“Reality is not fulfilled in temporality. It is not temporal now, and then eternal later, but rather tempiternal, all in one” (Culto y secularización).
The experience of tempiternity is to live the present as an intense experience of the now without reference to the past that has been or to the future that will be. It is that present in which an action is truly realized as such, that is, as authentic and therefore “unique”.
Tempiternity means that being and time are interrelated in such a way that nothing is untouched by time, not even eternity. At the same time, the temporal aspect of all reality is “only a partial aspect of the tempiternal nature of things”.
In speaking of time and eternity Panikkar uses three concepts: temporicity, temporality and tempiternity. While temporality comprises present, past and future, tempiternity represents “the crystallization of this very moment without ulterior distensions”. It is neither eternity nor temporality. “Reality is not fulfilled in temporality: it is not temporal now and eternal later, but rather tempiternal” (Culto y secularización). The future as such does not exist; genuine hope, which is incorrectly termed “of the future”, must strive to discover in each moment that fullness that we seek: it is possible to find the future in the present. “Time is the other face of what has come to be called eternity, so time and eternity form what could be called tempiternity. Eternity does not come after time – nor does it exist before. Man’s life on earth is not simply a pilgrimage toward God, reincarnation, or nothingness, but rather constitutes a rhythm in which every moment is inhabited by its other eternal face” (The Cosmotheandric Experience). And “If you wish to live your life in fullness, you must live it today without waiting for tomorrow”, Panikkar writes after a long and perilous pilgrimage. “We must be willing to abandon history and free ourselves of time”. It is about coming to the realization that “each step is the fulfilment of the journey, of the yâtrâ” (Pellegrinaggio al Kailâsa, Sotto il Monte 2006).