Before The Consciousness Of Eternity Poem by Mystic Qalandar

Place your consciousness
before the Consciousness of Eternity—
not as one finite awareness
standing before another,
but as a wave returning
to the immeasurable sea
from which it was never separate.

Be still.

Let thought loosen its claim upon you.
Let the mind cease
from naming what cannot be named,
measuring what has no measure,
and dividing what has never been divided.

Then ask:

Who is the one who sees?

And who is seen?

And what is this seeing
that silently joins
the seer and the seen?

Remain there—
before the question becomes an answer.

Until the seer
is no longer an isolated witness,
the seen
no longer an object outside itself,
and seeing itself
no longer an act performed by a separate self.

Until the three
fall into their primordial simplicity—

seer,
seen,
and seeing—

becoming the echo
of one and the same Reality.

Not three.

Not even one
in the ordinary sense of number.

Only That
which was before counting began.

Place your soul
before the Soul of Eternity—

not as a servant
standing before a distant Sovereign,
nor as a fragment
seeking reunion with its Source,

but as the breath
that discovers
it has never breathed outside
the Breath of the Real.

Surrender.

Not the surrender of defeat,
but the surrender
of the illusion of separation.

Let the one who surrenders
be surrendered.

Let the desire to arrive
be surrendered.

Let even the desire
to become divine
fall silent—

for what you seek
cannot be added to you.

It can only be unveiled.

And when the veil grows thin,
what remains?

The one who surrenders—
where is he?

The One to whom he surrendered—
where is He?

Between them
there was never a distance
except the thought of distance.

There was never a second
except the mind's invention of two.

There was never a journey
except the journey
from forgetfulness to remembrance.

Place your heart
before the Image
of the Divine Transcendent—

and do not mistake the image
for the Reality.

For every image
is already a veil,
and every veil
is also a disclosure.

The Infinite
cannot be contained by form,
yet every form
is suspended within the Infinite.

The Transcendent
does not descend into creation
as something separate from itself;

rather, creation
is the sign
through which transcendence
whispers its own presence.

Look again.

Look into the heart.

Not with the eyes
that divide the world
into subject and object,

but with that inward sight
before which distinctions
become transparent.

Behold—

your whole being,
too,
is transcendent.

Not because the body
has escaped the earth,

not because the world
has ceased to be the world,

but because beneath every changing form
there shines a Reality
that change cannot alter.

The body is passing.

Thought is passing.

Memory is passing.

Name is passing.

Time itself
is passing through you.

Yet something remains—

not an object,
not a personality,
not an image of yourself,

but the silent ground
in which every experience
appears and disappears.

Go deeper.

Before thought—
silence.

Before silence—
awareness.

Before awareness becomes
'my awareness, '
there is simply
Awareness.

And before even this distinction
can arise,

there is the Mystery
that no language can possess.

This is the metaphysical threshold:

where being
is no longer opposed to becoming,

where eternity
is not merely endless time,

where the Absolute
is not another entity
standing beyond the universe,

where transcendence
and immanence
are recognized as two ways
of speaking about the One
that language cannot contain.

The universe is not outside
the Mystery.

Nor is the Mystery
confined within the universe.

Every star
is a syllable.

Every breath
a disclosure.

Every consciousness
a window through which
the Infinite beholds
the theatre of its own signs.

And perhaps this is the deepest paradox:

you seek the Eternal
with a consciousness
that itself is sustained
by the Eternal.

You seek the Source
with a soul
whose very capacity to seek
is already a gift of the Source.

You seek the Light
while every act of seeing
is possible only because
some light has already entered you.

Therefore—

do not merely seek.

Become transparent.

Do not attempt
to possess Reality.

Allow the possessor
to disappear.

Do not ask,

'How can I reach Eternity? '

Ask instead:

'What is it in me
that imagines itself
separate from Eternity? '

Stay with that question
until the questioner grows silent.

Stay until the seeker
is seen as another veil.

Stay until the path
has consumed the traveller.

Stay until the destination
is discovered
not at the end of the road
but beneath every step.

Then the ancient mystery
begins to disclose itself:

you were not travelling
toward the Real.

You were awakening
to the Real.

You were not becoming
what you are not.

You were shedding
what you had mistaken
for yourself.

The ego was not the self—
only a temporary pronoun
spoken by consciousness.

The world was not the prison—
only the mirror
in which the prisoner's
imagined boundaries appeared.

And the veil
was never placed
over the Divine.

It was placed
over your seeing.

So place your consciousness
before the Consciousness of Eternity.

Place your soul
before the Soul of Eternity.

Place your heart
before the Transcendent.

And then—

let consciousness become spacious,

let the soul become still,

let the heart become clear,

until the one who beholds
and That which is beheld
are no longer experienced
as two.

Until seeing
becomes remembrance.

Until surrender
becomes union.

Until silence
becomes revelation.

Until the finite
discovers its depth
in the Infinite.

And finally—

when there is no longer
a 'you' standing before Eternity,

do not say:

'I have found the Eternal.'

For the last illusion
is the claim of the finder.

Simply be silent.

For Eternity was never absent.

The seer was its window.

The seen was its sign.

Seeing was its silent radiance.

And the one who sought
was, from the beginning,

a ripple
within the Ocean
that was seeking nothing—

because it had never lost itself.

Only the illusion
of separation
had to end.

And when it ends,

nothing new appears.

The veil falls.

The Real remains.

As it always was.

As it always is.

As it can never cease to be.