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Time-The Greatest Figment of Human Imagination

- Mr. kedarnath jonnalagadda


Some of the most commonplace ‘things’ that pervade the fabric of our existence a
re incredibly fascinating. Of these ‘time’ and ‘space’ occupy special places. Bu
t the incredibility of ‘time’ makes it fascinating and an all time great.
Time is commonplace and all pervading that it is the very mileu of the world we
live in. What exactly is time? You must think I have gone nuts, but the fact is
that ‘time is a figment of my imagination, it is a figment of your imagination a
nd it is figment of our imagination’… In fact it is a figment of collective huma
n imagination. It does not exist!!! And that makes it immensely fascinating.
The whole thing about time is like the ‘magic clothes’ that the clever tailor ma
de for the vain emperor in the bed-time story. He pulled a real fast one on ever
ybody. He proclaimed that none except that those who were honest and truthful co
uld see the clothes. A little chile spoke up. ‘But mommy.. the emperor has no cl
othes’. That woke everybody up the story goes.
‘time’ is no entity. It cannot be weighed, nor measured! We have never measured
time . We cannot. And this is imply because ‘time’ does not exist!!!
But what about all the clocks, sundials, you favourite water proof watch and the
lovable Big Ben. What do they do? Don t they tell us the time?
Well, they are all clocks all right. And as the breed of clocks do they measure
the gap between occurence of events.
And these events have to be some phenomenon in nature. The simplest clock is the
stick in the ground. It can be a sun dial. The shadow of the stick is here at s
unrise and it is there at sunset. Anybody can make a clock from any cyclical phe
nomenon in nature.
They can then arbitrarily devise some unit to show progression of the event. And
then get his neighbour to agree with him. And then another neighbour and the wh
ole neighbourhood… and so on until there is consensus of the majority in the pop
ulation of the area.
In history we have had different types of clocks, the stick in the ground, sundi
als, hourglasses with figures like women, water clocks, pendulums, quartz clocks
, cesium clocks, name them.
The ‘truth’ is that all of them have the foundation in the concept of ‘sunrise’
and ‘sunset’. And then a lot of ‘maths’ and ‘science and technology’ went in to
the concept and a great deal of ingenuity into establishing standards for time.
These standards were needed because each person having his or her own reckoning
of time would hardly contribute to social togetherness. You’d always be late for
dates. All said and done, ‘time’ is very much like any ‘language’.
Different people may speak different languages but in order for them to understa
nd each other – some commonly understood language is needed. So it is that inter
national standards were evolved for time such as ‘Greenwich Mean Time’, ‘Indian
Stadard Time’ and so on. But all this does not make ‘time’ anymore a ‘reality’ o
r anything more than a means for measuring some phenomenon in nature – and for u
s it is ‘sun rise’ and ‘sunset’.
It does not really require anybody to be a great thinker to know that ‘time’ or
rather ‘telling time’ is fictitious or a figment of the human imagination. And t
his imagination has been collectively ratified to be ‘ok’ and has the stamp of a
pproval from great thinkers.
I really wonder why it has taken Man so many many years to change opinion that ‘
time is absolute’ to ‘time is relative’. And that was worth a few Nobel prizes.
I wonder how long it will take to change all that to ‘time does not exist’ and w
hether anybody would give a simple prize too. And I don’t blame anybody who does
not give prizes to people for showing things that are not there!
Does all this mean we can throw away our Swiss watches and antique grandfather c
locks away. No, it may mean however, that we need to ‘de- learn’ a lot. And the
de-learned look at the clock on the wall is to understand that the clock is not
telling the time! It never has. It cannot because time does not exist. What it d
oes tell is something that you may like or not like depending on its bigger brot
her the ‘calender’ – If it is Sunday – the clock can do what it likes and you wi
ll do what you like. If it is not – life can be a drag or any number of things r
elativly speaking.
The nature of time was very clear in the minds of the sage. Time is nothing more
than ‘conjecture’ of the mind to make sense of the impinging reality of the cre
ation.
“Time is a measure I accept” But what is it a measure for has been my questions
since long. It is an arbitrary measure for what the human sees as moving… And ev
erything in the universe is moving. Einstein and considered the greatest scienti
fic thinker of our times is famous for the general theory of relativity and the
equation
E = mC2
Here E is the Energy m is mass of object and c is speed of light. Now Speed is d
istance covered by light(energy phenomenon that we can observe which could be sp
eed of photons/wave – particle-wave duality)/divided by time taken to move in sp
ace from arbitrary point A to Arbitrary point B.
I have no problem at all about this. My point is that time is primarily conceive
d in the mind of living being as a conjecture for measuring moving / rotating bo
dies in the cosmos…
In the above equation for speed ie. distance / time . Distance is real part of t
he terrain of the universe (as observed by observer – human) and time is part of
conjecture – arbitrary reckoning method in observers’ mind. And not a reality o
f the universe observed – however since observer is part of universe, at its bes
t, time and all conjecture can be a probablistic interaction factor ranging from
nearing 0 (very very objective) to 1 (h1ghly subjective).
If this factor nears 0 zero, time too tends to 0. and energy = mass tends to inf
inity.
In short Time is a measure I accept. But what is it a measure for? I have no pro
blem at all about this. Man after all is observing with his organs of sense (org
ans for Input ) which are 5 + mind – the processor + (I have been told by somebo
dy that there is mention of a 7th sense- I am trying to find out what that is)
My point is that time is primarily conceived in the mind of living being as a co
njecture for measuring moving / rotating bodies in the cosmos… and hence can be
equated to conjecture / imagination however logical that may be made to be.
The Vedic Perspective - atharva veda perspective
15269 (AVŚ_19,53.1a) kālo aśvo vahati saptaraśmiḥ sahasrākṣo ajaro bhūriretāḥ
|
15270 (AVŚ_19,53.1c) tam ā rohanti kavayo vipaścitas tasya cakrā bhuvanāni viś
vā ||1||
15272 (AVŚ_19,53.2a) sapta cakrān vahati kāla eṣa saptāsya nābhīr amṛtaṃ nv ak
ṣaḥ |
15273 (AVŚ_19,53.2c) sa imā viśvā bhuvanāny añjat kālaḥ sa īyate prathamo nu d
evaḥ ||2||
15275 (AVŚ_19,53.3a) pūrṇaḥ kumbho dhi kāla āhitas taṃ vai paśyāmo bahudhā nu
santam |
15276 (AVŚ_19,53.3c) sa imā viśvā bhuvanāni pratyaṅ kālaṃ tam āhuḥ parame vyom
an ||3||
15278 (AVŚ_19,53.4a) sa eva saṃ bhuvanāny ābharat sa eva saṃ bhuvanāni pary ai
t |
15279 (AVŚ_19,53.4c) pitā sann abhavat putra eṣāṃ tasmād vai nānyat param asti
tejaḥ ||4||
15281 (AVŚ_19,53.5a) kālo mūṃ divam ajanayat kāla imāḥ pṛthivīr uta |
15282 (AVŚ_19,53.5c) kāle ha bhūtaṃ bhavyaṃ ceṣitaṃ ha vi tiṣṭhate ||5||
15284 (AVŚ_19,53.6a) kālo bhūtim asṛjata kāle tapati sūryaḥ |
15285 (AVŚ_19,53.6c) kāle ha viśvā bhūtāni kāle cakṣur vi paśyati ||6||
15287 (AVŚ_19,53.7a) kāle manaḥ kāle prāṇaḥ kāle nāma samāhitam |
15288 (AVŚ_19,53.7c) kālena sarvā nandanty āgatena prajā imāḥ ||7||
15290 (AVŚ_19,53.8a) kāle tapaḥ kāle jyeṣṭham kāle brahma samāhitam |
15291 (AVŚ_19,53.8c) kālo ha sarvasyeśvaro yaḥ pitāsīt prajāpateḥ ||8||
15293 (AVŚ_19,53.9a) teneṣitaṃ tena jātaṃ tad u tasmin pratiṣṭhitam |
15294 (AVŚ_19,53.9c) kālo ha brahma bhūtvā bibharti parameṣṭhinam ||9||
15296 (AVŚ_19,53.10a) kālaḥ prajā asṛjata kālo agre prajāpatim |
15297 (AVŚ_19,53.10c) svayaṃbhūḥ kaśyapaḥ kālāt tapaḥ kālād ajāyata ||10||
15301 (AVŚ_19,54.1a) kālād āpaḥ sam abhavan kālād brahma tapo diśaḥ |
15302 (AVŚ_19,54.1c) kālenod eti sūryaḥ kāle ni viśate punaḥ ||1||
15304 (AVŚ_19,54.2a) kālena vātaḥ pavate kālena pṛthivī mahī |
15305 (AVŚ_19,54.2c) dyaur mahī kāla āhitā ||2||
15307 (AVŚ_19,54.3a) kālo ha bhūtaṃ bhavyaṃ ca putro ajanayat purā |
15308 (AVŚ_19,54.3c) kālād ṛcaḥ sam abhavan yajuḥ kālād ajāyata ||3||
15310 (AVŚ_19,54.4a) kālo yajñaṃ sam airayad devebhyo bhāgam akṣitam |
15311 (AVŚ_19,54.4c) kāle gandharvāpsarasaḥ kāle lokāḥ pratiṣṭhitāḥ ||4||
15313 (AVŚ_19,54.5a) kāle yam aṅgirā devo tharvā cādhi tiṣṭhataḥ |
15314 (AVŚ_19,54.5c) imaṃ ca lokaṃ paramaṃ ca lokaṃ puṇyāṃś ca lokān vidhṛtīś
ca puṇyāḥ |
15315 (AVŚ_19,54.5e) sarvāṃl lokān abhijitya brahmaṇā kālaḥ sa īyate paramo nu
devaḥ ||5||

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