The illusion of Time & Death

Hey everyone, Dan Vineyard here. My mission is simple: To help you remember the freedom and peace already within you.

I'm going to go over some concepts that I think are interesting and I hope they're interesting to you too. Let's chat about the two main illusions that come from our perception: Time & Death.

How do those illusions come about? Language is the great divider. It makes all these different words for different parts of reality that we see. For instance, here we see a ocean, and then there's a wave from the ocean, and then there's foam from the ocean, and then there's a water drop from the ocean, wave.

But in reality, none of these words exist. They're just concepts that we use to try to make sense of reality through language. So language is very useful. But it's not real. It's an abstract layer that describes the real. In reality we should call the phenomena we perceive as an ocean-wave-foam-waterdrop, because when we look directly at the phenomenon in the light, there is no separation. The wave is connected to the ocean. The foam is connected to the wave. The water drop comes from the foam and cannot exist without it. These are not separate things, but deeply interconnected in reality.

So once we start to understand that and see that language itself starts to divide everything for us. In order to be useful so that we can start to communicate about things. But the reality is none of those concepts exist. They're just useful patterns of language.

The mind also creates perceptions. You can look at this image of a rope and you're like, oh, wow, that looks like a snake! But if you zoom in, you see it's not a snake at all. It's a rope. And the mind does this all the time. The mind is constantly creating perceptions and stories about things that we see in reality.

It perceives things that aren't there. And why? Because the mind's trying to be helpful. Helpful is useful, but it's not reality. It's not truth. So the mind creates language and then it creates perceptions.

How time is an illusion.

So what does that mean about time?

Take a second and look outside and all around you. I want you to point to where time is, and I want you to point to where the past is. I want you to point to where the future is.

You won't be able to do it because those things don't exist.

They're language concepts and perception and different psychological aspects that come into our experience.

But in reality, the past doesn't exist and neither does the future! The only thing that does exist is this thing we call the now. So you have these things called memories, and it seems like there's the past. You can future trip and you can foresee what's going to come and this comes in your imagination and your third eye or your inner mind, and.

The difference is those things are not real versus what is real, which is just what you perceive today in the light. So where does the time come from then? Well, it's a phenomenon of a cycle of the sun and the earth rotating. So the earth rotates every hour. We can make 'time' out of it because it's so constant.

But what we call time is really the earth's rotation around the sun. and so this rotation creates time. And a lot of things that we call time, it's just really the decay of things. We measure "time" by using the cycle of decay of a cesium atom, which oscillates at an extremely stable rate. One second is officially defined as 9,192,631,770 vibrations. While the atom’s behavior is natural and consistent, the way we divide and label it as "seconds" is a human agreement, not a property of reality itself.

Even your 'age' is not about time, but the Earth's cycle around the sun.

So time is illusion. The only thing that exists is the now, this is experientially true.

This is reality.

Now let's look at death.

Just as language slices the seamless Now into parts, so too does it carve the life-death boundary that seems so real to us.

In what way is this true? Let's look at the cyclical patterns that exist in everything around us and see how death is a perception of the mind, like the snake for the rope. What we perceive as death is a small part of a large cycle.

I'm gonna go over two of 'em that are pretty common that you probably know already. One is the plant lifecycle where you start with the seed, the seed goes into a seedling, then the young plant forms, then a mature plant with the flower on it. The flower gets pollinated and turns into a fruit.

When you look at this, let me ask you, where's the start and where's the end? And in a cycle, there isn't one. It's a continual process.

Here's another common cycle. We call this the water cycle. The water is in the ocean. The sun heats the water and it evaporates and forms and it condenses into a cloud. The cloud goes over a mountain.

The cloud starts to fall and turns into rain, which creates the rivers and lakes which go back to the ocean. Well, let me ask you, where's the start of this cycle and where's the end of it? There is no ending and there is no start. It's an eternal now that's happening an infinite cycle.

Okay, so you've probably heard about the planet lifecycle where there's a gas and dust cloud turns into a spinning disc of matter. The matter starts to clump together from, rock and ice. Then that condenses even further with gravity and the young hot planet emerges in a cooling planet, and eventually the planet will break up and then goes back to the gas and dust cloud.

So here's Planet Lifecycle. Here's your solar system cycle. Another gas and dust cloud turns into a protostar. That star then, like we saw before with the planet cycle around it, and then it ages is a red giant and that red giant, sheds off dust and then that goes back into a cloud. It dissolves into the gas cloud again and dust cloud, and then the whole system starts over.

And then what about a galaxy? So Galaxy, same pattern, primordial gas. Galaxies forms, which are just cities of the stars. They're just more formations of this lifecycle of a solar system. The galaxies merge, the stars formation slows down, the stars dissolve, goes back to gas again. Okay, so let's talk about the logical conclusion of this is there's a universal lifecycle.

A universal lifecycle starts out as a vibration. The vibration. There's a mini verse, the first star stars form in that space. Then the galaxies form from a collection of those stars and then a make a galaxy, and then the universe cools and expands, and then the star dies out and goes back to the dust again.

Logically, we call it a big bang, but there can't be a bang because there's no space to make a sound. So I call it a universe vibration. So the vibration comes then a mini verse or a seed of that universe is created. Then it expands into its full potential, just like a plant, just like a planet or a star.

And then, eventually it'll cycle over again. So the death, you could say at one part of one of these and you'd say, oh, that's the young plant going to the mature plant and then eventually mature, plant the case. But matter cannot be created or destroyed. It only changes form and how it, how does it change form and these cycles, one cycle after the next.

We can look and say, oh, there's no time. So time is illusion. And then death is also an illusion. It's an illusion of language and only seeing part of the whole process. You can say that, these are two big illusions. So then what is reality? And reality is the. One. Now it's just everything is now, and then it's cycle cleans, cycles.

Everything that you see perceive everything is connected. There's no separation, only through languages is separate, and then it's, everything's in cycles. Your breath is a cycle. Your heart beating is a cycle. You have a circadian cycle. There's a solar cycle. There's a lunar cycle. There's an earth rotation cycle around the sun, there's a planet cycle.

It's cascading cycles over and over, all within each other, happening all at the same time.

And that's reality. It is the now with cycles.

So I would ask you to, meditate and to go outside and to just let go of your perceptions. Let go of the idea. That you can name everything and let go of the names and just experience the oneness of everything that is not separated at all, but interconnected. And then how are they interconnected?

Cyclically, you are part of the cosmos. The cosmos is part of you. We're not, we didn't come from space and land here and no, we're, our bodies are formed by the sun and the earth, and we're deeply connected to both of them and their cycles.

Okay. If there was a shape that could represent what this reality is. It's the ever present now that's cyclical.

You can't spot where it begins. You can't spot where it ends because it's interconnected and it's always evolving and changing, and it doesn't break. So this on the shape on the right, it's called a Mobius strip. This was found in ancient Rome, in ancient Greece. This same type of shape as is, common throughout history.

And I think it really does help describe what reality is. And if you had to just say, what is the shape of, the now? This is what it would be. It's a shape of. The energy transforming and folding into itself and getting new life and changing in again, and, and around and around.

But you can't stop it and you can't, you can't find where it begins or where it ends. So it's a never ending, never beginning, ever transforming. Now, and, you probably still have a question though. You can see that their cycles are happening all the time. And you can see that what we call death is really just one part of that cycle, which is the decay part.

But then the question might come as what happens to you? Or what happens to me? And that's a really good question. And I would ask you, you know, what? What are you I see that the is an eternal thing, and it's similar and in the same space as truth, as math, as love, as these things that are in, I would call the fourth dimension.

Other people have called it the realm of forms. But it's the non-reality reality. It's these things that may be more true than, than even, this energy here in this 3D. But this is the dual dimension that I talked about in a, in a previous video where you have the th third dimension, which is, this space that we see in the now.

But there's also this fourth dimension where these things exist and have always existed and exist internally. They exist outside of space and time. But they're here with us. And, like truth, you can't destroy truth. You can't alter it. You can't, tarnish it. It is so just like truth is you are.

And, you didn't have a beginning. You didn't have an end. You were pure awareness incorporated into a body, that we call a body. You've seen this already happen in your own life when you went from a baby and then you changed form to a toddler and then you changed form to an adolescent and he changed form to an adult and he changed form to a mature adult and then a more mature adult.

You never changed, but the form that you were incorporated in, inhabited in was changing. And just expand that scale. And that's what reality is. You exist, you will always exist in this fourth dimension. You're here now in this form and this body, and it's going to transform. But you can't destroy the self.

If you gained something from this, please share it with someone that might as gain something from it as well.

Here's a video on youtube of me walking through this as well. https://youtu.be/Wtt4EvlGk50

Thanks for reading.

Dan Vineyard
United States
April 9, 2025