Out of everything that I have studied about, or thought about, read, heard or things that I’ve seen in movies, Time is one of the few things that never bore me. I could talk about my thoughts about time all day long (I’d prefer a reciprocating conversation, obviously). Not that I have studied about it in any physics class or I have any kind of doctorate in the subject. No, I don’t have any of those things. So yeah, it occurs to me time to time (no pun intended), that I shouldn’t really talk about it. But I need to get all the things out of my head, however nonsense it may sound, before I explode.
So, when we talk about time, there’s one and one thing that comes across everyone’s mind. Debates are held on all the scientific communities about the possibilities and the consequences of one of the most controversial topic of all: Time travel.
very first time, the concept of time travel was introduced to me by a very famous TV show, which used to air every Sunday at 12 pm, during my childhood. Shaktiman was the most awaited show, me as child, used to have. I’m sure lot of you can relate to me when I say that it was the first ever source of entertainment and moral information, blended together. For those who do not know about Shaktiman, in short, he was the Indian version of Superman, except he was from Earth and he went through a fair amount of yajnas to harness the power of the 5 elements : Earth, Fire, Water, Air, and Sky (space or universe).
In one of the episodes, Shaktiman, alongwith his love interest, Geeta, and a brahman teenager boy, ventures in a dangerous yet an informative quest to save the world (like always). The brahman boy carries a device with him that activates a Time Machine which (you guessed it right) makes them travel through time.
That time, I didn’t give it much thought. I was too occupied with the sense of adventure and the information I was getting with it. I don’t remember if I came across any other shows or movies that highlighted the subject of time travelling, untill I came across the third installment of the Harry Potter movies: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The way the film makers portrayed time travel in that film, was unique for me. The way they tied some unexplained loose ends, was fascinating. Although the reason was vague, but while visiting the past, Hermione stopped Harry to confront his past self, because apparently people go crazy if they ever meet their own version of that time. That’s why it’s forbidden to interact with others while time travelling. As vague it was, it seemed like a reasonable law and it must be followed strictly.
After that I have watched the Back to the future movie series which had my mind boggled up. I figure I have to watch it again. The series presented some destructive consequences of time travel. It gave an idea about the fragility of the fabric of time. The idea of how even a small variation in the past would alter the entire history, was enough to make me consider if time travelling would be a good idea or not, if happened. DragonballZ also brought in the consequences of time travel in a way. So basically, all these shows and movies gave me an idea of the entire concept. Enough to keep me curious and interested in the subject. I know the source material of the information I gathered were not reliable, but they made sense somehow and motivated me to think about the possibilities.
Then came the day that changed my perspective on a lot of things, including time travel and how time is perceived. It was 14th November 2014, when I went with two of my closest friends from college to watch the epic masterpiece. The most awaited film from my favorite film maker : Interstellar. That film made me feel as if I travelled through space and time. Things changed for me. I could swear and claim that I was not the same guy as I was before watching this genius of a film. Anyway, I’m not here to write an essay about Interstellar. So let me get back on track by stating about the way the movie portrayed time. For the first time ever, I saw Time getting represented as a physical dimension. Needless to say, my mind was blown.
The travelling through time in that tessarect was more like walking from point A to point B. But that tessarect was built by the futuristic beings (evolved human), who were able to harness 5 dimensions. We are not as evolved yet and for us time travelling is still a fictional subject. But what if I say, it is not as much fictional as it seems. What if I say, there is another approach to look at it, as opposed to the one that had been fed to us by shows and movies. I wouldn’t dare and say it can be scientifically proven by me. There are people far better equipped to do that. Although I can present an idea or a hypothesis on the matter. A hypothesis that would make us see the physical experience of time travel in a new light. However before that, I would like to stick a pin to the subject and divert your attention to a different one.
A physical experience of any event, either be it as regular as reading a book, having dinner, making love, listening to music, peeling an onion, or as grand as attending a concert, climbing upwards a mountain, skydiving, getting married etc., all are merely information or data that gets through to us with the help of our sense organs. Those sense organs act as an input for sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. As those data gets inside our brain, processing starts and an output dictates a response for the stimuli. This is what a physical experience of an event is. In other words, when you have a physical experience of an event, you are there and experiencing it whilst saving it up in your brain, some data consciously and some unconsciously. Those data are known as memory.
Now memories are accessible, depending on how recent or how strong they are. When I say strong, it can be the high points or the low points, which is very subjective in nature. Some memories can be triggered with the reference of a visual aid, some by sound and some others by smell, taste and touch. But those are involuntary response to the external stimuli.
Imagination, on the other hand, is a voluntary action. We have the ability to imagine things that are way beyond our reach. Some of us has their imagination capabilities so strong, that they can visualise things that are not present at the current scenario. I would know, because I can do that and I’m pretty sure a lot of us can. I can imagine a 3D miniature of all the seven wonders, right on my bed. I can imagine birds flying atop those monuments. I can imagine the entire planet (and more) on the palm of my hand. I can imagine me standing near the gate of my school. And I can visualise everything. I can even claim that I can imagine the sound of all the things I mentioned above with the visualization. I can do all that because I can remember those things from somewhere. My imagination is relatively stronger, when it comes to recall the location I’ve been to, than those which I’ve seen images or videos of. Although I can’t, as of yet, access the memory of smell, touch and taste associated with the said location. However, it isn’t impossible to do so.
There are people around the globe, who has relatively strong olfactory memory. They can imagine a smell of specific objects even if the object is nowhere near them. No, I’m not talking about Phantosmia, a disease where one hallucinates the odor of vinegar, rotten eggs or anything pungent. I’m talking about thinking about something and getting it’s smell, no matter how vague it is. Same can be said about people who can imagine taste of various food products. There are highly trained chefs who have tasted hundreds of dishes in there daily routine, that now it is considerably easy for them to recall or imagine the taste of certain ingredients or maybe whole dishes. If these two senses could be trained enough, so much as to make our imagination feel real, I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to assume that even the touch of things (living or non-living) can be imagined.
Although, these instances are merely personal experiences and can be qualified as anecdotes. But the idea of being able to conjure up smell, taste and touch in one’s mind is immensely fascinating. Who’s to say if we train each and every senses enough to memorize the feeling, we wouldn’t be able to recreate it in our head, at will? I like to think that we have the potential to reach that level of conscious imagination where we’ll be able to conjure up an image in our head and get all the data, the sound, the smell, the taste and the touch, related to that image, reconstructed. And when that happens, I believe we could say, that we’d have taken a sweet journey in the 4th dimension.
As I explained earlier how physical experience relates with the information passed on to us by the sense of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste, I bring you the inverse of the last statement. Our imagination can get stronger with the information of each senses. So strong that it can make us experience the event we desire, in a physical manner. But of course to experience the desired event and that too getting the physical feel in that psychological trance, we have to have the perfect recreation of the information that are embedded somewhere in those complex web of neural clusters. That is one hell of a pre-requisite, I admit. But then again, time travel is not an easy accomplishment, either.
I would end this chapter with a dialogue between two individuals that happened according to one of the epic books: Mahabharata. While writing this chapter, I was getting a constant reminder of that specific dialogue between the eldest of the Pandavas, Yudhisthir, and the deity of death, Yamaraj. Take note, that it’s not my intent to back up my hypothesis with the help of a mythic story. Rather, I’d say this dialogue was one of the inspiration that made it possible to write this chapter with conviction. Having said that, the part of the conversation which I’m mentioning below occurred between Yamaraj and Yudhishtir when the Pandavas were in exile, and due to some circumstances, the Pandavas, except Yudhishtir, found themselves on the brink of death. As they lay unconscious, Yamaraj appeared in front of a grieving Yudhishtir and announced that he’d test him with a few questions. If he failed, he would lose his brothers and if he answered correctly he would get an opportunity to bring them back from the clutches of death. Out of the many questions, the one that inspired me is this:
Yama: What is faster than light?
Yudhishtir: Our imagination.
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