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Time is breath
"In the Search of the Miraculous" which is an account of Gurdjeff's teaching by
P.D.Ouspensky, is a portion, where G. stated that "time is breath".

Ouspensky began to elaborate on that hint by starting with the human breath. An
inhalation and expiration elapse in 3 seconds. In a day and night it amounds to 28400
breaths. By dividing 28400 days and nights by 365 (a year) gives about 79 years, which
could be the sleep and waking time, lifetime, of a human.
In the next higher cosmos, organic life, one breath is a day and night. Plants inhale in
the day and exhale in the night. For Nature a day and a night by similar division would
be 79 years.
Extending into other cosmoses, higher and lower, he found this number, 284000 as a
constant factor between living worlds in the three categories - breath, day and night and
life.

A fourth category can be made by dividing a breath (3 sec.) by 28400 equals 0.00010...
second. This period of duration could be considered as the shortest period of
impression for a human, just an electric spark or a flash of light. For the cellular world
1/10,000 second could represent a breath, or a lifetime for a molecule.
Just to make the concept of time more graphic: for the sun a human lifetime will be
perceived as a spark, just long enough to receive an impression.

Ouspensky made these calculation during World War I and was meant as an outline for
"time is breath" statement. In the early spring of 1947 he took his last breath.
Rodney Collin began to reconstruct Ouspensky's teaching for himself in the "Theory of
Celestial Influence".
In the chapter, the times of the universe, Collin describes his version of "time is breath"
by a proposal: "time is created by rotation about the vital center of a higher world".

An example is Johannes Kepler's third law, in which he shows that the relation between
distances from the sun (line) and the periods of rotation about the sun (time) is the
relation between square roots and cube roots.
Collin extend this law to other cosmoses, using the method of deduction. A general
principle is deduced by applying these laws in various specialized cases to see if it
works. We will try to implement the above general law on lower worlds such as Earth
and nature.

We have a general relation between line (linear space, radii) and time (duration,
lifetime). Kepler's third law stats that linear space develops by cubes, duration develops
by squares.
Kelper's method was induction. He examines the phenomena by gathering multiple of facts,
classifies them, and attempts to infer laws and principles from them by means of mathematic. This
is the method generally used by science and Kepler was one of the first since Pythagoras to
demonstrate its effectiveness.

To make the calculation simple Collin apply the Pi factor since this mathematic
constant together with the radius is incorporate in making of circles.

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The base will be a human, which linear space can be set to 1 meter - the radius from the
heart to the fingertip. The duration, lifetime, is set to be 80 years.

Linear space - radii - Pi 3 = Classes of beings Duration - lifetime - Pi 2 = 10

31.8
1 meter Human 80 years
3.18 centimeters Small animals 8 years
1 millimeter Insects and plants 10 months
.03 millimeter Large cells 1 month
.001 millimeter Small cells 3 days

A similar chart for beings bigger than man can be made, e.g. large trees, which linear
space should be 31.8 meter and a lifetime of 800 years. The progression up to celestial
beings does not show an exact fit. Other laws are involved, but it shows that linear
space has a significance for lifetime. The point is, however, that the number of breaths
are about the same, the speed of breaths is different.

Man is literally revolving about the center of Earth, which is a vital center of a higher
world, and this revolution takes a day and night - a period of waking and rest. The next
smaller cosmos is a cell, for instance, a blood cell. The vital center it revolves about is
the heart.

Another method to estimate the relative time and lifetime can be made by looking at
the time a blood cell travels from the heart to a distant part of the body. It takes between
8 to 18 seconds to make the circulation and leave its load of oxygen and return with
carbon dioxide. It takes about 6 seconds to be restored by traveling the little rotation
from the heart through the lungs and back to the big heart chamber for the new cycle in
the body.
An analogy to man's period of waking and rest can be made by considering a
"workday" for the blood cell to be 18 seconds and the rest period 6 seconds. A
proportion in seconds between blood cell and man is: 24 / life of a blood cell = 86400 /
25228800000 equals 700800 seconds = 8.1 days, the lifetime of a blood cell.

If we use the previous mentioned cube-square formula and we estimate the radius for
the red blood cell to 1/2500 centimeters with a more exact 130 centimeters radius of a
man, we have a size factor 325,000 times, which relates to time as cube to square. The
time factor will be about 4727. The human lifetime is estimated to 80 years. The
lifetime of the blood cell is 1/4727 of the human's equals 6.2 days.

The different methods gives 8.1 days and 6.2 days for life of a blood cell. This
dissimilarities are small considering the recent knowledge's about blood cells, which
average lifetime is 120 days from they are produced in the bone marrow to the decay in
the spleen.
Although these linear - space calculations do not show the actual resemblance to

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lifetime, I find the theory interesting and gives another input to the perception of time.

Thomas Hightower, September 2003.

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