Eternity

The world defines eternity as "time without beginning or end; infinite time; the state or quality of being eternal, the timeless state following death, the afterlife; immortality." Eternal is "being without beginning or end; existing outside of time; continuing without interruption; perpetual; everlasting, forever true or changeless; of or relating to spiritual communion with God, especially in the afterlife."

Eternal is that which has always existed and will always exist. Eternity means being eternal, immortal, such as eternal truths, infinite time, and the future life. Eternity is an absolute and an abstract principle, and a Via Christa Degree. Eternity, combined with the degrees of Space and Time, forms the ninth lesser Via Christa trinity, whose keynote is Immortality through conquering Space and Time.

Despite the arguments made by the ancient and classical philosophers and scholars, we know that God is all that is. Therefore, you cannot have God and anything else, Creation, for example. Since only God is, all things and beings exist within Him and can derive their being and existence from no other source. "Eternity radiates in every direction from the now. It overlaps and holds all the past, present and future in this handful of life right now." – Edna Lister







Edna Lister on Eternity

The soul is eternal and immortal. – Edna Lister, Eternal Youth, December 15, 1935.


Love is eternal and a flame undying. – Edna Lister, June 9, 1938.


Reality is eternal and infinite. Reality is beyond time and space, eternal in duration and infinite in extension. The finite mind cannot grasp infinite reality. – Edna Lister, A Design for Ascension, 1941.


The Priest must bear all life from earth to eternity; in this degree, you become aware of eternity. – Edna Lister, September 10, 1946.


Most people will say, "You have to face the facts," rather than facing the Light of eternity. Take your "facts of life" from the real facts of eternity, not the facts of past experience, or of outer appearances. – Edna Lister, The Three Phases of Life Through Faith, April 20, 1947.


Cosmic consciousness includes eternal vigilance. – Edna Lister, August 6, 1950.


Wisdom, Love and Joy are eternal, as are Mind, Substance and Power. – Edna Lister, July 16, 1951.


You can't live in the past, or in the future. You can live only now, which is eternal. – Edna Lister, May 22, 1952.


Eternity stretches in every direction. All you have is where you stand now. – Edna Lister, Success Through Prayer, July 7, 1953.


Eternity consists of Light, Life, Power and Substance; this is divine Mind. – Edna Lister, September 9, 1957.


The Light is immortal. This Light is eternal. This Light is true life. – Edna Lister, July 3, 1958.


You will never have greater access to immortality and eternity than you do right now. Now is an escalator to God, walled by Love on one side and Wisdom on the other. Ascend on this. – Edna Lister, Idealization, May 10, 1959.


Eternity radiates in every direction from now. It overlaps and holds all the past, present and future in this handful of life right now. A handful of life is immortal and stretches to eternity. You stand in eternity this very minute, and get out of it what you put into it. The Beatitudes teach how to live in eternity now — not in the future, not in the past, but now. You cannot live one day in eternity without setting something into action. – Edna Lister, The 33 Degrees of Soul Conquering, November 3, 1959.


The road to eternal life is a narrow road of discipline. – Edna Lister, October 21, 1961.


You live in eternity, but you use time and space. – Edna Lister, April 4, 1963.


The essence of Deity is eternal, but only the three original Persons of Deity are unqualifiedly eternal. All other deity personalities have an origin, but are eternal in destiny. – Edna Lister, The Supreme Being: God as Personality, God as the Sevenfold, November 3, 1964.


Potential infinity is absolute and inseparable from eternity. – Edna Lister, The Three Absolutes Founded on Philosophy, November 10, 1964.


All time is based in and on the principle of Mother Love. All space is based in Wisdom. Time is always now with Mother Love. Space forever opens under Wisdom. Universal Mother Love transcends time and space, being eternal and everywhere simultaneously. – Edna Lister, Eternity Is Now Mine, May 9, 1965.


Patience represents the exhaustless eternities of God expressing, and nothing and no one can stop the Eternal from expressing. – Edna Lister, May 25, 1965.


The eternal now begets the creative future, from the creature to the creator states of consciousness. – Edna Lister, Your Live Wire of Omnipotence, September 7, 1965.


All is One at the Source. In eternity, all is. All has not yet been revealed in time and space. – Edna Lister, The Source Above the Supreme, November 21, 1967.


We live in space between outer time and inner eternity. – Edna Lister, The Holy Ghost on this Day of Pentecost, June 2, 1968.


Time and eternity must meet at one point in space for us to be flexible and balanced. "In the beginning, God created" means God moved from eternity into time, and brought them together to meet in a miracle of manifestation. You must enfold time into eternity to produce a miracle. – Edna Lister, To Know, To Be, To Do, the Keys of the Kingdom, June 16, 1968.


The minute you think of God, you move from time to eternity. When God descends, He moves from eternity to time. Time is bondage in space, eternity is freedom. The Power and Substance of eternity fill you and you transcend time-space. – Edna Lister, June 17, 1968.


Originally, we moved from infinite eternity into time and space. Unfortunately, we reach for eternity without accepting full responsibility for our own immortality, here and now. All your difficulties arise from this urgency to move back from time and space into eternity and infinity. the Mind of God rules eternity and infinity; time and space are ruled by the minds of humanity — one pulls up and the other down. – Edna Lister, You Are an Ambassador of Peace, July 28, 1968.


Hold your point and place in eternity and everything shall fall into place in time and space where you are serving. – Edna Lister, October 18, 1968.


God is time, space and eternity. – Edna Lister, June 19, 1969.


When you can draw your time and space together, to meet as one, you can live in the eternal now. – Edna Lister, July 9, 1969.


Faith is your direct contact with eternity. – Edna Lister, I Let Life Live Me Now, January 6, 1970.


It was the oddest feeling to face eternity and not to know where your form would be, what it would be or where you would do your work. I've always stood between earth and the inner to protect our sponsors there. I've appreciated the tremendous work they do. I went and actually lived there, in eternity. It makes you smile at those who say, "God doesn't feel." I was taken in until every part of me was there. It was peculiar, not suffering, not actual pain or grief, yet it's bigger than them all. I cannot explain. You cannot appreciate it without being it.

However, such a supreme experience does make you know the difference between wanting to give so that the other one will stand with you, seeing, and wanting to give to keep the doors and windows wide open so that at the right time when one is working on the inner and ready, the words will be there for them to guide them, and bring them in as far as possible. Yet if you do not become a witness to what you know as truth, how will the other person have the words, the vibration for the cracking open at the moment of speculation?

Make certain that you do not take credit anytime, anywhere — this is important. You must not go there (eternity) if you have any sense of "getting" or sense of place or position. You must go there because you cannot bear to be any farther away. According to your depth of desire and need to be there, a golden cord stretches to the Source and the Father pours Power, strength and glory over that. You go there with eyes veiled, but with your heart bursting with love and adoration. Yet when you return, you can open your eyes and ears. – Edna Lister, May 1, 1970.


The Light is yours. You are the Light. The Light is One. There is no time or space. All your work is for the purpose of ascending, not through time and space, but to live in eternity now. You conform to the laws of time and space, but at the height of your Garden of Eden, you live in eternity. – Edna Lister, June 28, 1970.


As a creator, you must lift your time and space into eternity now. "The measure of my love and devotion is the measure of the eternity in which I live daily." – Edna Lister, Ascension Makes All Things New, July 5, 1970.


God consciousness collapses space and time into eternity now. You know that there is no then and there, only here and now. – Edna Lister, Stand, Endure and Hold Through the Magic Word, November 30, 1970.


The love of the Elect has collapsed time and space – no abysses remain between us and the Sources. The Light shines through them all. There is no consciousness of time or space. On earth, we seem to have time and space, but we really live in eternity. God sent us forth from eternity and our struggle has been to transcend time and space. We have been on earth, but of heaven. We have allowed ourselves to become entangled. As you awaken the thousand-petaled crown lotus, you become aware of this. As Solomon made a thousand days of burnt offerings, so you must live a thousand days without a negative. – Edna Lister, February 14, 1971.


There is no time or space in eternity. It is one. When you reach for eternity, space begins to collapse upon itself and you can stand as you did in the beginning, One with God. – Edna Lister, The High Altar, May 23, 1971.

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Plato on the Eternal Forms

In the Timaeus (37E6–38A6) Plato contrasts the eternal forms with the time-bound created world, the world of mutation and becoming, for time was created along with the heaven (38B5), meaning at least that time is the measure of change, and perhaps that it is identical with the movements of the heavenly bodies, a view later critiqued by Augustine (Confessions, Book XI. xxiii) Plato's idea of eternity in the Timaeus seems to be that of timeless duration, for the Forms endure in the temporal order in which 'time is the moving image of eternity'. It is possible to trace a similar idea of timeless eternity back to Parmenides, though exactly what he means is the subject of scholarly dispute.

While in some places at least Plato connected the necessary character of the Forms, including mathematical objects, to eternity, in Aristotle the connection is between necessity and sempiternity. What is necessary is what exists for all times. What is contingent is what at some time might not be. God, being necessary, is sempiternal. Nevertheless it may be said that the sempiternal is not bounded by time (in a weaker sense than Plato ascribes to the Forms) in that what exists sempiternally cannot age. (Physics 221b30) Philo of Alexandria is reckoned to be the first to ascribe timelessness to God, to the God of the Jewish Scriptures. In Plotinus (ca. 185–254) timeless eternity and life are for the first time identified together. Nous is eternal and beyond time, enjoying duration without succession. – Paul Helm


Old Testament on Eternity

God inhabits eternity: Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. – Isaiah 57:15.


Eternity in Other Sacred Writings

God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of His own eternity. – Wisdom of Solomon 2:23.

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Edna Miriam Lister
1884 – 1971
The original Christian Pioneering Mystic,
Platonist philosopher, American Idealist, Founder, Society of the Universal Living Christ, minister, teacher, author, wife, and mother.


Edna Lister


Etymology of eternity: Latin aeternitas, from aeternus, "eternal"; Latin aevum, "age, eternity."


Eternity is an absolute principle.

Eternity is an abstract principle.

Eternity is a Via Christa Degree.



Quote

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



References

Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Anchor Books, 1991, 64.

Helm, Paul, "Eternity", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2014, Edward N. Zalta, editor [accessed September 1, 2017].

The Compact Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary: 2 volumes. E.S.C. Weiner, editor. Oxford University Press, 1971.

The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV).

The Nag Hammadi Library. James M. Robinson, editor. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981.


Related Topics

See Infinity

See Time