Time flies...or does it?
I am really bad at pondering time. While I am fairly punctual and grasp that kind of time, I struggle with every movie or book that involves time travel or advanced notion of relative time. The more time I spend with the topic, the less it unravels. And I wonder how this integrates into a spiritual practice...
In general, there is psychological or individually felt time. And then there is physical, maybe even universal time. Let's look at them.
Psychological time is my felt sense of how quickly something moves from being object of expectation (future) to being an object of awareness (presence) to being an object of memory (past) [see Ricard/Thuan]. This seems very intuitive. Meditation is all about steadying your mind in the presence or the Now, therefore cutting out all the niftly little stories that your ego has authored about the past (all the unjust badness that has happened to you) or the future (all the evil that will most certainly come your way soon). In the presence, there is no story, just observation, Awareness. No ego....No time. This radical elimination of time is key to any spiritual awakening.
More so, the speed at which psychological time seems to pass is determined by the density of psychological events that occur. It seems that every 3 seconds or so, the brain is conditioned to change the object of awareness, its focus. This might serve some evolutionary purpose to be alert to a wide range of stimuli, but certainly gets in the way during meditation when monkey mind cannot even focus on the breath for 10 consecutive inhalations. So, it seems that there is a biologically ingrained sense of time that help us learn from the past, prepare for the future and generally be alert to current dangers. All good in the dark sages, but a somewhat annoying hindrance to overcome in one's meditation practice.
While I sort of get psychological time and can experience it first hand myself, I truly am lost when coming to physical time. The Newtonian arrow of universal time, always moving forward for the entire Cosmos at the same steady pace is much in line with the basic concept of psychological time and feels intuitive. In fact, it is very much the basis of everything that we do, plan, build, invent, etc. But it isn't correct, as Einstein certainly has shown.
Here is where I struggle: Relativity 101. Time and space are not separate, but one construct. If someone travels closer to light speed, his time elapses slower. Starting from the same point of time, his present will be his twin's past (because the twin stayed on earth and does not travel). Even weirder, time and space seem to be changing in relation to each other. If yo ugo faster, time goes slower and your are smaller - go figure. Even more weirder, the gravity of a black hole can make time go slower. At this point, I typically read that time can actually flow in either direction, theoretically, and/or that time isn't flowing at all but just a basic constant, always there, a time singularity. Wow, I am lost. Nothing in Einstein's world makes any sense to me, time wise.
So, if Now is such an important concept for spiritual practice, there does not seem to be a universal Now at all, always only an individual Now. Is there really anything special then about the Now? Does time matter at all? Is there time? If there is no time, was anything ever created? Or is the Buddhist view right that there was no beginning, no direction, no creation, no creator, there just "is"?
Any timely clues anyone? I wonder...
In general, there is psychological or individually felt time. And then there is physical, maybe even universal time. Let's look at them.
Psychological time is my felt sense of how quickly something moves from being object of expectation (future) to being an object of awareness (presence) to being an object of memory (past) [see Ricard/Thuan]. This seems very intuitive. Meditation is all about steadying your mind in the presence or the Now, therefore cutting out all the niftly little stories that your ego has authored about the past (all the unjust badness that has happened to you) or the future (all the evil that will most certainly come your way soon). In the presence, there is no story, just observation, Awareness. No ego....No time. This radical elimination of time is key to any spiritual awakening.
More so, the speed at which psychological time seems to pass is determined by the density of psychological events that occur. It seems that every 3 seconds or so, the brain is conditioned to change the object of awareness, its focus. This might serve some evolutionary purpose to be alert to a wide range of stimuli, but certainly gets in the way during meditation when monkey mind cannot even focus on the breath for 10 consecutive inhalations. So, it seems that there is a biologically ingrained sense of time that help us learn from the past, prepare for the future and generally be alert to current dangers. All good in the dark sages, but a somewhat annoying hindrance to overcome in one's meditation practice.
While I sort of get psychological time and can experience it first hand myself, I truly am lost when coming to physical time. The Newtonian arrow of universal time, always moving forward for the entire Cosmos at the same steady pace is much in line with the basic concept of psychological time and feels intuitive. In fact, it is very much the basis of everything that we do, plan, build, invent, etc. But it isn't correct, as Einstein certainly has shown.
Here is where I struggle: Relativity 101. Time and space are not separate, but one construct. If someone travels closer to light speed, his time elapses slower. Starting from the same point of time, his present will be his twin's past (because the twin stayed on earth and does not travel). Even weirder, time and space seem to be changing in relation to each other. If yo ugo faster, time goes slower and your are smaller - go figure. Even more weirder, the gravity of a black hole can make time go slower. At this point, I typically read that time can actually flow in either direction, theoretically, and/or that time isn't flowing at all but just a basic constant, always there, a time singularity. Wow, I am lost. Nothing in Einstein's world makes any sense to me, time wise.
So, if Now is such an important concept for spiritual practice, there does not seem to be a universal Now at all, always only an individual Now. Is there really anything special then about the Now? Does time matter at all? Is there time? If there is no time, was anything ever created? Or is the Buddhist view right that there was no beginning, no direction, no creation, no creator, there just "is"?
Any timely clues anyone? I wonder...
Maybe time is just a construct that makes now possible.
ReplyDeleteWell in the Big Eye book the author talked about the mind being nothing but an instant capture/recording device. It captures the now and the universe re-manifests itself constantly. So it could be that we just capture 'now' over and over and our brains string it together as time.
ReplyDelete