From Days in an Indian Monastery by Sister Devamata

[Guest guest]

" With a few words he (Swami Ramakrishnananda) could make a universe

crumble. " That this world is hollow and unreal I can prove you in a few

minutes, " he said to me one evening as we talked in the dimly-lighted

monastery hall at Mylapore. " All memory exists in the mind. Indeed the

mind is made up of memory, therefore all the past and all the future

exist in the mind; only the present exists in the senses. Now how long

does any sense perception last? Just at the point of time when the

object comes in contact with the sense organ, then at once it becomes a

matter of memory.

" This point of time, like Euclid's geometrical point, actually has no

magnitude. The present therefore is in reality only such a time without

dimensions; but man, because he wishes to live in his senses, magnifies

this point and extends to the " present age " or the " present time " or

to " now-a-days " , which means these few weeks, or months, or years.

Actually the present has no real conceivable existence and only the

past and future have duration. As these exist in mind, the whole of the

universe may be said to be in mind; and when a man goes out of his mind

he goes out of the universe. "