Totally in the Present

 

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Totally in the Present

Our whole emphasis is on this moment, because this moment contains all. Now is the only reality – all else is either memory or imagination. And even for the past to exist as memory, now is needed. It doesn’t exist as the past; it exists as a thought in the present. And so is the case with the future: the future does not exist as the future; it exists as imagination in the present moment. All that exists, exists in the now. Now is the only time there is and to become more and more alert about now is to become aware of the presence of God.

We are very unalert. We think much of the past and we also think much of the future and our whole life is wasted in that thinking. Because of and between these two – the past and the future – the present is crushed, sandwiched, and has almost become negligible, it has become so small. The real has become small and the unreal has grown so big.

If we think of the past, it is long - our past, then the society’s past, then humanity’s past, then the past of life on earth and then the earth’s past, and then the sun and the moon and the stars; it is infinite. And so is the future infinite: it will go on and on. Compared to the past and future, the present seems almost nothing – it is just a small point, atomic – and between these two it is almost lost track of. And that is the only reality; everything else is unreal compared to it.

Just meditate on this - we are facing a rose flower, a beautiful rose flower. It is there – the fragrance is released into our nostrils; we are delighted with it. Now bring the past in. Think of something in the past: somebody insulted us yesterday or yesteryear, or think of a childhood incident, our mother was beating us. Bring it into memory and suddenly the mind is clouded. Now we will not feel the presence of the flower so much. It is still there, the same flower, but we are no more here; we are distracted, we have become foggy, clouded. A screen of memory has come between us and the rose flower.

Or think of the future – some plan, some fantasy, something that we want to do tomorrow – and the flower fades, bows out further and further. The deeper in thought we go, the farther the flower recedes. Come out of the thought and the sky is clear, the clouds have separated and again the sunshine and again the presence of the flower; we can again smell it. While we were thinking of the past and the future the smell was still knocking at the doors of our nose, but we were not available. The colour of the flower was still coming to our eyes but we were not there. It was as if we were looking through a dark glass; things became unclear, hazy, a mist surrounded us

The whole work of meditation is nothing but this: how to become utterly present in the present, how to collect oneself in the now. Then everything is beautiful. Then walking is meditation, sitting is meditation, talking is meditation, listening is meditation, because whether you walk or sit, it is always now; whether you are silent or talking it is always now. There is only one time. Now is eternity.

This is the key. We have to work on it, we have to play around this idea more and more. In whatever we are doing, again and again we have to pull ourselves into the present. In the beginning the mind rebels, resists; old patterns are powerful, old habits go on dragging us here and there. But slowly, steadily as the joy of the present becomes deepened, as we start becoming more and more saturated with it, as we see the contentment that arises out of it and the silence and the celebration, the old patterns are broken, the habits disappear.

And that day – when we start living in the present twenty-four hours a day – is the day of enlightenment. It does not mean that one will never think about the past but that one will be aware of the present. Even when a thought of the past is present in our mind, we will look at it as a present thought; we will not be dragged into the past. It will be just like a rose flower, there inside, blooming – a memory flower – but we will remember that this is the moment, the now moment. We remain centred in the now; then there is no problem.

Yes, the past can be used, and so too can the future. One has to plan – tomorrow one has to leave and the tickets have to be purchased, the journey has to be booked, but that is not the future either; that too is in the present. One remains in the present whatever one is doing – in memory or imagination. 

And once this penetrates deeply, even in dreams we will be present. We will see the dreams blooming there and we will know that this is a dream. And to know that a dream is a dream is a great experience. Then we have really come home – we are centred in our being.