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During the night when Gautama entered Buddhahood and the great revelation of the Good Law was made to him, he discovered that existence was from moment to moment, discontinuous. The Hindu sages deny this and assert it is continuous in the Self. The pity of it is that both are right. For what happens in every interval between two moments? We then live solely and exclusively in the Self, the Absolute, delivered from Relativity and Finitude.

Many "still" photographs make up a cinema film. The break between every pair of pictures is not reported to the conscious mind because fast movement outruns attention. The symbolism is interesting: see The Wisdom of the Overself, Chapter 14, seventh meditation, for a more detailed explanation. Whoever attempts this exercise should practise it with the eyes only slightly open.

Then why did not the Buddha finish his announcement and give the entire truth? For the same reason he carefully kept quiet on several other points which could disturb men dependent on religion--on its representatives and rites, its customs and dogmas, and especially its past--to the point of enslavement. He likened the human predicament to being in a burning house and directed attention to the urgent need, which was to get out now and thus get saved. Here is a key word: the Present, manipulated rightly, can open the practitioner's mind. Then the Timeless itself may take him out of time (he, the personal self, cannot do it), out of the now into the Eternal NOW. If it is no easily successful way there is always the long detour of other ways found by men.

-- Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity > Chapter 4 : Time, Space, Causality > # 172


-- Perspectives > Chapter 19: The Reign of Relativity > # 36