On Time and My Inner Journey
Mike: Based on my own journey so far, what is Vedanta’s precise view of time?
Sundari: Even though time is not real from the nondual perspective, we experience it from the jiva perspective. Without a sequential process guiding experience, life would be total chaos. Imagine if everything happened at once!
In mithya, time is the space between events/experience, which are recorded by memory, an important function of the mind. If we could not remember experiences we could neither evaluate or assimilate their meaning, nor what is going on in us and our environment. Our intellect would not be functional, and we could not make sense of our mental/emotional state. This is why memory loss is the signature of the onset of dementia.
Time as a continuum can be divided into past present and future. The past can be divided into yesterday, last week and last year. Each of these time periods can be further divided into smaller increments. Which hour yesterday do you mean, 9 AM or 10 PM?. And what minute of 9 AM are you referring to; 9:21 or 11:17? Minutes break down into seconds and every additional unit keeps breaking down into smaller and smaller increments. Whatever is created is not created by addition, which would increase the substantiality of the unit and give us something to talk about, but it is created by dividing concepts, aka words. Has anything actually been created? If there is no “first,” there is no second or third. So, does time exist apart from the idea it exists?
Furthermore, each stage is perceived as a sequence of “now’s” – now, now, now, now, etc. A series of nows stretches into a continuum only when you step back and reflect on it. In the moment itself there is only “now.” Or take Pointillism, for instance. A single point has no dimension when you touch the paper with the pen, yet a collection of points gives rise to a pattern of measurable space. Neither the dot nor the spatial pattern is real since both seem to be real from different points of view. Two “reals” generates *seeming* realities but no actual reality. Seeming realities are as good a non-existent.
Here’s one more inquiry that will give you the gift of Eternal Time. When the world was created with a big “bang,” did time begin? The bang shattered the undifferentiated material mass, but the next event was a scattering of the various chunks of matter throughout space, which, science tells us is still going on. Scattering can’t happen until shattering has happened. Just as there is no time when shattering happens, is there time during the scattering “now?” No, because it is impossible to determine where the shattering ended and the scattering began. You need a third point to allow you to measure the distance between event 1 and event 2. That event hasn’t happened, so there is no way to tell the difference between the shattering and the scattering. If you want time, you are going to have to wait a very long time to get it. But by that time you will be dead many times over. Luckily, you are immortal so you can wait to find out what time it is.
Here’s another fact: time can’t begin because it isn’t real. And if it were real it couldn’t begin either because reality is non-dual Existence shining as unborn Consciousness. It was not shattered and scattered when the Big Bang banged because it is immutable…nothing changes it. If nothing changes it, nothing changes you because you are immortal Existence shining as whole and complete ever-present Consciousness. It can only be that way because reality is non-dual. If it were a duality then you might be a mortal entity, but you aren’t.
“So what,” you say.
“So now is eternal,” say I.
“So?”
“So you can stop rushing about like a chicken with its head cut off, worrying if you are going to get what you want before you die.”
“Because?”
“Because there is only one immortal Self and you are it. ”
Om and prem
Sundari
