Without necessarily realizing it, we tend to move quite dynamically through space and time — at least much less unilaterally than we often give ourselves credit for.
While true that we’re not always cognizant of the subtle ways that the future works to inspire our present, nor the ways that the past informs our movement towards the future, we’ve developed the imaginative and calculative capacity to leverage past and future alike in critical ways that shape our personal and shared evolution.
Nevertheless, the process remains somewhat buried within the depths of our subliminal existence, not usually bubbling up to the forefront of our daily operative awareness.
It can be said that our movement through time is something of an automatic drift, predicated upon social constructs (linear progression models, templated milestone assemblies of school, career, retirement, etc.) with some conscious overlay of goal-setting and achieving blended in.
But if we were to switch off the autopilot with respect to the bigger picture at play regarding our movement through time — if we were to take the wheel and veer into the ways by which we could circumnavigate the potential that grows out of a more lucid connection between past, present and future, we’d begin to stumble into some wildly curious realizations regarding our true potential.
By drawing on the two distinct concepts presented below, we can begin to loosen ourselves from the templated assumptions of time - first by blending ourselves into the universal dynamism of reality (holomovement), and second by flipping the traditional idea of cause and effect on its head (retrocausality).
It’s not necessarily about whether the concepts below are correct or feasible; rather, it’s about using them to stretch our conscious perspectives open as far as possible — because its from this openness itself that answers, via direct experience, begin to emerge.
As Carl Jung once said:
“There is no linear evolution; there is only circumambulation of the self. Uniform development exists, at most, only at the beginning; later everything points towards the centre.”
Holomotions
Developed as an alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation, Bohm’s concept of holomovement is one of the focal points in his foray into quantum mechanics.
The holomovement concept plays on the inseparability of the universe, which is itself seen to be constantly in motion and continually unfolding.
Bohm believed holomovement to reflect the fundamental nature of reality, underlying all phenomena — that all waves, fields, and particles emanate from this underlying, interconnected flow.
Moreover, he suggested that the holomovement is non-local — that it’s not confined to any particular point in space or time. Instead, it’s present everywhere and everywhen — in all spaces at all times, with its effects measurable over vast physical or causal distances.
In truth, the theory doesn’t seem too different from certain other philosophical conceptualizations (Heraclitus’ River), or Eastern principles of spirituality (the Brahman), but from a perspective of quantum mechanics, it delineates the potential of matter and non-matter alike to maintain something of an integral connectivity, even if separated by large distances in space or time.
Think entanglement, but far beyond any one system.
Numerous minds have framed this notion in numerous ways, interestingly creating a convergence around the idea that the universe, much like ourselves, is dynamic and ever-evolving.
Whether we want to consider ourselves as distinct from, or a part of, the grand system around us, and however we decide to contextualize the true meaning of it (whether the universe operates with some kind of inherent intention or is just a brilliantly intricate assembly of evolving parts), there’s no denying that we’re all locked in this perpetual game of evolution.
That we’re but one organism amidst a backdrop of similarly evolving life that can’t necessarily be disentangled from an enigmatic whole.
To see things in such a way is to appreciate the powerful, albeit inexplicable, essence of our reality.
Retrocauses
A longtime concept in quantum physics, the idea of retrocausality suggests the possibility that future events hold a causally-consequential influence in the past.
In other words, contrary to the standard view of causality (whereby cause precedes effect) retrocausality premises that an effect can precede its cause.
While prima facie counter-intuitive, it doesn’t take much to pry the imagination open enough to understand the concept.
In the specific context of information flow, through which holomovement itself becomes a bit more vivid, some better sense can be made. If certain information (an effect) can accumulate in the right way, it can precede its correlative cause.
Use the invention of Morse code as an example.
Whereas traditional causality may assess its advent as a cause (needing a new system of transcontinental communication) preceding the effect (the creation of Morse code), retrocausality would consider the effect to be primary; hence, we could hypothetically interpret Morse code as having been invented by chance or curiosity as opposed to necessity, later allowing us to manifest its critical use as a global form of communication.
Poor examples aside, the point is that retrocausality demands that we interpret things by deviating from the status quo of the causal flow, to look both ways down what we too often presume to be a one way street.
Also worth noting is the fact that this is a very soft interpretation of retrocausality; the more intensive advocates of the theory would likely go as far as to argue that an action in one region of any given system could have effects that literally propagate backwards through time, influencing past events.
Regardless, its in such imaginative deviations — off the beaten path of conscious thought — that our real enterprising potential begins to emerge.
Retrocausal Holomovement
When we join both concepts together, we can see how holomovement and retrocausality are symbiotic, especially in how they can prompt us to reconceptualize our perspective of the bigger picture relating to time itself.
They force us to zoom out, and to momentarily allow us to escape the shackles of culturally or socially-imposed perceptions regarding the way by which our reality works.
They help us see that the effects of any given action can be felt throughout the entirety of a system (or the system), rather than just in a localized region, and they vivify the dynamic whole that ebbs and flows multiple ways through time, or multiple times through space.
If we were to leverage some kind of immediate benefit from our understanding of holomovement and retrocausality, it really wouldn’t take too much effort — the wealth of conscious advantage that springs from employing these concepts is relatively infinite.
Understanding the interconnectivity of all things (including time and our movement through past to future) amplifies our causal navigation through an environment that unfolds and grows with us, mitigating the instances of friction or undesired consequences.
If we deviate from the linear progression models of time and space, those that habitually serve to constrict our movements, perceptions and our effectuations alike, our potential grows infinitely into the unmeasurable horizons of personal capability.
Regarding time itself as something growing, rather than depleting, tends to slow it down. To see causality as something that doesn’t just flow one way under a setting sun creates an entire new spectrum of our capacity.
We see that we can create or influence a cause by living or manipulating the effect; our perspective is grounded in novel opportunities that stretch into a limitless destination point rather than grasping at fleeting opportunities that fade out like some depleting resource.
We can thus get around the normative social structures (say, those focused on resource acquisition above all else) or better appreciate religious frameworks that we choose to overlay onto our interface with reality.
Moving from point A to point A, rather than point Z, prompts us to get the most out of lived experience, allowing us to focus on quality rather than quantity as we realize that point Z, while ostensibly being the most distant from point A, is actually right next in the grand scheme of time.
We deepen our connection to history, appreciating it as an ongoing dialogue, more relevant today than ever before, while valuing the lessons of yesterday all the more.
In doing so, we better integrate future possibilities, knowing they’re perpetually interconnected with the past, fostering enhanced creativity and imaginative capability of our conscious movement through time.
All in all, it may prove difficult to breakdown the modes of thinking that we’ve become accustomed to, but the benefits of doing so will always vastly outweigh the costs; whether we’re considering them on a functional or existential plane of evaluation, nothing quite parallels the reification of our consciousness.