POSTHUMOUS PIECES : 16





The Timeless Way


The only way of escape from subjugation to the concept of 'time' as an objective factuality, external to ourselves, is by identifying ourselves with it, re-becoming it, which is apperceiving that it is what we are, not objectively but subjectively.

When we recognise ourselves as temporality, we have only to apperceive what is obvious - which is that temporality and intemporality are inseparable, each being an aspect of the other, the one appearing in movement, the other static. They may be said to be twin modes of cognising what we are, temporality accompanying and making possible all phenomenal action, and intemporality remaining noumenally eternal.

As such the one may be said to be what we are as prajna, the other what we are as Dhyana. Noumenally we are intemporal, phenomenally we are 'time', the one nirvanic, the other samsaric.

But they only have conceptual existence, and neither is as any 'thing' in itself.

As 'time' we are intemporal, and as 'intemporality' we are time.

Of course as the one we appear to be singular, as the other to be plural, but our plurality is as conceptual as our singularity. We are neither - for what-we-are is not any 'thing' that could have any conceptual quality or attribute whatsoever. It is neither any 'thing' nor no 'thing', for it is void of 'thingness' - which is objective and conceptual only.

We can all say 'Intemporal, I am Time: temporal, I am Eternal'.


(© T.J. Gray, 1968)
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