Printed in the Spring 2024 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Keene, Douglas "What Time Is It Really?" Quest 112:2, pg 2
By Douglas Keene
National President
We use time and space to locate ourselves in the physical universe, and yet they present great mysteries. These two define the four dimensions which we use to orient ourselves, determine our relationship to objects on our planet, and even locate it within the greater vastness.
I recall when I was a teenager first coming to the realization of the infinity of time and space. I was perplexed by this paradox: logic would seem to dictate that each of these entities simultaneously could not be infinite and yet could not be less than infinite. No matter how they were defined, there would always have to be something before and beyond.
While this mental conundrum could be frightening to some (including my mother), I found it fascinating that these measures, which seemed so familiar, could be so indecipherable. To me it implied something mysterious and wonderful, something greater than ourselves.
The American novelist William Faulkner famously wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Apparently he was suggesting that we carry our past with us, as it is an integral part of ourselves. He may have been more correct than he suspected in that when time is suspended, past, present, and future merge into the ever present now.
Albert Einstein once quipped, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” More seriously, he wrote in a letter to the grieving family of a dying friend: “People like us who believe in physics know the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” He recognized that in physics, time depends on motion and gravitation, shown in his Special Theory of Relativity. The rate at which time passes changes depending on your frame of reference.
From the Theosophical perspective, H.P. Blavatsky wrote: “Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced” (Secret Doctrine, 1:37).
Both Einstein and Blavatsky refer to the passage of time as an illusion. Merriam-Webster defines illusion as “a misleading image presented to the vision” or “perception of something objectively existing in such a way as to cause misinterpretation of its actual nature.” This differs from a delusion, where “a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary.” HPB’s reference to illusion suggests we are perceiving time incorrectly, although the basis of this misperception nevertheless exists.
Sloka 1 in The Secret Doctrine reads: “The Eternal Parent (Space), wrapped in her ever-invisible robes, had slumbered once again for seven eternities.”
This introduces the concept of eternity. Here we have not one eternity, but seven. Eternity is not merely an enormous period of time, but understood as infinite time by some (if the concept of time can be applied at all). The passage appears to be metaphorical, but what is its inner meaning?
Sloka 2 goes on to say: “Time was not, for it lay asleep in the infinite bosom of duration.”
Here time is not infinite, but absent. Could this be the same thing? This strains the rational mind, and even the imagination. How can entities and events occur in the absence of time?
The early Theosophist Gottfried de Purucker wrote:
Time exists most emphatically, it is an illusion, a maya, which merely means we find it very difficult to understand it and do not understand it exactly as it should be understood; but that is not time’s fault, that is our fault. Our understanding is too weak to grasp it as it is, as it exists. Therefore, we call it a maya to us. In English we say an illusion. Yes, but illusion does not mean something that does not exist. If it did not exist, obviously it would not be an illusion. It means something which deludes our understanding, an illusion or a delusion to us.
We now have the concepts of time, eternity, and duration. How do these three relate to each other, and more importantly, what was meant by these terms in our foundational literature, particularly The Secret Doctrine?
HPB did not see eternity as endless or infinite. It was merely a long passage of time, as we see in the following passage from the Collected Writings: “We Westerns are foolish enough to speculate about that which has neither beginning nor end, and we imagine that the ancients must have done the same. They did not, however: no philosopher in days of old ever took ‘Eternity’ to mean beginningless and endless duration.” She used the term duration to indicate timelessness, with the absence of past, present, and future. When questioned about this difference between time and duration, she offered the following response:
Q. What is the difference between Time and Duration?
A. Duration is; it has neither beginning nor end. How can you call that which has neither beginning nor end, Time? Duration is beginningless and endless; Time is finite.
Q. Is, then, Duration the infinite, and Time the finite conception?
A. Time can be divided; Duration—in our philosophy, at least—cannot. Time is divisible in Duration—or, as you put it, the one is something within Time and Space, whereas the other is outside of both. (Blavatsky, Collected Writings, 10:308, 310)
We may get a small taste of this distinction in dreams. Although we often dream in sequences, time is fluid. We may feel an urgency to find someone or something, but then we find ourselves in another place, which is not clearly before or after. Scientists tell us that in the time it takes to roll out of bed until we hit the floor, we may experience a dream, seemingly lasting for hours, before we awaken.
We must ask ourselves, “How can this knowledge help?” As we struggle in our often fragile lives and in an uncertain world, how are we to understand timelessness?
Part of the answer is to be aware that timelessness can and does exist, however foreign it might be to us in our day-to-day (lower) mind. As we stretch ourselves in seeking the higher mind and beyond, to the buddhic consciousness, we also reach beyond the constraints of time, including mortality. The cycle of birth and death can only exist within time, and someday we will be able to step outside the prison of our own perspective, which constrains us to maya (illusion). There is a comfort in knowing that timelessness exists, where there is no need to race the clock.
There is a divine presence which can hold us and protect us. We can find it, for it is hidden deep within ourselves, containing our own truest Self, in the higher reaches of our being. In that space we can find the radiant light that holds the secrets there for us. As Annie Besant has written: “There is a peace that passeth understanding; it abides in the hearts of those who live in the eternal; there is a power that maketh all things new; it lives and moves in those who know the self as one.”
Let us seek it together.