Self and Time
Rustam Singh
This essay continues the meditation on the self
from the previous essay “To be Regardful of the Earth”, the meditation that was
first begun in the essay “To be Fortunate”. Here the focus is on the relationship
between the self and time. I will not write a longer abstract to this rather bold
essay which begins by saying that time does not exist but is, in fact, a creation
of the self.
The
endlessness of the weight[1]
of the self[2]
is linked to another thing as well. It is that the self is acutely conscious of
and constantly measures itself against what is called time. There are two
things that need to be noted in this context. Firstly, the self likes to behave
as if it is never going to die, as if it is immortal. Secondly, it likes to
behave in this manner because this thing called time is considered by the self
to be endless, to be itself immortal. Measuring itself in terms of this time
that it thinks is immortal, the self tries to approximate time but is always
defeated.
Why
is this defeat inevitable? For two reasons. One is that the self is mortal. The
second is that there is no such thing as time.
If
there were such a thing as time, and if this thing were immortal, the self
would behave like a creature which is bound by time, a creature which is
bound in it. That is, a creature which is born at a point in time and
dies at another point, a creature which would not behave as if it is outside
time, as if it is against it. In fact, in such a situation the self
would not need to perceive time: it would perceive only itself––but as a
creature which, without ever thinking about time, merely is, and which, having
lived its life, comes to an end, dies. In other words, if there were actually a
thing called time, then for the self there would be no such thing as time,
then for it time would not exist, nor would it try to imagine time: such a
thing would not occur to it.
To
be able to imagine time, the self must live without time, it must spend
its days in the deprivation of time, it must feel that there is not enough
time, that hardly is it born and already it is time to die. To be able to
imagine time, the self must have desire for time, it must have desire
for more time than it has, or it must have the fear that it may
soon have to leave behind whatever time is there.
This
is exactly the fear the self has: it feels that time is something it does not
have, or that it has very little time. That is why, out of this time that it
feels it has, it spends a lot of time thinking about time. It thinks about
time, or rather imagines it, and having done that it believes that there is
actually a thing called time.
But
why does the self imagine time? Why does it believe that time exists, that it
is there, outside its mind?
* * *
The
self believes in the existence of time so that it can measure itself against
something which is weightier than itself, or, if it is a thing that cannot have
weight, is mightier, stronger, lasts longer, lasts endlessly, as time is
supposed to do. But why does the self wish to measure itself against time? It
wishes to do that in order to feel its own weight and to feel that its weight
is no less, is not lesser, than that of time. And if time has no weight, if it
is an entity which is weightless, then the self wishes to feel that it is not
without the endlessness of time, that this endlessness is within its reach, is
in fact in its grasp, or is almost so.
This
wish on the part of the self is not surprising. It is only by measuring itself
against a thing like time that it can illumine for itself the possibility of a
life without end––‘life’, not just in terms of a physical entity that lives forever
but also a ‘mind’, a ‘selfhood’ that does not die, that overcomes time or at
least is not defeated by it.
Let
us put it in straightforward terms: the self does not like to countenance the
idea of defeat. In fact, it does not like to be defeated. But we can go even
further: the self, the way it perceives itself, likes to win. But how does the
self perceive itself? What is its vision of itself? What is its dream? Its
dream is to dominate––to rule over––not only the things that it can see but
also the things that it can think about, the things that it can imagine and not
yet imagine, the things that it can conceive, invent, conjure up, the things
that it can concoct––images, ideas, concepts and words, representations,
notions, but not only these. The dream of the self is to master the
things that it can create.
And time is a thing that it has created.
The
self has created time, and it has created it in order to illumine for itself
the possibility of immortality. But having created it, it would like to
dominate time––it would like to dominate it and rule over it, to be its master.
Given the way it perceives itself, nothing less would be acceptable to the
self.
However,
is time a thing that the self can dominate? Is it a thing that would allow the
self to be its master? What kind of a thing is time? And how realisable is this
wish of the self to be able to rule over it? Having created it, this relation
that the self strikes with time, how sensible is this relation?
Let
us straight away put this down: time is a thing which is unlike any other
thing. In fact, we can go to the extent of saying that time is not a thing.
Unlike things, it does not have a substance––a substance which is material or
even spirit-like. If time is there, it does not manifest itself: it is visible
neither in itself nor in any other thing. Then, in what lies the existence of
time? In what way does time exist? What is time?
The
best that we can say is that time is an idea, a notion that exists in the mind
of the self.
Nevertheless,
this is not the way the self looks at time.
Time
is a notion in the mind of the self. As such, time does not exist. Or it exists
only to the extent that a notion––a fancy––can exist: as a thing which is an
illusion in the mind of another thing, a fantasy, a delusion, a false
impression, a daydream, a figment of imagination, a mirage, an apparition, a
hallucination.
The
fact remains, however, that the self does not look at time as any of these
things.
For the self, time is real, as real as the self itself is.
But
in reality it is only a fascination with something which is beyond its
grasp. It is a thing which has come over the mind of the self, which has taken
its possession. It has possessed it in such a way that in this possession it
appears to be real, as real as a thing that possesses can appear to be real.
Let us take note of this: it is never a thing that possesses; it is always a
mind which gets possessed. And it gets possessed even when there is nothing to
possess it. The thing that possesses is an invention of the mind: it lives in
imagination. It lives there or gives the impression of a life which is,
actually, not there: a life not lived, not liveable, a caricature.
But
the self believes that time has a life: a life longer than its own life, much
longer than it, a life that goes on beyond its own life and was already there
when it was born.
And the self cannot bear it.
The
self cannot bear, not its own life, but the life of time, a life which makes an
appearance in its own life and disappears beyond it, a life before whose
disappearance its own life disappears. This disappearance of its own life
before the disappearance of the life of time the self cannot bear.
The self cannot bear it.
In
its inability to bear, the self gets weighted down by its own creation. Time,
which had no weight, begins to acquire a shape. A shape that grows. Till now the
self was the only thing that had weight. And its weight was enormous. But now
time displaces it. It becomes weightier than the self. This, too, the self
cannot bear. It cannot bear this weight, too. This weight crushes it––the only
thing which is crushed by this weight of time.
* * *
The
self is the only thing for which time has weight. This is so for two reasons.
Firstly, for no other entity does time exist. Secondly, the self itself is a
weightful entity. In other words, if the self were an entity without weight,
time would be weightless. This means that the weight of time has a connection
with the weight of the self. It is only because the self is a weightful entity
that time comes to acquire weight. That is, if the self were weightless, it
would not experience time as if it had weight––a weight that crushes it. The
self experiences time as such, it feels crushed by it precisely
because it has a substance that can be crushed by time, in a way that this
crushing, this being crushed, is felt by the self.
But
this is not the only reason why time is weightful. For time had weight even
at the time the self had created it: it was conceived by the self as
a weightful entity. The crushing by time, the devastation at its hands, came
later. It was a consequence of the weight of time created earlier. Therefore we
can say that the devastation that the self experiences at the hands of time is
its own creation.
However, is it possible that it was precisely to
experience this devastation that the self had created time?
This
is a peculiar thing about the self: it does not like to be defeated but it
inevitably gets into situations which would lead to its defeat. And it gets
into such situations because it is aware that, no matter what it does to avoid
getting devastated, devastation is its fate. This awareness turns the self into
a reckless and impudent creature. In this recklessness it does everything to
mock its fate: it mocks it and challenges it till its provocations spur its
fate to devastate it. Each moment of this devastation is experienced by the
self as a blow that crushes it: for the self is not merely impudent, it is
extraordinarily delicate. It is sensitive and proud and tries to hold its
ground till the devastation lasts.
But
this devastation cannot be stopped.
It
can neither be stopped nor be stopped from coming, for the self, because of the
very inevitability of the devastation, takes steps to bring it about.
This
is how it created time.
* * *
It
is curious to think that the self, which will in any case die, takes steps to
bring about its own destruction. This shows that the self wishes to die even
before it meets its death; it wishes to die in order to bring its death closer;
may be it wishes to die straightaway, at this very moment. Does this wish to
die have something to do with time? Is it likely that––now that time is
there––the self wishes to die also because it wants to put an end to its
engagement with time?
If
this latter is true, then, is this the proper way to disengage with time? The
proper way to do so is: not to die, not to choose death for oneself but rather
to let time die, to let it pass away, to let it pass out of the
mind, the imagination.
Let
us not forget that time lives in the mind of the self, in its imagination. In
fact, it is the self itself which gave this life to time. The self is the one
which had created it, and then established it in such a way that it has
acquired a life outside of the mind of the self. Actually, however, the
only life it has is inside that mind. As such, it is the self only which
can bring it to an end, which can push it out. In order to do that the self has
to learn to live without time, to live as if it had never created time and
given it a life, to live as if there never was a time when time was there. In
other words, the self has to kill time: it has to kill it to clear those
vast stretches of space in its mind which are now occupied by time. But does
this mean that it will have to clear out its memory itself, its story, its
history? Does the self have no memory, no past without time?
To
say that memory and past––memory and history––are things that exist in time
would amount to saying that they are things in imagination, for time itself
exists only there. However, this is not the argument we are going to put forth
here. What we are going to put forth is this: Memory and past are things that do
exist in imagination––in fact, they exist only there––but they have nothing
to do with time. Past comes to an end the moment it becomes past, and as
such there is no such thing as past, nor, as a consequence, is there an entity
which remembers past. What then is ‘past’? It is images––stored in what
is called memory––that denote certain events. These events, in turn, when the
self ‘thinks of’ them, evoke feelings and emotions, thoughts. And all this
happens in imagination. Therefore, when the self clears out time from its mind,
it would leave intact both the ‘past’ and the ‘memory’: they are secure in the
mind of the self; no harm will come to them with the killing of time.
However,
will the self ever kill time? Or will it rather kill itself? But
by killing itself, the self would kill, too, its own story, its history.
Therefore may be it would prefer to kill time?
The
self is faced here with a great difficulty. Both its story––its history––and
time exist only in its mind. As such, they do not really exist. And if this is
so, it should not at all matter which one of them is killed. But will the self
dare to kill its own story? Will it dare to take that step when it can,
rather, kill time? The self which is a weightful entity and has no compunctions
about increasing its weight––will it dare to kill its own story when that
story is all that it cares about? Its story is more or less what the self
thinks it is, and when the self increases its weight, this story is what gets
lengthened, what runs parallel to the length of time. As such, this story is
what brings it the grandeur, the glory that it craves. Therefore, will the self
be imprudent enough to cut short this story, interrupt its course?
The answer to this question is ambiguous. The self may
not kill its own story fearing a loss of its weight. However, in the very
pursuit of such weight it may push itself beyond its endurance and die
before its time, thus putting an end to its story.
It appears that this is the course the self is most
likely to adopt.
Time
will go on till the story of the self, its history, comes to an end, that is,
till it is brought to an end by the self itself.
This
behaviour is characteristic of the self. It will not kill its own story. As a
consequence, it will not kill time. However, precisely because of this dual
act, it manages to kill both of them and dies in the process. By this refusal
to kill––because this killing will kill the self as well––the self ends up
killing itself. In this killing the self dies before its time. As such, this
death appears to be untimely. Nevertheless, it is also simultaneously a timely
death. It is a death in which the self, while dying before its time, dies, too,
along with time: the self and time die at the same time. Thus it appears
to be an appropriately timed death, as also a death which is appropriate. It is
neither a suicide nor a death which comes at its own time, but rather a death
which is brought into existence to time with the end of a life which, having
created time, lived in mortal fear of it and yet tried to use it to increase
its own weight.
[1]
The idea that the self has weight, is a weightful entity, was first introduced in
the essay “To be Regardful of the Earth”.
[2]
Which, from another perspective, is not
actually endless; for the self dies and along with it its weight comes to an
end.
Written in 2005, this essay first appeared in my book 'Weeping' and Other Essays on Being and Writing (Pratilipi Books, Jaipur, 2011). The book is available at www.bookspunch.com, www.flipkart.com and www.amazon.in
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