Time's Arrow Arrested

Dusky shadows hide under the leafy boughs of the lanky trees. Beyond the dark sky the sun carries the bright promise of a lustrous morning. But it is merely a promise. For, the experience of the past is not evidence of future events. And how perturbing can be the obvious. This ever present and precisely dissected substance that we break to exact hours, minutes and seconds, and call it time. How mind-boggling is this historian’s palette, Newton’s infinite attribute, Einstein’s finite fourth dimension. Astronomers say that a colossal firecracker called the Big Bang exploded about fifteen billion years ago, marking the beginning of time and the universe. Yet this sophisticated modern myth does not really solve the enigma of time or the mystery of existence. After all, why does the world exist, rather than not? Newton viewed time as a mathematical duration, an absolute temporal dimension in which time flows steadily without relation to space, matter or human affairs. Many years later, Einstein dropped the notion of absolute space and time. In the Theory of Relativity he demonstrated that time slows down as velocity increases. Clocks can run at different speeds. Time became the fourth dimension. However, in the tiny world of the atoms, quantum physicists discover a bizarre universe of eleven dimensions. In Superstring theories higher dimensions are curled up within the deep structure of space-time. Moreover, the number of higher cosmic dimensions is not limited, because scientists might invent as many dimensions as it takes for their theories to work. Unfortunately, in relation to nature mathematical propositions are uncertain. Physicists nowadays conceive time as an asymmetrical arrow, flying in one direction, from the past to the future, through the present. They devise ingenious schemes to ride on the arrow of time into the future; or to reverse its direction of flight and travel back to the past. I believe that time is an illusion. It does not really exists. The hands of the clock does not really show us time but movement in space, an artificial human invention of hours, minutes and seconds. And what we measure with our objective instruments is not identical with the subjective psychological experience of duration. External time and internal time are not the same. Now, if time really flows like a river without banks, if it is indeed in a state of flux, then what is its speed? And since we measure speed by the ratio of traveling distance to the periodic motion of the clock, how are we supposed to measure the velocity of time? By time itself? Time does not exist. And nevertheless, it does. It is its own phantom. Time is a relationship between before and after. Paradoxically, it is the nothing that allows everything. But time is a mysterious nothing, an arcane cipher, the magical fountainhead of bondage and freedom. All events unfold miraculously in it while it also prevents them to happen all at once. Time is not a river without banks but the ocean of eternity. Events did happen of course yesterday and before. They leave their marks and traces through history. However, the idea of time moving from past to future is an illusion. The invisible hands of titans do not shoot arrows of time out of nature’s bow. Hence, time travel is a tough assignment because there is nothing to ride on. There is no arrow of time. The future and the past do not exist. Time stands still. Thus the years do not pass by, we pass through the years. Our life always enfolds in the here and now, sailing aboard an invisible boat on the mysterious ocean of the eternal present.