Ah fill the cup: — what boots it to repeat/ How Time is slipping underneath our feet:/ Unborn, tomorrow, and dead yesterday,/ Why fret about them if today is sweet!These words of Omar Khayyam bring home to us an integral relationship between the past, present and future together with a great deal of emphasis on the significance of thinking and living in the depths of the present. True, the past is concerned with experiencing time in what went before and the future in the time to come. But the present is always present in objective terms. It is the profound sense of living in the present vis-a-vis the past and the future, that distinguishes a Sufi from the ordinary men mired in the petty affairs of the world. Each moment of a Sufi’s existence on this planet is purposeful; it can be understood only in spiritual and historical terms.The Sufi is called the son of the moment (ibnu’l-waqt) for he lives in the present moment. The present moment is the nexus between him and the Eternal; hence he lives not merely in serial time but simultaneously in the Eternal Moment.Living in the present does not mean forgetting the past and the future. The past must be reflected upon for a better future. But one should never think of living in the past or the future. While obsession with the past may give birth to false pride, the idea of living in the future may create utopias in one’s mind. It is living in time or in the present alone that will link man to the Eternal. No other activity of man, therefore, unravels the mystery of time than the consciousness of living eternally in the presence of God.Devotion to God, therefore, demands sublime fulfilment of all religious and social obligations for being able to be at peace with oneself, one’s neighbours and environment. As the Prophet Muhammad (Peace of Allah on Him) said: ‘‘Worship Allah as if you are seeing Him. And if you are not seeing Him (perceive) that He is in fact seeing you’’. This Hadith needs to be understood in conjunction with another dictum that the Prophet had ‘‘a special time with God’’ meaning thereby that the conjuncture of the spiritual and temporal can take place only in the higher consciousness of the seekers after the Truth. Conscious of deeper spiritual and social dimensions of worship, a Sufi transcends the ephemerality of time and space by way of consecrating himself to the concept of adoring none but the Transcendent and the Immanent, the One who nourishes us all.
