The best books on the nature of time

Livia Kohn Author Of Taming Time: Daoist Ways of Working with Multiple Temporalities
By Livia Kohn

Who am I?

Livia Kohn, Ph.D., is Professor Emerita of Religion and East Asian Studies at Boston University. The author, or editor, of close to sixty books (including the annual Journal of Daoist Studies), she spent ten years in Kyoto doing research. She now serves as the executive editor of Three Pines Press, runs international conferences and workshops, and guides study tours to Japan.

I wrote...

Taming Time: Daoist Ways of Working with Multiple Temporalities

By Livia Kohn

Book cover of Taming Time: Daoist Ways of Working with Multiple Temporalities

What is my book about?

Time, literally, is of the essence. It is a key feature in all cultures, determining human thought, expectations, actions, and developments. The great master of time studies, J. T. Fraser, describes it in terms of six major temporalities that move at different speeds in unique environments. Matching the evolution of the universe, they include (1) the atemporal or timeless state of primordial chaos; (2) the prototemporal realm of quantum simultaneity; (3) the eotemporal long-term rhythms of the stars; (4) the biotemporal dimensions of living creatures; (5) the noötemporal phenomena of brain and mind; and (6) the sociotemporal world of clocks and calendars, history and society, analysis and philosophy.

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The Books I Picked & Why

Through the Time Barrier: Precognition and Modern Physics

By Danah Zohar

Book cover of Through the Time Barrier: Precognition and Modern Physics

Why this book?

A powerful melding of psi powers and physics, this proves just how certain phenomena usually thought supernatural or extraordinary fit within the framework of the natural sciences. The book focuses particularly on the functions of quantum reality, a cosmic order that is independent of human will, perceptual categories, and laws of causation. If finds expression in synchronicity and allows for nonlocal coincidences, holographic effects, and meaningful flow, which in turn make things like telepathy, clairvoyance, and other paranormal phenomena possible.

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Some Science Adventures with Real Magic

By J. Gregory Fandel, William A. Tiller, Walter Dibble

Book cover of Some Science Adventures with Real Magic

Why this book?

This reports on a physics experiment that shows how people in a state of deep concentration can focus their intention and create changes in their environment. In a special unitary symmetry state energy is exchanged via both photons (light) and phonons (sound), moving faster than light. Fine, information-wave generated patterns then activate all sorts of particles and modulate substances in a measurable and meaningful way. Any moment we are concentrating our intention, we therefore have tremendous power not only over ourselves but also over our environment and our future.

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Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

By David Eagleman

Book cover of Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

Why this book?

Named after the “I am” in cogito, ergo sum, this is a powerful parody of our concepts of time and turns time perception around in a big way. For example, it pictures an afterlife where one relives all previous experiences, but clumped together into long time slots, so that “you spend two months driving the street in front of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. For five months straight you flip through magazines while sitting on a toilet.” And so on. The book is a great delight by one of the masters of contemporary time studies.

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Momo

By Michael Ende

Book cover of Momo

Why this book?

As the subtitle of the original German says, this is the story of the time-thieves and how a child called Momo brought stolen time back to the people. A group of men in gray, paranormal parasites that steal people’s time, arrives in her hometown and all the inhabitants are made to save time in special banks by increasing efficiency and cutting down on leisurely human contact, fun activities, and artistic endeavors, considered “time-wasting.” Life becomes sterile, but Momo comes to the rescue, bringing time back to where it belongs: in the hands and minds of the people.

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Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World

By Marcia Bjornerud

Book cover of Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World

Why this book?

This book is since it shows just how potent the earth is, not simply a puppet dancing to the imposed rhythm of astronomical cycles but a complex webwork in a delicate balance, where even small changes to intricate natural systems can have large and unanticipated consequences. Becoming aware of its depth in time and resonating with it organically, people can find a new awareness of being in time, which she calls timefuleness. The book encourages not just a new perspective but a different way of being in time.

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