The Present Moment Now

When we are not aware that certain things which we take for granted like the separateness of things from each other. When we are not aware that this is a matter of convention, we are out to be fooled. Now I think one of the conventions by which we tend to be fooled more than almost any other is time.

And for all human beings, time is a matter of extraordinary importance and perhaps this is one of the principal ways in which we differ from animals because man has been called a time-binding animal. That is to say a creature who is vividly aware of the fact that his life moves, as it were, along a line from the past, through the present, and into the future.

Animals apparently live, pretty much, moment by moment. They don't appear to have very strong memories but because man has a strong memory, he is able to bare the past in mind and, as it were, cast it forward into visions of the future, based upon what has happened in the past.

And therefore, although this facility gives man the most extraordinary ability to plan his life, to prepare for future eventualities, at the same time, there is a very heavy price which he pays for it and especially if he takes this ability too seriously. In other words if he doesn't realise that the true reality in which he lives is the present moment now.

For example, the animal probably doesn't concern itself very much with problems of future disease, death or starvation and things of that kind. If an animal sees another dead animal laying around I don't suppose he thinks to himself "Well one day that's going to happen to me." Rather, he just sees a dead animal, sniffs it, sees whether it's good to eat and wanders away.

But for human beings it's entirely different because we actually spend most of our time and a great deal of our emotional energy living in time which is not here. Living in an elsewhere which is not concretely real. So much so that although we may be quite comfortable and happy in our present circumstances, if there is not a guarantee, not a promise of a good time coming tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow we're at once unhappy even in the midst of pleasure and affluence. And so we develop a kind of chronic anxiety about time.

We want to be sure more and more because of our sensitivity to the feeling of time. We want to be sure more and more that our future is assured. And for this reason the future becomes of more importance to most human beings than the present. And in this sense we are hooked, taken in by a maya because it is of very little use to us; to be able to control and plan the future unless we are capable at the same time of living totally in the present.

And so, when in civilised societies we spend so much of our time living in the future we become very much like those celebrated donkeys, you know that have a carrot fastened on a stick that's tied to the neck, you know behind here, and it comes over and there's the carrot dangling in front of them and they pursue it, pursue it, pursue it but can never reach it. And so in exactly the same way it's that way with us.

My goodness, don't you remember when you went first to school - you went to kindergarden and in kindergarden the idea was to push along so that you could get into first grade and then push along so you could get into second grade, third grade, so on going up and up. Then you went to high school - this was a great transition in life and now the pressure is being put on - "You must get ahead."

"You must go up the grades and finally be good enough to get to college." And then when you get to college you are still going step by step, step by step up to the great moment in which you're ready to go out into the world. And then when you get out into this famous world comes the struggle for success in profession or business.

And again there seems to be a ladder before you; something for which you're reaching all the time. And then suddenly, when you're about 40 or 45 years old in the middle of life you wake up one day and say "Huh?" "I've arrived." "And by Jove, I feel pretty much the same as I've always felt." "In fact I'm not so sure that I don't feel a little bit cheated." Because, you see, you were fooled.

You were always living for somewhere where you aren't. And while as I said it is of tremendous use for us, to be able to look ahead in this way and plan. There is no use planning for a future which when you get to it and it becomes the present you won't be there - you'll be living in some other future which hasn't yet arrived and so in this way one is never able actually to inherit and enjoy the fruits of one's action. You can't live at all unless you can live fully - now.

And because now is never satisfactory because we're never really living in it we get more and more avid to go ahead and pursue the future. We develop our technology to a fantastic ability where we can more and more fulfil our desires for the future almost immediately, working towards a sort of push-button-world. But have you ever stopped to think what the world would be like if you could fulfil every wish the moment you wished it? Suppose, for example, on going to bed at night you could always dream whatever you wanted to dream.

What would happen after a while? Of course, I suppose at first you would dream fantastic pleasures, wonderful adventures, fulfilment of all the things you ever wished. Then as time as went on, don't you think you would want to be "Ooh" - a little bit surprised? Have a little bit less control over what was happening to you? And after you had experimented with this for some months or years you might even want dreams in which you suffer Because there is no real delight, no real fulfilment without delay. Doesn't every child know on a hot day and you think "I'm terribly thirsty." "And I would like an ice cream soda."

Haven't you tried the experiment of putting off drinking it? Putting it off so that you get thirstier and thirstier and it's so much fun when you finally get to it. So in the same way, impatience with time always wanting the future is frustrating.