Space, Time and Causation

Divine Life Society Publication: Chapter 6 The Philosophy of Life by Sri Swami Krishnananda

The term universe signifies the totality of space, time and matter. Modern physical science has discovered that matter has no independent existence but can be reduced to the ultimate constitution of the space-time manifold. Ordinarily, space is conceived as extendedness with three dimensions, and time as a consciousness of the succession of events in space. Thus, common perception makes an empirical distinction between space and time. But scientists like Minkowski, Einstein and Eddington have tried to demonstrate and prove that every event in the universe has a four-dimensional character. What we perceive is not space and time but a space-time continuum. Matter itself is found to owe its origin to a particular feature discoverable in the space-time manifold. A kink or twist or curvature in space-time is said to be responsible for the appearance of what is commonly called matter. The nature of this curvature is dependent upon the quality and the amount of matter that it contains. The greater the matter, the greater is the curvature. And this curvature it is that goes by the name of gravitational force.

The stable universe of Newton has disappeared into a cosmos of relativity with space-time as its ultimate basis, constructed out of lines of force and intervals of events. There are no objects, only events; no points of space, only waves of energy. The visible universe is, therefore, not the real one.

The Yogavasishtha, which abounds in an extensive treatment of the nature of the world in terms of space and time, propounds the amazing doctrine that space and time are not realities in themselves but appearances relative to experience. It teaches that space and time are ultimately constructions of thought and are dependent on thought. One cannot conceive of space and time when the functions of the mind are inhibited, or where no consciousness seems to operate. It is possible for different persons existing in different orders of reality to experience the same world as being possessed of different space-time significance. The reality of space and time, and the stability, order and meaning of the things of the world, change, according to the Yogavasishtha, in different space-time realms.

There can be no experience of space without the individualisation of consciousness. Space is a mode of perception by the individualised observer. Where individuality is not, space also is not. The perception of space is relative to the activity of the mind. Under different conditions, different orders of space can be perceived by the same mind. Even a small area of space can appear to the mind, under certain circumstances, as a vast extension, or a kingdom itself.

The mind in the state of dream, for example, experiences a universe with its own space and time. The dream world has all the characters and structural qualities of the waking world, and yet the two realms are different from each other. We also know that, even in this world, the mind can perceive a thing as what it is not. Two-dimensional pictures can be made to rouse the idea of a three-dimensional region of great immensity. The mind can project forth space in accordance with the condition in which it is.

The idea of time, again, is dependent on the idea of space. In fact, the concepts of space and time rise simultaneously, and as spatial characters are relative to states of mind, so are time characters. A moment of time can appear to the mind as a long universal cycle, and the latter, again, can appear to it as a moment under certain given conditions. Whatever is the nature of the objective condition to which consciousness is related, that alone appears to it as reality. When consciousness is switched on to the idea of a moment, even an age can be passed as a moment, while, when it is identified with the idea of a long period of time, even a moment can be experienced as such.

The nature of the experience of space and time depends upon the manner in which the consciousness happens to be objectively modalised. Persons who are in a depressed state of mind or who are in deep sorrow are apt to feel that a moment of time is like a year, while those who revel in happiness would feel the contrary.

Space and time are ultimately conditions of consciousness and are not independent of it. In the dreaming state experiences ranging over thousands of years can be undergone in a moment’s time, while, at the same time, the mind in this state can also project a moment’s experience into a history of several years. In the state of intense spiritual contemplation and Samadhi, space and time are transcended, and only pure consciousness reveals itself. In this consciousness the entire universal cycle is said to appear and disappear within the millionth part of a moment. Space is the way in which the mind knows things as having extension, and time is the feeling of the succession of internal states reacting to those of events outside.

Excerpts from: Space, Time and Causation - Chapter 6 The Philosophy of Life by Sri Swami Krishnananda