Living in the present moment is impossible
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February 18, 2011
I am revealing a sacred secret about time.
Living in the present is impossible!
We always have a big theory, live in the present: that is enlightenment.
No. It is impossible. Live in past, present, and future. All three put together, at once, is liberation.
I am challenging all the teachers who are giving advice freely, who go on teaching, live in the present moment and you will become enlightened. I want all of them to know, if you are teaching people to live in the present moment, you are making them schizophrenic. I am asking all the thousands of seekers sitting with me and in front of me at this moment: you would all have tried to live in the present moment enough number of times - even more than the number of times you tried to have pleasure through the senses! At least when you try to have pleasure through senses, for a few seconds, you will have that pleasure. But when you try to live in the present moment, even for those few moments, you will have the fear, when will I lose this present moment? I tell you, living in the present moment is the conspiracy created by certain false gurus against humanity, to control human beings.
If a psychiatrist promises you that he will cure you, he is not only a liar or a hypocrite; he is a criminal. In the same way that psychiatry is built on a false promise that people can be cured, there is a big group of pseudo spiritual leaders who build their tradition and philosophy by promising that people will be liberated by living in the present moment. No. Living in the present moment is impossible.
Come on, try it! Present moment, present moment, present moment - but already it has become past and future! In the very idea of present moment, one part is already swallowed by past. One part is still coming out of the future. It is like, even as the child comes out of the womb, death is swallowing the child. The mouth of the womb and the mouth of death has no gap. In that gapless gap, you are trying to live.
A hen's egg cannot give birth to a tiger. When you try to live in present with the deep suffering of the past and insecurity about the future embedded inside this egg, how can this egg give birth to enlightenment? No! If somebody is saying, live in the present moment, you will be enlightened, be very clear he is a hypocrite. He has not practiced and achieved enlightenment.
Enlightenment happens in you when you live in all three spaces: past, present, and future. Nithya is not living in the present; it is living in all three. The broad understanding about kaalalakshana, Time, liberates you from Time.
Practice
Today, dedicate the whole day meditating on how to be in past, present, and future at once. If you are having a thought about something which has happened two years ago, then that does not mean you are in the past. You are in the present, knowing your past. If you are sitting and thinking, what is going to happen two years later, don't think you are in the future. You are thinking about the future in the present.
So you are all-inclusive!