Understanding Time

The division of time into days, months and years that make up calendars is man’s own creation. For the Lord there is no time. Sant Mat attaches no significance to any particular time or day. There are no bad days or good days.

In the physical realm where time exists, change happens all the time. Nothing stays the same. Maharaj Charan Singh used to call it the ‘shifting sands of time and space.’ But within us there is something unchanging.

Time changes and will go on changing, but Nam does not change.
The current of Nam goes on as usual.
_{Maharaj Jagat Singh, The Science of the Soul}

Our soul, because it is a spark of the Divine, never ages. It is never born, it never dies – it is eternal and timeless. Yet trapped in a mortal body that ages and decays, man can see that he is bound by time on this physical plane. He needs time to shower and get ready for the day; he needs time to make a mug of coffee. Even as he sits idly, time is passing him by.

God is the axis of the wheel of Time. Though all things rotate about Him in Time and Space, yet is He always timeless and spaceless and still. Though all things proceed from His Word, yet is His Word as timeless and spaceless as He.
_{The Book of Mirdad}

It is indisputable that time is not in our control. Rather it is time that directs and governs our physical life. Therefore time is an immense stress factor and causes tremendous agitation in one’s life. To catch a plane or a train; to send the children to school; to get to an appointment, all require us to compete against time daily.

If it were possible, man would create a machine that could put time on hold – a pause button that would allow him to complete his tasks on time. A rewind button would allow him to go back in time to redo any mess-ups; and a fast-forward button would accelerate his difficult and sorrowful times. Life would definitely be easier to handle.

Mirdad says that time exists for us because we identify with our senses. Through our senses we perceive the illusion of time. We sense the changes in the season; we perceive the growth of things as well as their decay. It is our senses that are involved in this deception.

Time is a wheel created by the senses, and by the senses set awhirling in the voids of Space.
_{The Book of Mirdad}

Escape from the illusion of time is only possible when we close the doors of the senses, still the mind, vacate the body and escape to the region of timelessness and spacelessness.

Till we are able to put our consciousness in Nam, we will be subject to changes, now happy and now miserable. That is why the saints repeatedly exhort us to withdraw our conscious attention from the nine doors of the body and fix it in Shabd. As we do this and our attention is withdrawn from the body and enjoys the bliss of Nam, we develop power of endurance and spiritual depth. After crossing the perishable state of maya, we enter the eternal state of Nam and, freed from the cycle of births and deaths, are entitled to everlasting happiness.
_{Maharaj Jagat Singh, The Science of the Soul}

The saints tell us that by gradually scraping our mind with the emery stone of the Shabd, the mind is eventually polished and humbled and releases its tight grip on the soul. To explain the soul’s confinement, consider the example of a drop inside a bottle floating in the ocean. The drop is our soul. It is part and parcel of the ocean, but it is isolated by the bottle. The bottle is not only our body but also our mind, senses, desires, and everything else that is part of this illusory world that binds us within the realm of time. If that soul drop is able to escape from the bottle, it will merge into the ocean of universal consciousness and be one with the Lord.

The elated and joyous soul that was trapped in the cage of the body from the beginning of time then flies out of its cage at will and dips into the divine nectar of the ocean of all consciousness. Saints call this process dying while living. It is the ultimate preparation for death, at which time its bottle is shattered and the soul drop, freed from the shackles of birth and death, at long last merges back in the ocean of light and love.