Time and Space

Today I am going to analyze how the thoughts are formed in our mind and subsequently have impact on the law of Karma. I have described in earlier postings regarding thoughts as an energy form. Thought can be described as any mental activity of being conscious of something. The thoughts that are formed in the brain are either about the past or future. It is not possible for the thoughts to come for the present state. Why is that so? Let us imagine of a thought; “the ring reminds me of my grandmother”. In this case the thinker is thinking in the present moment after his eyes captures the ring but the thoughts brought him to the past in which he needs to recall about his grandmother. In this instance, the thought comes from the past. How about another sentence relating to non-human objects; “the flowers are so beautiful”. In this case the thinker is looking at the bunch of flowers at the present moment and describing his feelings of how beautiful the flowers are. Could we say that the thoughts are in the present moment? Describing a feeling or expression such as ‘beautiful’ in this context comes from the past as the thinker’s brain has stored the memory of the word beautiful and the thinker needs to recall the word to describe the flowers.

            In short, in any mental activities such as interpreting, evaluating, imagining, planning or remembering, it comes from the past. On the other hand, thinking about future still brings past, as the past is the only set of events that has been stored in the thinker’s brain.  It is not possible to think at the present moment. Even if you think of a present moment, as it is happening now, by the time the action potentials take to propagate via neurons it is bound to temporal effect. There are certain time measurements taken for the action potential to propagate via neuron for the electro-chemical signaling to take place. Recently, American neurophysiologist, Benjamin Libet found that the brain begins initiating a voluntary act “about 400msec” before the appearance of the conscious will to act. In other words, apparently conscious decisions to act were preceded by an unconscious build-up of electrical charge within the brain. So, it is scientifically proven that before the actual thought and action is performed, unconscious buildup of electrical activity in neural cells occurs 400msec earlier.  In conclusion, time as a dimension involves apart from the existing space in three dimensions (length, width, height) in the formation of thoughts in the neural cells.

            From a Euclidean space perspective, the universe has 3 dimensions of space and one of time. Scientist proposed two different theories to describe time; tensed theory of time (A-theory of time) and tenseless theory of time (B-theory of time). In the tensed theory of time, time is described as something that flows as the present moves away from the past and towards the future. In tenseless theory of time, time is something, which is static, the past is just as real as the future and our experience of the present is an illusion.

            I believe in this physical plane, we only can agree with the A-theory of time in which events are ordered by way of the non-relational singular predicates “is past”, “is present”, and “is future”.  Although quantum mechanics provides compelling support for B-theory of time, is not possible for us in this physical plane to realize it. However, there is a possibility to realize the B-theory of time in higher energy state when the number of time dimension > 1.  I will elaborate further on this.

            According to ‘Einstein's theories of relativity’, he stated specifically that the tensed theory of time is incorrect. Special relativity states that two observers who are moving relative to each other must both measure the speed of light to be the same. This means that either of the two properties that movement relies upon, space or time, must differ between the observers. The first consequence of this is known as the relativity of simultaneity. This shows that the concept of the present is relative because events, which appear simultaneous in one reference frame, may not do so in another.

Einstein described his theory of general relativity as taking "away from space and time the last remnant of physical objectivity". This is because a number of different coordinate systems can be used to map the universe, all giving the same results. There is no way to know which system is 'correct' and so there is no absolute system, or "prior geometry" to the universe.

According to Einstein's theories of relativity, space and time cannot exist independently and so are best thoughts of as a single entity known as spacetime. Since there can be no time without space, there is no such thing as time outside of the universe and therefore nothing to measure the flow of time against. If there is no such thing as the flow of time then all times are equally real and the universe can be thought of as a complete and unchanging 'block' of four dimensional spacetime.

I believe it is only natural for us to think that time flows from the past to the future due to the human brain’s ability to remember only the past.  In this way we understand how the cause and effect works. Our brain cannot store the future at the present moment. Our brain is continuously storing information at any given present moment. However, we perceive time with the brain that has stored only the past. Due to the inherent quality of brain, which is only capable of storing the past, the future unfolds into present and becoming the past. If brain is not the point of reference, the past is just as real as the future and our experience of the present is an illusion.

            Let us analyze the same scenario in different angle. An act of observation involves an observer observing an object (mug). In the process of observation, the thinker or the observer observing and object, which is the mug and the act of observation leaves an imprint on the observer.  As long as the observer is present and performing the act of observation an imprint or impression will be stored in the observer’s brain. This act of observation between the observer and the object is the cause of flow of time. If there is no act of observation, there is no flow of time. The object is there. The observer has nothing to observe because the act of observation is not taking place. So the time becomes static. There is no past, future or present. There is only static time. This is the only way the subject is not subjected to time dimension and it is the only possible way to escape from the spacetime in this universe. The act of observation is what we need to avoid and the only way is ‘thoughtlessness stage’.  

I believe as long as the time dimension is involved in the process of thought generation, we will be subjected to the law of “karma”.  We will be bounded by the physical law, which governs the universe in terms of time and space. We will be subjected to the law of cause and effect. It is not possible to change the 3 dimensional spaces that our physical body resides but it is possible for us to control the thoughts that are related temporally.