Bohm on times

In March 1984 a conference was held at the Claremont Center for Process Studies on ‘Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time’. David Bohm’s reply to the papers of John Cobb and David Griffin treated time as times as follows:

the notion of an implicate order underlying [chronological] time is suggested by modern quantum mechanical field theory in several ways. In particular, the quantum mechanical behavior of the gravitational potential implies that neither the distinction between past and future nor that between cause and effect can be maintained unambiguously at distances as short as 10-33. So presumably there would be no objection to introducing “timelessness” at such short distances, since these may represent the shortest possible actual occasions. (…) Because of this, it is possible to establish a relationship between time and the timeless. (…) In this new approach, one no longer implies that the ordinary level of experience has no fundamental kind of significance, nor does one imply that the timeless or the eternal is the only basic reality. Rather, what is crucial is the relationship between the two. (In religious terms, this would be the relationship between what has been called the “secular” and what has been called the “sacred”.) The quantum theory as seen through the implicate order has given an important clue here, in that such a relationship is possible because [diachronic or chronological] explicate structures are seen to have [synchronic or ‘allatonce’] implicate counterparts. 
In establishing such a relationship, it is clear that eternity or the timeless should not be considered as [purely] absolute. Rather, one may think in terms of what may be called “relative eternity.” For example, a moment may have the quality of eternity and yet not cover the whole of reality in full detail. For example, it has been said that Mozart was able to perceive the whole of a composition in such a moment, which was then unfolded in time [first in its detailed composition and then in its performance] in all its detail. The proposal is that a similar relationship between time and the timeless may be universal and that we may see it in many areas of experience. Such a relationship may then be the very essence of what is to be meant by freedom and creativity.1

 

  1.  Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time, ed David R Griffin, 1986, 174-175. For the implication of freedom and creativity with times see Bohm on percept and concept.