what time is now?

“All time is contained in the present Now-moment.”
Meister Eckhart


Meditation:

“Saying the mantra is like dismantling a wall that separates your true Self from union with God … each syllable a brick … each word a course.”


Via Integrativa

m_Time20And20A20Word_01Today the clocks go back – so don’t forget to correct yours. The clock on my wall is perfectly correct twice a day. That’s because it’s stopped. My clock is a record player deck with a vinyl album on it and three hands – hours, minutes, seconds. The album (chosen by me) is ‘Time And A Word’ by Yes not because its my favourite album (it isn’t) but because I nicked the title for the lyrics to one of my songs.

Jesus did not own a record player but he was splayed on a wooden deck his arms and legs stretched out to embrace and integrate the agony of now-in-the-body with the bliss of eternity-in-I-Amness.

He said some pretty strange things in relation to time: “Before Abraham was … I Am.” (John 8:58) This little aside was enough to get him stoned for blasphemy. And when one of the criminals alongside him asked a favour “remember me when you come into your kingdom” Jesus replied “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43) Was Jesus a Time Lord like Dr Who?

His take on time seemed to be that the eternal kingdom is here, is now. For it is not a place it is a state. “Behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) As Einstein says “the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

It is only when we calibrate time on external reference points that eternity loses its immediacy. “Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once” puns Woody Allen paraphrasing science fiction writer Ray Cummings which is why, on a day like today, we put our clocks back so we can all experience each other in the same time zone – the time is always now.


 

consciousness

“The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.”

Meister Eckhart


Meditation:

“Saying the mantra is like dismantling a wall that separates your true Self from union with God … each syllable a brick … each word a course.”


Via Positiva

eyeEinstein was a realist. As he said, “I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it”. Does the full moon shine in the forest if there is no-one to witness it?

Not if your name’s Deepak Chopra. He is not a realist he is an an idealist in scientific terms when talking about consciousness i.e. it takes an observer for anything to be ‘real’. This stems as much from his deep understanding of quantum physics as much as his deeply Indian influenced advaita – non-duality – philosophy.

In the recent Science & Non-duality Conference he delivers a very clear presentation on what science can tell us about the nature of the universe and the nature of consciousness … almost nothing. He makes the observation that our scientific observations reveal that 70% of the universe is dark energy leading to the expansion of the universe, the edge of which is apparently unknowable at 47 billion light years away, 26% is dark matter which glues it together both of which cannot be observed. Of the remaining observable 4% almost 99% is made up of hydrogen and helium (invisible to human observation) and the 1% of 4%, or less than 0.01% of the (un)known universe, is made of ‘stuff’ – atoms in galaxies, stars, planets and bones.

The most powerful MRI scanner exploring the “nooks and crannies of our neural networks” has not yet located consciousness. Deepak’s conclusion is that we know very little about what makes up the universe and what makes up consciousness. Either consciousness is, as Daniel Dennett argues, an illusion of a biological robot or a priori the ground of our Being … ”die Grunde’ as Meister Eckhart refers to it.

“There is existence and there is awareness of existence.”

Enquire into this your self and see what you find – who is the observer?