Current Issue

THE MYSTERY OF TIME: Parabola Volume 50, No. 1, Spring 2025

 A half century ago, the first issue of Parabola appeared in mailboxes and on newsstands. The times were right for such a magazine—spiritual search had entered the mainstream—and, under the guidance of its founder, Dorothea Dooling, the magazine flourished. Its first ten years saw a growing readership appreciative of Parabola’s message—that life has meaning—explored by an array of distinguished teachers, writers, and artists including Mircea Eliade, Isaac Bashevis Singer, P.L. Travers, Helen Luke, Owen Barfield, and the Dalai Lama.

In this commemorative issue we celebrate those ten years (future issues will recall subsequent decades) as we ponder the passage of time and its many meanings. Popular author Richard Smoley leads off with a useful overview, followed by Parabola editorial director Tracy Cochran on the journey to timelessness. Acclaimed filmmaker Kent Jones (Diane) contributes a penetrative piece on time in art, particularly cinema. Understandings of time in Islam and Buddhism as expressed by Muhammad and Dogen, and as embodied by Christ, continue the conversation, to which Krishnamurti, P.D. Ouspensky, and Maurice Nicoll also contribute. There is a wonderful poem by Joseph Bruchac, returning to Parabola after several years, and a fascinating look at how the San, aka Bushmen, deal with change and its consequences, intimately connected to the nature of time.

Over the decades, Parabola has opened its pages to ever more various spiritual traditions. In this issue, we break ground by presenting an essay by a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is high time for that, and also for the report by West Coast editor Richard Whittaker on an extraordinary conference on G.I. Gurdjieff and his teaching held in December 2024 at the Harvard Divinity School.

May you enjoy and benefit from the time you spend with this issue.

—Jeff Zaleski


table of contents

What is Time?  Richard Smoley
A compelling overview 

A New World  Tracy Cochran
To heal, we must feel

In Time  Kent Jones
An acclaimed director on time in art and cinema

Time Signatures  H. Talat Halman
Muhammad’s God-Time and Dogen’s Being-Time

The Future Is an Illusion  John Roger Barrie
Vedantic wisdom on the eternal present

N!o’an-ka|’ae: The Changing  Bradford Keeney and Hillary Keeney
How the Bushmen approach change, and so time

Psychological Time  Jiddu Krishnamurti
A master on how to be free of time 

Mysterium Temporis Christ  Clayton H. Ramsey
When the temporal and the eternal met

A Visit to Apple Farm  Shawn Casey
A place of prayer and Jungian wisdom

Time and Movement  Olivier Laignel de Salzmann
How to inhabit the present moment

Parabola at Fifty   The Editors 
The first ten years

It’s Déjà vu All Over Again  The Editors
Do we live our lives over and over?

Devouring Tyrant or Refreshing River?  Philip Novak  
How Buddhism tames time

At This Time  Amy Barr
A Latter-Day Saint shares her understanding

The Time Traveller  H.G. Wells
He had all the time in the world

epicycle

The Seer and the Student  Nartana Premachandra
A story of Einstein and Gödel

poetry

How the Mink Stole Time  Joseph Bruchac

tangent

The Harvard Gurdjieff Conference Richard Whittaker
Notes from a Centennial, December 4-5, 2024