Man wants to live. Man wants to live eternally on this planet. Living is an obsession of man. But man is born and will die. The human body has an intrinsically embedded code to rebirth him to live again. Live to breed his race. The human body makes humans breed as well but an unusual sense began to dawn on them between 100 million and 10 million years ago. They began to make sense of the time.
A sense of perception of time and sense of perceived time between two successive events like night and day. Like one travels from point A to point B. Travelling from point A has a beginning and an end at point B. So travel between A to B in terms of that space that was measured much later after millions of years, in terms of distance or even in terms of time. Time existed as day and night then. Even to this date, humans use day and night that form years, hours, minutes, and seconds to calculate time.
Albert Einstein in his Theory of Special Relativity proves that time that is ticking at a constant rate is one of the dimensions of space. The time that ticks in a watch can’t measure time alone, space is needed. So time is space and time both. The universe is out of the perception of time as time is invented by humans to measure earth’s movement that yields day and night, months and years.
Genius physics theorist Stephen Hawking in his book ‘The Brief History of Time’ explains time as that when things change from order to disorder he calls it the ‘arrow of time’ which he splits into three folds-thermodynamics, psychological and cosmological. The ingenuity of the scientific mind has its own inhibitions.
People ask how space is time. Recent scientific discoveries prove that our sense of time is dependent on external stimuli and keeps mutating from our ongoing experience of the external world. It resonates with people’s feelings about the passing of time. In fact, the sense of time is anchored in our bodies. When we think about the time, we think about space. Studies suggest that our thinking about time and space is processed by the same part of the brain. A metaphor is used for ages in all cultures that time is space. In all cultures from tribal to modern, humans use gestures of past and tomorrow to move hands either from behind to forward or from left to right. Our calendars are arranged from left to right, most of our language text is written from left to right barring a few which is also a mirrored-reversed reality of left to right.
Time and space are relative. Draw two lines a shorter and a longer and ask a child to tell you how long lines are. The longer the line obviously the child lingers longer. It all depends on our cognition how our cognition cognises. We often feel time passes more quickly when we age which sends fear down our spine. Our brain is evolved to encrypt new experiences. If you introduce to it experiences that it already experienced that does not create new memories. The brain is evolved to measure retrospective judgment of time-based on how many new memories we create over a certain period. New memories make our perception of time longer and familiar ones shorter. You went holidaying, you met new people new ambience. Memories created at holidaying when retrieved will seem longer and you will sense that you spent quite a while being there. When you age you make fewer new memories or fresh experiences. Therefore in retrospect, your reflection of time seems to have lasted shorter than your childhood. We can lessen the sense of quickly ageing by learning new skills, engaging in exploring new ideas, enterprises, jobs, and places.
In reality, time is also the psychological space of mind. Time is that space in which the mind can think. Therefore, man blames time to be running fast. Time has not corrupted man, he has corrupted his own time. It is said that time is running fast and it will not come back. So time is money. Time is wealth. Obsession with time begins. You misunderstand time. Time is here to exist in it to live in it. But you think time is there tomorrow so you take pictures of today so that tomorrow you become part of the history.
People lament they are passing time. Word pastime is a synonym for sports. Time passes you by. The time that is a byproduct of mind passes you by. But if you begin walking with time and you consider you are walking then it makes you miserable. Then you will be a child, young, old, and die in fear. A lifetime of walk with time does not make you reach anywhere. If you don’t walk along the time, and you be in your being and stay in the being-ness of your being, you will see all that is happening timelessly timeless. You will see youth happening then old happening, and all that happens to your body but not to you. You are timeless. Nanak calls it Akal. The Timeless that which is beyond time. Sikhs greet others by Sat Sri Akal which means ‘hail the truth that manifests in you as timeless’. Jesus has said that in the kingdom of God there shall be time no longer.
In Gita, Krishna says, ‘I am the time and I am the source of destruction that comes forth to annihilate the worlds’ replying to Arjun who says if warriors are as good as dead already then why should Arjun fight?
Krishna has a timeless vision. Krishna can observe the past, present, and future whereas a human mind cannot. Like you are on earth and the earth is rested on the canvas of the universe. Observatories of the earth can view one dimension of the universe. Like you have a keyhole to view a part of the city from that hole. The other part of the city is not visible to the hole. To change your position to the other part of the city, you change the position of your hole. So what was actually going on at that time on the other part was your future and your earlier position is your past now. Space and time are relative. Krishna, therefore, says I am the time to mean that time and space are within you and your perception of absolute time is not. Existence has no time and space.
Existence exists timelessly. We exist timelessly. But we measure time. Time is a parameter of measurement of change around. All miseries of the world happen in time. In time, we get to know that there is death. Death makes us fearful. Fear of God and hell breeds dilemma. Mankind wants to live on earth forever in time. We are forever eternal. But man wants to live eternally in time and time is not. Time is mind. Time is a reflection of the space of your mind, in joy, it gallops, and in sorrow, it snails.
When you sit quietly in you the sense of time disappears. That is the moment eternity dawns on you. You drown into yourself deep down that’s that moment of timelessness. You can live your life timelessly but time will affect your body you will be a child, young, old, and die too. But in timelessness, you will be in eternity all the time beyond the body. Buddha used to say that ‘I have not said a word in last 40 years.’ In his 40 years of life after enlightenment, he would deliver sermons. As time did not create any ripple on his timeless existence. Because time cannot touch life. Being in the present moment of time is being timeless.
The author is a spiritual teacher and advisor on policy, governance and leadership.
