Have you ever experienced a moment, other than the moment of the Now?
Have you ever experienced a moment in the past? Or experienced a moment in the future? You haven’t, right? Because the past only exists in your thoughts that refer back to memories. In that sense, you can recall a memory of something from the past, in the present of the Now. But this is a thought, a feeling, it is not that moment in that past itself.
And you make representations of the future, you have speculative thoughts. You are never in the future, but always just in the Now. This Now is the only thing I can experience. In the book Why Time (Doesn’t) Flow, Jos Stollman explains that all personal experiences are ordered by the I-consciousness. The flow of time is nothing but our I-consciousness. The I experiences itself and the world around it in the flow of time.
Thoughts and imaginations determine one’s feelings in the Now. The Now is like a continuous flow in consciousness, of consciousness. All creation is created continuously. I am too. A stream of sensations from outside is flowing in through the senses and a river of all kinds of feelings and thoughts colour that Now, the reality of the Now. And in the midst of that feeling the consciousness exists that you are yourself
Recently a scientific book on consciousness was published: The Code of Consciousness, written by Cyriel Pennartz, a neuropsychologist. For a long time, the topic ‘consciousness’ was not a subject of study for science, because scientists could not measure much that was concrete about it. Scientific research then becomes difficult, because science only recognises something as truth if you can observe or measure it.
But for about twenty years now, ‘consciousness’ is no longer a taboo for science. In the end it turns out, that all kinds of things still can be measured with sophisticated equipment. Electrical currents, which show electromagnetic wave patterns, chemical or biochemical reactions between very complex molecules in places where nerve cells influence each other. You can measure all kinds of things while having a ‘living test subject’ perform all kinds of tasks. Then the relationship between the brain and its environment is measured.
Well, can we say that is consciousness? This remains a difficult question. Remarkable is, that on the last page of the book the author admits: these are two realities that are difficult to reconcile, namely on the one hand I see electrical currents, chemical reactions and on the other hand, I taste, I feel, I see and I hear: the experience. All the same streams, but the experience that seeing or hearing is something completely different from smelling, for example, can be confirmed by everyone. The writer admits: ‘We cannot solve the mystery of consciousness.’
The ‘subjective’ experience from within is quite different from something that you try to understand with ‘thinking’ over something outside yourself. ‘The mind is linked to the senses,’ Hermes already said in ancient Egypt.
Yes, that’s the difference. ‘Scientific research’ always looks at another, at another person outside itself, as if it is a sensory perceptible ‘thing’ actually. The intellectual mind can only understand things. Consciousness is not a thing. Strictly spoken, mind can never understand consciousness.
The Dutch philosopher Marjan Slob explains in her book Hersenbeest (Brainbeast), that there is a fundamental difference between inner experience and what someone else can observe of it. In conversation with others, words stand in between. Marjan explains that brain scientists themselves do not seem to realise that what they think they are researching is formed by words. Words try to give us a grip on reality in our communication with others. We are all islands in our own world of experience. Words are a kind of agreements, with which we hope to reach each other. But how difficult it is to understand each other well!
Intellectual thinking about consciousness also makes ‘the miracle’ disappear. Because if we can explain something, it doesn’t seem to be a miracle anymore. As if that explanation itself and those laws of nature themselves are not a miracle either.
Why not just stand still. Let your intellectual thinking fall silent, realising that actually you don’t really understand anything, and you realise that everything is a miracle that you are looking at in wonder. That you are consciousness, that everything is consciousness and that you are part of it. When it is quiet in your head, a wonderful feeling can touch you. Waking up in wonderment, that is close to love, unity and reverence. That makes me happy. How simple can it be. This is an experience in the consciousness of the heart. Being aware without coloring by intellectual thinking.
Give God back the miracle. Everything is a miracle. Einstein knew that.
When you open yourself up to the flow of life, and you stand still for the miracle of the Now, a new fire touches you in the heart. And everything becomes new.
