Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD. PhD
India Herald
Houston, USA
10th March 2010
Future (1)
“Not yet”
Man lives for the sake of his future for he believes it is out there waiting to confront him. He is convinced the future will not make itself known to him by his wishful thinking, but requires his efforts to build it up to specifications.
Therefore, man prepares for the future while he is in the present. He has to wonder who takes care of his present while he is busy preparing for his future.
While man is busy making plans for his future, moments in the present obviously get ignored. His present that is ignored passes into the past, together with the acknowledged present, which happens suddenly to man without being planned, for he never makes plans for his present.
Man may make plans for the day and takes it to be the present, but the day, which is yet to happen, would be the future and cannot be the present, for it is yet to happen. Therefore, man makes plan for the future and believes it to be for the present.
Man can never make plans for the moment in which he is alive, which is the timeless and thoughtless ‘now’, the only present man has.
He can only make plans for the future in the present and the time available for him in any moment is just an attosecond, which is one billionth of a billionth of a second.
Not even a single letter could be prounounced within an attosecond, let alone a word. In fact, only an attophoneme of a letter could be pronounced within an attosecond, which has no meaning whatsoever.
Therefore, a word is formed in the past and not in the present, as man believes, as an auditory illusion of sound which happens in the timeless and thoughtless ‘now’. This is the only present, if at all there is a present.
It is indeed ironical that man makes plans for his future from the past and expects it to work to perfection. It is still ironical that, though plans can only be made in the past, man never thinks of making plans for his past.
He never makes plans for his past because he knows he cannot live in the past. If he cannot be alive in the past, how is it possible for his plans to be alive? His plans would be dead too and man is not aware that the known is dead.
He believes and expects the present to come from the future, which is time that is not yet, and therefore the logical place to make plans for the present would and should be the future. But man can never plan for the present in the future because he can never live in the future.
So, when man plans for his future, he is unaware that he is in fact making plans for the present. Little does he realise that he meets the future only in and as the present, but never in the future, which is separate from the present.
By making plans for the future man thinks his future is taken care of, but little does he realise it is the present that is being taken care of every moment by life and not by the ego or the mind.
So, in fact, man keeps making plans for the present thinking that it is the future. Every day is the future of the day before. Every day the future arrives for man and yet he still keeps making plans for it.
Every hour is the future of the hour before. Every hour the future arrives for man and yet he still keeps making plans for it. Every minute and every second is the future of the minute and second before. Every minute and second the future arrives for man and yet he still keeps making plans for it: the so-called rat-race of man.
The unit of time measured so far by atomic clocks is an attosecond. An attossecond makes a moment for man. This time-duration is relative and not absolute.
The absolute unit of time is not yet known by man, and however small the unit of time may become as part of sophistication, it will still remain relative and illusory but never real, for the known is always in the past, and always will be, for life is faster than the mind.
Understand that as of now every moment lasts just for an attosecond. The next moment too will remain for an attosecond and not two attoseconds. So the future lasts just for an attosecond, and what plans could fit into it?
Life is, therefore, a mystery and an adventure of an attosecond. Life is not made up of a future with a huge time-period, as man believes it is, wherein he can think, speak and achieve. Life evolves and sophisticates faster than an attosecond and is timeless and thoughtless.
© Copyright V. S. Shankar 2010