How to Live in the Moment - A Scientific Perspective

By Avtar Singh
Source: Intent Blog


Both Einstein and spiritual masters have said that time is an illusion. Then isn’t each moment of time an illusion in itself? How is it possible to live in the moment if it is an illusion?

Generally speaking, living in the moment has been a spiritual concept related to the cultivation of awareness of the inner self or consciousness. However, in this modern day and age, the phrase has almost become a fashion in the pursuit of material wealth, power, and fame both in the personal as well as business worlds.

As part of the corporate training to enhance productivity and profits, the employees are provided motivational training by professionals to develop “living in the present” attitude or behavior. Yoga and meditation classes are given to corporate executives and employees to enhance competitiveness and financial health of the corporations. Recently, I heard the CEO of a Yoga franchise boasting about the extravagant success of its business in beating out even the most materialistic and egotistic CEOs of the well known and largest corporations in business.

Yoga, which originally meant to achieve unity with the universal consciousness or awareness of the present moment, has become, for a common person, another physical exercise to achieve bodily fitness and good-looks to succeed in the material world. Similarly, meditation that was meant to be a spiritual tool to achieve inner or self awareness to help living in the present/moment has become another profit making or earn-a-living tool for many.

Just like the materialistic science has squeezed consciousness out of the universal laws to win over the inanimate matter, the modern day pseudo-spirituality has squeezed consciousness out of yoga and meditation reducing them to mere physical tools to enhance material living. Instead of cultivating unity with the universe and inner self, the commercialized versions of the present day yoga and meditation have become ego gratifying and enhancing tools for individuals and corporations. Instead of providing meaning and purpose to life, they have mostly given rise to competition and jealousy of the enhanced egos of their practitioners.

Let us look into the science, a Holistic Relativity perspective, of the “living in the present moment” to understand its true meaning and value to life. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, the speed of a clock or passing of time depends upon the speed of the observer. Hence, time is only a relative entity to the observer and there is nothing like a universal time or clock that specifies an absolute synchronous moment of time in the universe.

Empty space has no running clock in it and each of the galaxies moving at different speeds in the expanding universe has different clock and time. Moreover, relativity theory says that there is no synchronicity in the different clocks related to different observers. That means there is no absolute and unique beginning or present or ending moment of time in the universe. Hence, Big Bang is a singularity and the moment of time in the universe does not exist as a unique point. Even quantum mechanics' uncertainty principle does not allow a certain unique moment of time to exist as the space-time becomes a quantum foam of uncertainty at smaller and smaller scales.

So, how could we live in the present or any moment that is indefinable as per the science? Are science and spirituality of living in the moment at odds with each other?

Holistic Relativity resolves this dilemma and vindicates the wonderfully intuitive and scientific insights of the spiritual masters as follows…….

There are other problems with the concept of the moment of time. In spite of the fact that time is an illusion and no physical experiment can be performed to establish its existence, science has devised atomic clocks that can measure time with an unparalleled accuracy down to nanoseconds. Our everyday experience of time reinforces the feeling that it is an absolute reality rather than a relative (temporal) reality or a stubborn illusion, as Einstein characterized it.

However, the present moment is nothing but an infinitesimal duration of time, much much smaller than even the smallest measurable time interval, which represents the boundary between the past and future. If it is only the boundary between the past and future, how can one live in it?

In order to live or dwell in the so-called present moment of time, there must be a finite non-zero extent of it to dwell in. Scientifically speaking, the smallest known moment or duration of time is the Planck’s time that equals approximately 10 raised to the power of minus 43 (that is1 divided by 10 forty three times) seconds.

Neuroscientific measurements have shown that there is an irreducible delay of several hundred milliseconds between our conscious decision-making and its pursuant action via neural responses by the brain. So, even if we consciously decide to live in the current moment, by the time we can act upon it several hundred milliseconds would have already passed beyond the Planck’s moment of time. So, it is neuro-scientifically impossible to live in the moment even if we tried. It is worse than fitting the camel within the eye of a needle. Then, how did Buddha live in the moment? What do the spiritual masters mean by “Living in the present moment”?

To understand this, let us see what happens if we are able to slow down the clock or time. As the clock movement slows down, the extent of the duration of the present moment sandwiched between the past and future also expands. In the limit, if the clock is stopped completely, then both the past and future disappear, and what remains is the present moment with an infinite extension. In fact, since the both past and future dissolve, so does the present and what really remains is the one wholesome eternal existence or the consciousness. There are no more boundaries of past, present, and future dividing space and time leading to a perfect state of universal unity or Yoga.

The Holistic Relativity shows that such a state of being with fully dilated space and time is achieved when the mass completely dissolves into energy. The important insight to be gained here is that the realization of such a state of being has been the fundamental objective of the practices of yoga and meditation as originally devised by the spiritual masters including the Buddha. Their insight that led to the development of these tools was deeply scientific showing their deep intuition into the workings and laws governing space and time. They may not have developed explicit mathematical expressions for their intuition, but their experimental verification was accomplished thru their direct experience of such states of egoless (mass-less and time-less) being while living a bodily and worldly life.

Hence, the concept of “living in the present moment” is, scientifically (Holistic Relativity wise) speaking, no different than the concept of the stopped clock signifying fully dilated space (omnipresence or total awareness) and time (eternity) in conjunction with the dissolution of the ego (mass) or enlightenment.

This egoless state is the state of true “Yoga” or unity with the universe. Meditation is nothing but a tool to realize such a state. Just like the medication is to cure the disease of the body, meditation is to cure the disease of the ego or mind. Just as when the healthy state of being is achieved medication is no more needed, meditation is not needed when the state of egoless-ness or total awareness is achieved. However, meditation may help maintaining the state of awareness as it gets tarnished by the struggles of daily living in the egotistic world.

In summary, please do not rush to taking the batteries out of your clocks to stop time. What “living in the moment” really means and how it can be achieved is – “DISSOLVE THE EGO"


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