JNLRMI Vol. II Nr.2  July 2003

Time is conventionally measured in European thought by a series of constructs based on the movement of the earth. The basic natural unit is the day, which is defined as the time required for one complete revolution of the earth on its axis. Days are then arbitrarily subdivided into hours, minutes and seconds. A second natural unit is the year, which is defined as the time required for one complete revolution of the earth around the sun. Years are then arbitrarily subdivided into months or arbitrarily added to form centuries, millennia and so forth.

Defined in this way, time appears as something extraneous to human beings. This may be true, but there is something about this way of looking at things that is a little strange. Although the alternation of day and night and the cycle of the seasons are certainly important factors in human life, there is another factor that is even more important. That is the cycle of birth and death. The most basic and fundamental way in which human beings experience time is by passing through a well known progression from birth to childhood to adulthood to old age to death. There is no way to escape this progression except by dying sooner rather than later. It is not even possible to modify it to any appreciable degree by shortening or lengthening any of the phases (again, except by dying either sooner or later). In short, progression from birth to death is as inevitable as the movement of the planets, and a good deal closer to home.

There is a strong tendency in European thought to avoid looking at time in human terms. The clearest expression of this tendency is the European obsession with pictorial images. All pictorial images constitute a kind of denial of time, because they depict the subject as it exists at any given moment but not as it exists in time. In time the human body is much larger than it appears at any given moment in space. In time the human body consists of one entire body beginning at conception and ending at death. And even this entire body is not the whole story, because in reality if not in consciousness it also extends further backwards in time through the sperm and egg from which it was formed and further forwards in time through what becomes of it after death. It is only the life of the individual human body that begins at conception and ends at death, while that body actually forms a part of a far larger organism beginning with the ocean from which life emerged and continuing with the elements into which the body eventually decomposes, plus the individual body's children, if any. This is the real body, whose existence no one can deny, yet which is nowhere described, depicted or recognized in European thought.

Instead, Westerners act as if the past falls off the edge of the universe the instant that it ceases to be the present. This cannot possibly be true. Does anyone seriously believe that the body exists only from instant to instant and has no existence in time? This is not a plausible doctrine, yet you will seek in vain in European thought for any alternative to this doctrine. Look at how Europeans describe memory. They imagine that human memories are stored in some part of the brain - a part which they have yet to locate - but there is a much simpler explanation for the phenomenon of memory which has completely escaped them. Memory is nothing other than the body looking back on its own past, which physically exists in time, and seeing what it once saw, only more dimly and incompletely.

The question which must be asked here is: does the body also extend forward in time even prior to its actualization in the future? It would seem that it does. In the first place, it is no more plausible to assume that the body is created from instant to instant than to assume that it completely disintegrates from instant to instant. In the second place, there exists a large body of evidence suggesting that the future has already happened. This is shown by visions of the future in dreams and trance states. The well known phenomenon of "deja vu" is also best explained as the feeling that arises when something happens in real life that had previously happened in a forgotten dream. The notion that the future has already happened seems contrary to common sense, yet there is no other possible explanation for the many accurate intimations of future events that most people experience from time to time.

Could it be true that the entire future has already happened in the same sense that the entire past has already happened? There is probably no way of answering this question, but it seems likely that it is true. Why should the future already exist up to some indeterminate point and then suddenly cease? In any case, what seems clear is that what actually moves from moment to moment in time is not the body itself but only consciousness. Consciousness is like a moving spotlight that throws a strong light on the present moment but only a dim and uncertain light on the past and future. However there is a big exception to this rule, and that is during sleep. During sleep it is the present moment which consciousness mostly ignores while the past and future may become more vivid. Dreams are nothing other than the vivid experience of the body's past and future as modified by our wishes, fears and preconceptions and activated by our imagination. But even if our consciousness of the present during dreams is mostly derived from the past and future, it still moves from moment to moment the same as it does when we are awake. 

What follows from the above is that "consciousness" and "the present" are really two ways of describing one and the same thing. European thought treats "the present" as an objective reality that exists apart from consciousness, but viewed as an objective reality "the present" is most likely identical with all eternity. As a subjective reality "the present" only exists in the consciousness of individual human beings, and this present moves from moment to moment in exactly the same way as consciousness moves from moment to moment. However, the subjective present is actually somewhat larger than a pictorial image might indicate. Both music and speech, for example, depend for their effect on the capacity of our sense of hearing to encompass more than a single instant in time. And in addition to the five senses there is also what is called the "sixth sense", which is probably related to the sense of feeling. We can feel events before they happen even if we can't see or hear them. In short, consciousness at any given moment extends for some distance into both the past and future and also may include isolated events from the more distant past or future. This entire complex of perceptions constitutes the subjective present.

Understanding of the true nature of the present moment is mystified in European thought by the equation of the present with a pictorial image. Starting with a pictorial image of the present, European philosophers then constructed a Euclidian model of a three dimensional motionless "space". Only in modern times, as a kind of afterthought, did European scientists also add a "fourth dimension" called "time". Movement in time is thus defined in European thought as a progression from one motionless slice of three dimensional "space" to another. But in human terms movement in time is the process whereby our consciousness gradually becomes aware of our entire life. Motionless space is a mythical entity which does not exist apart from pictures, since in real life we never experience a present without motion. Even if the external world seems entirely still our own body is constantly pulsating and breathing. In fact, consciousness of our own body is the primary way we experience time, and the gradual transformation of our body over the years is the primary way in which time affects us. A realistic concept of time should take cognizance of this fact.

What might such a concept look like? Let's invent something called "physical science", meaning the study of something called "physical being", meaning the body in all its ramifications. The great advantage of using the term "physical being" for the body is that it can apply equally well to the individual human body as it exists in time and to the entire organism of which the individual human body is a part. This organism is more or less synonimous with what is called "life". It originated in the sea and is probably best understood as a function of the ocean. What might this function be? The main thing which all or almost all living beings do is breathe, meaning take in air and let out air in some manner. Life could therefore be described as the ocean's way of breathing. It would follow that the best way of describing time in human terms would be to describe it in breaths. A moment in time could be defined as the interval from one outbreath to the next outbreath. This interval will of course vary from one individual to the next and also for the same individual at different times. But no matter how much it varies, every living person will always breathe, and therefore will always be able to organize time this way.

Let's say that the goal of physical science is consciousness of physical being in both its individual and collective manifestations. Let's say that the first step towards this consciousness is to be aware of the breath. As it so happens, this is the same technique as is taught by most schools of meditation. However these schools tend to mystify consciousness by separating it from physical being and treating it as an independent "spiritual" entity. Consciousness is clearly a function of physical being itself. What remains unclear is to what extent consciousness is a function of individual physical being and to what extent of physical being as a whole. It is not impossible that the sum total of the consciousness of all individual living beings adds up to some kind of overall consciousness on the part of physical being as a whole. And it is also possible and even likely that over and above the individual consciousness that exists from moment to moment there is also a larger individual consciousness that is a function of individual physical being as a complete entity in time stretching from birth to death.

However, if a moment is defined as the interval between one outbreath and the next, then consciousness of the moment is already more than consciousness of a single instant. A moment so defined has to be thought of as an event in space-time. It encompasses everything that we experience from one outbreath to the next. That includes not only the visual field, which usually changes during this interval, but also the changing sensations generated by all our senses, including the sense of feeling. It cannot possibly be accurately represented pictorially or experienced instantaneously. It roughly corresponds to the complex of perceptions that constitutes the subjective present. Awareness of the moment is the next step towards awareness of physical being. It is predicated on awareness of the outbreath, which defines the parameters of the moment, but requires a larger framework both in space and in time. Finding this framework is the key to consciousness of physical being.

The most comprehensive possible framework is the visual field. But since the visual field is normally continually changing, this framework cannot be represented but only experienced. A continual focus on the visual field from one moment to the next, a technique which is employed by some schools of meditation, has the unexpected effect of gradually bringing the mind into the future. This is because the future is no doubt already contained in the present. And the stronger the consciousness of the future, the stronger the consciousness of physical being. Physical being is most easily conceptualized as existing in the past, since we already have some knowledge of the various stages of evolution of life and even more of our own individual history. But conceptualization of physical being is not the same as consciousness of physical being. The path to consciousness of physical being as it exists in the future as well as the past leads through consciousness of the moment. The concept of time that arises from this consciousness is individual and subjective, but it is no less scientific on that account. Our life really is a series of moments, hence physical science is the study of real life, not merely as it appears to a non-existent external observer, but as it is actually lived.