[Non-Theological Version] Synopsis for Veiled-Flux Eternalism
🔬 Synopsis for Veiled-Flux Eternalism (VFE)
Submitted for Consideration in the Context of Timeless Physics, Non-Locality, and Quantum Ontology
Thesis:
The experience of temporal progression arises from the interaction between finite observers and a fully actualized, ontologically complete state of reality. This perceptual unfolding — referred to here as flux — veils the whole from the observer and produces what is conventionally called “time.” However, time does not exist as an ontological dimension. It is a relational artifact of veiled perception within an eternal, non-local structure of reality.
1. The Foundation: The Eternal State
Building on Barbour's rejection of time as fundamental (see The End of Time), VFE asserts that all of reality exists as an indivisible, eternally actualized state — not unfolding, not becoming, not transitioning.
There is no moment-to-moment flow, only relational differences in perceptual alignment with the totality.
What appears to be temporal succession is instead a veiled traversal of static relational configurations (Barbour’s “Nows”).
2. Quantum Mechanics: Superposition and Wave Function Collapse
Quantum systems exist in superposition until observation collapses them into a definite state.
This collapse is not temporal, but relational — dependent on the interaction between observer and system.
VFE expands this to the macro-level:
The entire perceptual field collapses into momentary relational experiences — not because “time passes,” but because flux veils the whole and only allows partial reception of the actual.
Thus:
What is observed as "change" is not change in being — but difference in perceptual access to a fixed, eternal structure.
3. Non-Locality and the Illusion of Sequential Causality
Experiments in entanglement (Bell tests, delayed choice, etc.) show that spatial separation does not prevent instantaneous correlation.
This strongly suggests that spacetime locality is an emergent, not fundamental, feature.
VFE aligns with this by proposing that:
All “locations” are relational collapse points within the veiled field.
Causality is a post hoc mental interpretation of correlated veil collapses.
The universe is not a set of local events progressing, but an interconnected whole where perception of motion is an internal illusion generated by flux.
4. The Apparent Past and the Non-Existence of the Present
In VFE, the “past” exists not as a former state, but as a recorded relational configuration sustained within the eternal whole.
The “present” does not exist — because it is never ontologically accessible. Any attempt to identify it collapses into the past.
Therefore, all that exists is a veiled, eternally complete state, perceived through relational collapse, which simulates time but never produces it.
VFE reinterprets temporal progression as sequential veil collapses from the observer’s perspective — not as movement through a temporal dimension, but as shifting alignment with the already-complete state.
5. Implications:
Time is not real. The experience of time is the epistemological consequence of finite interaction with the veiled eternal field.
Causality is contextual, not ontological — dependent on how collapses appear from within the fluxed frame.
History is not progression, but relational unfolding — not movement from past to future, but selective unveiling of states within the whole.
Entropy and decay are interpreted as forms of disalignment within the flux, not evidence of time passing.
Conclusion:
Veiled-Flux Eternalism provides a model in which:
Quantum behavior (superposition, entanglement),
Non-locality,
Time-independent correlations,
And the absence of a privileged present
…are integrated into a single framework that denies time as an ontological category and redefines all “change” as perception-distorted relational unveiling.
The universe does not happen. It is.
We do not move through time. We navigate flux.