Mahākāl : The Time Transform

In a quiet chamber chilled to near-absolute zero, a mirror was coaxed into doing the unthinkable: it reflected a photon before the photon arrived. Not metaphorically -- literally. In an experiment grounded in the Dynamical Casimir Effect, scientists simulated a relativistically moving mirror not through

motion, but through ultra-fast changes in an electrical boundary. The result? Real photons appeared from empty space, and some were reflected before being emitted, as if causality itself had stumbled. With a little bit of philosophical extrapolation, this suggests a provocative analogy to time bending. In fact, this is no trick of perception; it is a crack in the temporal wall -- a glimpse of a reality where time may be reordered, and effect may precede cause.

From Emptiness to Form

Physics has long flirted with paradox, but here, the void births not silence, but light. The Dynamical Casimir Effect suggests that empty space is a seething fabric of quantum fluctuations -- a vacuum that isn’t empty, but filled with latent potential. By perturbing this vacuum, physicists created photons ex nihilo. But more curiously, the timeline reversed. Energy emerged ahead of its signal, like a ripple anticipating the stone thrown into a lake.

From Information to Entropy, Energy

This transformation -- emptiness into photon, vacuum into event -- has cousins in other domains. First, in the Hindu concept of Shiva and Shakti, where stillness gives rise to motion. Then, in the eerie parallel between Shannon and Boltzmann entropy, suggesting a deep equivalence between information and energy. And finally, in biology, where the information in the genotype unfolds into the materiality of the phenotype -- the dance of amino acids and proteins shaped by the code of life.

Shannon’s information entropy and Boltzmann’s thermodynamic entropy share more than just form. Both are defined by equations that are remarkably similar in structure, except for the presence of a Boltzmann constant. The information content of a message is measured by its ability to surprise -- that is, the improbability of the message, or the amount of uncertainty it removes. Shannon elegantly captured this as the sum of probabilities multiplied by their logarithms: −∑p log p. Thermodynamic entropy, which measures disorder, can also be seen as a reflection of uncertainty  --  and fittingly, Boltzmann quantified it in terms of the probability of the system occupying different microstates. He expressed this as S = −K ∑p log p, closely echoing Shannon’s formula. This similarity  suggests that information and entropy are two expressions of the same substrate. 

While entropy is not a form of energy, it is fundamentally linked to the distribution and transformation of energy. In many physical systems, changes in entropy are reflected in changes in energy, allowing one to serve, under certain conditions, as a proxy for the other.  

Maxwell’s Demon is a famous thought experiment where knowledge of individual particle states is hypothetically used to separate fast and slow particles, thereby reducing entropy without expending energy  --  posing a challenge to the second law of thermodynamics. Szilard’s engine built on Maxwell’s thought experiment to show that information could, in theory, be transformed into usable work  --  a principle that has since been demonstrated in laboratory settings. Taken together, both imply a profound possibility: information, when organized, can give rise to energy. While not a direct conversion, the relationship is subtle, indirect  --  yet undeniably real.

Hindu or Indic philosophy offers intriguing parallels, where precise scientific concepts find reflection in rich metaphorical counterparts from spiritual thought.  The Hindu analogue lies in the relationship between Brahman or Shiva, and its emanation, Shakti. Brahman -- also known as Shiva -- is the universal consciousness: pure knowledge, without form or attributes, still and unmoving, like the calm depths of a vast ocean. From this ocean of stillness arises a wave of dynamism -- Shakti -- the active force that gives rise to form, motion, and the mass-energy that constitutes the physical universe.  But this emergence requires a catalyst: Time.

Time, Desire, and the Primordial Fracture

Brahman is still, eternal, and unchanging. But the world is not. Movement, change, and sequence can only arise -- or be born -- through Time. Yet Time is not the mother of creation, but its midwife. Why? Because for anything to exist, it must persist. And persistence requires duration, which in turn demands the presence of Time. Only with Time can we conceive of ‘before’ and ‘after’ -- a necessary scaffold for change. Change begets evolution, motion, energy -- Shakti. Thus, the journey from the stillness of Brahman to the dynamism of Shakti is catalyzed by Time -- by Mahākāl, the Lord of Time. Time, then, is as fundamental as Brahman itself, or perhaps one breath removed from it.

But Time alone cannot fracture stillness; it is the cradle, yes, but one that does not rock itself. It is the crucible, yes -- but one that must be heated white-hot. That nudge, that heat, is Desire. Desire is the impulse to see, to be seen, to become. It is not the result of causality; it precedes the very idea of cause. Like the photon in the Dynamic Casimir Effect, reflected even before it is created, this desire escapes Newtonian time and linear sequence. It does not follow from a cause -- it is the first ripple before causality itself can form.

And so, Brahman stirs. From the stillness of pure, formless knowledge arises the wish to reflect, to know itself. In that primal stirring, Shakti emerges -- the dancing field of energy and form. And in that moment, the world begins -- not with a bang, but with a longing. The reflection that appears in this mirror is not a perfect image, but a luminous distortion -- Māyā, the shimmering veil that makes reflection possible. Yoga is the process through which this distortion is gradually dissolved, until image and origin merge into one. But that is the destination -- or the map -- of another journey.

Could the universe’s energy be the result of a cosmic longing to exist? This primal yearning -- Kāma, the will to create and become -- is not incidental, but foundational. Tantra intuits this insight: the sexual impulse to procreate is not merely a biological necessity, but an echo of that deeper, cosmological desire -- the urge of pure consciousness to take form.

What we experience as sex is a terrestrial reflection of the universe’s own impulse to manifest. Beneath the surface of biology lies a metaphysical pattern: the yearning of Brahman, pure information, to become manifold, embodied, real. In the human body, this is mirrored in how DNA, a coded script of potential (genotype), unfolds through time into the tangible reality of proteins and life processes (phenotype). In this metaphor, information becomes flesh.

This transformation -- from code to form, from stillness to becoming -- is stirred by Kāma, and carried forward through the medium of Mahākāl, Time itself.

Kalachakra: The Circularity of Time

Yet if Time enables movement, must it always move forward? The Dynamic Casimir Effect (DCE) invites us to reconsider this assumption. In that experiment, photons appear to be reflected before they are emitted -- suggesting that the sequence of cause and effect can bend, or even reverse. General Relativity allows spacetime to curve back on itself, yet the arrow of time is typically preserved by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But in the DCE, causality stutters: the effect seems to flicker into being before the cause appears.

Such reversals are not alien to Hindu thought. Time is not a straight river but a wheel -- Kalachakra -- where beginnings and endings dissolve into one another. The Big Bang is not a privileged origin, merely a luminous flare on the circumference. Cause and effect fold into each other, cycling recursively, neither being truly first. Time unfolds not just as linear seconds but as vast Yugas or Eons, each looping into the next in a spiral of becoming. These cosmic epochs frame the rise and fall of worlds, of dharma and disorder, but that, like Yoga, is a journey we must take up elsewhere.

In this perspective, Energy arises from Information, not the other way around. But Information by itself is still -- formless, passive, like Shiva in deep meditation. It is cradled by Time (Mahākāl), but that cradle alone does not rock. To stir it into becoming, a spark is needed -- Desire (Kāma), the first tremor in stillness. And when that desire awakens, Information transforms into Energy, just as Shiva manifests as Shakti -- the dancing mass-energy of the physical world.

Conclusion

We began with a mirror and a photon that defied time. We walked through vacuums laced with latent pulses, engaged entropy as both demon and engine, and traced the conversion of information into energy -- and vice versa -- through the Indic understanding of Brahman or Shiva and Shakti, under the gaze of Mahākāl.

What emerges is not a final truth, but a deeper clarity: the universe is not made of things, but of transformations --  

• of knowledge curving into energy 
• time folding upon itself and 
• desire crystallizing into becoming

And these transformations are only possible through Time. For without Time, there is no motion, no becoming. It is Mahākāl who cradles stillness and makes it stir.

The DCE experiment hints at a reality where Time does not move in a straight line, but circles back -- much like the Kalachakra, the wheel of time, where beginning and end dissolve into rhythm. The mirror that bends time may also be the mirror held by consciousness itself. And in that final reflection, as Time unfolds into energy, Shiva watches -- as Shakti becomes.