The fact is that here, away from Calcutta, I live in my own inner world,
where the clocks do not keep ordinary time; where duration is measured
only by the intensity of the feelings; where, as the outside world does
not count the minutes, moments change into hours and hours into moments.
So it seems to me that the subdivisions of time and space are only mental
illusions. Every atom is immeasurable and every moment infinite.
There is a Persian story which I was greatly taken with when I read it as
a boy--I think I understood, even then, something of the underlying idea,
though I was a mere child. To show the illusory character of time, a
_faquir_ put some magic water into a tub and asked the King to take a
dip. The King no sooner dipped his head in than he found himself in a
strange country by the sea, where he spent a good long time going through
a variety of happenings and doings. He married, had children, his wife and
children died, he lost all his wealth, and as he writhed under his
sufferings he suddenly found himself back in the room, surrounded by his
courtiers. On his proceeding to revile the _faquir_ for his
misfortunes, they said: "But, Sire, you have only just dipped your head
in, and raised it out of the water!"
The whole of our life with its pleasures and pains is in the same way
enclosed in one moment of time. However long or intense we may feel it to
be while it lasts, as soon as we have finished our dip in the tub of the
world, we shall find how like a slight, momentary dream the whole thing
has been.
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