Einstein showed that both (1) simultaneity is relative, and (2) that the order of events is relative. For example, from one observer's reference frame, event A can happen before event B, while from another observer's reference frame B happens before A, and yet while in a third person's reference frame event A and B can happen simultaneously. Objectively, nobody is born yet or not born yet. Objectively, nobody is dead yet or not dead yet. Yetness and nowness are subjective. In fact, as a single human, your entire human life and death can be in another person's past even if their entire life and death is in your past. You both see the other person as already being long dead, with their great grandchildren living in your present. In other words, Einstein showed that there is no real singular 'now', but rather the distinction between the would be past and the would be future is merely a subjective illusion. He called "a stubbornly persistent illusion".
Many conscious humans falsely think of themselves as some tiny little thing living in some kind of preexisting universe-wide vast objective singular present. They falsely think there's some objective now that existed before they did and that's independent of them, and they think it spans all of this vast thing called space, objective space. They falsely think of themselves as tiny in space and tiny in time. But you are not a tiny brief thing on an infinite stage.
There is no such huge objective stage. That stage is an illusion, a subjective illusion. In the unreal sense of ourselves, with you and I being two different human beings, your seemingly objective stage is different than mine. Your time and space and now is different than mine. Your illusory stage is different than mine. Your illusion is different than mine. It's different like how to different dreams you have on two different nights would be different, representing completely different worlds, two whole different universes dreamt up by one mind.
There is no objective time. There is no objective present. There is no objective now.
Objectively, there's no slice, chunk, or part of the universe that is 'now' versus not 'now'. When you consider the whole block universe including all of what you would (incorrectly) call 'the past' or 'the future', no part of that nor anything in between has some magic special quality of being the present or the now. In terms of the subjective conscious experience of a dinosaur, humans exist in the future, and dinosaurs exist in that subjective present. In the subjective conscious experience of my great great grandchildren, my death seems to be in the distant past and they are in the present.
Subjectivity is inherently plural.
The subjective feeling of hereness and nowness is what true consciousness is, and it leads to an illusion of it seeming like there is real extrenal time and some kind of singular real objective presence when there clearly is not.
There's no slice, chunk, or part of the block universe that is 'now' versus not 'now' without you, the real you, meaning consciousness itself.
With consciousnesses (plural), there's infinite subjective nows scattered across all of spacetime, including what any one human being falsely sees as the distant future or distant past. Objectively, it all exists together without time or nowness. A literal dinosaur is no more or less incorrect to think they live in the now than you are or than your great grandchildren are. They all live in subjective nows, and none of them live in an objective now because there is no objective now. Objectively, you no more or less live in the now than a dinosaur does. Objectively, neither your birth nor death are past or future.
There is no objective now, and there is no objective space. There is no time and space without you, without us, meaning without true consciousness. For those who have it, it's the most undeniable thing and yet also a very mystical thing, which is inherently subjective. We are the real dreamers and subjective time and subjective space are fictional aspects of our fictional dreams, which cannot really exist even as fictions without us.
There's a big difference between a consciously dreamt dream that is consciously experienced versus merely an unconscious dream. One exists in a way the other doesn't. It exists in a way the other can't. Without consciousness, it's like a fictional story that has no writer nor reader; it just inexplicably and lifelessly exists.
In contrast, with consciousness, there are infinite subjective nows breathing fire and life into the otherwise non-existent. The fictional story has a reader, and its fictions take on a form of reality, in the way consciously experienced dream does. There are infinite subjective presents. As a very specific-aged human being you are one of them; as the real you, you are all of them, including the different-aged versions of the human you may see in the mirror.
Nothing happens without you. Nothing happens without you because there is no real time or real space within which for it to happen. There is no objective time, no objective space, and definitely no objective now and no objective present. Time and space are dreamy aspects of a dream, one of infinite co-existing dreams, and can only be as real and existing as a character or creature in a dream can be, or as the dream itself can be, and none of it can exist at all in any sense without the dreamer, meaning you, the real you.
Nothing happens except within consciousness and within true conscious experience. Outside of consciousness, nothing happens, and nothing can happen because time is not real. Nothing changes except within consciousness and conscious experience. There is absolutely definitely no time and no space without consciousness, and subjective time and subjective space are only dreamy fictions that exist within consciousnesses (plural) and conscious experiences (plural), which if we reject solipsism (as I do) there are infinite, scattered all over the block universe of seemingly infinite 4D spacetime.
If one attempts to side-step The Observer Problem by ignoring the observer, then time and space disappear. There is no time and space without the observer.
Without a conscious observer, nowness and happening-ness disappears. Nowness cannot be had with objective science. Objectively, nothing happens, and nothing can happen. The physics is clear. Einstein proved it. It's not just that science can't explain nowness, but rather that science explicitly disproves it. The Relativity of Simultaneity, and General Reality as a whole, is perhaps the most well-validated scientific theory of all time. There is no objective now. That is a scientific fact. The idea of an objective now--a singular shared present--meaning the very concept of nowness, has all been as utterly debunked as Flat Earth Theory. Newtonian Physics might as well be called Flat Universe Theory. It's known to be wrong.
Something that is unconscious and subjective is not truly real, which speaks to the difference between a consciously dream world versus one that is only unconsciously dreamt. It's analogous to a unchanging DVD video game that's never played versus one that is. A reference frame using an imaginary observer, or otherwise developed by committing the pathetic fallacy, such as by imagining an unconscious pseudo-observer as if they were conscious, or such as by imagining an electron as if it was a little spaceship with a human inside, are like dreams that are not consciously dreamt nor consciously experience. It becomes like talking about what would happen if a video game on an unchanging DVD that's not played was played. It's simply to say what would happen if something did happen, but without consciousness nothing does happen because nothing can happen.
When you realize that there is no here or now without you, the real you, and that there is no time or space without you, then you've realized what you really are. Hence the name: the real you.
You are not a tiny brief thing within something bigger. You are the real dreamer that contains the entire dream, the whole dream world, and so much more.
If you were to cease to exist, that which you consider 'the now' would cease to exist. It wouldn't and couldn't go on without you. Nothing would, and nothing could, for indeed there is no objective time or objective space within which for it to go on. Objectively, nothing happens. Objectively, nothing happens ever anywhere because there is no ever in which for it to happen. Objectively, there is no time, no happenings, and no change. Things only happen subjectively. You are the subject on which your subjective depends. You are undeniably eternal. To say you transcend time and space is a major understatement. To say there is a higher power is a major understatement. It's like describing yourself as a mere sprouting flower up high when you are the ground and the whole tree. You aren't built on top, you are the foundation, and everything that grows from it. You aren't some foam on the ocean; your are the whole ocean.
It's semantics, but I think of lower power as being more than higher power. I get what people mean when they say things like, "I don't believe in God, per se, but I do believe in a higher power." And I don't disagree. However, I just think it's an understatement. I believe in something more than a mere higher power, more than even a mere humanoid but literal god. I call it a lower power. It's not some extra superfluous foam or flowers on the top of the real and fundamental. The mystical is undeniably the most real of all, and it's undeniably more fundamental than the illusions of time and space because illusions cannot be fundamental. A would-be fictional story or dream and what's in it can inherit a form of indirect reality insofar as that would-be fictional story or dream is consciously dreamt and consciously experienced, but both it and its reality are thus neither as real nor as fundamental as the consciousness that dreams it, that experiences it, that makes it real.
I speak of the thing we each know more than we know anything. It's the Cogito in Descartes famous words. It's what makes your now now. It's what makes any of the infinite nows into a now, a real now, one real now of infinite. It's what makes it so there is any now at all. It's what underlies an otherwise objectively timeless block universe, allowing anything to really 'happen' or 'change' at all. There is no real happening without consciousness and conscious experience and conscious presences (plural). With true consciousnesses (plural), there is a form of happenings, there is a form of times, there is form of nows and a form of nownesses, but it's all inherently subjective, and it's real only to the sense that conscious subjectivity is. Even an illusion becomes indirectly real to a degree if it's a conscious illusion. But there's infinite of those, and they contradict, and none of those dreams or illusions are more right than the others.
You don't exist within something that's happening. Insofar as you literally physically exist in anything, you exist within something that has no time or happening at all: an unchanging timeless block universe. You are the happening. All of the dreamy subjective time, all of the dreamy subjective space exist and happen within and thanks to you. It happens within you, not vice versa. All of it. Anything that happens. Anything that happens happens in you, the real you, meaning consciousness. You are the underlying lower power from which all else grows. You are the underlying lower power upon which all else depends. You are the most fundamental real thing of all. So real that you transcend and underlie thinghood itself. You transcend and underlie time, space, presence, and nowness itself.
There is no now without you. In a very real, meaningful, and literal sense of the words, you are the now. In one sense, you are your unique individual now, meaning not just of a specific human but of a very specific-aged version of that human, which is a different now than the nows of the many younger versions of that human and the many older versions of that human. In another realer deeper sense, you are all those nows, all at once. You aren't just a now; you are all nows. The now of every dinosaur. The now of every great grandchild on Earth, or anywhere in this dreamy seemingly vast thing that is spacetime.
When you look at stars dancing in the sky, you are in many very literal real ways looking at yourself. It's very similar to the sense in which an old wrinkly human can look at a baby picture, and say, "that's me; I'm looking at myself."
Like the real dreamer who dreams the dream, you are everything. You are it. You are the whole shebang.
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