This is the 4th part in the series. read the first three at the following link:
Death a contemplation-1st/2nd/3rd part
“I am time, the destroyer of all; I have come to
consume the world”. These are not from
some Movie, but these are words of Lord Krishna. Only Lord Krishna has the unique way to declare the truth in its own unique aggressive way which can at some
times look quite egotist. Lord has told these in chapter 11, verse 32 of the
Geeta. I find these very mysterious and so far still unable to understand the
real meaning of it. General translations
have been given like time will kill everything so Arjuna can’t save them
(Kauravas) as time is bound to kill them anyway.
But the use of word “Time” by Lord is itself
something very meaningful. Does he approve of Time as an entity? Time is real;
not a byproduct of space and consciousness! Time has always fascinated me and I
found myself using phrases like “How much time it took to God to create Time” to
signify the mystery of time. At times I also felt “space is a physical
demonstration of time”.
Remember the famous insoluble chicken egg
riddle….what came first a chicken or an egg, a tree or a seed? It appears just
out of reach for a rational mind, but the situation seems real and complex. How
can there be a chicken without egg and there can’t be any egg without a
chicken. But actually this situation is a phenomenon of time theory. If you
take time as a linear entity, you can’t solve this. If there are past, present
and future on straight linear time line, then this question is absurd. Then the
only answer is-someone put the egg
on the bare earth and it became a chicken or straightway a chicken was
produced. Even this doesn’t seem out of place because at some “point of time”
the base matter of our universe was produced in this way.
Or in fact, there are no such fragments of
time…time is a one single moment and that is only present. Past and future are
ramifications of physical spatial universe. Tree and seed are not different;
they are same, facets of one complete moment, a cycle of tree life. In this
cycle, seed is becoming tree and tree is again becoming seed. But this is one
single moment. But due to our senses and space limitations we are seeing it as
line of events.
What are our sensory limitations? The information
or events we gather from the universe depends upon the “data” processed by us.
It is just like our flour mill. The flour (after the grain is crushed or processed) we are gathering from the outflow nozzle is not
the total “possible” flour at that “moment” but it is the quantity which the flour mill can
process at a given moment. So one flour mill can process 1 kg or 100 kg…it is
pure processing power.
Similarly, the data captured by our various
senses makes up the time moment for us…but the information processed is not the
complete or absolute…it is “relative”
to our processing power. So if there is another or parallel universe; with its
own set of law of physics then there will be a difference in time span for a
given event. It may took 10 minutes for me but in another realm of life it may be just
1 minute.
Just look at our dreams, we never feel “passing” of time in dreams. Sometime we witness a very
length event in a dream…but when we wake up…it is only 5 minutes. And to the
most of our astonishment, most of the times in our dreams, we are already knowing
the outcome or next event of our dreams; we see a full incident at the very
moment of our dream. When we wake up, it feels like we have seen a flow of
events and linear time comes into being. But we shock to see the clock which
shows only minutes have passed. Dreams are a great example of timelessness. We feel
that the event of our dream has occurred in a series of events. However it was
a single complete occurrence.
I run 2 miles and when I see the clock…it shows
10 minutes have passed. But that only means that the minute needle of clock has
covered the distance of 4-5 inches in the clock when I have run 2 miles. My speed
may be variable, but speed of needle is always constant. And we can measure
something only with a constant yardstick. But if we remove the clock from the
picture and asks 5 different persons running 2 miles in 10 minutes; every person
will feel the 10 minute length differently. For some it may be longer than the
others. The more conscious we are, longer the time duration feels; more sleepy
we are, time just runs away. Lovers always feel this timelessness when they are
in their moment of togetherness. When we are young, time moves slow; we start
doing job and time just run away. We are conscious when we are young, but job
is a sleepy routine.
So our first impression of time is due to space. If
there is no space and I want to meet you; then it won’t take any time at all. But
our mind fails to comprehend this situation of timelessness. Because we think
that our laws of physics are universal laws. But these are laws of our small
universe. Life at another realm may have its own set of laws. There, force of
gravitation may be instrumental in burning fire…not for attracting things, oxygen
is required for people to fly in the sky as their bodies are made up of
different material which requires oxygen to stimulate its cells; which then
behaves like pump. It can be anything which we just can’t imagine. Most of our
physical laws are “derivatives”; they
are not made or created at first but due to creation of first, second and third
law in that order, another fourth law comes into existence. Had "God" had created
initial three laws in different order (2,1,3) fourth law could have been a different
law.
I feel our death was
created in this manner. It is a bit complex. Death is also a Derivative. I’ll try to explain with examples.
In accounting , we use different set of debit/credit rules for different type
of phenomenon. If it is personal accounts like persons/banks we use set A for
debit/credit (dr
the receiver, cr the giver ) ; for real accounts like cash/machines
we use set B (Dr
what comes in, cr what goes out ) but now when we come to nominal
accounts like Expenditures/incomes we find that because of sets A and B already
used for personal and real accounts, the freedom to define the rules of Dr/Cr for
nominal account is almost gone. Nominal accounts are completely bound by personal/Real
account rules.
We want to pay salary in cash. Salary is an expense and cash
is a real account. We have already defined credit for what goes out in case of Real accounts. In this
case , cash is going out…so we have to use credit for cash; And hence we have no other
option but to use debit for expenses in nominal accounts. We can say rules for
nominal accounts are Derivatives. They derive their presence due to Rule A and
B.
I’ll give a simple example. Suppose during our camping in a
forest, we have planned for Bar be Queue lamb. We are having some rice and one
pot also with us. We have very limited quantity of coal with us. So we decided
to go for Lamb and prepared the bar be queue set up. But one of our friend ,
oblivious to our plan; put the coal in the stove for fire, rice and water in the pot and finally put the pot on the stove. Now as he has already used the available option or
freedom to use coal and pot for rice …so lamb can’t be bar be queued or cooked
in the pot. It will remain uncooked. But again, another friend of ours put the
pieces of lamb into the rice and what we got finally is a tasty “Biryani”.
This biryani is a derivative. Because it wasn’t our first choice but it is
existing due to choices made earlier.
I think the same is true for our death. Because our model of
life here just looks ordinary. It doesn't look advanced. What was the need to
create death? Why the concept of food was created in this complex way? Our bodies
could be made in a way to use sunshine and water as food instead of killing and
wandering for food. Death mayn't be the original plan by the creator, but as he
had already created the initial laws of physics and basic structure of our
bodies. These initial steps might have made possible the existence of death.
Like our memories…the only possible way to end our old memories of
childhood/youth and old age and start afresh is to destroy these. It is only
possible with death. And when no such destruction is required as one has risen
above the impact of memories, a human simply transcends as told by our old
Gurus like Buddha and Lord Krishna.
(I find this
derivative concept very mysterious; will explain it further in some next post)
In the same way, I feel time is also a derivative of space
and consciousness. And duration of time is different in different world. After death,
a soul may remain in the world of souls. But during its stay, few days there
may be equal to 50-60 years in our Mrityuloka (Earth). So it may be possible
that a son can meet his father after death, where his father may feel that only
few days have passed after death, but for his son 50-60 years have passed after
the death of his father. We have heard so many instances of Near death
experiences, where a huge numbers of people have claimed to meet their dead
loved ones. It is possible only because of different speed of time.
(This is getting quite lengthy and complex, so I’ll
finish it in the second post)…to be continued...