Times and Worlds

We have already mentioned that the Myth we are considering refers to time as speed and direction of the actualization of the potentials of the monad — the individual stream of awareness.

In other words, the more potentials the mind has realized, the more desires it has revealed and actualized, the more time elapses for it.

Based on such an understanding, it becomes clear that each world is a collection of monads’ fields of awareness carrying out self-actualization at a comparable speed. Therefore, each of the worlds is characterized not only by its own set of properties and energies, but also by its own concepts of time. Accordingly, the many stories about how entering another world and then returning from it is often experienced as falling out of time are quite well founded: indeed, if in one world a being lived through one span of time, then in another its subjective rate of realization may not correspond to the commonly accepted rate. Therefore, returning from another world, one may well discover that far more (or far less) time has passed back home than in the other world.

Moreover, such a mismatch concerns both the relations between worlds and the interaction of worlds with the Interworld: time in the latter generally flows very differently across its regions.

Understanding the relative nature of time helps make sense of the relationship between the states of “retribution,” “reward,” and the cycle of rebirth. Indeed: the mind that ends up in the Interval and reaps vast amounts of karmic effects there may at the same time make little progress realizing its basic potentials. Therefore, although in its subjective experience it may spend a whole eternity in Sheol or the Elysian Fields, it only ‘consumes’ negative or positive karma there, without significantly changing in its level of realization. Then, returning to one of the “stable” worlds, it may find that only a very short time has passed there. And conversely, entering a world with a high realization potential (for example, one of the buddhakṣetras) and returning from it, the mind far outpaces its ‘brethren’ and therefore — from their point of view — its absence from the ordinary world seemed very long to them.

Thus, from the deceased’s perspective, after death he may have time to experience the bardo visions corresponding to his culture and ideas, end up in “hell” or “heaven,” spend long periods there, or wander through the Interworld, and then be reborn again on earth, where the traditional 6–7 weeks pass between his incarnations.

Moreover, entirely paradoxical phenomena can also occur, when the mind that has gone through the Interval is reincarnated into the world at times before its prior birth. Such a situation may occur if some of the realizations achieved by the being turned out not to be stable, did not imprint on the fabric of its mind-stream, and therefore were lost during the intermediate state and must be repeated and renewed.

Therefore, both the intervals between incarnations and subjective experiences of how time correlates across different states can be regarded as epiphenomena of the movement of the stream of mind itself. Nevertheless, since the worlds themselves are collections of mind-streams with roughly similar characteristics, usually such variations are insignificant, rare, and of greater importance for worldview than for practical concerns. Understanding the relativity of time makes it possible to get rid of the false feeling of “objective reality,” without falling into nihilism, and not denying the “relative” stability of this reality.