God is Time

By Ernie Stanley

An excerpt from Shamanic Voices, a collection of shamanic narratives,

"I knew and saw God: an immense clock that ticks, the spheres that go slowly around, and inside the stars, the earth, the entire universe, the day and the night, the cry and the smile, and the happiness and the pain." - Maria Sabina

Maria Sabina, perhaps the most famous shaman within anthropology is describing an ecstatic experience where she has realized that God is time. God is a clock. This largely makes sense too, since what began existence, what begins everything? I could say time, despite the notion that many people have time is simply a measurement. However, how can time simply be a measurement if it has no barriers to quantify it? Our concept of time is very grounded in science, particularly that of the Earth's rotation. However, to quantify time is merely an abstraction and not very real. In reality, we markwith time from the beginning to the end of happenings. Thus it could be said that time is behind the beginning of all things, and also behind the end.

Time itself is timeless and infinite. As is our concept of God and the soul. Thus it is hard to draw the line between what is God and what is time.