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Recently I was asked if you could physically change the past with space/time magic. The person specifically brought up a technique I mentioned in Space/Time Magic, where you can influence your past self via a meditation technique in order to guide and influence that past self.
Throughout my life I’ve had moments where I’ve encountered a future version of myself that gave me advice or pushed me in a specific direction or warned me away from a direction I might have gone down. I know when I’ve followed that advice/push or pull in a specific direction its generally worked out in my favor, but it does create an intriguing question.
Was I interacting with my future self or with a version of my future self, or what?
I’ll be the first to tell you that so far as I know you can’t physically changed the past. I’ve never physically time traveled to the past or hopped into a DeLorean and gotten a sports almanac or hopped in to a Tardis. Nor have I traveled back into the past in any other way that seemed remotely physical
Yet nonetheless I’ve had moments where I’ve experienced a sense of myself, older, who’s taken it upon himself to show up in dreams or meditations and either give me a push toward a certain direction or provide some type of instruction that has shown up as a spiritual transmission of sorts. I’ve also purposely initiated workings where I connected with a younger version of myself and provided him information and directions.
The question is who am I interacting with? Am I interacting with the future version of myself that I am becoming or am I interacting with a version of myself that made some different choices and knows those outcomes, and so points me in a different direction? I’m inclined to think its the latter case, because it is possible that there are multiple versions of ourselves and that under the right circumstances those versions could interact with us, via something like dreams or meditation when we’re in an altered state of consciousness.
That version wouldn’t be changing his past, but would be providing a change to my version of the life of Taylor Ellwood.
Alternately perhaps it is truly my future self and that future self, with the wisdom of a life lived, is choosing to look back and make some suggestions so that changes can be made.
If that’s the case, how is this change happening if for that future self its the past? And what is changing for that future self.
This is where our notions of linear time run smack into non-linear time. In either scenario what we have to recognize is that our notions of linear time set everything up with a distinct path forward. You have a sequence of past, present, and future. One moment leads into the next and never is that moment revisited save through remembrance.
Non-linear time on the other hand offers a different perspective. Past, present, and future aren’t delineated in the same way. They inform each other, explore each other and change each other. The past and future are just other moments of the present that a person slides into.
The question then is what changes and do we notice that change in the everyday life of linear reality?
This is a sticky question to answer because when you throw non-linear time and space into the mix there is no conveniently easy answer. Yet nonetheless while I can point to moments where I felt a sense of self come through and say, “Go here and do this or don’t do that,” what I can’t point is the alternative, because that alternative hasn’t happened or if it did happened, it happened to a different me. So has something changed? Maybe, but if so its a subtle change, something experienced subjectively that nonetheless has an effect on your life.
And what about me and where I am at? Having done some work with my past self, providing him instructions and direction, I can tell you that something may have changed in my life as a result, but I can’t point to something specific that tells me what changed. I don’t have objective evidence that a physical change occurred. I only have the subjective experience and as a result this is why I can’t say that the past has physically changed. Maybe it did but I can’t be entirely sure it did. All I know is that I influenced the path of my life in some way and as a result I’m where I’m at, but what changed…I provided myself suggestions and he followed them. If he hadn’t, something else would have happened.
It’s not terribly specific or measurable. It’s probability and when you deal with probabilities, you’re dealing with non-linear time and space, where nothing is convenient and everything is possible. Nonetheless the question still remains, “Did I truly change my past?”
You changed a past…but is it yours or another version of you? There’s only the subjective experience, the feeling of change and difference and what you make of it.
