i'm still in my philosophical funk that was brought on by the movie Solaris. While re-reading some Kierkegaard over the weekend, i came upon an interesting notion. The eternal is experienced in an instant that intersects time and our perception. For Kierkegaard, man is not just a temporal being comprised of a synthesis of soul and body; rather she is also a synthesis of the temporal and the eternal. While i do not claim to be a philosopher, my reading (see selected text) spurred me to consider the relationship between our perception and reality as it relates to time. Here is my first go at it.
"…. Because every moment, like the sum of the moments, is a process (a going-by) no moment is present, and in the same sense there is neither past, present, nor future. If one thinks it possible to maintain this division, it is because we spatialize a moment, but thereby the infinite succession is brought to a standstill, and that is because one introduces a visual representation, visualizing time instead of thinking it."
It is this continual process of visualization that we commonly refer to as history with its past, present and future. Moment by moment we reflect on our immediate experience and create the chimera of the present. The present we create is not itself an entirely objective picture of reality. It is a memory of the experience of perception within time.
Those external objects that exist within our spatialization are normally referred to as real if they have a fairly detailed correspondence to the perceptions of other people in this construction we call the present. Take ghosts sightings as an example of this social phenomenon. If ghosts were as commonly perceived in the present as the chair you are sitting in, their existence would be socially codified as a reality instead of a belief.
A truly objective reality may lie in that instant of experience before our reflection, categorization, thought construction and memory storage. It seems plausible that reality would consist of the "pure being" or eternality expressed in the instant of transition when time and eternity intersect. The instant is therefore an abstract expression of eternity.
"The instant characterizes the present as having no past and no future, for in this precisely consists the imperfection of the sensuous life. [Physical reality] The eternal also characterizes the present as having no past and no future, and this is the perfection of the eternal….what characterizes time is only that it goes by…. If time and eternity are to touch one another, it must be in time - and with this we have reached that instant."
If we follow Kierkegaard's notion that man is a synthesis of the temporal and eternal, our consciousness lives in that instant. Our perception of reality is the transition between the eternal and our experience of that instant within the framework of time.
This is not an instant of time but rather an instant of eternity intersecting with time. A glimpse of the eternal that we get in the experiential flash of being that is prior to thought and our temporal visualization of it. Our notion of the present functions as an abstraction of eternity since our mental language of thought and idea are used to realize our experience of that instant. It would also follow that what we commonly refer to as reality is itself part of the social abstraction of the eternity we call the present.
Past, present, future, eternity and perceptual reality become meaningless apart from that instant where eternity intersects the temporal. The paradox of this transition only highlights the innate mystery of perception, reality, eternity and time. Our perceptual understanding becomes a dark lens that we use to describe the eternality of being within time.
i think this notion of the instant exists within the core of many a Christian mystic like myself. The mystical quest is to seek a union with God. It is a deep communion that exists beyond the mental language we use to describe our experiences. In this union, we experience God beyond knowledge, thought, knowing and even the memory of our experience of communion. It is a mystery and paradox.
If you have ever read any books from the Christian mystical tradition you will find them filled with colorful language and poetry to give us the gist of what they experience. At its core, mystical experience lay beyond the mental maps, perceptions and cognitive tools used to describe it. It is the experience of Kierkegaard's "instant" with God. Mystical experience is that communion of God and man where eternity and time intersect.
Thanks for sticking with me on this one. I think i've gotten out of the funk just before I go on my "Desert Wanderings" later this summer. (My spiritual retreat in the mode of the desert fathers.)
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