Supreme and Ultimate—Time and Space

118:1.1It is help­ful to man’s cos­mic ori­en­ta­tion to at­tain all pos­si­ble com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity’s re­la­tion to the cos­mos. While ab­so­lute De­ity is eter­nal in na­ture, the Gods are re­lated to time as an ex­pe­ri­ence in eter­nity. In the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses eter­nity is tem­po­ral ev­er­last­ing­ness—the ev­er­last­ing now.

118:1.2The per­son­al­ity of the mor­tal crea­ture may eter­nal­ize by self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the in­dwelling spirit through the tech­nique of choos­ing to do the will of the Fa­ther. Such a con­se­cra­tion of will is tan­ta­mount to the re­al­iza­tion of eter­nity-re­al­ity of pur­pose. This means that the pur­pose of the crea­ture has be­come fixed with re­gard to the suc­ces­sion of mo­ments; stated oth­er­wise, that the suc­ces­sion of mo­ments will wit­ness no change in crea­ture pur­pose. A mil­lion or a bil­lion mo­ments makes no dif­fer­ence. Num­ber has ceased to have mean­ing with re­gard to the crea­ture’s pur­pose. Thus does crea­ture choice plus God’s choice even­tu­ate in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of the never-end­ing union of the spirit of God and the na­ture of man in the ev­er­last­ing ser­vice of the chil­dren of God and of their Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

118:1.3There is a di­rect re­la­tion­ship be­tween ma­tu­rity and the unit of time con­scious­ness in any given in­tel­lect. The time unit may be a day, a year, or a longer pe­riod, but in­evitably it is the cri­te­rion by which the con­scious self eval­u­ates the cir­cum­stances of life, and by which the con­ceiv­ing in­tel­lect mea­sures and eval­u­ates the facts of tem­po­ral ex­is­tence.

118:1.4Ex­pe­ri­ence, wis­dom, and judg­ment are the con­comi­tants of the length­en­ing of the time unit in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence. As the hu­man mind reck­ons back­ward into the past, it is eval­u­at­ing past ex­pe­ri­ence for the pur­pose of bring­ing it to bear on a pres­ent sit­u­a­tion. As mind reaches out into the fu­ture, it is at­tempt­ing to eval­u­ate the fu­ture sig­nif­i­cance of pos­si­ble ac­tion. And hav­ing thus reck­oned with both ex­pe­ri­ence and wis­dom, the hu­man will ex­er­cises judg­ment-de­ci­sion in the pres­ent, and the plan of ac­tion thus born of the past and the fu­ture be­comes ex­is­tent.

118:1.5In the ma­tu­rity of the de­vel­op­ing self, the past and fu­ture are brought to­gether to il­lu­mi­nate the true mean­ing of the pres­ent. As the self ma­tures, it reaches fur­ther and fur­ther back into the past for ex­pe­ri­ence, while its wis­dom fore­casts seek to pen­e­trate deeper and deeper into the un­known fu­ture. And as the con­ceiv­ing self ex­tends this reach ever fur­ther into both past and fu­ture, so does judg­ment be­come less and less de­pen­dent on the mo­men­tary pres­ent. In this way does de­ci­sion-ac­tion be­gin to es­cape from the fet­ters of the mov­ing pres­ent, while it be­gins to take on the as­pects of past-fu­ture sig­nif­i­cance.

118:1.6Pa­tience is ex­er­cised by those mor­tals whose time units are short; true ma­tu­rity tran­scends pa­tience by a for­bear­ance born of real un­der­stand­ing.

118:1.7To be­come ma­ture is to live more in­tensely in the pres­ent, at the same time es­cap­ing from the lim­i­ta­tions of the pres­ent. The plans of ma­tu­rity, founded on past ex­pe­ri­ence, are com­ing into be­ing in the pres­ent in such man­ner as to en­hance the val­ues of the fu­ture.

118:1.8The time unit of im­ma­tu­rity con­cen­trates mean­ing-value into the pres­ent mo­ment in such a way as to di­vorce the pres­ent of its true re­la­tion­ship to the not-pres­ent—the past-fu­ture. The time unit of ma­tu­rity is pro­por­tioned so to re­veal the co-or­di­nate re­la­tion­ship of past-pres­ent-fu­ture that the self be­gins to gain in­sight into the whole­ness of events, be­gins to view the land­scape of time from the panoramic per­spec­tive of broad­ened hori­zons, be­gins per­haps to sus­pect the non­be­gin­ning, non­end­ing eter­nal con­tin­uum, the frag­ments of which are called time.

118:1.9On the lev­els of the in­fi­nite and the ab­so­lute the mo­ment of the pres­ent con­tains all of the past as well as all of the fu­ture. I AM sig­ni­fies also I WAS and I WILL BE. And this rep­re­sents our best con­cept of eter­nity and the eter­nal.

118:1.10On the ab­so­lute and eter­nal level, po­ten­tial re­al­ity is just as mean­ing­ful as ac­tual re­al­ity. Only on the fi­nite level and to time-bound crea­tures does there ap­pear to be such a vast dif­fer­ence. To God, as ab­so­lute, an as­cend­ing mor­tal who has made the eter­nal de­ci­sion is al­ready a Par­a­dise fi­nal­i­ter. But the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, through the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster, is not thus lim­ited in aware­ness but can also know of, and par­tic­i­pate in, ev­ery tem­po­ral strug­gle with the prob­lems of the crea­ture as­cent from an­i­mallike to God­like lev­els of ex­is­tence.