Rest assured, we need not delve into such subtleties and may now broach the topic of sacred time. Let us qualify the term first: Sacred is not s y n o n y m o u s w i t h religious in spite of a certain o v e r l a p p i n g between the two. Moreover, in India, these notions of sacred, cyclical, or linear time are neither explained nor even mentioned by Tantra, simply because linear time is a m o d e r n Western abstraction and u n k n o w n in that context! Furthermore, the Tantric ritual in India affords its followers a first class ticket to the very heart of sacred time:
such is one of the goals of Tantra. But since I belong to the Western world and must perforce deal with linear time - from which I have had to free myself - I thought it useful to address the subject.
But back to sacred time and to what Mircea Eliade had to say about it in The Myth of the Eternal Return (Princeton, 1954, p. 34): "A sacrifice, for example, not only exactly reproduces the initial sacrifice revealed
by a god ab origine, at the beginning of time, it also takes place at the same primordial mythical moment; in other words, every sacrifice repeats the original sacrifice and coincides with it. All sacrifices are performed at the same mythical instant of the beginning of time;
through the paradox of the rite, profane time and duration are sus-pended Insofar as an act (or an object) acquires a certain reality through the repetition of certain paradigmatic gestures, and acquires it through that alone, there is an implicit abolition of profane time, of duration, of 'history.'"
Let us highlight the keywords in the excerpt above: repetition, ges-tures and by them alone.
Tantra holds that sacred time alone is "real" and that - paradoxical though this may seem - it abolishes all other forms of time! The past, precisely because it has passed, no longer exists. The future, because it is still to come, does not exist yet! And is the present a year, a day, a second, a billionth of a second? Impossible to define in terms of linear time or even cyclical time. (The mind boggles!)
Let us go a step further. For Tantra, creation is not a single event that took place x billion years ago, it's a continuous process. Creation is here and now! The manifest universe is constantly emerging from the non-manifest, outside of time which is a mere mental category! What remains is an eternal now. (I deliberately chose the word now instead of the term present for people unconsciously situate the latter some-where between the past and the future.)
The phrase, "at the end of time," is to be taken literally. When the universe is reabsorbed into the bosom of the Primary Cause during what we call the end of the world, even time-space will disappear and it will be the "night of Brahman." This will be followed by a new day, that is, a new universe, and so on and so forth in an infinite succession of universes.
This leads us to the essential concept of "process." Our reason and senses tell us that an oak is an independent, autonomous unit, distinct from other units and belonging to space-time. We know when it was planted, we could uproot it from the forest and replant it in the mid-dle of the lawn. But that oak, as it stands here and now, contains all of its own "past." It bears the marks of every spring it has experienced, each and every rainfall. Its present is actually condensed past and it conditions the future, yet only its present exists. A Tantrist perceives the oak as a whole, as a process, from the acorn all the way to the storm that will eventually fell it and even beyond. For the oak did not begin with the acorn, a mere link in the overall "oak" process which in the meantime produces other acorns, etc. The real oak is the integral
"oak" process, from the very first to the very last of the species and it
Profane Time, Sacred Time 31 is inseparable - except artificially or intellectually - from the forest which is in itself a continuous, complex process included in the total life process on our planet. Even felled, the oak still belongs to the
"oak-forest-life" process which recovers it immediately.
Going from oaks to h u m a n s , let us consider a beautiful young woman. A male Tantrist feels the impact of her beauty, for him she embodies Cosmic Femininity, but at the same'time he sees her as a process. As if superimposed upon her, he visualizes the baby she once was and the wizened old woman she will become. He also envisions her coupled with a man, taking his semen and p e r p e t u a t i n g the process. Infertility would not matter because, come what may, she is part and parcel of the process called " h u m a n i t y " which is itself included in the eternal process of cosmic and planetary life. Moreover, a Tantric man's attitude would be the same in front of a crippled old woman: he would visualize her as young and beautiful but also as an embryo or even a fertilized ovum in her mother's womb. Considered as a process, her life did not begin at the moment of conception and it will go on, after her.
Each human being having been posited as a process contained in another, wider, process, and so on and so forth up to the cosmos, have we not returned to Descartes' clockwork universe? Not quite; as a matter of fact, not at all. Each individual-process is endowed with its own ever-changing dynamism, it is not a mere cog in some mechani-cal construction and that makes a world of difference! The universe is alive and conscious!
This vision of time-beyond-time also applies to Tantric maithuna, the ritual sexual union, which ceases to be profane with the awareness that creation is taking place here and now. Maithuna reproduces in real time the initial human sexual intercourse, which itself duplicates the ultimate act of creation, w h e r e the cosmic feminine principle (Shakti) coupled with its male counterpart (Shiva) creates the universe and engenders it continuously. Maithuna reproduces concretely, in sacred, therefore real, time, the original creative act belonging not to some non-existent, distant past but to the present moment which, alone, exists.
Once I realize this, once I become truly aware of the fact that I am encompassed in and borne by the process called "humankind," first I am instantly freed from the time of watches and clocks, then from time altogether. This liberating experience dispels all inner tension and brings a feeling of security and serenity. I also perceive that sweeping aside my ego does not change the process of which I am a part and which will go on indefinitely: the subsiding of a wave does not change the ocean, for the wave is the ocean.
This Tantric ritual transposes the follower's consciousness onto another plane of existence where h e / s h e grasps and concretely experiences this ultimate truth, gaining access to the divine, to sacred time which abol-ishes both cyclical and linear time.
Although words cannot express it, attaining sacred time, thus erad-icating profane time that gnaws away at our life, is a truly liberating experience. Thereafter, nothing is really urgent and even if we some-times have to hurry, it need not be in a mad rush or stress-producing.
Does it really matter if such and such a thing is done today or in ten years or not at all? I am part of the process and, well, no, nothing can happen to me!
Gaining access to the process, to sacred time beyond even cyclical time, does not mean that one must throw away one's watch - I still wear mine! The hands on it tell me that it's getting late and it's time to go to bed. Tomorrow the sun will rise again even if it's hidden by clouds. Nor have I thrown away my datebook: I have appointments tomorrow. But things have become relative, I don't get - or I no longer get - caught up in the game.
Linear time, cyclical time, sacred time? Allow me to reiterate: real-izing that I am a continuous process which did not begin at concep-tion and will not end w h e n "I," a structure of convenience, dies, allows me to go beyond my ego. If, in a sudden flash of insight, I perceive the universe itself as a continuous process to which I belong -in a state of perpetual emergence, then time is dissolved, be it cyclical or linear. I have reached timelessness. This elating experience makes everything simple, full of light, and I feel I have been freed. Clocks and watches no longer tick away my life with each passing second.