Temporality

“ Our view declares that all the life of the world, and therefore all temporal sequences, are present at once to the Absolute. Our view also maintains that, without the least conflict with this sense in which the whole temporal order is known at once to the Absolute, there is another sense in which any portion of the temporal sequence of the world may be taken as present, when viewed with reference to the experience of any finite Self whose present it is, and when contrasted with what for this same point of view is the past and the future of the world. ”

“ Every change leaves a series of trainées lumineuses in the mind like the passage of shooting stars. Each image is in a more fading phase, according as its original was more remote. This group of images gives duration, the mere time-form, the 'bed' of time. The distinction of past, present, and future within the bed comes from our active nature. ”

“ For your own grasp of the contents of your passing instant of consciousness faces at once a series of successive events, but also does not therefore bring before your insight all the successive contents of any present moment at any one temporal point within that present moment. What your own passing consciousness is to grasp at once, within the range of its own time-span, consists of facts which are successive one to another. ”

“ Whoever says, “In the universe at large only the present state of things is real, only the present movement of the stars, the present streamings of radiant light, the present deeds and thoughts of men are real; the whole past is dead; the whole future is not yet,” — any such reporter of the temporal existence of the universe may be invited to state how long his real present of the time-world is. ”

“ Thus it is that when we stretch our view through immense vistas of time past, or when we look forward through immeasurable ages of time to come, the alteration in the length of the day will assume the most startling proportions, and involve the most momentous consequences. ”

“ Time, in short, is to our conception, a series in constant onward progress, and cannot be conceived by us, but as a progressive series, of which our separate feelings are parts; the remembrance of the events of our life, whenever we take any distant retrospect of them, being like the remembrance of the space, which we have traversed in a journey,—an indistinct continuity of length, as truly divisible, in our conception, into the separate events which we remember, as the space, which we remember to have traversed, into its separate variety of scenes. ”

“ For how could 'time' be measured in minutes or hours by a woman wearing a blindfold, shut away in the dark, and waiting a verdict that could cause the future to slough away into chill gulfs? And how could 'time' have any meaning when the stars faded out of the sky and a sunset gun boomed farewell to the joys of the physical world? ”

“ That which is more than an event must also, from another side, exist, and must thus appear in, or as, one member of the temporal series. But, so far as it transcends time, it is ideal, and, as such, is not fact. ”

“ We reach the notion of space through our external perception of extension by the senses of sight and touch. So also we derive the notion of time from our perception of motion or change, and mainly from our consciousness of change and succession in our own conscious states. The concept of time involves immediately two other concepts, that of duration, and that of succession. Duration, or continuance in existence, is of two kinds, permanent and successive. Permanent duration is the duration of an immutable being, formally and in so far as it is immutable. ”

“ Let one sit with closed eyes and, abstracting entirely from the outer world, attend exclusively to the passage of time, like one who wakes, as the poet says, "to hear time flowing in the middle of the night, and all things moving to a day of doom." ”

“ And this is borne out by individual reflection. When striking and deeply interesting events follow one another very rapidly, as when we are travelling, duration appears to swell out.
It is possible that such a succession of stirring experiences may beget a vague consciousness of time at each successive moment, and apart from retrospection, simply by force of the change. In other words, without our distinctly attending to time, a series of novel impressions might, by giving us the consciousness of change, make us dimly aware of the numerical richness of our experiences. ”

“ Looking only to the Future, you forget our ample Past that has made us what we are. Yet our Past is here and now, beside us at this very moment. Into the hollow cups of weeks and months, of years and centuries, Time pours its flood beneath our eyes. Time is our schoolroom.⁠ ⁠... ”

“ We have, however, seen reasons, which, applied to time, would lead us to declare that an absolute insight would view the temporal order as a discrete series of facts ordered as any succession of facts expressing one purpose would be ordered, viz. like the whole numbers. On the other hand, we have no reason to suppose that our human consciousness distinctly observes intervals of time that in brevity anywhere nearly approach to the final truth about the temporal order. Within what is for us the least observable happening, a larger insight may indeed discriminate multitudes of events. ”

“ As we saw before, the brief span of our consciousness, the small range of succession, that we can grasp at once, constitutes a perfectly arbitrary limitation of our own special type of consciousness. But in principle a time-sequence, however brief, is already viewed in a way that is not merely temporal, when, despite its sequence, it is grasped at once, and is thus grasped not through mere memory, but by virtue of actual experience. ”

“ As, in this life, consciousness is interrupted by sleep and by accidents, so the temporal processes, in whatever variety they have, which fulfil in their wholeness and in their relations to the eternal order the life of an individual, may be, for all that I can see, in any one of a large number of relations to us and to one another, — contemporaneous, continuously successive, or discontinuously successive, with temporal gaps of any magnitude. ”

“ Within, by the light of distant windows, amid refracted shadows, we discern the vacant pews and empty galleries, the silent organ, the voiceless pulpit, and the clock, which tells to solitude how time is passing. Time,—where man lives not,—what is it but eternity? ”

“ With self-enshrined eternity, &c.
Time is our consciousness of the succession of ideas in our mind. Vivid sensation, of either pain or pleasure, makes the time seem long, as the common phrase is, because it renders us more acutely conscious of our ideas. If a mind be conscious of an hundred ideas during one minute, by the clock, and of two hundred during another, the latter of these spaces would actually occupy so much greater extent in the mind as two exceed one in quantity. ”

“ How lustreless and same the passage of time appears when we review it in our memory! but how uncertain and varied it is when we live it moment by moment, leaning out of each second to encounter the next! ”

“ Time, the consoler, Time, the rich carrier of all changes, dries the freshest tears by obtruding new figures, new costumes, new roads, on our eye, new voices on our ear. As the west wind lifts up again the heads of the wheat which were bent down and lodged in the storm, and combs out the matted and dishevelled [223] grass as it lay in night-locks on the ground, so we let in time as a drying wind into the seed-field of thoughts which are dark and wet and low bent. Time restores to them temper and elasticity. How fast we forget the blow that threatened to cripple us. Nature will not sit still ”

“ As regards an individual life, the duration of a realm, or the chronology of any connected series of events, it would seem that we are dealing with an isolated stretch of time; everything seems to have a beginning and an end. And it would appear that a series of such experiences, lives, ages, or epochs, when successively arranged, constitutes a straightaway drive, an isolated event of time flashing momentarily across the infinite face of eternity. ”

“ Let us therefore see, O human soul, whether present time can be long; for to thee is it given to perceive and to measure periods of time. What wilt thou reply to me? Is a hundred years when present a long time? ”

“ But no series of experiences upon which attention is fixed is wholly indifferent to us; and the temporal aspect of such series always involves some element of expectancy and some sense of something that no longer is; and both these conscious attitudes color our interest in the presented succession, and give the whole the meaning of life. Time is thus indeed the form of practical activity ”

“ What are the moments loaded with passion, intense, and never-dying—years, ages upon earth! Away with the divisions of time, whilst one short breath—the smallest particle or measure of duration, shall outweigh ages. ”

“ Of these subjective Time (or times, since every centre of experience possesses an indefinite plurality of his own, if we do not—as for practical purposes we always do—exclude the times of dreams, etc.) alone can claim to be a matter of immediate experience. It consists in the psychical facts of succession and memory, and its ‘present time’ always has duration. It forms the psychological basis of all time-constructions, but for practical purposes it is well nigh useless. Our subjective time estimates vary too enormously for us to live by them. ”

“ Beyond its borders extends the immense region of conceived time, past and future, into one direction or another of which we mentally project all the events which we think of as real, and form a systematic order of them by giving to each a date. The relation of conceived to intuited time is just like that of the fictitious space pictured on the flat back-scene of a theatre to the actual space of the stage. ”

“ When the future, thanks to such computations, becomes transparent, the sensation of time is lost, and it seems that you are standing motionless on the deck of the foresight of the future. The sensation of time dissappears and it resembles a field before and a field behind, turning into a kind of space... ”

“ For who of us can measure even Time, that the gnat measures as well as we, or the eagle, or the ancient yew, or the mountain whose granite brows are white with ages—much less Eternity, wherein Time is but a vanishing pulse? ”

“ Spalding, that I was gratified when I first came here to find everybody talking and thinking correctly about time and space. You will have noticed that here we say state, meaning state of consciousness, where we used to say place. In the same way we talk about states of time, meaning time as a state of consciousness. My present state, you will observe, is exactly ten minutes past ten by my clock, which is my consciousness. My consciousness registers time automatically. ”

“ As we grow older the years seem to run to months, the months to weeks, the weeks to days, the days to hours, the hours to moments, until time, like an exhalation, appears to dissolve in the inane, and become the nothing it was and is and will be for eternity. ”

“ The concept of ‘period of time’ marks the disclosure in sense-awareness of entities in nature known merely by their temporal relations to discerned entities. Still further, this separation of the ideas of space and time has merely been adopted for the sake of gaining simplicity of exposition by conformity to current language. What we discern is the specific character of a place through a period of time. This is what I mean by an ‘event.’ We discern some specific character of an event. But in discerning an event we are also aware of its significance as a relatum in the structure of events. ”

“ The time is conceivable, if it is not actually realisable, in which the earth will be like the moon—in which the sun will be like the moon. What will have come to the energy which they have given off? ”

“ In our consciousness, however, the now of experience does mean just such an actual, brief, but still finite, interval or period of time, within which and during which events succeed one after another. ”

“ PERIODICITY We recognize and accept this cyclic return of time in such familiar manifestations of it as Nature affords in periodicity. We recognize it also in our mental and emotional life, when the periods can be co-ordinated with known physical phenomena, as in the case of the wanderlust which comes in the mild melancholy of autumn, the moods that go with waning day, and winter night. ”

“ Free-Will. "Time is but a relative mode of regarding things." "Events may, in some sense, exist always, both past and future." Time like a moving-picture reel, containing the future scene at the present moment, though out of sight. Analogy of dream-time. An Absolute Consciousness in which past, present and future exist as a single perception. A glimpse of a transcendental truth. How to acquire the faculty of Future-Clairvoyance. ”

“ For what is Time? The shadow on the dial,--the striking of the clock,--the running of the sand,--day and night,--summerand winter,--months, years, centuries! These are but arbitrary and outward signs,--the measure of Time, not Time itself! Time is the Life of the Soul. ”

“ Material and temporal terms must naturally have ceased to bear any meaning to them, since they have passed out of this infinitesimal sphere of space and time into the timeless and immeasurable day, the sun of which for ever stands at the height of an imperishable noon. ”

“ They reason that just as a man may see at one moment of his time some particular event which might appear as a year to some minute form of life and mind—the microscopic creatures in a drop of water, for instance—so that which seems as a year, or as a hundred years, to the mind of man, may appear as the happening of a single moment of a higher scale of time to some exalted Being, or form of consciousness on a higher plane. ”