Escape Space & Time
Space-Time is the straitjacket that mortals wear. From the moment of our birth to the moment of our death, we are trapped in the thick medium of space and time, there is no escape. Or is there?
The supremacy of space and time has taken quite a hit in the last 120 years, it doesn’t exert the dominance that it used to in the minds of men. First, Einstein irrefutably connected space and time in one theory. Then, further developments in quantum theory began to relegate time and space from primary to secondary in the grand scheme of things. This means the seemingly inescapable reality of space and time is fundamentally illusory, no matter how utterly convincing the illusion may seem to the mortal mind.
We might say the human mind is addicted to space and time, we can’t seem to get enough of it. Yet, there are occasional glimpses that lift our experience out of the thick constraint of being caught in the web of space and time. We’ve all had these experiences where we rise above the medium of space and time and experience the rapture of timeless being. These peak experiences are as varied as the humans that experience them, but the common factor is that experience is liberated from the mundane field of mortal space and time into a timeless and spaceless realm characterized by joy, peace, and remembrance of our true nature.
We can describe all of our worldly problems, especially the most difficult ones, in terms of being stuck in time and space, much like a fly caught forever in amber. Our worst problems are the ones that take the most time to escape and fill the greatest volume of the space we occupy. There is no such thing as suffering without being caught, trapped if you will, in the thick, gooey medium of space and time. In extreme suffering, the problem swamps virtually all of the space you see and feel around you and there seems to be no limit to the time you’ll be stuck in the dilemma; there appears to be no way out of the time/space prison.
Of course, the mortal mind wants out of the trap of suffering and habitually fights the problem or dilemma it sees with resistance, struggle, and a willful effort to rearrange the external conditions that appear to be the cause of the suffering. A perfectly good motive, but we know what the road to hell is paved with. The mortal mind, stuck in the vice of space and time, struggling against problems it sees as external to itself, is much like the fly initially caught in the amber; the more it struggles and thrashes against the medium in which it is caught, the more it ensures its “eternal damnation”, i.e., the virtually endless amount of space and time it will have to endure before any hope of being liberated.
If struggling against the apparent dominance of space and time in our mortal experience only leads to becoming more stuck, what is the solution? If all problems exist in space and time and severe problems are characterized by a seemingly never-ending volume of time spent in difficulty and suffering, can the fly ever escape the hellish amber it is trapped in? Curiously, the answer is both yes and no.
The answer is no, we are going to be trapped in difficult problems for very large segments of time and space, if we cannot liberate our mortal minds from the straitjacket of the illusion that time and space cast over our experience. The more we are hypnotized by believing we are limited mortal creatures at the effect of an external constraint of time and space, the more we guarantee more time and space will squeeze us in the vice of difficulty and limitation. Thrashing about in quicksand does not get you out, it only gets you in deeper.
The answer is yes, we can escape the artificially and arbitrarily imposed cage of time and space and the problems that arise within it if we are willing to liberate our minds and rise above. It is quite possible and available for every human mind to rise above and away from the compressing influence of the very familiar pressure that time and space exert on all of us. It may not be easy, in fact, it may the most difficult project we ever engage in, but the rewards of extracting our minds from the limitation and problems that can only live in time and space are the most valuable we could ever receive.
Time and space exert an effect on the human mind much like a pendulum, swinging our attention back and forth, from the past to the future, creating a vast container of the space in between the two, with our small, mortal sense just a pinprick within it. When our minds are rapidly oscillating from the future to the past, we see the objects of the world outside of ourselves in a space that creates a separation between us and the qualities and things of life we love. The pain of separation from the qualities and things we love makes those things seem to be very far away and only afar off in the future, if even available at all. This is the illusion of time and space cutting us off from our true nature and power as creative agents.
But if we slow down the pendulum of the mind and allow the momentum it has gained from wildly oscillating back and forth from an imaginary future to a deceased past, the effect of and the very sense of being caught in the web of time and space begins to evaporate from our awareness. If a pendulum is no longer acted upon by an outside agency of force, it will naturally resolve into less and less movement until it settles into perfect stillness. The pendulum of a clock keeps time moving, the pendulum of our mind keeps both time and space active in our habitual mortal experience.
When the movement of our minds becomes calm and still, the ravages of living in time and space are relieved. Our problems and difficulties, our trials and tribulations that can only live in the thick medium of time and space are denied the resource they need to remain alive; they die off when denied the nourishment they need to survive. We can be reminded of the supreme line from the Yoga Scriptures that declares: “Yoga (bliss) spontaneously appears in our consciousness when the movement of the mind is quelled”.
The key to resolving suffering, problems, and difficulties is to cease thrashing about in the sticky spider-web of time and space and only getting more trapped. If what our heart truly wants seems very far away and a long time from now, we can recognize we are caught in the prison of space and time and the cage we are in is only self-imposed; we can free ourselves from it at any moment, but only in the present moment, not in the past or the future. We must practice lifting our awareness from the mundane and habitual world of space and time and rise above to where they don’t exist.
Is this crazy talk? Is there a place where time and space don’t exist? Yes, there is, remember the beginning of this essay where many of the greatest minds of modern science have confirmed that time and space are only theoretical concepts, convenient for describing the familiar world we live in, but not intrinsic or inviolable at the depths of reality. Shouldn’t this give us an important clue? Can we now begin to realize the degree to which the human mind, our human mind, is addicted to the illusion of space and time and the limitation in our experience from suffering from such a deep misperception of reality?
The release from the constriction of time and space does not involve a super-human effort or a daring and dangerous escape plan, such effort and struggle would only serve to ensnare us more deeply, like the fly struggling after landing in amber. To rise above space and time involves practicing greater and greater degrees of stillness of mind, allowing the momentum of attention from wildly wandering back and forth from the past or into the future, the very activity of mind that creates the illusion of time and space in the first place.
The practice of stillness, let’s call it meditation, is one of the rarest activities (or lack of activities) that humans ever engage in, yet it is the key to bringing about the essential stilling of the mind necessary to escape the prison of time and space that has completely captured the minds of most people. Without removing the constraint of the overwhelming sense of time and space that is present within a highly active or anxious mind, the problems or difficulties within such a mind are allowed to magnify until it feels as though any solution is both far away and a long time off.
All suffering and all problems are characterized by a corresponding pattern of the movement of the mind. If the intensity of the pattern of the mind that associates with the problem is reduced, the problem is reduced. If the pattern of the movement of the mind that associates with the problem is eliminated, the problem is eliminated. In effect and in reality, the time and space necessary for the problem to live is erased. This is the value of learning and practicing the quieting and stilling of the mind. Is there a more valuable skill to learn? If the duration (time) and volume (space) of problems, dilemmas, and suffering can be radically reduced, we are well down the road of liberation.
A final metaphor to drive the point home: A guitar string made to vibrate repeatedly only continues to make its signature sound and will only continue to do so until the player quits plucking it. When the player does discontinue the activation of the string, where does the sound go? Obviously, it disappears into its latent nothingness, available to be activated later, but entirely absent in the present moment. The active sound created the sense of time and space it occupied through its vibration, its movement back and forth; when the movement is stilled, the sound and the time and space necessary to accommodate it disappear.
Time and space are not a bad thing, by any means. They are the playground in which the human mind plays, creates, manifests, and experiences the gift of being. The question is, what do we fill up the time and space of our own experience? Lovely, joyful, and fulfilling feelings, sensations, and experiences? Or depressing, difficult, and degrading feelings, sensations, and experiences? If it is the former, time and space are our best friends and offer us an unlimited resource to grow, enjoy, and evolve. Time and space do not exert any pressure on us, we have all the time and space we need to enjoy the journey of life
If it is the latter, time and space is a cage we have consigned ourselves into and the only escape is to quiet the movement of the mind and release ourselves from the trap. When the mind becomes still, painful patterns of the movement of the mind are quieted and quelled, ultimately to be removed from our minds forever, as long as we become sufficiently intelligent to not pluck painful strings and continuously create vast new volumes of time and space that separate us from the things we love.
Begin to escape the illusory constraints of time and space today. Even the slightest quieting of the mind will help to reduce the intensity of problems and suffering. It will not happen overnight, but the steady and consistent practice of bringing silence and stillness to the mind will enable you to rise up and out of the compression of time and space and bring you to a place where the old and familiar problems and difficulties cannot exist.
Of course, while we’re mortal, new situations and problems will present as we move up the scale of consciousness, but when we encounter them, we can remove our mind from the medium of time and space, where any problem exists, and find our solution and freedom in far less time and far less effect on the space of our lives. A serious problem that would have taken months or even years before, can be solved in just a few day or hours, perhaps instantly.
Isn’t it about time we learned this skill? Now is a good time to start.