Truth-Eclipsing Time

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Time conceals Reality. It is the thin veil between us and the Truth. Under the spell of time objects appear to be out there, and they appear to be out there as embodied things. Embodiment, whether of the object, of ourselves, or of the world as a whole, is the production of time. Time appearing to slip away makes objects too appear to slip away, as if they’re stretched in time, as if there were histories and futures.

Time gives objects their face, their identity. But this world is nothing but a mask, a mask made of time. This world is my mask. The ideas of past and future are the two threads by which the mask is tied around my face, His face.

This existence, this seemingly real brightness, is not lit by the light of Truth; it is not lit at all, for it is all made of shadows. This existence with all its sciences and theories, religions and philosophies, is just a state of eclipse. The world that ceaselessly appears before you is precisely that which is blocking the light of Truth. World is not something; you are not something; World and you are both the lack of something, the lack of Reality: We are nothing but shadows, shadows cast by the eclipse of Truth. For His blinding face to appear, everything must disappear. The veil to be torn apart is nothing but ourselves.

But what is it that is blocking the light and causing the eclipse? It is the mind and its time-consciousness; it is the shadow of our beliefs and convictions, our notions and ideas of ourselves, God, and truth. Yet, for Truth to appear as Itself all shadows must vanish, all ideas, and especially the idea that I have ideas, the idea that I am at all.

My dear, you are not; you only think that you are because there is the notion that He is not. When He reveals Himself all things melt. When He appears all else disappears, for He is all that there is and world is nothing but His back.

Time & Consciousness

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The object that I see in front of me I see as something in space, but my seeing of it is not something in space. What is seen is seen to be an spatial entity; however, seeing itself is not something spatial. We tend to treat objects of the world as independently existing entities as if our consciousness could stumble upon them by chance!

Consciousness cannot make as its object something that is not already prefigured in it. I see the world through my perceptions but I do not see my perception through any intermediary mechanism. It is due to the self-evident and immediate givenness of perception that I come to know the world and know that I know it. That I perceive an object is because the object is something constituted within the temporal flow of perception. Even the spatiality of an object is something itself first perceived and only later spoken of. In this sense, the world and its objects are essentially temporal extensions before they are spatial.

To put it more precisely, world and its object are made of time, for it is in and through time that they appear within the field of perception. To exist means to be, to keep being in time, to endure in time. From here we can see more clearly how world is constituted in consciousness and not outside it. Time and being in time have no meaning and existence apart from consciousness, for the passage of time is something meaningful only in and through experience. Time is what we experience and not something we perceive out there in the world. Only a consciousness that subsists the flow of time can experience the passage of time.

Time is nothing but the ecstasy of consciousness, that is consciousness experiencing itself as conditioned and partitioned. It is this partitioned and fragmented consciousness that appears to us as diverse experiencing subjects. In reality there is only one subject, but this subject cannot experience itself unless it objectifies itself into the manifold of its own infinite possibilities. Each person is one possibility for the being of one and the same consciousness.

Consciousness undergoes the same self-objectification into multitudes in the case of dream experience: In a dream one and the same consciousness, that of the dreaming subject, projects itself into a world of diverse objects and experiencing subjects. All the conscious agents that appear in our dreams are the possibilities inherent within the dreaming consciousness. It belongs to the nature of consciousness to project itself outwardly in such a way that it appears to itself as something fragmented and embedded inside a world as if it were only a part of that world. In our dream we appear as a person among others inside an infinitely extended world of objects, but all persons and objects are one and the same consciousness, only appearing to itself as if it were outside itself. Consciousness inside itself is the dreamless sleep, but consciousness outside itself is the world. It is in this sense that I see the world as the ecstasy of consciousness.

The Fountain of Now

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The experience of the moment is the same in all of us; it is our own psychological colorings that make it appear as something personal, attached to a definite past and a possible future. When we disentangle the moment from the ideas of past and future, when we see it afresh, as if we had just appeared in a safe magic land, then we find infinite joy stored for us. The moment is never part of our life, an external condition, because our life as an external condition is itself something conceived of and known in the moment. In fact, external condition is what we bring into the moment through thoughts and recollections, thoughts and recollections that consume the infinite energy of pure presence.

It is our ideas of past and future that suck in the infinite energy so to fuel their presence in our lives. The moment is infinitely greater than the sum of the past and the future, for past and future are both conceived and referred to only in the moment. This moment has never been here and will never be here again. Yet passively we sell it for the thought of moments we can’t have right now.

Imagine the mental and spiritual energy that goes in to holding together a character and its life story through a bundle of personal narratives; this infinite energy is shooting up from the now but almost always dissipated by the narratives that attach us to a definite past and a possible future. Memories and anticipations which create regrets and desires are constantly feeding on the fountain of now. Imagine this whole energy stayed in the moment and channeled into your spirit; then we know infinite joy, for we are in the God-Vortex. God is that moment.

World Is A Face

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World, we think of it as a collection of objects; but there is a special angle, concealed to most, from which one sees that the world is really a face. In other words, when we see the world we are in fact not seeing. Human perception is a case of epidemic blindness when it comes to higher truths. But as a blind person can feel the world that he cannot see, we too feel that face; we know it as music, as art, as mathematics, and as the sense of the sacred, as that which uplifts us from our immanence in the world in moments of ecstasy and transcendence.

To see the world is to not see the Face.

But this Face is peculiar. It is a face that removes all fears and doubts, though it shoots in our hearts a fear of a new kind, a fear of an infinite totality in the face of whom we lose our tongues. How can one even begin to express this face when all expression is nothing but the expressions of the face itself!

Deluded by our commonsense and shallow convictions we have come to accept without a doubt that world is an expanse, that it has depths and dimensions, befores and afters. But world is really like a flat sheet of paper; it is expansive if we look at in its flatness; but rotate it and you see that it is nothing but the thinnest of all expanses. The Face too is right in our face; we can’t see it because we are facing its edge, and hence we think we see the world. But find that sacred angle: The world disappears and the Face appears. Then you will know that it is all the Face and nothing else. Thus, one who sees the Face must die.

Being in Time: The Primacy of Consciousness

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We use the capital letter B in Being to distinguish Being from being. We follow Heidegger in doing so. Being cannot be defined; to define is to reduce to more basic and fundamental elements; but Being is the most fundamental category; there is nothing more fundamental to which Being can be reduced; thus, Being cannot be defined; but it is always already understood by us. Being is similar to the notions of point or set in geometry and algebra respectively, which are not defined since they are the basis of all subsequent definitions.

Being is the the state of all beings; being is that which is in Being: It is. Thus, being is the object and Being is its state. I am a being because I am, that is, because I am in Being. With this rudimentary distinction we can go ahead and further analyze Being. Since Being is not defined the best we can do is to analyze “what it means for something to Be?”

The cup in front of me is a being; it is in Being: It is. But what are the conditions for the possibility of my experience and assertion of the Being of this cup?

The cup is because it keeps being experienced. It has to keep Being in order to be the cup at all. Thus to Be is to keep Being. But to keep Being is to keep Being as time passes; it is a possibility in time. If time doesn’t pass the cup cannot keep Being. The Being of the cup is something in time; but also it is an enduring in time as the cup: To Be is to endure in time as itself.

We are able to say that something is in Being only within the passage of time and only when that something endures in time as itself. The cup could not be if it didn’t endure as the cup.

But the Being of the cup is, namely it is witnesses only if my experience too endures in time along with the endurance of the cup, enduring precisely as my experience. In other words, the cup is because my experience of the cup endures in time precisely as an experience of the cup. This can be synthesized into one condition: The Being of the cup is a Being in time of an experience of the cup. If my experience didn’t endure in time precisely as my experience no Being could be experienced. Thus, Being is a possibility only in and through experience. When I am thinking of the Being of the cup in the absence of the cup the Being of the cup is an endurance in my thinking of it. This time the cup is in my thinking; before it was in my seeing; later it is in my theorizing about it as a physicist perhaps; but it is always a Being as an enduring within an act of cognition, within an experience of some sort.

When I posit that the moon is, that it exists, even if I am not looking at it, the Being of the moon is now a possibility in my cognition that ” the moon exists independently;” even here the Being of the moon is in my theorizing about it and not independently of this cognition, though the content of such theorizing is the independent existence of the moon.

In order for me to know and assert this objectivity, about the moon, the very cognition that asserts it must itself endure in time, itself Be, in order for the objectivity of the moon to be at all. Objectivity is constituted within the temporal flow of subjectivity. The objectivity of the moon, which is its independent existence, is itself a human cognition, thus through and through subjective: Only a subject can be objective. In the absolute absence of a subject the notion of objectivity makes no sense whatsoever.

Only subjectivity can assert the independent existence of phenomena in its own absence. Objectivity, independent existence, is a purely subjective position,  for it can never be verified empirically or theoretically independent of a subject, all such verification being a verification by a subject. Any attempt at verifying the independent existence of an object destroys the very independence under investigation: To know if something exists when it is not experienced we have to somehow observe it, directly or indirectly. But such observation is a bringing back into the temporal flow of subjective experience, whether in the form of perception or theorizing, etc. Thus, independent existence is a metaphysical assumption held only by a conscious subject: Independent existence is itself a pure notion inside consciousness. 

Being is a temporal phenomenon; it is Being in time. It is endurance in time as itself. But this time, itself being centered around a now-moment, is subjective time. The endurance of objects is endurance within the temporal flow of subjective experience. To Be is to endure in time, or more precisely to endure in a now; thus Being is possible only for a being that has a now. But now is a possibility only of consciousness. It is meaningless to speak of a now in the absence of a conscious experience: Now is always the now of a conscious experience. It is in the face of consciousness that time takes a three-fold division of past-now-future. Consciousness makes such division since it is itself a Being-in-the-now, thus its now divides totality into two neighboring regions centered about the now: Past and future are the two regions existing only for a consciousness since their existence is created by the now-sword of consciousness. This is also shown in Einstein’s theory of relativity which asserts that now depends entirely on an observer. Universal now is an empty and meaningless notion.

Now being a possibility of consciousness, and Being understood as the keep-Being-in-Now as itself, we see that Being is a possibility only for consciousness. Being is Being-of consciousness for consciousness. Being is a Being-for consciousness.

“To Be in the absence of consciousness” is itself a position possible only for a consciousness. Only consciousness can conceive of the Being of objects in the absence of itself. Only a consciousness can conceive of and assert “the independent existence of objects.” Independent existence of objects is an existence within a cognitive act, a cognitive act that can assume its own negation, hence absence, while the object keeps Being; but this keeping in Being is precisely inside the very cognitive act that is constantly negating itself in order to produce the metaphysical notion of objectivity. When I assume an object existing in the absence of my seeing it is consciousness that is cognizing the not-being-seen of the object. The being while not-being-seen or the being while not-being-experienced is a being within the cognition that can imagine a not-being-seen or not-being-experienced.

Only a consciousness can imagine things in the absence of itself, in the absence of experience; but since such imagination itself being a cognition of consciousness, Being is not possible without and outside consciousness; and ironically only a consciousness can reject this. To deny the absolute character of consciousness is itself a denial by consciousness.

It is in principle impossible to deny the absolute and universal character of consciousness; only a consciousness can imagine something existing outside consciousness: Outside consciousness is itself a notion within consciousness, for if it weren’t a notion within consciousness, then the notion would never arise in the first place. The notion outside-consciousness arises inside consciousness, thus making consciousness to be both inside and outside itself, hence permeating all things. Consciousness is identical with totality; and of course to say otherwise is only possible if consciousness knows totality in its own absence; but knowing totality in the absence of consciousness is a knowing by consciousness, and hence a consciousness that is in principle identical with totality.

Independent existence from consciousness is an independent existence for a consciousness, and thus depending on it from the very beginning. Objectivity is a notion inside subjectivity. Nature cannot produce subjective experience, for nature is itself something known and existing inside subjective experience. Nature is a subjective experience that we have named “nature.” The name stands for a collection of subjective experiences; the objectivity of nature is only in name, name itself being another object-for a consciousness.

When a deluded man says that “consciousness is a product of natural processes” he is oblivious to the fact that it is consciousness that makes this assertion, and that “consciousness being a product of natural processes” is itself an experience of consciousness: There is nothing outside experience. There is nothing outside consciousness. To say there is something outside consciousness is itself a saying by consciousness, and hence inside consciousness.

What appears as existence is nothing but the ecstasy of consciousness. 

Consciousness is absolute: Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute.

The 4th Dimension

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If we were exclusively 3 dimensional beings, then we would not be able to experience a 3 dimensional world. Why? Below is the reason:

Construction:

  1. Circle is a geometrical construct that needs two dimensions for its construction.
  2. The construction of a circle is possible only in a 2-D space.
  3. Two dimensional space is a necessary and sufficient condition for the construction of a circle.
  4. When we say that a certain geometrical or topological construct is N dimensional we mean that an N dimensional space is the necessary and sufficient condition for its construction.

Perception:

  1. Circle as a 2-D construct can be perceived fully only from above, from above the 2-D space in which it is constructed.
  2. To fully perceive a circle one needs to transcend the circle’s space.
  3. One has to be transcendent to the circle in order to perceive the circle, or else the circle itself will be transcendent to one’s perception.
  4. Circle in its entirety is always a transcendent shape to the immanent
  5. In order to perceive a circle in its entirety, the shape of the circle, one has to step into the third dimension, a dimension that is transcendent to the dimensions of the circle and yet contains the space of the circle.
  6. The condition for a perception of the 2-D totality of a circle is being in a space that is both transcendent to the space of the circle and yet contains the space of the circle as immanent.
  7. To perceive an N dimensional shape in its entirety one has to be placed in the N+1th

Conclusion:

  1. To perceive (experience) the N dimensionality of a space, rather than deducing and inferring it, one has to be transcendent to it, being located in an N+1 dimensional space.
  2. For an N dimensional space to be perceived (experienced) it has to be immanent to the observer’s consciousness, but this immanence is possible only if the observer is transcendent to the observed, hence enjoying a higher dimension than the observed.
  3. The dimensionality of an N dimensional space is always transcendent to the observer located in the same space.
  4. The dimensionality of a space becomes immanent only and only for an observer that is transcendent to that space.
  5. Our experience of 3-D space is immanent: We intuit the 3 dimensional character of our space immediately and don’t need to deduce or infer it by examination and investigation.
  6. The 3-d character of our space is given to us immediately; it is immanent.
  7. Since our experience of the world is already 3 dimensional and immanent, therefore we have to be transcendent to it and located outside of it.

                                                                                                      QED.

 

    ***To experience two dimensionality directly one has to be in the third dimension. Therefore to experience three dimensionality one has to be in the fourth dimension.