Article February 28, 1983 Issue

The discovery of now

KEITH NEALY

Time. Have you got a minute? Seems as if everything takes time. Action, work, life itself, is defined in terms of time. But how real is time? How immutable? Just what is time?

We are educated to believe that time consists of a past, a present, and a future. The past and the future are supposed to take up virtually all of time, leaving only an evanescent sliver to the present. Yet consider your own experience. All you have ever done or thought has taken place at the moment you proceeded to do it—in the present of that moment. You can't be doing something yesterday or tomorrow. All human activity takes place now, in present human consciousness; and it is spiritualization of present consciousness that is, according to Christian Science, the key to dominion over time.

Statements as to the fundamental nowness of spiritual existence can be found throughout the Bible. One of the earliest is God's declaration to Moses of His nature as "I AM"^{ See Ex. 3:14.}—a present, eternal, conscious reality. Much later Christ Jesus declared, "Before Abraham was, I am,"^{ John 8:58.} showing the timelessness of man's real being. And in Ecclesiastes we find: "That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past."^{ Eccl. 3:15.}