Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD.
Published on www.academy-advaita.com
The Netherlands
4 June 2021
Past (2)
“What is it”
What is the past? Past is: the time before the existing moment. The time before the existing moment has a place and the existing moment also has a place. The moment in time having a place is only one and not two moments having two places in the same time.
So, what exactly is the past moment is not known. But knowledge of the past is history, which is well known by humans. Wisdom reveals that the knowledge of the past and history is known only by humans.
The known and history are in memory. The known in memory are letters in the alphabet and letters as words. History too is made up of words which have letters in alphabets.
The letters in the alphabet form the word ‘past’. The intellect recalls the word ‘past’ from memory, which deceives man and woman into believing that past is a place before the existing moment. But only the existing moment, which has a place, is here and now and every moment is only ‘here and now’.
The fact that you know only after something happens in the moment implies that you live the past as the present. This is because every letter in any word is in memory, which is not as an actuality in the here and now.
The actuality in the ‘here and now’ moment is only light and sound.
As evolution progressed, so did the movements of sound in man and woman progress and sophisticate instinctively. The sophisticated, instinctive movements of sounds were registered as letters and stored in the memory of humans.
The sophisticated, instinctive, human sound-movements that evolved are numerous and were registered in the memory as words. These indicated daily, household chores, actions in games and other words of actions which were only sophisticated, evolved movements in humans.
When humans moved in modern times, their evolved, sophisticated movements of sound were recognised as actions. This implies that humans do not recognise the evolved, sophisticated movements as evolved movements, but memory labels them as actions.
This is obvious as modern man or woman comes to know what action has happened with certainty only after some movements happen. But, in fact, an action has not happened - only memory of singular movement in every moment as an action has happened.
The memory of action, therefore, is an illusion of evolved, sophisticated movements of sound. Eachmovement of sound is in each moment and an action is not in each moment.
Wisdom reveals that an action or a thought has not occurred in the past, which has a place separate from the present.
The enlightened realise that everything in nature, including humans, is only moving in every moment of their life-time. The enlightened realise that human’s mind with thoughts lives the past or memory as the present.
Author: Dr. Vijai S. Shankar
© Copyright V. S. Shankar 2021
Editors Note:
Deep understanding of life presented here explains the nature of the make-believe world of human beings. This illusory world has not been created by man or woman for they are not the doer. It is the gift provided by the intelligence of life to man as he and she progress on their evolutionary path towards realising who they really are. What a wonder is this provision that enlightenment alone may reveal to man, albeit gradually. May it be so.
Julian Capper, UK.
German Translator‘s Note:
If "the past" would really exist as something real, it would have to be the same past for all people and animals and plants and things. But first of all past exists only for the human being who as the only living being has a functioning mind and past is never independent of memory. And secondly, the past is different for every human being, because everyone has a different, subjectively colored memory, which reports about the past, that supposedly took place exactly like that. Third, the memory of the past is different in the same person at different times, that is, the human mind keeps telling the story in new ways. If these three basic points do not yet convince you that the past is an illusion in the mind at the present moment, you would be wise to read this article even more carefully: Every word in memory is an illusion of sounds, a sound-movement that happens in the "here-and-now" moment and never happens in the present itself let alone in the past. The conditioned mind needs clear details to be deconditioned. Dr. Shankar's articles provide these details precisely. Thus, the mind is illuminated from all angles and gradually reveals itself to be illusory and not real even in your own daily life. The "here and now" is all there is.
Marcus Stegmaier, Germany.