I made mention earlier about the relativity of simultaneity. Take a minute to reflect on what that means: If two things happen at the same time according to one observer… but event “A” happens before event “B” according to a different observer… and event “B” happens before event “A” according to someone else… then all three people have experienced a different timeline, yet each is completely correct in their experience. This video touches on the idea briefly at around 2:20, and is a really good description of relativity and spacetime so worth a watch the whole way through. Admittedly, these descriptions apply to people travelling close to the speed of light relative to the events they’re observing, but they’re correct nonetheless: The sequence of time, the order of events, and cause and effect are all relative. For a far more eloquent discussion of this phenomenon, read the book The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli (or listen to the audiobook as I did — it’s narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch!) In it, Rovelli talks about the reasons we experience time, why it’s superfluous in physics calculations, and why it doesn’t even make sense at the microscopic or macroscopic level of reality.

Again, so what if time is just a limitation of our consciousness? What does this mean for the conception of ourselves in the universe? We’re pushing the limits of practical science here, what does it tell us about the human experience and how does it relate to the divine? Well, if the sequence of any two events isn’t absolute, then the sequence of all events isn’t absolute either. I’ll say it again to let it sink in: If someone, somewhere could observe a glass shattering before I drop it, then another observer, given the right circumstances, could also observe my death before my birth. As Einstein himself wrote to the family of his recently departed friend, Michele Besso, “Now he has departed this strange world a little ahead of me, that signifies nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” What?! *mind blown* Yes, if Time is an illusion… then death is too. Nothing is final because nothing is first.

Now, back to the divine. What’s another common feature amongst world-religions besides the altruism thing? Life after death. As I’ve posted previously, awareness of one’s own mortality is a great motivator in connecting to the divine. Coming to terms with the impermanence of life, the inevitability of death, and transcending death itself, is a feature of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, [insert your world religion here]. What if our perception of death is a limitation of our own time-bound consciousness and that the mystery of life after death is more of a mystery of the “after” part of the statement. Perhaps what comes after life is a question that doesn’t make sense. And what does it mean to “transcend” time or “overcome” death? Can someone really “rise above” something as seemingly permanent and unavoidable as death? Christianity addresses this question directly in the Easter story: Yes. Our understanding of the finality of death is incomplete. We view death from a certain vantage point, like a horse wearing blinders that won’t or can’t step of the linear trail of time. Or like one of the three blind men trying to determine what an elephant is like by touching only a leg, or a trunk, or a tusk, and yet being absolutely convinced of the superiority of one’s own limited experience. Are you detecting a recurring theme here? To experience the divine, one must “detach” from one’s ego, or from one’s viewpoint, or from one’s own self.