The Lexicon
Time, reality, and cosmos
Eternity
Eternity in these traditions is not endless duration but the timeless dimension that underlies all duration. It is the ever-present now seen from within, the changeless ground in which the river of moments arises and passes. To know eternity is to recognize in oneself that which was never born and can never die.
Vedanta and the nondual stream point to an awareness untouched by time, the Self that the Gita calls unborn and immutable. The mystics speak of an eternal here that the soul touches when it rests in pure being. Time is then understood as the play of the timeless, and the human heart as already at home in what has no beginning and no end.
In their words
You were never born; you will never die. You have never changed; you can never change. Unborn, eternal, immutable, immemorial, you do not die when the body dies.
Find out who you are by asking 'Who am I?' and abide as that.
The eternal now is the ground in which time arises and into which it returns.
It is always still in the depths of the ocean, irrespective of the storms that may be raging on its surface.