The connectedness between 'time' and 'eternity'

NOTHINGNESS - WHAT modern physicists call no-matter - is the essential stuff the universe is made of, exactly as the Vedas had propounded thousands of years ago that all manifestation is derived from an ultimate principle of spiritual consciousness - the one and only existent form of eternity – the void. The void is empty in the sense of nothingness, but don’t get it wrong, it is not mere empty nothingness - void of all right - but a creative void. We must remember this distinction in the context of what is being now discussed.
The seed of a tree is nothing but a container of that creative void. Break a seed. What do you find? Emptiness. When the seed breaks down into the earth, that void starts sprouting into a tree. The tree will flower, bear fruit, and falling into the earth, will become a seed again, thus returning to its origin, the void. This cycle of existence the Hindus have called samsara, the wheel, and its cessation, nirvana - the extinguishing of the fire of a lamp. ‘Nirvana’ is a Buddhist expression, having its origin in Hindu philosophy, but why the seed of Buddhism could not sprout in India is another story. (It went from India to China, and from there, to Japan).
No-mind, or, nothingness, is thus the beginning of all and the end of all. Out of nothingness arises what tantra (meaning, the technique) calls un-origination: out of un-origination arises non-memory; out of non-memory arises memory. This is the Tantra tree, the sequence.
Nothingness means that all is potential, nothing is yet actual. Existence is fast asleep in the seed, resting – the state of un-manifest being. The second state is un-origination – still nothing has originated, but things are ready to become actual – a pregnant state, ready to be born any moment. It is very very ready; in that sense it is not similar to the first state.
The third state is called non-memory. The child is born; the experience has become actual. The world has come in, but there is still no knowledge: non-memory. This is akin to the Christian concept when Adam lived in the Garden of Eden and had no knowledge; he had not yet tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge. This is the state, in which every child lives early in life. For a few months the child sees, listens, touches, tastes, but no recognition arises, no memory is formed. That is why it is so difficult to remember the early days of our lives. We can retrace our memory to about the age of four, or three at most, and then suddenly there is a blank. Why? We were alive, in fact more alive in those first three to four years than we will ever be again. Why is the memory of those years not there? Because the recognition was not there. Impressions were there, but there was no recognition.
That is why tantra calls this state non-memory. You see, but by seeing no knowledge is formed. You don’t gather anything. You live moment to moment, just slip from one to the other moment, have no past, each moment arising absolutely fresh. That is why children are so alive and so fresh, and their life is so full of joy, delight and wonder. Small things make them so happy. Everything for them is luminous. Their eyes are clear, no dust has gathered yet; their mirror reflects perfectly. This is the state of non-memory.
And then comes the fourth state: memory, the state of mind. Adam has eaten the fruit of knowledge; he has fallen, he has come into the world. From no-mind to mind is the passage into the world. No-mind is nirvana; mind is samsara. If you want to go back to the source, to that primal innocence, that primordial purity, then you will have to go backwards. The steps remain the same, only the order has to be in the reverse. Memory will have to be dissolved into non-memory. Hence the insistence of all meditations that the mind be dropped, thoughts be dropped.
Move from thought to no-thought, then from no-thought to un-origination, and then from un-origination to no-mind. There is a whole lot of technique involved, elucidated in detail in the Tantra – the ‘how’? of it. That’s another subject. To understand the concept in simple terms; we come from the ocean of eternity, from the void to origination, live in ’time’ in the samsara, journeying through countless lives because we do not seem to learn from our past mistakes, and when we finally do, return to our source, the void. It’s cyclic, like a wheel going on and on.
The pattern can be traced in the whole of nature. For example, the waters of the Ganges has an identity of its own, as long as it travels through various rivers, tributaries and sub-tributaries, into straits, assuming newer names in the process, ultimately to fall into the sea - the Bay of Bengal - far, far away from its place of origin, the Gangotri, in Garhwal Himalayan mountains. (Incidentally, Gangotri is the mouth of a cow, in the form of a gargoyle from where the waters drop in trickles, but its real origin is still shrouded in mystery). According to Hindu mythology, Goddess Ganga - the daughter of heaven, took the form of a river to absolve the sins of King Bhagirath’s predecessors, following his severe penance of several centuries. Lord Shiva received Ganga into his matted locks to minimize the impact of her fall”. (Source: Wikipedia). Minimising the ‘impact’ has a deep significance; the waters would have then penetrated the Earth and gone to hell, falling, as it did, from the heavens. Symbolic, but very meaningful.
Falling into the sea, even the goddess loses her identity, a difficult concept for many of the Westerners to grasp. How come a goddess loses her identity? Use Ganges in its stead, if you will. The drop has now become the ocean. And the beauty is that it is not only the ocean containing the drop, the drop too contains the ocean. Vastness is not two. It is one in its oneness! When you reach your source, you have arrived. From origination to nothingness is the other half of the cycle. And, then . . .
You are again the infinite.You are again the eternal.
No-mind is eternity; mind is time. Do you see the connectedness?