If in a universe which creates itself out of nothing, particles, their properties must be as much the cause as the effect of their interaction, of forces between them, then their communication —and the transmission of light— must be instantaneous: not over any space distance but over any spacetime distance, which is something else entirely. If there would exist only a single electrically charged particle in the entire universe so it cannot express its charge in interactions, then it cannot be charged itself. Charge, any property then must be something which lives within particle interactions, something a particle cannot privately own. Similarly, if by definition there is nothing outside the universe, then it cannot have any particular property nor be in any particular state as a whole as ‘seen’ from the outside (no matter that there is no outside to the universe) as well as seen from within. If, as in big bang cosmology, it at any moment in cosmic time would have particular properties and be in some particular state as a whole, then it would have the same properties and be in the same state as ‘seen’ from without. Though big bang cosmology aims to describe the universe from within, it fails to achieve this, a failure which has disastrous consequences for cosmology in general and for our notion of time in particular. For in speaking about its age, for example, big bang cosmology in fact states that time is defined, that time passes even outside of it —which of course makes no sense and if true would mean that the origin and nature of time cannot be understood even in principle. While a big bang universe lives in a time continuum not of its own making; as a self-creating universe only exists as seen from within, it contains, produces all time inside of it.As a result, time in this universe cannot be observed to pass at the same pace at all distances, so past, present and future are relative, observer-dependent notions —as opposed to big bang cosmology where we can delude ourselves that we can determine what in an absolute sense precedes what, what is cause of what.This paper is an exploratory study into the origin and nature of time.