R
Ridgerunner
Guest
Undoubtedly, we have a keener sense of the process we call “time” because we perceive things sequentially; we remember things in the past and anticipate things that will happen in the future. We are thus inclined to think of time as a line; a sequence of events. Some scientists think time is another thing; a thing that interacts with space. Stephen Hawking is one of those who believes time travel is theoretically possible (and “proves” it mathematically), but that any matter attempting it will be destroyed in the process. That is all well beyond my ken, but at least to some, time is a real thing, not just my perception of sequence giving me the illusion that there is such a thing as “time”.
Oddly, though, we humans have a perception of “non-time”; something that is not in the clickity-clack of sequential events, and which we would not learn from it. It is an intuition of something we do not and cannot directly perceive (though the deja vu experiences of some might suggest such a perception). Being utterly outside our experience, it should be outside our imagination, but it isn’t. In that, timelessness or eternity is similar to infinity. There is no possibility whatever that we can apprehend, let alone comprehend infinity, notwithstanding the horizontal “8” we use in mathematics to signify it. Our minds are not big enough for it. Yet, we do seem, as some have observed, “built for the infinite”. We do not fill up with knowledge, love or wisdom, like so many quart jars. Likely we are on the same footing with time and timelessness, and perhaps timelessness is only an aspect of infinity. A cow with a bale of alfalfa is entirely happy. A dog with a steak is as well. They are fulfilled in the moment. We, on the other hand, are never are fully, completely satisfied. As Goethe maintained, the Faustian bargain does not “work out on the ground”, as the surveyors say. Sartre, observing this, declared that if God existed, human life would make perfect sense. But, (he being an atheist) since God does not exist, he said, life is absurd. And, like Camus, he declared that the only thing to do is to rebel against it and, ultimately, to commit suicide as a protest against someone who isn’t even there; the indisputably perfect absurdity.
Now, one could propose, and many do, that there is no God. If there is not, Sartre and Camus are right and human life is not only absurd, human life is cruel, because virtually all of us have an instinct toward, and an intuition of, a denoument that would not actually be there. We would be alone among the creatures of which we are aware, in having ultimate longings that go nowhere.
Most everyone accepts the speculation that there are purely natural creatures somewhere in the universe that are far beyond us, both in intelligence and in longevity. Many scientists seem to take that as a given. But once one allows of that possibility at all, one must accept it that such creatures would be ultimately incomprehensible to us as they are, and that we could know and understand them only insofar as they elected to communicate something of themselves to us in a way we could understand. We would call such communication “revelation”, would we not?
So, since our experience is only of sequence, but our intuition tells us timelessness has reality, and since our whole being is drawn to not only timelessness but infinity, we can only wait. And, in the meantime, we have no alternative but to weigh in our minds whether life is, indeed, absurd, or whether those things for which we long actually exist. But it is certainly sobering, and perhaps instructive, to realize how very little we know even about things that are purely natural, and to further realize we are unlikely to penetrate into much of it even if we had a thousand Hawkings with a million years to undertake it. A fair example of that is whatever was there before the Big Bang if, indeed, there was a Big Bang. It is axiomatic that we can never know that because the B.B. would have changed everything, leaving no fingerprints behind to examine. Since we are forced to admit there is much (probably most things-we still don’t even know why we have an appendix) that we can’t know, the balance seems weighted against assuming absurdity, when there are many fairly clear signs, persuasive to most humans throughout history, that the weight of the proposition is against it.
Bottom line. I don’t think we can penetrate eternity. We are, we believe, everlasting beings, but we are not eternal beings, and have no frame of reference. We can know of eternity only to the extent its aspects are revealed to us by the One who lives in it. It is interesting for us to think of eternity for that Being as a state rather than a “thing” or a perception of a “non-thing”. But we can’t know about it other than what we are told.
Oddly, though, we humans have a perception of “non-time”; something that is not in the clickity-clack of sequential events, and which we would not learn from it. It is an intuition of something we do not and cannot directly perceive (though the deja vu experiences of some might suggest such a perception). Being utterly outside our experience, it should be outside our imagination, but it isn’t. In that, timelessness or eternity is similar to infinity. There is no possibility whatever that we can apprehend, let alone comprehend infinity, notwithstanding the horizontal “8” we use in mathematics to signify it. Our minds are not big enough for it. Yet, we do seem, as some have observed, “built for the infinite”. We do not fill up with knowledge, love or wisdom, like so many quart jars. Likely we are on the same footing with time and timelessness, and perhaps timelessness is only an aspect of infinity. A cow with a bale of alfalfa is entirely happy. A dog with a steak is as well. They are fulfilled in the moment. We, on the other hand, are never are fully, completely satisfied. As Goethe maintained, the Faustian bargain does not “work out on the ground”, as the surveyors say. Sartre, observing this, declared that if God existed, human life would make perfect sense. But, (he being an atheist) since God does not exist, he said, life is absurd. And, like Camus, he declared that the only thing to do is to rebel against it and, ultimately, to commit suicide as a protest against someone who isn’t even there; the indisputably perfect absurdity.
Now, one could propose, and many do, that there is no God. If there is not, Sartre and Camus are right and human life is not only absurd, human life is cruel, because virtually all of us have an instinct toward, and an intuition of, a denoument that would not actually be there. We would be alone among the creatures of which we are aware, in having ultimate longings that go nowhere.
Most everyone accepts the speculation that there are purely natural creatures somewhere in the universe that are far beyond us, both in intelligence and in longevity. Many scientists seem to take that as a given. But once one allows of that possibility at all, one must accept it that such creatures would be ultimately incomprehensible to us as they are, and that we could know and understand them only insofar as they elected to communicate something of themselves to us in a way we could understand. We would call such communication “revelation”, would we not?
So, since our experience is only of sequence, but our intuition tells us timelessness has reality, and since our whole being is drawn to not only timelessness but infinity, we can only wait. And, in the meantime, we have no alternative but to weigh in our minds whether life is, indeed, absurd, or whether those things for which we long actually exist. But it is certainly sobering, and perhaps instructive, to realize how very little we know even about things that are purely natural, and to further realize we are unlikely to penetrate into much of it even if we had a thousand Hawkings with a million years to undertake it. A fair example of that is whatever was there before the Big Bang if, indeed, there was a Big Bang. It is axiomatic that we can never know that because the B.B. would have changed everything, leaving no fingerprints behind to examine. Since we are forced to admit there is much (probably most things-we still don’t even know why we have an appendix) that we can’t know, the balance seems weighted against assuming absurdity, when there are many fairly clear signs, persuasive to most humans throughout history, that the weight of the proposition is against it.
Bottom line. I don’t think we can penetrate eternity. We are, we believe, everlasting beings, but we are not eternal beings, and have no frame of reference. We can know of eternity only to the extent its aspects are revealed to us by the One who lives in it. It is interesting for us to think of eternity for that Being as a state rather than a “thing” or a perception of a “non-thing”. But we can’t know about it other than what we are told.
But someday she will see, know, and perhaps understand what even I myself do not know about myself.
