ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Knowledge and the Sacred Chapter Seven: Eternity and the Temporal Order Zeit ist wie Ewigkeit und Ewigkeit wie Zeit, So du nur selber nicht machst einen Unterscheid. Eternity is as time, time as eternity, If they are otherwise, the difference is in thee.1 Angelus Silesius To-day, to-morrow, yesterday With Thee are one, an instant aye.

Joshua Sylvester Not only does man stand at the point of intersection of the vertical and horizontal axes of existence considered in their spatial symbolism, but he also lives at the moment when the eternal and the temporal meet. He is at once a being located in time and the process of change and one who is made for the Eternal and the Immutable and who is able to gain access to the Eternal even when living outwardly in the domain of becoming.

He can, moreover, live in time and experience it not only as change and transience but also as the “moving image of eternity.” In the same way that the periphery of the circle of existence reflects the Center which is everywhere and nowhere, the experience of that change which is called time reflects eternity in that whenever which is the ever-recurring now.

As long as man is man, the vertical axis is open before him not only in the “spatial” sense of enabling him to climb to the higher levels of reality and ultimately to the Real as such, but also “temporally” in transcending the experience of profane time to reach the portal of eternity itself.

Likewise, in the same way that the intermediate worlds possess their own space and form until one reaches the level of formless manifestation, so also do they possess their own “time” or what would correspond to time in the terrestrial realm of existence.

No better proof is needed of the meeting of the dimensions of time and eternity within man than the fact that man is aware of his own death, of his own mortality, which means that he is also given the possibility to envisage that which lies beyond the terminus a quo of terrestrial existence. Man's awareness of his mortality is in a sense proof of his immortality, of the fact that he was created for the Eternal.

Moreover, there exists within normal man a natural attraction for the Eternal which is none other than the Absolute and the Sacred as such. The Eternal is like the original abode of the soul which, being lost, is sought by the soul everywhere in its earthly exile.