Time will explain
“Elizabeth! Very well. Time will explain.”
Is a quote from Jane Austen’s last novel Persuasion, and the phrase was a reference to the future by Anne Elliot, a young Englishwoman of 27 years, that felt she could determine nothing at present.
Austen wrote Persuasion in 1816 while she was very ill and ignoring the warning signs of her illness. The majority of biographers list her cause of death as Addison’s disease but Austen herself made light of her condition, describing it as “bile” and rheumatism. As her illness progressed, she experienced difficulty while walking and lacked energy; she died on 18 July 1817 at the age of 41.
While writing her last novel, her body was fighting against the time passing by, that was bringing her everyday closer to her end. Her chronological age (41 years old) was very different from her biological age which was indicating she was aging very fast. Back then at the age of 40 you were an old woman.
Anne Elliot — the 27 years old and still unmarried protagonist in Persuasion — was also fighting like Jane against time passing by. But while Jane was fighting against death, Anne was fighting against a social class system that considered a woman who did not find a husband while young could be terrifying, both in terms of her social reputation and her financial stability.
So, while two women in two completely different scenarios (Austen in our 4D space time reality and Anne in Austen’s brain — an organ full of multi-dimensional geometrical structures operating in as many as 11 dimensions) were both racing againt time passing by, they were both admitting that:
“Time will explain”.
What is “now”?
Two hundred years have passed since Jane and Anne have existed, and while we are all time travelling right now through the year 2021 “40 is the new 30" and “30 is the new 20".
Back then, even if these two women were considered too “old” according the societal standards, they were both very right when admitting that nothing could be determined at present (“now”), and only time (therefore future) will explain.
As a matter of fact, the world has indeed changed very much since Jane and Anne have lived, and it was only through their present (past for us) that a new future (present for us) has arrived.
But what is present or “now”?
Einstein believed that “now” was a human concept which was not meaningful in the mathematical description of the universe.
In fact, he said that the “now” worried him seriously.
He explained that the experience of the “now” means something special for people, something essentially different from the past and future, but that this important difference does not and cannot occur within physics. And since this experience couldn’t be grasped by science this seemed to him a matter of painful but inevitable resignation.
He wrote:…
“there is something essential about the “now” which is outside the realm of science”.
What he probably meant was:
“If the past is t=10 years ago from “now” and the future is t=10 years ahead from “now” in a symmetrical reality, what is then “now” in terms of time? Zero? A state of zero time?”
Try for a moment to imagine reality as a movie.
If the past is a frozen frame in this movie we call reality, and the future is another frozen frame in this movie, then “now” is probably what gives motion to the movie.
Is “now” a state of liquidity?
In fact, “now” is where action happens.
Is “now” a state of action or motion and therefore reality?
Probably “now” is what makes time passing by just being an illusion of continuity in a world of stillness and solidity and driven by consciousness.
“Now” is not time.
Try to imagine yourself on a boat this time, in the middle of the sea and imagine billions of dipoles of water embracing and enclosing your boat, like a hug.
Your boat isn’t moving, is still, motionless (let’s call this “time a” or past) and let’s call “frozen state a” all the billions of dipoles of water embracing your boat, plus the air and the sky around you.
Suddenly, a gentle wind blows from the sea onto the land, and your boat moves 1 length closer to the land and stops (let’s call this “time c” or future). In time c, all the billions of dipoles of water embracing your boat will form a new “frozen state c”.
But, in order for the boat to move from the “frozen state a” to the “frozen state c”, a gap in solidity (or a state of liquidity) appeared at time “now” allowing your boat to move.
To put it simply, “now” or this “state b” we call “present” is just a gigantic machine for time passing by. And this machine is made of animated stardust. And is consciousness itself that drives this illusion of continuity we call reality.
As a consequence, in this animation or illusion driven by consciousness, the “now” is not time to track on your watch, but “now” is where past and future coexist creating life.
And it gets even better, because when you sum all the “nows” of temporally liquidity at all “times b”, you get as a result reality itself!
Accordingly, reality itself is not time, it is the product of all time.
But what is consciousness?
Jessica and consciousness
Consciousness at its simplest is awareness of internal or external existence. That is, a person’s awareness or perception of something.
Despite centuries of analysis, definitions, explanations and debates by philosophers and scientists, consciousness remains puzzling and controversial, being “at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives”.
Consciousness is connected with the “state b”, the gigantic machine for time passing by. Without consciousness the boat would stay still in the above scenario. Therefore, consciousness is the observer and also the product of time, an animated stardust. Consciousness creates reality. And reality is consciousness.
Consciousness for Jane and Anne two hundreds years ago was not exactly the same like a modern’s woman consciousness, let’s call her Jessica.
Back then Jane and Anne knew that hey had to breathe, eat, drink, sleep, take care of themselves, fall in love and take care of others, but they knew and accepted that in order to survive, socially and economically, they needed to find a husband while in their early 20s.
Today Jessica knows that she has to breathe, eat, drink, sleep, take care of herself, fall in love and take care of others but she knows and accepts that in order to survive — socially and economically — she needs to find a good job and probably to get married in her early 30s or 40s. Jessica in fact has a chronological age of 40 but a biological age of 30.
But what has changed in the last 200 years?
A lot of things have changed, and probably all of them have affected our epigenetic footprint.
Epigenetics: when consciousness meets DNA
Epigenetics is the study of mechanisms “on top of” the classical mechanisms that affect gene expression. “Epi” comes from Greek, meaning “upon” or “over”.
Epigenetics looks at how genes are activated or suppressed not by changing the underlying DNA sequence, but by dynamic processes connected to our everyday choices and experiences. Some of these mechanisms include DNA methylation and histone modification, two processes that can be triggered by immediate environmental as well as experiential stimuli — reinforcing the idea that we are at least in part products of our own environment.
Usually mutations (that drive natural selection) occur randomly over time and they may be accelerated by environmental factors, but they typically occur very slowly. Meaning, if your great great great grandmother lived similar experiences to Jane’s and Anne’s, no mutation would have been possible to explain why modern women have become stronger while looking and feeling “younger” in their 40s.
In actual fact, epigenetics suggests in this case that what has happened in the bodies and souls of all women back in the 1800s or in the 1000s (suffering and adversity) was passed down on to their children. And as a result of an oppressive situation back then women have found “a way” to be stronger, independent and therefore physiologically better, when in their 40s.
Even so, Jane never had children so she couldn’t affect the epigenetic footprint of her offspring, nevertheless Jane had something else more powerful than epigenetics and genes. She had a “voice”.
A voice that through her books has inspired many more women for generations, eventually giving us Jessica, a strong and independent woman in her 40s convinced that she can have her first child at her late 40s…probably a dream for many women like Anne back in the 1800s.
As a matter of fact it was William Blake who said:
“What is now proved was once only imagined”.
Moreover, French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1 August 1744 — 18 December 1829) which predated Charles Darwin, was the first to propose that surrounding conditions can modify characteristics acquired during a person’s lifetime, and those characteristics can be passed on to the offspring — for example a giraffe constantly stretching its neck to reach the leaves at the top of a tree would result in an increased tendency toward long-necked offspring in future generations.
In other words, epigenetics affects the software of our reality (longer neck for a giraffe or “40s is the new 30s”, "reading many books makes your smarter"), while genetics affects our hardware (born a giraffe and not an elephant or born a woman and not a cat or born a genius).
Epigenetics, is in fact, the interface where the “mind over matter” becomes reality and consciousness reigns.
Accordingly, if an experience, an emotion, a dream, a book and a thought can change our future through epigenetics, that would imply that in this animated stardust reality, feelings, books, thoughts and words have the power not only to affect Jessica’s epigenetic footprint but also to affect the movement of a boat on a calm sea.
And that is something that the scientists all over the world haven’t learned yet how to factor in while analysing experiments.
But given enough time, energy and persistence even this dream will eventually become reality.
Thank you for reading 💙
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