Joking apart, in the strictest of
analyses, there is only “now”, meaning this very instant or present moment, now!
But then again there is very little “now” for most of us, because if we were
cognizant of a truly conscious and all-pervading “now” and we were fully immersed
in it, we would all be enlightened and see reality as it is. This is obviously not
the case, as our “nows” are very tiny and limited, infiltrated with lots of “befores”
and “afters” – a product of the thinking process. But in the body the story is
different.
Unconsciously, we have many “nows” that
are totally functional. Do you think the cells of the body don’t act on “nows”
and “right-aways” and “instantaneous moments of reaction”? Of course they do.
The body lives in its own world of total “now”. Everything that is happening
within the body is on a “now-basis”: instant action and reaction to continue
the life process. Can you imagine a lazy blood cell that wants to wait until
“tomorrow” to do its job? Or a stressed-out alveoli that says it doesn’t really
want to deal with that oxygen intake business right now, preferring to do it “later”?
Or maybe a madcap neuron that has declared a strike and refuses to transmit a synapse
“at this precise instant”? No, the body is in “now” mode – at least the
unconscious survival process corresponding to it.
Within our normal “waking” consciousness,
our so-called “will”, or just laziness, may delay reactions or refuse to act,
or we may act inefficiently or wrongfully, but this is part of the psychological
function; the way our minds operate. But again, unconsciously, everything is OK
in the mind. Impressions are being received, willy-nilly, either through our
conscious choice or just because of our unconscious conditioning. On the
cellular level, the basis of mental reactions is “now-based”. Because herein
lies the truth – there IS no other time in any case. Nothing can really be
OUTSIDE the “now”. At least nothing of any consequence…
And there’s the rub. Existentially, there
is no other time than NOW. Bodies and minds are already in the NOW. But if our partial,
puny, untrained thinking minds – in what we on this blog call S-A 2, or the “normal
civilised waking state” – are busy with all kinds of ingrained thought
processes, and we are fully identified with these, this mode of existence has
very little to do psychologically with the true NOW. Stimuli from impressions
(which we might call “reality”) hit this reduced field of awareness and provoke
habitual reactions in the mindstuff: likes and dislikes, automatic reactions
from past experiences, sometimes expectations of future possibilities, etc.
Examples: a) It is cold, I don’t like the cold, I complain about the cold, get
upset, and wish for warmer weather… b) Someone says a phrase I don’t agree
with, I reject it and think how much cleverer I am than that silly person… c) A
person does something I think is wrong, and I criticise that person
mercilessly, although I have probably done the same thing as him and it didn’t
matter much to me at the time!
So, survival and physiology are proceeding
quite consequentially from past experiences, and if we don’t realise and accept
“now” as it is, it is because our Awareness is low. Our thinking and emoting processes
are running the show, controlling our present experience, and making all kinds
of judgements about (innocent) present impressions: “I like this”, “I don’t
like that”, this is good”, “that is no good”, “I wish this wouldn’t happen”, “If
only it could be otherwise”, etc.
The
state of our “Nows” depends on our Self-Awareness (S-A), so let’s review the
various levels we have talked about before:
In
S-A 0,
or deep sleep. NOW is timeless. 4 hours is less than a mere instant. We sleep
and wake, and to our awareness, no time has passed, and yet somehow the clock
says various hours have gone by.
In
S-A 1,
or REM sleep, NOW is an instant. A dream may seem long, but it may be just a
bat of an eyelash. Memory plays a trick on us and makes us think that perhaps many
“nows” have gone by.
In
S-A 2,
or the “normal civilised waking state”, NOW is a barely conscious flash, which then
becomes infiltrated by Memory and ensuing Imagination, and
hijacked by our own Identification process, producing an automatic
(learned) reaction from the mindstuff, and continuing in a chain reaction to
produce more of the same: “semi-nows” of unknown consequences… This is where we
must distinguish existential “nows” in the survival process; physiological “nows”
in our bodily processes; and the highly disorganised psychological “nows” of our
mental functions, let’s say “exclusionary nows”, which may or may not
correspond to the NOW of reality.
In
S-A 3,
or a degree of Self-Awareness, NOW is a more conscious reality, and the higher
the awareness the more the NOW starts to include or encompass. There
begins to be a separation in the mindstuff, with Awareness (“I”) observing the impressions
being received by “me”, witnessing reactions in the mind, determining their
nature and deciding on the appropriate action or inaction to take. The mental operations
of Memory and Identification are observed by Awareness, and the Discriminatory
function decides how to interpret these. This is the beginning of awakening to
the manifold reality of NOW.
In
S-A 4,
which we might call Cosmic or Solar Awareness, NOW becomes the only reality,
Eternity in one instant, everything is seen as it is in a vast cosmic play of
the elements. This is beyond our experience at present, because our Awareness in
“lower” states is only partial. It may be a conscious form of the Timeless NOW
of S-A 0, when we are in deep sleep and resting in the bosom of the universe.
Next week, we’ll look at the inevitability of now, the exclusivity of now, and how “now”
can never be “then”…
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