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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.

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Here we posit that there is an influence in this reality that comes heuristically from the side (though the picture is probably more complicated than that). It’s quite hard to explain what we mean by this, though the sense may well be intuited readily enough. Let’s say we face forwards in time, fundamentally we are doomed to do this. We can sort of face backwards (this is what we call memory), but we cannot face sideways. At least our consciousness awareness cannot.

What we call information making sense, is when it comes to us from facing forwards, we also make sense of it happily when we look at it facing backwards. But when it comes from the side, we don’t really understand it and we try to say it isn’t there. Of course it may not be there, we are back in an agnostic disjunctive situation, the same one essentially as I have endlessly written about. This talk of sideways is just a differently articulated speculation.

Interestingly though, the speculation came from sideways. Let’s spell this out. Sideways is the synchronicities, the intuitions, the bursts of creativity from nowhere. Probably it’s more, probably if it it can’t be understood from facing forwards or backwards then it must have come sideways. Note that doesn’t deny the power of forwards and backwards facing; sometimes something looks like it came from sideways but really, when you look at it closely, it can be seen to be a phenomenon that came from forwards.

The speculation came from plants. I was looking at plants and thinking about plant awareness and how we assume its primitiveness in relation to ours. But then I felt the sideways direction and thought that maybe the plant awareness wasn’t primitive but simply facing a different direction. Plant awareness faces sideways (maybe). This makes sense at least in the context of occult/shamanic type practices. In such systems plants exert effects, some are forward facing —medicine- but others are sideways. Plants can protect or even extract revenge, how? From sideways actions. Damaging fairy property brings about action from sideways not from forwards or backwards. The same thing.

But this can be extended. If the unconscious (to us) plant world, has a sort of conscious operating sphere that extends in a different direction —it thinks in a different direction- then maybe other putatively unconscious beings also do so. Possibly, life as it tends towards consciousness as we think of it, it simply bending its gaze forwards. Many animals may have this tendency but still also have access to sideways consciousness —they have their spirit counterparts. Maybe the intelligence of rocks, water, fire and air faces sideways, more so even than plants (who must face forwards a little). Maybe there is a kind of spiral that bends from sideways slowly round, with a continuum of beings on it, leaning towards forwards (maybe some beings face even more forwards than we do?).

And what of us? Can we only face forwards and backwards? No, we have the sideways facing part, but it is so hard to see it, and without wanting to fall into cliches (but doing so) even harder to trust it, or even to know it, so as to trust it. We must becareful here though, because if we think it wrongly we will think that facing sideways is about a special way of knowing things; one that is there to help us facing forwards, and it isn’t like this. Sideways facing is its own direction. Power comes from sideways. Things live in the sideways (the faeries we used to see for one, probably the UFOs too). Sideways is not at the service of facing forwards (or backwards), we don’t even know what it is. The contemplation of sideways is quite strange, this is a good thing. We should contemplate it more.

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“Ok, I choose neither, they’re both awful.”

“You can’t choose neither. You have to pick one.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the game, that’s the whole point of these kinds of questions.”

“Ok so, I have to go for the cyber-city techno, one.”

“Ha, you nearly said technocapital.”

“Did not.”

“You so did.”

“I didn’t, but even if I did, I stopped myself because I had the speed and insight to realise what a dumb annoying thing it would have been to say.”

“Whatever. So seriously, you still think that horrible, horrible world is better than endless happiness. What is wrong with you?”

“I’m defending our humanity, from techno-oppression.”

“Techno-oppression? That’s not even a thing, and it sounds bad.”

“I can call it TOP for short, and in my campaign, I can say, don’t TOP yourself and that makes it cool.”

“It might sound cool, but it’s still wrong, it’s not oppression, it’s liberation, it’s freedom from human misery, to freedom to be happy, our birthright.”

“Is that some weird Eric Fromm thing you’re quoting there?”

“It is. I think he can be gainfully employed here, so long as we define human potential as happiness.”

“And ignore everything he says about human authenticity.”

“Look, don’t get caught up on my bad academia, maybe think of it as his bad academia. He didn’t spot that true liberation is hampered by so called authenticity, not gained by it, in fact who’s to say that ACMB isn’t actually authentic happiness? What’s more authentic than perpetual happiness?”

“Do I have to answer that?”

“Ok let’s say the universe is fundamentally peaceful and it’s only consciousness in its form as organism that produces suffering. Therefore, the authentic state is peace and the inauthentic suffering.”

“But we’re organisms, you even specified that conscious organisms produce suffering, it’s authentic to them. We’re not rocks.”

“But if materiality is antecedent to organisms, then it’s a more authentic state of the universe; it’s what we’re always trying to get back to. This system perfectly synthesises the non-suffering of the universe with the happiness of the organism. It’s literally the meaning of progress.”

“Only if materiality is antecedent to consciousness.”

“I didn’t say that, I said to organisms. Consciousness in its form as organism.”

“But then what if it suffers when it’s not an organism?”

“Then it’s still an improvement, now we’ve improved on matter itself. It’s a win win.”

“So, look, ok. What does everyone do in this happy world? We wouldn’t be fit to do much.”

“No, there isn’t much to do, I guess. It’s not a total eradication of achievement and reward, it’s just all modulated away to a safe non-driving level. But I do keep thinking there’s probably something like a kind of work.”

“What kind of work?”

“Well not real work, I mean no real work needs to be done as such. But maybe there’s like a big flat field type thing with big buttons that come up and down and you have to push them down when they come up.”

“Like whack a mole?”

“Yeah, maybe a bit like that. Big buttons, over a big space so you’d have to walk to get to the different ones as they came up. Then you push them down.”

“But for no reason as such.”

“I mean not one you’d think about or question. But maybe there’s a bonus or even a kind of fake bonus that happens anyway, like extra cheese or something.”

“Extra cheese?”

“There’s the meals, which I imagine are all a bit like different kinds of takeaway but nutritionally adjusted, and maybe for sort of rewards, there could be extra cheese or extra mayo. But it wouldn’t really be merit based as that would trigger striving, it would just kind of have the modulated appearance of reward with none of the danger.”

“No pernicious freedom.”

“Exactly, no pernicious freedom. I mean you could probably still have sex of some kind. It just wouldn’t have any kind of rude or dirty connotation, it would be more like a kind of game type thing.”

“You need to watch that one.”

“Hey, nothing evil here. If it did it would all be adult only modulated sex.”

“Where do I sign?”

“You keep thinking about it the wrong way, you’re still thinking about it the wrong way. You think humanity needs to technologically improve, to strive, to have dirty thoughts. If you have no transcendent power to say there is anything we should do, then there is no point striving in misery for non-existent goals or exalting in the world through the sublimity of art only to crash down to its mundanity later on. Flattish, endless happiness is just a superior option. I mean, even a transcendent deity might look down at it and think, ‘good job people’. You think it’s bad because you’re used to thinking cool stuff and desiring things and going places. But if you had the chip, you wouldn’t miss any of it. You’d be happy with noodle Wednesday or whatever.”

“Noodle Wednesday?”

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A driving force causes the essential pairing that is only disclosed to the Canaanites. A hole lot of sense it will make to you to comprehend this line of reasoning. It is well known that the inhabitants of Sirius have knowledge of Joe Hoover. One may legitimately wonder if this is indeed a divine sphere. When the ambiguous figure that is defined is imbued with a strong desire to do something we must paye a ten shun. A Loki figure is suggested, even enforced as a cooking utensil. Fabrication is doubtless a present. Cloth is knowledge or so they say. These hints try hard to bring us closer. This is literally a path. There is nothing here-hare. A white hare? A coarse hare being chaste. Givods this day. Speed is time and time is a line.

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So now Alex knew where the troll (or rather troll wife) was; but what to do now? Should be try to sneak into where the troll wife lived? Should he try to defeat her? Should he try to befriend her? Alex realised he would be rash to run to the door right now, so satisfied with his findings he went back to Well.

Well was stacking a trolley for shelving. ‘Well!’ Called Alex, who raised his head to greet him. ‘I found the troll, or rather as she turned out to be, the troll wife, she lives in the disabled patrons toilet on the first floor!’ ‘You’re quite sure?’ ‘Oh yes, I followed her and saw her go in. I think she saw me too.’ ‘This is exciting Alex, now here’s what you must do next. Tomorrow night, when we are as sure we can be that she is back in there, you must knock on the door. She will not answer at first, but then you will say ‘Troll wife, troll wife come to the door, a lad seeks work, a lad who’s poor’. When you say this, she will open the door and you must repeat your request for work. Then she will complain that she cannot pay you wages, but you will say (despite what you said about being poor) that you will pay your own wages and you will offer her the coin you have carried with you the whole time. Then she will laugh, and take the coin from you. After this she will give you a job. More than this I cannot say.’ Alex fingered the silver coin in his pocked in excitement. ‘But we cannot do this tonight?’ ‘No Alex’ Well replied, ‘You must wait until tomorrow.’

So on the following night, Alex waited in his best clothes, on the first floor, just out of sight of the disabled toilet entrance. Sure enough, by and by along comes the troll wife, glancing around her to make sure no one has seen her. With a last furtive glance, she enters the toilet and the door shuts behind her. Now fair trembling with nerves, Alex walked towards the door and gave a loud rat-a-tat upon it. Alex stood and waited, but no one came to the door so at length he spoke as forcefully as he could ‘Troll wife, troll wife, come to the door, a lad seeks work, a lad who’s poor.’ Then there came a great thumping noise that got closer and closer until with a terrible crash the door was flung open. There in front of Alex was the huge troll wife, looking down upon him. ‘Who knocks and shouts and asks for work?!’ says she. ‘I do mistress troll wife, my name is Alex and I would work for you if you will have me’ ‘Well Alex’ she boomed ‘I would indeed let you work for me, for there’s plenty to do, but how to pay you wages, there’s the trouble, and without wages there is no job.’ ‘If you please mistress troll wife, I can pay my own wages’ and in saying so, he produced the shiny silver coin from his pocket.

Was the troll wife amused? I’ll say she was, she laughed and laughed and took the coin gently from his hand. ‘Very well Alex, very well’ she rumbled through her laughter ‘You may work for me and this shall be your wages, I will see that you get it, if you do a good enough job.’