Is Time Travel Possible?
Questioner: Acharya ji, Pranam. I am Pranjul, a student of IIT-Delhi. I want to understand the concept of time travel or timelessness. Is it there, is it any spiritual sight to it? Or is it just a product of the human mind?
Acharya Prashant: It’s a fantasy. Where does the future come from? Where does the future come from? The future comes from the choices that you make today, right? You are there and the material world is there and you are a creature of choice. If you’re not a creature of choice, everything is deterministic and then life is not worth living. There is no freedom. If everything is predetermined, where is the question of freedom then? And freedom is the highest spiritual ideal.
So, you are a conscious person and by definition consciousness is choice, which means there are an infinite number of futures possible. If you say, you are traveling into the future, which particular future are you traveling into? Which particular future? So, all this time travel is just fantasy. A nice thing to entertain the mind. There is not much more in it.
Questioner: Sir, some related with the gravity. The more the gravity, slower the time would be and some say, “When you travel more than the speed of light, the time will slow down.” So, is there any sense to it or it’s just for fun?
Acharya Prashant: See, slowing down of time is one thing, negative time is a totally different thing, right?
Questioner: Yes.
Acharya Prashant: Also remember that when you travel at the speed of light, you are not you anymore. So, we talk of traveling at the speed of light as if some new technology is just on its way! What’s your weight by the way? Let’s say seventy kg, you know how mass behaves with speed, right? What will happen to your mass? You will be an impossible mass as your velocity approaches that of light.
Have we not heard of that, m=(M)/(sqrt(1–(v^(2))/(c^(2))) standard equation (Einstein’s theory of relativity). And then from where will the energy come to accelerate you any further? If mass is increasing to those levels, from where will you get the energy for acceleration? Infinite mass will require infinite energy. So, all that is quite titillating but still quite pointless.
Questioner: Sir, sixth sense ke bare me janana chahata hun. I have often heard from mostly women that they have sixth sense. Is it for real or just or just a man-made theory? Woman made theory? (laughter)
AP: It’s not a new thing nor is it specific to women. The scriptures have always said that the mind is the sixth gyanendriya. So classically that’s the way they put it. They said there are five senses of knowledge, there are five senses of action and then they also talk of the eleventh sense, that’s the mind. How?
To watch something, you require this particular sense, right? It is called the eye. So, watching should be dependent on the eye. Let’s see, close the eyes, close your eyes. How many of you are still not watching something? Is it so that you’re not watching anything now? You’re still watching, right? From where is that coming? That’s coming from the mind, that is the Sixth Sense.
Even if you plug your ears, you’ll still hear sounds. From where are those sounds coming? From where do dreams come? They all come from the mind. So, the mind is the sixth sense, nothing else. So, what is this thing that you classically call as a sixth sense? It is nothing but the deposit of past experiences.
You see, each single one of us is carrying millions of years of experiences in every single cell, right? That’s the process of evolution. We have not just descended in one particular day. All those experiences are contained within us.
There is a reason why you have the thumb. Why do you have the thumb? So, this thumb is coming from experiences of the past, right? There is a reason why you don’t have a fifth finger. When you have a thumb then you are able to do something very special. What is it? This kind of a posture (showing a posture of hand) is not possible with a fifth finger and the moment you can do this, you can hold something.
Are you getting it?
There is a reason why your brain is more developed than the brain of the monkey or the chimpanzee because you walk on these two feet and therefore you can have subtler blood vessels in your brain. The blood pressure reduces when the head is erect.
If you are walking on all fours; like animals, then the head and the heart are at the same horizontal level, the blood pressure is higher, so finer vessels cannot develop there. And when you have finer vessels then you have finer intellect. So, all this is coming from the past and we have accumulated experiences of the past and those experiences are helpful.
A little rabbit, tell me, how does it know that it has to become alert when a cat approaches it? Has the rabbit been shown pics in advance? This is catty and run away when you see her. Has that happened? But a very small rabbit; fifteen days old, and still if it sees a cat, it knows run, run. How does it know? That knowledge is contained in the body, that knowledge is contained in the body.
So, the human body too just like the rabbit’s body contains a lot of knowledge from the past and that knowledge is helpful when you have situations that are identical to those in the past. That’s a huge condition, mind you. For a rabbit, knowledge of the body is sufficient because the rabbit never faces a condition that is not similar to conditions it has faced in the past, right? The rabbit was living in a jungle ten lakh years back. The rabbit is still living in the jungle. So, all the physical knowledge is helpful because the conditions are repeating themselves.
But human beings, we are no more living in conditions that are identical to the once millions of years back. So, the knowledge that is there in the body can be helpful or can be very dangerous! The knowledge in the body can be helpful or can be very dangerous because our conditions have changed.
Are you getting it?
A rabbit looks at a female rabbit and runs after her and that is all okay because the rabbit is in the jungle, where it is an animal of prey, which means its population is constantly being attacked. Therefore, it needs to procreate at a rapid speed, therefore the rabbit’s body says, “The moment you look at a female pounce up on her,” otherwise the entire species will go extinct and that is all right.
But the same knowledge is there in the man’s body as well. It’s just that you are no more threatened, in fact today you are the species that is threatening all other species. But still the man’s body, because of the past experience feels like pouncing upon the woman’s body. It’s not that the man is to be condemned as over-sexual, it’s just that evolutionary training of the past. To have a stable population, you needed to have the woman constantly pregnant, otherwise mankind would have gone extinct.
But that kind of an obligation, does it exist even today? It does not exist today. So, conditions have changed but the body has not changed. Body is still behaving as if you are living in the? That’s why the woman’s Sixth Sense often betrays her because it is acting as if the conditions are primitive but the conditions are no more primitive. Therefore, you have to be very careful when you have intuitions or instincts and advises from your Sixth Sense. You have to be very careful. It can be useful and it can be very dangerous.
Are you getting it?
Sometimes it can be useful, for example, you smell smoke, immediately the adrenaline levels in your blood will spike. Why has adrenaline risen in your blood? So that you can have more glucose which is more... which is more energy. So that you can because you used to have forest fires in the past as well. So, the body has learned that, the moment you smell smoke, you get a rush of energy so that you can run fast. If you don’t run fast, you’ll be consumed by the fire.
So, all that is okay when it comes to those physical things, but that is not okay when it comes to all the matters that involve events, incidents of today.
Are you getting it?
So, you should learn to be a witness of your Sixth Sense which means you must learn to be a witness of your mind. The mind will tell you something. Does it happen or not? Someone comes to you and even without knowing much about the person you feel like saying, “Oh! this is a wicked fellow.” Does it happen or not?
Women claim to have a more active Sixth Sense so it happens more with them, right? Now why does it happen more with them? Because historically they have been physically the weaker sex. Therefore, they were more in need of protection.
One, the body was weaker, second, there were large periods of pregnancy, extended periods of helplessness. So, she needed to rely on advanced Instinct, otherwise she would have been killed. She can’t run, she is pregnant. Even if she can run, how about the Chhotu? So, she needed to be cautious in advance, therefore she developed the Sixth Sense more than the man. That was a historical imperative. Is that historical imperative needed even today, I’m asking.
No. So there is no need to talk so much about the Sixth Sense etc, rather talk about wisdom. Your wisdom is far more important than any sense or something. Spirituality is about transcending all senses. All wisdom is about transcending the mind. Do not depend on your thoughts, your emotions and also your instincts. None of them matter too much. To some extent they are useful, yes, beyond that you should know that they are just biological, physical so they cannot be trusted.
Are you getting it?
Do not just say it is my gut feel, the gut feel and all is not of much worth all or that thing today, that vibes, vibes. I’m not getting the right kind of vibes from this fellow. That’s the function of an animal. Are you still an animal to trust vibes and all? If you are a human being, you will not trust vibes. You will inquire, you will go close, you will ask, “Who are you?’, “Where are you coming from?” “What do you mean?” You will engage that person in an argument or if you are too suspicious you will do a background check, right? You will not say, “I am getting vibrations.! What is this?
So, all that is a thing of the animal, do not be too respectful of that.
Now you also know what this thing about falling in love is. That too is a biological thing coming from the past, just as you get bad vibes, they also call it low frequency vibrations, right? Science is indeed progressing, low frequency vibrations, wow! Frequency match nahi kar rhi.
So not all that. The other side of the coin is you look at someone and say, “Oh! this is the one for me. I am getting just the right kind of vibes.” No, Aise nhi pataa lagna. The senses are not trustworthy. Thoughts deceive, experiences are partial.
Do you know the great thing about Jain philosophy? From where has it brought non-violence to you? It’s called ‘Nayvad.’ It says, “Do not trust, do not trust. All experiences are to the ego. Do not trust. No experience is trustworthy. All the knowledge that you have is partial because you are the partial entity. You are the ego and the ego is never complete. The ego is an Apoorna thing, partial. Therefore, never trust your senses which means do not trust your eyes, do not trust your ears and never, never trust your (indicating the head). Enquire, enquire, enquire.” And that’s what gives the the Jain path and consequently the entire Indian thought a lot of tolerance.
Because you say, “Whatever I am saying is partial, whatsoever he is saying is partial, so how do I attack him!” I cannot say, “What I am saying is the absolute thing and even that which he is saying can never be the absolute thing, so how can I attack him! How can I attack him!” Know that all this is just very partial because the recipient of all sensory input is the ego.
It is the ego to which all the senses deliver their messages and that’s the ego by definition is partial, partial not absolute. So, Enquire, know, know. Be a witness of the mind. In that the knowers have said that there is completeness.
