Time, Space and Personhood
Notes from a talk by David Hoffmeister
Posted by aplecompte on July 2nd, 2010
This morning you said, “I want enlightenment now.” Can you really want it now and not have it? Let’s read about your one remaining problem in The Immediacy of Salvation T-26. VIII.
The one remaining problem that you have is that you see an interval between the time when you forgive, and will receive the benefits of trusting in your brother. This but reflects the little you would keep between you and your brother, that you and he might be a little separate. For time and space are one illusion, which takes different forms. If it has been projected beyond your mind you think of it as time. The nearer it is brought to where it is, the more you think of it in terms of space. paragraph 1
This is the metaphysical basis of everything you look at, your one remaining problem. Everything is just a thought in the mind. There are two perspectives which you can take on the world:
1) You are a separate person with a private mind in time. Every memory is a thought. If a thought is projected beyond your private mind, images farther off are seen as separated in time you think of it as time, as if it happened in the past. The nearer an image is brought to the projector, you think of it as space. The deceived mind perceives itself as a person in the world, surrounded by the cosmos, and most immediately wrapped in a body. Images close to the projector are seen as separated by space. We even describe stars in terms of light years. Time and space are one illusion. All of the images are of the wrong mind and a means for distancing.
Or (but not both)
2) The world can be seen from the perspective of the dreamer of all aspects of the projected cosmos. The right mind sees that all of it is made up and that there is no ordering of images. Without ordering there is no sense of being in the cosmos as a tiny part. It is more a sense of the vastness of dreaming it up. There would be no sound or image apart from yourself as the dreamer who dreamed it up. There is nothing that happens apart from you.
All images are branches off the trunk of the ego. The ego is zero. So even if the ego belief system has billions of beliefs and images, they are all nothing.
There is a distance you would keep apart from your brother, and this space you perceive as time because you still believe you are external to him. 2
A private mind and personhood are made up and cannot be so. The subject object/split makes trusting your brother impossible.
The mind chose for the ego, and tried to forget about the light. One denies the other. For your mind to be able to keep the two thought systems apart and maintain separation, the split is projected out on the screen, where the mind identifies as the subject person in the subject/object split. Your mind identifies with the subject “hero” of the dream. In this way the ego transfers its fear of God to the world. The ego is fearful because, in one sense, the mind knows it has done this and tried to forget, but the Holy Spirit reminds it of God.
So, although the mind still has the stress and doubt, it seems to have relieved them somewhat with the projected cosmos. It’s a scam. The subject/object split has not resolved the conflict. The mind tries to forget its original wholeness. The subject mind says to itself: “Now I am a whole person.” But the mind is constantly in doubt maintaining this state of deception. It can’t trust anything because it doesn’t know itself.
This split has to be seen as in the mind in order to heal. Only then would the mind be able to listen to and trust the Holy Spirit. If you did listen to the Holy Spirit, you would see that you are the dreamer of the dream and not a little figure in it. But the one thing that really can be trusted is invisible and the one thing the deceived mind is afraid of. As long as the mind remains fearful and in doubt it can’t trust anybody or anything. The Course says that you are afraid of spiritual sight because you would lose the world you see.
This makes trust impossible. And you cannot believe that trust would settle every problem now. Thus do you think it safer to remain a little careful and a little watchful of interests perceived as separate. From this perception you cannot conceive of gaining what forgiveness offers now. The interval you think lies in between the giving and receiving of the gift seems to be one in which you sacrifice and suffer loss. You see eventual salvation, not immediate results. 2
You fear giving and receiving forgiveness, the seeing of the false as false, because what would be lost is your personhood and your whole world of preferences. Personhood is the little gap that you (as ego) would like to retain; the sense of a separate self with a separate will, your private thoughts and memories. [See Self-Concept versus Self T-31.V]
You can’t say you are upset because you are "presently deciding for the ego." The ego is not and entity; it is a decision. Either you’re an ego or you’re not an ego. The ego has no reality, no presence. The mind is always teaching itself what it is. You are upset because of your present decision for the ego, which is wrong-minded. This is the problem. The right mind is the correction. So discernment between ego thoughts and God’s thoughts is the key—seeing that "I Am the Right Mind!" There is no other possibility. From that clarity the wrong mind is dissolved.
Another way to look at it is that the right mind is a constant state. Vacillation is a metaphor; there is only the right mind. Right and wrong minds are mutually exclusive; it cannot be both. The immediacy of salvation is seeing that there is no gap between you and your brother because there is just one mind.
There is no gap. There is only one mind, the right mind. The right mind is a state where there is no ordering of thoughts or ordering of images. The right mind does not have preferences, does not judge. Ordering thoughts brings on pain and loss. It is a metaphor to say that the ego exists or even to say that it could be resistant or resilient. Who are you? You are wholly mind.
Salvation is immediate. Unless you so perceive it, you will be afraid of it, believing that the risk of loss is great between the time its purpose is made yours and its effects will come to you. In this form is the error still obscured that is the source of fear. Salvation would wipe out the space you see between you still, and let you instantly become as one. And it is here you fear the loss would lie. Do not project this fear to time, for time is not the enemy that you perceive. Time is as neutral as the body is, except in terms of what you see it for. If you would keep a little space between you and your brother still, you then would want a little time in which forgiveness is withheld a little while. And this but makes the interval between the time in which forgiveness is withheld from you and given seem dangerous, with terror justified. 3
It gets back to cause and effect. The mind believes in the reality of the ego, a false cause. The cause of your error is belief the ego and a world of separate bodies. Your mind is holding on to belief in that false cause now. Jesus is telling you not to project this error onto time by imagining a space in time between forgiveness and its effects. The ego’s use of time causes all wounds. The awareness that brings release is that there is no linear time. There is only now. There is only the holy instant. The belief in linear time is the sickness.
Every thought you have is “hypothetical,” because you think you live in an objective world of past and future. The whole projected world and the belief in linear time are hypotheticals. Any “real” experience you think you have had is hypothetical. You believe in hypotheticals. Even in Course study groups you argue uselessly about “what if” hypotheticals. The ego mind likes this because it keeps you within the limited thought system of the objective world.
Instead, go for the experience. Now is all there is. Now is free of interpreting images. You have heard “live in the moment,” but the ego mind doesn’t have a clue what that is. Don’t think: “I know what now is.” Now is unknown to the deceived mind. But now is all that can be known. “At no single instant does the body exist at all.” T-18.VII.3:1 There are no bodies in the holy instant. That’s what makes this seeming perception hypothetical.
Another way to look at hypotheticals is the belief that there is a gap between cause and effect. The world is made up of distorted cause and effect relationships; it is “a fixed delusional system.” P-1.in.1:2 As a stepping stone, all the events that seem to be occur as events over linear time are really simultaneous. Still another way to say that is that ideas leave not their source. There is no gap of time space between events because ideas leave not their source. All events are of the wrong mind. Time and space are seen as this little gap between cause and effect.
If there is no gap of time and space, then there is no personhood. The subject/object split could only be equated with that gap. There is no subject/object split. You have to see the impossibility of that gap. The Course teaches that there is no gap between cause and effect. There is no linear time.
The whole point of mysticism is to come to where you see there are no logistics to handle. The logic of “if you do x, then y will happen” is false. One does not really happen before the other. The world is only the projection of unreal effects of an unreal cause. The film is false cause; the images are false effects. The movie only seems to be reality. Yet the mind believes in the reality that people do things to other people. Just as people cry and laugh in movies, people cry and laugh in the world. Things are not as they appear to be. It is all in the mind. This realization can at first be disorienting. The cause and effect are simultaneous in your mind.
Question: How does this realization help me in any practical way, in experience?
It can be used practically and helpfully. Ask yourself, “What am I using time for?” as you are engaged in an activity. If your goal is the peace of God and cause and effect are simultaneous, then you experience restfulness and joy. Nothing is a waste of time if you use it to get in touch with your beliefs and how you perceive the world. It is all about the healing of the mind. You pull your perceptions back to the mind and see that cause and effect are not separate. You get back to the experience of: “I don’t know what anything is for.”
What is practical about this? Joy and peace of mind result from the experience of realizing that cause and effect are not apart. If you come to the awareness that the script is written and there is no cause and effect in the world, then all struggle is taken out of life. What would you be striving for? There are no future outcomes, nothing needs to unfold. Everything is complete now. You feel no anxiety about the future. There is nothing that has to evolve. Leap into that experience!
Yet space between you and your brother is apparent only in the present, now, and cannot be perceived in future time. No more can it be overlooked except within the present. Future loss is not your fear. But present joining is your dread. Who can feel desolation except now? A future cause as yet has no effects. And therefore must it be that if you fear, there is a present cause. And it is this that needs correction, not a future state. 4
Present joining is your dread. Have you noticed how people feel discomfort in the presence of others, lack of eye contact? This is symbolic of the mind’s dread of joining. On the other hand, the telepathy of the aborigines described in Mutant Message Down Under worked because “we have no secrets.” There was no belief in private minds. This is the experience on one-mindedness. “The willingness to communicate attracts communication to it”. T-15.VII.14:5 You can attract those willing to awaken. The ego is a present decision, as is the Holy Spirit.
At a deeper level you’ve chosen to connect with the father. But you don’t see yourself as mind. Personhood runs very deep; it is your self-perception. You must look at, question and undo your beliefs that hold up personhood. Repetition of the thoughts of God is important at the beginning to remember your purpose. Later the most beneficial from of practice is completely unstructured thinking in your mind, sinking down and letting go of everything you think you know.
Talking about specifics becomes less and less important as the mind learns to be ready for and open to the stillness. “If you fear, there is a present cause.” The present cause is the belief in the separation. Look at your thoughts that conceal this. This statement: “My mind holds only what I think with God.” W-rIV.in.2:2 puts the ego out of business.
The plans you make for safety all are laid within the future, where you cannot plan. No purpose has been given it as yet, and what will happen has as yet no cause. Who can predict effects without a cause? And who could fear effects unless he thought they had been caused, and judged disastrous now? Belief in sin arouses fear, and like its cause, is looking forward, looking back, but overlooking what is here and now. Yet only here and now its cause must be, if its effects already have been judged as fearful. And in overlooking this, is it protected and kept separate from healing. 5
There is no hypothetical, but the deceived mind thinks the hypothetical is real. It believes that scarcity and pain are real, that painful disasters have happened in the past, and that they will happen again in the future. That is the ego belief. You overlook the here and now.
In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and looks not to effects. How else could He correct your error, who have overlooked the cause entirely? He bids you bring each terrible effect to Him that you may look together on its foolish cause and laugh with Him a while. You judge effects, but He has judged their cause. And by His judgment are effects removed. T-27.VIII.9.
The Holy Spirit does not look at the effects of the world. The Holy Spirit knows that the ego is false. What you see as the painful past is completely false; not even the self who perceived it was real. It is a present thought that causes pain. Do you believe there is a disastrous present cause? If you think the past was painful and real, you anticipate more pain. Question this.
For a miracle is now. It stands already here, in present grace, within the only interval of time that sin and fear have overlooked, but which is all there is to time. 5
The working out of all correction takes no time at all. Yet the acceptance of the working out can seem to take forever. The change of purpose the Holy Spirit brought to your relationship has in it all effects that you will see. They can be looked at now. Why wait till they unfold in time and fear they may not come, although already there? You have been told that everything brings good that comes from God. And yet it seems as if this is not so. Good in disaster's form is difficult to credit in advance. Nor is there really sense in this idea. 6
If everything good is supposed to come from God, but you are experiencing confusion and pain; then you think that those are nice words, but they are empty. God would be cruel if he placed the good in the future rather than the present. God placed the answer in the present, right under your nose. What, then, is blocking your awareness of it?
Why should the good appear in evil's form? And is it not deception if it does? Its [the good’s] cause is here, if it appears at all. Why are not its effects apparent, then? Why in the future? And you seek to be content with sighing, and with "reasoning" you do not understand it now, but will some day. And then its meaning will be clear. This is not reason, for it is unjust, and clearly hints at punishment until the time of liberation is at hand. Given a change of purpose for the good, there is no reason for an interval in which disaster strikes, to be perceived as "good" some day but now in form of pain. This is a sacrifice of now, which could not be the cost the Holy Spirit asks for what He gave without a cost at all. 7
There is cause for joy now. God is not withholding anything. The sun is shining. Why don’t you feel joy? Because you are blocking it; you are holding up a shield. The shield is your attachment to your fearful beliefs in linear time, judgment, the gap and separation. This isn’t about lots of Course study. You need to desire and have the experience. God does not intervene in the law of cause and effect. God’s Son is perfect and God does not interfere in His Son’s choice. The Son must lower his shield.
You need a different desire, the Peace of God, and different thoughts so that you have a different experience. The Holy Spirit will help you take the shield down. What is your intention? What is your burning desire?
Yet this illusion has a cause which, though untrue, must be already in your mind. And this illusion is but one effect that it engenders, and one form in which its outcome is perceived. This interval in time, when retribution is perceived to be the form in which the "good" appears, is but one aspect of the little space that lies between you, unforgiven still. 8
Be not content with future happiness. It has no meaning, and is not your just reward. For you have cause for freedom now. What profits freedom in a prisoner's form? Why should deliverance be disguised as death? Delay is senseless, and the "reasoning" that would maintain effects of present cause must be delayed until a future time, is merely a denial of the fact that consequence and cause must come as one. Look not to time, but to the little space between you still, to be delivered from. And do not let it be disguised as time, and so preserved because its form is changed and what it is cannot be recognized. The Holy Spirit's purpose now is yours. Should not His happiness be yours as well? 9
Enlightenment/salvation is instantaneous. The cup is full now. Will you accept it? If not, there is something to question. You must still believe that you’re a person, that the past is real. If you let that go, trust would settle every problem now. The Holy Spirit will tell you what to do right now. "What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good?" W-135.18.
Once you accept His plan as the one function that you would fulfill, there will be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not arrange for you without your effort. He will go before you making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. Nothing you need will be denied you. Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away before you reach it. You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill. T-20.IV.8:4-8
That is cause for rejoicing right now. You get the desire of your heart. If you are not experiencing it now, notice where your thinking is coming from; monitor it; don’t condone mind wandering; unplug the ego immediately; drop the ego thought. Search out your beliefs. Question and drop any belief that is holding you back: levels, time, space, etc.
To see that salvation is immediate is to see that everything is thought in the mind. Whenever you feel some upset, don’t let the little space between you and your brother be “disguised as time.” Don’t take the bait. Be open to the present correction that is always available. Remove the space by seeing the falsity of the ego.
