ASSUREDLY no ordinary human being could claim to read “the grand clock of the Universe,” and even recognizing the orderly process of seasons on Earth, most wouldn’t accept that a universal time-keeper even exists.
Yet, it can be argued that we do own a piece of the larger puzzle — the personal events of our lives. By diligent self-reflection and intuition, we ought to be able to see glimpses of their purpose and meaning.
Such digging may be as close as we can get to knowing and managing our personal Karma, let alone the World’s destiny. Esoteric Theosophical philosophy makes the task more difficult in teaching that Past, Present and Future represent a “compound” time. Indeed, Buddha’s dying words, purportedly, were “all compounds are perishable,” i.e. temporary illusions.
Thus we ought to “sieze” every stray event in our lives, and attempt to extract their true meaning (according to Theosophist William Q. Judge): “Man must seize the key in his hands and himself — as a whole — open the gate.” (A Year on the Path.)
The great Sage Patanjali in his Aphorisms noted: “A great and most subtile knowledge springs from the discrimination that follows upon concentration of the mind performed with regard to the relation between moments and their order.” (The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali)
On this Mr. Judge comments: “Patanjali speaks of ultimate divisions of time which cannot be further divided, and of the order in which they precede and succeed each other. It is asserted that a perception of these minute periods can be acquired, and the result will be that he who discriminates thus goes on to greater and wider perception of principles in nature which are so recondite that modern philosophy does not even know of their existence.”
“Karma is not subject to time, and therefore he who knows what is the ultimate division of time in this Universe knows Karma.” (6)
Aphorisms on Karma
by William Q. Judge
Wheels of Destiny
In the realm of “noumena” (or the primary causal plane) H. P. Blavatsky wrote that these three aspects of time have no separate validity, and according to Mahayana Buddhism: “The Past time is the Present time, as also the Future, which, though it has not come into existence, still is.” (Secret Doctrine 1:43)
To the uninitiated concepts of duration and time Blavatsky points out, “are all derived from our sensations according to the laws of Association.” And because they are “inextricably bound up with the relativity of human knowledge” they are superficial and only temporal tools.
Because rationalist views ignore psychic experience, they must eventually fall away in the face of thousands of reported cases such as the near-death experience. Today precognition is validated by new experimental research data in parapsychology.
Minority Report – Precog
Announcing the publication of a controversial work by Cornell researcher Daryl Bem in a 2003 article published in The New York Times, Dr. Bem purports to have demonstrated precognition in a series of experiments. Dr. Bem studied over 1000 people and looked for proof that future events affected past behavior, or retro causation.
His research was analyzed using standard statistical techniques. Using standard measures, Bem’s research indeed finds a causal link between future events and past behavior (or thoughts?)
Theosophy Watch 