time

Featured

Time

/ Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

My thoughts were turned to this subject when I scolded my cat Spooky. I shook my finger and looked cross. ‘Naughty! He slunk off guiltily. Just a few moments later he re-appeared and jumped up onto my lap. I realised that the incident had been completely forgotten in his mind, although in mine it was still fresh. I concluded that animals move through a series of disconnected events and are present most, if not all of the time, in the ‘now’. If they remember anything of the past it is only ever locked in their instinctual memory; the place where they store their ability to hunt and fall on four feet.

The Cat Righting Reflex, the perfect ‘Now!’

One might consider the well known psychology experiment by Pavlov who rang a bell before a dog’s meal time and he observed they salivated even though there was no food. Their response to the bell produced an anticipation of food. I would argue that the link is again instinctual memory rather than dogs imagining an event in the future as humans do.

Humans and animals experience time in the present, but humans go beyond this. We will form memories of past events from which we can recall at will. Films featuring an amnesiac character such as the Jason Bourne series of thrillers, show how difficult it is the function socially without memory.

Then we can imagine future events and manipulate in our minds how we will would like them to turn out or not. As children, we learn about danger by experience or parental instruction; ‘don’t put your hand in the fire’. By imagining an unpleasant future outcome, a bad experience can be avoided.

What the past and future have in common is the concept of time. Neither are occurring in the present moment. Therefore, we can argue, that before humans had the concept of time, events were experienced in the moment. Tribal myths and legends, passed on over the camp fire, were the only record of the past.

Avebury, England: Larger than Stonehenge containing Sun and Moon circles within a ditch and henge.

But these ‘disconnected events’ were at some time, observed to repeat as patterns. The passing of the seasons was undoubtedly a serious matter. Solar and lunar observatories were built all around the world and the Wiccan solar festivals remind us of this function. Megalithic henges and stone circles are commonly found to be astronomical calendars able to measure and predict the solstices and equinoxes. This was more than for agricultural use as archaeologists believe and relate to complex permutations of universal energies.

Although various crude clocks were used such as sun dials and candles, it was not until the 18th Century when an English clockmaker John Harrison invented the marine chronometer. This was a critical moment in history for it meant that navigation of the seas was made considerably safer. The precise time from an chronometer, reliably indicated the longitude on long sea voyages. When combined with the latitude from the height of the sun at midday, this gave navigators the precise position of the ship. The measurement of time not only fixed points in the day and night, but one’s location. Experiences in known time and space joined together in the age of science and reason.

Ariadne hands the thread to Theseus: depicting the wise aspect of his Anima

There is a story from Ancient Greece concerning Ariadne and her lover, Theseus. Theseus was charged with destroying the Minotaur, a flesh eating monster that lived in the centre of a labyrinth. Ariadne gave Theseus a ball of thread and instructed him to unwind it as he walked through the labyrinth, thereby finding his way out. Theseus successfully killed the Minotaur and escaped to Crete with Ariadne.

Ariadne gave Theseus a novel aid to connect the otherwise confusing experiences in the labyrinth, in a rational and repeatable way. Instead of disconnections which lead to the experience of ‘where am I?’, Theseus was able to rationally and repeatedly connect together these individual events. He was the first of Ariadne’s suitors to avoid being consumed by fierce panic and confusion, and by mastering time and location, escape.

The thread in this story, I suggest, represents Time with a capital ‘T’. Although an abstract concept and therefore not ‘real’ to the five senses, the continuity of experience created by time helps every human on their individual journey.

TI – ME

When we tie (TI-E) our experiences together we are able to overcome the monster within ourselves (–ME) and become our Higher Self.

The Sufi’s have an exercise which is conducted just before going to sleep. The entire day is recounted backwards in as great a detail as possible. There are no ‘conclusions’ or ‘observations’ to be made other than to ‘rewind’ daily experience.

In this way a continuous memory is formed of that day. This technique can be used after the death of the body as an objective review of one’s life is rewound before one’s eyes and beyond into the afterlife. Just as time does not exist in our dreams, so time ceases to be useful after death and we enter the fabled ‘eternity’. The fabled ‘lost souls’ of pergatory are those that have lost control of their ability to consciously move from one experience to another. Some even become locked in a repeated event in as described in the story of Tantalus. His condition was not ‘punishment’ as moralists believe but a state of mind.

However sophisticated modern technology becomes, it can only ever approach the idea of infinitely fast things, never achieve them. When a quartz crystal has a tiny electric current pass through it it vibrates at 32,768 times a second. Nature is astoundingly constant in this respect and gave us quartz watches and other electronic devices. Just as quartz crystals are tetrahedral arrangements of oxygen and silicon atoms so precise that light passes straight through it, so it vibrates perfectly constantly.

The same clarity of experience is reproduced in spiritual practice by what is called ‘invocation’. In many mystical practices around the world, a student is tasked with the silent recitation of holy words. This ‘mantra’ is recited within the heart whilst experiencing, not negating, ordinary life. It is a task requiring Herculean concentration and effort, taking a lifetime to master, if ever at all.

The effect is to link the events of daily life in the way that an old fashioned movie film has regular cut outs on either side for the projector to connect with and move the film along at a regular speed. The illusion is one of still images that change imperceptibly and at thirty frames per second.

However difficult it is to understand how individual images scroll at speed, we do not need to know. The imperative is that one maintains the ‘I’ or ‘eye’ of the individual light bulb in the projector…whatever the story that is being projected.

Just as Theseus creeps closer to the centre of the labyrinth, so the observer creeps closer to their God within, using the technique of invocation. Like a cat watching a mouse hole, one’s concentration is fixed; mouse or no mouse.

The Taurean Age of Civilisation on Crete, The Minoans

The slaying of the Minotaur in the age of Taurus, was central to the Minoan civilisation. The dark corridors of life have to be travelled so that the God-self can be discovered. The Beast or Minotaur is the same archetype as in the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. It is only truly known when love of true Self, slays the hideous ego.

This Jungian psychology is strangely connected to our modern day by the mystery of ‘time’ and the passing of discontinuous events that can warp into psychosis. The illusion of time becomes, in the clinically ‘sane’ at least, a constant ‘glue’ that makes experience appear continuous. But, just as in the beating chambers of the heart, time has an uncanny ability to increase and decrease it’s pace. Wonderful holiday experiences can fade all too soon while interminable waiting in the airport lounge has no end.

Physicists have there own story about this phenomon. In Albert Einstein’s ‘General Theory of Relativity‘, time is described as being something which can lengthen or shorten in it’s relation to space. ‘Time Dilation’ states that as an observer approaches the speed of light, time slows down. An astronaut might therefore return to Earth after a journey to the edge of the Universe at ‘warp speed’ and find that he or she is younger than their children.

Such concerns await us in the future. For the philospher, the task is to get to grips with the every day meaning of the passing of events. Can we keep a grip of the thread laid out to guide us through the labyrinth? Can we slay the monster within?

The Labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral, France: A Message from the Medieval Masons through time
picture credit: Helen Mueller
Featured

Back to the Present

/ Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

The present is the greatest gift

I visited my mechanic at his garage a few weeks ago and was surprised to find the place deserted. But an impressive Delorean sports car sat there with it’s rear engine exposed as if ready for ‘take off’. After a few moments of wonder, the garage owner appeared wiping his hands on a rag. ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘I thought you had gone back to the future!’

He didn’t laugh and had probably heard the joke all morning but it made me think on the film ‘Back to the Future’. What a nonsense premise for a story I always think. Odd that in a society that considers itself rational and scientific, writers are fascinated by illogical impossibilities and their absurd consequences. Such non-real accounts are of course, fiction, and humans have an ability that is often taken for granted; to live in factual and fictional worlds simultaneously.

Films like this such as Disney’s ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ introduce concepts of non-linear time that I do not believe children are likely to understand or benefit from. Contrary to Lewis Carroll’s original concept, a character known as ‘Time’ played by Johnny Depp, is central to the story as Alice time travels to change the past.

‘You cannot change the past!’ screams Alice at one point in the film.

The same insight applies to the future…a simple fact that children would do well to be taught at an early age. But of course, science fiction knows no end to the concept of jumping forwards and backwards along the illusion of linear time.

‘The Time Machine’, directed by George Pal, 1960. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Whilst Western fiction writers are sending their characters off ‘through time’ in absurd contraptions, philosophers and some indigenous tribes like the Dogon, describe a ‘non-linear time’ model in which all pasts, presents and futures exist together.

Just as one needs a map to know a destination, a time traveller needs to know the where and when of a proposed journey. There are many oracle card designers and readers in Western societies today; overtaking the famous ‘Tarot’. An ‘oracle reader’ will use cards to predict ‘the future’ but preface the prediction with ‘this is only one of many futures.’

It would be good for us all, in my view, if we admit that the fourth dimension which we call ‘time’ is a mysterious, filtered perception and, in my view, better left so.

What then? Well, this leaves us with ‘the present’ and we should not feel the lesser for it. Perhaps we should pause and seriously contemplate how much we live in the present and how much in selected memories of past and an imaginary future.

I have noticed how older people, enjoying the last flourish of their lives, tend to talk too much about things that they have done in the past. Sometimes these stories contain humour or valuable life lessons but mostly they are experiences intended to impress rather than amuse or inform.

This phenomena is not only applicable to personal history, but also scholars of global history, politics, religions and any subject that has come and gone.

We tend to understand now, that history is ‘written by the victors’. Writers filter facts in order to record a biased account for intentional or unintentional reasons. Politicians of all colours, do the same. We tend to put previous leaders on pedestals and forget their misjudgements and misdeeds. For example Winston Randolph Churchill was a man whose military mistakes are overlooked for his finer qualities of oratory and leadership. Nelson R. Mandela was an ANC terrorist imprisoned for his acts and yet later was awarded the Nobel peace prize for laying down the foundations of equality of the races and democracy in South Africa. Mother Teresa valued ‘poverty’ so much she rarely distributed the money she was given to the poor. Are these people really good role models for future generations?

The further back into the past one investigates, the more imagination and conjecture colours and shades reality. Religions have a hard time presenting a solid case around revered or ‘holy’ prophets and saints for the same reasons. The main difference compared to politics, in my view, is that for religions, ‘faith’ can be used to excuse the unprovable.

Religious scriptures that do not change endure, because they can be trusted. The dynasties of ancient Egypt could be argued to have remained powerful through thousands of years for this very reason. An nnovatory pharaoh, such as Akhenaten, was overruled by the priests on his death and past traditions restored.

Today academics study the past, apparently for it’s own sake. A cabinet full of Stone Age flints, for instance, is meaningless to the ordinary person. In contrast, the causes and consequences of war might be considered worthy of study and learning lessons, but this rarely happens. For this we pay a price and wars continue to this day.

The tales of olden times, told around the camp fire by our ancestors, sustained knowledge and wisdom, whereas today there is little such continuity and consensus for our children.

Past and future are fraught with conjecture, imagination, bias, incomplete facts and false reasoning. I suggest that the value of both the past and future as treated in the West today, is at best limited and at worst, misleading.

Which leaves us with the present. The ancient Greeks had a word for the quality of the present moment which is ‘kairos’. It describes the true value of every moment. When they measured time with solar shadows or lunar observations for purely practical reasons, they called it ‘chronos’. The two were distinct and even turn up in the Holy Bible in Acts 13:18 and 27:9 .

In the East, ancient thinkers have encapsulated the same idea; such as in Zen Buddhism and Taoism. In Zen, the meditator is kept in the moment by being struck with a stick by the teacher, should a student’s mind be observed to be wandering.

But perhaps it is a surprise to find the same understanding also described in the Holy Bible. Ephesians 5, 15-17, James 4 and Psalm 118 all refer to and imply an awareness of the quality of the ‘God filled’ moment. What the ancient Greeks called ‘chronos’ is time as a measured ‘tick’ of time, however this might be done. This, apart from being helpful when arranging appointments, is a double edged concept that creates the stress of having to avoid ‘lateness’ and ‘sloth’ and ‘waste’.

‘What a complete waste of time!’, we say and yet how is this ever possible?

In contrast, the kairos moments embrace all our thoughts and actions and give grace for inspiration to enter a persons soul. Those who only measure time experience the frustration which we call ‘impatience’.

In Western Judaeo-Christian history, there has always been an understanding of not only the right moment to perform an action but a right season. For instance, there are times in the Jewish Astrological calendar that is it wise to start a new enterprise. This is the month of March or Aries in astrology. If one is wishing to start a new business, for instance, then the unique qualities of this part of the solar year, add benefit to the enterprise and make it more likely to succeed.

The contrast between chronos and kairos concepts of time bear a parallel resemblance to a ‘five senses’ life and an ‘inner senses’ life respectively. The majority of the population are primarily engaged in the former; particularly the agnostics who believe that when the watch winds down, it is dead. Non such ‘clockwork minds’ are able to give less importance to the five senses and develop awareness of ‘Mind’. Mind is what is happening within ones body / mind unity, as a microcosm of everything in the Universe.

This ‘universal’ way of life, is one of the many graces obtainable through being sensible of the subtle, ‘unmeasured’, qualities of our soul and being present in it.

The poet and mystic William Blake expressed this most perfectly in his poem

Auguries of Innocence;

‘To see a world in a grain of sand,

And heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour,’