Seventh Day: Conscious existence.

Seventh Day: Conscious existence.

The seventh cycle of creation. The sequence of experiences lived in the present moment, which from this point on is constant. The seventh day is a call to conscious existence in the present, which is defined based on the second cycle.

Genesis 2:3

With the sixth day, creation was completed.

"Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them."

God sanctifies the seventh day and creates no further definitions. The world is complete; it exists.

According to the cycles of creation, the world does not exist in the way we, as human beings, experience it. The laws of the second cycle determine time in the manner in which we perceive it as human beings, yet according to the description, the world does not mean only the world existing in the present moment.

If we examine the description of the six days — the cycles of creation — it becomes evident that time is necessary because perception is limited, enabling us to come to know the world in its details.

The world exists in the same way that a film exists on a reel. However, in order to comprehend and understand the content of the film, we must watch its frames one after another at a speed that is appropriate for us. Imagine how much we would understand from a two-hour film if we watched it at such a speed that it ended in five minutes, or conversely, if it took us five days to reach the end. If every frame were projected simultaneously, we would see only a completely bright screen on which nothing could be perceived.

The third day represents the sequence and the kinds of experiences. It does not define the present moment but every experience that exists—everything we have ever experienced or ever will experience.

The fourth day represents not the knowledge currently available to us and its individual definitions, but every definition that exists. For us, these include definitions that we came to know in the past and definitions that we will come to know only in the future, yet on the fourth day every definition was established.

The fifth day describes the process of knowing and reveals that the laws can be known only in a specific order, because the knowledge available to us determines what we are presently capable of coming to know.

The sixth day defines not only the material forms through which experiences become known, but also the order and the logic according to which they must appear again and again, in the presence of different emotions and interpreted according to different properties.

For us, as human beings, the world is perceptible only in the present. We are capable only of perceiving the present. According to the description of the Bible, however, the world exists as a complete whole. We experience the world like a film, moment by moment. The past and the future exist only in our imagination, based on how much we have come to know of the laws that determine the world. Therefore, as our knowledge grows, both the past and the future continually change so as to reflect our present knowledge. Reality, however, exists according to what God determined through the six cycles of creation.

The seventh day is therefore existence itself. For us, it unfolds in time, whereas for God the world exists as a complete whole, and at the beginning of the second chapter the text of the Bible declares this explicitly. After making this declaration, the text continues:

"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created."

From this point onward, the descriptions of the Bible present the laws of Heaven as they appear to the human being, in time, in a manner that is comprehensible and understandable for the human being.

Apparently, a second account of creation begins here. In reality, however, the world exists according to the laws established during the six days, and it is presented in chronological order according to the process of knowing by consciousness.

The seventh day is conscious existence, within which we perceive the present moment. This present moment reveals only a small fragment of the world, so that the world may not shine merely as one great radiant light in which nothing is distinguished from anything else and nothing can be known. Rather, through limited perception, which unfolds along a timeline, the world becomes knowable in all its details.

The seventh day is also a recurring call throughout the text of the Bible. In the biblical narrative, the seventh day is a day of celebration on which no work is to be done. The true meaning of this is that the seventh day should continually remind us that the world exists. We do not shape the world. Rather, because of our limited knowledge, our limited perception, and the free will that appears according to our present knowledge, we perceive the world as though we were shaping it.

Throughout the text of the Bible, God repeatedly foretells what will happen. He even foretells how people will respond, what would happen if they chose one way or another, and ultimately how they will choose and what will happen.

Such descriptions always refer back to the cycles of creation and to the meaning of the seventh day.

The seventh day, which is the first holy day in the Bible, continually points out that we perceive the past and the future only according to our present knowledge. However, the experiences that appear in the present always appear according to all the laws of the world, of which we become capable of perceiving more and more as our knowledge grows.

Our knowledge can increase only through conscious presence, because in the past and in the future only our present knowledge can appear; no new information can appear there. Nevertheless, the past and the future remain important even as we imagine them, because we are able to imagine the laws we have already come to know in forms that could never appear in reality. However, what can ultimately appear in reality and what cannot is revealed only in the present as it becomes reality. The experiences of the present confirm whether what we imagined is achievable and possible.

According to our knowledge, we imagine the future. We become capable of planning farther and farther ahead, over increasingly greater intervals. Yet it is always the future as it becomes reality that reveals, in the present, how accurately our knowledge corresponds to the reality that ultimately comes to pass.

The seventh day is now. It is always now. The seventh day is not the process that we experience, but existence itself. We, as human beings, exist in reality only within the present moment as it appears along the timeline. Reality—the seventh day—exists, has always existed, and will always exist. From this reality, we can perceive only the moment that is appearing to us through conscious presence.

Just as, in a film, we see only the frame that the projector is displaying at that moment, so too, of reality, we are capable of perceiving only as much as is appearing to our senses at that moment. The film, however, exists from beginning to end regardless of which particular frame we are currently seeing.