We have learned that time is but the succession of our thoughts. We have learned also that in all our experience of time and irrespective of the particular series to which it belongs, whether it run with the rapidity peculiar to dream or with the slowness peculiar to wakefulness, there must exist in us a background of rest, of stillness, against which we unconsciously measure our time-sense. The problem is how to bring this background into the field of consciousness. The answer is partly provided for us by this brief analysis. If the thought-succession were stopped--if awareness were determinedly pinned down to a single immobile point--then we would become enfranchised in the kingdom of Infinite Duration. This, however wonderful it be, could nevertheless only be a temporary process because life itself demands that we return to world-consciousness, to the knowledge of experience in space-time. It is indeed the condition which the successful mystic evidently arrives at, the condition of sublime trance which is regarded by him as the perfection of his quest.
-- Notebooks Category 19: The Reign of Relativity > Chapter 2 : The Double Standpoint > # 28
