The Mirdad Mysteries week 7
Growing through constant decay
Quotes from The book of Mirdad, chapter 18
Time is a wheel created by the senses, and by the senses set awhirling in the voids of space.
You sense the bewildering change of seasons and you believe, therefore, that all is in the clutches of change. But you allow withal that the power, which folds and unfolds the seasons, is everlastingly one and the same.
You sense the growth of things and their decay, and you declare despondently that decay is the end of all growing things. But you avow that the force, which makes for the growth and decay, itself neither grows nor decays.
You sense the speed of the wind in relation to the breeze; and you say that the wind is the swiftest by far. But despite that, you admit that the mover of the wind and the mover of the breeze is one and the same and neither dashes with the wind, nor toddles with the breeze.
How credulous you are! How gullible of every trick your senses play on you! Where is your imagination? For with it only can you see that all the changes, which bewilder you, are but a sleight of hand.
How can the wind be swifter than the breeze? Does not the breeze give birth to the wind? Does not the wind carry with it the breeze?
You walkers on the earth, how measure you the distances you walk with paces and with leagues? Whether you saunter or gallop, are you not carried on by the speed of the earth into the spaces and regions whither the earth herself is carried? Is not your gait, therefore, the same as the gait of the earth?
Is not the earth, in turn, carried along by the other bodies, and her speed made equal to their speed?
Yea, the slow is the mother of the swift. The swift is the carrier of the slow. And the swift and slow are inseparable at every point of time and space.
How say you that growth is growth and decay is decay, and that the one is the other’s enemy? Has anything ever sprung up except out of something decayed? Has anything every decayed except from something growing?
Are not the dead the subsoil of the living, and the living the granaries of the dead?
If growth be the child of decay, and decay be the child of growth; if Life be the mother of death, and death be the mother of Life, then verily were they but one at every point of time and space. And verily were your joy for living and for growing so stupid as your grief for dying and decaying.
How say you that autumn only is the season of grapes? I say that the grape is ripe in winter too, when it is but a drowsing sap pulsating imperceptibly and dreaming its dreams in the vine; and also in the spring, when it comes out in tender clusters of tiny beads of emerald; and also in the summer, when the clusters spread out and the beads swell up and their cheeks become tinted with the gold of the sun.
If every season carry in itself the other three, then verily were all the seasons one at every point of time and space.
Aye, time is the greatest juggler, and men are the greatest dupes.
Much like the squirrel in the wheel, man who has set the wheel of time a-turning, is so enthralled and carried by the motion that he no longer can believe himself to be the mover, nor can he «find the time» to stay the whir of time.
The wheel of time revolves in the voids of space. Upon its rim are all the things perceivable by the senses, which are unable to perceive a thing except in time and space. So things continue to appear and disappear.
What disappears for one at a certain point of time and space, appears to another at another point. What may be up to one, is down to another. What may be day to one, is to another night, depending on the «when» and «where» of the looker-on.
One is the road of life and death upon the rim of the wheel of time. For motion in a circle can never reach an end, nor ever spent itself. And every motion in the world is a motion in a circle.
Shall man then never free himself of the vicious circle of time?
Man shall, because man is heir to God’s holy freedom.
The wheel of time rotates, but its axis is ever at rest. God is the axis of the wheel of time. Though all things rotate about Him in time and space, yet is He always timeless, space-less and still. Though all things proceed from His Word, yet is His Word as timeless and space-less as He.
In the axis all is peace. On the rim all is commotion.
Where would you rather be?
I say to you: slip from the rim of time into the axis and spare yourselves the nausea of motion.
Let time revolve about you, but you revolve not with time.