The Past Isn’t Gone. Your Brain Still Travels Through It.

And no – it's not just nostalgic memories. Our brain literally goes back. To places that haven't yet healed. To moments remembered by the body. To spaces where the same anger, the same fear, the same pattern is triggered once again.

Time Might Not Be One-Dimensional

It may sound like science fiction — but it's grounded in physics. And not just any physics, but a theory that could shift the way we understand reality, movement, and consciousness. In 2025, physicist Gunther Kletetschka from the University of Alaska proposed a bold hypothesis: Time is not a one-way path. It's not a thread we follow from past to future. It's not a line. It's a field.

A three-dimensional, vibrating field that forms the foundation of everything we perceive. Space — the one we touch, move through — is, according to Kletetschka, only secondary. It arises as a consequence of intersecting time axes, weaving together like threads beneath the surface of reality.

Imagine a canvas and a brush. Time is the thing that holds the structure. Space is the trace the brush leaves behind. What you see is the color. But what determines how and where the color moves — is the canvas. The invisible base.

In Kletetschka's metaphysics, the canvas is time. Not like a ticking clock counting seconds, but as a multidimensional web that holds context, coherence, and vibration. Everything else — matter, motion, location — is its echo. Sounds like poetry? Perhaps.

But at the same time, it's a mathematically grounded theory.  It reproduces the masses of known particles (e.g., the top quark at 173.21 GeV), offers an interpretation of quantum superposition, and explores the link between quantum mechanics and gravity — not as opposing extremes, but as connected consequences of time's geometry.

And here's where it gets interesting. Because if everything we perceive is an expression of layered time — what does that mean for memory? For emotion? For those strange moments when we feel "out of place"? Maybe we're not broken.  Maybe we're just stuck — in a different direction of time.

Memory Isn't a Line. It's a Trajectory

When we remember, we don't tell a story. We enter a space. Something inside us moves. An image. A wisp of scent. A word that echoes in a familiar tone. And our inner world tips from the present into something else — not back in time, but sideways. Inward. Into a deeper layer.

Because the brain doesn't remember like a chronicler. It doesn't organize facts by date. It doesn't build sequences, but structures of meaning and sensation. Neuropsychological studies (Schacter & Addis, 2007; Siegel, 2020) show that our memory functions like an associative network. Not as a list, but as a map of nodes — each node linked to an emotion, a bodily trace, a fragment of imagery. A network where we travel not left to right, but bottom to top, across layers, back into a record that is not stored but lived.

When something in the present aligns with this pattern — like a tone of voice that "sounds like back then" — the neural network triggers the entire trajectory. Not as a conscious memory. But as a living reaction. And so it happens.

Something smells like it once did. Someone looks at you like he did. At a certain time of day, in a certain place. And you're not fully here. Without meaning to, you find yourself — not in the space around you, but in time within you. Not in the past as an archive, but in a present moment uncannily similar to a past experience. The brain doesn't evaluate what was. It evaluates what now resembles what once hurt.

And when it finds that match — it reactivates the full configuration: the image, muscle tension, held breath, the inner decision to "disappear." Not because you want to recall it, but because your inner map has been reactivated.

This isn't just psychology. It's time-navigation with no road signs, only resonance. The brain doesn't trigger a response because it's dramatic. It does so because it believes it's back there. Not logically — but emotionally. And therefore: also actually.

Kletetschka's Theory as a Key to Psychological Reality?

What if trauma isn't just what happened? But where we got stuck in time. Not as a metaphor, but as a literal temporal location of consciousness that never made it back.

Kletetschka's theory of three-dimensional time changes the game. If true — and more experimental data suggests it might be — then our understanding of memory, experience, and psychological pain changes too.

In quantum physics, a particle can exist in multiple states at once — a superposition where it inhabits several possibilities simultaneously, and only observation determines where it "lands." Kletetschka argues this isn't just a quantum trick. It's the result of a particle moving along multiple time axes at once. Not a single line, but divergent temporal trajectories.

Now imagine a person. Not a particle, but a consciousness with layers. Memories. Images. Emotional residue. A body that remembers. If our consciousness can move through multiple time layers simultaneously, then it's no mystery why you might sit safely in the present, while your body feels like it's running again.

It's no mystery that you love someone, yet something in you fears them — not them, but the old presence they resemble. It's no mystery that you understand what happened, yet your nervous system never got the message that it's over.

And here it becomes therapeutic. Because if trauma is being stuck in a particular temporal direction, then healing doesn't have to be about talking — but about shifting direction. Correcting the trajectory. Learning to "switch axes" — from the one where the event keeps happening, to the one where we have a choice.

And this is exactly what we do in EMDR. In IFS. In somatic therapy, in breathwork, in guided imagery, in touch. We don't dig up the past. We look for a way out of that time-layer.

Therapy as Navigation!

When we learn to heal, we're not just changing our view. We're changing our direction. Not direction toward a goal. But direction in relation to time.

If consciousness is stuck in one trajectory — in a line that leads back to pain — therapy can be a map that reorients us. From the axis of no choice to the axis where possibility returns.

Healing, then, isn't a linear move. It's not a journey from point A to point B. It's an internal shift — like when someone in a dark room turns a few degrees and suddenly sees the door.

Kletetschka speaks of spacetime as a multi-layered field. Therapeutic work is nothing more than fine-tuning that orientation: in the body, the nervous system, in symbolic language or movement. When we shift our eye position in EMDR, when we change our stance toward a part in IFS, when we find new ways to feel safe in somatic work — we don't teach the brain to forget. We teach it to redirect.

Healing is time navigation. Not mechanical. Not conscious in the way we tend to believe. But internal, sensory, nonlinear. Something inside us turns. And suddenly we're no longer trapped. We still feel — but we know where we are. We still remember — but from a new direction.

And maybe that's why: the past hasn't vanished. Your brain still travels through it. The question is — do you know where it's looking right now?

Reference: (1) Kletetschka, G. (2025). Three-dimensional time as the base of reality – Phys.org. (2) Siegel, D. (2020). The Developing Mind. (3) Schacter, D. & Addis, D. (2007). The cognitive neuroscience of constructive memory. (4) Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle.

PhDr. Ivana Čergeťová, PhD., LL.M., MBA, PCIC

I'm a psychologist, NLP coach, and attachment-based therapist. Over the course of my extensive career, I've worked in a variety of settings — from academic institutions and therapeutic centers to private practice — focusing on individual and couples therapy, group work, and systemic relationship mapping.

My approach is grounded in polyvagal theory, attachment science, and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). 

A session with me can help you gain deeper self-understanding, heal emotional wounds, and build healthier relationships. Together, we'll explore the path toward greater fulfillment and self-love.