12-05-2018, 10:05 PM
A FEW THOUGHTS ON TIME
What is time? Is time a concept, or is time a physical thing? Does time exist?
Consider for a moment the relationship of what we call time to other things, the passage of time can be measured by our orbit of the sun, or the moons orbit around us, or even a walk round the garden. That which we call time is a relative concept, and therefore incapable of existing in its own right!
If we look at it in a simple form i.e. relative to a walk round the garden, if we stop walking, does time stop?
For us it does!
Consider a fly in a railway carriage, if the train is travelling at 50mph and the fly is flying at 5 mph in the same direction how fast is it actually flying? Well in relation to the train it is flying at 5mph, but to the outside world it is 55mph.
If we imagine that the railway train is time, and the fly were to fly in the opposite direction then it would be travelling back in time in relation to the railway carriage, but not in relation to the outside world.
Time is generally viewed in the modern world a being linear, but past civilisations and other thinkers consider it to be circular, after all everything in nature is circular so why should time be different.
If you consider the words in this passage to be time, it only starts to exist when you start to read it. As long as you don’t start to read, it remains in the future and as you read each word they are consigned to the past. So there is only past and future, there is no present.
So where does that put us, some people say we must live for the present, but the present only exists in an immeasurable amount of time, less than a nano-second.
We exist in the past. The past is there behind us, it is measurable, quantifiable, but unchangeable. The future on the other hand is unknown, and immeasurable, but can be changed and influenced. We can see the past, and if we take a photograph we are capturing that minute piece of time we call the present. It is said that the photograph captures the past, but in fact it captures little pieces of the present, and holds that piece of time forever. That which is captured on film will not age, or deteriorate, only the film on which the picture exists will degrade with the passage of time. The picture may have been taken years ago, or only moments, but it shows an event which has now moved into the past, but on that film it is the present frozen in time.
Memories have the same characteristic, we look into our past and are able to see or re-live an event from our past. These snapshots are a reality in our minds and as such are slices of time imbedded in our memory.
When we put them there they were in that space we call the present, and so they are like the photograph, the present frozen in time.
When we look back to past events, happy or sad, and feel the emotions thus engendered, maybe smiling, laughing or crying. Are we just pulling out the photo album from the filing cabinet we call memory and thumbing through them or are we actually re-living those moments we captured?
Is it memory or time travel?
I leave the answer up to you.
What is time? Is time a concept, or is time a physical thing? Does time exist?
Consider for a moment the relationship of what we call time to other things, the passage of time can be measured by our orbit of the sun, or the moons orbit around us, or even a walk round the garden. That which we call time is a relative concept, and therefore incapable of existing in its own right!
If we look at it in a simple form i.e. relative to a walk round the garden, if we stop walking, does time stop?
For us it does!
Consider a fly in a railway carriage, if the train is travelling at 50mph and the fly is flying at 5 mph in the same direction how fast is it actually flying? Well in relation to the train it is flying at 5mph, but to the outside world it is 55mph.
If we imagine that the railway train is time, and the fly were to fly in the opposite direction then it would be travelling back in time in relation to the railway carriage, but not in relation to the outside world.
Time is generally viewed in the modern world a being linear, but past civilisations and other thinkers consider it to be circular, after all everything in nature is circular so why should time be different.
If you consider the words in this passage to be time, it only starts to exist when you start to read it. As long as you don’t start to read, it remains in the future and as you read each word they are consigned to the past. So there is only past and future, there is no present.
So where does that put us, some people say we must live for the present, but the present only exists in an immeasurable amount of time, less than a nano-second.
We exist in the past. The past is there behind us, it is measurable, quantifiable, but unchangeable. The future on the other hand is unknown, and immeasurable, but can be changed and influenced. We can see the past, and if we take a photograph we are capturing that minute piece of time we call the present. It is said that the photograph captures the past, but in fact it captures little pieces of the present, and holds that piece of time forever. That which is captured on film will not age, or deteriorate, only the film on which the picture exists will degrade with the passage of time. The picture may have been taken years ago, or only moments, but it shows an event which has now moved into the past, but on that film it is the present frozen in time.
Memories have the same characteristic, we look into our past and are able to see or re-live an event from our past. These snapshots are a reality in our minds and as such are slices of time imbedded in our memory.
When we put them there they were in that space we call the present, and so they are like the photograph, the present frozen in time.
When we look back to past events, happy or sad, and feel the emotions thus engendered, maybe smiling, laughing or crying. Are we just pulling out the photo album from the filing cabinet we call memory and thumbing through them or are we actually re-living those moments we captured?
Is it memory or time travel?
I leave the answer up to you.
What is important is not the right doctrine but the attainment of the true experience. It is giving up believing in belief.