Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes, hasten to their end ….. Shakespeare                                                                                                             

Time in day to day parlance is a proxy for the sequence constructed of your work, chores, and events which are happening, happened and will happen.  

Time is very enigmatic, misty and mystical. It keeps cropping up when we read psychology and philosophy. It bogs you down to go further. In my younger days, I just defined it to myself as” Time is the function of change. If there is no change, there is no Time”.It has given me a kind of reprieve. But the stories of time travel and that nothing can travel faster than Time were the cool things in my younger days.

Krishna in Bhagavad Gita says “I am Time”. The concept of Time is not anthropocentric. Is time linear or cyclical? Hindu traditions believe time as cyclical and creation, sustenance and liquidation for renewal and recreation are the proxies of time. Everything in nature and existence is rhythmic and happens in cycles. Hence time also is cyclical.

The deity, Kala Bhairava is a Timekeeper, and Bhairava denotes the one that sustains and destroys the creation in cyclic nature. MAHAKALA in Mahayana Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism is “that which is beyond time-lapse”. 

In the western religious point of view, Time is linear, and it will reach the end of times, and the dead will be resurrected to be judged and based on their merit they will do their Time for eternity.

Time for eastern civilisation is cyclical, repetitive, recurring and on-going, while for others it is linear and finite. The perception of Time as finite makes it valuable and Time becomes interchangeable with work, and hence finishing tasks on time, deadlines, and punctuality might have emerged.

Oriental circumspection of human relations and cyclic nature of Time make them have a dilated sense of Time. No wonder people of eastern civilisation are lax on punctuality.

For Aristotle, Time is a cosmic phenomenon and related in a way with planetary motion. Newton has further matured the thought.  To Newton, Time was absolute. It exists independently of a perceiver, progresses at a consistent pace throughout the universe. It is measurable but imperceptible and can only be understood mathematically. The world is like a cog work, and if initial conditions are stated and the Time is indicated, the outcome could be predicted. Many of us still view Time in the Newtonian sense.

However, to Einstein, Time is relative and conjoined with space. Space and Time together are one entity, and collectively, space-time is absolute. The special theory of relativity posits time expansion and time contraction or vice versa of space.
A whole lot of time travel and other science fantasies had come about when this fact was established. Then comes the question of when Time was created or when it has emerged.

Time was thought to be a function of change and not have an independent identity. However, today scientists believe Time to be a product of the Big Bang. Just as energy coalesced to form matter and space, is it not possible for Time to be created by the Big bang as well. By the way, space is not an empty-space but an entity SPACE which is supposed to be with eight dimensions, and it is curved. Space is not alone but conjoined with Time, and both together have an inversely related character of elasticity. 

The chronobiology, a niche science, says that all cycles of the body systems are rhythms and time-related. There are clocks in the body to run the Time. They run the circadian, infradian and ultradian rhythms. For example, we always don’t breathe with both the nostrils all the Time. Each nostril takes a turn for every three hours. Bio rhythms have their own time. Life span also obeys the built-in clock in the cells which rings the “times up” bell. Means Time to die. The cloned sheep DOLLY died young because it was counting the time from the time of the birth of the cell from which Dolly was cloned. Chrono pharmacology includes, medications being more efficacious when given at particular timings as cells are at different stages of activity and rest.

What is the nature of psychological Time? It is subjective. 

As per Bergson, the scientific knowledge of ourselves is different from what our experiences are. For scientist’s, Time is quantifiable and divisible by clocks, calendars, grids, days, months and years. But the experience of Time is a flow, unique to each individual, it resists calculation, and objective measurement mingles with memories and iIs a very particular sensation. It might be partly communicable, but it is radically un–transferable.

Edmund Husserl, a phenomenologist, hypothesised on melody and music. He says that one hears the sounds and notes in the present, past and the future together. The listener listens to note in the immediate present, and holds it in his memory and expects and guesses the notes of the music to come next.
The Musician lives in time which is unified. Unified past, present and future. Or undivided time.

It is exemplified in Mozart’s practice. Mozart used to get musical thoughts all at once while travelling in a coach or while strolling. The linear Time with all past, present and future is not compartmentalised but held as a unitary chunk. Music appeared to him not as a sequence but as a “blob”.

Heidegger says that Time is not lived as past, present and the future but as a whole as a piece or a block. But for the sake of communication, we divide it.

Rupert Spira, a Neo-Adwaitist, was asked by an attendee of his sessions that he was trying to get the hang of Time. He decided to go behind Big bang and could not find any answer because there was nothing and so went into the future where it appeared that Time is not going to end. Infinite Time. Rupert Spira said that Time is Infinity, but when seen through the prism of mind it seems as Time and when the mind is transcended, what you see is just Timeless consciousness.  

One of the Indian vernacular poets personifies Time as stone-hearted, jests on your plight, a blind bat and a tormentor.  

In summary, Time can never stop enchanting us. Enigmatic and evasive Time. The more you dig for it, the more fascinating it gets and the more of its nature blooms.

~ Matcha

( From the thought dump of reflections, from what was read, discussed or searched over a period of years. Processing helps in clearing the altar for new Ideas to come in)