Question: Totality, Wholeness, Nonsubstantiality—you are surely referencing now, are you not? (Now is defined in your glossary as …without time. Not to be contrasted with “then,” or confused with “the present moment,” which appear only within the context of time.  Both “now” and “then” are concepts; now is not. Now alludes to objectless Reality.)

Is this not (‘the’) now that is never not here, that cannot be conceptualized, that we all live, all of the time, the only inescapable and effortless universal?  Am I understanding correctly?
 
Response: “Yes” to your first question.  It’s my basic response to your second question as well, except that I would make an effort to avoid the word “time” in this context.  Nor would I use the word “only,” since here is of the same nature as now.

​Question: You write [in endnote 59] “In fact, the past, like the future, isn’t uniquely determined either, as we shall see.”  Then you cite: The Grand Design, [by] Stephen Hawking: “Quantum physics tells us that no matter how thorough our observation of the present, the (unobserved) past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.  The universe, according to quantum physics, has no single past, or history.” 

Could you please elaborate a bit on that (the “past” not being determined)?  Is this because the (meaning of the) past is regenerated continuously in the now?  Or something else on top of that?
 
Response: The past is not determinable simply because “it” doesn’t exist—i.e., persist.  Even for a nanosecond.  See Chapters 19 and 24 (including endnotes) in The Grand Delusion.

Question:  I do not understand the concept of not near or far, not big or small.  Is the Universe NOT large and is Mars NOT far away?  And, if it not near or far, then why is it taking the Mars Perseverance mission six months to get there?
 
Response: Terms like “near,” “far,” “big,” “small,” refer to what appears relative, not Absolute.  They do not designate actual Nearness, Farness, Bigness, Smallness—whatever such made-up terms could possibly mean.  Only in our conceptualized world of “this” and “that” does there appear a large universe where Mars appears far away from Earth.  In Totality, which hasn’t any size, there is only here and now.  Please check out the terms here, now, and Totality in the glossary.  See also two truths in the glossary and then reread chapter 36.