Time as a relative element

From our perspective, the fourth physical dimension is straight forward in its strongest sense. It is a straight line that we call time, and we all travel through it in a direction that goes from past to present, from present to future, and from future - deeper into future itself. For everybody and everything in our world, time is a one way journey.

But despite the fact that time (and by consequence, our lives) seem to travel in an unavoidably straight direction, there still appears to be an intimate relation that influences present by our past, our future by our present, and even past by our future. Indeed, it is easy to understand that present and past are directly related because there cannot be a present without a past. Likewise, since present is future's past, the relation between both is akin to that of present and past. But what can we tell about the influence of our future in both in our present and our past? Is there even a influence at all of our future over our past?

In our world, and our average understanding of Universe as a whole, that is impossible. Future only happens because past and present have already happened and shaped the direction of said future. But even from a scientific point of view, we acknowledge that our perception and understanding of the Universe is very limited. For instance, Einstein explained that time and space are relative, and both can be bent and altered by each other. Likewise, quantum physics agree in that our potential understanding of the Universe is very restricted, since all we can potentially study and understand from it is whatever we can sense from our 5 physical senses only. There is so much more that surrounds us, which we can't possibly perceive - let alone understand. We are aware of our own inherent human limits, and all of our knowledge, perceptions and understanding will be limited by them in consequence.

These principles support the theory that the Universe is, in fact, multi-dimensional (as opposed to restricted to the 3 dimensions -height, width, depth- plus the 4th dimension, time, that we can perceive from our perspective). If that is true, then time is a dimension that can be modified from other dimensions beyond our capabilities of understanding, in a way that our past, present and future could be occurring simultaneously, but in different dimensions and in different spaces.

This knowledge is a wake up call to realize that every single moment in our lives counts. Despite the fact that we seem to have only control over our present, in fact we have also control over our past and future. The decisions we make every second have a repercussion in who we are, and who will we be, and potentially who we were some time before. At the end of the day, time not a straight line and sometime, somewhere, we can find ourselves coming back in it as well. Thus even if we made mistakes in our past, correcting them in the present will also correct our past and will allow for a better future, which will in turn help us fulfill our mission in the Universe.

Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body?

Ever since I heard "Still Ill" by The Smiths for the first time, I have been wondering whether the body rules the mind or the mind rules the body. Indeed, "does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?" makes for an excellent line in a song, but it is nevertheless a valid dilemma (which, in my opinion, only Morrissey -one of the best, if not the best, lyricists of our time- could have posed so beautifully in a song) that goes beyond a mere timeless song.

This question has a more of a spiritual value than a musical one. It requires, first of all, a definition of what is the body and what is the mind. To put it in simple terms:

• The body represents all of our physical existence - that is, our physical needs (eating, sleeping, etc.) plus all of the physical stimuli that we perceive through our 5 senses.
• The mind is our connection to the Infinite, the conscience that sets us in a higher level of understanding of the Universe as compared to animals and other living beings.

Put in those terms, it would appear that the body and the mind are in fact two separate entities, completely independent one from the other. But that could not be a true statement either, since we are a single entity and both our mind and our body are part of ourselves. How, then, do they relate to each other to create a unity in our existence?

The secret lies in the heart. Our heart is the connection between the body and the mind. It is the core that keeps the body alive by pumping blood, oxygen and nutrients to the rest of our body. In turn, our body serves as a vessel to keep our mind (and hence our connection to the Universe) running in our physical world. In turn, the heart is a vessel associated to elemental parts of our consciousness, such as emotions and feelings. The heart is indeed a central piece key of our existence and the one that allow us to be connected between the physical world and the Universe.

In that spirit, the body cannot rule the mind, and the mind cannot rule the body, since they are both separate entities. Each of them have serve completely different purposes in our existence. Yet, they keep us together in mind and body as a single being by connecting one to the other one through the heart, and hence through our feelings and emotions. Then body, heart and mind are three attributes that make us rational beings capable to assimilate our existence in the physical world like the earthly animals, yet able to connect to rationality and a higher spiritual level like no other species on Earth.