Since in an outward
direction we cannot go beyond the three dimensions of what we call space from
the standpoint of our usual consciousness, the only other direction in which
we can move is inward, namely, in the reverse direction of extension, i.e. in
a direction which is completely different from that of physical time and three-dimensional
space: the direction toward the center and the origin of everything. If we -
to use a simile - regard the horizontal as the direction of our space-time development
or individual unfoldment, then the vertical represents the direction of our
inner, concentrative absorption into the universal center of our essential being
and therewith the process of our becoming conscious of the timeless presence
of all possibilities of existence in the organic, all-embracing structure of
the living universe. But while the horizontal, for all that we know - i.e. according
to the laws of all spatial movement - has the tendency to move in an unimaginably
big circle (which, therefore, appears to us like a straight line) or in a spiral,
in which certain pleases repeat themselves rhythmically, though without being
identical, the vertical represents the central axis of this revolving movement,
namely the timeless, ever-present origin, inherent in all living processes.
It is what poetically has been expressed as the "eternity of the moment,"
which can be experienced in a state of perfect inwardness or absorption, in
which we turn toward the center of our own being, as realized in states of meditation
and creative inspiration.
In a former work I have depicted both these directions in a diagram, in which
the movement parallel to or following the periphery represents the space-time
development of the individual, while the movement which runs at right angles
or perpendicular to this in the direction toward the center indicates the ever
increasing states of absorption or inwardness. The further this inwardness proceeds,
i.e. the nearer it moves toward the center, the more universal becomes our experience.
In reaching the center, the completeness and universality of consciousness is
being realized.
Consciousness thus proceeds from the more limited to the more comprehensive,
from lesser to greater intensity, from lower to higher dimensions, and each
higher dimension includes the lower ones by coordinating its elements in a wider
and more intricate structure of relationships. The criterion of a consciousness
or recognition of a higher dimension, therefore, consists in the coordinated
and simultaneous awareness of several directions of movement or extension within
a higher unit, without annihilating the features which constituted the character
of the integrated lower dimensions. This may be illustrated by the simple fact
that the two-dimensional square is not annihilated in the three-dimensional
cube.
Thus the reality of a lower dimension is not devaluated or eliminated by the
higher one, but only relativized. This is not only true with regard to spatial
dimensions, but even more so in regard to time-dimensions, or what we experience
as different forms or principles of time. "Only the recognition of all
those time-forms which constitute man, liberates him from the exclusive validity
of the mental time-form, creates distance and enables him to integrate those
other time-forms. The courage to recognize the actuality of pre-rational magic
timelessness and of the irrational mythic time-principle, besides the mental
time-concept, makes the leap into the a-rational time-freedom possible. This
is not a freedom from earlier time-forms which are inherent in every human being's
constitution; it is first of all a freedom towards them. From this kind of freedom
which as such can only be achieved by a consciousness that is capable of placing
itself independently ‘above' the earlier time-forms, only from such a freedom
can a conscious approach to the origin succeed."
"Origin," however, does not mean a beginning in time, but the ever-present
origin (sahaja), in which sense the much misunderstood terms sahaja-kaya and
Adibuddha have been used in the terminology of the Kalacakra School of medieval
Buddhist philosophy (about tenth century A.D.). Sahaja-kaya means literally
the "inborn," "innate" body, that is, the natural - universal
body, the embodiment of universal order (which is also expressed in the term
dharma-kdya), underlying every individual consciousness, but realized only by
the Enlightened Ones who are fully awakened to their inner reality and are,
therefore, called Buddhas. Adibuddha, which literally means "first, foremost
or original Buddha," has similarly nothing to do with a sequence in time-and
can, therefore, not be regarded as a kind of God-Creator from which the universe
has sprung (as many scholars have surmised), but represents the ever-present
dynamic principle of enlightenment (bodhicitta: the urge for the realization
of enlightenment) at the center of every form of consciousness, from which time
(kala) and space (symbolized as cakra) emerge.
In other words: we do not live in time, but time lives within us: because time
is the innermost rhythm of our conscious existence, which appears outside of
ourselves as space and materializes in the form of our body and its organs.
From this point of view we may say that the body is the crystallization of our
consciousness, namely, the sum total of former volitions, aspirations and actions,
of our conscious mind (what is called karma or consciously motivated "action"
in Buddhism).
It is remarkable that Gebser - though coming from a different cultural background
and starting from entirely different premises - arrives at similar conclusions
and finally even at a world-view in which Eastern and Western thought become
equal partners - equal, because each of them has attained to the same fundamental
insight in his own way. Gebser expresses this in the following words: "The
body (in so far as we conceive it also in terms of space) is nothing but solidified,
coagulated, thickened, materialized time, which requires space for its unfoldment,
formation and materialization, because space represents a field of tension,
and due to its latent energies it is the medium or carrier of the active time-energies,
in which both these dynamic principles, the latent one of space and the acting
one of time, condition each other.
We also could say: space is the possibility of movement, time the actuality
or the realization of movement; or, space is externalized, objectivated time,
time projected outward. Time, on the other hand, is the internalized, subjectivated
space - the remembrance and inner transformation of spatial movement into the
feeling of duration or continuity. Time and space are related to each other
like the inside and the outside of the same thing. Reality comprises both and
simultaneously goes beyond both of them. Those who experience this reality live
in a dimension beyond the space-time continuum and experience the universe as
a timeless body. This is the ultimate teaching of the Kalacakra philosophy.
Here we may be reminded of Fa-tsang's interpretation of the message of the Avatamsaka-Sutra,
according to his monograph, called "The Meditation by which Imagination
Becomes Extinguished and One Returns to the Source":
There is one Mind which is ultimate reality, by nature pure, perfect and bright.
It functions in two ways. Sustained by it, the existence of a: world of particulars
[extended in space] is possible; and from it originates all activity [extended
in time], free and illuminating, making for the virtues of perfection paramita.
In these two functions which we may call existential and moral, three universal
characters are distinguishable. Existentially viewed, every particular object,
technically called anuraja, "particle of dust" [the smallest possible
unit or atom, as we would call it nowadays] contains in it the whole Dharmadhatu
[ultimate reality]. Secondly, from the creational point of view, each particle
creates all kinds of virtues [or "qualities," in a more general sense]
therefore, by means of one object the secrets of the whole universe are fathomed.
Thirdly, in each particle the reason of sunyata [the incommensurable element
of metaphysical reality, in contrast to its phenomenal or formal elements] is
perceivable. (Explanations in brackets are mine.)
Sunyata is that incommensurable element of metaphysical reality which, in contrast
to its phenomenal or formal elements, can only be circumscribed as "emptiness
from all conceptual designations," similar to "space" which includes
and contains all things and movements and is at the same time contained in them.
Sunyata is, so to say, the spiritual space whose emptiness (this is the literal
equivalent of sunyata) makes possible the wealth of forms and activities and
the freedom which exists prior to any law ("at the first step we are free,
at the second we are slaves"), the purity and liberty of action of the
Origin. It is, in order to put it into Gebser's words, that which is 'before'
time and space, that thanks to different structures of consciousness has become
more and more realizable through timelessness, time-awareness, time and space,"
and that "in the conscious achronicity becomes experienceable. The unoriginated
becomes time-free, emptiness becomes fullness, in the transparency the 'diaphainon,'
the spiritual becomes perceptible: Origin and Presence. We preserve the whole,
and the whole preserves us.
Sunyata is the emptiness of all conceptual designation, because it is the essence
of the whole, which lies hidden in the center of each individual, in the innermost
depth of our consciousness, which Fa-tsang calls "the Source." Time
and space, therefore, extend between this timeless and spaceless center and
the infinity (or ultimate distance) which we experience in the expansion of
space and the accumulation of time-remembrance, constituting the infinity in
time-extension. Thus time does not move from the future (as if it were existing
there already) into the past-as it would appear if time had independent reality,
instead of being a property of things or the intrinsic nature of living beings-but
it is, as Bergson puts it, "the continuous progress of the past,"
from the center of all being, as we might say, "which gnaws into the future
and which swells as it advances.-The piling up of the past upon the past goes
on without relaxation. In reality, the past is preserved by itself, automatically.
In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant. - Doubtless we think
with only a small part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including
the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will and act."
Here again we see that the future does not play any role in the actual process
of time, and why the entire past has to be raised into the light of consciousness,
before the control of desire, will and action can be achieved and perfect enlightenment
can be attained. Enlightenment means to bridge the two poles of time - past
and present - as well as the two poles of space: the near and the far. The "here"
of space and the "now" of time correspond to each other, like the
infinite distance in space and the infinite past in time. In other words, both
time and space swing between the poles of ultimate nearness and ultimate distance.
The relationship between time and space is a double polarity, and the more we
can see this, the more we shall realize that, as we said before, the three dimensions
of space do not correspond to the threefold division of time. Nobody has made
this clearer than Ludwig Klages, from whose significant work Der kosmogonische
Eros I translate the following passage:
Space and time, belonging together as two poles, have this in common, that each
of them is stretched out between the poles of nearness and distance. As certainly
as nearness is only one, irrespective of where I am, and as, on the other hand,
[the concept of] spatial distance is only one, irrespective of whether we look
towards the east or the west, towards the north or the south, in the same way
there can be only one distance in time, in relationship to one and the same
temporal nearness (presence). If there were two, namely, besides the distance
of the past, another distance of the future, then the character of the distance
of a future point of relationship would in some way be contrary to the character
of the distance of a past point of relationship. But since the opposite is true,
the duality of time-distance is a pure invention, and one of them must be an
illusion! For the following reasons we must regard the future as such. If I
think of the past, I remember a reality that existed; if, however, I think of
the future, I think of something unreal, i.e. of something that exists only
in the act of thinking. If all thinking beings would suddenly disappear, the
past that really existed would remain exactly as it was before, while the name
'future' would simply lose its meaning, if there were no beings with the thought
of a future! The future is not related to the past like one distance of time
to another opposite distance of time, but as a mere concept is related to reality:
the future is not a quality of real time. The past and the present, and not
the past and the future, are the poles of time, and therefore temporal distance
is the same as distance in the past. Only in images, i.e. in images of the past,
can time be realized and made visible. Reality is eternal, and real time is
the pulsating of eternity. The illusion 'future' created the spectre of death,
or annihilation of existence, and the passionate desire for immortality.
What we call "future" is only a possibility, inherent in the direction
of our movement. To give a concrete example: if we are moving in a certain direction,
or let us say, on a road with a bridge at some distance ahead of us, then this
bridge (as well as any other feature of this road) becomes a part of our future,
provided we persist in following the chosen road or direction. On the other
hand, once we have crossed the bridge, this fact becomes an irreversible, undeniable
and ineradicable part of our past. The past possesses reality not only as a
fact, as something that has undeniably happened or existed, but even more so
as something that acts upon future happenings, whose course is determined to
an overwhelming extent by the actions and conditions of the past. The future,
however, being only a potentiality, cannot act upon the present (except as an
expectation, based on previous experience and conclusions drawn from it) and
much less upon the past. It is in this sense that we cannot ascribe reality
to the future. The real time, however, is more than all our conceptual ideas
about it, but, as Klages metaphorically and profoundly expresses it, is "the
pulsating of eternity."
Thus it depends on the nature' of time which we create through the inner rhythm
of our life and the depth of our consciousness, whether we are mortal or immortal.
Those who live in the illusory time of their peripheral consciousness, of their
intellect, and in the space-time continuum of an assumed external world, identify
themselves with what is mortal. Those who live in harmony with the pulse of
eternity, identify themselves with what is immortal. They know that the whole
of eternity is within themselves. In this connection, the words of another modern
writer will gain special significance: "It may be we shall find our immortality
not in some miraculous proof of survival after death, but in -some changed apprehension
of the nature of time."
Consciousness is the primary and space-time a secondary quality of reality.
The movements and conformations within the all-embracing depth-consciousness
(alaya-vijnana) - which modern psychology has rediscovered, but at the same
time degraded into the concept of the unconscious - appear as the notions of
time and spatial extension to the individual mind, who separates the various
phases of movement and momentarily appearing forms, thus limiting his vision
and breaking up reality into transitory phenomena. These phenomena, though not
real in the ultimate sense, are not to be dismissed as mere hallucination, because
they do not appear without causes, and these causes are the expression of an
inherent order, the immanent law of reality. In other words, these phenomena
have a relative reality, and only for those who take them as ultimate truth
do they turn into a misleading illusion (samsara).
For those who are caught up in their own individual past, because they cling
to isolated aspects without seeing the whole picture of the interdependent origination
of all phenomena, the future will appear as fixed and unalterable as the past,
and indeed, by clinging blindly to those aspects, they themselves produce such
a future. In this way an endless cycle of cause and effect, birth and death
is created, from which there is only one way that leads out of this vicious
circle: The "letting-go," the giving up of all entanglements through
craving or possessiveness, which again and again entraps us in the ephemeral,
in the chain-reactions of cause and effect, and which prevents us from seeing
and realizing the all-embracing wholeness and universality of our true nature.
Liberation from those entanglements is possible only "if we are ready to
accept that the whole of our human existence, i.e. all levels of our consciousness,
which form and support our present as well as our coming consciousness, should
be integrated into a new reality. This requires the full depth of our past,
which we must experience over again in a decisive sense. He who denies or condemns
his past, deprives himself of his future. This is true for each single human
being as much as for humanity."
For the wise, who have penetrated the realm of ultimate causes, down to the
ever-present origin, who have raised into the light of full awareness what to
others appears as the dark realm of the past-of them is true what Asvajit said
of the Buddha, when asked to sum up the quintessence of the Buddha's teaching:
Ye dharma hetuprabhava,
hetum tesam Tathagato hyavadat,
Tesam ca yo nirodha, evamvadi mahasramanah.
"The causes of
all cause-originated things have been revealed by the Tathagata (the Buddha),
and also their cessation. This is the teaching of the Great Ascetic."
The liberation from the power of those causes lies in the recognition of their
true nature. As long as they are seen under the aspect of time (i.e. incompleteness)
or, more correctly, under the aspect of temporal and spatial isolation, and
not in their dynamic and ever-present relationship, we fail to understand the
profound significance of the law of Dependent Origination (pratityasamutpada),
proclaimed by the Buddha, which is far more than the proclamation of a merely
mechanical law of causality, as superficial observers are apt to think.
Even Ananda, The Buddha's closest disciple, seems to have been in danger of
this misconception when he proudly proclaimed how self-evident and easily understandable
the Pratityasamutpada appeared to him; whereupon the Buddha rebuked and warned
him: "Do not speak thus, Ananda; do not speak thus! Deep is the Law of
Dependent and Simultaneous Origination and profound in its appearance. It is
because people do not perceive and realize this Dharma, that they are overwhelmed
by suffering and unable to free themselves from the rounds of rebirth and death."
The idea of causality appears simple to those who are accustomed to think in
terms of abstract logic and mundane commonsense. This kind of causality presupposes
a temporal and unchangeable course of events, a sequence which is fixed and
foreseeable. The Pratityasamutpada, however, does not depend on any temporal
sequence (though it may unfold in time), but may just as well be understood
as the simultaneous cooperation of all its factors, each link representing the
sum total of all the others. Or, if we want to express this from the standpoint
of time: each form of appearance is based on an infinite past and thus on an
infinity of causes, conditions and relationships, which does not exclude anything
that has been or ever will come into existence. This is the basis of Rilke's
pyramid of individual consciousness (mentioned previously).
But when the past is realized in its all-encompassing cornpleteness, it loses
its time-quality and is converted into something which we can only call a higher
dimension of space, for the simple reason that all that apparently has happened
in time is seen or sensed simultaneously, and therefore experienced as timeless
presence (in contradistinction to the mere concept of the "present,"
as something in-between the past and the future). If this were not so, the causes
of an infinite past would be forever beyond our control, could never be reached
or modified, and still less neutralized. They would go on forever with unfailing
necessity. But by raising them again into the present, the "one-after-another"
is transformed into "the-one-within-the-other," a relationship so
beautifully and profoundly described in the Avatamsaka Sutra in the vision of
Maitreya's Tower (representing the universe), in which all things reflect and
penetrate each other as well as the experiencing subject, without losing their
respective individuality. Thus the universe and the experiencer of the universe
are mirrored in every phenomenon, and therefore, nothing can be said to "originate"
or to be "destroyed" in a final or absolute sense. What is destroyed
is only our dependence on any single phenomenon or motive.
The perfect mutual interpenetration of forms, processes, things, beings, etc.,
and the presence of the experiencing subject in all of them-in other words,
the simultaneity of differentiation and oneness, of individuality and universality,
of form and emptiness-is the main thesis of the great Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna,
who lived in the second century of our era. His philosophy of the "Middle
Way" consists in a new orientation of thought, freed from the rigidity
of the concept of "substance" or that of a static universe, in which
things and beings were thought of as more or less independent units, so that
concepts like "identity" and "non-identity" could be applied
to them and form the basis of discursive thought. Where, however, everything
is in flux, such concepts-and a logic derived from them-cannot be adequate and,
therefore, the relationship of form to emptiness and vice-versa cannot be conceived
as a mutually exclusive nature or as absolute opposites, but only as two aspects
of the same reality, co-existing in continuous co-operation. Because "form"
(rupa) must not be confused with "thing-ness" or materiality, since
each form is the expression of a creative actor or process in a beginningless
and endless movement, whose precondition, according to Nagarjuna, is precisely
that mysterious "emptiness" (or "plenumvoid," as it has
been aptly called) expressed in the term Sunyata.
In this experience of timeless reality beyond the realm of opposites, the relative
is not annihilated in favor of the absolute nor is the manifoldness of life
sacrificed to an abstract unity, but the individual and the universal penetrate
and condition each other so completely that the one cannot be separated from
the other. They are as inseparable as time and space, and like these they represent
two aspects of the same reality: time is the dynamic aspect of individual (and
therefore incomplete) action and experience; space is the sum total of all activity
in its ever-complete and therefore timeless aspect.
The incomplete, however, is as necessary and important an element as that of
completeness. It is that which supplies the impetus, the desire for completeness,
for perfection. This impetus is the very essence and the conditio sine qua non
of life. Therefore Novalis says in one of his "Fragments": "Only
that which is incomplete can be understood and can lead us on. What is complete
can only be enjoyed." And at another place: "All illusion is as necessary
to truth, as the body to the soul." (Is not this also the function of maya?)
If we modify this thought with regard to the concept of time, we might formulate
it thus: Transiency is as necessary to immortality (or to the experience of
eternity), as the body is to the soul, or as matter is to mind. And in saying
so, we might note that these are not irreconcilable or totally exclusive opposites,
but rather the extreme points in the amplitude of the swinging of a pendulum,
i.e. parts of the same movement. By becoming conscious of the inner direction
and relationship of our transient life, we discover the eternity in time, immortality
in transiency -and thus we transform the fleeting shapes of phenomena into timeless
symbols of reality.
Liberation is not escapism, but consists in the conscious transformation of
the elements that constitute our world and our existence. This is the great
secret of the Tantras and of the mystics of all times. Among modern mystics
nobody has expressed this more beautifully than Rilke, though few may have recognized
the profound truth of his words, when he said:
Transiency hurls itself everywhere into a deep state of being. And therefore
all forms of this Our world are not only to be used in a time-bound (time-limited)
sense, but should be included into those phenomena of superior significance
in which we partake (or, of which we are part). However, it's not in the Christian
sense, but in the purely earthly, profoundly earthly, joyfully earthly consciousness,
that we should introduce what we have seen and touched here, into the widest
circumference. Not into a 'beyond' whose shadow darkens the earth, but into
the whole, into the universe. Nature, the things of our daily contact and use,
all these are preliminaries and transciencies: however, they are, as long as
we are here, our possession, our friendship, participants of our pain and pleasure,
in the same way as they were the trusted friends of our ancestors. Therefore
we should not only refrain from vilifying and deprecating all that which belongs
to this our world, but on the contrary, on account of its very preliminary nature
which it shares with us, these phenomena and things should be understood and
transformed by us in the innermost sense. - Transformed? - Yes, because it is
our task to impress upon ourselves this preliminary, transient earth in so deep,
so painful, so passionate a manner, that its essential nature is 'invisibly'
resurrected within us.
This resurrection takes place in every act of retrospective insight and spiritual
awakening, as we have seen in the process of the Buddha's enlightenment. It
is an act of resurrection, in which the ultimate transformation takes place
and in which all causes come to rest in the light of perfect understanding and
in the realization of sunyata, in which all things become transparent and all
that has been experienced, whether in joy or in suffering, enters into a state
of transfiguration. Then all the worlds of the universe hurl themselves into
the invisible as into their next deeper reality," a reality that is ever-present
within us, beyond time and space.