They say things like ‘power of now’, ‘no yesterday, no tomorrow, only now’, ‘grab now and live blissfully in it’, ‘yesterday gives depression and tomorrow gives anxiety’, so on and so forth.

I can’t resist temptation of looking at this ‘Now’. And that brings several questions leaping and bouncing in my head. Is there a thing called ‘Now’ independent of ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’?  Or is it ‘Now’ that holds ‘yesterday and tomorrow” or vice versa? Can we really separate ‘Now’ from ‘Yesterday and ‘Tomorrow’ or are they just one coin with three faces? How did ‘Now’ come to exist and wherein it lies the fountain of bliss?

As with ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’, I see that human mind shelters them as nowhere else in nature of things can they claim their existence! They can’t grow in land nor can they hang down from plants or creepers. No living beings apart from humans ever need them to go on.  We’ve created places galore for them to live immortally forever. Besides mind and memory, they thrive in history, literature, science, prophecy, civilizations, to list a few. We look back at ‘Yesterday’ and swell with pride at the astonishing feats our ancestors and predecessors achieved. They live in history as a beacon of hope and source of inspiration for us.  And if those great men came and went yesterday, more of them will come tomorrow! We cherish the memory of them, fight out predatory thoughts drifting us away from great memories!

That makes me wonder if humans could really live without them (Time framework) like others! I know it for sure that all come without them and go without them. Now then, the question is whether or not they can live without them in the earthly plane after what we call coming to life and before what we call melting away into death! And if the answer is yes, then that leads to the question, why on earth did we need this ‘Now’, ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’, the total time framework, at all?

Well, there are group of reincarnation theorists who believe that few humans are born with memory pregnant with many lives they lived in recent or distant past. Psychiatrist Dr. Brian Weiss’ claustrophobic patient Catherine who suffered bouts of panic attacks and palpitations put through hypnotic regression is a case in point. He claims that she could recount graphic details of various lives she lived in different corners of the earthly plane. The Tibetan Book of Dead reinforces this theory painting a picture of life after death or Bar-Do (Time space between death and rebirth) in which it suggests the dead coming into somewhat ethereal existence after earthly departure and that this form of existence proceeds from his own memory stuffed with the accumulated deposit of human karma (residual deposits of his good or bad deed).

In this little piece of writing I refrain from going into this obscure stuff called reincarnation. I live it at that.

Let me come back to this ‘Now’, Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’ and do some speculations on why on earth did humans need it, or more precisely, why couldn’t we do without it? When we look for an explanation, one plausible explanation we land up in is that we didn’t feel or sense or observe things around us as comfortable, convenient, safe, and secured at some level of our psyche with the non-orderly nature of our existence against the vast expanse of unknown things we found ourselves in. Everything we looked at was completely chaotic, an object of bafflement. Nothing to hold onto and nothing to fall back on!  Living in unknown! End to end and only endlessness and empty nothing! Where to begin and where to end! Confusions! Baffling! Fear! Sense of Insecurity!

Where do we go from here! Nowhere to go! Live without knowing a thing! Live without naming a thing! Live without knowing what living is! Die without knowing what dying is! Eat, shit, fuck and sleep! That’s it!

No, we can’t live that way! We need to understand things! We need to have ideas about things! We need to analyze things! We need to have control over things! We need a sense of security! We need a framework! We need an ORDER in this non-orderly, chaotic plane of our existence!  And, we went for an order and had it!

This little ORDER we created because the big ORDER (natural or cosmic) we found ourselves in was only too vague, obscure, mysterious and frightening. And with the creation of this little ORDER came the concept of time, space, birth, life, death, religion, culture, civilization and awful lot of other things that we swell with pride and steadfastly hold on to as our dearly possessions.

It is certainly not easy if not impossible for an ordinary mortal to break free from this ORDER that they have lived this far. A few have transcended it which means, to me, they shook off shackles of this ORDER that had bound them by rising above it and never ever longed for another order. This way they went back for the big ORDER where they naturally belonged to.

Now, coming back to the point ‘Now’, ‘Yesterday’ and Tomorrow’, let’s ask this question to ourselves, ‘Can we let go ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’ by holding on to ‘Now’? Isn’t it that ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’ are born of ‘Now’ and they continue to exist because of ‘Now’? Isn’t ‘Now’ the foundation on which ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’ stand? Is it possible for someone who doesn’t have ‘Now’ to have ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’?  Isn’t it ‘Now’ from which proceeds ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’?

The answer is simple and plane. One needs ‘Now’ to think or to talk about ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’.  One cannot be in ‘Yesterday’ and think and talk about ‘Yesterday’, neither can he be in ‘Tomorrow’ and think and talk about ‘Tomorrow’. In order to think and talk about ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’, you need to be in ‘Now’. If ‘Now’ is not there, ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’ can’t be there.

So, it is ‘Now’ that constitutes the column on which surmounts ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’. If one aspires to break free from ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Tomorrow’, he/she has to knock the column of ‘Now’ down.  Or else, all sweet talks are only talks.