Dear Ram

The two questions I wanted to ask are: 1) in one of your books you mention "linear" and "cyclical" concepts of time. My Chinese girlfriend often tried to explain the differences to me, but never succeeded. Can you boldly go where she was unable? 2) what is the difference between mind and ego? But one request: please do not use one word of Sanskrit, or any quotes from the shastras, Vedas, etc.

Ram: I’m happy to try and answer your questions and I promise not to use any fancy Sanskrit.

Linear and cyclical time.

Linear time is based on the idea that time starts at a certain point and moves directly to another different point. You can only take this concept as true if you do not understand how the universe works. It is purely an intellectual concept. For example, let’s say the universe started with the big bang. There is no time when the big bang happens. For there to be time you need at least two subsequent experiences or events. There is no time at the first event because there is no way to evaluate the relative distance between the first and second events. Only when the third experience or event happens does ‘time’ happen. This is so because you can not evaluate the distance between event a and event b without event c. According to the linear time idea time marches out from this original point in a certain direction and it never returns to that point. It is impossible to determine where time is marching to because the end has not been reached. This concept is responsible for all the evolutionary fantasies one finds.

Cyclical time also measures the interval between events but time ends up at the same place it starts. For example, a seed turns into a tree and the tree turns into seed. It takes a lot of small events for this to happen but you end up with the same thing at the end you had at the beginning. Although the Self is timeless it becomes the source of time when it brings itself into manifestation. Because the Self is limitless anything that (apparently) comes out of it cannot help but (apparently) return to it…since there is nothing other than it to return to. So time has to return to its source, just as a tree has to return to its seed state. On a macrocosmic level the cosmos can only have come from the Self and can only return to it. In Vedic science you have the idea of the manifest and the unmanifest, the seed state and the visible state. Time exists potential but unmanifest in the Self (the seed) and when it sprouts time (and manifestation) begins. All the energy in the seed is spent creating a new seed and when the new seed is finished, which is a replica of the old one, the form that contained the energy dies, the new seed sprouts and life begins anew. This process is going on in everything every where. So with this idea you can see clearly that there is nothing new under the sun and there is going to be nothing new. True there will always been new forms but the forms will perish and the seed, what Plato called the pure idea, will always remain. When you belief in linear time you have plenty of room to imagine that something that has never happened will happen, that things may get better or worse, since you do not know where they are going. This accounts for both utopian and apocalyptic views.

There is a third concept of time which is that there is no time. This idea is based on the fact that everything here is just the Self and the Self, being unborn, is not subject to time. The reason time seems to exist is because we are viewing the Self through a mind that is constantly moving and this movement which is just a series of subjective events, thoughts and emotions, seems to break up the Self which can then be spoken of in terms of time. . When you transcend the mind, time stops. It also does not exist in the sleep state. This show that time is not an absolute objective reality, whether it is cyclical or linear, but simply a projection of the mind. I’m sure you have realized that time is completely subjective and cannot actually be objectively proved. When you’re being tortured for two minutes in an Iraqi prison the two minutes seems like an eternity. When you’re having a two minute orgasm the two minutes is gone in a flash. So, in reality ‘time’ is just a convenience for organizing events, subjectively or objectively.

I hope this clears it up. See no Sanskrit.

Ram