nontime

Nontime Clue Archive

1. What are Seth's specific claims about this concept? How many times, in which books, and does the wording change over time?

Seth specifically discussed the nontime concept in Sections 429, 433, and 437 of The Early Sessions Book 9, appearing across three sessions of material. [early-sessions-9 §429, §433, §437]

nontime is closer to reality than the word "time." Seth explicitly stated that "the word time is itself a distortion, projecting nonexistent limitations onto other reality systems," and that "nontime is closest to reality." [early-sessions-9 §429]

nontime is the source of time. Seth said, "You come out of nontime, enter what you think of as time, and then return to nontime," and that "in nontime is provided the basic energy for the time you currently experience." [early-sessions-9 §437]

Experience in nontime is more direct. Seth said that in nontime, experience is far more direct and does not require your words to describe it. [early-sessions-9 §437]

nontime is related to all probabilities. Seth said, "All probabilities have their reality in nontime," and that creative achievements in nontime generate all probable realities. [early-sessions-9 §437]

nontime is related to the dream state. Seth said, "In the various dream states you do indeed delve into nontime, and this is also where your main existence and identity are rooted." [early-sessions-9 §437]

nontime represents freedom in perceiving and organizing experience. Seth said, "nontime represents the freedom to do so," and that "in nontime, you perceive at your own rate and organize experience in your own way." [early-sessions-9 §433]

The relationship between nontime and the entity. Seth said, "In nontime, these parts of the entity exist completely freely, with no time barriers separating them." [early-sessions-9 §433]

Time systems are consciously used within nontime. Seth said, "In nontime, the personality fully recognizes time systems and sometimes uses them, but the personality is aware that it dwells in nontime," and that "time is formed by nontime and arises from nontime." [early-sessions-9 §433]

From the three available sessions, in Section 429 (August 12, 1968), Seth first distinguished time from nontime, emphasizing that nontime is closer to reality, and stated, "No-time is my time." [early-sessions-9 §429]

In Section 433 (September 2, 1968), Seth connected nontime with perceptual freedom, multidimensional personality relations, and the construction of time systems, making the concept more concrete. [early-sessions-9 §433]

In Section 437 (September 18, 1968), Seth closely linked nontime with probabilities, dream states, and the foundation of existence, further deepening the concept. [early-sessions-9 §437]

2. What mechanism does he provide?

• Any time structure is an auxiliary tool that organizes experience along specific routes and restricts perception to a considerable degree; it is a protective device. nontime represents the freedom to experience without these restrictions. [early-sessions-9 §433]

• In nontime, the individual perceives at their own speed and organizes experience in their own way. [early-sessions-9 §433]

• In nontime, the various parts of the entity can exist freely, with no time barriers separating them from one another. [early-sessions-9 §433]

• The multidimensional personality can establish connections at different levels; its relationships involve a trust that you do not have, and there are many open areas of agreement. [early-sessions-9 §433]

• In nontime, the personality fully recognizes and sometimes uses time systems, but the personality is aware that it dwells in nontime and will form timetables or systems to reach where it wants to go, much as one builds roads or paths. [early-sessions-9 §433]

• Time is formed from nontime and arises out of nontime; nontime is psychological experience and psychological reality, and time always serves it. [early-sessions-9 §433]

• Entities form the time in which they seemingly dwell. [early-sessions-9 §433]

• Form, like time, is an aid, an organization of experience; form can exist without mass and matter, and the multidimensional personality knows that it constructs forms just as it constructs various time systems, as aids in organizing perception. [early-sessions-9 §433]

• You come out of no-time into what you call time, and then return to no-time; in no-time experience is far more direct and requires no verbal description. [early-sessions-9 §437]

• In no-time there exists the energy that provides the foundation for the time you presently experience; all individuals and consciousness cooperatively form and maintain the framework you know. [early-sessions-9 §437]

• All probabilities have their reality in no-time, and the creative achievements occurring in no-time produce all possible realities that have existed or will exist within all various time systems. [early-sessions-9 §437]

• In the various dream states you do indeed delve into no-time, and your main existence and the root of your identity are there. [early-sessions-9 §437]

• It therefore pervades your time system, which is merely transposed over it. [early-sessions-9 §437]

• What you call time basically does not exist; nontime is far closer to reality than time. [early-sessions-9 §429]

3. Are there observable corollaries or explicit predictions (including time, quantity, conditions)?

The material does not address this.

4. Where does he say science was wrong at the time, and in what direction should it look?

On the question of nontime, science errs in equating rational thought with science itself and in making provability the sole criterion.
Science confuses its frame of reference with "rational thinking," so that any other line of thought automatically appears unreasonable; thought thereby becomes overly specialized, lopsided, and inflexible. [magical-approach §?] It insists on believing only what it can prove, with the result that it tends to build worldviews on certain materials alone, forming isolated disciplines—biology, psychology, physics, mathematics, and so forth—each maintaining its own facts, while no field can synthesize this information. [magical-approach §?] In general, science, with its rational mode of thought, cannot provide any comprehensive, conceivable hypothetical conception of reality. [magical-approach §?] Science does not emphasize the cooperative forces of nature but is eager to distinguish, prescribe, and classify; it is largely blind to the equally real unifying forces. [magical-approach §?] Science also regards the human being as a product of genetic endowment plus limited energy, in which intention, purpose, or desire has no place, making the person a stranger in the environment and opposed to their own body. [magical-approach §?] In terms of time theory, you believe yourselves bound to a path of time, not knowing that you built the path yourselves and perceiving no other reality. [early-sessions-9 §433]

Science should look in the direction of nontime, treating time as something formed from nontime and serving it.
Time is formed from nontime and arises out of nontime; nontime is psychological experience and psychological reality, and time always serves it. [early-sessions-9 §433] In nontime, energy provides the foundation for the time you presently experience; all probabilities have their reality in nontime, and the creative achievements occurring in nontime produce all probable realities. [early-sessions-9 §437] In your various dream states, you do indeed delve into nontime, and this is where your main existence and the root of your identity lie. [early-sessions-9 §437] To understand this, you must strive to discard all familiar notions of time, for the word time itself is a distortion that projects nonexistent limitations onto other reality systems. [early-sessions-9 §429, §433] nontime is far closer to reality than time; any time structure is merely an aid to organizing experience, a protective device that restricts perception for the sake of learning, and ultimately you will learn to organize experience without such artificial aids. [early-sessions-9 §433]

5. What experiments or practices did he suggest? What did Jane and Rob actually do and observe at the time?

1. He suggested meeting twice a week at nine o'clock, saying, "You may try whatever experiments you want, and call them homework if you like," encouraging them to train their abilities on their own. [early-sessions-1 §12]

2. He suggested that Ruburt practice "psychological time" in the morning, saying, "Twenty minutes should still be the upper limit," while noting that this time practice could allow the ego to relax its focus on the objective. [early-sessions-4 §156]

3. He hinted at using a pendulum as a tool, and both Jane and Rob "made an effort to use the pendulum regularly as Seth suggested." [early-sessions-4 §153]

4. On another occasion, he suggested that four people sit on the floor in a circle, holding hands for an experiment. [early-sessions-3 §129]

5. In the January 4 experiment (Seth not present), Jane and Rob drew the curtains, used a red Christmas light, spread a black cloth, and placed a wedding ring and military insignia, sitting quietly in the dark; Jane observed that "her hand seemed to disappear," that is, she could not see her own hand, and the metal insignia showed a similar phenomenon; Rob had a colored vision of a person walking along a road. [early-sessions-1 §12]

6. In a waking trance state, Jane heard a male voice whisper "twelve-oh-five" at her ear and used the pendulum to confirm it was random mediumship. [early-sessions-4 §153]

7. In one circle experiment, after the four held hands, Jane suddenly began to speak in the persona of Seth, her voice loud and low, and more animated than usual. [early-sessions-3 §129]

8. On the way back from vacation, Rob attempted to suggest to his subconscious that "the car uses less gas"; upon arriving home he felt the car had used at least two quarts less oil, and once at a fill-up the attendant told him "it doesn't need any." [early-sessions-2 §80]

9. After another experiment, Jane and Rob tried the psychological time practice, but "there were no results," although Rob felt a familiar "tingling sensation." [early-sessions-2 §80]

6. Supplements or contradictions from other concepts in the corpus related to this concept?

• Time structure is an auxiliary tool; it organizes experience along specific routes and restricts perception to a considerable degree, serving as a protective device; nontime represents freedom, a state in which one can perceive at one's own rate and organize experience without relying on artificial aids such as time. [early-sessions-9 §433]
• Fundamentally, what you call "time" does not exist; nontime is far closer to reality than time. [early-sessions-9 §429, §433] Time is formed from nontime; nontime is psychological experience and psychological reality, and time always serves it. [early-sessions-9 §433] Time is superimposed upon nontime, just as mass is superimposed upon form within your system. [early-sessions-9 §433]
• nontime and the entity are a central focus of discussion; in nontime, the various personality parts of the entity exist freely, with no temporal barriers separating them. [early-sessions-9 §429, §433] Entities form the time in which they seemingly dwell. [early-sessions-9 §433]
• All probabilities have their reality in nontime; the creative achievements occurring in nontime generate all potential realities. [early-sessions-9 §437] In the various dream states, you do indeed delve into nontime, and there too lie your main existence and the root of your identity; nontime therefore permeates your time system, which is merely transposed over it. [early-sessions-9 §437]
• In nontime, experience is more direct; in your terms there is less differentiation there, but in terms of consciousness and psychological experience, there is more differentiation. [early-sessions-9 §437]
• The personality's subjective experience and psychological existence are constituted by the dimension of "value fulfillment"; in this context, value fulfillment corresponds to "time" within your temporal domain. [early-sessions-9 §429]

7. Questions that have not yet been asked

1. Under conditions of sleep deprivation or REM-awakening, would subjects' subjective estimates of time passage show deviations approaching a "nontime" experience, and would such deviations correlate with reduced default mode network activity? The research design of Zhang & Saxbe (2021) on the neural mechanisms of time perception could serve as a reference.
2. Could a temporal bisection task be designed to compare meditators and controls on the accuracy of time estimation when they must simultaneously process multiple probabilistic events, thereby testing whether Seth's claim that "all probabilities exist simultaneously in nontime" corresponds to an expansion of working memory capacity? The experimental design could draw on Grondin's (2010) time perception paradigm.
3. Using magnetoencephalography to record neuronal oscillatory phase during a deeply hypnotically induced "loss of time sense" state, could one analyze whether cross-frequency coupling is reduced, thereby providing a physiological marker for "nontime"? Craig's (2009) hypothesis on time sense and insular integration could serve as a reference.
4. In a virtual reality environment where the reversibility of event causal order (e.g., playback) is manipulated, would subjects' subjective ratings of "temporal distance between events" predict memory reorganization better than physical time intervals? This could directly test the claim that "time is formed from nontime," with the experimental design referring to Bueti's (2011) VR time perception experiments.

Appendix: Claims List (for Phase C)

id	Claim	Type	Source
nontime-1	nontime is closer to reality than time; the word time itself is a distortion that projects nonexistent limitations onto other reality systems.	Ontological assertion	early-sessions-9 §429
nontime-2	Time is formed from nontime and arises out of nontime; nontime is psychological experience and psychological reality, and time always serves it.	Ontological assertion	early-sessions-9 §433
nontime-3	Experience in nontime is far more direct and requires no verbal description; in the various dream states you delve into nontime, which is the foundation of your main existence and identity.	Ontological assertion	early-sessions-9 §437
nontime-4	All probabilities have their reality in nontime; the creative achievements occurring in nontime produce all possible realities.	Ontological assertion	early-sessions-9 §437
nontime-5	nontime represents freedom in perceiving and organizing experience; in nontime the individual perceives at their own rate and organizes experience in their own way.	Ontological assertion	early-sessions-9 §433
nontime-6	In nontime, the various parts of the entity exist freely, with no time barriers separating them; entities form the time in which they seemingly dwell.	Ontological assertion	early-sessions-9 §433
nontime-7	In nontime, the personality fully recognizes time systems and sometimes uses them, but the personality is aware that it dwells in nontime; time systems are merely transposed over nontime.	Ontological assertion	early-sessions-9 §433; early-sessions-9 §437
nontime-8	Form, like time, is an aid, an organization of experience; form can exist without mass and matter, and the multidimensional personality constructs forms as aids for organizing perception.	Mechanism description	early-sessions-9 §433
nontime-9	Time structure is an auxiliary tool and protective device that organizes experience along specific routes and restricts perception; nontime represents the freedom to experience without these restrictions.	Mechanism description	early-sessions-9 §433
nontime-10	In no-time there exists the energy that provides the foundation for present time experience; all individuals and consciousness cooperatively form and maintain the framework you know.	Mechanism description	early-sessions-9 §437
nontime-11	The personality's subjective experience and psychological existence are constituted by the dimension of "value fulfillment," which corresponds to "time" within the temporal domain.	Ontological assertion	early-sessions-9 §429
nontime-12	To understand nontime, one must strive to discard all familiar notions of time, for the word time itself is a distortion.	Methodological suggestion	early-sessions-9 §429; early-sessions-9 §433