The Text - Section 112
112. HUMANITY’S RELATIONSHIP TO TIME
Greetings, my dearest, dearest friends. Blessings for every one of you. Blessings for your
work on this path.
Every living organism experiences visible changes, which represent milestones in its process
of growth. When I speak of a living organism, I do not refer only to an individual. A group like this
is a living, growing organism, because it stands on a healthy foundation, enabling many more
individuals to cultivate their growth. Every one of you who participates in this work contributes to
the inner growth of the group. Many of you are doing your very best to grow out of confusion and
error, and thereby you contribute. Some of you also help through outer actions, each in your own
way.
Such help and contribution is of great value, and the cosmic forces thank such people in their
own way. Our thanks -- if we may call it that, for lack of a better word -- take the form of particular
blessings not easily and instantly recognizable. Their reality is perceived only in deep meditation.
These particular blessings are coming forth tonight to all friends, both present and absent.
Universal, divine gratitude truly exists, my friends. May all of you who are helping with inner and
outer assistance feel the reality of these blessings. Everyone has a different possibility of
contributing toward the growth of this "body of truth," but it is the facing of your self in utter
candor that represents the principal contribution which ensures the continuance of this group on its
present healthy foundation.
The growth of a living organism cannot always be measured by outer signs. This holds true
for groups as well as for individuals. Anyone with an open and sensitive mind can perceive growth
and inner health, even if, at times, there are no outer changes or obvious manifestations. However,
there are times when an outer change is noticeable. This is such a time. The fact that we are now
housed in new quarters represents a milestone. Divine blessings go forth to all of you who made
this growth possible; the new venture is blessed. Whenever milestones are passed in the growth
process of an organism, the inner reality can be sensed by all who have contributed toward it by
their actions and by their work of self-confrontation. May this be the case now. May you all be
flooded by a wave of hope and security that you live in a benign universe in which you have nothing
to fear.
Tonight I should like to discuss a new topic, humanity's relationship to time. This is, indeed,
an important subject. My words will be very helpful, if you take the trouble of pondering them and
trying to apply them to yourself. What I will say may at first seem utterly inapplicable to your
personal lives because of its abstract, philosophical and metaphysical nature. But if you have
patience, and try to follow the deeper meaning of my words, you will soon see that they do have a
very practical application.
Human existence on earth, in the dimension of the earth and its atmosphere, is bound by
time. I explained on a previous occasion that time is a creation of the mind. Without the mind, time
does not exist. In your dimension time, space, and movement are three separate elements of reality.
When humanity reaches a higher degree of consciousness and with it an extended dimension, time,
space, and movement begin to integrate more and more, until they become one. However, it is an
error to believe that the next higher dimension is timelessness. There are many extended "times," if
I may use this expression, in the higher realms of being, long before you reach the state of being that
is timeless. As yet it is impossible for humanity to fully grasp this. The best you can do is to sense
this truth occasionally.
Time is a very limiting existential modality. It is a fragment, cut from a wider and freer
dimension of experience. The limited fragment, called time, is at the disposal of human beings so
that they can grow, fulfill themselves, experience, and reach happiness and liberation up to the limit
commensurate with this dimension. To the degree they fulfill their potential through inner growth,
their life will be a dynamic and full experience within which the limitation of time will not be a
hardship.
At this point, because it has so much bearing on this topic, I should like to interject once again
that it is possible to be on a path of self-development on the whole and nevertheless miss many an
opportunity for growth. How many times does it happen that you find yourself in a negative mood
without learning the deep lesson behind it, or seeing its significance for your innermost being?
Instead, you simply wait for the mood to pass by itself. You will be exposed more and more often
to such periods of depression, anxiety, uncertainty, and disharmony, and if you do not pay attention
to them, finding the inner cause will become more difficult. In these instances you do not utilize
time well and it becomes a burden and a source of conflict. If you use each such growth
opportunity for going to the root of the negative incident or mood, you will experience deep
understanding and liberation. Then the exhilaration and trust in life and in yourself that you now
experience only occasionally will become a more permanent state. Then you will be at one with the
time element of your dimension, thereby organically growing into an extended time dimension.
Listlessness, depression, impatience, nervousness, anxiety, tension, frustration, boredom,
apathy, and hostility -- all these emotions and many others -- are in the last analysis a result of
unutilized time. If you don't do the utmost possible to understand yourself and dissolve inner
conflict and confusion, you cannot avoid the negative emotions that are unleashed when time goes
by unutilized.
To those of my friends who have experienced liberation from such emotions with an influx of
strength and inner joy, feeling that they are at one with life, I say: you can repeat this experience
whenever you do not shirk the effort of looking deep into yourselves until you discover the origin of
all the negative emotions. As you recall these times of liberation, you know that they were always
connected with such efforts on your part. And to those of you who have not, as yet, had this
experience, because you may be too new on this path, I say: it can be yours if you do what is
necessary.
You may ask what bearing these reflections have on your relationship to time. If you analyze
each negative emotion, you will find that it conflicts with the limited fragment of time at your
disposal. This may be a very good meditation exercise and well lend itself to deeper exploration.
Constructive, realistic, and positive feelings do not conflict with time, because time is utilized as it is
supposed to be.
The vague knowledge that the time at your disposal is limited in this earth-dimension creates a
special tension. You, therefore, strive to get out of this limitation of "time," straining as a dog pulls
at its leash. Time holds you in its grip and you feel imprisoned in a fragment of reality. The
unconscious still has a memory of the great experience of timelessness and tries to find its way back
into a limitless freedom. This can be done, but only by accepting and fully utilizing the fragment
you call time. Then the transition into freedom will be an organic flow with a minimum of conflict.
Or you can, of course, resist by straining against the transition and not utilizing time in the way I
describe and all true spiritual teachers point out. Then inevitably conflicts and tensions arise.
All truthful spiritual, metaphysical, or philosophical concepts, ideas, or postulates have their
practical application to psychological attitudes. This is how you can realize and corroborate any
truth given to you.
Let us now discuss the particular conflict that human beings have with time. Each one of you
has the possibility of finding out the truth of what I say, provided you take the necessary steps of
self-investigation. As I have already indicated, human beings strive to reach a freer dimension of
time. Translated into practical life, this manifests by striving toward tomorrow. If you observe
yourself closely from this particular viewpoint, you will find it to be true in so many instances.
Sometimes this is quite obvious because your thoughts are on the surface; at other times it
permeates you as a vague general climate and is therefore not easily recognizable.
People strive toward the future mainly for two reasons: you do not like the present and hope
for something better from the future; or else you fear a certain aspect of life and want to leave it
behind in the past. Your vague hopes for the future and the unpleasant, unfulfilled state of the
present are your reasons for straining away from the present and into the future. Thereby you avoid
living in the now. If, however, you were to explore within yourself the reasons for your
unfulfillment and the difficulties which cause you to strain away from them, you would be capable
of living in the now fully, meaningfully, and dynamically, deriving all the many joys from each
moment that you now overlook. If each moment were truly lived to its fullest, you would already
reach an extended dimension of time, while still remaining in this earth-dimension. The truth is that
only by fully utilizing the dimension you live in can you outgrow it. Experiencing everything that
each moment of time contains will stop you from straining away; you will thereby automatically find
yourself flowing into the next time-dimension.
As always, awareness is the first step. So, do become aware of your inner striving away from
the now. You will then find that you struggle against the now because you have not really found
and resolved the causes that make you strain into the future. Such investigation will give you the
best inkling about one side of humanity's conflict with time.
The picture is entirely the opposite on the other end of the conflict. Human beings fear the
future while they strive forward into it, because the future also means death and decay. While they
strain into the future, hoping for fulfillment, they simultaneously stem against the tide of time,
desiring to stop its movement, or even go backward into youth. People want two impossible things:
the fulfillment of the future in the past or, at least, in the present. This wish generates two
contradictory soul movements: one strains forward, the other holds back. Needless to say, the soul
suffers from tension, a useless and destructive waste of energy.
Some time ago I discussed the fear of death, which is an integral part of the conflict with time.
Fear of death causes a backward movement opposed to the natural movement of time which is a
steady, harmonious flow. If you can feel into its rhythm, you will be in harmony. You can do so by
being in time in the only meaningful way, using each moment and incident for growth. Not
straining away from the future, you will not have to fear it. Not pulling away from the present, you
will utilize it well, so that it will not seem desirable to strain away from it. This is being, even if it is
not yet the highest state of being. It is the state of being commensurate with the dimension of time
you live in.
Once in this state, you follow the natural flow. The wave of time will bring you naturally and
gracefully into the next extended dimension, which you fear so much because you cannot yet prove
its reality. Your very haste, on the one hand, to get into the new dimension, and your fear of the
unknown, on the other, are reactions to what seems so uncertain to a part of your personality. With
these reactions you restrain the natural movement and create tension, setting your soul forces to
work in opposing directions. The result is stagnation of growth, as well as lack of the full experience
of each "now."
After you determine the subtle, but nevertheless very distinct inner double motion, you will
find a psychological value in understanding the nature of the emotions and attitudes responsible for
the contradictory soul movements.
If you strain forward you do so because in one way or another you do not want to recognize
certain functions in your particular life which could be improved. Somehow, you let opportunities
slip by. I do not speak of outer opportunities and fulfillments, although they may often be a final
result of missed inner opportunities for growth and unfoldment of the soul -- for the resolution of
inner conflict and dissolution of inner error.
The daily review I advocate is one of the best means toward living each day and each hour
fully. I venture to say that all my friends who work so diligently on this path have, at least
occasionally, experienced the special peace that is full of the spark of aliveness, as dynamic as it is
peaceful, after having recognized in all its depth a distortion or a negative attitude in themselves. If
all the benefit contained in the recognition has been derived from it, then this wonderful feeling of
aliveness is bound to manifest.
That the recognition itself may be very unflattering and disillusioning about oneself, and at
times even painful, will not diminish the great experience once the recognition is complete. On the
contrary. This may furnish the best proof of the truth of my words. Also, you may use the peaceful
experience as a yardstick. Whenever a self-confrontation does not, in the end, produce an uplifting
experience, you have not found all that is to be discovered. This knowledge should not make you
impatient or tense, but rather help you to understand that you are hedging the truth in some way.
You do not wish to see all there is to see.
The awareness will open you up so that you will eventually derive the maximum experience
from each particular incident. You will cultivate the inner will to face and understand in yourself all
there is to confront and comprehend. Then you will experience the exhilaration of having fulfilled
yourself to the utmost at this moment. Then you will no longer tug at time in diametrically opposite
directions.
Have you ever thought, my friends, why it is that, after an unflattering or painful recognition -
- provided you go to its very depth and do not stop halfway -- you experience such a dynamic state
of harmony and aliveness? It is so only because, at that moment, you have fully utilized what is
given to you, the fragment of time at your disposal. When you are listless and depressed, or in any
way unhappy, the material is there, right in front of you; you are right in it, but you are blind to it.
You do not focus your attention on it. You merely try to get out of this "now" without utilizing it.
That is the forward movement which also causes your fear of growing into death -- which is actually
a threshold of life. Therefore you hold back while you also push forward.
Fear of death exists in many forms and shapes. I do not wish to go into more detail on what I
said on this subject before, only that any spiritual or religious belief, if it is superimposed from the
outside and not experienced inwardly, is as much a part of the fear of death as a violent protestation
of unbelief. They are but two different sides of the same coin.
The only way to experience the flow of time that knows no interruption, that brings you into
extended dimensions, is to utilize each living moment in the manner you learn to do on this path.
Then you no longer deal with concepts which you adopt or reject, which you agree or disagree with.
An inner experience comes into being that makes you realize that the present matrix of time is only
one facet of another matrix of time; it is but a fragment of a bigger piece. This, in itself, brings the
knowledge that death is but an illusion. Death is merely a manifestation of transition into a different
dimension. However, such words can be meaningful only if you make the experience of their reality
possible. For that, this pathwork gives you ample opportunity.
When you reread this lecture, you may come across passages that are not quite clear to you.
In your discussion groups you will have the opportunity to clarify them further, provided you take
the effort of searching together for what you wish to understand on a deeper level. Participation in
the discussions is essential, for otherwise my words will remain only words -- and that is not good
enough.
Are there any questions now pertaining to this topic?
QUESTION: You say that once one leaves this dimension of time one enters another time
which involves unification of space, time, and movement. Will you please clarify that?
ANSWER: Yes, I will try. In your dimension, time and space are two separate factors. I give
you a practical example: you find yourself in a certain space, you require time to get there. In order
to bridge the distance, movement is necessary. So, movement is the bridge that combines time and
space. In the next dimension, where there is a wider fragment of what you may call time -- which is
still far from timelessness -- movement, time, and space are one. In other words: you are in one
space. You think of the space you wish to be in. The movement required to bridge the distance is
your thought. It is of a shorter span of time and motion. Thought, which is movement, brings you
into another area of space, regardless of the distance, as measured in your dimension. Do you
understand that?
QUESTION: Yes. But it brings two questions to mind. One is: Can this happen on earth?
And two: I saw a TV program recently which explained that in outer space, as we know it today,
this adjustment via movement through time and space takes place, so that the time changes
according to the rate of speed you are travelling in space. I don't quite understand it.
ANSWER: To bridge distance with thought is not possible on earth with material means.
The spirit, the psyche, is, of course, capable of experiencing this. In fact, it experiences it constantly,
only the waking brain is rarely aware of it. The physical body is incapable of the experience because
it is made and adjusted to the limited dimension in which a separation between time and space
exists, and the bridge between these is movement.
As to your second question: When material and technical means have been invented to leave
this dimension, an inkling of this factor becomes accessible to material brain knowledge. But
whether or not the discovery is understood in its profounder meaning, depends, of course, on the
individual, on the capacity and willingness of people to understand. I might add that the technical
knowledge that brought this cosmic truth into your material world -- the same truth that I
approached here from a different angle -- is a consequence of a general, overall readiness of this
earth-sphere to grasp higher truth. If, in spite of its possibility for growth that brought such higher
truth into its grasp, humanity still does not learn the deeper meaning from it, it will stagnate with all
the destructive results of such stagnation. It is exactly the same process with an individual. A
person who has potential to grow but does not utilize it will be a more troubled soul than the one
who may actually exert less effort in the direction of individual development, but is closer to the
given potential. This explains why it is impossible to judge and compare.
To get back to your question: The technical discoveries are one way of helping humanity to
acquire a broader awareness. But if a technical discovery does not lead to broader and deeper
understanding, such discovery will not only be useless, it will turn destructive. The constructiveness
and benefit of every discovery depends on whether or not humanity as a whole understands spiritual
and cosmic law on a deeper level than before such a discovery was made. If this happens, it will
help humanity to produce greater inner freedom, faster growth and development, and therefore
outer peace and justice in increased measure.
If history is observed from this point of view, it will be found that every earth upheaval that
humanity has experienced is a result of broader knowledge used without the proper understanding.
The links between new knowledge in certain eras and the subsequent upheavals due to ignorance of
the real meaning of the knowledge could be established if historians undertaking such a search were,
themselves, in a fully growing life-process. New knowledge is not necessarily and exclusively of a
technical nature. It can be an influx in art, philosophy, or any realm of experience. The links are not
immediately visible, but they are there. It might be an interesting study for a historian who has the
inner equipment to see what first seems obscure, but stands out clearly once one's attention is
focused in the right direction.
What you mentioned in your second question is the same in technical terms as what I
explained in philosophical and psychological terms.
My dearest friends, be blessed again, every one of you. May these words not merely pass
through your brain. May they, indeed, give you the incentive to listen deeply within yourself in order
to gain a little distance from yourself. Just by gaining more objectivity, you may become more at
home with yourself and feel more at ease with life in this fragment of time, so that you may utilize it
fearlessly, neither straining toward the future nor stemming against it. Therefore you will be in
harmony with the flow of time. Thus, gradually, through the discoveries about your innermost,
hidden attitudes and emotions, you will find yourself flowing with the wave of time, in harmony
with it, living each now to the fullest. May all of my good friends -- those who are present and those
who are absent, those who are new, and those who are hesitant, those who may contemplate to
begin a new way of inner life -- may you all find your real self and thus eventually overcome the
barrier that makes you tend to the visible manifestation, while being blind to what causes it.
Be in peace. May you find the strength and the reality that I try to help you find. Be blessed.
Be in God!