“There are more days than one. A day, whether six or seven ago, or more than six thousand years ago, is just as near to the present as yesterday. Why? Because all time is contained in the present Now-moment. Time comes of the revolution of the heavens and day began with the first revolution.
“The soul’s day falls within this time and consists of the natural light in which things are seen. God’s day, however, is the complete day, comprising both day and night. It is the real Now-moment, which for the Soul is eternity’s day, on which the Father begets his only begotten Son and the soul is reborn in God. God the Father and the Son have nothing to do with time. Generation is not in time, but at the end and limit of time. In the past and future movements of things, your heart flits about; it is in vain that you attempt to know eternal things; in divine things, you should be occupied intellectually . . . .
“The soul’s day and God’s day are different. In her natural day the soul knows all things above time and place; nothing is far or near. And that is why I say, this day all things are of equal rank. To talk about the world as being made by God to-morrow, yesterday, would be talking nonsense. God makes the world and all things in this present now. …
“Again, God loves for his own sake, acts for his own sake: that means that he loves for the sake of love and acts for the sake of action. … The past and future are both far from God and alien to his way.” ~Meister Eckhart
Forever Day
What is a day? On planet Earth, it is a bit over twenty-four hours. It represents one spin of the planet on its axis. But what if you’re not on Earth? A Martian day or a day on Saturn is different. Each planet has a different length of a day. So even though most dictionaries define a day as a period of twenty-four hours, that is only true on earth. On a different planet, around a different sun, in another galaxy, it can be quite different. But this is all based on our standard concept of time. Eckhart says that time is very different to the soul and to God.
In spiritual worlds, time doesn’t exist. That means there is no past and mo future in those places. Everything is an eternal now, a Forever day. So to say that God created the world in seven days is symbolic. God creates now. To Him, there is nothing but an eternal Now. Likewise, there is no specific place because spiritual realms also exist without the boundaries of space. So God didn’t create some things in the distant past, other things last Tuesday, and still others next week. At least not from His point of view. Creation is always happening now, and everywhere, in the eternal forever day.
Soul’s Day and God’s Day
The sentence in the quote: “The soul’s day and God’s day are different,” can be confusing. It sounds like Eckhart is saying that what is a day to the soul is different from God’s day. Therefore, a soul day is not a forever day, an eternal day. But then he adds that the soul knows all things “above time and place.” So it sounds like a day to the soul is the same as a day to God. There is an exception of sorts, which may be what Eckhart is alluding to.
When we are born in a physical body, we have a soul. But that soul is dormant. It is in a condition similar to a coma. So while it is in that state, it is not aware of much of anything. Once the souls is awakened—what being born again really means—it lives in that spiritual realm of the forever day. So then it knows all that happened while it was dormant because it has no connection with time and space. Which is why the concept of an old soul is complete nonsense. All souls are exactly the same age.
God’s day is that forever day and God is and always will be fully conscious. So there is no beginning, no end, and no pause in the God Day. The forever day is forever.
Days of Good and Evil
A common question you hear from new spiritual students is, “Why did God create evil?” the answer, of course, is that He didn’t. Evil can exist only in the realm of matter and time, therefore it has to be created by the being (or beings) ho created that realm: the Demiurge.
The second question they ask is, “Why doesn’t God get rid of death, disease, starvation, and other evil things?”. The answer is that God exists in that eternal now, the forever day. Since all evil is temporary, it doesn’t exist there. The forever day is a day of eternal good. So the way to get rid of evil is not to suck the evil out of the material universe, but to get rid of the universe of matter entirely. Not by destroying it, but by transforming it back into spirit.
In a realm where there is no time, there can be no hunger, no death, no disease, no want. All of those things rely on time to exist. But God won’t transform the physical universe until most of us want Him to. We have a certain amount of free will granted by God. Because of that, we can choose to stay stuck in the realm of matter. Most of us do just that. Usually not consciously, but on a subconscious level.
God Knows Time
Although God dwells in the forever day He does know what time is. He knows that to those of us in the physical world where things change and therefore time exists, time is a real thing. Time is an illusion only in the sense that the physical universe is an illusion. To physical beings, it is real.
So because God understands time, while living outside of it, he has given us a limited amount of time to redeem ourselves. I know many think otherwise. They are wrong. God is not going to wait forever for us to change. He has sent his Sun of Righteousness to awaken us and help us develop our spiritual side. But He isn’t going to wait much longer for us to do it.
