Understanding the Structure of Being – 2

Science, Common Sense, and the Illusion of Time

Time is one of the most unquestioned aspects of human experience. We measure it, plan by it, and recall the past while anticipating the future. Science, common sense, and everyday perception all seem to confirm that time is real—an objective framework within which all things move, change, and eventually perish.

Yet, if Being is eternal and nothing truly becomes, what does this say about time? Is it an illusion? A mere mental construct? And if so, how do we explain the overwhelming experience of its passage?

Science and the Nature of Time

Modern physics has complicated our traditional notions of time. Einstein’s relativity shows that time is not absolute but depends on motion and gravity, varying for different observers. Quantum mechanics raises even deeper questions, suggesting that time may not be fundamental at all but emergent from deeper structures. Some physicists even propose that the universe exists as a timeless whole, where past, present, and future coexist beyond our limited perspective.

Yet, even as science destabilizes the common-sense idea of time, it still assumes that reality unfolds in some sequence. Even theories that attempt to deny the reality of time often subtly reintroduce it—treating it as an underlying process or a necessary structure for change.

Common Sense and the Appearance of Time

For everyday experience, time is unquestionable. We age. The sun rises and sets. Events happen in sequence. The past is gone, and the future has not yet arrived. These seem like undeniable truths.

Yet, Severino’s insight challenges this. What if these observations do not confirm true becoming, but only reveal the limits of human perspective? What if time does not “pass” at all, but is instead the way in which eternal beings appear to us in a given moment?

Consider memory: we think of the past as something that once existed but is now gone. But what if the past has never ceased to be and simply no longer appears to us? The same applies to the future—it is not something that does not yet exist, but something that has not yet entered our field of awareness.

A useful analogy is that of a vast landscape seen from the window of a moving train. The landscape itself does not come into or go out of existence—it simply shifts in and out of view as the train moves. Time functions in a similar way: it is not an external force dictating what is real, but the shifting of what is present to our awareness.

The Limits of Human Perspective

Time, then, is not a reality “out there” governing existence; it is the structure of how reality appears to finite consciousness. What we call “past” and “future” are not non-being but hidden being—realities that exist eternally but are not presently manifest to us.

This explains why time feels so real: it corresponds to the way we experience existence. We see things appear and disappear, not because they are coming into or going out of being, but because our awareness of them shifts.

Thus, time is not an illusion in the sense of being “false,” but in the sense that it is not what we assume it to be. It does not point to becoming but to the eternal structure of Being itself.

The Next Hurdle: If Time Is Not Real, What About Causality?

If time does not govern Being, what about causality? Doesn’t one thing lead to another? Doesn’t science confirm that causes produce effects?

This next difficulty must be confronted directly, as it is one of the strongest objections to the eternal structure of reality. If nothing truly becomes, then how do we explain causality at all? This will be the focus of the next article.