‘You seem to be in deep thought my child. Anything I can do to help’ asked God with a smile looking deep into the eyes of Science sitting in contemplation. Not fully out of his reverie, Science whispered almost to himself ‘They almost look like parallel lines. Never meeting and yet totally intertwined…How is that possible Father?’ Science finished with a perplexed frown. Gently caressing the frowning brow, the Lord smiled into Science’s eyes and replied – ‘Perhaps that is the way it is meant to be!’ Awaking from his trance like preoccupation, Science looked deep into the Lord’s eyes wanting to see all the puzzles fall in place. In His presence they seemed to fit just fine and yet…
God: Have you ever wondered if time has other dimensions?
Science: Come again?
God: Space has three dimensions – length, breadth and depth. What about time? Don’t you think it can have several dimensions to it too?
Science: Well, humanity knows that a ‘lifetime’ of a species is the average life span for that species in earth years. That life span varies from species to species but to that group it is a whole lifetime – a butterfly’s experience of life may be limited to a day of a human but to the butterfly it represents a whole lifetime of inner experiences. That inner experience is available to all creatures all the way down the ladder of evolution. So yeah, maybe that inner experience of a lifetime or shall I say the quantum of consciousness in each species can be considered to be the different dimensions of time!
God: Hmmm… Well said! So if the different quantum of consciousness represent different dimensions of time, could it be that time need not be experienced just on the physical plane as past to present but also on a slicing from left to right?
Science: Sorry Father. You have lost me…
God: You were saying about the parallel lines never meeting… what actually did you mean?
Science: I was trying to decipher the meeting point of quantum theories with classical physics and relativity. They don’t seem to meet…
God: Why don’t you instead imagine the parallel lines to represent time and space – like say a railway track always together and intertwined, never the one without the other and yet totally distinct and separate. One line we shall call the time line and the other the space line. Ok?
Science: Ok. So what gives?
God: Life as a human on earth is lived from the perspective of the time line. Limited by man’s identity with a physical body, he has a static presence in space. However, his entire life is a dynamic potential of time unfolding – growing, ageing, maturing… His entire life is about living up to the dynamics of time. On the physical plane time is dynamic and space is static.
Science: I am with you so far.
God: Now consider when humans sleep. Perception of time to them is static during sleep. They switch from the perspective of the time line to the perspective of the space line with ample potential to dream. When they are taught to meditate or practice yoganidra or conscious sleep like the ancient Indian Yogis, consciousness becomes dynamic. On the spiritual plane space is dynamic and time is static.
Science remained silent absorbing the Lord’s words.
God: Now consider my earlier statement – what if time can be experienced not as from past to present but from left to right?
Science recollected the words of Craig Callander, a professor of Philosophy at the University of California, ‘Physicists, artistes and graph makers of all kinds routinely depict time as another dimension of space, creating a unified space-time… Relativity holds that space-time can be sliced up in various ways… Imagine slicing up space-time from past to future; each slice is the 3-D totality of space at one instance of time.’ This is the way creatures on earth live life – every moment is filled with 3 dimensional space. For instance, a movie strip of a bouncing ball will show individual frames placed in succession the changed position of the ball. You will find the object present in different places in all the frames – but the passage of time is not part of this deal. The animation or movement is merely a semblance achieved by the chronology of the frames. If the frames where jumbled they would appear like a strobe effect – what the quantum scientists experience with their particles. Callander suggested an alternative slicing – ‘The second method… corresponds to carving up space-time not from past to future but from east to west…’
Science: (almost like speaking to himself) A bouncing ball in normal life would show the ball in 3 dimension at every moment of time and its passage from point a to point b. Whereas the second alternate of slicing right to left suggests that rather than seeing a 3 dimensional space at a single point in time, man can see from the perspective of a single dimension of space and see 2 dimensional space with time. Sounds inconceivable…
God: …And yet humanity does it all the time! In a dream like half awake state they become conscious of being themselves but still don’t seem to have a body. They have thoughts that they know are theirs and yet the thoughts don’t have spatial presence. Recovering from a dose of anaesthesia, the physical world seems in a totally different speed from the patient’s recovering consciousness.
Science: But this is very difficult to prove my Lord! I mean the waking consciousness of humanity does see time only in the past to future slicing. How can it ever be tuned to a different perspective?
God: Well, the problem with this second slicing is quite different. In the first scenario, embedded on the time dimension when space is dynamic, all of humanity can observe the same phenomenon. It is replicable and verifiable. But if one wishes to switch to the space line, or to the dimension of dynamic time, it is no longer verifiable for each individual has a different ‘space’ than the other. X cannot see through the same eyes as Y! This is the problem with all spiritual revelations. It is subjective to the experiencer for it happens in the dimension of his individual space enjoying the freedom of limitless space-time. Yoganidra taught the Yogis how to switch between these two tracks at will.
Science: You are saying like the parallel tracks of a railway line, time and space actually run parallel and human consciousness keeps switching between the two – while awake limited in space and dynamic in time; while in meditation embedded in a time and dynamic in space or awareness. But what has this to do with physics?
God: Patience! First tell me what happens when time is sliced east to west rather than past to present?
Science: If a bouncing ball is graphically represented in a three dimensional space time, normally the ball in 3-D would appear in every moment of time. This is the normal slicing from past to future tracking the movement of the ball. If the same had to be sliced left to right, then multiple balls would appear in the same frame.
God: Exactly! On the physical plane man is not aware of time – that is why he can never define time. He can experience it, liken it to a rhythm – a heartbeat, earth’s spin, light travelling… but he cannot define time. And yet he is most certainly governed by its rules. He lives his life on the physical plane slicing time from past to future – seeing a 3 dimensional space at every moment of time. Now imagine if time ceased to exist. How would he see these bouncing balls?
Science: Well, at 9.01 the ball is in position ‘a’ and at 9.02 the ball is in position ‘b’. But if time no longer exists, then the ball is in position ‘a’ and ‘b’ – or he perceives two balls.
God: That is why the wise yogis said ‘when you see two objects maybe they are just the same object defying the presence of time.’ The ancient masters of India proclaimed ‘So Aham – I am Thou’. If time is not present to distinguish the movement of an object from one position to another, it would look like there were two objects but actually there is only one. In that spirit the wise ones bring their palms together to bow at each other, you in spirit and I in spirit are one and the same. Now what if space doesn’t exist?
Science: At 9.01 the ball is… and at 9.02 the ball is… but where???
God: Everywhere and No where! This is what the Masters call ‘Shunyata’ emptiness which is actually a completeness! On the tracks of time, as man currently lives life on planet Earth, he wonders why are there so many life forms, so many human beings. Well he is seeing all the dimensions of space at every given moment. He doesn’t see or experience the passage of time. But he sees the entire space. So he doesn’t ‘see’ how the monkey evolved into man, but he does see the monkey and the man. Just like the two balls being present in the same frame. On the contrary, on the tracks of space he wonders how come the first human who realised the unification with all of creation did not help the converse to happen. Why did the rest of creation also not feel unified with him and solve this game for everyone? Well, the enlightened soul was seeing from only an individual point in space and so one man’s enlightenment could not change the perspective of every individual in space.
Science: I understand…Coming back to our twin tracks theory, from the track of time dimension, space is the matrix. So the physical world seems all too organised with the laws of relativity and classical physics very much in place. From the track of the space dimension, the world of consciousness and thought seem all too chaotic for it differs from individual to individual. And from the plane of the space-time continuum, the place humanity is right now in, the quantum world defies the laws of both – neither physical laws apply nor the weight of consciousness.
God: My child! Even spiritually, the search has always been on – how to make these two tracks meet? How to merge the spatial dynamism available during life with the creative dynamism at meditative level? In other words how to bridge the gap between space and time? A whole section of people follow the material life on the time line, happy with spatial dynamism. Many who understand the need, slip into a meditative mode viewing life from the space line, blissful in the dynamism of consciousness or time. The modern spiritualist, like the quantum scientist is trying to balance the two, trying to be Zorba the Buddha.
Written by Gita Krishna Raj | Published in infinithoughts in August 2010
When Science met God… | Segment Six: Lost in Time | Chapter Eight: So Aham
