Part 28 (2/2)
ETERNITY WITHOUT TIME.
”Man's conception of eternity is that of infinite duration, continuance without beginning or end, and yet everything he knows is bounded by two or more opposites. From a beginning, as he sees a form of matter, that substance pa.s.ses to an end.” Thus spoke my guide.
Then he asked, and showed by his question that he appreciated the nature of my recent experiences: ”Do you recall the instant that you left me standing by this bowl to start, as you imagined, with me as a companion, on the journey to the cavern of the grotesque?”
”No; because I did not leave you. I sipped of the liquid, and then you moved on with me from this spot; we were together, until at last we were separated on the edge of the cave of drunkards.”
”Listen,” said he; ”I neither left you nor went with you. You neither went from this spot nor came back again. You neither saw nor experienced my presence nor my absence; there was no beginning to your journey.”
”Go on.”
”You ate of the narcotic fungus; you have been intoxicated.”
”I have not,” I retorted. ”I have been through your accursed caverns, and into h.e.l.l beyond. I have been consumed by eternal d.a.m.nation in the journey, have experienced a heaven of delight, and also an eternity of misery.”
”Upon the contrary, the time that has pa.s.sed since you drank the liquid contents of that fungus fruit has only been that which permitted you to fall upon your knees. You swallowed the liquor when I handed you the sh.e.l.l cup; you dropped upon your knees, and then instantly awoke. See,”
he said; ”in corroboration of my a.s.sertion the sh.e.l.l of the fungus fruit at your feet is still dripping with the liquid you did not drink. Time has been annihilated. Under the influence of this potent earth-bred narcoto-intoxicant, your dream begun inside of eternity; you did not pa.s.s into it.”
”You say,” I interrupted, ”that I dropped upon my knees, that I have experienced the hallucination of intoxication, that the experiences of my vision occurred during the second of time that was required for me to drop upon my knees.”
”Yes.”
”Then by your own argument you demonstrate that eternity requires time, for even a millionth part of a second is time, as much so as a million of years.”
”You mistake,” he replied, ”you misinterpret my words. I said that all you experienced in your eternity of suffering and pleasure, occurred between the point when you touched the fungus fruit to your lips, and that when your knees struck the stone.”
”That consumed time,” I answered.
”Did I a.s.sert,” he questioned, ”that your experiences were scattered over that entire period?”
”No.”
”May not all that occurred to your mind have been crushed into the second that accompanied the mental impression produced by the liquor, or the second of time that followed, or any other part of that period, or a fraction of any integral second of that period?”
”I can not say,” I answered, ”what part of the period the hallucination, as you call it, occupied.”
”You admit that so far as your conception of time is concerned, the occurrences to which you refer may have existed in either an inestimable fraction of the first, the second, or the third part of the period.”
”Yes,” I replied, ”yes; if you are correct in that, they were illusions.”
”Let me ask you furthermore,” he said; ”are you sure that the flash that bred your hallucination was not instantaneous, and a part of neither the first, second, nor third second?”
”Continue your argument.”
”I will repeat a preceding question with a slight modification. May not all that occurred to your mind have been crushed into the s.p.a.ce between the second of time that preceded the mental impression produced by the liquor, and the second that followed it? Need it have been a part of either second, or of time at all? Indeed, could it have been a part of time if it were instantaneous?”
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