10 Feb 2005 @ 13:17, by Beto Hoisel
I want to show how a lattice formed by three dimensions of space and three dimensions of time can account for all physical and psychical phenomena and possibilities contained in wholeness, at least until the horizons our intelligence, intuition and feeling permit us to reach.
First of all I wish to confirm my view on space, which I see as Euclidean and 3-dimensional, albeit it can assume hyperbolic or elliptical variations at the whim of the scientist who studies it in special conditions or scales.
However, I discard Hilbert's n-dimensional spaces as entirely abstract entities, essential to many mathematical formulations but devoid of any factual correspondence to the empirical world where we live in. I also discard the remote worlds of quarks and quasars whose existence is, to my view, entirely instrumental, without any relationship to our living experience of greed and bliss, my basic reference in our path to knowledge and true wisdom. About such distant entities I dare to say that even the verb to exist should be well qualified when applied to them.
I propose that Euclidean 3-dimensional space adjusts to the objective face of wholeness that one we call real, the existential locus of matter and objects that physical science recognizes as such. On the other hand, time, which is also 3-dimensional, is the existential locus of the subjective contents – the subjects – that we identify to the imaginary face of Being, whose center is inside each one of us.
Each incarnated spirit, or subjectivity living on Earth, human or not-human, is a complex entity, formed by a real or corporeal part, and another psychical or imaginary. This outline doesn't deny the existence (should existence be the proper word?) of entirely imaginary sentient beings, or entities whose "real" face hardly would be recognized as such by our means of perception. Our body occupies space and our soul – the mind, or psyche – is a creature of time. As complex beings, we inhabit 6-dimensional space-time in spite of not being aware of such dimensional frame in its completeness.
Linear time of clocks and calendars, such as recognized by physics, is only an expression of 3-dimensional time shrunk by a geometrical projection, a forced reduction which compresses the imaginary world by reason of the cultural conditioning of our perception. Sometimes we represent space by a coordinate axis and time by another, in some concise graphics of scholar books, unaware that if 3-dimensional space can be compressed into just one line, the same can be true for time.
So we could be unconsciously doing this. About graphics, it's worth to remark that all of them use geometric projections, a useful resource for some needs but which make others difficult. It's noticeable that if we can easily draw a graphic which resumes 3-dimensional space in one axis and time (secretly 3-dimensional) in another, we hardly could draft a graphic representing a point – or event – in the relativistic 4-dimensional system. Simply, such a projection is not possible or, at last, it should result confusing if we try it.
It's very important to be aware that time and space are different things, although they can be converted in each other, as Albert Einstein have shown. After relativity, it's a commonplace to believe that pairs like time and space, or matter and energy, are one sole thing. This is not exact, and to believe that can be more confusing than enlightening. Time and space are convertible one into the other in special circumstances; however, they are distinct ways we use to perceive the world, in the same sense that matter and energy – explosively convertible in each other – are different contents of this world.
Length, width and height are not distinguishable in their own and they only take these names when we ascribe to them. Length has not different intrinsic qualities from width or height, except in a specific referential frame which requires some subjective assumptions to make them distinguishable. We cannot see such dimensions of space as separate entities, unless we use deliberate criteria to do it. We perceive space as a whole and length, width and height are our spirit's constructs just for a better management of it. These obvious considerations turn to be necessary because in my proposition they are not valid for the three dimensions of time.
But – we can argue – if our perception of space is actually of a volume, which contain or may accommodate volumes, 2-dimesional surfaces or lines, why don't we feel something similar about time? Why the mental picture we make of time is always that of a river which continuously runs, a chariot which makes its way in a road, something that flows steadily, irrevocably, linear? I reply that such view is a shortcoming of our cultural conditioning that shaped our cerebral structure throughout many centuries.
As I said before, the three dimensions of time, such as those of space, are around us, we are immersed in them although we are not aware of them. The metaphor of the linear flow of history as a river is embedded in our minds confining the world we can see as much as the linguistic structures we impose on reality, molding and shaping the world to make it understandable. The contrast is that such an imprisonment of 3-dimensional time in its linear cage is still deeper, once it's the linear time of sequential speech that conditions and model linguistic structures.
Today, linear time has the tremendous force of an archetype and the sweeping power of a god. It's true that we are subject to many of its constraints but this is also valid for space. We cannot move without encumbrance along linear, or 2-dimensional nor 3-dimensional time. But the same happens to space: even if we acknowledge its broad 3-dimensionality which unfolds up to the clouds and interstellar space, we are not free to move in it as one pleases. We are constrained by physical limitations, bounded to the Earth's surface, to the size of our ship or to the bars of a jail. The prisoner sees the blue sky and the far away mountains through the rails of the window, but he can only move in the tiny world of his cell.
Two-dimensional time
First, we need to know what 2 and 3-dimensional time really are, and then to study a way – and by which means – we could move in these realms. It seems clear that we can figure out what one-dimensional time is. I just have to look at the seconds hand in my watch or at the maze of my wrinkles in the bathroom mirror to have a feeling of linear time. But, what could be a 2-dimensional time? What should be the metaphor that could adjust to it, or what kind of mental picture can we make of it? Why doesn't 2-dimensional time appear in the instruments and observations of physicists?
To understand what 2-dimensional time is (and also 3-dimensional) it's necessary to accept its imaginary – hence subjective –character, as bounded to the imaginary face of wholeness, which discloses only through subjectivities: spirits or sentient beings, human or other.
It's absolutely necessary to become aware that time is something essentially subjective, which manifests in the space of physical things as a projection of geometrical nature. It's essential to understand that transformation, even when it occurs in physical things of space, doesn't imply time, and that time is transformation being perceived by some subjectivity. Without a participation of the subjective and imaginary slope of wholeness there is neither time nor movement – although there can be transformation. I recall Ernst Mach's still valid remark in his classic book The Science of Mechanics: "It is utterly beyond our power to measure the changes of things by time. Quite contrary, time is an abstraction, at which we arrive by means of the change of things." Without its subjective and imaginary face the universe would be only an immense decaying corpse and the transformation that could occur there should be only a kind of rottenness – by reason of entropy.
This is unthinkable to a "hard-nose" physicist, usually prone to smile condescendingly from inside his cage. But his smirk may vanish when he recollects the notion of a particle's proper time, which is basic to the formulation of general relativity and to qualify any quantum object: "an absolute concept of metaphysical flavor" as quantum physicist Bruno Bertotti once said.
Many quantum scientists consider this basic notion – a very difficult one for mathematical treating – as a key for unexpected doors to the subjective and imaginary slopes of wholeness, doors that no one dared to open really wide, up to now. And that smile certainly will disappear if he becomes aware of the utter implications of linear time as definitely bounded to the observer, the way special relativity puts it, demolishing the Newtonian concept of simultaneity. At last, maybe something awakens in this physicist's spirit if he concedes to face open-heartedly the longtime controversy between the physicists' notion of time and the more widely spread psychological time of the rest of humanity.
Time is imaginary and subjective. The notion of 2-dimensional time emerges when we get aware that each subjectivity has its own proper time, its exclusive worldline, also defined by Minkowsky in an important paper already a century old, where he has shown the imaginary character of time. [link]
Surface-time can be conceived as the sideways move of an individual worldline through the subjectivities that crowd the universe, human or otherwise, incarnated or not, whichever terrestrial or inhabitants of far away cultured celestial bodies, even unlikely odd beings of interstellar clouds or abiding unsuspected regions of Tartarus and Elysium. In this conception, disembodied spirits have no "existence" in 3-dimensional space, only in time. Channeling phenomena of interaction with living humans or several kinds of materialization should be taken as similar to geometric projections yet to be studied.
But – it can be argued – don't these entities are known to be discrete, individual, discontinuous? Certainly not! They are not separate. All subjectivities that aspire to the right of existing (whatever this may mean) are dots in a vast continuity, like the countless emerging peaks of a gigantic submersed mountain range. We are the islands this ridge forms, deceptively separated from each other in our bodies and our vanity. Such continuity is the oneness of spirit, the imaginary slope of uncountable complex beings that pervade the entire cosmos embedded in its 6-dimensional lattice.
Sideways motion in surface-time cause short-circuits between subjectivities, perceived in our vicinity as synchronicities or telepathy. Telepathy doesn't imply time or energy because there isn't any transmission or reception of anything. The phenomena we call telepathic are just the fortuitous sharing of the same thoughts, feelings or information by two or more subjectivities not linked by physical communication media. So, what really happens is a kind of sudden and surprising short-circuit in surface-time. Unexpected motion of a spirit or its "sensing organs" along its own worldline, or in a bundle of worldlines, explain presages, omens and premonitions. The vehicle for these movements is emotion, when it surpasses a certain critical limit yet to be studied. That's why most authentic prophets become weary and suffer great loss of psychical energy of an emotional nature when they wield their powers too intensively. It's also for that reason that events that cause waves of premonitions almost always are a kind of happenings able to trigger strong collective emotions, such as catastrophic earthquakes, large shipwreck or the murder of important and esteemed personalities.
It's usual in literature that fiction books, after some years of its publication turn out to be a foresight of actual facts to happen later. This occurs because creative imagination is a name given to the freedom an artist-writer's spirit have to move along the superior dimensions of 2 and 3-dimensional time, capturing other epochs and boundless collective experience. They access past memory as well as future foresight, reaching the sources of a permanent knowledge sometimes called transpersonal unconscious.
It's a mistake to say that an artist is like an aerial or antenna, once nothing is transmitted or received. An artist is a free being, able to ride short-circuits and soar over unexplored or remote regions of imaginary time, bringing with him that experience to share with others through his artistry.
The metaphor of the sideways movement of a worldline, as a resource to understand 2-dimensional time is a clear analogy with the generation of a surface in Euclidean space through the lateral motion of a line. This way, 2-dimensional time is the fabric of countless subjectivities that pervade the universe, each one bearing its proper time, individual and linear.
But – someone could ask – how can the time we see in clocks and calendars seem the same, common to everyone? Initially I reply this is not exact, as states quantum physics, as well as relativity. Then I add something new: I am convinced of the existence of a principle of consistency. This new principle of science, which comes out to join others discovered in the beginnings of quantum physics, states that interacting subjectivities' individual times connect to each other in such a way a perfect illusion is created: clock time seems to be the same for all of them, as if they were sharing a common good. However, this can occur only among interacting subjectivities, only if they are in touch or, in a sense, communicating by physical means. Non-interacting subjectivities can be bounded to very different individual times. Or, in other words: to look for equivalence between individual times of non-interacting subjectivities doesn't make sense, once they are bounded to universes that actually are not communicating. I think most of the scientists who read me now acknowledge this proposal as not far from an extension of quantum and relativistic long lived findings.
Three-dimensional time, however, remains beyond human skill for abstract thinking and imagination. Three-dimensional time is the realm of gods. But a glimpse of its structure can be attained by the same geometrical expedient we used to understand 2-dimensional time, and should be seen under the strict limits of a metaphor: 3-dimensional time can be generated by a dislocation of 2-dimensional surface-time – formed by the weaving of many subjectivities – in a direction perpendicular to that "surface". This way we create something similar to a "volume", an inconceivable imaginary volume, the absolute volume that engulfs the evolution of wholeness, which contains everything and has no limits nor outside.
Three-dimensional time is the most close equivalent we can conjecture of God's mind, as well as three-dimensional boundless space – the universe – could be a metaphor for the locus of his physical body. In one of his texts the Christian theological philosopher Thomas Aquinas said:
"In spite of all events manage to become real successively, God doesn't know them as we do, that is, in the sequence of their happening. He knows them simultaneously. All things are present to God, in eternity, because His look sees everything as present."
Later, he said:
"The soul is part of time, existing above time, in eternity: it encompasses nature but surpasses physical movement as measured by time. Time is the measure of transformation; eternity is the measure of permanence."
Here we touch the ineffable borders of Eternity. Whoever can freely move in these premises is a god – or Himself.
Closing this Gnostic journey to the fringes of the knowable we see with awe and disbelief, that time, as the physicists see it, this time where entropy abides, our common linear time of clocks and calendars, of erosion and wrinkles, this quotidian time which drips drips drips drips drips drips drips ceaselessly, unending, is nothing more than a leak in the immeasurable tank of Eternity.
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