TIME AND SPACE

3.12 TIME AND SPACE :

THE MEANINGFULNESS OF EXISTENCE

" Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day"...Albert Camus

3.12.1 TIME AND REALITY

In the existential domain of the space-time axis, time is the greater mysterious

aspect that for the linear rational process presents a challenging concept to

grapple with.

"Time is one of my most valuable assets"......Bill Anderson

In this work of Personal Validity, reason and its application in

intellectual understanding has been given a special emphasis.

A special kind of creative synthesis experience transcends space and time in a

manner that the space-time axis collapses and time loses its continuity and

linearity.

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand,

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

To hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an Hour".....W. Blake

It is not the place here to overvalue or undervalue such experiences,

but this place deals more with how one can meaningfully transcribe from

or translate such experiences ( especially so if artificially induced ) into

linear reality. The meaningfulness of existence and life comes from not

only the exercise of one's creative faculty that leads to a creative vision

of the future direction of one's life, but also the exercise of the rational

faculty in the translation and realisation of this vision in linear time.

Everything in Reality can so easily turn into a trap if one is ignorant and not

careful about the direction of one's own motivations, predilections, meanings,

Will or purposes all of which contribute to one's uniqueness.

"Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of
Reason, or give up existence.".....Friedrich Engels

Time is dealt with in depth in this article, the emphasis on the space element

is confined to the physical boundaries of this World, that is, this planet Earth,

the place where the real action seems to be taking place,

having reached a critical point in time.

"A man is the master of his liberty. Time is their master, and when
they see time, they'll go or come"......William Shakespeare.

3.12.2 THE WHEEL OF TIME :

" As if you could kill time without injuring eternity "......Henry David Thoreau

Time is both circular ( like a spinning wheel ) as well as linear. The end ( dissolution or

destruction ) meets the beginning ( creation ) in a circular time loop, and yet eternity

or "ultimate reality" is not the same as in the beginning. It will have refined.

The pooches of life and death is a test of reality's core or essence. The actions of the

beings inherent in this reality, given certain limitations, are a test of this "goodness"

or "fineness" of this soul or essence of Reality.

IN the reality of the flow of time, the linear aspect can never be ignored, if we consider

that reality is a moral order or has an inherent moral sequence, or follows the direction

resultant from the moral and immoral actions of the beings in the Reality of a

particular World.

3.12.3 FIRST ASPECT - Current Reality :

The Reality Of Experience

"A man who is truly modern is one who is fully aware of the immediate present,
conscious to a superlative degree, a man who stands upon a peak, or the very
edge of the world, the abyss of the future before him, above him the heavens,
and below him the whole of mankind with a history that disappears
in primeval mists."...Jung

The first, foremost and therefore the most important aspect of time is this

moment - now, the Present.

This is the instant in time independent of meaning, purpose, goals but extremely

relevant for Will, for Will manifests instantly and spontaneously and only in

its wake gives birth to purpose.

The present is the Reality of the spontaneity of the moment, of pure experience,

without meanings, but with instantaneous appeal and force, the moment of

discovery of one's predilection, Will and uniqueness, of creativity,

of Power and Inspiration.

In pure experience, one's beliefs and operating assumptions should become

suspended, and irrelevant. It is a moment when the conscious self fuses with

the super-conscious self, when the self is revealed, the Will and its predilection

is revealed.

The experienced Reality of the instantaneous moment is the only Reality, the

rest are all words, concepts, beliefs about Reality.

3.12.4 THE ETERNAL - BEYOND LIFE and DEATH

The timeless Reality of the Absolute and Infinite, also experienced as the dissolution of

the self in time and space. The experienced fusion of the self with the totality of Reality,

where time collapses, space assumes infinity.

This experience is useful, if not necessary for the self to be free of the shackles of self-

importance. But by itself it may not be able to accomplish that, and has the danger of

trapping the self into excessive indulgence of so called "highest experience".

Its a kind of trap that meditators, junkies and mystics fall into, and can no longer

meaningfully relate or contribute to the Social and Cultural reality.

Power and Will have no relevance in the state of this experience and one's

uniqueness also dissolves, there being no need for uniqueness in this state.

The real danger however is that subsequent to such experiences, one starts

operating from the beliefs that the Self is irrelevant, that the whole world is

an illusion, life has no meaning except to break from the cycle of birth and

rebirth, from pain and suffering.

The only goal left is to seek a state of perfect peace of mind, further to shut

off the mind, self altogether - to seek a state of unity with the eternal, to

transcend the existential domain of space and time.

Nothing wrong with that if one has paid the price of having existed in this world

by giving back to it more than one has taken from it. And that is the crux of what

this work tries to promote.

And the belief projected here is that no one can cheat Reality on this issue.

"The human contribution is the essential ingredient".

.....Ethel Percy Andrus

3.12.5 SHORT TERM REALITY - LIFE and DEATH

" He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils:

for time is the greatest innovator"......Francis Bacon

It is the short term reality of the time between birth and death that provides for

meaningful thought, beliefs, goals, purpose and action, without which one

cannot develop and realise one's given potential.

An assumption that has been made here is : The Neurophysical Brain

of a human being has potential for intelligence and creativity whose diversity

and limits, we as the human race are nowhere close to realisation.

To believe that life is meaningless is to demean it, although each one of us has

to discover, develop and define the meaning and purpose of ourselves existence

even if it means that one comes to the conclusion that one's life has no meaning.

But one cannot insist that all of life is meaningless, at the most

this conclusion applies only to oneself.

" Tisn't life that matters. 'Tis the courage we bring into it"...Hugh Walpole

Whether we like it or not, the truth is that no one lives continuously in the domain

of pure experience, and so, meanings, interpretations and beliefs are bound to

result from any experience.

And if these are not critically examined and analysed time and again, the existing

defaults become reinforced to the point where one's existence becomes

static and sterile, not explorative and growing.

Furthermore, it is in the domain of the short term reality, that beliefs, goals and

purposes become crucially valid, since most of what we experience is derived and

interpreted, from and to the beliefs one holds.

Even more crucially important are the beliefs one projects onto others,

because society is shaped by commonly held or shared beliefs. These

shared beliefs are what define and direct a society and culture. The most

open society is one which encourages its members to not only develop

their own ideas and beliefs, but also to question or put these to test

in current reality

The short term time reality is crucially related to Personal Validity through the

meanings one holds for life in general and of one's own life in particular.

But it should be clearly comprehended that there are no mass meanings.

Mass meanings only lead to organised religion, which this work attacks.

Mass meanings kill individuality and creativity and become the breeding

grounds for mass-deception, the domain of cult groups.

The only possible mass meaning is to give back to the world

in which one lives, more than one has taken from it.

"Once I was in Victoria, and I saw a very large house. They told me it was
a bank and that the white men place their money there to be taken care of,
and that by and by they got it back with interest. "We are Indians and we
have no such bank; but when we have plenty of money or blankets, we give
them away to other chiefs and people, and by and by they return them with
interest, and our hearts feel good. Our way of giving is our bank."
............Chief Maquinna, Nootka

"We have taken so much from your culture, I wish you had taken something
from ours...For there were some beautiful and good things within it. Perhaps
now that the time has come, We are fearful that what you take will be lost"
......... Chief Dan George

" The world is divided into people who do things and people who get
the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There's far
less competition".................D W Morrow

3.12.6 SUMMARY

"The essence of the North American Pot-latch (Native

ceremony) is the obligation to give".....Mauss

All the three time aspects of Reality are significant in the sense that experience of

the totality of oneself, and the development of one's potential is not complete

without all of them, the experiences and the beliefs thereby of all the three

aspects of time should be complimenting and balancing for each other.

To overvalue or dwell excessively only in one

aspect is to lose out on the other aspects.

" Neither fire, nor wind, not birth nor death can erase our good deeds"....Buddha

The End

of Personal Validity