Real Time and Potential Time

 Today’s reflection (deep looking) was on cause and effect, antecedent and subsequent, potential and manifest. All these concepts of awareness operate in time. They lead to one THING or to one EVENT and to another thing or event.

If time was not always an entity, before TIME came into the equation, what was there “before”? In this vast unmeasurable universe, maybe TIME is also potential, not actual. It shows its head only when something moves from one place to another or one thing changes to another! The first involves moving through space and in the second the thing is stationary but the form changes.

In other words, movement in space and changes in form shows us, the observers, passage of time. An observer becomes a necessary requirement for time to be perceived.

If there is no movement, or if there is no change in the form or if there is no observer what happens?

Time is there, but just as a potential. It appears to be real and of consequence because of us observers and experiencers.

This is the same for matter, energy, and information too. They can all be manifest or potential. Since time and space are intertwined, is Space the only constant?

Did our ancestors know this in their intuition? Is that why Vedic philosophy considers Space (dahara akasha) as the first of five principles? It is “Knowledge-Space or Ether of the Heart”, according to one dictionary. That Space is in our hearts, which is referred to as “guha”. Since Sound is the property associated with Space, the idea of Cosmic Dance and Nataraja evolved.

This idea of Cosmic Dance and Cosmic Sound has captured the imagination of astronomers and cosmologists to the point that a huge Vigraha of Nataraja stands at the entrance to CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.  (File:Shiva's statue at CERN engaging in the Nataraja dance.jpg - Wikimedia Commons)