson certainly appears to have contributed to a periodical with the latter name. See, e.g., <http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/new_thought_chicago/new_thought_v18_n8_nov_1909.pdf>.
[20] Byrne, The Power, pp. 226 and 238.
[21] Byrne, The Power, pp. 222-223.
[22] Rhonda Byrne, The Secret, electronic ed., New York: Atria Books; Hillsboro, Ore.: Beyond Words, 2016, [p. 128?]; archived at <https://books.google.com/books?id=MagHtB5NKVcC>.
[23] See Howard, Secrets of Mental Magic: How to Use Your Full Power of Mind, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1964; Wellingborough (U.K.): A. Thomas; Billing & Sons, 1978, <https://archive.org/details/secretsofmentalm0000vern> and <https://ia803200.us.archive.org/12/items/Vernon-Howard/Secrets%20of%20mental%20magic%20_%20how%20t%20-%20Howard%2C%20Vernon%20Linwood%2C%201918-.pdf>.
[24] Christopher F. Chabris and Daniel J. Simons, “Fight ‘The Power’,” New York Times, Sept. 24, 2010, <https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/books/review/Chabris-t.html>.
[25] Crowley, loc. cit., p. 172.
[26] Byrne, The Secret, loc. cit., (p. 62).
[27] He actually speaks of events ordered in an “A Series,” and contrasts that with events ordered according to a “B Series.” J. M. Ellis, McTaggart, “The Unreality of Time,” Mind, vol. 17, no. 4, 1908, pp. 457-474; archived at <https://philpapers.org/archive/MCTTUO.pdf>.
[28] Heather Dyke, “Time, Metaphysics of,” Routledge, 2011,
<https://doi.org/10.4324/9780415249126-N123-2> and <https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/time-metaphysics-of/v-2>.
[29] William Lane Craig indicates that Einstein’s original theorizing supported a “3+1”-dimensional ontology as opposed to a “4D” ontology. But, this difference lies beyond what we’ll be getting into, here. And, of course, Einstein expanded Special Relativity to include gravity. According to his General Theory of Relativity (published 1915), “…particularly massive objects warp the fabric of space-time.” Tillman, Bartels, and Dutfield, loc. cit. To put it another way: “Massive objects cause space-time to stretch.” Barb Mattson, “100 Years of General Relativity,” NASA, Nov. 25, 2015, <https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2015/11/25/100-years-of-general-relativity/>. Incidentally, according to the theory, this sort of “…distortion …manifests as [the force of] gravity…”. Tillman, Bartels, and Dutfield, loc. cit. This is all we’ll be saying about General Relativity, here.
[30] Earl Conee and Theodore Sider, Riddles of Existence, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005, pp. 47-48.
[31] Italics added. Daniel G. Shaw, The Philosopher's Quest, ch. 8, § 8, “Scientific Realism & Anti-Realism (Instrumentalism)”; PPSC PHI 1011, Colorado Community College, <https://pressbooks.ccconline.org/introtophilosophy/chapter/8-8-scientific-realism-and-anti-realism-instrumentalism-2/>. A related example is the neoclassical construct known as Homo economicus (“economic man”), which is an idealization of a human decision maker who, according to the idea, chooses rationally.
[32] William Lane Craig, “The Metaphysics of Special Relativity: Three Views,” William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, eds., Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity, London: Routledge, 2008, p. 13.
[33] Craig, op. cit., p. 12.
[34] Nola Taylor Tillman, Meghan Bartels, and Scott Dutfield, “What is the theory of general relativity?” Space.com, May 14, 2023, <https://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html>.
[35] Admittedly, the word “manifold” is tricky. Without getting too deep in the weeds, we’ll simply say it’s a imported from high-level geometry. Manifolds have to do with the equally obscure study of topology. “Topology is a branch of mathematics that studies the properties of objects that remain the same under continuous transformations, such as stretching, bending, or deforming without cutting or gluing. It focuses on the connection, continuity, and proximity… [among] points…”. “What Is Topology?” Worksheet Planet, n.d., <https://www.worksheetsplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/What-is-Topology.jpg>.
[36] Byrne, The Secret, loc. cit.
[37] Byrne, The Secret, loc. cit.
[38] In fact, the number of coordinates you need to specify a location in some space, s, tells you the dimensionality of s. If you need two coordinates, then s is two-dimensional. If three coordinates are required, then s is three-dimensional. So, for n coordinates, the space is n-dimensional.
[39] The temporal coordinate would seem to have the same ontological status as the three spatial ones.
[40] “A Matter of Time,” American Museum of Natural History, <https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/time/a-matter-of-time>.
[41] Tim Maudlin, “Einstein Didn’t Think Time Was an Illusion: Relativity Doesn’t Imply a Block Universe,” Nov. 28, 2022, <https://iai.tv/articles/tim-maudlin-einstein-didnt-think-time-was-an-illusion-auid-2317>. Emphasis supplied.
[42] Incidentally, Jefferson seems to have been one of America’s few Founding Fathers who held (something close to) authentically classical-liberal, democratic, and populist sentiments.
[43] Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Trumbull, Feb. 15. 1789; archived online at the Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/18.html>.
[44] Jefferson, loc. cit.
[45] Peter Kosso, Appearance and Reality, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998, pp. 34-35ff.
[46] Ibid.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Bradley Dowden, “Time,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d., <iep.utm.edu/time/>. “Substantivalism” is also known as substantialism or the substance view of space/time. It may also be referred to as the “Newtonian” conception.
[49] Qtd. by Dowden, ibid.; citing Aristotle, Physics, chapt. 11
[50] Qtd. by Dowden, ibid.; citing Aristotle, Physics, chapt. 12.
[51] “Relationalism” is also sometimes called relationism or the relational view of space/time. It might be called a “Leibnizian” view, after the 17th-18th-c. German rationalist philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
[52] Dowden, loc. cit.
[53] Ibid.
[54] Peter Kosso, Appearance and Reality, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998, pp. 34-35ff.
[55] Some years ago, I tracked the reference to Adolf Grünbaum, “Reply to Hilary Putnam’s ‘An Examination of Gruenbaum’s Philosophy of Geometry’,” Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky, eds., Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, vol 5, 1966-1968, p. 92. However, when I went to check the reference, and get screenshots, I couldn’t determine where I had come up with it. So, see the text body for an alternate citation.
[56] New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963; <https://archive.org/details/philosopicalprob0000unse/>.
[57] Grünbaum, op. cit., pp. 345-346.
[58] Grünbaum, op. cit., p. 346. His full sentence reads: “Since time relations are first constituted by the system of physical relations obtaining among events, the character of the temporal order will be determined by the physical attributes in virtue of which events will be held to sustain relations of ‘simultaneous with,’ ‘earlier than,’ or ‘later than.’” The last part gets to an aspect of the distance that we haven’t broached: i.e., is it sufficient to character events as “earlier than,” “later than,” or “simultaneous with” (what’s called the “B Series”) or do we need pastness, presentness, or futurity (A Series)?
[59] Grünbaum, op. cit., p. 352. He finishes his thought: “…these physical relations turned out to be such that topological simultaneity is not a uniquely obtaining relation and hence cannot serve, as it stands, as a metrical synchronization rule for clocks at the spatially separated points Pi and P2.” Ibid.
[60] Michael A. Hoffman II, Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho: Independent History & Research, 1992, p. 37.
[61] Also spelled toponymy.
[62] Hoffman, loc. cit.
[63] Downard and Hoffman, op. cit., p. 11.
[64] Ibid., p. 13.
[65] If these acts of imagination make no difference – and we’ll revisit this in a moment – then the best Byrne could say would perhaps be this. Future-you is already set in place. Future-you is either financially, psychologically, or relationally fulfilled or she isn’t. But since present-you can’t do anything about it one way or the other, present-you may as well take a deep breath and relax. After all, as Jesus himself told us, worrying’s not gonna help. If all Byrne were saying is present-you would be better off taking a deep breath, that would be one thing. Like I said, this is my exercise in being charitable.
[66] Note: in this context “happen” and “occur” have to be understood “as tenseless rather than present tense”. Dyke, loc. cit. In the Eternalist picture, the same applies to many uses of other words, such as “exists” and “is,” and takes some getting used to. For Presentists, remember, dinosaurs no longer exist at all, whether tensed or tenselessly. For Eternalists, it is true (now) to say “Dinosaurs exist – tenselessly.” But – pace cryptozoology – it’s still (and obviously) untrue to say “dinosaurs exist now” if by “exist now” we mean that they’re situated in the same subsection of the spacetime block that we are.
[67] Byrne, The Secret, loc. cit. On the face of it, to Byrne, any two events whatsoever – even ones separated in time – are possible synchronicities, because all events are already actual synchronicities! For all x, if x (is actual), then x is possible (∀x [x→◊x]). Cf. Robert E. Larsen, “Morris Cohen’s Principle of Polarity,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 20, no. 4, 1959, p. 591; JSTOR, <https://doi.org/10.2307/2707894> and <https://www.jstor.org/stable/2707894>. In modal logical systems such as B and S5, the related (stronger) Axiom-B holds that “If x, then necessarily-possibly x” (x→□◊x). But, this is arguably problematic for her. See the text body.
[68] Byrne, The Secret, loc. cit., (p. 62).
[69] See the Appendix: Eternalism and Determinism.
[70] We’ll simply say that a “reference frame” is an observer’s unique point of view. In actual applications of the theory, this frame would be mathematically specified.
[71] Whether or not two (spatially separated) events occur at the same time is not absolute. This is the “relativity of simultaneity,” and it should be contrasted against the Newtonian conception of “absolute simultaneity: [namely, that] …for any …event there is an objective …fact [of the matter] about which other events in other places take place ‘at the same time’.” Maudlin, loc. cit.
[72] Byrne, The Secret, loc. cit.
[73] Ibid.
[74] Jesús Mosterín, “Anthropic Explanations in Cosmology,” n.p., [2004?], p. 28; online at <https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1658/1/Anthropic_Explanations_in_Cosmology_.pdf>.
[75] David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, reissue ed., Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2001, p. 2.
[76] For Lewis, counterparts are objects in possible worlds that correspond to objects in the actual world in virtue of their being to each other what has come to be called the “counterpart relation.”
[77] Lewis analyzes such things roughly along the following lines. There is a world, w1, and I’m rich in w1.
[78] Conee and Sider, op. cit., p. 50.
[79] Ibid., p. 147.
[80] Ibid., p. 51.
[81] Ibid.
[82] Ibid., p. 49.
[83] A.P. Taylor, “The Frustrating Problem for Four-Dimensionalism,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 165, no. 3, Spet. 2013, pp. 1,097-1,115, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/42920204>.
[84] Donald W. Bruckner, “Quirky Desires and Well-Being,” Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy, vol. 10, no. 2, June 2016, <https://www.jesp.org/PDF/Quirky%20Desires%20and%20Well-Being.pdf>.
[85] Taylor, loc. cit.
[86] An Eternalist might think: Both your present and future parts are embedded inside your entire person, so, your entire person should count as “satisfied” so long as your ultimate temporal part is satisfied. If future-you gets the prize, your entire person counts as winning the race. Fine. That’s a semantic fact.
[87] Ibid.
[88] Natalja Deng, “What Is Temporal Ontology?” Philosophical Studies, vol. 175, 2018, pp. 793-807; online at <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11098-017-0893-6> and <https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0893-6>.
[89] Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008, p. 391.
[90] Ibid.
[91] Isaacson, loc. cit.; citing Einstein's statement to a Spinoza Society, 1932.