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before I began to live with myself. Otherwise, the idea of Time would be similar to a
stick with only one end to it. Could a stick be a stick and possess only a single end?
Aren t two ends required to give such stick reality? Or rather, aren t the two ends
required to make the stick knowable for what it is? To my way of thinking, because
Consciousness must have some way of measuring or conceiving of its endlessness in
both directions from the Now, we have the phenomenon of the strictly mortal
span when the vehicle has Beginning and an End. Consciousness itself has had no
beginning and can have no end not as sheer Self-Awareness. But Consciousness could
have a beginning of function to demonstrate itself objectively, just as it can have an
ending of function demonstrating itself objectively. True, the Omniverse of
demonstrable Form will cease to exist in such twinkling of time, leaving
Self-Awareness in total knowledge of all which lies within itself. It is even passably
creditable that some such terminus of objective animation is  that far-off divine event
toward which all creation moves. Still, that, is not our subject for discussion at the
moment. Consciousness must have some way of conceiving of the endlessness of
existence, resident in its own essence. So it developed the phenomenon of entering into
Beyond Grandeur William D. Pelley 54
and out of a vehicle of expression known as organism, which performed for a sequence
in Form, and then vacated. The organic vehicle thereat disintegrated. The constant and
continual coming and going of immortal Consciousness in organic form, and the
constant and continual dissolution of the organic form when a reasonable longevity of
function had maintained, introduced the ideology of Death into endlessness in terms that
endlessness could conceive in application to itself.
The notion of a given span of animation for the organic vehicle and its dissolution
at the finish of the span, would seem to have been merely an intellectual ruse of
Consciousness for arriving at the concept of its own eternality. Otherwise Endlessness
would not be interpretable to itself. It was the concepts in operation that gave the result
of self-identification in each instance that is, by opposition or contrasts.
Seemingly organic Death was necessary to Consciousness to depict its own
deathlessness. And this is nowise paradox. The physical occupancy and demise
conveyed other idea-images to Deathless Consciousness than this concept of its own
deathlessness, of course. But when we come to grasp Death of the Vehicle as a ruse to
prove its opposite, we grasp a Purpose, or aim in itself, of this physical termination that
at the present stage of capsule self-awareness appears to be such tragedy. It has to
appear thus tragic, it seems, in order to make the desired impression on the deathless
intellect, and obtain the picture images for Endlessness to think in, concerning
Everlastingness.
But wait a moment! Let s go back and do some thinking about the endlessness that
preceded the Now ...
IN THE first place, how much attention have you ever given to the phenomenon of
Now? Ten to one you ve never thought about it, just accepted it as self-evident
proposition. Now was the present instant of self-aware consciousness in which things
happened that impressed permanent record by the feat of memory upon your intellect.
The fact that they happened in perceptible circumstances made you absolutely certain
that they were occurring in contiguity with your instant s observation. Probably it never
dawned upon you that maybe they didn t at all, that it was all an illusion of our sense
perceptions.
Meaning this: It has been told by marijuana smokers that the drug registers a
peculiar effect upon the mind. Some marijuana addicts hear the reports of a pistol-shot,
for instance, and it is not a quick sharp detonation of sound it is long-drawn-out roar
of noise that dies away in diminuendo of echoes. A clarinet player starts to sound the
note of music that contributes his part to the piece the orchestra is playing just one
note, understand. The effect of it on the marijuana smoker s consciousness is similar to
the blast of the 10:30 curfew to the normal person s perceptions, a long tuneful drone of
sound that may even rise or fall in volume or seem to do so and that may even give the
musician opportunity to alter his pitch. The nonmarijuana user hears only a mechanical
toot coming form the bell of an instrument, quickly drowned out by other noises. Do the
Beyond Grandeur William D. Pelley 55
senses of the drug user actually add to Time? Suppose the delayed registration of sound
in the consciousness common to the addict were common to all persons what of Time
itself? If all persons were afflicted with the addict s delayed recognition, or accelerated
recognition, of the time required to play a note in a jazz orchestra, would events be
happening when he assumed they were or would they be delayed or advanced? Actually
the marijuana user s senses must be ahead of the vibration producing the  music ...
What is Time, anyhow, that it can thus be trifled with, in practical effect?
Our clocks register Time by dividing the span of occurrence of event by the
sequence required for our satellite to complete its orbit around the sun months and
weeks and hours and minutes and seconds. The average human being  thinks in
seconds. But are we sure we know what Time truly is, when we encounter entirely sane
and sensible persons whose consciousness has been able to plunge ahead into scenes of
events not yet occurred and describe the denouement, or go backward and behold what
happened yesterday or the day before as though happening in the present instant? Don t
argue that such suggestions are fantastic... I have done the thing myself. On a certain
memorable occasion at 7:30p.m. in New York City of an August evening I  went
backward in Time to 2:30 that same afternoon and projected myself into sequence that
had been played out by others at a distant spot where I was recognized as one of the
participants in the happening; a moment or so later in New York I slipped mentally
ahead two weeks and played another scene with principals that they did no themselves
enact in reality until a fortnight had passed. And the point of proof was, that in each case
my report of activity as to my own behavior was one hundred percent attested by second
and third parties and yet I described my acts in Time both ways within the one
summer afterglow between seven and eight o clock by solar chronology.
My philosophical challenge is, if all the Time acknowledged in the universe had
been gauged by my own sense reactions in both instances, and there were no other
critical brain to either conform or deny it, would not Time have been considered as a
mere mental postulation and not a subdivision of the earth s movement about Old Sol at
all? Suppose the clairvoyant  moves up ahead into the Time Drama she is witnessing
and describing under trance? Does not Time become only a corollary of her
consciousness? And is it not quite as positive and reliable to her as to any four or five
people who are not entranced? Very god then, suppose for expositon s sake we eliminate
the  four or five . Suppose we say there are no other persons alive on the globe but the
clairvoyant. What becomes of Time as an abstract proposition? Isn t it anything that the
observing consciousness recognizes it to be? And if there were only two people on earth,
and they failed to register time-passing the same mentally, then would there not be two
varieties of Time and who could say which was accurate?
The material logician would say all of it have nothing to do with the fixed passage [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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