What did Einstein mean when he said time is an illusion?
Albert Einstein once wrote: People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Time, in other words, he said, is an illusion. Many physicists since have shared this view, that true reality is timeless.
Reality is not really real -something else is actually the case and what is presented and perceived is a version of the truth or a down right lie and we do nt really know this is happening even as it happens so we are being fooled by something or even our own minds to think what is is what it is as is and not otherwise ...
Whoever he was and whatever his argument about “the changes we perceive in the world are illusions”, I know the name of the philosopher who opposed such position: Heraclitus (550 B.C.), who conversely argued that: -permanence is an illusion, change alone is real.
Of course the world is an illusion! We see only a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is divided into colours that exist only in our brains. We hear only a limited range of vibrations, onto which we impose meanings the vibrations do not themselves contain.
According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn't correspond to physical reality. Indeed, as Rovelli argues in The Order of Time, much more is illusory, including Isaac Newton's picture of a universally ticking clock.
Physics > Space and Time
According to Einstein , you need to describe where you are not only in three-dimensional space — length, width and height — but also in time. Time is the fourth dimension. So to know where you are, you have to know what time it is.
It is a fact of neuroscience that everything we experience is a figment of our imagination. Although our sensations feel accurate and truthful, they do not necessarily reproduce the physical reality of the outside world.
a theory that explains the perception of a variety of visual illusions as visual distortions induced by the emotional state of the observer. [ Theodor Lipps (1851–1914), German philosopher and psychologist]
Perhaps the best real-life example of a perceptual illusion is the Moon illusion. When the Moon is at the horizon, it appears to be much larger than it does when it is high in the sky. Yet when the Moon is photographed at various points across the sky, all the images on the negatives are the same size.
Albert Einstein once quipped, "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." The famous scientist might have added that the illusion of reality shifts over time. According to a new Brandeis University study, age influences how we perceive the future.
Can reality be an illusion?
The further quantum physicists peer into the nature of reality, the more evidence they are finding that everything is energy at the most fundamental levels. Reality is merely an illusion, although a very persistent one. What else can we do in the face of what scientists have discovered about reality? It's unbelievable!
When Buddha says “All is illusion,” he isn't saying that nothing is real. He's saying that your mind's projections onto reality are illusions. He's saying that the elements in the universe that form every physical thing we see—solid, liquid, gas—if they're taken down to a subatomic level, they don't exist.

“Life is an illusion a dream; a bubble; a shadow… Nothing is permanent. Nothing is worthy of anger or dispute. Nothing…” ~ The Buddha.
A new theory now suggests that the accelerating expansion of the universe is merely an illusion, akin to a mirage in the desert. In 1929, cosmologists discovered that the universe is expanding — that space-time, the fabric of the cosmos, is stretching.
In short, space-time would contain the entire history of reality, with each past, present or future event occupying a clearly determined place in it, from the very beginning and for ever. The past would therefore still exist, just as the future already exists, but somewhere other than where we are now present.
The concept of the multiverse stems from the big bang theory — Albert Einstein's once controversial, but now widely accepted, idea that the universe instantaneously expanded from a tiny point called a singularity.
In the tenth and final dimension, we arrive at the point in which everything possible and imaginable is covered. Beyond this, nothing can be imagined by us lowly mortals, which makes it the natural limitation of what we can conceive in terms of dimensions.
We are actually four dimensional. We are comprised of 4 distinct but integrated parts. Three of which are related to our physical experience – the body, heart and mind.
In five or more dimensions, only three regular polytopes exist. In five dimensions, they are: The 5-simplex of the simplex family, {3,3,3,3}, with 6 vertices, 15 edges, 20 faces (each an equilateral triangle), 15 cells (each a regular tetrahedron), and 6 hypercells (each a 5-cell).
New research done by scientists at the University of Aberdeen and the University of California, Berkeley reveals that human vision is up to 15 seconds behind real time, and we function on a “previously unknown visual illusion.” Essentially this delay could be the reason our vision doesn't make us dizzy or nauseated.
Can your brain tell the difference between reality and imagination?
To put it simply, their brains can't tell the difference between what is reality and what is imagined. Scientific studies back this up. One study in particular, took two groups of individuals and asked one to play a specific set of keys on the piano and the other to imagine playing a set of keys.
Colour is not a physical property of an object - it is a sensation, just like smell or taste. Colour is generated only when light of a particular wavelength falls onto the retina of the eye and specialized sensory cells generate a nerve impulse, which is routed to the brain where it is perceived as being colour.
Illusionism is a metaphysical theory about free will first propounded by professor Saul Smilansky of the University of Haifa. Although there exists a theory of consciousness bearing the same name (illusionism), it is important to note that the two theories are concerned with different subjects.
Locations in space and time, hence, have no identity and can be said to exist only as mathematical conveniences. Quantum theory suggests that locality is an illusion, a byproduct of the decoherence that occurs between quantum waves so that nonlocal effects are damped while local effects are reinforced.
Epicharmus and Protagorus invented optical illusions in 450 B.C.
“The greatest illusion in this world is the illusion of separation.” – Albert Einstein.
As poet Miguel de Unamuno said, “love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion.” By definition, illusions are mismatches between our perception and physical reality. Therefore, it may be possible to say love is a completely subjective or unique experience for each and every individual.
The space-time connection
According to Rovelli, time emerges in the thermodynamic context, but it is an illusion born of our incomplete knowledge; it is not something that exists objectively. “Time is a derived concept, it is not something fundamental,” Rovelli summarises to OpenMind.
- Meditate. ...
- Make a list of all the limiting beliefs you hold on to, which prevent you from living life in fullness. ...
- Become the witness periodically throughout the day; observe your thoughts, your emotions, and your actions. ...
- Observe your breath.
Illusion cannot exist independently of reality. Imagination—making up images—does not construct illusion alone. Rather, illusion is also a phenomenon involving our perception of reality, whether it is a “true” representation of that reality or not.
What is the paradox of reality?
Reality cannot exist. At least not any reasonable reality. A reasonable reality must satisfy some basic assumptions such as causality: the idea that the past can influence events in the future, but not the other way around.
Quote by Sigmund Freud: “Religion is an illusion and it derives its stre...”
illusion, hallucination, delusion refer to false perceptions or ideas. An illusion is a false mental image produced by misinterpretation of things that actually exist: A mirage is an illusion produced by reflection of light against the sky.
No one created God. God got created as the universe grew and changes. God is the cumulative energy of the universe.
The term has its roots in Genesis 1:27, wherein "God created man in his own image. . ." This scriptural passage does not mean that God is in human form, but rather, that humans are in the image of God in their moral, spiritual, and intellectual nature.
Christ as Image
A uniquely Christian perspective on the image of God is that Jesus Christ is the fullest and most complete example of a human in God's image. Hebrews 1 refers to him as "the very image of his substance" and Colossians reveals Jesus as "the image of the invisible God".
The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.
The daily experience of the self is so familiar, and yet the brain science shows that this sense of the self is an illusion. Psychologist Susan Blackmore makes the point that the word 'illusion' does not mean that it does not exist — rather, an illusion is not what it seems.
Reality is seen, ultimately, in Buddhism as a form of 'projection', resulting from the fruition (vipaka) of karmic seeds (sankharas). The precise nature of this 'illusion' that is the phenomenal universe is debated among different schools.
The Soul Illusion is the consequence of failing to appreciate the difference between the objective world and our perception of that world —that is, going beyond the adaptive convenience of acting as if our representations of reality were valid and believing that we see things as they really are.
Can there be two universe?
Our universe is but one in an unimaginably massive ocean of universes called … the multiverse. If that concept isn't enough to get your head around, physics describes different kinds of multiverse. The easiest one to comprehend is called the cosmological multiverse.
One of the many implications of Einstein's special relativity work is that time moves relative to the observer. An object in motion experiences time dilation, meaning that when an object is moving very fast it experiences time more slowly than when it is at rest.
Locations in space and time, hence, have no identity and can be said to exist only as mathematical conveniences. Quantum theory suggests that locality is an illusion, a byproduct of the decoherence that occurs between quantum waves so that nonlocal effects are damped while local effects are reinforced.
I begin the discussion by offering the following three laws: ▸ The laws of physics are identical in all non-accelerating (that is, inertial) frames. ▸ The vacuum speed of light, c, is the same for all inertial frames. ▸ The total energy E of a body of mass m and momentum p is given by E=√m2c4+p2c2.
Einstein proposed that time travel into the past could be achieved through an Einstein-Rosen bridge, a type of wormhole. Wormholes are theoretical areas of spacetime that are warped in a way that connects two distant points in space.
The world as we know it has three dimensions of space—length, width and depth—and one dimension of time. But there's the mind-bending possibility that many more dimensions exist out there. According to string theory, one of the leading physics model of the last half century, the universe operates with 10 dimensions.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." ~ Albert Einstein Surface Level Meaning : Don't take life too seriously. Deeper meaning : Understand the Yogic concept of "Maya". The world around you is an illusion or a simulation. Because an illusion is an illusion.
There's no time without space
In short, the time you experience depends on your velocity through space as the observer. This works as outlined through Einstein's special relativity, a theory of how speed impacts mass, time, and space.