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Time Travel Of Consciousness?

rasputin

Devoted Cultist
Joined
May 6, 2009
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116
Ok, this is more a stream of thoughts than an actual question but...I would love to be able to travel back in time to when I was a teenager. These were some of the happiest times of my life and I have a lot of nostalgia and think about these years often. However, when one thinks about time travel, it poses so many more questions than just the practicalities of actually going back in time because what I am really seeking is to live an earlier experience all over again as a novel experience, however, if one were to be able to do this, then they would not know they traveled back in time as they would have no memories of experience of the passing of years.

So the conundrum is, that time travel (in my case to the past) is desired because I would like to a) experience my youth all over again but b) make changes, however, it is impossible to do b) without knowledge of the present. You cannot experience both the innocence and wonder of an original experience as if it were the first time but also have the necessary memories from your future self to be able to change your destiny.

Also, from the physical aspect - if you travel back in time, does your consciousness move to a younger physical self or is time travel literally physical transportation of your current physical self into a earlier setting in which everyone and everything around you is in the past? In which case, where is the younger "you"? Surely, therefore, time travel to the past could actually be done via consciousness/manipulation of reality (if you believe time is a field and not a forward moving path as Einstein did) rather than moving physical particles (your current self) through space (which is what most time travel theories focus on).
 
Also, from the physical aspect - if you travel back in time, does your consciousness move to a younger physical self or is time travel literally physical transportation of your current physical self into a earlier setting in which everyone and everything around you is in the past? In which case, where is the younger "you"? Surely, therefore, time travel to the past could actually be done via consciousness/manipulation of reality (if you believe time is a field and not a forward moving path as Einstein did) rather than moving physical particles (your current self) through space (which is what most time travel theories focus on).
There's a new age cult called the Damanhurians who believe they can time travel to the past in this manner.
 
There's a new age cult called the Damanhurians who believe they can time travel to the past in this manner.
I thought time travel was a plane through which one could morph....as an out of body experience? A dimensional thing
 
I thought time travel was a plane through which one could morph....as an out of body experience? A dimensional thing
Other than that is it not teleportation?
......I will now leave quietly
 
I would love to be able to travel back in time to when I was a teenager. These were some of the happiest times of my life and I have a lot of nostalgia and think about these years often. .
Yep me too, especially as the number of years behind me increasingly outstrips those in front... I guess as you relive parts of the past, your mind is experiencing a bit of time travel on some level. Don't let it spoil the present though!
 
Unfortunately, I think all of our memories from our teen years are just the highlights reel. Looking back, it was a time filled with new discoveries, friendships, relationships and experiences. But it was also filled with the day-to-day nonsense of being a teenager which we have blocked out. Hours and hours of waiting at cold bus stops just to mention one. Imagine how mind numbingly boring and frustrating it would be to travel back into your teen body with your current mind.

Sure, it would be great to be filled with youth and optimism and to have all of those firsts again but imagine having to spend all your time chatting and interacting with teenagers. Jesus.
 
Imagine how mind numbingly boring and frustrating it would be to travel back into your teen body with your current mind.

Oh but the power! Imagine the energy of yoof but with the deviousness and experience and wisdom of age. Imagine what could you achieve in such a situation!

;)
 
Oh but the power! Imagine the energy of yoof but with the deviousness and experience and wisdom of age. Imagine what could you achieve in such a situation!

;)

I can almost picture you steepling your fingers together as you swivel in your leather chair.
 
Oh but the power! Imagine the energy of yoof but with the deviousness and experience and wisdom of age. Imagine what could you achieve in such a situation!

;)
Reading your post ...I'm struck with suspicion that at least one of my teenage friends was a time traveller....they knew too much then...as now.
 
Reading your post ...I'm struck with suspicion that at least one of my teenage friends was a time traveller....they knew too much then...as now.
Yes - one I came across at school, suspiciously went from an obnoxious character to being created, among other stuff, a Lord. Either he knew too much or the one is a prerequisite for the other..
 
I thought time travel was a plane through which one could morph....as an out of body experience? A dimensional thing
The Damanhurians (purportedly) are able to project themselves back in time into the body of someone living in a past era, thereby seeing through that person's eyes. They claim to have done this as far back as neolithic times.
 
How can you tell the difference between someone who believes they can time travel their consciousness and someone who actually can?
 
How can you tell the difference between someone who believes they can time travel their consciousness and someone who actually can?
Find out if they have a capacity for self-delusion? I dunno.
 
How can you tell the difference between someone who believes they can time travel their consciousness and someone who actually can?

Depends if you class memories as time travel and whether time is also an illusion and what we consider to be reality. Remember Einstein said that time is like a field, rather than a road heading in one direction. Perhaps the human mind only has the capability (at the moment) to see "time" in a certain way?
 
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Depends if you class memories as time travel and whether time is also an illusion and what we consider to be reality. Remember Einstein said that time is like a field, rather than a road heading in one direction. Perhaps the human mind only has the capability (at the moment) to see "time" in a certain way?
Perhaps someone will make a film about that idea and call it "Arrival".
 
Unfortunately, I think all of our memories from our teen years are just the highlights reel.
.

I'm fairly sure mine could be summed up as one of those 70's and 80's Public Information films.

pifs-main.jpg
 
I'm fairly sure mine could be summed up as one of those 70's and 80's Public Information films.

pifs-main.jpg
Unfortunately, I think all of our memories from our teen years are just the highlights reel. Looking back, it was a time filled with new discoveries, friendships, relationships and experiences. But it was also filled with the day-to-day nonsense of being a teenager which we have blocked out. Hours and hours of waiting at cold bus stops just to mention one. Imagine how mind numbingly boring and frustrating it would be to travel back into your teen body with your current mind.

Sure, it would be great to be filled with youth and optimism and to have all of those firsts again but imagine having to spend all your time chatting and interacting with teenagers. Jesus.

I wonder what it would be like to live life Benjamin Button style. Probably would only work if everyone else did the same.
 
Back when I was in college, I started writing a novella about an old college professor who invents a machine that would allow a person to view other times. The principle was that, by default, the brain was wired to view only the present. The machine would calculate the arrangement of matter and energy for other moments in time, and then input this mathematical distribution into the brain, thus enabling the person to become conscious in that other time. The unforeseen side-effect was that the machine worked too well and actually deposited the person physically into the other time. The uptake is that the professor convinces one of his graduate students to take the machine back to the time of Christ. Somewhere, about fifty pages in, I got sidetracked and never went back to finish writing the story.

During this period, I did a lot of thinking about the nature of time and how it would function as a dimension. By our own observations, time seems linear in nature. The question is, does time have persistence - does a moment still exist even when it moves from our perception of the present into the past? To make time travel work at all, those moments would have to co-exist. That would make time like a phonograph record on which you can drop the needle at any point, but which only makes sense when played in a single, forward direction. It also occurred to me that, if this were true, every moment is and always has been perfect and complete. A time traveller could visit that moment, but, because the moment has always existed, any action or inaction he takes has already been figured into what that moment has always been. The conclusion is that you cannot go back and change time because anything you do in that moment would have already been accounted for and, in fact, has always been a part of it.

If all this is true, it is good news for the time traveller in that nothing he does in the past would impact the timeline because his actions have always been part of the timeline.
 
Your intended novella sounds rather close to Gore Vidal's "Live From Golgotha", published in 1993. I can't quite recall the time travel mechanism in the book but it involves computer technology allowing people to see into the past , and specifically involves "going" to the time of Christ to record the crucifixion as a sure fire ratings winner...
 
Your intended novella sounds rather close to Gore Vidal's "Live From Golgotha", published in 1993. I can't quite recall the time travel mechanism in the book but it involves computer technology allowing people to see into the past , and specifically involves "going" to the time of Christ to record the crucifixion as a sure fire ratings winner...

Going back to the time of Christ is a VERY common theme in time-travel sci-fi.
"Crucifixion Variations" by Lawrence Person, which I read quite recently, also covers pretty much that same ground.
 
I started writing mine maybe in 1975 or 76. I hammered it out on an ancient Underwood manual typewriter which my mother picked out of the trash at the railroad company where she worked. My intention was to make Christ the son of the machine's inventor. He had used the original prototype of the machine to escape a house fire. His father then assumed that his son had died in the blaze. I think I came to the realization that I didn't have the background to write convincingly about ancient Jewish culture. I also couldn't figure out an appropriate ending.
 
I started writing mine maybe in 1975 or 76. I hammered it out on an ancient Underwood manual typewriter which my mother picked out of the trash at the railroad company where she worked. My intention was to make Christ the son of the machine's inventor. He had used the original prototype of the machine to escape a house fire. His father then assumed that his son had died in the blaze. I think I came to the realization that I didn't have the background to write convincingly about ancient Jewish culture. I also couldn't figure out an appropriate ending.

Sounds like a promising story!
 
I started writing mine maybe in 1975 or 76. I hammered it out on an ancient Underwood manual typewriter which my mother picked out of the trash at the railroad company where she worked. My intention was to make Christ the son of the machine's inventor. He had used the original prototype of the machine to escape a house fire. His father then assumed that his son had died in the blaze. I think I came to the realization that I didn't have the background to write convincingly about ancient Jewish culture. I also couldn't figure out an appropriate ending.

Behold the man by Michael Moorcock has his protagonist travel back to the time of Jesus, a pretty good read I won't spoil it, but........
 
but imagine having to spend all your time chatting and interacting with teenagers. Jesus.
lol
It was bad enough back then. My 'golden' memories are punctuated with a lot of fisticuffs in the back seats of aussie V8s. We tended to squabble given the booze and drugs ... and the fact we were teenage arseheads. heh
 
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