Maurice Nicoll, Yeshua, and T.S. Eliot speak of consciousness levels.

Maurice begins his talk with the statement, “The feeling of Eternity enters into Self-Remembering, and does not enter into Self-Observation.” Commentaries, p943. I love Maurice’s talks about time! 

In the diagram on p945, time is our familiar 4th dimension along the horizontal axis of life—past, present, and future. Eternity is the 5th dimension, which intersects every moment of time. Every now is eternal, and humanity is both in Time and in Eternity. 

Maurice says, “Real ‘I’ is in Eternity—not in Time. Self-Remembering is out of Time and out of Personality. Essence, being Eternal, has not the feelings of Personality, which are of Time only.” “It is not the force of life (which lies in Time) that can make Personality passive. Only another force coming from a different direction can make Personality passive and feed Essence—the eternal part of us. One can then begin to see that all esoteric teaching must have the quality of Eternity about it, and being so can develop Essence, which is eternal. Through all Time, through all the ages, esoteric teaching remains the same. It always teaches the same things. It is above Time and change. It is Eternity in Time—and so it speaks always of eternal life.” Commentaries, p945

From this perspective—our life in Time and our life in Eternity—Maurice goes on to make the observation that I’ve heard before, that changing one’s level of Being can change both the past and the future on the timeline. “One act of non-identifying now influences your past as well as your future.” Commentaries, p946, Maurice says that it is the new ideas of the Teachings that can bring about this change of seeing. 

At first, hearing this concept was foreign to me, but I think I have an example. At age 30, I suffered a serious back injury. There was physical and mental pain for several years, and I viewed the whole event as catastrophic. Over time I adjusted to the limitations imposed by the injury, and slowly came to see it as a positive event in my life. At that point, the event in the past was “reexperienced or reclassified.” The past had been changed, and the future also, as my new positive attitude changed the future. I became content with the present, the past, and the new future.

Maurice goes on to say that the external senses can only register the present moment in time, so ideas like this are often labeled nonsense. Yes, they are non-sense, exactly! M further elaborates, “There are many parallel lines of Time, like telegraph wires, and one can be on one or another according to one’s inner state. If you enjoy your negative emotions, you will follow one line, the lowest. To rise in a vertical movement, one rises and follows another parallel line by non-identifying and by Self-Remembering—by the Work, which enters Time at right angles, and so is always vertically above you, and never in the future, for the future is in horizontal Time. If Being develops, the direction is vertical. One will see one’s life differently. Higher Being is above lower Being.” p946 “One can change things in the past now—not by useless sad regret, but by active work on ourselves. We are not connected with a dead past but by a living past. Every act of Work vibrates through the whole Time-Body and alters things in it.” Commentaries, p946

Logion 50
Yeshua says...

Suppose you are asked,
"Where have you come from?"
say, "We have come from the Light at its source,
from the place where it came forth
and was manifest as Image and Icon.

If you are asked, "Are you that Light?"
say, "We are its children,
and chosen by the Source, the Living Father."

If you are questioned,
"But what is the sign of the Source within you?"
say, "It is movement and it is rest."

In his poem Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot describes a “still point” where time and eternity meet, where movement and rest converge, and where the dance of life occurs:

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;  
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,  
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,  
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,  
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,  
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”

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Note: All page numbers refer to Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise. 

All quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.