A section from the journey

Deep Time of the Earth

The earth is far older than we can easily picture — billions of years old. Beside that vastness, a human life is the briefest flicker. The tradition, too, kept its own vast clock, counting time in immense ages. Here we hold both clocks at once: the long clock of the rocks, and the long clock of the tradition. We do not force them to agree. We let each one teach us awe.

Before we take a single step forward in our story, we must do something harder than it sounds. We must learn to feel how much time there is.

The earth is old. Not old like an old person, or an old city, or even an old forest. The earth is old beyond what the mind can hold. Those who study the rocks count its age not in years or thousands of years, but in billions of years.

Remember that old plateau in the south, the Deccan? Some of its stone is among the most ancient on the whole planet. It was already old when the great mountains in the north were young. It has watched almost the entire life of the earth go by.

Now set your own life beside that. One human life, even a long and full one, is the briefest flicker against such a span — a single spark thrown up from a fire, bright for a moment, then gone. This thought can make a person feel very small.

Sit with that smallness for a breath. It need not frighten you. The same vastness that humbles us can also fill us with wonder — the quiet awe of belonging to something far larger and far older than ourselves.

And here is something beautiful. The tradition we are about to follow felt that vastness too. It never imagined the world to be small or young. It told of immense ages of time, turning slowly one into the next, in great cycles — ages so long that all of written history would fit inside a corner of one of them.

These great ages have a name. We will not unfold it yet — it belongs to a later part of our journey, and it deserves its own quiet sitting. For now, simply know that this tradition thought in enormous spans of time, long before clocks or calendars as we know them.

Let us be honest, as we promised we always would be. The clock of the rocks and the clock of the old stories do not give the same numbers. They are not trying to. One measures the body of the earth; the other measures meaning, and the turning of the soul through vast time. We will not force them to agree.

Do you remember, at the very start of our journey, how we spoke of holding two clocks at once? Here they are again. The clock of the evidence, and the clock of the tradition. We keep both in view, honour both, and let each teach us in its own way. And both, in the end, whisper the same thing: you are small, and time is deep, and that is a wonder.

Step outside one night and look up at the stars, whose light set out long before you were born. Let yourself feel small for a moment. Is that feeling only frightening — or is there something peaceful in it too?