18 April 2012

Time, Universe, and I

I wonder what is time. Latest scientific research states that there was no time before the Big Bang. Also, that time disappears when inside a black hole. So the very thing which gives rise to the sense of eternity is itself ephemeral? What is this strage phenomenon that we know as time?

To me time is a measure of change. If nothing ever changed there would be no sense of time. It is because things change - people age, stars birth, days come and go - that we have a sense of time. Even if one were to sit in a dark room for ages one would still have a sense of time because the body is changing, breath is moving. No being, outside of deep meditation, can know that timeless state of being.

However, within me, and I would gather within each of us, there is a sense of youthfulness that does not age. A sense of "I feel un-aged even though my body's aged". Is this who I am? If this is me and if this me does not age then this is perhaps that what we call as the divine  - that which is beyond time, ageless, changeless. If this is so then to know oneself as anyone other than this being would indeed then be ignorance and a fundamental cause of sorrow and suffering.

And if something is changeless and timeless then it can surely have no beginning and no end. Hence it is eternal or beyond time. And hence it stands to reason that "I" am eternal and timeless. This is perhaps what science is unable to come to terms with since it assumes a beginning, and thereby an end. And even though it is convincingly right about the coming about of this known material Universe but what about that which was before, continues now, and, by same reasoning, would outlast the known structures of matter, energy and space?

Stephen Hawking, the renowned Physicist, in the documentary "Does God Exist?"concludes that there can be no God given that the rules of Universe exist all by themselves and that Quantum theory proves that things can come into existence out of nothingness all by themselves. To him the Universe is the biggest free lunch ever. Eventually he denies the possibility of God and of reincarnation. He says "...there is no heaven and perhaps no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate this grand design of the Universe and for that I am extremely grateful".

But who is grateful? And to whom? What is life? How is it different from matter, from energy, from space? What is the ability to ask question, to be curious? What is intelligence? What is compassion? What is love? And what is that nothingness from which everything spawned?

Stephen Hawking is right. The God, as he understands, does not exist, cannot exist. If God is a maker of things, of time and bound by time, then of course there can be no such lasting entity. Science has answered many questions and we of scientific temperament may have convinced ourselves of having solved the mysteries of this Universe. But I, an individual, am unable to grapple with the miracle of my tini tiny existence that has been granted the immensity to question and understand the infinite. Who am I, I still do not know.

All I know is that everything in this Universe lends itself to doubt - a star that is like the sun but does not appear to be so, a sun that is a star but looks so different, a mirage that looks like water but is not, a dream that feels real but is an illusion of the mind. But of one thing I am always sure and aware - I am. Whether asleep or awake, whether with people or alone, whether in sorrow or in joy, whether young or old - I am. But Who am I, I still do not know.