Have you heard the one about the London taxi driver who recognised the passenger in the back of the cab as the famous philosopher Bertrand Russell. “So I turned to ‘im,” says the cabbie, “and I say to ‘im, ‘Bert, Bert, what’s it all about then?’ And do you know what? The bugger didn’t know!”
Then there’s the world’s greatest hotelier, Basil Fawlty (I think John Cleese’s TV comedy series Fawlty Towers made its way to the States) who was constantly railing against the slings and arrows of misfortune, shaking a fist at the heavens, and asking: “What’s the point? I mean, what’s the blooming point?”
The question has been asked down the ages, usually more seriously, and it boils down to this: is there a purpose to life?
Those of you who know the Time-Light model might guess my response: there are three answers! In fact, there are three answers to most things, and it’s been the plight of the Western mind to restrict itself to just one.
As a Present-time self, the purpose is to be happy, and to enjoy your life. Better yet, to luxuriate in it, celebrate it, sip every last thirst-quenching wonder from it.
Then there’s the Past-time self. Its purpose is to stop the madness, the constant repetition of past imprinting, whether it’s from your own past or that of previous generations, or even of a familial patterning.
Finally, there’s the Potential self, and this is where it gets really interesting (in case the first two didn’t grab your attention). We are the meeting point between time and the timeless or eternal, and space and the infinite. As such, our purpose is to bring God (the infinite and eternal) into the world of space and time.
But what does that mean? What is this God we must bring into the world? It’s a cliché to say that God is love; many people do say that, but it’s just playing ping-pong with two concepts, neither of which they truly understand.
So let’s try it another way. If God (replace that with any term you prefer) is the original creative force outside of time and space, then its introduction into the world has the effect of fundamentally altering both dimensions.
As I say in my Time-Light book, hate isn’t the opposite of love—separation is. Separation or alienation is the feeling of enormous space that divides you from the world and others. Love, therefore, is a sense of unity and oneness, where space does not divide us.
Space’s twin is time, and time too collapses when God walks the earth in you and me.
As Judaism, Hinduism and Christianity suggest: God is a destroyer, and it is—a destroyer of time and space.