The Eclipse of Distance and the End of Time

Lo, the Nightingale of Paradise singeth upon the twigs of the Tree of Eternity, with holy and sweet melodies, proclaiming to the sincere ones the glad tidings of the nearness of God,

(Compilations, Baha'i Prayers: 208)

The extraordinary point is that in all the arts—painting, poetry, fiction, music—the modernist impulse has a common syntax of expression underlying the diverse nature of the genres.  It is, as I have said, the eclipse of distance between the spectator and the artist, between the aesthetic experience and the work of art.  One sees this as the eclipse of psychic distance, and aesthetic distance.   The loss of psychic distance means the suspension of time.

(Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism: 116)

Last post discussed the end of time as the irruption of divine Revelation, which Baha’u’llah describes in the quote above as bringing Paradise or God near, into the already established rhythm of human life that is known within a particular mental space of consciousness.  A new Revelation both brings this rhythm to an end and initiates a new one, and abolishes the mental space that knew it.  It does this by joining and knitting together the opposites Spirit and Matter into a system of new universal relationships, creating a new Reality to be known by the consciousness that can know it and which it gives birth to within those who recognize it.  Direct connection of the opposites B and E in a new configuration, embodied in a new Revelation, which is the nearness of God, reconfigures all levels of understanding and gives people the sense of an eclipse of distance in many spheres of life and thought.  When the spiritual Paradise is brought nigh, a powerful current of spiritually electric energy pulsates through all creation.

Spiritually, within the human world, the eclipse of distance means that for those who have recognized the new Reality the higher nature of humanity has eclipsed the ego.  Intellectually, it renders obsolete all non-essential knowledge in human life, those concepts and modes of understanding that cannot deliver accurate knowledge of the new Reality, but which, in fact, act as veils to the comprehension of the new configuration.  This is not to go back to a more primitive state in history, but to return to essential humanity in order to integrate and advance.

Baha’u’llah dismissed the claims to knowledge of a “learned” but arrogant man of His time by writing: “In this day, they that are submerged beneath the ocean of ancient Knowledge, and dwell within the ark of divine wisdom, forbid the people such idle pursuits. Their shining breasts are, praise be to God, sanctified from every trace of such learning, and are exalted above such grievous veils. We have consumed this densest of all veils, with the fire of the love of the Beloved—the veil referred to in the saying: 'The most grievous of all veils is the veil of knowledge.' Upon its ashes, We have reared the tabernacle of divine knowledge. We have, praise be to God, burned the 'veils of glory' with the fire of the beauty of the Best-Beloved. We have driven from the human heart all else but Him Who is the Desire of the world, and glory therein. We cleave to no knowledge but His Knowledge, and set our hearts on naught save the effulgent glories of His light.” (The Kitab-i-Iqan: 187)

For most people, however, the spiritual event of Paradise brought nigh is experienced historically, psychologically and aesthetically as an eclipse of distance, but without knowing the source. That is, many who do not believe or recognize the new Reality or the Source of it nonetheless know that something significant is happening and respond to it as they know how.   In all examples where the human heart is inspired or becomes restless and seeks new experience, but does not know or recognize the source of its search and unrest, it sees itself as the originator of the spirit animating human life.  Here eclipse of distance is attempted by the imperial self, who wishes to be God.  It is the eclipse of distance as the eclipse of God Himself, at least the need for Him to advance one’s consciousness, by the enshrouding ego fantasy. 

For them the eclipse of distance is a new conception of space. But it is, too, a new dynamic of speed.  This has emotional reverberations, for the speed of change in human life and society does not encourage people to think and contemplate but, rather, to seek the immediacy of intense experience, ecstasy, and peak experiences.  The emphasis on sensation, immediacy, simultaneity, disjunction, impact and action provide the formal cultural syntax for the arts.  The goal is to reach an identity between emotion and object.  The transitive elements come to be emphasized.  Such art and the theory of it is discussed in such books as The True Voice of Feeling by Herbert Read.

This modern cultural and artistic syntax reflects the new social reality brought about by technology such as the internet, social media, and jet transport which manifest the eclipse of distance geographically and culturally.  As Daniel Bell describes it: “In the new conception of space, there is an inherent eclipse of distance.  Not only is physical distance compressed by the newer modes of modern transportation, creating a new emphasis on travel and the visual pleasure of seeing so many different places, but the very techniques of the new arts, principally cinema and modern painting, act to eclipse the psychic and aesthetic distance between the viewer and the visual experience.”  The modern arts, he goes on, “are efforts to intensify the immediacy of the emotion, to pull the spectator into the action rather than allow him to contemplate the experience.” (The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism: 104) 

That is, the eclipse of distance in the arts is the dissolving of aesthetic form in order to involve the observer in the work itself, to invite him through his response to be a co-creator of the work, to obliterate any supposed gap between art and life.    

The eclipse of psychological distance occurs with the collapse of the intellectual space between subject and object that is characteristic of cognition and language.  It is the dissolving of a dominant form of objective rational thought and mind and, in part, a return to feeling and the heart to erase the traditional distinction between subject and object—to create a new interactive, shared unity. This compressing, almost fusion, of the subject and the object breaks down old identities and opens up new spaces of involvement. 

The physics of quantum mechanics has determined that the observer changes what he observes and is thus, really, a participator.  Observation of things becomes the on-going observation/participation in reality through observation of oneself observing things.

A like movement in theoretical thought occurs in the humanities and social sciences with the notion of reflexivity.  Reflexivity is the name given to a mode of thought in which the person engages in self-consciousness monitoring of his behavior.  Reflexivity per se is not peculiar to a post-traditional society.  It has always formed an integral part of the self and social relations of some individuals.  However, some sociologists, like Anthony Giddens, argue that a different sense of reflexivity can be attributed to post-traditional societies.  In today’s world, reflexivity consists also in the fact that social practices are also constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information about those very practices, thus constitutively altering their character.  Only in the modern era is reflexivity applied, at least in principle, to all aspects of human life.  The self is also further changed in this reflexive activity. The hold of tradition loses its salience irretrievably and the self is continually interrogated.  It becomes separated from the meaningful, if relatively unquestioned, context it had in previous times been immersed in.  New identities are forged, new social relations are tried.  But, without any new context to transform into, the experiments are groping in the dark for a new anchor.

For me, without the overarching context of life, order and thought provided by the Revelation, all these social, technological, artistic and intellectual innovations are the soul’s attempt to experience and understand the new reality directly, but without any guide or mediation. It is the human attempt to fuse what only the Manifestation can bring together.  For the human reality can never achieve the station of divinity and join and knit together the opposites B and the E.  It can only discover their connections.