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My reading of the Grandfather Clause is that it suggests the impossibility of time travel. I think immortality is the closest one could possibly get to conquering time. We may be able to bend time's effects (think of freezing), but I can't get my mind around actually stepping into another time "dimension" or sending faster-than-light messages that get replies before they are sent.
I am a firm believer in causality within a universe (as opposed to multiple streams in a multiverse). You cannot break the logic of causality. So, this means that it would be impossible to step into a time before you were born. How could you be there if the conditions of your current existence haven't yet been met?
If an grown man came up to me today and told me that he was my grandson (I'm 31 years old), what would happen to him if I were to make a vow of chastity right on the spot? Would he disappear? And before you say, "Well, he's already there, so the fate of your vow must be that it was broken," what about his being there in the first place? Doesn't it suggest that one is capable of changing fate through one's actions? This doesn't work. It's just silly.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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