Current reading

I have Mr Smiley to thank for 'chancing' upon this book @ Bedok NLB

Open Secret
Part One ~ 1. Time & Space

""WE TEND to misunderstand the nature, & exaggerate the importance, of "time" & "space."

There are no such "things" (they do not exist in their own right): these come into apparent existence, i.e. they "function" only as a mechanism whereby events, extended spatially and sequentially, may become cognisable. They accompany events and render their development realisable. In themselves they have no existence whatever. They are appearances, and their apparent existence is deduced from the events they accompany and render perceptible. They are hypothetical, like the "ether," symbols, like the algebra, psychic inferences to aid in the cognisance of the universe we objectify, and they neither pre-exist, nor survive apart from, the events they accompany, but are utilised in function of each such event as it occurs.

Where there is no event there is no need of "time" or of "space" --- and in their absences we are no longer in bondage --- for there is no one to believe that he is bound.

Time is only an inference, devised in an effort to explain growth, development, extension and change, which consitute a further direction of measurement beyond the three that we know and at right-angles to volume; and "past," "present" and "future" are inferences derived from this temporal interpretation of the further dimension in which extension appears to occur. All forms of temporality, therefore, are conceptual and imagined.

Thus prophecy or precognition is perception from a further direction of measurement, beyond that of time, a fourth right-angle, wherefrom --- as in the case of each superior dimension --- the inferior ones are perceived as a whole, so that the "effects" of "causes" are as evident in what we call the future as they are in what we call the past.

The events only occurs in the mind of the perceiver of it, singular or plural as the case may be, and no event could be anything but a memory when we know it. No event is anything but a psychic experiences. Events, or memories of events, are objectivisations in consciousness.""

One of the best-loved of Wei Wu Wei's books, Open Secret enlightens us as to the true nature of the self, as well as time, space, and enlightenment itself. The work includes extensive commentary on the Heart Sutra, regarded by Buddhists as the summation of the Buddha's wisdom. The pseudonymous author studied intensively in Eastern and Western philosophy and metaphysics, along with the esoteric teachings of the great religions. In his writing he distills this knowledge into uniquely elegant prose - full of humor, metaphors, profundity, and his essential understanding of the open secret of life.