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The WoK Experiment: Nov 7, 2006


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Piet to Heloisa and Rod

Dear Rod and Heloisa,

Being still in Japan, my days are out of sync with respect to Rod in the U.S. and Heloisa in Brazil. So I decided to run Rod's one-day experiment from noon to noon, 11/6-11/7 instead. That had the interesting effect of including a night's sleep in the middle. When I woke up this morning, vivid dream memories were lingering, many more than usual. I saw three options: I could continue dressing myself up with my normal habits and identifications; or I could try to remember my many dreams; or I could try to remain in the openness available in between waking and sleeping.

I tried to remain in the openness, but pretty soon I realized that my normal thought processes had started up again. I recognized the sense of `me' trying to be something far wider, but that trying had become a fantasy, about an openness that `I' was now trying to obtain.

At that point I saw clearly the difference between the `four times' that Buddhist literature talks about: the past, present and future in serial time, and the `fourth time', what I have called timelessness. What happened, I think, was: a glimpse of timelessness offered itself in between sleeping and waking; I tried to avoid falling into memories of the past, and I also tried to avoid falling into the habitual serial present, and instead I fell into a future fantasy about trying to reach a future state of timelessness.

I had to laugh about the paradoxes upon paradoxes, with an `I' as defined in serial time trying to reach for a future in which to be more real and more timeless! How pernicious our time-bound habits are.

I then saw the different nature of the four times more clearly. I could remember my many dreams, and indeed I did so later, but I could not re-enter those dreams: I was only dealing with present memories of the past. I could also try to reach for future deep insights, but by definition those would out of reach: I was only dealing with present attempts pertaining to possible future insights.

So there I was: seemingly caught in the present, with past and future sealed off and all attempts to deal with them more ways to find myself locked in the present, and the fourth time doubly locked away; wishing to reach for the fourth time immediately degenerated in placing it habitually but mistakenly into the future. So what to do with the fourth time, separated even from that future from which I was already separated?

The answer came by itself, as an intuition rather than a thought, an insight that was more of an immediate clarity rather than the outcome of a process. The fourth time could not be reached, indeed; but not because it was off limits, but rather because it already constituted everything else, as the basis or origin for the whole show of serial time. I laughed again. How simple!

Piet


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