Why does the passage of time seem to accelerate as we grow older?
This is a good question. Rose often talked about the concept of 'duration', and how we actually determined the length of a second, minute, or an hour. He said that space and time were incontrovertibly intertwined, and without space there was no time, and without time there was no space, as is the subject of scientific relativity experiments. To a man in a delirium, a second can seem like an hour, whereas to a man in love, an hour with his beloved can seem like a second. It may well be that time is not passing, and that it is our consciousness or awareness that is moving though an already played out strand or drama, of which we take ourselves to be the main character. We are but a Witness, in the Final Analysis, though this is theory until proven by experience for each individual.
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Recomended Reading
- Carillon: Poems, Essays, and Philosophy of Richard Rose-(147 pp.) PB - ISBN: 978-1-878683-03-8
- Energy Transmutation, Between-ness and Transmission-by Richard Rose-(68 pp.) PB - ISBN: 978-1-878683-02-1
- Meditation-by Richard Rose
- Psychology of the Observer-by Richard Rose-(133 pp.) PB - ISBN: 978-1-878683-06-9
- The Albigen Papers-by Richard Rose-(240 pp.) ISBN: 978-1-878683-00-7
- The Direct Mind Experience-by Richard Rose-(316 pp.) ISBN: 978-1-878683-01-4
- The Sex Connection, A Study of Desire, Seduction and Compulsion-by Alan Fitzpatrick-(371 pp.) ISBN 9780977614714
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- "Each man blooms from a different catalyst. The only thing hat the enlightened men have in common is that which they find."
- "There is only one time to start and that is now. And we can expect to battle the urge to procrastinate from now on."
- "Let me remind you That the perceived Cannot perceive." Huang Po
- "Come to see all things directly."-source unknown-
- "If you do not fast from the world, you will not find the (Father's) kingdom." The Gospel of Thomas-Translated by Stephen Patterson and Marvin Meyer
- "Even the spiritual path can become a distraction. We settle into a comfort zone, reading, talking, listening. We run through it like a field, never stopping to observe what goes on there, or when we do we personalize it, make it out to be what we want it to be rather than making an effort to see it as it is or isn't as the case may be. " John Rose
- "The path to Truth begins with the self. We cannot properly isolate, identify, or analyze the self, because it is the subject about which we know the least." Richard Rose
- "Religious democracy gives the false sense that we are all going to make it, and that may not be the case. If you do your research and read accounts of other experiences then you may find out many things for yourself rather than just riding the tide into heaven." Richard Rose
5 comments:
I always say the following about how I have tracked time.
Before I went to school, I thought in minutes.
During school, I thought in hours.
Once I started working, I began to think in days.
Once I had kids, I began to think in weeks.
My personal observation is that the perception of the rate of passage of time is somehow related to our ability to remain present and not get lost in our thoughts.
I agreee with you Al. When you are older and the years seem like they are flying by, you are also more able to take on very long term projects, like a quilt for example, and stay focused until they are done. In fact, as we mature, we seem to develop a greater interest in larger, more comprehensive projects, of which soul development is the greatest. So here we all are, feeling the time slipping away quickly while we work on our masterpiece.
Maybe the personal experience or subjective perception of the passing of time is related to the number of existing impressions stored as memory in our minds relative to our present experiencing? Perhaps as we get older we have more memories which produce thoughts, and thus find it easier to escape into the past and the future and compare them with the present experience? I know that as a child time for me did seem to drag into eternity. Using the phonograph analogy of mind, it could be that because we have less sense impressions (less etched grooves of memory) on our record of experience as a child, that we therefore experience time as a relative illusion more so than when we are older.
When I am asleep and I awake the next day I perceive time to have passed, whilst sleeping. There is some sense of duration, perhaps tied into my experience of dreaming. However when I have been under general anesthetic in surgery, I did not intuitively perceive the passing of time when I regained conciousness, two days later. It was as though the perception of time was erased briefly from my life experience. Perhaps to escape time, one needs to not only escape concious thought and memories but also dreams from our unconcious mind?
On a side note. I remember reading, many years ago, a theory that the perception of time passing is relative to all sentinent beings and is somehow related to our metabolism, heart rate or mass. This suggests that say a tortoise whose metablism is slow and lives in excess of 150 years, subjectively experiences a lifecycle the same way that a mosquito experiences the duration of a lifecycle in as little as 4 days. Whilst there is no way of proving such a theory, it does impress upon the notion that time is a relative construct of being.
Yet the paradox remains, because it has been suggested by both physicists such as Einstein as well as mystics such as Rose and Ramana Maharashi that time or space-time could very well be absolute. Do we pass through time or does time pass through us, is a question with an answer that Rose infers is beyond comprehension with the finite rational logical mind that exists in relative time, and must be experienced to be known.
Thus we can use a time analogy of a film projector for relative conciousness being sense impressions and memories that pass through and are projected onto our screen of conciousness. Therefore if the roll of film containing each frame of our experience (the absolute) exists before we put it through the projector (relative consciousness), then the experience of the absolute or samadhi would be like placing all the frames of the already existing film (containing everything that ever was and will be - all of time) on top of one another and passing the lot, superimposed, through our conciousness. Thus time only exists on our plane of existence because we presumably take an illusory position of a seperate observer outside of the absolute.
Therefore all notions of "free will" are thrown into question with the concept of time in its absolute sense. Do we think, or do we think we are thinking? What are we to do? Can we change the hand of destiny, or can we merely change the way we react to it? As Rose states in Psychology of the Observer: some will say be still there is nothing you can do, you will be chosen, some say seek and ye shall find. The paradox stays with us, but whichever direction we go in, we can do nothing other than what we are already doing in our sincerity of seeking the Truth.
When I was 5 years old, the previous year represented 20 percent of my life. Now that I am 59, the percentage has gone down to less than 2 percent. No wonder it seems shorter. Sometimes my whole life to this point seems like the blink of an eye.
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