We all have experienced the feeling that the momentary perception of time that we just had didn’t seem to align with “reality”. It could be when you’re studying and feel that time has moved slower for you than it did in real life, or it could be when you’re having fun with your friends, and time feels like it’s going by faster. It could be when you’re 40 and feel like the last 20 years of your life have gone by the blink of an eye, or it could be when you’re 20, and feel like the last 20 years have been REALLY long.
Whatever it is, it is only your perception of the said time that tends to differ. And I mean that for the time in reality, that I mentioned in quotes, as well. Reality (of time) doesn’t exist. We use different tools available to us like the Earth’s orbit around the sun, the moon’s orbit around the Earth, and other celestial bodies’ movements as seen from here, to measure our current “reality” of time. While it is a very useful tool to us humans as it helps us with a variety of things from navigation through our day-to-day life to understanding the origins of our universe, it is still a concept that we created. It’s not THE reality, but an illusion inside another illusion.
Let’s say that the standard definition of “a year” is a planet’s full orbit around its star. Imagine Planet A [P(a)] orbiting a Star A. Let’s assume that this star is a lot more massive than our sun, thereby increasing the circumference of P(a)’s orbit. By our definition of a year, the year of P(a)’s is going to be RELATIVELY higher than Earth’s. That doesn’t mean one is right and one is wrong.
Even our bodies, down to each cell, follow their own time based on their sleep-wake cycle. This process is known as the Circadian rhythm. Our bodies have evolved in a way that it is able to have their own perception of time based on their exposure to other external stimulations like sunlight, activities, sound, etc. This means that even this Circadian cycle is relative to these external factors. You stay in a dark environment all the time, your body is bound to adapt itself to that stimuli, and think it’s nighttime. That’s why when it comes to issues like depression, it’s always good to step out and get some sunlight, for all depression is just a chemical imbalance that your body gets into.
And this is why we say that Time is an illusion. Our concept of it has been created on relative parameters, and rightfully so, as it has been quite a useful tool for humanity to come this far. But it’s important to remember that it is not the true time, for there is no such thing as one. It can be very easy to get bound by these constraints of an illusion that seem so realistic. This might make one wonder if everything that we know of, is an illusion. It cannot be better answered than this post I saw on Reddit:
If the brain itself is an illusion, how can it be the one creating this illusion? Then what exactly is creating this illusion? Something to think about.
In Vendanta, time can be thought of as Vritti i.e., a disturbance in the stream of pure consciousness that is caused by thoughts and perceptions pertaining to this illusion. Think of a body of still water. That is pure consciousness. When a pebble is thrown into the water, there is a disturbance to its stillness due to ripples. This is what Vritti can best be explained as. Your illusionary existence itself is a disturbance to the still water.
