Chapter 42

ETERNITY WITHOUT TIME.

“Man’s conception of eternity is that of infinite duration, continuance without beginning or end, and yet everything he knows is bounded by two or more opposites. From a beginning, as he sees a form of matter, that substance passes to an end.” Thus spoke my guide.

Then he asked, and showed by his question that he appreciated the nature of my recent experiences: “Do you recall the instant that you left me standing by this bowl to start, as you imagined, with me as a companion, on the journey to the cavern of the grotesque?”

“No; because I did not leave you. I sipped of the liquid, and then you moved on with me from this spot; we were together, until at last we were separated on the edge of the cave of drunkards.”

“Listen,” said he; “I neither left you nor went with you. You neither went from this spot nor came back again. You neither saw nor experienced my presence nor my absence; there was no beginning to your journey.”

“Go on.”

“You ate of the narcotic fungus; you have been intoxicated.”

“I have not,” I retorted. “I have been through your accursed caverns, and into hell beyond. I have been consumed by eternal damnation in the journey, have experienced a heaven of delight, and also an eternity of misery.”

“Upon the contrary, the time that has passed since you drank the liquid contents of that fungus fruit has only been that which permitted you to fall upon your knees. You swallowed the liquor when I handed you the shell cup; you dropped upon your knees, and then instantly awoke. See,” he said; “in corroboration of my assertion the shell of the fungus fruit at your feet is still dripping with the liquid you did not drink. Time has been annihilated. Under the influence of this potent earth-bred narcoto-intoxicant, your dream begun inside of eternity; you did not pass into it.”

“You say,” I interrupted, “that I dropped upon my knees, that I have experienced the hallucination of intoxication, that the experiences of my vision occurred during the second of time that was required for me to drop upon my knees.”

“Yes.”

“Then by your own argument you demonstrate that eternity requires time, for even a millionth part of a second is time, as much so as a million of years.”

“You mistake,” he replied, “you misinterpret my words. I said that all you experienced in your eternity of suffering and pleasure, occurred between the point when you touched the fungus fruit to your lips, and that when your knees struck the stone.”

“That consumed time,” I answered.

“Did I assert,” he questioned, “that your experiences were scattered over that entire period?”

“No.”

“May not all that occurred to your mind have been crushed into the second that accompanied the mental impression produced by the liquor, or the second of time that followed, or any other part of that period, or a fraction of any integral second of that period?”

“I can not say,” I answered, “what part of the period the hallucination, as you call it, occupied.”

“You admit that so far as your conception of time is concerned, the occurrences to which you refer may have existed in either an inestimable fraction of the first, the second, or the third part of the period.”

“Yes,” I replied, “yes; if you are correct in that, they were illusions.”

“Let me ask you furthermore,” he said; “are you sure that the flash that bred your hallucination was not instantaneous, and a part of neither the first, second, nor third second?”

“Continue your argument.”

“I will repeat a preceding question with a slight modification. May not all that occurred to your mind have been crushed into the space between the second of time that preceded the mental impression produced by the liquor, and the second that followed it? Need it have been a part of either second, or of time at all? Indeed, could it have been a part of time if it were instantaneous?”

“Go on.”

“Suppose the entity that men call the soul of man were in process of separation from the body. The process you will admit would occupy time, until the point of liberation was reached. Would not dissolution, so far as the separation of matter and spirit is concerned at its critical point be instantaneous?”

I made no reply.

“If the critical point is instantaneous, there would be no beginning, there could be no end. Therein rests an eternity greater than man can otherwise conceive of, for as there is neither beginning nor end, time and space are annihilated. The line that separates the soul that is in the body from the soul that is out of the body is outside of all things. It is a between, neither a part of the nether side nor of the upper side; it is outside the here and the hereafter. Let us carry this thought a little further,” said he. “Suppose a good man were to undergo this change, could not all that an eternity of happiness might offer be crushed into this boundless conception, the critical point? All that a mother craves in children dead, could reappear again in their once loved forms; all that a good life earns, would rest in the soul’s experience in that eternity, but not as an illusion, although no mental pleasure, no physical pain is equal to that of hallucinations. Suppose that a vicious life were ended, could it escape the inevitable critical point? Would not that life in its previous journey create its own sad eternity? You have seen the working of an eternity with an end but not a beginning to it, for you can not sense the commencement of your vision. You have been in the cavern of the grotesque, --the realms of the beautiful, and have walked over the boundless sands that bring misery to the soul, and have, as a statue, seen the frozen universe dissolve. You are thankful that it was all an illusion as you deem it now; what would you think had only the heavenly part been spread before you?”