Timeless-Spaceless
Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia, June 2nd, 2013
Salaroche

 

May your emotional, mental, and spiritual tranquility be seldom disturbed by the vagaries of the moments or circumstances you may find yourselves in.

In participating in an email forum whose members live in Asia, Europe, Central America, and the United States, I noticed that each time we send or receive emails across those three continents we are breaking the traditional perception of the concepts of time and space.

For example, here in Malaysia we are in a time zone measured at  GMT +8, those who reside in Switzerland and France are at GMT +2 (summer time), those living in the US East Coast are at GMT-4 (also summer time), those living in Central America are at GMT-6 (no summer time change), while those who reside in the US West Coast are at GMT-7 (summer time).

In total, the largest time-space difference between the members of that forum is the one between me and the Californians, which is of 15 hours and approximately 14,565 miles (northwestward from Kuala Lumpur) then there is the one between myself and the Central Americans, which is of 14 hours and about 12,875 miles. Miami is 12 hours behind Kuala Lumpur and about 11,550 miles away, while France and Switzerland are 6 hours behind me and about 6,200-odd miles away.

Several members of that forum, therefore, live literally thousands of miles away from each other, as well as several hours apart. Yet, each time we send an email we all receive it almost simultaneously and in a matter of seconds. So what happened to time and distance? Well, in this case, those two concepts are virtually nonexistent.

Basically, time only serves to measure the changes that things and beings might suffer, while space is something useful mainly when it comes to placing things or beings in relation to each other. The basic everyday concept of time primarily measures the rotation of the earth on its axis and then its translation around the sun, but that measure of time loses its validity on the space station currently orbiting the earth about 230 miles above us and at a speed of about 17,200 miles per hour (about 15.7 orbits around the earth per day). For the astronauts living in that station, our concept of time doesn’t make much sense.

Something similar would happen if, for example, we went to have a picnic at any point between the earth and the moon. Our concept of space would always apply there, but with the big difference that our idea of up and down wouldn't make any sense, nor would the one about north and south, east or west. Also, there we wouldn’t have any day or night, summer or winter, etc.

The more we advance in the fields of communications and rapid transportation, the more the concept of time is reduced to a simple measure to assess the cycles and biological changes in our bodies. Nowadays, our "now" is largely determined by our being awake or asleep, our age, the advance of our illnesses, our lunch time, etc.

Some people say that time and space are a single entity, inseparable from each other, which perhaps could be corroborated in contemplating how both are invalidated when we send and receive an email. Some others claim that space-time is the fourth dimension determining our parameters for perceiving "reality", but that's a proposition that, however plausible it may be, and given the subjectivity of its intangible nature, might be rather difficult to validate.

And what is the role of consciousness in all of this? Well, that would depend on what kind of consciousness we have in mind when we mention that term: Our everyday consciousness or our super consciousness?

Salaroche, for example, along with some other people who might have had similar experiences in the field of Yoga, or in some other disciplines, might suggest that upon reaching a certain level of consciousness which is beyond or "above" the level of our everyday consciousness, we may find that time and space are entirely absent and that all that is perceptible while in that state of being is the permanent continuity of all, the essence of which is but the essence of all beings and anything else that has ever existed, including mine and that of anyone who may be reading these words.

In fact, the substance / essence of that super consciousness I’m talking about is exactly the same substance / essence of the entire universe, hence our ability to perceive the permanent continuity that comprehends it. This means that, in reaching that state of super consciousness, what we are actually doing is perceiving ourselves as part of that timeless and spaceless continuity mentioned, hence our ability to perceive the substance / essence of the whole.

From this perspective, then, all super conscious states of mind similar to the one I’ve mentioned would be like a window to the timeless / spaceless permanent reality of things. But it would actually be much more than that, as the substance / consciousness that is the essence of the whole is the same substance / consciousness which is the essence of each of us (i.e., the multiplicity of the One).

In any case, and as the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun and the subject of time and space has already been contemplated across a few centuries, mainly from the perspective of physics, metaphysics, and philosophy. Then there are also religions, most of which always refer to the topic in one way or another.

The point is that, since this subject is something so obviously recurrent within human thought, it would not be unreasonable to assume that any reference to it could easily be the result of random subconscious intuitions of the timeless / spaceless nature of our super consciousness, intuitions that sometimes manage to reach our daily consciousness, thereby arousing our desire to elaborate on the subject.

In any case, it occurs to me that, since it doesn’t hurt at all to reflect a little on these things during our leisure time, then, it doesn’t hurt at all to jot down a few words about it on digital paper either.

May you all be well.

Salaroche