Introduction: Question That Sparked the Inquiry
A reader once asked me a simple but profound question on the theme of demystifying kundalini: if time is an illusion, then what really happens when we travel? When we sit in an aircraft and fly from one city or country to another, are we actually going anywhere? Or is the mind creating the perception of movement and time, giving us the feeling that we have reached somewhere? And if movement itself is illusory, how does one experience timelessness even while the body is in motion? This question opened a deep inquiry, not theoretical, but rooted in lived experience, observation, yoga, and long years of inner life.
Time Is Not Experienced Directly, Only Change Is
Time is never experienced directly. What we experience is change. The mind observes change, compares it with a previous state, stores that comparison as memory, and from this process the feeling of time is generated. Without comparison and memory, time does not arise as a felt reality. When we sit inside an aircraft, from an external reference frame the body is moving across space. But from the standpoint of immediate awareness, one is simply sitting. He does not see any change in his position. Even when looking outside, no scene appears to be changing, unlike when sitting in a car or a train.
When I drive a car, I become timeless. I do not notice the hours or even days spent on the journey. But when I sit as a passenger, even two hours start feeling like a whole day. During driving, my mind does not register changes, nor are there continuously changing thoughts, so the sense of time disappears. Although roads change, scenes change, and even thoughts change, the mind does not register them deeply because it requires sufficient space for driving attention. When this is accompanied by a non-dual sense, timelessness increases further, along with a sense of bliss.
As a passenger, however, I experience whorls of fleeting and constantly changing thoughts. To reduce this, I started reading something while traveling. Reading calmed down vulgar and restless thoughts, and as a result, the sense of time was reduced to some extent. Sensations arise, thoughts arise, sounds are heard, the body breathes. The sense that “I am going somewhere” is not a direct experience but a mental construction created by clocks, schedules, destinations, expectations, and memory. If these mental reference points are temporarily removed, movement continues, but time collapses.
Motion Does Not Create Time, Mental Registration Does
Movement by itself does not create time. Time is created when change is registered deeply and held. Change is continuous everywhere, but felt time arises only when change is noticed, compared, and stored. This is the crucial mechanism. Yoga does not stop change, and meditation does not freeze the world. What yoga changes is how change is processed. In a yogic life, experiences are lived fully but are not clung to. Meditation dissolves impressions before they can consolidate into dense memory. Change may be noticed lightly or may be deregistered quickly before it turns into the psychological substance we later call time. This is why days can feel full while living them, yet years can feel astonishingly short when remembered.
Before formally sitting for yoga, this state of unchanging Tao occurred in me even during periods of intense worldliness, with the help of Sharirvigyan Darshan. Through this, I became non-dual in experience. Non-duality is essentially synonymous with non-changing.
During those fifteen years as well, I experienced timelessness. Time did not dominate my life even then, because awareness remained established in something that did not move, even though worldly activities continued on the surface.
Jet Lag and the Body’s Relationship With Time
This understanding becomes clearer when we look at jet lag. Jet lag is not caused by distance but by crossing time zones. When one travels fast across multiple time zones, clock time jumps abruptly, but the body does not jump. The body lives by rhythm, not by abstraction. Circadian cycles, digestion, hormone release, sleep and wakefulness all follow gradual solar cues. Jet lag is the desynchronization between symbolic clock time and biological rhythm. The body must realign itself, and that realignment is felt as fatigue, confusion, or discomfort. In this sense, jet lag can be understood as the body reconciling continuity after the mind has leapt ahead through space using technology.
Why Delhi to Goa Felt Effortless
This is why flying from Delhi to Goa did not produce any jet lag for me. Hunger came naturally, sleep came on time, and I felt rested on arrival. There was no disturbance because no time zones were crossed. Clock time, sunlight rhythm, and body rhythm remained aligned. This experience shows something important: the body does not care about distance, it cares about rhythm. Whether one moves ten kilometers or two thousand kilometers is irrelevant to the body if rhythm is preserved. From the awareness perspective, movement happened, but time did not fracture. Experience remained continuous.
Ten Years That Felt Like Ten Days
While living a full yogic life for nearly ten years, those years passed like ten days. This is not poetic exaggeration. It is a direct consequence of how time is stored. Time exists only as memory, not as lived presence. When life is restless, conflicted, or driven by unresolved desire, memory becomes dense, and time feels long. When life is lived in presence, with minimal psychological friction, memory accumulation is light. In yogic living, days are lived, not counted. Experiences complete themselves in the moment. When one looks back later, there are very few mental bookmarks. The mind therefore concludes that little time has passed. This does not mean life was empty. It means life was complete enough not to leave residue. Time feels long only when something is unfinished.
Registration of Change Is the Real Clock
This leads to the central insight: time is not produced by change itself, but by the depth of registration of change. Yoga weakens unnecessary registration. Meditation clears impressions before they harden. Experiences are either lightly registered or unregistered quickly. Before they can thicken into psychological time, they dissolve. This is why suffering stretches time. Suffering creates strong registration through resistance, repetition, and unresolved emotion. One painful year can feel longer than ten peaceful ones. Yoga does not erase memory. It prevents excess accumulation.
The Role of Unfamiliar Locations and Reduced Social Obligation
Another important observation from my experience was that I was living in an unfamiliar location, with far fewer social obligations. This played a major role. Social obligation is one of the strongest amplifiers of time. Social life requires constant identity maintenance, comparison, anticipation, and retrospection. Each interaction creates micro-registrations that multiply memory density. When social obligation is reduced, the mind has less to track, rehearse, and store. Events naturally cluster into broader chunks. Instead of daily registration, experiences register weekly or even more broadly. This is not because nothing happens, but because nothing demands psychological bookkeeping. Solitude or low-demand environments allow experience to complete itself immediately.
Spiritual Environment and Subconscious Orientation
Timelessness during those ten years was also supported by the spiritual environment itself. Temples, kathas, Sanatan rhythms, and sacred symbols were ever-present. This environment did not force belief or practice. It gently oriented the subconscious inward. Certain ideas were already settled deeply, such as the notion that the Ganga purifies or that the cow is sacred. Because these ideas were settled, they did not require daily mental debate. They rested quietly in the background, freeing attention. When inwardness is socially normal, the nervous system relaxes into yoga without effort.
Adolescence, Childhood, and the Earliest Experience of Time and Duality
This timelessness that I describe was also experienced by me for about three years during adolescence. However, before that, in early childhood, I felt time as extremely delayed, perhaps the slowest and heaviest in my entire lifetime. That phase occurred largely due to the company I kept, especially with Mohan, a stormy and restless child. That environment intensified duality and made even short periods feel unbearably long.
Yet, paradoxically, that phase also helped non-duality to be learned indirectly. Through contrast, awareness began to recognize what it was not. However, even a small bout of duality—such as anger, dispute, or loss of non-dual self-awareness—even if it lasts for only a few moments, makes one feel as if one is passing through ages. Time stretches instantly.
Such moments do not end with the moment itself. They strain relationships for a long time afterward, thereby increasing duality further, just as a small spark increases a fire ahead. One disturbance creates conditions for many more. Because of this, one needs to be always cautious, not merely in action, but in inner alignment.
During my university time, I felt that five years were spent like five lifetimes. This happened because the environment there was completely filled with duality, especially around me. I do not know whether those people were around me so that I could learn from them, or whether they were meant to make me learn their style of living, but later it felt like both happened.
I was affected by their dual lifestyle, and perhaps they were also affected by my non-dual style, especially later in their lives when their jumping energy calmed down. Although I was recently awakened at that time, what can a single awakening do if the environment does not support it and instead opposes it? I was happier remaining alone in non-duality, but one cannot remain alone in a crowd for long.
Even before awakening, because of my family background rooted in non-duality, I already felt timelessness. This shows that a non-dual environment is more important than awakening itself. Awakening only gives confirmation that nonduality is the final truth.
Symbols as Functional Yogic Tools, Not Superstition
In yogic understanding, symbols are not literal or superstitious. They are functional. The Ganga represents flow, purification, continuity, and subconsciously aligns attention toward the central channel, the sushumna. The cow represents sensory nourishment without aggression. Preserving the cow symbolically means protecting the senses from being scattered outward. Worship of natural objects is not about external objects themselves. It is about regulating inner systems. Each symbol corresponds to subtle functions within the body and nervous system. Every form of energy and matter is connected to one or another chakra. Therefore, worshipping the presiding deity of that form is essentially worshipping the corresponding chakra, or practicing chakra meditation in a symbolic way. symbols are not main aim but the subtle yogic principles represented by them.
It is not that worshipping nature or preserving any special animal is the main aim of the scriptures. The main aim is the subtle yogic truth. Symbols may change, but the truth does not.
Why Gross Worldliness Cannot Hold Subtle Insight
People deeply immersed in gross worldliness often cannot understand subtle yogic states. Even if they momentarily glimpse them, they cannot retain them. This is not because they are incapable, but because their memory systems are busy preserving visible, measurable, socially reinforced objects. Gross things advertise themselves repeatedly and therefore remain remembered. Subtle states are self-erasing. Without an environment, rhythm, and symbolic support, subtle awareness is quickly overwritten. This is why traditional yoga relies so heavily on environment, routine, and symbolism, not merely on technique.
Timelessness Is Not Escape, It Is Alignment
Timelessness did not arise because I escaped the world. It arose because the world I was in did not constantly pull attention outward. When the senses are protected, when symbols remind without demanding, when identity work is minimal, change still happens, but it is not registered as time. Yoga does not slow time or speed it up. It reduces the mind’s need to measure it. Awareness remains unchanged whether the body is sitting still or crossing continents. Movement continues. Time dissolves.
Conclusion: Living Yoga, Not Practicing It
This entire inquiry leads to one conclusion. Time is manufactured through memory. When memory lightens, time thins. When awareness is complete, time disappears. Yoga lived as a way of life, supported by environment, rhythm, and inward orientation, naturally dissolves time without effort. This is not an altered state. It is the ground of experience. Whether the body is in motion or rest becomes irrelevant. That is yoga lived, not practiced.
Ultimately, this converges to the ultimate base of non-duality. Change is what affects consciousness and the body. Change itself is duality. First, consciousness is affected, and with it the body, as both are deeply connected. A change in time zone is an extreme change in the environment, leading to extreme duality and, consequently, more pronounced effects on the body.
If non-duality is maintained, these changes may become less severe. In fact, change itself may even become beneficial by producing stronger non-duality, because the former becomes the basis for the emergence of the latter when approached with the correct mindset.
What a change in time zone produces body-change through a sudden alteration of position, an even greater degree of it is produced with dual mindset while living in the same location. We do not notice it because it is gradual and sustained, even though it is low-grade. Yet it affects the body and consciousness much more than occasional changes of location.
Thus, non-duality appears to be the most fundamental antidote to the poisoning of body and mind caused by continuous change, especially in modern life.
One more experiential insight emerges from this. Working too strenuously, to the point of exhausting the body and mind, strengthens duality indirectly and unknowingly. This happens because it gives the inner message that one’s work is more important or special. Importance should exist in the mind, but it should not be given excessive weight, as that produces duality.
Today, many people exhaust themselves in electronic screens, mobile phones, and constant stimulation. They may speak about non-duality, but their lifestyle itself is deeply dual. In the same way, doing too little is also duality, because it gives insufficient weight to responsibility and importance and makes one attached to easy goingness.
Excess and lack, both are harmful and dual. Only the middle path is non-dual. Working moderately, in balance, becomes a door to non-duality.
Demystifying Kundalini 