02 EDITORIAL: NOW OR NEVER (VK-Sep

1996)
Time is but the method of our thinking, but we are the eternally present tense.
Swami Vivekananda, CW 8: 22

AN IMPORTANT INGREDIENT OF SUCCESS IS the ability to stay focused on what’s

happening every moment. Some say that it is the most important requirement, and they’re
probably right.
As Swami Vivekananda pointed out, time is only a method of our thinking. It seems to be a
reasonable, practical method, this cutting up of time into slices called the past, the present, and
the future. The time which is no more is past; the time which is now here is present; and the time
yet to come is future. Simple enough.
Not so simple though if we take it into our head to ask too many questions. Questions such as
these: Where does the past time go? Where is the future time waiting? How long does the present
time remain present? What exactly changes when the future time becomes present and the
present time becomes past? Can we conceive of time without reference to any divisions such as
past, present, and future? Or without reference to other artificial divisions like seconds, minutes,
hours, days, months, and years? Or without reference to any two events?
We see that our present time is present only at the present moment. A moment ago it was
future time; a moment later it becomes past time. Every moment passes through these three
chambers—future, present, past. Once it enters the past chamber, it’s stuck there for ever. It’s
lost once and for all. Time moves backward—from future through present to past.
But motion is always relative. So we cannot be too sure whether time is moving backward or
you and I are moving forward. Sooner or later we realize that this mysterious entity called time is
only a silent, unobtrusive witness. It is not driving in reverse gear and disappearing into the past,
but we are moving forward, rushing headlong into the uncertain future. Time doesn’t fly, but we
fly—toward death. Time cannot be wasted, but our lives can be. Time just is, it doesn’t move; it
is we who move.1

My Past and My Future

The ‘movement’ of our lives is easy to understand. In the past we were little kids, then came
school and university education, and was followed by this and that, and today—at present—we
are what we are. The movement continues. We have a future ahead of us, where most of us have
some agenda to be worked out. Whether we succeed or not is a different matter altogether. This
is as far as our present life goes.
Let us now push the enquiry beyond the borders of our birth and our yet-to-come death.
According to Vedanta we existed even before our birth and shall continue to exist even after our
death. What we call our ‘birth’ is only a dressing ceremony when we put on a new body-dress.
What we dread as our ‘death’ is only a stripping ceremony, when we discard the (usually) old,
tattered, worn-out body-dress to put on a new one. So our ‘birth’ was not our beginning and our
‘death’ won’t be our end. These are just the periodic visits we make to our physiological
wardrobe.2 Birth and death are mileposts on our life’s journey.
So let us look deeper into our past and future to get a better and broader view of the journey.
But before we do that, one little digression. This journey that you and I are making is a mystery
in itself. We do not know at present why we embarked on it, when we started it, how long it’s
going to last, and whether there is any realistic chance of its coming to an early end. Many of us
are not even sure whether we want it to end because we have not the foggiest idea of what awaits
us there. Would the journey’s end signal my end too? Would it be worth living without any
world around to interact with? Despite these several questions remaining unanswered, we can
still try to look at our past and our future to improve our understanding of our life-journey.
What was my past like before my birth? Essentially not much different from the present. I
lived in different bodies, everytime having a body that had birth, growth, and the eventual
decline and death. I inhabited different worlds, not just the one we are all in at present. Over my
God-knows-how-many lives I have acquired different tendencies as a result of my experiences
and actions. Whatever I am today is the resultant of all the forces of life I have confronted and
assimilated.
What is my future likely to be? Again, not much different in the essentials. 3 After my present
body dies, I’ll take up another one and, when that dies, a yet another one . . . this will go on. I
will dwell in different worlds, and continue to get more experience.
But where is all this going to end? Just nowhere. A circle doesn’t end. Unlike time, we are on
the move all right, but we’re just running round in a circle. We keep coming back to the same
place and charting the same route. Some journey this is! A journey without a destination. Our
destination cannot be heaven, it being a place located on the circle. The journey can end only
when we come out of the circle. Our destination is not a place to be reached but a truth to be
realized—the truth that I am the ever-free, timeless being.
Students of Vedanta, therefore, like to think of their future as a time when they will be
‘realized souls’—people who have realized the futility of getting stuck in this dreary-go-round of
creation and have simply leaped out of the circular path. The life’s destination, they say, lies off
the beaten track. Along the conventional path we are bound by the circular route and the
consequent centripetal and centrifugal forces. It requires both faith and daring to resist these
forces and fly off at a tangent along the pathless path to freedom. Only freedom can bring us
uninterrupted peace, stability and joy. It is of this blessed state that spiritual seekers think of
when they contemplate their future.

Focusing on the Present

The point sometimes missed is that both the looking back at the past and the looking forward
to the future can be done only in the present. 4 The past has disappeared, yes, but not entirely. It
still lives in us in the form of memory, producing feelings of joy, nostalgia, guilt, regret. Our
present stock of samskāras is a gift of the past. So the past has not really gone away, it is very
much present with us—but to realize this, we must learn to focus on the present.
If we do that, we shall see that even the future is already with us right now. After all, what is
future but the result of how we handle the present? Our future is the baby in the womb of the
present. If we take good care of the mom, she’ll give birth to a beautiful and healthy baby. We
are what we are at present because we did what we did in the past; it naturally follows that we
shall be what we want to be in future if we do what we must do at present. The key to the future,
therefore, lies in the present.
So if we remain focused on the present, we don’t alienate ourselves from our past and our
future. On the contrary, we are able to touch them at a deeper level. If our past is not integrated
into the present, it becomes a foreign body and causes havoc with the present which, eventually,
destroys the future. We must therefore make peace with our past and assimilate it into the
present. This can be done neither yesterday (it’s gone) nor tomorrow (it never comes). It can be
done only today—now.
Living in the present we’ll know exactly what must be done and what must not be done. We
can deal with our life intelligently only when we are fully present. Most of the time we aren’t: a
part of us goes voyaging across the dreamy seas of the future; another part goes backpedalling
into the forest of the past; a tiny fraction rambles about in the present like a zombie. Not a very
encouraging picture, this. But this is how our life has been by and large.
If staying focused on the present is so vital for success, so essential to make life meaningful,
why don’t we all do it? For the simple reason that it requires effort. It doesn’t require effort to
brood over the troubled past or to dream about a rosy future. It doesn’t require effort to long for
the return of ‘the good old days’ or to fret over the uncertain days ahead. These things we do
spontaneously. But to live in the present moment without getting sucked into the past or pulled
into the future requires single-minded effort. There must be constant vigil, alertness, faith in
oneself, and strong will-power. These things don’t just happen; there is a lot of effort involved
and not many are willing to pay the price. The Kathopaniṣad. 2.1.1 says:
The Self-existent One ‘injured’ the sense-organs by creating them with outgoing tendencies;
so a person experiences only outer objects and not the inner Self. But a spiritually awakened
person, wishing for immortality, beholds the inner Self with the indrawn senses.5

Our ‘outgoing tendencies’ are usually explained only in terms of space. We say our sense-organs
are receptive only to ‘outer objects,’ which we can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste. This is
correct, but it is not the full truth. In order to complete the picture our ‘outgoing tendencies’ must
be understood in terms of time as well. Instead of remaining focused on the present, we
spontaneously ‘go out’ fishing into the past and the future.
The ‘inner Self’ can be realized only when the senses are indrawn—drawn away not only
from the ‘outer objects’ in space, but also the ‘outer objects’ in time, namely, the past and the
future. The Self can be realized only in the present moment when I am an integrated whole, not
weighed down by the past and not worried about the future.
As we have seen, this requires effort. But not many feel inspired to make effort to dwell in
the present moment because they simply do not know the enormous benefit they can get. Some
there are who may not believe it even after being told that dwelling in the present can reveal an
enormously more beautiful world of peace, joy, stability, and freedom.

The Game of Life

It was inspiring to see new records being set in several sports in the recently concluded
Olympic Games in Atlanta. How much effort the medal-winners must have put during their
training sessions! Only a few could participate actively in the Olympics, the rest of us were only
passive viewers. But there is one game in which all of us are actively engaged—yes, actively but
not always consciously. The name of this game is Life. Played mechanically, this game can
become a torture; played consciously, it becomes a challenge, an inspiration, and a source of
unending joy and fulfilment. Playing the Life-game consciously requires vigorous efforts to stay
focused on the present. If we succeed in doing that, we become eligible for a medal more
precious than a million gold medals put together. It’s the freedom medal that’ll be ours.
The training to excel in the Life-game must begin now. First and foremost, we have got to
master the technique of living from moment to moment. Basically this technique has three
components: (1) integration of the past into the present, (2) freedom from anxiety about the
future, and (3) ability to learn from the present. 6 Only when we are freed from the hold the past
and the future exert on our lives do we really begin to live. Buddha laid great emphasis on
keeping one’s consciousness alive to the present reality:
Do not hark back to things that passed,
And for the future cherish not fond hopes:
The past was left behind by thee,
The future state has not yet come.
But who with vision clear can see
The present which is here and now,
Such wise one should aspire to win
What never can be lost or shaken.7

Now we begin to understand to some extent what Swamiji meant by ‘we are the eternally
present tense.’ What goes and comes is the body. What oscillates between the past and the future
is the mind. But I am neither the body nor the mind. I am Ātman. I don’t go when the body goes;
I am deathless. I don’t come when the body comes; I am birthless. 8 I don’t oscillate when the
mind does; I am changeless. This, then, is another practice that must be perfected: maintaining
the awareness of my true nature as the Ātman, deathless, birthless, and changeless. This is not an
intellectual exercise; it’s a call for action. Maintaining the Ātman-awareness needs an
uncompromising reordering of our lives. Here are a few of the things Vivekananda asks us to do:
Hold your money merely as a custodian for what is God’s. Have no attachment for it. Let
name and fame and money go; they are a terrible bondage.9
Give up all desire for enjoyment in earth or heaven. Control the organs of the senses and
control the mind. Bear every misery without even knowing that you are miserable. Think of
nothing but liberation. Have faith in Guru, in his teachings, and in the surety that you can get
free: Say So’ham, So’ham [’I am the Absolute, I am the Absolute’] whatever comes. Tell
yourself this even in eating, walking, suffering; tell the mind this incessantly—that what we
see never existed, that there is only ‘I’. Flash—the dream will break! Think day and night,
this universe is zero, only God is. Have intense desire to get free.10
Feel the wonderful atmosphere of freedom. You are free, free, free! Oh, blessed am I!
Freedom am I! I am the Infinite! In my soul I can find no beginning and no end. All is my
Self. Say this unceasingly.11 Repeat over and over, ‘I am Ātman,’ ‘I am Ātman.’ Let
everything else go.12

Mark the ‘tense’ in Swamiji’s words: I am blessed, I am Freedom, I am the Infinite, All is my
Self, I am Ātman. All of this I am now, this very moment. It’s not something that’s going to
come to me on its own in the afteryears. Not even something that I will realize with effort at
some point in future. So looking forward to some ‘future realization’ is a waste of time. Even an
obstacle, in fact, because it takes my mind away from my ‘present realization.’
What is my ‘present realization’? Simply this: all the peace, joy, stability, freedom, and
perfection that I seek are already mine, because I am Ātman. If I am not able to feel these things
at present, it is because I am not being myself. Do I need to wait for some miracle to occur
tomorrow, or next year, or ten years hence, in order to be my true self? I must be myself myself;
no one’s going to do that for me. So what am I waiting for? And, by the way, what do I think my
life will be like after that miracle has taken place? Vedanta teachers advise: stop this silly cliff-
hanging and start living now the way you would live as
 a realized soul. Yes, it’ll need effort, herculean effort. But if we don’t make that effort today,
tomorrow we may not be able to do it with even double the effort.
Speaking of tomorrow, is anyone assured of a tomorrow? There may never be a tomorrow in
my life if I die today. Why tomorrow, can anyone guarantee me even the next hour or the next
minute? When such questions are raised, people tend to take them lightly. For, to take them
seriously is a frightening, unpleasant experience. So someone may just smile and say, ‘Oh don’t
worry, you’ll live long.’ Thanks, nice to hear that, but both of us know that you cannot add one
minute to my life just as you cannot add one minute to yours. Any minute could be our last
minute on earth, so there is no point in longing to do in future what can be done now. There is no
point in dreaming about some faraway, distant realization when that realization is possible here
and now. That is why Swamiji said, ‘Don’t seek for God, just see Him.’13
We have seen three things necessary to succeed in what we’ve called the Game of Life. First,
living from moment to moment. Second, maintaining the awareness of my true nature as Ātman.
Third, making efforts to live now the way a realized soul lives.
The freedom medal can be won when the Game of Life is played consciously, and that is
possible only when we learn to live in the present moment. We must either start playing the Life-
game now or forget about playing it ever.

References:
1. See Bhartṛhari’s Vairāgya-Śatakam, 7 — कालो न यातो वयमेव याताः ।
2. See Gitā 2. 22 —
वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि ।
तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णान्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही ॥
3. English dramatist Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934) called future ‘the past again, entered
through another gate.’
4. Cf. ‘The present only is existent. There is no past or future even in thought, because to think it,
you have to make it the present.’ See The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 8 vols.
(Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1972-77), 7: 92-93 (hereafter cited as CW).
5. पराञ्चि खानि व्यतृणत् स्वयंभू तस्मात् पराङ् पश्यति नान्तरात्मन् ।
कश्चिद्धीरः प्रत्यगात्मानमैक्षत् आवृत्तचक्षुः अमृतत्वमिच्छन् ॥
6. These three factors were discussed at some length in the July 1990 editorial ‘Living from Moment
to Moment.’
7. Majjhima-Nikāya, 13. Quoted in Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (Kandy:
Buddhist Publication Society, 1992), 149.
8. Cf. ‘Coming and going is all pure delusion. The soul never comes nor goes. Where is the place to
which it shall go when all space is in the soul? When shall be the time for entering and departing
when all time is in the soul?’ See CW 5: 68.
9. CW 7: 61.
10. CW 7: 92.
11. CW 7: 61.
12. CW 7: 74.
13. CW 7: 29.