Time Spiral Part 2 - A Blink in a Blink: On Seeing, Time, and Everything In Between

Time Spiral Part 2 - A Blink in a Blink 

On Seeing, Time, and Everything In Between

Preface for Readers:

This is Part 2 of the “Time Spiral” series. In Part 1 — The Verbs of Time , I explored how the everyday language we use about time — making it, spending it, killing it — offers surprising clues to how we experience life itself. This next spiral goes deeper. It’s less about how we talk about time, and more about how we see it… or think we do. 

Yes, it started with the same video. A sunset from somewhere else on Earth. I had received it almost instantly. That golden sky, recorded at Time A, was on my phone by Time B — milliseconds later, no matter the physical distance. The sun had set there, while I remained here, unaware, asleep, the sun had already set three hours earlier for me. And so began my spiral into one of the strangest, most natural, and possibly most useless questions I love to ask myself : What is time, really? What began as a serious question, soon led to something even more philosophical. Is just living with "In the Now", "Living in What is" - enough? 

Underneath those metaphors, a quieter thought lingers: what if none of that time was ever really ours to begin with? I mean, think about it. Time, space or distance is relative, so does past and present and maybe future seem relative because that is also just an extrapolation of time. 

Imagine an average human life of about 80 years. Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old. So one's life as a fraction of Earth’s age is 1.78 millionths of a percent. Use a calculator if you want. It’ll probably just throw up some E+ something — you get the idea. If the Earth’s entire lifespan were 24 hours, one's whole life would last 0.0015 seconds. 

About a blink in a blink. 

And yet here we are, asking timeless questions within that blink. We mark calendars, invent clocks, change time zones, and confuse ourselves further by calling someone in San Francisco at night at 9.30 pm while watching a sunset video from Greece and the person whom you are calling is rushing to office in THEIR morning at 9.30 am. 

And then we ask: What’s the time? Maybe the better question is: What are we in time?

On Seeing

“How far can the human eye see?” The answer can surprise you. On a clear night, with no pollution and a bit of squinting, the naked human eye can spot stars up to 2,500 to 4,000 light years away. That’s right — light years. No zoom lens. No telescope. Just two eyeballs and a handful of photons. The nearest star (Proxima Centauri) is 4.24 light years away. Deneb, one of the brightest stars, is 2,600 light years away. And yet, it twinkles in one's eye like a streetlamp. So yes — you can literally say, “I can see thousands of years into the past.” And no one can argue. Try saying that at a dinner party. Watch the reactions. Everyone will think you are drunk.

 

And from there, it spirals further. Not the thought. My brain. Because if I could receive light from another part of the Earth in near real-time, and also see a star that’s hundreds of light years away, and also glance at the pen lying beside me — all within the same instant, all three exist now. Then what is this thing we casually call “Now”?  That’s baffling. 

Which makes me wonder…....  Is “now” even real? 

Or is “now” just an experience the brain knits together from various time-stamped photons and stories? Or is “now” just a perception made by my brain?

The Speed Illusion

Then came the next layer of the spiral. Imagine a spaceship zooming through deep space at 40,000 km/h. To the astronaut inside — weightless, still, coffee in hand — it feels like they’re not moving at all. There is no reference to say they are moving. To someone watching from Earth, it’s a blur of light streaking across a vast black canvas. To the speedometer inside the craft — it’s 40,000 km/h, precisely.

So who’s right?

All of them. And none of them.

Because speed, it turns out, is just a relationship — between the observer and the observed. Just like time. Just like everything.

What Am I Really Seeing?

This part twisted my head the most: When I say  “I see or observe" something, I’m not actually seeing it. I’m seeing light bouncing off it. Here’s a quick tour of how vision works (I checked the science books). Photons (light particles) bounce off objects and enter the cornea of your eye. They pass through the lens, hit the retina, and trigger electrical impulses. These impulses travel along the optic nerve to the visual cortex of your brain. There, your brain interprets this electrical data and says, “That’s a pen!” or “That’s a sunset!” or “That’s a star that died before the Earth came into being!”  My mind presents it to me as a reality happening NOW but basically it is something which has happened a billionth of a second in the PAST. So as per all scientific studies we are seeing reality NOW as was in the past. The star, the sunset and the pen. But what if, I mean, just think about it, what if, the light hitting my eye didn’t just carry past information (like starlight), but sometimes carried future probabilities too? After all, my mind predicts outcomes every second.

I have played cricket as a child and I see IPL (not much but still). So many wonderful catches are taken. How does the fielder, in three dimensional space reach a particular point, where the ball will reach in the future after it is hit. How do I swerve just in time before a car hits me. We sometimes sense what will happen before it does. Is that instinct? Or is it my brain catching a whiff of the future? And now — with tools like AI (hello, ChatGPT) — one can even simulate one's 80-year-old self and look back to check if their prediction was right. What a strange loop that would be.

Have you ever had a déjà vu moment — that eerie sense of having lived it before? Of a feeling that you have seen it or felt it or imagined it as having happened to you in the past. Or is my mind doing something far more interesting — a kind of rapid prediction based on present data?

Now let’s sneak in a bit of ancient psychology — minus the incense.

In yogic thought, the mind isn’t one thing. It’s a team of four: Manas – The sensory mind. It is the doubting faculty. Buddhi – The intellect. It is the decision making faculty. It evaluates. Chitta is the memory storehouse. It remembers past experiences. Ahankara – The ego. The sense of identity. Now tie this back to your perception.  The light hits your eyes. The Manas grabs it and wonders what it is. The Buddhi processes it. The Chitta provides context. And the Ahankara slaps a name on it  It’s a beautifully messy orchestra playing reality in your head. The interesting part? Not one of them knows if they’re reacting to the past, the present, or the future.

A Blink Within a Blink

As I stood there — metaphorically — staring into the abyss of time, one final realization landed gently. And even if I figured all this out — every concept of past, present, future, relativity, consciousness, perception, and light — what would I really have gained? 

So is this all just Maya? Maya isn’t just a Sanskrit word. It’s a stunningly accurate metaphor for perceptual illusions.

Maybe.

Maybe the ancient sages were right.

Maybe reality is a beautifully convincing illusion — a film reel of photons and feelings and forecasts stitched together by a mind that wants it to mean something.

And maybe… that’s enough.

Maybe the point was never to solve time.

Maybe it was just to sit with it, even briefly, in wonder.

Because some questions don’t need answers.

Einstein said it best: “The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”