Friday, August 3, 2012

The Unrreality of Time

Today, I wanted to share some reflections on time. I noticed that my preoccupation with time started from a young age. While human beings appear to value time and even obsessed about rituals centred on time, keeping track of time had practical applications.

Indeed, time keeping was essential for agriculture, navigation and early astronomy. The significance of time is also evidenced by the fact that is also a concern of religion. In this sense, the fact that we defined time also suggests that we might have been trying to get to terms with death and the inevitability of impermanence. In fact, it may be argued that world religions which believe are a source of hope in n after-life.

All humans in general, fear death and do their utmost to avoid talking about death. While belief in a better after-life may some individuals to go on living, the danger is when people in an attempt to escape from dealing with their impermanence, go on believing that they will not die or that their truth is the only valid truth.

Consequently, instead of using their life to help others, they fixate on saving the world and divide themselves on the basis of faith. However, our thoughts are often caught in an illusion called time.

For time itself, is not real. Our experience of life stretches to a number of about more than a 100 years. While we might now that there are beings that are still living for thousands of years, we just cannot relate to such long lifetimes.

Similarly, we can't ignore that our perception of time depends other factors such as awareness of movement and space and conscious awareness. So while time is a useful concept, it doesn't exist in its own right!

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