Brilliant treatise on the concept of time.

[Charlie]

People like us, who believe in Physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Albert Einstein

Time is a motherfucker, isn’t it?

My inherent feeling is that for humanity to move into a higher vibrational existence, the human mind has to come to grips with the reality that time is non-linear. The problem, of course, is that our everyday waking experience screams otherwise. I am certainly not a child anymore (regardless of what my wife says), which points unfailingly at a past, and have no doubts that I will drop dead one day sometime in the future. On the flip side for the non-linear argument, there is almost a mathematical inevitability which sneaks into historical cycles, which I think must be acknowledged. Then of course, there is the concept of dreaming, which no one in science wishes to consider seriously...

I unearthed Lama Govinda’s Creative Meditation and Multidimensional Consciousness from a dusty thriftstore bookshelf last week, and started thumbing through it. What a find. I can be impressed by great writers and philosophers in several ways: through impeccable logic or deductive reasoning, through a passionate thirst for truth, for pure creativity or visionary thought, or for a gifted interpretation of universal truths. I would label Govinda’s writing "Unrelenting Mental Clarity." There is simply no obscurity, no fog in this man’s mental glovebox; obviously the product of decades of centered meditation. The man just thinks incredibly well. What also makes Govinda so appealing to me personally is that he was educated in Europe, and writes in the Western mindset; it stands devoid of mystical, allegorical statements such as, “No-mind is the great pearl in an ocean of mind-movement.”

The excerpts below are from the chapter "The Mystery of Time." He also seems to be quite a fan of Jean Gebser and quotes him several times in the chapter.

In the deceptively simple excerpt below, Govinda marries the concept of time, quantum physics and Gaian theory into one digestible spoonful; we might envision his definition of the Fourth Dimension as a 2012 prepositus...

I will post more tidbits on request.

*****************

“The less we move (inwardly or outwardly), the more we are aware of time. The more we move ourselves, the less we are aware of time. A person who is mentally and bodily inactive feels time as a burden, while one who is active hardly notices the passage of time. Those who move in perfect harmony with the innermost rhythm of their being, the pulsating rhythm of the universe within them, are timeless in the sense that they do not experience time any more. Those who move and live in disharmony with this inner rhythm, have existence without inherent duration, ie, merely momentary existence without direction or spiritual continuity and, therefore, without meaning.

What we call “eternal” is not an indefinite duration of time (which is a mere thought-construction, unrelated to any experience), but the experience of timelessness.

Life--just like time--is an irreversible process, and those who speak of eternal recurrence of identical events and individuals (as Ouspensky in his book, A New Model of the Universe) mistake rhythm or periodicity for mechanical repetitition. It is the most shallow view that any thinker can arrive at, and it shows the dilemma into which scientific determinism is bound to lead. It is typical of the intellect that has lost its connection with reality and which replaces life with the phantoms of empty abstraction. This kind of reasoning leads to a purely stagnant and mechanical world-view, ending in a blind alley.

Whether the universe as a whole can change or not is quite irrelevant; important alone is that there is a genuine creative advance possible for the individual and that the past that is ever growing in him as widening horizon of experience and wisdom will continue to grow until the individual has reached the state in which the universe become conscious in him as one living organism, not only as an abstract unity or a state of featureless oneness. This is the highest dimension of consciousness.

What do we understand by “dimension”? The capacity to extend or to move in a certain direction. If we move outward, we can only do so in three dimensions, ie, we cannot go beyond three-dimensional space. The movement, however, which produces and contains these dimensions is felt as time, as long as the movement is incomplete or as long as the dimensions are in the making, ie, not conceived as a complete whole. The feeling of time is the feeling of incompleteness. For this reason, there is no time in moments of highest awareness, intuitive vision or perfect realization. There is no time for the Enlightened Ones.

This, however, does not mean that for an Enlightened One the past has been extinguished or memory blotted out. On the contrary, the past ceases to be a quality of time and becomes a new order of space, which we we may call the Fourth Dimension, in which things and events which we have experienced piecemeal can be seen simultaneously, in their entirety, and in the present. Thus the Buddha in the process of his enlightenment surveyed innumerable previous lives in ever widening vistas, until his vision encompassed the entire universe. Only if we recognize the past as a “true dimension of ourselves,” and not only as an abstract property of time, shall we be able to see ourselves in proper perspective to the universe, which is not an alien element that surrounds us mysteriously, but the very body of our past, in whose womb we dream until we awake into the freedom of enlightenment."

[ November 02, 2005, 09:57 PM: Message edited by: Charlie ]

[Rob P]

bump back!!

[zenafire]

Mas por favor! There is still a bit of mystic-speak, but even so, I agree, this is written with clarity.

[Charlie]

Another excerpt which I found particularly interesting:

"Both time and space are the outcome of movement, and if we speak of the “curvature of space” we should speak likewise of the “curvature of time,” because time is not a progression in a straight line—of which the beginning (the past) is lost forever and which pierces into the endless vacuum of an inexorable future—but something that recoils upon itself, something is subject to the law of ever-recurrent similar situations, and which thus combines change with stability. Each of these situations is enriched by new contents, while at the same time retaining its essential character. Thus we cannot speak of a mechanical repetition of the same events, but only of an organic rebirth of its elements, on account of which even within the flux of events the stability of law is discernable. Upon the recognition of such a law which governs the elements (or the elementary forms of appearance) of all events, is the basis upon which the I-Ching or “The book of Changes,” the oldest work of Chinese wisdom, is built.

Perhaps this work would better be called “the Book of the Principles of Transformation” because it demonstrates that change is not arbitrary or accidental but dependent on laws, according to which each thing or state of existence can only change into something already inherent in its own nature, and not into something different. It also demonstrates the equally important laws of periodicity, according to which change follows a cyclic movement (like the heavenly bodies, the seasons, the hours of the day, etc.) representing the eternal in time and converting time quasi into a higher space-dimension, in which things and events exist simultaneously, though imperceptible to the senses. They are in a state of potentiality, as invisible germs or elements of future events and phenomena that have not yet stepped into actual reality."

[sidecross]

It is a sad commentary that on the centennial of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity most people still do not know why the curvature of space-time is an accepted fact.

[Lowlight]

Im always wary of 'accepted fact'.

[daniel]

Govinda is a wonderful writer and thinker... his book on the fundamental concepts of Tibetan Buddhism is also terrific.

[Dna]

The forum is introducing me to different interesting things. I was not familiar with Govinda before now, for example. He does write with clarity.

Thanks to Charlie. Peace to All.

Best,

Dna.

[sidecross]

Originally posted by Lowlight:
Im always wary of 'accepted fact'.That may be one of the reasons Galileo was arrested for believing the Earth was not the center of which the stars and planets revolved!