touching THE tiMEless

I am only a ferryman, and it is my task to ferry people across the river.  I have transported many, thousands; and to all of them, my river has been nothing but an obstacle on their travels.  They traveled to seek money and business, and for weddings, and on pilgrimages, and the river was obstructing their path, and the ferryman's job was to get them quickly across that obstacle.

"You will learn it," spoke Vasudeva, "but not from me.  The river has taught me to listen, from it you will learn it as well.  It knows everything, the river, everything can be learned from it.  See, you've already learned this from the water too, that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek depth.  The rich and elegant Siddhartha is becoming an oarsman's servant, the learned Brahman Siddhartha becomes a ferryman: this has also been told to you by the river."

"Did you," so he asked him at one time, "did you too learn that secret from the river: that there is no time?"  Vasudeva's face was filled with a bright smile.  "Yes, Siddhartha," he spoke.

"It is this what you mean, isn't it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?"  

[courtesy:  Project Gutenberg EBook of Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse]