Aaron Cheak

 Aaron Cheak, PhD

—  

Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river;
it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. [1]

— J. L. Borges —

  

IN OUR INCREASINGLY SURREAL TIMES, the personal refrain, “I have no time”, has now become collective—“we have no time”. The rational division of our daily existence into hours, minutes, seconds, and nanoseconds not only fragments our lives—it reinforces a deeper divisiveness that threatens to disintegrate our reality as a whole. But is time really something that can “run out”? For phenomenologist and Kulturphilosoph, Jean Gebser (1905–1973), our pervasive time-angst is symptomatic of an intensification of consciousness that is breaking down but also breaking through our rational distortion of reality. Just as pressure creates diamonds, so too can our crushing time-angst be transfigured into the diaphanous, crystalline clarity of integral consciousness.

Before we explore the Gebserian principle of time-freedom, it should be noted that we will also, by necessity, be stepping inside and outside of time. What should proceed as a straight-forward articulation of the mutations of time, therefore, will become, at the same time, a circumambulation of and immersion into the different waters of time to drink of their timeless wellsprings. What we hope to convey through this can be distilled into three main points: (1) rational time disintegrates, while time-freedom integrates; (2) in time-freedom, the unfolding of consciousness is not linear but whole; and (3) time-freedom renders origin—the pre-eternal wholeness of time—consciously present. We will conclude by discussing how the prerequisite to time-freedom, to rendering origin present, is primordial trust.

Pulsations of Origin

In The Ever-Present Origin (Ursprung und Gegenwart, 1949/1953), Gebser emphasises that origin is not a beginning point, but an ever-present wellspring of reality that stands behind all time-forms as we know them. Ursprung means “origin” but, as Gebser points out, it literally signifies a primordial leap (Ur, “primordial” + Sprung, “leap, spring”).[2] Gebser’s entire thesis is a precise elaboration of the first sentence that appears in the foreword to this work: “Origin is ever-present” (Der Ursprung ist immer gegenwärtig). Gebser sought to describe the unfoldings of human consciousness precisely in terms of such “leaps” of the primordial consciousness, which for Gebser was not a phenomenon limited to the remote recesses of prehistory, but an ever-present reality (Gegenwart, “present”). Ursprung und Gegenwart is thus concerned with how the primordial leaps or unfoldings of consciousness continually undergird our present consciousness; it is concerned with how structures considered long outmoded continue to act through us; it is concerned with how consciousness is in fact still emerging, still unfolding, still leaping from its primordial substratum to generate a way of being and perceiving which Gebser characterised as integral, transparent, and time-free.

Although origin ripples through every expression of consciousness, over the course of the last two millennia, we have increasingly abstracted ourselves from the wholeness of time—the biological, psychological, and natural rhythms that form the living foundations of our relationship with reality: the pulse of our bodies, the seasons of the soul, and the eternal cyclic dance of the natural cosmos. The abstraction of our existence into linear chronology—with its urgent push forward into an increasingly uncertain future—ultimately divorces us from these deeper, more integral modes of experiencing reality.

“Time is measured by a clock of blood”, remarks Baker in his fascinating phenomenology of the peregrine falcon. It is not the “grey and shrunken time of towns”, but the “memory of a certain fulmination or declension of light that was unique to that time and that place on that day, a memory as vivid to the hunter as burning magnesium”.[3] In such a fire, each fleeting moment becomes simultaneously timeless. The eternal is immersed in the transient, and the transient is interwoven with the eternal.

However, when a moment in time breathes the atmosphere of eternity, yet the two aspects are differentiated rather than fused, then sacred time—or hierohistory—irrupts.[4] Here, the eternal and the transient evoke each other through enantiodromia—“opposites arising from their opposites”—and time becomes a “moving image of eternity”.[5] A historical battle, for instance, can be situated at a particular time and place, but to mythic consciousness, when the king vanquishes his enemies he is also vanquishing, by extension, the enemies of the ordered cosmos. Any given clash thus becomes cosmic in scope, a repetition of the primordial Chaoskampf. The universal animates the particular, and the particular embodies the universal.

For Gebser, the time-forms that we know—the all-consuming moment of the magical consciousness, the archetypally animated cycles of the mythic consciousness, and the linear chronology of the rational consciousness—are each mutations of an originary pre-temporal substratum in which all forms of time lie latent. In other words, each modality of time is, in and of itself, a partial unfolding and expression of a deeper, ever-present whole.

To express the pervasive wholeness of the pre-temporal consciousness from which all partial time-forms flower, Gebser coined the word achronon. Formed from the Greek alpha privativum (the prefix a-), the word achronon expresses not a “negation of” but a “freedom from” chronos (“time”).[6] Importantly, this freedom from time, while ever-present and foundational, only emerges into consciousness when the individual forms of time have been unfolded, integrated, and cultivated into a living, breathing, sentient whole.

The achronon, therefore, is not attained by abandoning the previous time-forms as if they were inferior stages of a developmental process, but by concretising them, i.e., allowing them to “crescend together” (con-crescere).[7] Only through “achieving each of the previous time-mutations from archaic pre-temporality”, i.e., only by “granting to magic timelessness, mythical temporicity, and mental-conceptual time their integral efficacy”, will the “original præternity” (ursprüngliche Vorzeitlosigkeit) be open to us.[8]

Time-freedom, therefore, is in no way to be mistaken for free time. It is not ordinary calendar time temporarily free from life’s demands. It is neither a simple synthesis of existing time-forms, nor a higher stage of consciousness that transcends them. Rather, it is the ability to “perceive the world in its foundations”.[9] It is “pre-conscious pre-timelessness” (vorbewußte Vorzeitlosigkeit) become conscious præternity.[10] As the liberating root and fulfillment of all temporal being, time-freedom renders origin present.

Concealment and Revelation

The principle of achronicity has important ramifications for our current conceptions of “evolution”, and especially for the idea of the “evolution of consciousness”, which is too often portrayed as if it develops through time on a linear, historical scale towards progressively rational goals. In the light of time-freedom, however, “evolution” is seen less as a path of chronological development and more as a process of making the implicit explicit (per Bohm); the unrolling of what is previously rolled up (per Aurobindo).[11] In both cases, reality is described in terms of enfolding and unfolding. Bohm’s implicate and explicate orders (from implicare and explicare) hinge on an inward or outward orientation of the root *plek-, “to plait” (Greek plekein “to plait, braid, wind, twine”, plektos “twisted”, Latin plicare “to lay, fold, twist”, plectere “to plait, braid, intertwine”). Rolling up and rolling out, on the other hand, are literal translations of the word evolution itself, which pivots on the root *wel- “to turn, revolve” (Latin volvere, “to turn, twist”, Old High German walzan “to roll, waltz”). Evolution, therefore, implies a dance of unfolding, a play of concealment and revelation.

In a complementary fashion, the fundamental interwovenness of all temporal forms gives rise, by extension, to all corporeal forms, which for Gebser are “nothing but solidified, coagulated, thickened, materialised time”.[12] Much as salt crystalises into being from a super-saturated solution, the visible, tangible, time-bound forms of reality congeal out of the invisible, intangible, and time-free ambience of origin. In both instances, this crystallisation (Auskristallisierung) occurs through an intensification of the originary ambience.

From these points of view, the different phases in the evolution of consciousness, which appear to develop over time, are nothing but the visible emergence of what is already latently present within the invisible. The ever-present whole simply conceals and reveals itself, and its dance appears as interwovenness, enantiodromia, or chronology, depending on the consciousness through which we perceive it. Our present, rational awareness, which places an extraordinary emphasis on individual perspective and free will as a means of navigating linear chronology, is but one movement of this dance. And because it emerges out of a far deeper, more primal unfolding, individual free will, together with its linear conceptualisation of time, paradoxically appears to be “predetermined” in the achronicity of the whole. This point requires further unfolding.

The Will that Cannot be Willed

The very idea of pre-existence, of events being somehow pre-decided before they happen, is usually considered problematic, indeed antithetical, to modern consciousness. Our habitual attachment to free will—the desire to control our future through individual decisions of our own making—perpetuates the belief that we are in conscious command of our destiny. And yet in reality, we are forced to navigate the future as if it were an uncertain ocean requiring constant rational vigilance. However, as Ted Chiang notes in his novella, Story of Your Life, it is our very emphasis on free will itself that eclipses our inherent and complementary capacity for memory of the future—i.e., of experiencing time as a whole.[13] Gebser develops an almost identical point in his later writings, where “free will” and “predestination” are not seen as mutually exclusive opposites, but as two sides of the same coin.

Chiang elaborates his point in the context of Fermat’s principle of least time, in which a ray of light refracted through water seems to “choose” the pathway that takes the least time—almost as if it knew its destination and could plot its course before it began its journey. The wholeness of time proceeds “almost teleologically”, he remarks, insofar as one needs “knowledge of the effects before the causes could be initiated”. For Chiang (as for Gebser) the two approaches are complimentary and do not rationally exclude one another: “Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available”.[14] For Gebser (as for Chiang): “we have to comprehend evolution as a spatiotemporally-bound process of realisation that is predetermined in the non-visible. Evolution as the realisation of what is predecided is to be understood thereby as complementary to evolution as forward progress. Both approaches complement each other, just as the two polarities of yin and yang, or the front and back sides of a coin, or the visible and invisible, together form a whole”.[15]

As Gebser’s remarks suggest, these points reflect very closely the ancient Daoist understanding of a “receptive” and an “active” aspect to volition—a yin will and a yang will—in which teleology and causality intertwine. Both principles coexist in the dance of the greater whole, cutting across the familiar distinctions we like to make between “fate” and “free will”. Whereas yang will (zhi yang) is of the nature of fire and embodies everything that we commonly recognise as free will—our conscious choices, intentions, actions—yin will (zhi yin) is of the nature of water and is much more mysterious. It unfolds slowly, unconsciously, yet irrevocably shapes our lives like destiny. It is everything beyond our knowledge and control that nevertheless reveals the presence of a deeper intention—a “will that cannot be willed”.[16] Just as “hindsight gives a shape to what is shapeless as [we] live it”,[17] so too does this deeper will mould our existence like water sculpting stone.

Although yin will proceeds like an inscrutable river, it is no less real than our visible decisions. Like the Orphic waters of Mnemosyne (anamnesis), its currents restore gnosis of origin and by extension memory of the future. For as Peter Kingsley remarks in his Book of Life, “the future is not some optional possibility, some remote alternative to the present, but is just as solid and close as anything now”.[18] The gnostic and prophetic qualities imparted by the wholeness of time cannot be grasped by perpetuating the forward-looking, future-oriented consciousness of rational chronology; nor are they obtained simply by looking back into the past in the same linear capacity; prophetic gnosis only emerges through deep consciousness of the primordial whole—the time-free, ever-present origin from which all temporicity unfolds.[19]

The Dissolution Solution

These remarks bring us to the heart of Gebser’s poetic and aphoristic writings, where he reveals that the stars of the winter sky are no further or nearer for us than this stone or that flower. “We could pick up the stone; we could pluck the flower”, he remarks, but there is no reason to even reach out because “you too are this sky” and “all the stars flow through your veins”.[20] Here, all spatial separation—all distinction between “near” and “far”—dissolves and coagulates in nondual awareness. So too the distances of time.

To interiorise the stars is to integrate the greatest timekeepers of cosmic becoming. When the remotest past and farthest future pulsate through our beings, time becomes (once again) a “clock of blood”, but now it is “the sacred lucidity of origin’s ever-presence” (nüchtern-heiliger Ursprungsgegenwärtigkeit) flowing through our veins.[21] But beyond all “melting time” (zerrinnende Zeit) and “dissolving space” (sich lösende Raum), it is the fundamental duality of innerness and outerness itself that resolves into a single expanse—the Rilkean Weltinnenraum—where interior and exterior worlds fuse.[22]

With these points in mind, we can return to the question with which we began. The pervasive fear that our “time is up” dissolves when we know deep in our bones that the timeless roots of the stars themselves radiate through our very beings. The “solution” to the problem of our corrosive time-angst, therefore, is to embrace the breakdown of our rational reality as a creative dissolution which allows the living achronon to shine through. That is, rather than approach the divisiveness of time as a “problem”, we must accept it as a dissolution in the alchemical sense—a liberating destruction of everything that prevents us from breathing the achronicity of origin.

This liberating character is inherent in the words “solution” and “dissolution”, but also “resolution” and “absolution”, all of which derive from the root *lyein “to loosen, untie, slacken” (Greek lysus “a loosening”; Latin solvere, “to loose, release, atone for, expiate”; Old Norse lauss, “loose, free, unencumbered”; German lösen, “free, release, resolve”; and English “loosen, release”). There is thus a very real degree of letting go—of Gelassenheit—in the solutions of dissolution. Through this surrender, we let that which primordially is be.

For Gebser, this release is fundamentally related to the leap of primordial trust (Urvertrauen).[23] This leap, as we have explained elsewhere, is fundamentally identical to the primordial leap (Ur-Sprung), for it is precisely through this act of release that origin (Ursprung) springs through us.[24] When we make the primordial leap, we both participate in origin, and embody origin in the present.

This leap of deep trust is also pivotal to overcoming the essentially existential fear that persists beneath the crumbling façade of all time-angst. This deeper angst, which Gebser called primordial fear (Urangst),[25] is rooted in the abyss of mental and emotional neuroses that stem, consciously or unconsciously, from the fear of death—and it is precisely this that cuts us off from gnosis of the whole. Primordial trust, by contrast, is a deep, active participation in the reality of origin; a conscious realisation that all so-called beginnings and endings—not just past and future but ultimately life and death itself, all creation and destruction—are interwoven polarities of one integral whole. Urvertrauen is thus a fundamental acceptance of and freedom from death through dissolving the dualities that perpetuate the fear of death; for underneath our rational façades, the world of the living and the realm of the dead are not separate, but form the “double flow” of a “greater breathing”.[26] To participate in origin, therefore, we must breathe these twin atmospheres and, in the words of Neruda, become “drunk on the great starry void”.[27] For only when we leap into the abyss (Abgrund) in a spirit of pure abandon, only when we accept that there is nothing there to catch us, do we realise that something is there: our true foundation (Urgrund).

As Gebser realised at the end of his life when he was confronting his own impending death, that which we regard as a poison is secretly a gift. This deceptively simple insight was recorded on his deathbed in a note that simply said: “gift (english), Gift (deutsch)”, pointing to a dual-language pun of far-reaching significance—in German, the word Gift means “poison”.[28] Its meaning was only indirectly elaborated by Gebser: all that we fear as dangerous or deadly is a sacred offering. To accept this poison is to accept that those things that we fear the most, those things which threaten to restrict or destroy us, are in fact the most “beneficial obstacles” in our entire lives because they teach us to swim free in a spirit of primordial trust.[29]

When we realise that everything that happens to us in life partakes of this nondual nature—poison and gift, dissolution and solution, abyss and foundation—we see that events in time are neither exclusively “good” or “bad”, neither “chosen” or “unchosen”, but merely what is given. And regardless of whether the events that happen to us are fortunate or unfortunate, destructive or generative, we can take them either in a spirit of primordial angst: a gift that poisons, or in a spirit of primordial trust: a poison that gives.[30] For just as a stretched string creates tone from tension, and just as music dissolves dissonance into harmonic resolution, so too is the fundamental tonos of our being the very essence of this alchemy. Primordial fear is the prima materia of primordial trust. Gravity creates suns. The flow of origin radiates through our beings, and we coagulate like diaphanous diamonds.

Endnotes

1. J. L. Borges, »Nueva refutación del tiempo«, in: Sur 1946: »El tiempo es la sustancia de que estoy hecho. El tiempo es un río que me arrebata, pero yo soy el río; es un tigre que me destroza, pero yo soy el tigre; es un fuego que me consume, pero yo soy el fuego«.

2. Jean Gebser, Ursprung und Gegenwart, 1949/1953; Zürich, Chronos 2015, Bd. I, S. 63.

3. J. A. Baker, The Peregrine, London, William Collins 2010, p. 31.

4. Cf. Henry Corbin: »Herméneutique spirituelle comparé«, in: Eranos-Jahrbuch XXXII/1964; Zurich, Rhein-Verlag 1965; Face de Dieu, face de l’homme : herméneutique et soufisme, Paris, Flammarion 1983, p. 159–160: »que nous avons appelé ici hiérohistoire, c’est l’apparition d’une dimension hiératique, hétérogène à notre temps historique ; le temps de cette hiérohistoire, c’est celui que nous avons vu Swedenborg analyser comme une succession d’états spirituels, et c’est ›en ce temps-là‹ que se passent réellement et que sont vrais les événements qui sont des visions, ceux de la hiérohistoire ismaélienne, par exemple, ou ceux qui remplissent notre cycle du saint Graal«; cf. Mircea Eliade, Le Mythe de l’éternel retour, Paris, Gallimard 1949, passim; R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, Le Roi de la théocratie pharaonique, Paris, Flammarion 1961, p. 173.

5. Plato, Phædo 71A: ἐξ ἐναντίων τὰ ἐναντία πράγματα; Timæus 37C-E: χρόνος αἰῶνα μιμούμενος.

6.  Ursprung und Gegenwart, Bd. II, S. 444, 725 n.4.

7. On concreton as »con-crescere« (zusammenwachsen), see: Ursprung und Gegenwart, Bd. II, S. 718, 773 n.732; on the concretion of time, see: Ursprung und Gegenwart, Bd. II, S. 530: »Und deren Bewußtwerden, das selbst ein Konkretionsprozess ist, ist zugleich die Befreiung von allen diesen Zeitformen: alles wird Gegenwart, konkrete und damit integrierbare Gegenwart.«

8.  Ursprung und Gegenwart, Bd. II, S. 530: »die einzelnen bisher aus der archaischen Vorzeitlosigkit herausmutierten »Zeitformen« realisieren; mit anderen Worten: indem wir der magischen Zeitlosigkeit, der mythischen Zeithaftigkeit und der mentalen Begriffszeit ihren ganzheitlichen Wirkcharakter zuerkennen.«

9.  Ursprung und Gegenwart, Bd. II, S. 531.

10.  Ursprung und Gegenwart, Bd. II, S. 530.

11. David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980; London, Routledge 2005, p. 188–190; Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1939–1940; Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press 2005, p. 5–6, 137, 197.

12.  Ursprung und Gegenwart, Bd. I, S. 100: »Jeder Körper (insoweit er auch raumhaft aufgefaßt wird) ist nicht anders als erstarrte, geronnene, dichtgewordene, materialisiert Zeit.«

13. Ted Chiang, Story of Your Life and Others, New York, Tor 2002.

14.  Story of Your Life and Others: »The thing is, while the common formulation of physical laws is causal, a variational principle like Fermat’s is purposive, almost teleological […] one had to know the initial and final states to meet that goal; one needed knowledge of the effects before the causes could be initiated. […] Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available.«

15. Gebser, Der unsichtbare Ursprung: Evolution als Nachvollzug, 1974, in: Vom spielenden Geilingen, Zürich: Chronos 2018, S. 304: »daß wir die Evolution als einen raum- und zeitgebundenen Nachvollzug, der im Bereich des Nicht-Sichtbaren vorentscheiden ist, zu realisieren haben. Evolution als Nachvollzugdes Vorentscheidens ist damit auch als komplementär zur Evolution als Vorwärtsbewegung aufzufassen. Die beiden Betrachtungsweisen ergänzen einander, so wie sich die beiden Pole des Yin und des Yang oder die der Vorder- und Rückseite einer Münze oder die des Sichtbaren und des Unsichtbaren zum Ganzen zusammenfinden.«

16. Ted. J. Kaptchuk, Chinese Medicine: The Web that has no Weaver, revised ed., London, Rider 2000, p. 62–3.

17. Siri Hustvedt, Memories of the Future, New York, Simon & Schuster 2020, p. 116.

18. Peter Kingsley, A Book of Life, London, Catafalque 2021; p. 180.

19. On prophecy as origin made present, see: Kingsley, Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity, London, Catafalque 2018, p. 297–300.

20. Gebser, Aussagen: Ein Merk- und Spiegelbuch des Hintergrundes (1922–1973), in: Ein Mensch zu sein, Zürich, Chronos 2020, S. 176: »Wir könnten den Stein aufheben? Wir könnten die Blume brechen und in unser Dasein ziehen?«; Das Wintergedicht, 1944, in: Ein Mensch zu sein, S. 313: »Es fließen alle Sterne auch durch deine Adern.«

21. Gebser, Asien lächelt anders, 1968, in: Vom spielenden Geilingen, Zürich, Chronos 2018, S. 233: »Wer ihrer [dieser Transparenz] teilhaftig wird, ist […] durchpulst von nüchtern-heiliger Ursprungsgegenwärtigkeit.«

22.  Das Totengedicht, 1945, in: Ein Mensch zu sein, S. 332: »und die zerrinnende Zeit,/ und der sich lösende Raum/ ängste dich nicht«; on Gebser, Rilke, and the Weltinnenraum, see: Cheak, »Rendering Darkness and Light Present: Jean Gebser and the Principle of Diaphany«, in: Diaphany: A Journal and Nocturne, Auckland, Rubedo 2015, p. 21–37; cf. also Das Wintergedicht, S. 310: »Wer spricht von Zukunft?/ Wer mißt sich an/ zu sagen: „Es wird sein?“/ Siehe hinaus/ und sieh in dich hinein:/ Es ist.«

23. Gebser, »Urangst und Urvertrauen«, 1974, in: Vom spielenden Geilingen, S. 354–370.

24. Cheak, »Trust in Mad Strife: Primordial Trust (Urvertrauen) in the Power-sources of Existence (Kräftequellen des Daseins) in the Life and Work of Jean Gebser«, Paper presented at the 38th International Jean Gebser Society Conference, Melbourne, LaTrobe University 2008.

25. »Urangst und Urvertrauen«, in: Vom spielenden Geilingen, S. 354–370.

26. Gebser, Das Totengedicht, 1945, in: Ein Mensch zu sein, S. 332: »die doppelte Strömung des größeren Atems«.

27. Pablo Neruda, »La poesía«, in: Memorial de Isla Negra, Buenos Aires, Losada 1964: »Y yo, mínimo ser,/ ebrio del gran vacío/ constelado,/ a semejanza, a imagen/ del misterio,/ me sentí parte pura/ del abismo,/ rodé con las estrellas,/ mi corazón se desató en el viento.«

28. Aussagen, in: Ein Mensch zu sein, S. 266: »gift (engl.)—Gift (dt.)«

29. Gebser, Die schlafenden Jahre (1946–1959), in: Ein Mensch zu sein, S. 80: »Damals wußte ich es nicht, daß jener Badezuber eines der förderlichsten Hindernisse für mein Leben gewesen ist: jener mir dort widerfahrene Schock, daß das gewissermaßen mütterliche und das Leben gebärende Element auch lebenshindernd, ja tödlich zu sein vermag.«

30. On “poison as gift”, see: Cheak, The Leaf of Immortality, Auckland, Rubedo 2017, p. 45–48, 51, 58, 70.

Banner photograph by Remigiusz Agatowski (Ługi Ujskie, Wielkopolskie, Polska, 2010), CC BY-NC 2.0.