"Oh right," Tuck said as he remembered what he had told me before. "You didn't like that, but it's a simple way to illustrate how time is nonlinear. The idea is that you get into a car accident, and then you have a negative emotional response to it. But your response is not merely a passive reaction to what happened. Your response after the accident actually helped cause the accident in the first place."

"I've thought some more about this," I said, "and I've really tried to see it your way. But the closest I can get to believing it is to acknowledge that your response to the accident reflects your state of mind before the accident. It's natural to be upset when you wreck your car, of course. But if you get all hysterical, you didn't pull that out of thin air. The seeds of hysteria must have been planted in you beforehand. And if you're a driving, ticking time bomb, that could affect the way you drive, and help cause an accident."

"That's certainly true," Tuck acknowledged. "If you keep a bunch of negative emotions bottled up, they can cause you to drive recklessly, and they can explode in rage after you crash. But there's more to it than that."

"Tuck, I just don't..."

He cut me off, saying, "I'm saying that your thoughts after the accident aren't just the continuation of what was there before the accident. I'm saying that your post-accident thoughts directly caused the accident, retroactively. That time, just like the other three dimensions, doesn't flow in one direction only. It's all happening right now, and the past is not separated from the future by an impenetrable barrier. Nor are thoughts separated from physical reality, nor is the mortal separated from the divine."

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