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"Time
is carving you...,let yourself be shaped according to your true
nature."
-
Master Po from _Kung Fu_ Episode #23
"The Tong"
Time
This nOde last updated June 4th, 2005 and is
permanently morphing...
(3
Ak'bal (Night) / 1 Zots (Bat) - 3/260 -
12.19.12.6.3)
time
time (tìm) noun
1.Abbr. t., T.. a. A
nonspatial
continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession
from
the past through the present to the future. b. An interval separating
two
points on this continuum; a duration: a long time since the last war;
passed
the time reading. c. A number, as of years, days, or minutes,
representing
such an interval: ran the course in a time just under four minutes. d.
A similar number representing a specific point on this continuum,
reckoned
in hours and minutes: checked her watch and recorded the time, 6:17
A.M.
e. A system by which such intervals are measured or such numbers are
reckoned:
solar time.
2.a. Often times . An
interval,
especially a span of years, marked by similar events, conditions, or
phenomena;
an era: hard times; a time of troubles. b. times. The present
with
respect to prevailing conditions and trends: You must change with the
times.
3.A suitable or opportune
moment or season: a time for taking stock of one's life.
4.a. Periods or a period
designated for a given activity: harvest time; time for bed. b. Periods
or a period necessary or available for a given activity: I have no time
for golf. c. A period at one's disposal: Do you have time for a chat?
5.An appointed or fated moment,
especially of death or giving birth: He died before his time. Her time
is near.
6.a. One of several
instances:
knocked three times; addressed Congress for the last time before
retirement.
b. times. Used to indicate the number of instances by which
something
is multiplied or divided: This tree is three times taller than that
one.
My library is many times smaller than hers.
7.a. One's lifetime. b.
One's period of greatest activity or engagement. c. A person's
experience
during a specific period or on a certain occasion: had a good time at
the
party.
8.a. A period of military
service. b. A period of apprenticeship. c. Informal. A prison
sentence.
9.a. The customary period
of work: hired for full time. b. The period spent working. c. The
hourly
pay rate: earned double time on Sundays.
10.The period during which
a radio or television program or commercial is broadcast: "There's
television
time to buy" (Brad Goldstein).
11.The rate of speed of
a measured activity: marching in double time.
12.Music. a. The
characteristic
beat of musical rhythm: three-quarter time. b. The rate of speed at
which
a piece of music is played; the tempo.
13.Chiefly British. The
hour at which a pub closes.
14.Sports. A time-out.
adjective
1.Of, relating to, or
measuring
time.
2.Constructed so as to
operate
at a particular moment: a time release.
3.Payable on a future date
or dates.
4.Of or relating to
installment
buying: time payments.
verb, transitive
timed, timing, times
1.To set the time for (an event or occasion).
2.To adjust to keep accurate time.
3.To adjust so that a force
is applied or an action occurs at the desired time: timed his swing so
as to hit the ball squarely.
4.To record the speed or duration of: time a
runner.
5.To set or maintain the tempo, speed, or duration
of: time a manufacturing process.
"This is it, you've only got one shot, and it's already started"
- Roger Waters on "Time", CBS News London (For DSOTM 20th Anniversary)
All roads lead to this big question. what is it that we are all striving for? the answer lies in time. not pleasure, or sex, or money, or children, or even art. these are just immediate pacifiers for what we really want: the time to do, see, and feel everything and everyone we want. once this breakthrough occurs, we'll have a new set of problems, but that is the state of how things are now. we are aware of death and time, and we're trapped. we can't go anywhere with it so we have this annoying need to hurry up and get everything done before we buy the farm. so who's going to build the first time machine? or do we even need a machine? maybe that concept is a bit archaic and needs updating.
what exactly is immortality? it's the negation of time. how do we negate time? by getting close to, and perhaps matching, the speed of light. if you ARE light, everything is instant. if you see light, to you it travels at light speed. how do we reach light speed? i'll leave that up to the scientists and yogis. i believe some have already reached this point, and from our perspective of "trapped perception" they are not in "front" of us. the future has already happened because the future is the same as the past and the now - to them. to us, the "now" is elusive and does not exist. once that initial breakthrough (through science or meditation or ANY MEANS NECESSARY) occurs (like fish out of water perceiving the concept of "water" for the first time), it'll be a sense of "of course, isn't it obvious?" until then, it's impossible. it's not worth it to even think about, let alone pursue. at the moment, time is money (and distance). in the future, time will be art. see you at the eschaton. - @Om* 11/10/99
Time
Time, period during which an action or event occurs; also, a dimension representing a succession of such actions or events. Time, like length and mass, is one of the fundamental quantities of the physical world.
Solar, Standard, and
Sidereal
Time
One day is the interval
between successive passages of thesun
across the same point in the sky. The day is by custom divided into 24
hours. The length of the day according to solar time is not the same
throughout the year, however, because the apparent motion of the sun
varies throughout the year. Mean solar time was therefore invented,
based on the motion of a hypothetical sun traveling at an even rate
throughout the year.
Standard time, which is based on solar time, was introduced to avoid miscommunications that occurred when each community used its own local solar time. For standard time, the earth is divided into 24 time zones. Each zone spans 15° of longitude. Within each time zone, all clocks are set to the same time. Time zones are described by their distance east or west of the zero meridian that passes through Greenwich, England.
Because mean solar time is based on the motion of a hypothetical sun, a base position was established from which the mean time can be calculated. This base position is the vernal equinox, an imaginary point in the sky located by reference to star positions. Solar time based on the position of the stars is called sidereal time.
Ephemeris Time
Neither mean solar time nor
mean sidereal time is precisely accurate, because the motion of the
earth on its axis is not regular. This problem was solved with the
introduction of ephemeris time, which is used chiefly by astronomers
when the greatest degree of accuracy is required. Ephemeris time is
based on the annual revolution of the earth around the sun.
The Scientific Standard of Time
The scientific standard of time, the second, is
measured by the atomic clock, which is tuned to the resonantfrequency of the
transition energy between two energy states of the cesium-133 atom. Yet
time is not a physical constant. As Albert Einstein demonstrated in his
theory of relativity, time can be dilated (expanded) by motion or gravity.
Time
A truer image of the
world,
I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of
time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time
as the devouring tyrant of all that is.
Bertrand
Russell (1872-1970), British philosopher, mathematician. A Free
Man's
Worship and Other Essays, ch. 2 (1976).
Time
For tribal man space was
the uncontrollable mystery. For technological man it is time that
occupies
the same role.
Marshall
McLuhan (1911-80), Canadian communications theorist. The Mechanical
Bride, "Magic that Changes Mood" (1951).
Time
The best way to fill time is to waste it.
Marguerite Duras (1914-96), French author,
filmmaker.
Practicalities, "Wasting Time" (1987; tr. 1990).
Time
The geometry of landscape
and situation seems to create its own systems of time, the sense of a
dynamic
element which is cinematising the events of the canvas, translating a
posture
or ceremony into dynamic terms. The greatest movie of the 20th century
is the Mona Lisa, just as the greatest novel is Gray's Anatomy.
J. G. Ballard (b. 1930),
British author. "The Thousand Wounds and Flowers," review of J. T.
Frazer,
The Voices of Time, in New Worlds, no. 191 (London, June 1969; repr. in
Re/Search, no. 8/9, San Francisco, 1984).
Time
Time is the substance
from
which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the
river;
it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that
consumes
me, but I am the fire.
Jorge
Luis Borges (1899-1986), Argentinian author. Labyrinths, "A New
Refutation
of Time" (1964).
Eternity
Eternity is in love with the productions of
time.
William Blake
(1757-1827), English poet, painter, engraver. The Marriage of Heaven
and Hell, Plate 7, "Proverbs of Hell" (1790-93; repr. in Complete
Writings, ed. by Geoffrey Keynes, 1957).
"time is the moving image of eternity..." - Plato
All of biology is, in a sense, a conquest of dimensionality. That means that animals are a strategy for conquering space/time. Complex animals do it better than simpler animals, we do it better than any complex animal, and we twentieth century people do it better than any people in any previous century because we combine data in so many ways that they couldn't -- electronically, on film, on tape, and so forth. So, the progress of organic life is deeper and deeper into dimensional conquest. From that point of view , the shaman begins to look like the advance guard of a new kind of human being, a human being that is as advanced over where we are as we are advanced over people a million years ago.
On one end of the chronological spectrum, time is not money; it is the measure of your life, as in "the time of your life." The measurement of nature -- the thirteen lunar cycles, the solar eclipses, the seasonal shifts -- is as close as it gets to "galactic" time, the time which knows no beginning or end but a metamorphosis of duration. At the other extreme, there's the 60 second/60 minute/12 month manmade organization of available time into measurable bits and pieces, usually connected with the punch-clock of employment; time as commercial regulation.
- Antero
Alli - _Occulture: The Secret Marriage of Art and Magick_
TIME is a medium, like water, through which creative energy (or some might call it the Tao) flows. This medium is not the same all over. It is subject to non-random fluctuations in its [otherwise random, probabilistic] flow. Implying, for example, that a coin tossed on day x might have a 50% chance of turning up heads, but tossed on day y the same coin might have only a 49% chance of turning up heads...for reasons not entirely evident to nor elucidated by the theory of probability.
"We believe that time is passing only because our ordinary consciousness, absorbed in the transiency of material forms, is capable of "illuminating" only one particular moving cross section of space-time at each instant. In other words, form and substance, including the brain and body through which we perceive, are continually changing, and we experience time as passing because each instant of consciousness is different. This is because we are always thinking new thoughts, experiencing and noticing new things, metabolizing new substances; and it is this constant sequential difference of one instant from the last or the next that gives the experience of time passing -- the mind-body relationship drives time into its appearing and disappearing movement. But through meditation techniques, in which perceptions and thoughts are trained to subside, or through Mantra, by which each instant is made, through repetition, to appear the same as every other instant, the sense of the irrevocable movement of time can be arrested, and a "timeless" status of consciousness experienced.
This is, of course, only a very external view of the mechanics of meditation, such as is proposed by the physicist R. B. Rucker in his book _Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension_, but it does lead us to several exciting implications concerning the experience of time. Clearly, variations in temporal perception are a factor separating one individual consciousness from another within a species and, to an even greater degree, separating the conscious awareness of different species. It may be said, indeed, that each distinct variation in the pattern of temporal recognition constitutes an entirely different universe of perception. For example, birds have a capacity for temporal recognition eight to ten times more rapid than we do. For them, pictures flashing at twenty-four frames per second, which appear to us as a continuous, moving picture, remain still photos until the velocity of 240 frames per second is reached. Likewise, sounds which are to us a continuous whistle are to birds separate and distinct peeps. In other words, birds are able to record ten times as many granulated perceptions as we can in any given temporal interval, which accounts for the acute rapidity of their reflex responses. It is even possible to say this perceptual rapidity was not developed in birds to enhance flight ability, but rather that birds fly only because it is a movement which suitably embodies and expresses the perceptual rapidity.
The sense of time, then, is related to the rate of change in phenomenal experience."
- Robert Lawler - _Ancient Temple Architecture_ pp. 74, 75
"Have you
guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
"No, I give up,"
Alice replied. "What's the answer?"
"I haven't the
slightest idea," said the Hatter.
"Nor I,"
said the March Hare.
Alice sighed wearily.
"I think you might do something better with the time," she
said, "then wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers."
"If you knew
Time as well as I do," said the Hatter, "you wouldn't talk
about wasting 'it'. It's 'him'."
"I don't know
what you mean," said Alice.
"Of course you
don't!" the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. "I
daresay you never even spoke to Time!"
- Lewis Carroll - _Through The Looking Glass_
It all had to do with time. "Time can be overcome," Micrea Eliade wrote. That's what it's all about. The great mystery of Eleusis, of the Orphics, of the early christians, of Sarapis, of the Greco-Roman mystery religions, of Hermes Trismegistos, of the Renaissance Hermeticalchemists, of the Rose Cross Brotherhood, of Apollonius of Tyana, of Simon Magus, of Asklepios, of Paracelsus, of Bruno, consists of the abolition of time. The techniques are there. Dante discusses them in the _Comedy_. It has to do with the loss of amnesia; when forgetfulness is lost, true memoryspreads out backward and forward, into the past and into the future, and also, oddly, into alternate universes; it is orthogonal as well as linear.
- Phlip
K. Dick - _VALIS_
Everything is linked to time, even the full meaning of words. Any vision of nature and society that wants to be comprehensive cannot ignore the vast problem of time; it determines even our manner of thinking.
The contrast between physical time, a frame of reference that is outside events and phenomena, and psychological time, which is rich with the intensity of living experience, reveals itself in everyday language as well as in the languages of organization and data processing. We speak of time gained or lost, of shared time and real time, of free time and the lack of time. To go beyond such conflicts, we must free ourselves from what I call our chronocentrism. The term may seem a bit strange; I use it here in relation to two better-known terms, geocentrism and anthropocentrism. Thanks to the theories of Copernicus and Galileo we have succeeded in getting rid of our geocentrism, the stifling idea that the earth is the center of our world. It was just as difficult to escape anthropocentrism, which put us at the center of all living things. Thanks to the theory of evolution, man is again one species among thousands.
Yet the most difficult threshold remains to be crossed. We are prisoners of time and words. Our logic, our reasoning, our models, our representationsof the world are hopelessly colored by chronocentrism (as they formerly were by geocentrism and anthropocentrism). From chronocentrism come the conflicts that paralyze our thinking. Can we free ourselves from them?
- Joel De Rosnay - _The Macroscope_
The time of Einstein. The theory of relativity introduced a new upheaval, the transformation of space into time, or the "spatialization" of time (time and space being equivalents). Henceforth we can speak only of a "space-time continuum." For relativists time does not "pass" and matter is unfolded in both its "temporal thickness" and its "spatial span"--which means that time, like space, is an actual span. We can no longer refer to a "universal time" and an "absolute space." The properties of space-time depend on the speed at which a moving object travels, and at speeds approaching the speed of light, space-time "contracts" around the moving object. But the time of relativity, like that of classical physics, remains reversible.
Time according to Bergson
and Teilhard.
Bergson and Teilhard place the direction ofevolution
over that of entropy . According to Bergson, "all our analyses teach us
that life is an effort to climb the slope that matter descends."
Teilhard measures the duration of evolution by the series of
transformations that lead matter, life, and society toward states of
higher complexity. "We are already prepared to observe that life, taken
in its entirety, manifests itself as a current opposed to entropy.
...Life, contrary to the leveling play of entropy, is the methodical
construction of an organization that ceaselessly grows bigger in the
most improbable way." For Teilhard space-time takes the shape of a
cone: the point of the cone is the outcome of cosmogenesis; god isOmega, the end.
film_A Clockwork
Orange_ (vhs/ntsc)(1971)
Alex DeLarge: "You know what you can do with
that watch, you can shove it up your ass!"
"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
- Frank Zappa
"In a world where time
cannot be measured, there are no clocks, no calendars, no definite
appointments. Events are triggered by other events, not by
time. ...In a world where time is a quality, events are record
the color of the sky, the tone of the boatman's call on the Aare, the
feeling of happiness or fear when a person comes into a room. The
birth of a baby, the patent of an invention, the meeting of two people
are not fixed points in time, held down by hours and minutes.
Instead, events glide through the space of the imagination, materialized by a look, a
desire. Likewise, the time between two events is long or short,
depending on the background of contrasting events, the intensity of
illumination, the degree of light
and shadow, the view of the participants."
_Einstein's Dreams_ by Alan Lightman
Like us, music expresses itself through time, but that linear motion also conceals a more complex temporal field, a nest of beat cycles and refrains and eternal returns. When we are enraptured or deeply moved by music, or tranced out on the club floor, we shift away from clock-time. Music reveals time itself as a mystery, a mystery that is perhaps the most basic condition of consciousness. Perhaps this is why music remains the most 'spiritual' of arts, even as it keeps hot young bodies pumping across the globe. Music models the invisible world.
- Erik Davis - _The Future Mix_
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