After all, time is a theory of relativity. There is nothing called
yesterday, today and tomorrow at all; yesterday was today of that day and
tomorrow of yesterday. Today was only yesterday, which remained tomorrow.
Tomorrow will become yesterday and today a subjective interpretation. “The
past is history, the future is a mystery, and this moment is a gift. That
is why this moment is called ‘the present’.” Deepak chopra. T.S. Eliot's
poem "Burnt Norton," which is the first of his Four Quartets. This line
reflects Eliot's exploration of the nature of time and existence,
suggesting a complex relationship between past, present, and future.
Interpretation:
1. Interconnectedness of Time: Eliot posits that time is not linear but
rather interconnected. Our experiences and memories (time past) influence
our current actions and perceptions (time present), which in turn shape our
future (time future). This cyclical view suggests that all moments are
interrelated.
2. Memory and Experience: The line implies that memory plays a crucial
role in how we understand our present and anticipate our future. The past
informs our current identity and decisions, while our present actions can
affect how we view the past.
3. Philosophical Reflection: Eliot's work often engages with
philosophical themes, particularly the nature of reality and human
consciousness. This line invites readers to reflect on how time affects our
perception of life, suggesting that the past and future coexist in the
present moment.
4. Spiritual Dimension: In the context of the Four Quartets, which
grapple with themes of spirituality and transcendence, this line can also
be interpreted as a meditation on the eternal nature of existence, where
time is seen as a continuum rather than discrete segments.
Conclusion:
Overall, this line encapsulates Eliot's intricate thoughts on time, memory,
and existence, encouraging readers to consider how their past experiences
shape their present and future. It invites a deeper understanding of how
time influences our lives and perceptions.
BURNT NORTON
(No. 1 of 'Four Quartets')
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
“Time” is the most commonly used noun in the English language. The word
itself is so versatile: we can kill time, do time, save it and spend it.
Time even takes on a medicinal role when it comes to healing both physical
and emotional wounds. Most of us wish we had more of it, and yet time
persists both as an object of value and an enemy of every person on Earth.
It is, eventually, the thing which kills all of us. And yet for all its
pervasiveness in our everyday conversations, describing what time is
doesn’t come easily.
Thinking of it in a common sense sort of way, one would imagine a universal
clock which ticks at the same rate at all times and for all people. One
second passing for me is also a second which passes for you and for every
other person on this world or on any other. It is an event outside of our
control, simply a characteristic of the universe like gravity or light. We
experience it as a sweeping movement from the past and into the future,
carrying us with it and leaving us helpless to do anything about it. The
most unsettling part of time is also its most refreshing: the future
unfolding before us, dictated by our actions and by an unpredictability
than can bring both great or terrible happenings our way. But that part of
our lives hasn’t yet been written.
Except it might’ve. The future might already exist and those three ways we
separate time — past, present, and future — are nothing more than an
illusion created by our minds.
This is the picture of the universe that emerged from Einstein’s theory of
relativity. Unlike the universal clock imagined by Newton, relativity gives
us time as a very individual experience. A second for me isn’t the same
second that you experience. In fact, events don’t even have to unfold in
the same order for two observers in the universe. Whereas you might see a
fish taken out of its tank, killed, and cooked, in a different part of the
universe someone might witness the dead fish taken out of the pan, brought
back to life, and placed into its murky tank. How events play out depends
on the reference point of the individual.
This is possible because of the relationship between space, time, and
motion. To give an example from everyday life, think of where you are right
now. You are in your bedroom at 7 PM. You are on the bus at 11:53 AM. You
are in a restaurant at 3:40 PM. You cannot have one without the other. That
is, you will never be at a place without a time or exist at a time without
also being someplace.
Relativity merges space and time into a single fourth-dimensional structure
known as spacetime. We should think of time the same way we think of space;
just as all of space exists outside of our world and any point within space
can be described by coordinates, all of time exists as well and any events
that have happened or will happen already exist, described by their own
coordinates within the universe. And the same way all coordinates in space
are valid, all coordinates (or events) in time are valid as well, meaning
that there should be no such distinctions as “past”, “present,” or
“future”. The universe and life within it is not an organic thing that’s
constantly changing and morphing. Instead it’s like a video where the
present moment is merely a frame within that video. And that video, had we
access to it, would reveal every event to ever take place in our universe,
from beginning to end. This cosmos is known as the “block universe”, a
place where change isn’t real and there’s nothing special about the present
moment. Considering this on a philosophical scale brings into question the
idea of free will.
WHAT IS ATOMIC CLOCK?
The most accurate measurement of time is taken using the frequency of
cesium atoms. 9,192,631,770 oscillations of this atom is equal to exactly 1
second. Image of URWERK AMC Atomic Master Clock.
But there’s another important relationship here: that of time and motion.
The Hafele-Keating experiment of 1971 proved that relativity was real.
Atomic clocks were taken aboard a commercial airline by two scientists — J.
C. Hafele and R. E. Keating — and the clocks were flown around the world,
once to the East and once to the West. Upon returning, the clocks from the
airline were compared to those which had stayed at the observatory in
Washington. The airline clocks were found to have gained .15 microseconds.
Modern experiments since then have continued to prove this aspect of
relativity time and time again.
The discrepancy between the two sets of clocks is due to time dilation. In
simple terms, time dilation is the relationship between a moving object (in
experiments they’ve witnessed this effect with muons and photons) and how
quickly time will move for that object. The faster the speed of the object,
the slower time passes for it. If you left home to board a spaceship in the
year 2000 and the spaceship went at 99% the speed of light for 5 years,
when you came back the year on Earth wouldn’t be 2005, it would be be 2036.
And yet you’d only be 5 years older than when you left. Meaning that, yes,
you’ll have travelled into the future 31 years. In this way, when an object
is standing still, all of its motion is through time. It’s only when the
object begins to move that its motion is now shared between time and space
— the more motion through time, the less it has through space and vice
versa.
This is important because going back to the example of the video, one would
believe that any observers can agree on what happens on any given frame —
that is, any given moment. But this changes because of the relationship
between time and motion. For an observer who’s moving, what’s happening in
the frame will be different than for an observer that’s standing still.
Movement gives the person a different rate of time and thus a different
perception of the frame and what’s happening within it. While relativity
happens on Earth all the time, the differences are so small that they’re
imperceptible. However, if two observers are separated by enough distance
(say tens of billions of lightyears) their movement can change their
perception of the frame to include events in our past or in our future. But
if this is true and our future or our past can be part of the perception of
another observer, that must lead us to the conclusion that both these
things already exist. The future is not unfolding and the past is not
inaccessible.
This moment — this “now” — and the constant ticking of the clock, ever
passing and ever fluid, sending us toward a mysterious future might only be
in our heads. An impression created by our brains.
Gravity is another factor which also affects the passage of time. Miller’s
planet, from the movie “Interstellar”, existed on the cusp of a black hole.
Because of the black hole’s immense gravity and speed, an hour on the
planet was equal to 7 years back on Earth. Image from “Interstellar”.
But that doesn’t explain why we observe a clear direction to time. It goes
from the past and into the future, even though the laws of physics don’t
prevent events from going the other way. This “arrow of time” is one of the
greatest mysteries of our universe. It’s believed this directionality has
to do with entropy (the amount of disorder in our universe, to boil it down
to a quick definition) and the idea that entropy must always increase. It’s
a fundamental law present since the Big Bang and one which seems to simply
be an initial condition of the universe, continuing its course ever since
that iconic explosion 13.8 billion years ago. But there are experiments
that dispute the idea that entropy is the reason time flows forward.
*The idea of a universe in which all events exist simultaneously is both a
grim and a comforting one*: things and people which we’ve lost aren’t gone,
merely a little out of our reach at the moment. But it also means we might
not have as much say in the future as we hope. Of the many things we can do
with time, it seems there is one which we haven’t yet managed: to
understand it.
You may ask what about our scriptures? Yes it narrated a lot and I will
present later
K Rajaram IRS 21224
On Mon, 2 Dec 2024 at 04:57, Jambunathan Iyer <[email protected]> wrote:
> Fear not for the future, weep not for the past. Let the past hold on to
> itself and let the present move forward into the future. If you don’t make
> bold moves, the world doesn’t move forward.
>
> N Jambunathan Rengarajapuram-Kodambakkam-Chennai-Mob:9176159004
>
> *" What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you
> become by achieving your goals. If you want to live a happy life, tie it to
> a goal, not to people or things "*
>
>
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