God is a meticulous clockmaker. So precise is His order that everything on earth happens in its own time. Neither a minute late nor a minute early. And for everyone without exception the clock works accurately. For each there is a time to love and a time to die.
God as clockmaker is an image presented by the deists of the 18th century. According to the materialistic paradigm, which was popular among the educated scholars of that time, symbolized this image that God had prepared the creation in the beginning with an exact program like a precise clockwork representing the highest quality of craftsmanship. The program would run as written until the springs became tired and the gears defective, at the end of time. According to this assumption, God would not care about the world and leave it up to its course. So there would be no sense in blaming Him for lacking care and attention for his creation.
To understand the quotation above, we should abandon this mechanistic image. Here the hint is directed to the idea of predetermination of everything that happens as if it would run according to a clockwork. The milk overcooked, the bus too late – it is meant to happen like this and cannot be any different. Of course, according to possibility, everything could be different; yet reality exists only once in a given moment, in a single and unique version. So it does not make sense to nag about it and to want it different to what it is. I can take the pot from the stove and wipe up the burned milk but I cannot reverse the milk into an uncooked state. I can take a taxi instead of the bus but I cannot retrieve the lost time.
Seeing life like that can help us to great equanimity by accepting everything as it is whether it fits our plans and expectations or not, whether it is pleasant for us or not. We do not need to quarrel about the events in our lives, as quarreling does not change anything about it except that we create a new problem: the original problem plus our quarreling about it. Of course, our complaints are also part of the clockwork as well as the idea which comes from somewhere at some point in time that there has been enough quarreling and that without it life could become easier.
When we allow this idea to come into our experience, we accept a higher intelligence „above“ us which is superior to us and know immensely more as we could ever conceive of. This is the idea of God which is placed in an area beyond all that is conceivable for us. With this idea, we accept the limitations of our models and of our attempts for explanations. It helps us to let go of the tiresome urge to search for all the reasons of our hardships. What is left for us are attempts to understand rather than final explanations. We look for explanations because we like to do this, but without the expectation to solve any problems by doing so. Problems get solved to the degree and direction which is designed for them, sometimes with our collaboration, sometimes without.
Relieved and liberated from self-excruciation, we gain extra time and energy for other activities, e.g. for loving. There is always a time to love, every moment waits for us to “act” like this. We cannot always connect us with the moment and its openness for love, often we are entangled in a chaos of thinking and feeling, totally absorbed by our hungry self relatedness.
Since ages, the contemplation on higher wisdom, which acts behind all the events and processes, should liberate us from this bedevilment. Then our view would be directed not only and permanently on ourselves and our own well-being as we would notice that we are cared for and carried. Rather we would be open towards the outside, towards those around us. Then our view would no longer be fixed on what they could take away from us or how they threaten us, but on what God has put into them as treasures and preciosities waiting for us to be discovered.
The time to die causes sorrow only when we have dropped out of the time to love. In these cases it can be that we think about our life to end some day, as we just have ended this life which consists of love (mostly without knowing how and why, not even noticing that it had happened). Immediately, the thought about dying causes fear, because so many things are still open. We think about what had to be done and is not yet completed. Love is patient and does not need any hurry, it leads into the moment which is always perfect in itself.
Why is death such a problem? Philosophers have defined humans as “Sein zum Tode”, as beings characterized by the tragic of knowing about their end. Why can we not just leave, in any moment, from this form of existence into the unknown? Of course, no one wants pain, which is often connected with dying. But pain is part of life, and as long as pain persists, we are still alive. And of course, we are afraid of the unknown, the nameless which follows dying. Whereto is the journey? Will there be a heavenly law court, various bardo rooms, a river to cross or simply nothing?
The typical aspect about the border of death is that we cannot know what will show up behind it. So it is an absolute border to our knowing. Knowledge is always connected to a sensual experience which is processed in a living brain. We do not have access and experience with any other kind of knowledge. Death is signified by the definitive ending of all functions of our sensual organs as well as of our brain. So all information gained and developed there will be deleted and gone. Consequently, there is nothing, which could experience fear – we know from reports by people who had near death experience that there is no fear after the first step on the way to death. When we cannot feel anxiety any more, will we just be flooded by light and happiness? People who were clinically dead have after their return often, but not always told that they had had such states of bliss. Yet, as they had returned before the next step, they cannot report what would happen after that, when also those circuits of metabolic functions belonging to those experiences had broken down.
When we say goodbye, we also say goodbye to our beloved ones. We have to leave the people back we have shared most in our lives. We have given a lot and received a lot. When we encounter death consciously, we realize that a cycle has come to completion. Now it is crucial that we move on and also that our beloveds move on. The love which connects us changes its form but not its inner contents.
When we are in love, we are connected to life and its force of development and growth. Then no thought about death can cause fear. Certainly we like to life, but why should it be so important that just we should go on living forever? New Life is created all the time, and old life leaves. A huge web is spun around all those processes and weaves them into a gigantic tapestry of stories. And every story has a beginning and needs an end. Only when one story has ended, the next can begin. All those stories are stories of life, and stories of life are stories of love. So our dying ends a love story and a new one begins, with new protagonists playing their role. We have added our humble knot to this net – not more to do and not less.
We are well advised to show respect to death – it is a mighty power. But we also can meet it with trust, like a guide leading us to unknown territory, with much experience and security, like a friend who renders his one and last service to us.
Alike, death shows its respect to us as it will only be at service when the time has come which we has been given to us. We can and shall trust that the time which has been conceded to us has the exact length and that death will be waiting for us when our clock has come to its end. In this great arch of trust, which even includes death, both of them meet: The time to love and the time to die.
The rules are taken from Elif Shafak's novel “The Forty Rules of Love” (Viking 2010). They are inspired by the Sufi tradition and worded by the autor's imagination. www.elifshafak.com
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