What is Eternal Reality?
First, we are to understand that Eternity is not just unending time.
Time is a process within Eternity. Eternity is an infinite “Here-Now”.
This is not an easy notion to grasp. Our mind is generally conditioned in its processes to think of things happening one after another in a sequence. It is this sequential, linear way of thinking that has given rise to the idea that Time stretches from what we call the “past”, through what we call the “present”, into what we call the “future”.
But “past”, “present” and “future” are very mysterious. Some of the world’s greatest philosophers have tried to disclose the secret of Time, and yet not given us a clear explanation of it.
Plato saw Time as the “moving image of Eternity”. This can be a very fruitful way of thinking about Time and Eternity. Let us remind ourselves that God is omniscient, that He knows everything, and that He knows this “everything” in an infinite simultaneity, an unlimited “all-in-oneness”. This “all-in-oneness” is the Eternal Now, an infinite Now that contains within itself all conceivable things, beings, events and relations, in one infinite wholeness.
Eternal Reality is infinite wholeness, within which is contained Time.
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