Saturday 5 October 2002

Pic of the day: The bridge, the end of which is ever unseen ... from time to eternity. (Actually it's a screenshot from DAoC, but I really liked it.)

Arch of time

On the bus to work earlier this week, I enjoyed the special issue of Scientific American, September 2002: "A matter of time". I warmly recommend it for those who have the suppleness of sanity to go up against such an awe-inspiring concept as time is. Remember Greek mythology? Chronos - Father Time - was identified with Cronos, the ruling Titan and father of the gods. He ate them all as newborn, but eventually had to release them and give up his power. (Details may vary.) But unlike those gods, we have never been able to overcome time. It still eats us all oh so shortly after we are born.

By one of those strange coincidences that we mystics love, my friend "Amani" recently posted the lyrics to Morning please don't come in her LiveJournal. I remember that song from when I myself was young. Roger Whittaker, the guy who sometimes whistled instead of singing, performed that song quite beautifully. Parts of the lyrics are still with me, I think. Let's see:

Day don't break,
for you will take
my love away from me.
Try to hold back the sun,
I beg you,
morning please don't come!

Ah, but morning comes and goes, and the past is lost. Or is it? Not according to science, and not according to my experience as a mystic. Time is a dimension, just one where we cannot move randomly back and forth. (Or if we do, we cannot know it.) But it is still there. Everything that was, is. The land does not sink beneath the waves when we sail out. It just looks that way to us.

***

"It is possible to imagine drugs that could suspend the subject's impression that time is passing. Indeed, some practitioners of meditation claim to be able to achieve such mental states naturally."

No spit. And that's not "mental" in the street use of the word. Rather it is an experience of what we already know: Time does not pass, we "pass" through it like thread "passes" through a weave. Just because an end of the thread exists, that doesn't mean the whole thread suddenly ceases to be; much less that the weave unravels.

"And what if science were able to explain away the flow of time? Perhaps we would no longer fret about the future or grieve for the past. Worries about death might become as irrelevant as worries about birth."

(We're talking worries about being born, obviously. Worries about giving birth are near universal and quite reasonable in women who approach the time of labor.)

To some extent, I live this life already. I do not grieve for the past. It happens occasionally that I grieve for the future. Not for the unavoidable; but sometimes we could change the future and yet we lack the will to do so. That's when I grieve. When I see a friend walk over the edge, then I grieve. When they are over the edge and gravity does its work, the time for grief is over. The laws of nature do not relate to our emotions; the two are not inside the same framework. It makes no sense to beg the morning not to come. It comes when it comes.

On a similar note, I do not fear death and grave. I do resent death, as least as it relates to me and those close to me. But it is a part of reality and can only be postponed, not overcome. I'm OK with that. What I fear is what comes after death, the uncertainty of the hereafter. Will I after all have to pay back for all the happiness of this life? That would suck, for I have had a glorious time. (You don't have to believe that - it's enough that I do. I'll be happy to go into more detail on this, but not tonight.)

***

Some mystics have no doubt about the benevolence of God. But I am not so easily convinced. The mystic experience is only half my life. I also retain the logical mind that most secular scientists pride themselves of. And so I see all things with two different eyes. It is not like a mood swing where you first see one thing and then another, at least usually not. They are both there, it is a question of focus.

I see time in the simple, human way that we were all raised in. But at the same time I see it with the eyes of knowledge, the inner eyes that have outgrown the primitive notions. Yet somehow I never give up one as I grasp for the other. I remain suspended, my mind like a bridge between time and eternity.

But sometime, there will be only eternity.