Immersion

Immersion in a book, a landscape, a woman, may make one lose track, but what does it mean? How do we track time, if time is so elusive? Physics tells us that for bodies subject to gravitation, time is relative, dependent on speed, and what reference system is chosen. Time is a 4th dimension in this context, thanks to Einstein’s Relativity. So, if we use clocks, those clocks are subject to the laws of Relativity. However how do we know that time is ticking otherwise?

We know because of Entropy, the fact that most things, alive or inert, decay with Time. Energy is finally converted into heat, thereafter unusable for anything else than warm up our old bones. Plants, animals, mountains, planets, stars, galaxies: all decay in some way, that is go back to particles reusable by other objects. This sad (maybe) story is how we can be “sure” that time is a reality. If time did not “flow” there would be, presumably, no Entropy.

Entropy

But isn’t it another illusion? Entropy is a physical phenomena, similar to the way artificial satellites lose altitude and finally burn themselves down through the atmosphere. Is it a proof that Time really flows? This leads us to ask: is anything constant in the vast Universe? If immersion into anything makes us “lose track” it may be because nothing is constant. The Universe changes and this perpetual change is not a function of anything else other than its very nature: stars die for other stars to be created… 

When we say we’ve lost track, we mean we forget about what time it is. This happens very simply after a deep sleep, even a nap, or another diversion, either physical or spiritual. Among physical diversions we consider:

Spiritual quality

Reading, (serious) Writing, Loving, Travelling…

Each one having the potential for spiritual quality.

Contemplation

Reading a novel, or a profound original work of any sort – this really includes being absorbed into contemplation of Art – is sufficient for some of us to lose track, the immersion into the plot, the characters, the feelings expressed therein, are enough to take us “elsewhere”, where time no longer flows. My personal experience is that was quite common as I discovered books in my teenage years.

Serious writing is in turn a creative activity, requiring concentration, some form of plan, and energy. As we write we slowly slip into the universe we are creating, its own laws, its own logic. This logic may take us elsewhere, again, this time in a world of our creation. In so doing, we hope that the reader will follow us, becoming immersed reading our work.

Loving

Loving is, if I dare say, like reading and writing all at once. Being strongly attracted to another human being, real or imaginary, is both discovering, as we discover a book, and writing into it, as we try to charm, convince, elicit the response we hope for, convince, seduce. This may well make us forget the other realities. In Loving we find the same cloud of unreality as in dreams: the subject exists, is alive, may be distant, may exist elsewhere, if we are unlucky.

South Tyrol

Travelling is the ultimate physical diversion: we seek a change of landscape, colours, smells, sounds, we hope to find solace, or just entertainment by observing time flowing in a different stage. This is most effective for me in the mountains, in such a different landscape as, for example, the Dolomites in the Italian South Tyrol: the skies, the rocks, the fauna speak of another world.

Thus Immersion is key to moving away from the familiar and routine. If we train ourselves, this may lead to a new track in Time.

Entropy

“Entropy, the measure of a system’s thermal energy per unit temperature that is unavailable for doing useful work. Because work is obtained from ordered molecular motion, the amount of entropy is also a measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system. The concept of entropy provides deep insight into the direction of spontaneous change for many everyday phenomena. Its introduction by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius in 1850 is a highlight of 19th-century physics.

The idea of entropy provides a mathematical way to encode the intuitive notion of which processes are impossible, even though they would not violate the fundamental law of conservation of energy. For example, a block of ice placed on a hot stove surely melts, while the stove grows cooler. Such a process is called irreversible because no slight change will cause the melted water to turn back into ice while the stove grows hotter. In contrast, a block of ice placed in an ice-water bath will either thaw a little more or freeze a little more, depending on whether a small amount of heat is added to or subtracted from the system.

Such a process is reversible because only an infinitesimal amount of heat is needed to change its direction from progressive freezing to progressive thawing. Similarly, compressed gas confined in a cylinder could either expand freely into the atmosphere if a valve were opened (an irreversible process), or it could do useful work by pushing a moveable piston against the force needed to confine the gas. The latter process is reversible because only a slight increase in the restraining force could reverse the direction of the process from expansion to compression. For reversible processes the system is in equilibrium with its environment, while for irreversible processes it is not.” (source)