Be Here Now

Following up on Jack’s suggestion to look at the list of conventional views (listed on TSK 83-85) and reflect on how they differ from the TSK vision—what stands out most for me is how the meditative phrase, “Be Here Now” expresses a limited view of being in space and time.

Ram Dass, who made this phrase a mantra in the ‘60’s, gave something positive to the world, as has Eckhart Tolle in his book, “The Power of Now.”  And it is encouraging to see that people, outside of the small group of people who study TSK, can experience an alternative to the discouragement and dread instilled in us in the face of the powerful inertial forces that are sweeping across our world.

At the same time, reading “The Power of Now”, after years of appreciative study of the TSK vision, I felt that something was missing in Tolle’s “Now”.   Perhaps not for him personally, but as a communicated vision, the “Now”–while providing a natural doorway into a greater Time–cannot be the destination.   TSK warns of having any pre-established destination, including that of activating an intense feeling of presence in the Now.

Reflecting on this, I notice my own infatuation with the idea that the future is glimpsed through a window and beckons outside an open door.  I suppose we all need some kind of metaphor for a greater “reality” that is just a step away.  But it’s that step that is the issue.  If we are busy ‘being here now’, we may miss that we are already the beneficiaries of a greater being in the openness of a greater space (a spaciousness that embraces all here’s and all there’s) and that we are animated by a greater time (a time which permeates all now’s and all when’s).