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>When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished being here rather than there, why now rather than then.
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>Pascal
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>So, Jos ... why are you (we) here now ? .... Or have we always been here but have not always been aware of it ? Don't you think that it is a coincidence (considering infinity), that we should be here "now" ? Considering the alternative ...

Its a great quote but the eastern ideas of time and the "eternal now" pre-date Pascal by some several thousand years :)

"Why" is a question of philosophy. Its not a case of having always been "here" or "then" or "there". This is an idea which belongs to the time-line view of time. The idea that we "appear" somewhere along a pre-existing and objective "line of time" which starts at the big bang and ends at some distant point in the future.

Try to ignore the idea of a time-line, as time moving from a past to a future for a moment. Think first how the whole universe exists in this instant. Every atom in the universe exists at this instant. Then time is the illusion that is created because things change. We remember a previous state and often we can imagine a future state. This gives the idea that time exists and independantly "moves" from a past to a future. But its an illusion. Imagine instead that nothing changed at all, nothing. Then we would commonly say that "time stands still". But thats not really true. The truer statement in that scenario would be that time doesnt exist at all.

Time is the illusion created because things change and because we can observe this change. It is an arbitrary measurement of the rate of change that we observe. But everything that exists can only exist and therefore change in this moment.