MYSTICISM AND TIME

I am somewhat preoccupied with the idea of time and how we perceive it in our lives. I am fascinated by how time sometimes seems to slip by unnoticed and at other times becomes the focus of our most immediate thoughts. When we are young, summers unfold endlessly into the future, but when we are older, summers are of such short duration that we wonder where time has flown. We are enveloped by our perceptions of time. Our lives are lived in time. We experience our livelihoods and our retirements in a sequence of time. We measure our productivity and our leisure in terms of time. We dwell in memories and anticipations of future times alike—all wound and bound up in perceptions of time. We have individual and family histories. We study history in school with the idea that we might find some wisdom in the untidiness of how other people lived their lives and how time treated their behavior and activities. We identify ourselves in a relationship with time, a relationship that changes as we age.

Our perceptions of time continue to influence how we observe our lives unfolding. In a previous blog post, I worked with the idea of linearity and how we see the world and construct our own cosmologies according to our concepts of linear time. We have come to feel that cause and effect in most things should connect point A with point B in a straight line. This is the scientific method incorporated into our perception of all things. Yet, it has been shown that creativity and the flow of time are often punctuated by what are termed paradigm shifts, jumps in insight that lie outside what we assume are normal ways of thinking. But linear thought has not always been the norm. Fragmented time sequences have been part of older cosmologies. If artistic trends can reflect social norms, then art history has had periods in which reality was broken into thousands of mosaic pieces, each reflecting some smaller aspect of a total picture. Stained glass windows were constructed of hundreds of brilliant sources of light, each transmitting a different color and intensity. Early textual writings were composed by multiple anonymous authors, each contributing to the whole. The whole was the point and not who had written which part.

So, my fascination with time and its expression in all aspects of our lives has taken me in different directions, not the least of which is to contrast notions of time and its influences with what it might be like to live with a sense of timelessness. What would it be like to adopt a world view that allows for a mental space in which there is no time? What would that feel like and what would it mean? In these times of so much chaos and fast living, such a feeling might offer us some peace and calm we can't find in the commotion all around us. In an old book, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (1957), D. T. Suzuki (pictured nearby), a Buddhist scholar, examines the idea of mysticism in the works of Meister Eckhart (also pictured here) and compares and contrasts his ideas with his own understanding of it. It is an examination of the idea of “emptiness” that is typical of Buddhism and of “infinity,” which is the Christian term for the same thing, he says. In both cases, the idea is that there is a place, a mental concept at least, where time does not exist. It is immovable and fixed but serves as the ideal space in which to dwell. Accessing this space is a matter of chance and circumstance and is described as insight or enlightenment, depending on one's orientation.

We are living in times that have invited exploration of what is termed “mindfulness.” This seems to be a response to the pressures of our time-focused lives. I am not certain that its full meaning and implications are realized by those who are looking for a quick fix to their confusions and fears. It is a beginning to some sort of relief but it has also become a somewhat superficial approach to a matter that begs for greater depth and commitment. Mindfulness is easy or difficult, depending on one's view. It represents a short-term pause in activity, but it is also a long-term commitment to changing one's perception of time. Mindfulness can be a suspension of time. Isn't that, after all, what is hoped for as a refuge from the pressures of time management and demand? There is in the minute point of time suspended a perception of infinity. It isn't necessary to posit a space outside daily reality that represents this unmoving and stable mental place. If one thinks of infinity as a place above earthly activity, somewhere in a “heaven,” then it becomes an ideal and unavailable to most of us as we go about our daily toil. However, if mindfulness is another face of infinity, then one only has to pause and connect with it in the course of a life full of distractions and interruptions. It is a place where time can stand still, if only for a brief sequence. Is this useful?

I think it is useful to think of mindfulness in this way. It avoids having to subscribe to a place that is so very remote for most of us to imagine. We are less attached these days to the religions and spiritual traditions that have in their dogmas ideas of heaven and hell or their equivalents. Suzuki writes about Meister Eckhart's notion of the Godhead, a static and immovable source from which emanates the spiritual energy he calls God. Suzuki equates the essence of the Godhead with the Buddhist idea of egolessness. He says that our time consciousness will never be abolished because that is the way we as humans perceive our lives in this world. However, he says that it is useful to have a concept of empty space with potential to realize a freedom we don't receive in the activities of our surface and relative lives. And it is useful to have some relief from our own egos, if only for brief periods. We benefit from this interruption personally in being reminded of our humanity and, in the ways mindfulness can be taught and shared with others, we cultivate a deeper sense of community. This is no small thing in times when we are faced with the consequences of individual power and the sense of entitlement that we derive from it. The more we are separated from each other, the greater the chances that our biases and prejudices will lead to tribalism and despotism. We will be divided from our best selves and from all those on whom we depend for so many aspects of our lives. Infinity is for everyone.

Yes, that small point of eternity in the moment can yield up to us benefits that are outside of time and all its tyrannies and joys alike. We can experience a deep freedom that gives us courage and strength to continue along the timely path until the next mindful moment. We are reminded that we are not alone in this effort of historical motion but we see ourselves differently in the process. We see that we are capable not only of continuation in our efforts along our paths, but also capable of participating in minute paradigm shifts and punctuations that lead to greater creativity and deeper relationships. We are not victims of time so much as actors in its long sequences, participants in the process of its flow. If we were to imagine a new metaphor for time in our lives, then the idea of a stream would be a good one. A stream is ever-changing and continuous with energies that vary. There are straight channels of flow and there are eddies and pools. There are rapids and there are indolently slow movements. No part of a stream remains static and unchanging, yet its substance is defined and characteristic of it. We are in the flow of time but our human agency and our talents at conceptualization open us to the possibilities of imagining the stream as a still point, a point of mindfulness in which there is the freedom of its motion and direction. We are given the capacity “to see a world in a grain of sand. And a heaven in a wild flower. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand. And eternity in an hour.” These words of William Blake echo what both Christianity and Buddhism share in their concepts of mystical freedom brought down to how we might conduct our lives in our desire for shared freedom from the tyrannies of time.

We will not escape history and we won't escape time. We will continue to move in a stream from birth to death and we will continue to age, get sick, and eventually die. But I suggest that within that process of streaming time there are moments of infinity and emptiness that bring to us refuge in dark and troubling and distracted times. This is no escape maneuver but a conscious effort of mindfulness that can lead to the hard work of deliberate self-care and the sharing of self with other. What do we have to lose in the effort? What do we have to gain? Are we not interested in a more fully whole life in which all people can participate? Are we not able to share infinity? And isn't infinity easily accessible to all of us?