The relation of pneuma to time can only be played with speculatively. This however does not mean that reasonable speculations cannot be made, and even if they are speculative they may have merit as ideas to be experienced if nothing else.

Difficult as it is to unpick, it is necessarily true that time is an accretion of pneuma. That is to say, since it is a concept like any other, this must be the case. There is a vector, or maybe several vectors that have the time concept applied to them. This sense of movement and change accompanied by regular patterns of lengthening and shortening days, altering seasons, decay, birth. These are the overlapping vector regions that we call time. For us, it goes in one direction, or at least for the consciously aware parts of ourselves. As Bergson recognised, it has different natures, it has an experiential qualitative dimension in which it can drag or quicken and it has a seemingly objective nature in which we can demonstrate its measurable nature by means of time pieces.

As time has gone by the latter version has become more and more accepted as the only time, and Bergon’s time becomes more like an interesting thought, an epiphenomenal time that we can recognise but know isn’t ‘real’. The pneuminous accretive model suggests a feedback system in which the accretion employed feeds back onto th vector to make it ‘more like the accretion’ in some way. This direction in which this is the case could now reasonably be identified as sideways (see the previous post on sideways perspectives).

So time is an accretion, but part of its vector structure is (as stated) the sense of change. There is a conceptual (accretive) parade in front of us as we move around, an endless series of conceptually understood beings litter the place. Internally (in the mind, another accretion) it is, if not similar, also accretively littered. The internal dialogue, for most people, constantly pours over various ideas, scenarios, worries.

An extension of this observation is that since time is an accretion, a background accretion for this parade of accretions then there is, in a sense, a way to stop it. To not be too crazy about it, I would have to concede that, barring possible extreme spiritual practices that I could only hypothesise about and have no particular evidence to suppose exist, such a notion would not alter reality in the sense of the absolute cessation of time. However I do find cogent the possiblity that whilst the vector field is indubitably changing, the engagement we call time could in some sense be severed.

This would in its most basic sense be meditation, but a meditation that did not focus on any rhythmical pattern, breath or otherwise that tied it to the forward facing time accretion. Such an absolute stillness, with an absence of intruding accretions, coupled with a re-perception of external reality that removed its comprehending concepts (successfully bracketed them off) would essentially form an absence of temporal perception (the removal of the time accretion). This removal would in turn remove the feedback, at least in the region of the individuals accretive connections. There would be no time. Of course the nagging sense that the body would continue to be forward facing persists. It’s a primary manifestation, however there is a secondary manifestation that presents an uncertainty as to how much ontological effect one might achieve by this action. If there is any ontological interaction then it seems to follow that lesser versions of such a practce might also precipitate lesser versions of reduced temporality.

So whilst internal dialogue stopping practices might fail at being as extreme as the one described above, any silence of the mind, removes accretive flow, disconnects us from it, and in a sense places us slightly outside of time (in a way that we should not feel is necessarily simply epiphenomenal). This fits quite well with pretty much all occult/esoteric systems, as they always encourage the cessation of the internal dialogue to achieve anything. Contemplating again the notion of sideways, we might hypothesise that, the removal of internal dialogue that directs the flow of the being forwards, allows it to face sideways. Sideways being the direction in which plant and other beings, often considered not conscious in our sense, direct their awareness. This direction may actually also be a kind of time (in the sense that there might be moving change within it), just time as we do not understand it, orthogonal or diagonal to ours. Certainly sideways has access to our time; this is speculatively, the direction from which synchroncity emits. Thought in this way, whilst Bergson’s duree, is still within forwards facing time, it could be considered to accept a certain wobble, and tendency that takes the being closer to the sideways perspective. From this perspective it would certainly achieve ontological parity with chronological time.