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I have been told by a friend, who I trust very much on such matters, that time is an illusion. But it is also said that all of this world's experiences are an illusion so I guess time would naturally be a part of that stew pot.... I get a tickle in my gut now and then that tells me it is true and I feel like I'm about to understand it. Then my intellect comes thundering back in and firmly reattaches itself to the "certainty" that all of this is quite real.

TigersEye, is your friend who told you "time is an illusion" a scientist, or a Buddhist? I have great difficulty reconciling the two.

One of the greatest physical scientists of the Twentieth Century — Erwin Schrödinger — clearly had a warm spot in his heart for Eastern philosophy — see his What Is Life? for details.

Without getting into theological details, Buddhism absolutely denies any "realist" position WRT the world in which we humans are implanted. Instead, it tells us that whatever we see through our eyes, whatever we gather about the world we live in through our own direct experience, is Maya, illusion. In sum: What we in the West think is real on the basis of observation and experience is a totally false picture of Reality. Ergo, the main business of Reality is to fool us.

But if this is the case, if everything about us is an "illusion," then what is the point of science? Under such a condition, it appears to me that scientific investigation would simply be an exercise in futility from the get-go.

Ultimately, time is a cosmological problem. Eastern philosophical traditions presuppose a Cosmos that has no beginning or purpose. It just "is what it is," meanwhile causing great suffering to human kind without any reason at all. So the best thing a person can do — and ultimately, Eastern philosophy tends to deny personhood altogether — is to escape from the "illusions" of natural Life and simply melt into the great undifferentiated sea of Brahmin....

In the West today, many people like the idea of an "eternal universe" — i.e., a universe that has no beginning and which has no purpose at all in the end. Indeed, the very ideas of beginning or end have zero implication for human existence in this world. The world is just is what it is, playing itself out over time "randomly," in terms of pure materiality and nothing else.

And you can't' find out a single thing about the world, because reason itself, indeed, even personality, are illusions, too.

Buddhism denies intellect; it ultimately denies personality; these are just other aspects of Maya, of illusion....

But you, TigersEye, already know better than that; for you wrote: "Then my intellect comes thundering back in and firmly reattaches itself to the 'certainty' that all of this is quite real."

Again, if Schödinger actually believed all this, how could he account for the fact that he is one of the greatest scientists of the Twentieth Century? Somehow, this situation just "does not 'compute'."

Must close for now. But would only like to add that I received a very great insight into the nature of the problem we are discussing here, from a very great poet. I refer to T. S. Eliot, who oh so truthfully remarked (IMHO) that

Man lives at the intersection of time and timelessness.

Man senses time as serial, linear, and irreversible, just on the basis of experience and "habit."

But God does not.

Ultimately, time is a cosmological problem.

Advice: Trust your intellect on such matters — and your common sense.

TigersEye, I find you a delightful correspondent. Thank you so very much for writing!