TIME AND ETERNITY “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would be seen as it is infinite” William Blake As a general rule we accept time as real something possessing an independent also lute reality, all of its own. Seldom or perhaps never does it occur to us that time as in past, present and future might be a trick of the mind. Outrageous as this may seem, perhaps Blake’s invitation to clean up our act may not be so out of reach as we might imagine. What he is asking for however is that we stand ready and willing to investigate a new, our long held perceptions and believes. He is saying our cherished ideas of reality are not the only reality. Right here is where we run into trouble, because to question our concepts is to question ourselves. Whenever the spotlight is turned on ourselves and the ideas we hold dear, we mostly feel uncomfortable. Our beliefs and opinions help us feel safe and secure. We unconsciously feel that all things great are better when made small. Right at the heart of this activity stands the Ego – the Me. When attempting to think outside the box the Ego feels directly under threat and so engages in various gymnastics to pressurise the thinker into falling back on that which we already know – our old ideas and opinions. “Mostly it is unreality we suffer from” John Moriarty John Moriarty‘s diagnoses suggests we are away of the mark regarding the truth so what is true and are we really that easily deceived by our own thinking? In attempting to discover and discern what is real from what we think, we will need to be uncommonly open minded and this is not always easy and maybe not always possible. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj spent forty years of his life sitting in a tiny loft among the back streets of Bombay where people from around the world were always welcome, a fully enlightened man trough self enquiry he had this to say about mind as we generally understand it: “The mind is an instrument for communication, for practical purposes. The mind cannot grasp the truth”. Nisargadatta Maharaj Has this man lost the run of himself? Or is there much more to consciousness than that aspect of it, we call mind. Through the six senses and the interpreting centre the mind, we reduce consciousness at large. The mind acting as a kind of filter from which we rarely break free. When we do it is mostly in sleep, here the consciousness at large comes visiting through our dreams. More rarely we benefit from a break through. In moments of illumination, when we understand intuitively the truth of something that was not accessible through thought. This intuitive intelligence stands free from the tyranny of the ego and that very independence is free from all conditioning and knowing. This spacious intuitive intelligence affords us a tippy toed view so necessary in attempting to see beyond the obvious. Someone once remarked that “we are always getting ready to live and never really living”, which suggests that we are almost always in flight from the now present moment. With regard to the questions of time, the now present moment needs no explanation, it simply is. The only fact we can be sure of as far as time is concerned is the now. All events and experiences are real only in the present. We experience reality in this present moment and at no other time. Once an event is experienced it becomes memory. Collectively our memories become the past, that which has happened and this we feel is behind us. Were it not for memory no such thing as time would ever exist. We can see from the above that memory builds a solid block of time behind us. Anticipation provides us with a future and this we hope will bring us the blessings our present appears to lack. This future we feel has not happened yet, it is ahead of us, creating as it were another block of time out in front. In this way our eternal now present moment becomes, the meat in the sandwich of time. Our present it seems last only a moment or maybe two before falling behind us to become the past. “ We dwell in yesterday and dream forever of tomorrow, and thus bind ourselves with the torturous chains of time and the ghosts of things not really present”. Ken Wilber What Ken Wilber is suggesting is that we get lost in transition, our addictions to “ the ghosts of things not really present” brings us the feeling that our tomorrows hold the key to real happiness. Also when our future fails to comfort us, and instead fill us with fear and anxiety, we then look back at all our yesterdays and with misty eyes, we feel that the good old days were the happiest times of all. In this misty landscape of mind we loose our way and right here is where past and future weave their magic powers. Perhaps we might take a closer look at memory. We are convinced we posses old memories of a past. The truth is however, that I can not have an old memory. A memory is a thought and all thoughts are present moment thoughts. I can have only one thought at a time, so what appears to be an old memory is in fact a present moment thought of a past event. Lets for a moment listen to some wiser heads. “Past and future veil God from our sight”. Jalal –Uddin Rumi “Time is what keeps the light from reaching us”. Eckhart “I am come as time the waster of the people, ready for the hour that ripens to their ruin”. The Bagavad Gita All of the above are suggesting that our addiction to time is not a good thing. Like all addictions it gives a little but takes a lot. Time takes from us the very thing we want the most, “eternal life”! We generally think of eternity as being a very very long time, so long that we are unable to quantify exactly how much time is involved. There is a very good reason for this. “If you want to know what eternity means, it is no further than this very present moment”. Seppo. Zen Master If as “Seppo” tells us that eternity is in the present moment. That means eternity is not a very long time, it is in fact no time at all. In the now present moment there is no time. No matter how hard I try, I can never find a beginning or an end to the present. It is always now, and now is eternity. So thinking, it would seem confines us to the prison like world of our heads, where past and future slam shut the gates of time. “See the whites, we think they are all mad they say they think with their heads we think with our hearts” Ochulay Biano –Pablo Indian Chief, New Mexico To the cliff dwelling Indians of the New Mexican desert, thinking with their hearts, their intuitive intelligence, was the only thing that made sense. In our intuitive intelligence lays eternity and therefore eternal life also, the two are one and the same. When we begin to live from our hearts instead of our educated heads, we are taking a step into the open spacious landscape of awareness for it is here when our thinking walks out on us that the truth surrenders itself voluntarily. A truth that the power of thought seldom unfolds. Patrick Joseph Crowley