The morning fog still clung to the hills around the ashram as I walked the dirt path to my teacher’s farmhouse. Tucked into a quiet valley in Northern California, that simple home had become a place of slow learning.
I had arrived the evening before after a long drive, my mind still humming with city noise. My teacher had suggested I rest and come by in the morning for tea.
As I stepped onto the porch, I saw her sitting with a steaming cup in her hands, gazing toward the mountains as the mist began to lift.
The Question of Time
“Good morning,” she said, smiling as I took the chair beside her. “Did you sleep well?”
“Eventually,” I replied. “It took some time for the mind to slow down.”
She nodded. “The mind carries its environment for a while. Like ripples on a pond long after the stone has sunk.”
We sat in silence for a few moments. Then I brought up something that had been troubling me.
“You said that the only reality is here and now. I have been turning that over ever since. But honestly, I do not fully understand it. Life feels as though it is moving through time, in a world full of places and things.”
She took a thoughtful sip of tea. “Let us look carefully. When you say now, what do you mean?”
“The present moment.”
“And how long does this present moment last?”
I hesitated. “A few seconds, maybe?”
She tilted her head. “If now lasts a few seconds, does it not have a beginning and an end?”
I nodded.
“Then by the time you are halfway through it, the beginning is already past and the end is still future. So can that entire span really be called now?”
That made sense. “Then now must be shorter than a few seconds.”
“How short?”
“A split second. A millisecond.”
“But even a millisecond has a start, a middle, and an end,” she said. “The moment you try to measure it, part of it has already gone and part of it has not yet arrived.”
I saw what she meant. “So the present cannot actually be captured. The moment we try to define it, it breaks into past and future.”
“Exactly. The real now has no duration. It cannot be measured.”
I frowned. “But if now has no duration, how can we live in it?”
She smiled. “That is the paradox. We only ever live in the present, and yet the moment we try to grasp the present as something within time, it slips away.”
I remembered being a child, staring at the second hand on the living room clock, trying to catch the exact instant when now happened. It always escaped me. Decades later, I was finally beginning to understand why.
Past and Future as Thought
Birds had begun calling from the trees. My teacher continued.
“Think about yesterday. Where is it now?”
“In memory.”
“And tomorrow?”
“In imagination.”
“Past and future are thoughts appearing in the present. They do not exist for you outside of thought.”
She let that settle.
“We believe we are moving through time. But time, as we usually think of it, is a model. In direct experience, there is only now. Everything else is a story unfolding within it.”
I sat with that. Every memory I had ever replayed. Every future I had ever worried about. None of it had substance outside the thinking that was taking place now.
“But the past did happen,” I said. “And the future will happen.”
“Did the past happen as something that still exists somewhere?” she asked. “Or did something happen, and what remains now is memory?”
There was a subtle but important difference there. The past was not where I had imagined it to be.
The Illusion of There
She pointed toward a grove of redwoods in the distance. The fog had thinned, and their dark shapes stood still against the morning sky.
“When you look at those trees, where are they?”
“Over there.”
“And where are you?”
“Here.”
“Now imagine walking to those trees. Once you arrive, where would you be?”
It hit me immediately. “I would still be here—just here in a different place.”
“Exactly. And this place where you are sitting now, what would it become?”
“There.”
She smiled. “So no matter where you go, you are always here. There never arrives. It is a label the mind keeps moving.”
I nodded, struck by the simplicity of it. “I have never actually been anywhere but here. The surroundings change, but experience is always here.”
“Beautifully said. And this is not merely a play on words. It points to something real. There is an idea. Experience is always here.”
The Edge of Here
“How large is here?” she asked. “Where does it end?”
I looked around. “This porch? The farmhouse?”
“Is the garden part of here?”
“Yes.”
“And the hills beyond?”
I nodded.
“Then where exactly does here end and there begin?”
I tried to imagine a line, but any boundary I came up with had to appear somewhere, and that somewhere would still be here.
“It does not really end,” I admitted. “There is no clear boundary. Either here has no size, or it includes everything.”
“Just as now has no duration, here has no fixed extension. They are not positions in time and space. They are the reality in which time and space appear.”
The Puzzle of Space
“But space feels real,” I said. “We move through it. We measure it.”
She picked up a stick and drew a line in the dirt.
“Where does this line begin?”
“Right there,” I said, pointing to one end.
“And how large is that starting point?”
I paused. If it had size, it could be divided. Then it would not be a point at all. “It is dimensionless.”
“And what is next to that point?”
“Another point.”
“Is there space between them?”
“If there were, they would not be adjacent.”
“So if there is no space between them, are they not the same point?”
I laughed softly. “Then how does the line have any length at all?”
“That is the puzzle. If space is made of points, contradictions arise. And if it is not made of points, what is it made of?”
I could feel the ordinary solidity of space starting to loosen.
“And if space is infinite,” she continued, “what does that really mean? If it ends, what lies beyond it? Both ideas break down when examined closely.”
A Brief Word on Things
She lifted her teacup. “And what is true of time and space is also true of the things that appear within them. The cup depends on its form. The form depends on clay. Clay depends on molecules. Molecules depend on atoms. Atoms dissolve into patterns we can describe but never directly grasp as final. Look closely enough and the world of separate solid things becomes a network of appearances resting on something we cannot point to as an object.”
I nodded. We had touched on this ground before.
Duality and Non-Duality
“What we are doing,” she said, “is examining the ordinary view of reality—separate things in space, moving through time—and finding that it does not hold together as neatly as it first appears.”
“That ordinary view is called duality. It divides experience into self and other, here and there, now and then, subject and object.”
“And the alternative?” I asked.
“Non-duality. The recognition that those divisions belong to the way the mind organizes experience, not to reality itself.”
I sat back. “So the dualistic view feels obvious, but on examination it is full of contradictions. Non-duality is actually simpler.”
She smiled. “Yes. We are so accustomed to duality that we mistake familiarity for truth.”
What Is Truly Here and Now?
“If time and space and things are not ultimately real in the way I assume,” I asked, “then what is? What is this here and now you keep pointing to?”
She looked at me gently. “Close your eyes.”
I did.
“Are you aware right now?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know. It is self-evident.”
“That knowing is what is truly here and now. Not a place. Not a moment in time. It is the background in which all experiences come and go.”
I opened my eyes.
“Think of a movie screen,” she said. “The images change, but the screen remains. Your awareness is like that screen. It allows everything to appear.”
“In Vedanta, we call it Brahman when we speak of it as the reality of the world, and Atman when we speak of it as the reality of the individual. But it is one and the same.”
“This awareness is not in time. It is what makes the experience of time possible. It is not in space. It is what makes the experience of space possible. It has no boundary, no beginning, no end.”
Living from Awareness
I looked out at the brightening valley. Then a practical question arose.
“If time is only a concept, why plan? If separateness is an appearance, why care for this body more than any other?”
She nodded. “Recognition does not erase practical life. In the realm of appearance, action still matters. The body still needs care. Others still need kindness.”
“But you stop mistaking the form for your true identity. You begin to know that what you are—the awareness in which all change is known—is not itself born, changed, or diminished by what comes and goes.”
She placed her hand lightly on mine. “And that knowing brings a quiet freedom.”
The Direct Path
By then the sun had fully risen. The fog had lifted, and the valley lay open and clear.
“What is beautiful about this,” she said, “is that it is always available. You do not have to travel through time to reach it. It is here now.”
“You are aware. That awareness is not elsewhere. It is what you already are—before any thought, belief, or identity.”
“This is why Advaita Vedanta is sometimes called the direct path. You do not arrive at the here and now through seeking, because you have never been outside it.”
I sat quietly, letting her words settle. The world looked the same, but something in the way I met it had shifted.
As we rose to go inside and make breakfast, she said softly, “The world has not disappeared. You simply see it more clearly now—as an appearance in the awareness that you are.”
We walked together toward the kitchen.
There is only here.
Only now.
Only awareness.
And in that simple recognition, there was peace.