© 2000 Jeanmarie Chaise
© 200 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| UB Readers' Meeting | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 16 — Winter 2000 | Proposals and Reflections on the 2002 Meeting |
It may be that man has the impression of being a slave to the material contingencies of his environment. This is largely true as long as he has not really grasped all the data that would allow him to initially abstract himself from them, then to increasingly detach himself from them in order to soon cross the stages that go from the consciousness of a material being to the consciousness of a spiritual being. The human personality is not the plaything of events in time and space or, at least, it
is not only the toy; it also has a role to play
To verify this, we must therefore try to delve deeper into the concepts, and in particular the concepts which concern us most directly from the outset, the concepts which touch our state of being present most closely and which obsess us to the point that we have all the trouble in the world getting rid of them, I mean the concept of space and, perhaps even more so, the concept of time.
Obviously, what seems to be the most insurmountable obstacle in our search for the absolute, the infinite, the eternal, is precisely this entanglement made of time and space which, between us and these inaccessible concepts, sticks to our skin, permeates us to the bone and prevents us from seeing, feeling, hearing, in short, from grasping what they really consist of. What is space-time? What is space? What is time?
The temptation is strong to think that the notion of space is more accessible than that of time, but, in truth, we are dealing here with two concepts that are closely intertwined with each other. A parcel of space, however small, is graspable in a certain way, whereas over any instant of time, however small, we have no control. This is why, without a doubt, we are most often accustomed to resorting to space to try to define time for ourselves, as in the common expression of “the space of time” in which we have the possibility of accomplishing short or long actions. This is why we must define time for ourselves. And besides, does it really exist or is it just an illusion, a passing dream? Let us first consider it from our usual point of view as beings subject to time.
Time is what occurs by virtue of movement, and this time exists for us because of the inherence of our mind to grasp its sequences. Two conditions are therefore present here to validate its reality of being, movement and consciousness.
First of all, time measures space with the complicity of movement. Space does not measure time. Time-movement acts everywhere in space more or less empty of matter. It is matter that is activated by movement, internally as well as externally, and not space. Movement acts in matter by interposed (infinitesimal) matter, and matter moves in space, which is essentially static. Time, for its part, is relative, precisely because of the movement that can range from dizzying speeds to near-immobility, in a tiny space or in an immeasurable vastness. Time-movement is existentially dynamic. Space is the place of substance; time is the occasion of duration. Time is for us a mental representation of sequences
more or less activated by real or imaginary movements. What we commonly call time is only the successive unfolding of events that speaks to our understanding. Being presently made of matter almost exclusively, we are made to grasp this temporal succession, and therefore, to connect this notion of flow to the notion of space. Time has always intrigued by its elusive character. What we call time is in fact only a non-existence between past and future. Outside of any movement, life, which is inherently sequential, is more or less aware of time. But this time therefore depends essentially on the degrees of consciousness. According to the animal species, the awareness of time is very layered. Humans have a much more developed awareness than animals about the flow of time. Man has a very different awareness of time from one individual to another according to a multiplicity of criteria; man even has an awareness of time that varies greatly during his existence alone. Time is therefore a matter of movement, but also a matter of consciousness.
Time is not a being, even a philosophical one; time is a means for being to be; and being, physical, in our present sphere of action, has nothing to do with the instant that does not exist, but has everything to do with the temporal sequences that serve it to have been, to be and to become. We hear it said that everything happens in time, and that, starting from this consideration, “time is.” This is false; unless we attribute to time the notion of duration that is more familiar to us, in which case between past and future the slice of time that must be considered is consistent to the point that it will have a beginning and an end. No matter what we say and do, any other consideration of time will be only sterile “metaphysical.” This time is our customary time, the one on which our subjectivity is continually exercised. But the supposedly intrinsic time, the one that passes, the one that we cannot grasp between what ends and what begins, the time that philosophers have always sought to define in vain, what is it? Does it exist? What is this instant that we call time and which always vanishes and is reborn by calling itself past or future, but never truly asserts itself as a graspable entity? And besides, is what we say about the past and the future more reliable? Have we ever managed to grasp an instant, an entity of time, in the past? Will we one day grasp such an entity in the future in order to define it? That would be, I believe, to spoil hope.
This is where we must ask ourselves whether time is a constant throughout all of creation. And it will appear that reality necessarily differs as we move toward the center of divine Creation. I will use an image, which will allow me to describe more clearly what there is to say now about what we can call the contraction of time.
We are accustomed to considering time, or rather duration, according to its linearity which is to grasp the moments successively according to our nature, and we call this sequences. In doing so, we act like someone who would find themselves on the external face of a moving wheel, successively occupying the contiguous points of the space in which it moves.
Let us now consider replacing our habit of considering time in a linear, horizontal manner with a way of approaching it vertically. Let us leave the external surface of the wheel and go inside, that is to say towards the center, to see what is happening there, and how “time,” duration, changes. This same wheel could be a full wheel, made of concentric circles, on each of which states of being could be arranged that are more or less distant from the center. Instead of considering time in a linear manner by continuing to stand on the outer circle of the wheel, which is what we do, in short, when we remain in the same place in the external universe such as the earth, let us therefore orient ourselves towards the interior by jumping from one circle to the next. We will immediately see where I am going with this.
Let us consider this wheel in motion. It is clear that when it turns, the different circles that constitute it move at speeds proportional to their distance from the center. What represented a quarter of a turn for our first outer circle represents still a quarter of a turn for a circle located halfway between the center and the periphery, (it is a question of the same time for a smaller space) and it is proportionally the same for all the circles, however numerous they may be, located between the rim and the center of our wheel. It is only when we consider the last inner circles, close to the center, that another problem of the conception of time will pose itself to us in a more pressing manner. What was inscribed in a long distance on our first circle has diminished proportionally as we progress inward, and now the quarter turns are so minute that they become practically non-existent, until their complete extinction on arriving at the center of all things. But is time always there, the same? This is only an image, naturally, but it reflects the phenomenon of a-spatiality where all our spatial concepts converge. Yes, but time; is it always there, always the same, or has it also diminished in proportion to the approach to the center? Because, the time elapsed at the center and at the periphery is apparently the same for the same movement of the wheel. We seem to be unable to doubt it; but if time, allied to movement, measures space, as there is every reason to think, this time which did not seem to diminish, will soon have to be reduced to nothing in the right proportion of the zero displacement of the epicenter of the wheel, however always turning.
We can therefore say that the capture of a spatial duration is instantaneous at the center while it is so developed at the periphery that it quickly leaves the horizon of its observer. But is not instantaneity precisely a suppression of time? This is, I think, what Lao Tzu means in his little poem 120:
Although thirty spokes converge at the hub,
It is the central void that makes the chariot move.
Clay is used to shape vases,
But their use depends on the internal void.
There is no room where there are not doors and windows,
Because it is still the void that allows habitat.
Being has abilities that Non-being uses.
As man moves toward the center through the constellations of space, he is increasingly able to grasp the concepts of space and time and to progress in the mental and spiritual domains; his consciousness finds it easier and easier to rise to the successive levels of the universes. He acquires experience; the growth of his cosmic conceptions amplifies his clairvoyance and widens his field of consciousness. This consciousness becomes internalized and progressively transcends, level by level, all the echelons of the spatiotemporal organization. This ascension toward God, toward the center of all things, is not just an image; it is the reality of the journey of every personality toward its creator, toward its resemblance to the Universal Father. At the center of all things, the concept of the absolute finally transcends all ideas of time and space. The personality freed from sequential contingencies embraces all at once the circle of the existent. Linear consciousness has transformed into global and circular consciousness.
In relation to what can we estimate the value of time, anywhere in the universes, if not in relation to the absolute immobility of a center around which the whole of spatio-temporal creations can be organized? This spatial immobility and this absence of time are what must necessarily be called the transcendence of time and space. And on our inhabited world, as on all similar worlds of external spaces, only beings endowed with spirit are capable of grasping these relations between space-time and its absence, between essentiality and substantiality, between existentiality and duration. Only thinking beings can begin to try to transcend, here below, the portions of space that separate them from each other, or that bring them closer to possibly very distant places. Thought is man’s first aptitude for crossing spaces; it is the fruit of the spirit which inhabits it and which is the first gift of God which was granted to it at the same time as the gift of life and personality.
Can this gift of the mind then allow us from now on to attempt to take a new step in the cognition of spatiotemporal data, namely, can it allow us to answer here the question of spatiotemporal immobility, that is to say, on the one hand, the existence of time without space, and on the other hand, the existence of space without time? Is, for example, spatial immobility, synonymous with a-temporality, really synonymous with the absence of time? Would not our capacity, admittedly minimal, to transcend space through thought be a first indication, allowing us to suppose that the space and time relationship can embrace other conjugations of dimensions than the one we know? Our universe, like all universes created by Sons of God, is clearly structured in a quaternary mode, like the number-symbol of their designers, the number-symbol “4”. [^1]
Downstream, because we are supposed to go against the current, that is to say return to the source which is God, the Center of all things, the heart of life, we find modes of being in one, two, three dimensions. We ourselves evolve in a four-dimensional environment, although we have only recently become aware of it. But what about upstream? What are the concepts of space and time that we will have to grasp when we leave our current universe, when we pass from the regime subject to the sovereignty of a Son of the local universe to the sovereignty of the Universal Father, the Triune Deity? Will we not have to cross three more major stages in our progression towards the Ineffable, from the fourth dimension to the seventh, because we are told that the fifth, sixth and seventh do indeed exist?
Will we not first have to design a new five-dimensional space-time, in which case this new space-time will more specifically take time into account, if we are to believe the numerical symbolism so dear to the revelations of the Book in its domain of the arrangement of universal laws?
It should be noted that if the schematic is respected; it is in fact to the symbol “3”, the symbol of the “Spirit” personality of the divine Trinity, that the “5” dimensional space-time will correspond analogically, the “4” being here the axis of the septenary of symbolic reflection as well as conceptual reflection.
Will we not then have to conceive of a six-dimensional space, in which case this new space-time will be more specifically space-related, if we are to believe this same chapter of the laws? We will note again that the diagram makes the symbol “2”, the symbol of the Personality “Son” of the divine Trinity, correspond to the concept of six-dimensional space-time, an analogy always dependent on the axis “4”.
Finally, are we not going to have to grasp a seven-dimensional spatiotemporal conception, as all the diagrams indicate to us everywhere and always? Shouldn’t this new and ultimate conception be the crowning, the culmination of our entire ascension of the universes? What do we observe through all these questions?
We observe that each new concept of time and space transcends the previous one. This is remarkable with regard to the states of being downstream: the point, the plane, the volume. There is apparently no reason why this process of transcendence should not continue upstream. By learning “time” in five-dimensional space-time, we will learn to transcend four-dimensional space-time, our current space-time. By learning “space” in six-dimensional space-time, we will learn to transcend five-dimensional space-time. By learning space-time in seven-dimensional space-time, we will learn to transcend all the lower-dimensional space-times at once, whereas at present, in our four-dimensional space-time, we are only learning to transcend purely physical space-time, three-dimensional space.
This is only a demonstration based on four-dimensional logic. But it is the nature of the mind that inhabits human thought to project itself forward, to always anticipate from one state of being to the next state of being. The mind always strives to transcend the evidence of its state of being; this is why it must strive to recognize the diversity of spatial realities. In our four-dimensional space-time, as I have just said, we only apprehend three-dimensional space. This is a purely intellectual approach. In the future, we will have to apprehend space-time in a mode that is no longer purely intellectual, but also in a technique that is closer to time, that is to say, closer to the mind, analogy requires — between “3” and “5.” — In doing so, we will access the fifth dimension. This is how we will learn not to be content with apprehending space as if it were only a set of material connections. We will learn through the in-depth study of time to know space better and better, while in the next stage we will learn through the in-depth study of space to know time better and better. In the final stage, we will finally learn to master the study of seven-dimensional spatio-temporal concepts, the study of the absolute.
It emerges from this that time and space are only closely and contradictorily interdependent when they are linked by a minimum of dimensions. The more the study of one by the other is pushed, the more they become separable and become definitively so at the absolute level. At the center of all things, this is what we have just seen, time can do without space. At the center of the wheel, time is grasped in the same way as at the periphery, but in aspatial immobility.
But can space do without time? This is now the only question left unanswered. To do this, the example of the wheel seems inappropriate. However, something reveals that the thing is possible, it is the fact mentioned from the start of the analysis, according to which it is time, aided by movement, which measures space; and since time measures an absence of space, there is then no more time, it is a-temporality. There is therefore at the center the possibility of a-spatiality and a-temporality. I say “possibility”, but only the Creator can decide otherwise.
But the answer to the pending question has still not been found. This is because creation is not a simple wheel as envisaged here. The indefinite number of concentric circles are certainly not united as in a full wheel, and the diversity of movements and the diversity of their intensities come to confuse the reflection. If time-movement measures space everywhere, it follows that at the center of creation movement must crush time to concentrate space to the point of being reduced to the indefinite, and this necessary indefinite space is necessarily left to the appreciation of its designer, God. Crushing time means accelerating movement, that is to say concentrating energy, life, spirituality. It is indeed in spirituality that space can do without time. The energy-matter of the worlds on the periphery is gradually transformed into spiritual energy at the center of all things, passing through an indefinite number of states that we can call psycho-spiritual. Energy-movement is indeed “everywhere” and “always” the vector (figuratively) of what is transmitted in space-time, thought in the lasting substance, spirituality in the essential existence. In external universes such as ours, time and space are unthinkable without each other. At the absolute level they are essentially dissociated. This is what we can call the transcendence of time by space and the transcendence of space by time.
Matter made of static space in which the temporal dynamics of movement teems is the typical example of the inseparability of one from the other. Space of lesser material density shortens time. Thus, the gaze cannot at all pass through a dense object; that is to say, it takes an infinite time not to pass through it, whereas when space is empty of matter, this same gaze is capable of crossing immeasurable distances; we can say that it takes an instantaneous time, almost infinitely shortened to reach the most distant stars accessible to it. Only then, from one infinity to the other, stand more or less dense screens of particulate matter, concentrated particles of solids, then less concentrated particles of liquids, then gases, then molecular, atomic, electronic void. less and less dense
As we can see, the study of time, space, space-time has only just begun. Everything more that can be said will be said in the future, perhaps about this world, but certainly about the future worlds of our eternal migrations. I would like to finish by materializing this cosmic wheel of space-time somewhat and schematically showing this contraction of both time and space when the traveler of eternity that we all potentially are gets ever so slightly closer to the center.
Here the space travelers do not travel the same path. B is content to travel the outer circle, while A makes an incursion towards the center. It is clear that the greater the distance traveled by B, the more the distance traveled by A in the same time will be reduced in proportion to the magnitude of the movement (notion of space) and in proportion to the speed of the movement (notion of time). If we consider their respective routes to return to their starting point, their time is then very different. If we consider these differences in terms of the ages of the travelers, B will be much older than A, and the estimation of this gap can only be appreciated here in terms of the space traveled, without being able to understand the impact of time on this same gap between their respective ages when they meet again, for example after a complete journey.
The contraction of time, and therefore of the space covered, (or vice versa) is a fundamental and logical fact of universal organization.
Jeanmarie Chair
| UB Readers' Meeting | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 16 — Winter 2000 | Proposals and Reflections on the 2002 Meeting |