Eternity

 

 

This word 'KALA' is very meaningful: one meaning is time, another meaning is death. The same word means time and death. It is beautiful, because time is death. The moment you enter into time, you are ready to die. With birth, death has entered into you. When the child is born, he has entered into the realm of death. The birthday is also the deathday. Now only one thing is certain: that he will have to die. Everything else is just uncertain; it may happen, it may not happen. But the moment a child is born, the moment the child has taken his first breath, one thing is absolutely certain -- that he will die.

 

Entering into life is entering into death; entering into time is entering into death. Time is death, hence the Sanskrit word KALA is very beautiful. It means both time and death. And Kali means beyond time and beyond death. Eternity is deathlessness. How to find eternity? What is the way? One has to understand the process of time.

 

The process of time is horizontal: one moment passes, then comes another moment; that passes, then another moment -- a procession of moments, a queue of moments -- one passes, then another comes; another passes, then another comes. It is horizontal.

 

Eternity is vertical: you go deep into the moment, not moving in a line, but into depth. You drown yourself in the moment. If you stand on the bank, then the river goes on passing. Ordinarily we are standing on the bank of time. The river goes on moving; one moment, another moment, and another, and the sequence of moments continues. This is how we ordinarily live, this is how we live in time.

 

Then there is another way -- take a jump into the river, drown in the moment, the here-now. Then suddenly, time stops. Then you are moving in an altogether different dimension; the vertical dimension is eternity. That is the meaning of Jesus' cross.

 

The cross is a time symbol. It is made of two lines: one vertical, one horizontal. On the horizontal line are the hands of Christ, and on the vertical line is his whole being. Hands are symbolic of action: doing, having. Having is in time; being is in eternity. So whatsoever you DO is in time, whatsoever you ARE is in eternity; whatsoever you achieve is in time, whatsoever is your nature is in eternity. Change from having, doing, towards being. This moment the turning can happen. This very moment, if you forget past and future, then time stops. Then nothing moves, then everything is absolutely silent and you start drowning in the here-now. That 'now' is eternity.

 

Kali is a symbol of now, of the eternal, of the absolutely real. To live moment to moment and not to bother about past and future is the way towards the novel man.

 

-Osho, "The Beloved, Vol 1, #5"