In his classic novel Descent into Hell, the British writer Charles Williams (a contemporary of C. S. Lewis and Lord of the Rings creator J. R. R. Tolkien), observes that, "But if the past still lives in its own present beside our present, then the momentary later inhabitants [of the world] were surrounded by a later universe."
     It's an intriguing thought.  Although the past is no longer happening physically, it is still here, living still, embedded in our memory, very much alive and present, but oddly, no longer present or palpably with us.  We walk in a funny tangle of past, present past, and past past, an undulating and often aphonic web of experiences on which we are constantly building, but which we no longer see, experiences that shape but experiences which no longer exist.  Yet they remain.
     Given Williams's commitment to the existence of the spiritual world, we might view this remark as a conclusion about what is known and what is not.  While we may, through various texts and experiences, "know" (or at least think we do) about the spiritual world, we usually do not see it.  But if it is there, it is living in its "own present" besides our own, a present with a past and present of its own, a present that surrounds and penetrates all other presents as a kind of permanently living past and present, a present that explains all others.  Into it all the pasts goes, and into it all the pasts finds meaning.
     And, the story continues, we all are (or one day will be) surrounded by a "later" universe.  In the end, a forever present will reign.