Visual Objects: Types, Forms and Status

(This paper has been published in the journal New Horizons: A Multidisciplinary Research Journal, Vol. XV (August 2018).

 
Visual Objects: Types, Forms and Status

Rustam Singh

One should begin, perhaps, by saying that most visual objects are not just visual objects. Many of them can also be touched, heard, even smelled or tasted. We can touch a tree or an animal or, if we are allowed to do so, even a sculpture or an ordinary object. We hear the people speak in a film or a TV serial or even in a news presentation or discussion. We can smell both living and nonliving visual objects, such as a person or a freshly printed or old, rusty book. And we can taste fruit or bread, etc. Apart from all this, many visual objects—a painting, a photo, a cartoon—are normally accompanied by some text, such as a commentary, a title or a caption.

This doesn’t mean, however, that there are no purely visual objects. I will mention only one example here, that of a photo in a newspaper that doesn’t need a caption and speaks for itself, such as the photo of a parched field in drought, or the photo of a crow drinking water from an open tap.[1] In the rest of this essay I will focus on the visual aspects of those objects that can also have one or more non-visual aspects.

There are man-made visual objects, but there are also forms of the visual in nature. Man-made visual objects can initially be divided into two kinds of forms: (1) art forms, and (2) non-art forms. Non-art forms of the visual objects can again be divided into two types: (1) forms that carry an intellectual and emotional content, and (2) forms that do not carry such content. For example, forms such as a cartoon, etc., do carry intellectual and emotional content. But forms such as a bulb, a table, a toilet seat, a bottle or a cap, etc., do not normally carry such content. It is only in exceptional circumstances that they do so. For example, when I feel possessive about a chair and believe that it is my chair, that chair, for me, carries an emotional content. Similarly, when a cap, for example the Che Guevara-style of cap, becomes a symbol of an ideology and a political movement, it does carry intellectual and emotional content.

Art forms of the visual objects, such as a painting, a sculpture, a photo, a film, etc., carry intellectual, emotional as also aesthetic content. But one can also make another kind of division in the visual objects: (1) pictorial forms, and (2) non-pictorial forms. Here, a photo, a film, a TV serial and a video, etc., are examples of the pictorial forms; and a sculpture, a building, theatre, a dance performance and mime, etc., are examples of the non-pictorial forms. However, there can also be a third type of forms in this division, ones that combine the pictorial and the non-pictorial elements. The example one can give here is that of an installation in which the central object is accompanied or surrounded by TV or computer screens showing moving images.

Now, visual means that which can be seen, which is seeable. So that when we say that a thing is visual, what we mean is that if we wish we can see it. But what do we mean when we say that we can see an object? Or what does seeing involve?

At first look, seeing involves three things: an object that is seen (and what I’m calling the ‘object’ here may also be a living being, human or nonhuman), a subject who sees, and seeing itself. But what is seeing? What happens when I say that I am seeing?

When I see an object my visual perception encounters the object, takes notice of it and tells me that there is an object there. But this is not all that happens. When I see, I do not just take notice of the object; I also figure out what object it is or what kind of object it is, what its shape and size are, how far or near it is, whether it is static or moving, whether it is dangerous or friendly, harmful or none of these things. If it is an object which is pleasurable to see, I immediately notice it. If it is an object which makes me sad or arouses fear in me, that too I take note of. I also figure out whether after noticing the object I should stay where I am, go close to the object or go away from it or even run away. In other words, I am even able to figure out, at least to some extent, what action in the immediate future I should take.

The implication here is that seeing involves not just taking notice of an object but also understanding it or at least the attempt to understand it, and it is not just our eyes that are active in this process but also our mind. (I should mention here that if we simply notice an object but do not or cannot understand it due to some reason, it would mean that ‘seeing’ has been obstructed or the process of seeing has not been completed and therefore seeing has not been fully accomplished.)

(What I have said above reminds me of the Hindi and Sanskrit word ‘darshana’. ‘Darshana’ means seeing but it is a kind of seeing that includes understanding, having an insight into things, the phenomena. ‘Darshana’ means not just looking but also unveiling, that is, exposing and then understanding that which is not apparently visible. That is why this word is also used for a philosophical system or a philosophical vision, where the system or the vision is the result of seeing. And a philosopher is called a ‘daarshnika’, that is, the one who sees, what in English is called a seer.[2])

This brings us to the second implication, which is that when we are seeing we are actively and fully involved in the process, with our entire being. This further means that there is no such thing as bare visuality where we only notice or passively look at an object.

Now, we have been talking so far of objects as if they were sovereign and independent and, as such, the source of all the information that we gather about them. But not all visual objects are sovereign and independent in this manner. Here, I’ll talk about four types of objects which don’t seem to be sovereign and independent.

The first are what I’ll call violated visual objects. These are those nonhuman visual objects that have been impinged upon or encroached or invaded by humans. The visual that most readily comes to mind here is that of the trees which are decorated with electric lights or paper flags on various occasions and for various purposes. The second are what I’ll call appropriated visual objects. These are those nonhuman visual objects which have been appropriated by humans. The examples are nonhuman animals which have been enslaved (such as buffaloes, cows, goats and sheep) or are being raised for slaughter (such as cows, goats and sheep again, or pigs and poultry). (Needless to say, I’m also including here those visual objects which are raised in factory farms for the meat industry.) Nonhuman animals and insects which have been captured and are kept alive for experimental purposes fall in the same category. Other examples are animals in zoos and birds in cages.[3]

The third and the fourth categories of the visual objects which are not sovereign and independent include those objects which are created and used as a medium. And I’m talking here of visual objects that are man-made, that are produced by humans. As such, they are not to be found in nature, but only in settings which are created by humans and can be called human-dominated settings. To make things more clear, I should say that these objects include all those art and non-art forms of the visual objects which are made by humans.

But there are some differences between the objects included in these two latter categories. In the third category, what I will call mediated visual objects, I will place those visual objects whose purpose is not mere entertainment. The examples here are art objects, such as a photo, a painting, a sculpture, certain kinds of films—what are called art or documentary films—and a theatre or dance performance. We can also include here cave paintings and objects known as craft such as items made from clay, wood and metals, etc. Cartoons making socio-political commentary, too, can be included here as examples. Finally, in the fourth category, what I will call mediatized visual objects, I will place those visual objects which are meant to provide pure entertainment. The examples here are popular kind of films, soap TV serials, reality TV and even delivery and analysis of news on TV channels when these are turned into a performance.

In the case of the visual objects in all these four categories there is not just a viewer and a visual object; rather, there is another entity residing somewhere behind the object but at the same time present within it, and when we see the object, this entity is not always explicitly visible: it is like a presence that we cannot see but is always there. In the case of the objects in the first two categories, namely the violated and the appropriated visual objects, the identity of this presence is quite clear: it consists of those humans who impinge upon or enslave the objects. In the case of the third and the fourth categories, namely the mediated and the mediatized visual objects, this presence is the person or the people who create a visual object or phenomenon and use it as a medium. And I need to add here that this person or these people need not necessarily be alive; it is possible that they created this object and are now long dead. Further, normally makers of these objects can be named; but I’m including here also the objects whose makers are unknown and hence cannot be named, they are anonymous.

However, in all such cases, the presence that we are talking about, that is, the entity behind the object and also within it, becomes the dominant source from where the information flows and reaches the viewer through the visual object.

Therefore, it seems to me that visual objects that belong to these four categories, mentioned above, are not complete visual objects but are rather incomplete in the sense that in order to see them in their totality we need to be aware of this third entity which is behind them and also within them like a presence but is not explicitly visible.

And in the case of the visual objects in the first two categories—the violated and the appropriated visual objects—we need to add that, in addition to being incomplete, they are also damaged visual objects. They are impinged upon or invaded or enslaved and are not fully in possession of their being. Part of their being, and as such their destiny, is in the possession of someone else.

Here, I would like to introduce another element in this discussion: when we see an object in the manner in which seeing has been described above, it is as if the object begins to speak to us, and what it tells us and what we hear is a part of seeing, or, we can even say that it is part of its visuality. The object begins to tell us about itself, about what it is, and about its destiny or situation. For example, when we see a pig in a factory farm, in the small space where it is confined (and the same is true of all the other animals in the factory farms), it is as if without speaking in the human voice it tells us about the painful life it is forced live and that it will be sent to the slaughterhouse when it is fat enough and therefore doesn’t have long to live. Animals which are targets of experiments in laboratories tell us that their life is perhaps even more painful than animals in the factory farms. A parrot in a cage, too, tells us a story, the essence of which is that it is exists for the entertainment or the emotional or rather sentimental tickling of the people who have enslaved it. An elephant on a crowded and noisy city road being made to participate in a religious festival tells us that it has been uprooted from its habitat and is being forced to live a life which is alien to it. A tree decorated with lights and other sundry stuff tells us that it is being forced to serve a purpose for which it was not made.

Mediated and mediatized forms of the visual objects, too, speak to us but in a somewhat different fashion. The voice of the mediated objects, when they speak to us, is quieter than the voice of the violated and appropriated visual objects. There is less tremor in it, if at all, and there is less pathos. However, the voice of the mediatized objects is the loudest, even when it sounds quiet, even when it sounds like a whisper. This is so because their aim is not really to talk to us but rather to shout us down or to shut us up. That is why the being of the mediatized visual objects is much coarser or cruder as compared to the being of almost all the other objects mentioned above.

Towards the end, I would like to come back to what I have called the violated and appropriated visual objects. The examples I gave of such objects earlier were all of them of living objects. This gives the impression that the violated forms of the visual objects, as also those of the appropriated objects, can only be the living objects. But this need not necessarily be the case. Even the nonliving visual objects can be violated and appropriated. For example, a painting can be violated, a sculpture or a statue can be violated, and may stay in that condition at least for some time. However, in such cases we call it a violation because of the value we, the humans, place on them. But a graver violation is that in which the object is not a product of the humans and thus has a sovereign being, independent of the humans.

Among the living visual objects the examples of a sovereign being are a tree, a bird, an animal or an insect in its natural habitat. Among the nonliving visual objects the examples of a sovereign being are, let us say, a river, a mountain, a rock or a stone, before they have been violated or appropriated.

In other words, when dams are built on a river, when it is forced to change its course or when it is heavily polluted by man-made objects and chemicals, it is no longer sovereign. When trees and shrubs on a mountain are cleared away and it is loaded with man-made ugly objects, such as modern buildings, or when chunks of its body are blasted off to make holes through it or for mining purposes, it is no longer sovereign. When we sit on a rock and stare down into a valley, its sovereignty is not violated. When we use stones to build a small hut in their natural habitat, I don’t think their sovereignty is violated. But when rocks and stones are cut into pieces and are taken hundreds or thousands of miles away to become part of a structure in an alien environment, they are no longer sovereign and have been violated and appropriated.

Finally, it is necessary to say that when we no longer see things or objects in their sovereign state and become used to seeing them only in their violated, appropriated or damaged form, it means that our visual perception, our own ability to see, too, has been damaged, if not violated. This damage to or violation of our visual perception in turn means that our being itself has been damaged or violated. And henceforth we move around carrying a damaged or violated being, even if we may not be aware of this.

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Notes

[1] We are saying this despite what W. J. T. Mitchell, in his paper “There Are No Visual Media”, had argued. According to him, there are only mixed media, therefore no purely visual media. Clearly, we don’t agree with Mitchell. See, Journal of Visual Culture, August 2005, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 257-66. Veu.sagepub.com/content/4/2/257.full.pdf+html  Accessed on 16 March 2016.

[2] Monier Monier-Williams, in his A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, mentions, among others, the following meanings of the word ‘darshana’: seeing, observing, inspection, examination, experiencing, contemplating, apprehension, understanding, foreseeing, philosophical system, a vision, etc. See, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, Delhi, 2002.

[3] Properly speaking, this kind of visual objects are not just objects; they are also, at least partly, subjects. However, in this paper we will continue to call them objects.

Works Cited

Mitchell, W.J.T. (2005) ‘There Are No Visual Media,’ Journal of Visual Culture, 4(2). Available at: Veu.sagepub.com/content/4/2/257.full.pdf+html [16 March 2016], 257-66.

Monier-Williams, M. (2002) A Sanskrit-English Dictionary. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited.

Death and the Self

Rustam Singh

This essay continues the meditation on the self from the previous essay, “Self and Time”.

The self brings about its own death, hastens towards it out of its wish to die, and yet it does not wish to die: it wishes to live forever. The self wishes to have its way all the way till death, and then it would not like to die. And if death is inevitable, it would like to die its own way and at a moment of its own choosing. However, the self realises that this may not be possible. Nevertheless, it does not wish to give up control over its destiny. This situation turns the self into a desperate entity and it drives itself to the point where it wishes to die.

But there is another thing that needs to be considered here. That is, whose death is it going to be? Will it be the death of the self, or the death of the being which is, so to say, the being of the self? Or is it going to be the death of both of them?

In other words, is there a being which is the being of the self, a being which is part of existence? Or has the self, in the process of becoming what it is, distanced itself so much from being that the latter is not any longer one with it, that the self has become a self without being or is a self but not being?

Looking for answers to these questions, we can straightaway point out two things. Firstly, there is no doubt that the self, as it is, is situated very far away from existence. Secondly, before this entity that we now call ‘self’ became what it now is, it was part of existence. Therefore, now that it has become what it is, now that it is a self and is located at a great distance from existence, does it still have a connection with the latter, a connection in the sense that it retains some ingredient of it, that it carries a substance which resembles somewhat the substance of existence?

Let us think about it in this way. What is the most peculiar thing about existence? The most peculiar, and the most visible and clear thing about existence is that, firstly, it is there at any given moment, and, secondly, it is no longer there the very next moment as it was at the previous one. Given the fact that the self is, in its nature, an unstable entity, one can say that it shares this trait with existence. But there is another trait that existence has: it comes into existence––it is born––and then it goes out of it––it dies. In other words, there is no eternity, no endlessness about it. And this too is a trait that the self shares with it. It too is born and it dies, but what it does not share with existence is this: when it is born, existence is already there––is prior to it––and when it dies, it leaves it behind entirely intact.

This shows that the death of the self makes no difference to the life of existence. In other words, the self was already redundant for existence while it was still alive. But was it redundant too as the entity that it was before it was born, before it came into existence?

We have to be extremely careful here. When we say ‘self’, we mean that entity which has moved away a great distance from existence. Therefore when the self dies, it is the death of this entity, the entity which had created this gulf, this hiatus with existence. One reason why its death makes no difference to existence, why it leaves it indifferent to it, is precisely this gulf. This gulf is too vast for this death to make any impact on existence. And it is too vast because it was created by this entity called the self. This means that it is only the self which could have created this gulf. If the self had been a being, or if there were a being which was the being of the self, it would not have created this gulf. Therefore we have to say that, firstly, the self is not a being, or that there is no being which is the being of the self, a being which is part of existence. Secondly, the entity that the self was before it became a self could not have been redundant for existence. In other words, the self created this redundancy when it created itself.

Let us not forget that this redundancy which the self has created is the redundancy of the self itself. Thus the self is a superfluity; it is a thing which is not needed and yet is there. On the other hand, it is there but because of this redundancy of itself, it is as if the self does not exist. That is why one can also say that the self is an emptiness, a void, a vacancy, but a vacancy which has weight.

The self is an entity which, because of its weight, finds itself banished from existence. Furthermore, it is an entity which, despite its weight, turns into an emptiness.

What could have saved the self from this emptiness that it is? What would have held it firmly within existence?

Precisely being.

But, in such an event, the self would not be a self but something else. It would not have created itself, and, in the process, created that distance from existence which has made it redundant for the latter. Given this distance––given the fact that the self is there––it wishes to die, and yet it does not wish to die: it wishes to live forever.

* * *

Wishing to die, the self takes steps to realise this wish and goes on rushing towards its death. However, the death towards which it rushes is not the death which is inevitable, but the death which it brings about.

Thus, there is not one but rather two deaths which loom over the self, and it is the inevitability of one––an inevitability that it deeply resents––that makes it speed up the advent of the other. As a consequence, the death which meets the self––or the death which the self steps forward to meet––is the death which replaces the inevitable death, happens before it, and is, as such, only a false death, a death which crops up but, as a created death, lacks the substance which would make it real. In this fabricated death, it is as if the self fails to die and because of this failure is yet to die the other death which this death has upstaged but which is yet to take place.

This being so, the self, having once died, must die a second time.

But this second death never comes about. It stays at a distance, seeming to wait for the self to come near, to approach it, as it had approached the first death, but the self never approaches it. The reason for this is quite clear. This death––which is death proper––does not wait for the self, cannot wait for it, for the self which does not exist for existence does not exist for this death either.

Nevertheless, so far as the self is concerned, this death never disappears. In fact, it is the only death which the self sees as death. And it is the sight of this death which frightens it and from which its wish to die appears. With the appearance of this wish, the self starts moving towards its death, which is apparently the death proper but is actually that false death which the self creates for itself and embraces in the illusion that it is meeting its death.

This is how the self is abandoned by death––as it was abandoned by existence––but dies. It dies at the hands of that false death which is death too but is a kind of death which is not preceded by life and therefore does not succeed it: it succeeds only an illusion and itself comes as one. Having lived without life, the self dies without death, but dies nevertheless. After this death, it is no longer there, neither as a self nor as anything else. That is why even in this illusory death the self meets a proper death, a death which is not proper but is proper to it. Even though the self was an entity without life, this death kills it: it makes sure that it does not have life. In this way it confirms––exactly as if it needed this confirmation––that the self had no life and that it was precisely because of this lack that it needed to die, and die in the way it does.

We can see that what gets confirmed in this confirmation is that the death of the self is the death of an entity which is already dead. This would mean that the self is born as a dead entity, and lives as such until it dies. It would also mean that it is born in the sphere of death, and lives in it, and then dies in it. If this is so, then the world of the self is the world of death, and the self is a deathly, a deathlike entity.

However, isn’t it true that this world––the world of death––is created by the self and that it is created precisely when the self creates itself?

Therefore, the very birth of the self is an act of creating death and of creating a world which is deathlike. The self comes into the world accompanied by death, a death created by it. It comes into the world of death, a world which is created as soon as the self creates itself. It lives in this world of death as an entity which is dead and is deathlike. And it dies at the hands of a death which is there only till it dies.

Why is this death around only till the self is alive? Why does it die along with the self? It dies along with it because this death which was created by the self was created in order to die, and once the self dies, this death has no reason to exist. It appears from this as if the self knew, when it created itself, that it was going to be abandoned by death and therefore created the space for this other death for itself. And it follows that, in such an event, the self would have known too that having created itself it must die, that it must not keep alive forever.

The self would have known it because it would have known as well that in the world it was creating––the world of the self––there would only be the self and no one else. It would have known that it would be a lonely world and that in this world it would be lonely.

This shows that the self was aware of the consequences of what it was doing. Secondly, this makes the self an entity that experiences loneliness.

* * *

Having created it––along with the world that it was creating––the self makes attempts to free itself of loneliness. To free itself of it the self must die. On the other hand, being the entity which is focused on itself, the self does not wish to die. This conflict makes the self even lonelier than it would otherwise be.

But why does the self feel lonely? Why is it the entity that cannot be without loneliness?

The self is an entity which has no being within itself. It created itself by emptying out being and making a hollow. Therefore, it is an entity which has a hollow within itself, or, to be more precise, it is made of this hollow: it is nothing but a hollow, a void, an emptiness. Nevertheless, it is not an emptiness that is sufficient unto itself. It is dependent on being but in a way that being is a thing that is outside of this emptiness and must stay there for the emptiness to be what it is. As such, the emptiness that it is is propped on an absence: it is a consequence of it and follows from it.

Therefore, it stands to reason to say that what makes the self feel lonely is the absence of being.

But what does it mean to say this?

It means, firstly, that even though the self had emptied out being, it has not been able to get rid of the latter, in the sense that being remains present in the life of the self but not as a presence but rather an absence. Secondly, this absence is such that it is felt by the self. This is how the self fails to become an entity that is sufficient unto itself. In this failure the self misses being, wants to be close to it or one with it, and since this is not possible without ceasing to be a self, it wishes to die. In this wish, however, the self continues to be a self. As such, it does not wish to die: it continues to be lonely.

This is not to say that the self is alone in its world: it is surrounded by an infinite number of things. But all of them are things that the self itself has created, and as such these are not the things that can cure its loneliness. They are as dead as the self itself is. As a matter of fact, they are deader than the self in that they are not capable of feeling lonely. Devoid of being, the self fails to put any being into them. Deprived of being, they cannot feel for the self. But this is not all. The self at least had voided itself of being, or had created itself in the process of voiding it. But the things made by the self lack this valency. They are entirely dead and are dead too for what is not themselves. Being dead as such, they are as good as being absent, but this is an exaggeration. They are not absent: they are very much there, around the self, but entirely dead for it. And this is not a desert in which the self lives. (A desert has a being.) This is a desolation. These things, which surround the self, symbolise what it has ravaged in the course of creating this desolation. They are the ravaged face of a world that could have been the world of a ‘self’ but has turned itself away, leaving towards the self that face of itself which is not a face but a ravaged landscape. This landscape is not visited by the inevitable death. What death will visit a place which has been voided of life? Not the death which is the antithesis of life, but only a death which will kill what is already dead.

Written in 2006, 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

Self and Time

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.

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NOTES

[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