Time is direct consciousness. It is not measured in physical terms like length, weight, volume etc. It is abstract and measured in units, which are time intervals like, seconds, minutes, hours etc. As time is consciousness, it is as much complicated and mysterious as the latter and equally misunderstood. Time basically is a concept developed by the mind along with space and matter to make existence of any entity an apparent and an acceptable reality. Basically our mind is a very powerful tool because living in the present moment, we can imagine about the infinite time in the past as well as infinite time in the future. We always tend to think that time is an absolute entity and could exist without the mind or the consciousness. Actually such a thought is a fallacy because without consciousness, even the question of existence of any entity cannot arise. Time is always on a forward movement and is never still at anytime. It is impossible to make time flow backward except in imagination. Even when we imagine and analyse the past when the mind never existed, this analysis is done only in the present time or in other words the reality of past can be established only with respect to the present moment. This paves the way for the realisation that only the present moment is the reality. The past as well as the future is mere imagination based on memory and intelligence. This also is the crux of Buddha’s enlightenment when he realized that the universe exists only momentarily, that it is appearing and disappearing every moment and that even as it appears it intrinsically disappears.
While we discuss about the nature of the present moment, another curious question arises. How long does the present moment last actually? Is it one second or one millisecond or even less than that, etc? However small a time interval you may choose, it is still possible to consider a smaller interval. In mathematical terms it is limit tending to zero and for all practical purposes we can even take it as zero as it is infinitesimal. When only the present moment is reality and when we try to quantify the reality in terms of time we arrive at the truth that the reality lasts only for an infinitesimal second or in other words reality is practically zero or a myth while our imagination is infinite in time interval. The truth is that it is this infinite imagination alone that sustains this infinitesimal reality. As a matter of fact, the concept of time helps us to understand the magnitude of reality and find it to be non-existent.
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