Mastering Time: How Humans Can Transform the Past and Create the Future
By Pooyan Ghamari
Many people view time as three separate segments: the past, the present, and the future. But when we look more deeply, we realize that this division is simply a tool for human understanding. No religion or culture has ever considered time to be a simple straight line. At a deeper level, all traditions share a fundamental truth: the past and future are not truly separate, and humans can influence the flow of time.
The Quran states: “He is the Beginning and the End, the Manifest and the Hidden.” This suggests that everything, from the perspective of absolute consciousness, exists simultaneously in a single point. The Torah teaches that God is the First and the Last. The Bible reminds us that light shines in darkness, and darkness cannot overcome it. Across all these messages lies a common insight: humans move through time, but the meaning of time is guided by consciousness, not by the calendar.
In Iranian culture, Ferdowsi wrote that “good deeds return tenfold,” expressing the principle of energy return. Shams Tabrizi believed, “If you change your heart, the world changes toward you.” This echoes a fundamental Quranic teaching: “God does not change the fate of any people unless they change themselves.” This is not merely an ethical suggestion; it is a practical law about transforming destiny.
In India, karma represents the effects of the past, while dharma provides a path to transform it. In China, it is said: “Water is the softest element in the world, yet it shapes everything.” In Greek philosophy, Pythagoras saw the universe as harmony, while Nietzsche observed that a noble human transforms the past into power, not chains.
So what does this perspective teach us? Humans cannot erase the past, but they can transform its impact. They cannot undo events, but they can rewrite their meaning. They cannot turn back time, but they can redesign the path of the future. This is the moment when humans move from being prisoners of time to becoming engineers of it.
Time is not a rigid flow; it is a living wave. Humans can influence it through the quality of their mind and heart. Change in time does not come from the outside—it begins within. Each moment a person assigns a new meaning to a past event, the event itself does not change, but its effect does. And this is enough to create a new future.
All cultures, religions, and philosophies converge on a single truth: the present is where the future is created and the past is redefined. True power lies in the quality of the present moment. When a person elevates their present self, three things change simultaneously: the impact of the past, the direction of the future, and the meaning of now.
This truth has the power to transform a life completely. The future does not emerge from external circumstances; it is created from within. The past is not a fixed decree; it is raw material that can be shaped into power.
And this is where humans evolve from ordinary beings into conscious, creative architects of their own destiny.