This

eternal now concept, which sort of eliminates time from the equation, if I understand it correctly, I imagine that's got to be the same thing that other mystics that we've spoken about in the past. It's got to be the same thing they saw or experienced, which they could not put into words. St. Augustine comes to mind.

Yes.

Because, you know, we can talk about seeing angelic figures. We can talk about seeing the Virgin Mary as St. Bernard did or seeing Jesus or a host of other things. And we can sort of, as human beings, we can sort of grasp it and understand that we're seeing figures but i can't imagine living outside of time well i don't think anybody can imagine what it's except the mystics that have actually experienced it i can't imagine what it's like to to not have for there being no time for not having a watch not seeing a second tick, not feeling like I've been here for a while or anything like that. It's completely out another dimension.

That's right. So how do you describe it? Well, it's impossible to describe it. That's why I think to phrase it in the following way an eternal now moment is as close as one can come to describing it you can understand the concept right you can understand the concept of there being only an eternal now for god but imagining yourself experiencing this even when you understand the concept you can't understand what that would be like but you know what's funny is that um in the 20th century the american novelist uh kurt bonnegut in his novel slaughterhouse five speaks of these aliens from another planet from trial palmodore that they actually live in an eternal now moment they don't see time as sequential they just see all of time at once and um of course a novelist has to use this concept as something that non-humans from some other planet can deal with humans have a very very hard time dealing with it including the character in his novel billy pilgrim who has constant episodes where in the way that bonnegut words that is he gets unstuck in time oh billy got unstuck again and billy experiences an eternal now moment but bonnegut has no way of explaining how Billy feels, you know, when he's unstuck again. But Billy can go backwards and forwards in time precisely for that moment. Right? So it's a very nice science fiction concept, right? But it's also a very mystical concept.

You know, C.S. Lewis wrote something, and I actually printed it out, and I framed it. I have it hanging on my office wall, and it does have to do with time, and I think it's something that has helped me kind of try to understand, you know, how God works, but it's a short little passage. I'll read it. It says, never in peace or war commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment. Quote, as to the Lord, unquote, it is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for and here's the last sentence is what brings it all together he concludes with the present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received every time i read that it's almost like it's that eternal now that this is what i thought about when you when you mentioned that phrase it's like now is the only time that you can receive anything from god that you can give unto god anything it's right now it's not in the future it's not in the past it's right now yeah so this is this is help at least gives me a little bit better understanding of it but i still can't wrap my arms around it well

it's uh you know some astrophysicists in the last few decades have said very similar things about time and you know the way in which our universe has come into existence and how it will perhaps sometimes cease to exist as a moment not billions or trillions of years but an event a single event that some astrophysicists propose keeps happening over and over again, eternally. So you can have crazy conceptions of what an eternal now moment really means. But for Eckhart and for his disciples, and for those who would be affected by this concept, it is always a disappointment to come down from that experience back into time. I can imagine. Oh, no. And what if when you come back from the eternal now moment, you're already late for an appointment? Oh, my God. Double disappointment. Because the time kept rolling while you were gone. Yeah. And, you know, there's a beautiful poem by T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding, where it's a very mystical poem. Perhaps we can, you know, have another segment just on this, on how mystics write poetry, and poets who are not known as mystics can write very mystical poetry the line i'm thinking of in t.s elliot reminds me of this eternal now moment quick now here now ridiculous the waste sad time before and after quick now here now ridiculous the waste sad time before and after which points to the disappointment that one reads about in mystical texts disappointment voiced by the mystics that this is what we all yearn for this eternal now moment augustine spoke of it very differently. In the last part of his confessions, he has a very long meditation on time, what time is, how time is for God and how time is for us. And actually, what Augustine says is that, and it might sound like the opposite of what Eckhart is saying, but I think it's not. Augustine says, you know, the present doesn't exist for us humans. Because, for instance, by the time what you say the word now, or in Latin, nunc, you say now, by the time you get to the last letter, it's no longer now. It's already the past. the future we don't know it's it's never something you can go to so he augustine says all we have all we humans have is our past and you know that saying that you have on the wall by c.s lewis doesn't quite fit with what augustine is saying but i think that what augustine is saying is he in confessions is that, of course, we humans have a very, very difficult time, an impossible time, conceiving of anything that is not a constant movement in time.