“Life, for eternal us, is now”

— E.E. Cummings

Introduction to Poems 1924-1954

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E.E. Cummings 208

American poet 1894–1962

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“What a sublime doctrine it is, that goodness cherished now is eternal life already entered on!”

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Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 210

“Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 2, Chapter 13-14
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Context: Campbell: Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. There's a wonderful formula that the Buddhists have for the Bodhisattva, the one whose being (sattva) is illumination (bodhi), who realizes his identity with eternity and at the same time his participation in time. And the attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder and to come back and participate in it. "All life is sorrowful" is the first Buddhist saying, and it is. It wouldn't be life if there were not temporality involved which is sorrow. Loss, loss, loss.
Moyers: That's a pessimistic note.
Campbell: Well, you have to say yes to it, you have to say it's great this way. It's the way God intended it.

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No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.”

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Variant: No heavenly power will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.

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“The more we can be raised above the petty vexations and pleasures of this world into the eternal life to come, the more shall we be prepared to enter into that eternal life whenever God shall please to call us hence.”

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Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 211.

“We have eternity, beloved."
"You may have eternity. I have only now."
"But this is eternity.”

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“Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!”

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Often paraphrased as, "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge"
Context: We exhort the compromisers to open their hearts to truth, to free themselves of their wretched and blind circumspection, of their intellectual arrogance, and of the servile fear which dries up their souls and paralyzes their movements.
Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!

“The essence of life is change, he said, and the essence of eternal life is eternal change.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Darwinia

Source: Darwinia (1998), Chapter 25 (p. 209)

“You say that in heaven there is eternal beauty. The eternal beauty is here and now, not in heaven.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

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“Life, for eternal us, is now”

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E.E. Cummings 208

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