A Story About Catching a Glimpse of What Seems to Be the Mechanism of the Past, Present, Future, and the Universe

[1] I had a strange experience that I absolutely cannot dismiss as just a dream. When I was a child, I often had a recurring dream where I’d get into an elevator, and it would inevitably go up endlessly. Eventually, it would reach the rooftop of a building, and the only way down was through a hose-like escape chute, but I’d always wake up too scared to go down. I had this dream so many times that whenever I got into an elevator in the dream, I knew, “Ah, it’s going to go up forever again,” yet I’d still get in. Years passed, I became an adult, and I hadn’t had that dream for a long time. Then, about a year ago, just once, while sleeping, I had a dream where I felt like I was being pulled up into space. Though it felt like a dream, it was intensely real, like I was 80% awake. It was also partially dream-like; I felt paralyzed, unable to even roll over, and had no sensation of being able to wake up. Ascending into space, I couldn’t see Earth, just a universe full of stardust, like you’d see from the ground. Feeling lost, I tried to check my body and realized, “Huh? Do I not have a body??? I can’t open my eyes or move??” Yet, somehow, I could still see the starry sky, and I saw, in a way, that I had no body. There was fear, a desire to wake up, to return, but a sense of resignation, that there was nothing I could do, eventually took over. I stayed there for some time. Somehow, thinking about my life so far, a feeling like homesickness or nostalgia made me sad. As I was reflecting on my life, a pleasant drowsiness, like sleepiness, came over me, and I felt myself drifting off. When I came to, I was in my room, watching my own sleeping self. For a moment, I felt relieved, but then I started to think I had died. But even if I had died, I didn’t know what to do, so I just stayed there. First, I noticed the lack of sound, and then I realized that the ‘me’ I was watching was just sleeping, not dead (lol). Is this what they call an out-of-body experience!? I thought, trying to get back into myself, but I couldn’t. The image of myself lying next to my sleeping self continued. I don’t know how much time passed or what happened, but eventually, I was able to return to reality and woke up. I clearly remember the sensation of returning; it was like being sucked into Tobi’s Sharingan. I felt relieved to be back in my body! I was so glad it was just a dream!!

[2] Then, last night, I had a similar experience, but this time it was different in many ways, and I was shown various things. Or rather, “shown” isn’t quite right; reflecting on it now, it felt more like the mechanism of this world passed through my senses. I’m not good at explaining things in writing, and I wasn’t one for studying, so it might be hard to understand, but I’d appreciate it if you’d listen. I’ll talk about the experience itself later, but first, let me tell you what I learned. I want to convey the important parts before I forget. We usually think of the world as having a fixed past, a present, and progressing towards a future, but the past wasn’t fixed at all. I know this sounds strange, but please hear me out as I try to explain. About the past: ① The past is largely determined, but it takes about 1000 years to become completely fixed. ② Even the largely determined past exists within a tremendous wave-like distortion, and furthermore, there are blank spaces, like potentials for entirely different pasts. ③ Going further back into the past, up to about 1000 years ago, the largely determined past exists with less distortion, but the blank spaces increase. ④ It’s just a feeling I grasped, but the closer you get to the recent past, the more pressure you feel, like a resistance to entering, though it doesn’t seem entirely impossible. ⑤ Around 300 to 500 years ago, the fear and pressure significantly diminish. ⑥ A characteristic of viewing the past is that time seems to flow slower the closer you are to the ground level of that past world, and faster when observing vaguely from a higher perspective. ⑦ My presence wasn’t visible to anyone, but people who are sensitive seem to unconsciously sense my presence, even if they can’t see me, as a feeling of unease or something out of place. ⑧ As for whether one can interfere with the past, I currently cannot, but there are beings who can. However, they are beings from a future far beyond mine. (This is just based on piecing together the information I received). ⑨ Even for future beings, traveling to the distant past is relatively easy, but traveling to the recent past remains extremely difficult. ⑩ Related to points ⑧ and ⑨, it’s consciousness, or something like it, that can travel through time, not the physical body.

[3] About the future: ① The future isn’t clearly visible. It appears as a jumbled mess, like flickering colors upon colors upon colors… enough to drive you mad. ② To see it like an image or picture requires a certain knack, difficult to explain in words. It’s like squinting at the whole thing vaguely, while mentally shaving off thin layers of the colors, taking in one color layer at a time, and then constructing an image in your mind. Honestly, even saying it, I don’t quite understand it myself. ③ The future seemed overexposed, like a blown-out photograph, while the past appeared somewhat underexposed. ④ The future felt less like infinite possibilities spreading out and more like established plans or predictions, but it certainly exists concurrently with the past. ⑤ The future and past exist simultaneously, pulling at each other, with the future having a slightly stronger pull. I didn’t look too far into the future. Partly because I felt a fear and pressure that made me not want to, but also because what I glimpsed early on was mentally shocking. Writing this now, I’m starting to regret not looking further. The part of the future that was easiest to see, around 100 years from now, was desolate. At first, I didn’t even think it was Earth. I had to search to find people, and I was relieved just to find trees and plants. Elsewhere, maybe in a different future? There were many people, but they felt strange. It made me strongly understand the feeling older generations have when they say “Kids these days…” Their expressions were faint, or rather, they seemed calm and peaceful, but in an alien way. Less… animalistic, perhaps? They definitely weren’t robots or anything like that. Maybe they were unmodified humans, but I had a visceral, instinctual aversion to them. Thinking back, perhaps that’s the form humanity might take if it pursues the ideals of the current era… I used to imagine a gentle world and hope for such a time, but if that’s where it leads, I absolutely hated it.

• [6] This kind of story is common.
• [8] I agree with the point that the past, present, and future exist simultaneously.
• [6] >>8 I also agree with that view.

[9] >>8 Amazing that you can agree. I definitely wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it myself. Still, I wonder if anyone can understand where exactly I went…

[10] About the current feeling of strangeness: I did return to myself properly, but something doesn’t feel quite right, a hard-to-describe discomfort in my own body. I feel like someone entered my room while I was gone, but there’s no trace of it. The question “Did I return to the right place?” keeps nagging at me.

• [11] Just an out-of-body experience. Basically a dream, right?
• [13] You should read about Hopi mythology. The feeling of unease might be Koyaanisqatsi (a world out of balance).
• [14] I think dreams are glimpses of our other selves in different worlds.

[15] >>13 I’ll look into it a bit. I really want to understand even a little of what happened. >>14 Other selves in different worlds… sounds complicated again. Regarding something like other worlds, maybe something like that did enter my mind. Like there’s a place where things we imagine accumulate, and those imaginings take shape as possibilities, and maybe we ourselves originated from some imagined possibility like that. Sorry if this is unclear. I can’t organize the things I felt I saw, experienced, and the things that entered my head that I don’t even remember. Maybe with prompts like these, I can pull out and recall more details.

[18] >>13 I’ve read a little bit now, and maybe it’s because I used to be skeptical about gods and the occult, but now, somehow, the feeling that gods and such things don’t exist has become stronger. Strange, isn’t it? Despite telling this bizarre story, my stance of not believing what I haven’t seen myself doesn’t seem to have changed.

• [16] People who have similar experiences sometimes describe them in religious terms. You might find something if you look into that.

[19] >>16 Religion… Until now, I’ve always thought there was nothing more despicable than religion, but my desire to know what happened seems stronger, so I’ll look into it. Thanks for the advice.

• [4] >>19 You’re welcome. If someone more action-oriented had this experience, they might have started a religion. But it could also be more like near-death experiences, something multiple people have experienced and become part of wider lore. Anyway, it’s probably worth investigating.
• [17] Are the gaps in the past timeline there so that history can be changed by going back? Is it like the universe anticipating the invention of time machines…?

[1] >>17 I’m starting to interpret it similarly. From what I saw, the potential for change, the ‘blank spaces,’ only seemed to exist up to about 1000 years ago. Before that, there were no gaps, so perhaps even if one could go there, changing things wouldn’t be possible. It felt less like a physical time machine and more like a technology that sends consciousness back to view things like a hologram. So, no physical body travels, but it seems to be enough to exert influence.

• [0] I’ve seen visualizations representing higher-dimensional objects (?) as 3D shadows. It seems plausible that even the 3D past isn’t fixed but fluctuates when viewed from a higher dimension.

[5] >>20 I don’t really understand the concept of dimensions, but I can’t say for sure… However, the universe isn’t that vast. It felt like the same space could be overlapped, and parts of the overlapped areas could be seen… No, that doesn’t feel quite right either, I can’t find the words. But the universe definitely wasn’t infinite or incredibly vast. Though perhaps it’s made to appear that way.

• [33] >>25 Sorry to keep bringing up dimensions, but maybe you perceived 3D space as a single point? This series has videos projecting a 4D hypercube into 3D, might be interesting if you’re curious: https://youtu.be/cTrUcRIRaBo

[36] >>33 I tried hard to watch it, but it was too difficult to follow. Strangely though, I felt something very close to it. The idea of folding and unfolding might be conceptually similar. From the perspective I gained, things like Earth, no matter what’s inside or how many layers they have, are also just empty space. That’s why they can be overlapped, and the inside of a sphere or box can be overlapped or expanded, right? They overlap but occupy different locations.

• [37] >>36 Perhaps the 4D projection is purely geometric (?), so experiencing it directly might feel like that. Still, it’s fascinating! Anyway, keep writing it all down.
• [2] Do you know anything about the edge of the universe?

[7] >>22 There should have been something like an edge. There is an edge, but it feels like it can be overlapped or extended. I can’t explain it well, but it’s not vast! I remember this feeling clearly.

• [8] There are similar descriptions in the Dharma talks of Suigen Zenji, might be worth looking into. The part about the universe sounds similar (?) to discussions about approaching and receding.
• [30] I had a slightly similar experience once. In high school, coming home tired from my part-time job, I lay down, and suddenly my consciousness shot upwards at incredible speed, out into space. And there was this beautiful music I’d never heard before playing loudly in my head. When the panic of needing to get back to Earth, which felt like it was below my feet, peaked, my alarm clock, which was supposed to be broken, went off, and I snapped back to reality. It was terrifying.

[31] >>28 Thanks for the recommendation. I’d love to read about any similar experiences. >>30 You heard sound?! For me, there was no sound, and it took me a while to even notice its absence. It’s an incredible fear, isn’t it… A type of fear completely different from anything I’d ever felt before.

[32] About the size of the universe, I said it wasn’t vast, but trying to recall the information from my head now, the image that comes up is like a DVD, an optical disc. You can’t see it with your eyes, but it holds a lot of information, and there are specific locations to access that information. If you try to reach a destination by launching a rocket, you’d end up traveling what feels like an eternal distance, going in circles. But you can simply jump directly, like seeking a specific track. Conversely, it feels strange wondering why we try to reach places by ‘traveling’ around.

[34] Something else I just remembered: time doesn’t flow from past to future. It’s stopped.

• [35] Perhaps that’s how it is if you can perceive time spatially. A specific moment in time is just a point on a line, and seen that way, it appears fragmented and stationary.

[38] >>35 You sound very knowledgeable, that’s reassuring. Even if it was temporary, can you guess or imagine what happened to me, what I saw? My head is a mess. I perceived the past and future as existing simultaneously, like pages in a book, and thought that what people perceive as time is just the act of turning those pages. Time is stationary, but because consciousness creates it, it’s possible to jump through it, right?

• [40] >>38 Well, that’s the best I can imagine. Looking at it from a different angle, there was talk for a while about the similarity between the structure of dark matter in the universe and the neural networks in the brain. They say mirror neurons allow humans to sense the neural activity of others. So, maybe you sensed the ‘activity’ of the universe? It’s a wild guess, though (lol).
• [42] Oh, right. H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine also includes mentions of astral projection, you might find that interesting too.