Time is the most powerful factor that affects our life. Time never stops, and people, places and circumstances change as time goes by. There is a right time for everything, and when we act according to the time, the desired result is achieved easily.
As farmers know, there is a time to sow, a time to water crops, and a time to harvest the produce. The best of seeds sown at the wrong time will only produce disappointment. In our life too we act according to time. A baby cries, babbles, plays, sleeps and does little else, but that is alright, for the infant is not expected to do otherwise.
But as the baby grows up, its behaviour and activities change. It goes to school, learns to interact with others, and becomes more aware of the world. As time passes, the child matures, enters adulthood and learns still newer things, including how to manage one’s feelings and deal with the emotions of others.
In every phase of life, we face situations specific to that phase. Some of the experiences of an earlier time are not repeated later in life, as they were linked to a particular time or place. We cannot relive those experiences even if we want to. An old man cannot become his infant self again, just as a tree cannot become the sapling it was years ago.
However, as we can see as we watch the cycles of nature, time is cyclical. Day turns into night, only for a new day to dawn, and the seasons occur one after the other, each playing its role in sustaining the planet’s ecological balance. When summer gives way to autumn and then winter, we cannot hope to have summer during winter. But summer will arrive again at the right time, after the cold winter has passed.
Because we ignore this fact, we often fail in our attempts to set things right. We attempt to stop time moving forward or to bring back an earlier time that was more desirable, but it is impossible to bring back the past because time moves forward, not backwards.
An old building can be repaired to extend its life, but it cannot be made new as everything in it is subject to the ravages of time. But once the building has reached the end of its useful life, it can be pulled down to build a new one in its place.
Similarly, a tree cannot become a sapling, but it produces seeds from which a sapling emerges and grows into a new tree.
An old man also cannot become a youth in the same life. But after his death, the soul will take birth in a new body as a baby, which will go through youth, adulthood and old age before passing away to be reborn again.
The world similarly passes through various stages in the cycle of time, which begins with a time when everything was perfect and people lived in harmony with each other and nature.
Gradually, as time went by, the quality of human souls, and consequently their actions, deteriorated. The newness and goodness faded, and so did the joy of life. As souls became weaker, vices began to influence them, and they experienced unease, sorrow, guilt and fear. In the final epoch in the cycle of time, called the Iron Age or Kaliyug, souls are at their weakest, and are in bondage to vices. Their actions – selfish, cruel, and dishonest – reflect this bondage. The result of those actions is the world we see around us, with its myriad problems.
Universal peace, prosperity and happiness cannot be brought about in this world when the consciousness required for that does not exist in the majority of people. The world can again become the peaceful and happy place it once was, but only after a process of renewal. Just as a dilapidated building needs to be demolished to build a new one, everything that is old will have to be swept away for this world to be made new. Temporary fixes and piecemeal solutions can only extend the life of the old world with all its baggage of problems, and not create a new one.
This renewal happens as the wheel of time turns, starting a new cycle with the dawn of what is often called the Golden Age. So, instead of making futile attempts to perpetuate the old, we can work with time and usher in the Golden Age by acquiring the qualities that will create a new world of purity, peace, truth and bliss.
B.K. Asha is Director of the Brahma Kumaris’ Om Shanti Retreat Centre in Gurugram, Haryana.