Mind and Time

Mind and Time

Someone at sometime noticed that the earth’s movement in relation to the sun was something that could be predicted.  S/he noticed that the sun arrived at the same point in the sky at the same time every day and after deep deliberation, managed to measure how long the sun was visible and how long it stayed away during the darkness.  Eventually this period of light and darkness was added together and split into the 24 hours of the day.  It was also realised that it took the sun a certain length of time to move in the sky in such a way that its position at a certain point determined how the seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter occurred.  A complete cycle was also observed, a cycle that occurred 365 times before the sun started to repeat the larger cycle.  This movement of the sun formed our idea of time that we now take for granted.

Science has since discovered that the earth travels round the sun and the ‘fact’ of the sun’s movement as seen by the individual mind was an illusion.  Despite our new knowledge, however, the modern individual still experiences the sun rising in the morning, passing right across the sky and disappearing over the horizon.  Despite what we now know of the earth’s travel around the sun, we do not experience that journey from our standpoint.  Reason tells us that the earth rotates around its own axis and travels round the sun, but experience tells us the earth is static and the sun moves across the sky.  Reason refutes and reveals, but does not remove the illusion.

This shows that the knowledge used by both the ancients and the moderns was an interpretation by a conscious mind of the movement of these heavenly bodies.  These movements are sensations in the mind gained through the eyes.  And, as we know, the brain deals only with the light from these suns and stars that strikes the eyes, then all we have become aware of is what occurs in our own brain and eyes.  You have never at any time become directly aware of the multitude of suns, moons and stars that can be seen in the sky.  This sense of time that we now have is nothing more than an interpretation by the mind of its own creations, because the mind has created the senses.  Time is created by the number of sensations that pass through the mind.  Time is the natural result and necessary concomitant of the process of producing thoughts.

This lecture was first published in Rock ‘N’ Ruminations by Daniel McGowan. You can download the PDF of this book for free here:  FREE DOWNLOAD