4

What Time Appears to Be, and What It Really Is

Saint Augustine once said: “What, then is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.”1 How many of us might answer the same way? To think about time can be a strange experience. It is something we are intimately and constantly connected with, and yet we just normally take it as it is, a self-evident, unavoidable fact of life. If we were to describe time as “what is measured by a clock” it is because it appears that obvious. But this will no longer do, so let's establish what the concept of time implies, then strip away its mystery and see what lies behind it.

Time is simply motion or change in space. Our earliest ancestors knew this and did the only thing they could do—measure it. Each time the sun rose it was their reference point; they divided this cycle into one half day, one half night. Each time the change of seasons had run its course, and the sun and other celestial bodies returned to their former positions was another good reference point, the year, which they divided into four seasons. This was just the beginning.

Starting with the day and the year, Man gradually organized and systematized his concept of time, breaking it down into ever more defined segments. Sundials, water clocks, and hourglasses came into use, and by the thirteenth century A.D. mechanical clocks arrived, even if at first wildly erratic by today's standards. But steady progress eventually made it possible to accurately divide the hour into minutes and seconds. Still, this was not good enough.

Each region had its own time system, determined by the rising and setting of the sun. These had to be combined, coordinated, and indexed into a worldwide system of timekeeping. Now the whole planet is synchronized to the nearest one thousandth of a second with the use of atomic clocks, and the watch is the most mass-produced object in the world with more than five hundred million of them sold a year.

Time is motion in space, and our index for measuring this motion is the solar system. The interval it takes for the Earth to completely orbit the sun we count as a year; divide this into twelve smaller units and we have months. The time it takes the Earth to revolve around once on its axis we count as a day; divide this 360 degree rotation into 24 segments and we have hours. Divide the hour into 60 smaller units and we have minutes, divide these again by 60 and we have seconds, and so on if we wish. A second, minute, hour, day, and year are just measurements of how much the Earth has moved since the last measurement.

Our normal idea of time is minutes, hours, and months, and not degrees of rotation or positions in orbit. This way of thinking is so ingrained in our culture and personal lives that we feel compelled to preserve the system. In reality, the Earth sometimes spins a little bit faster or slower, and it takes about 365 1/4 days to orbit the sun, but we compensate for this by adding an extra day to the calendar every four years, making a leap year. Thus we interpret motion in space as time and translate its measurement into a timekeeping system, which has almost come to be seen as the real thing, instead of the representation it actually is.

Time is motion and is indissolubly connected with change or events in space. But this motion actually occurs outside our space, somewhere else; we see only the results by the effects on our space. So in our idea of time exists everything else that does not exist for us now in space. Everything that ever was or ever will be in space: what a vast realm! It may seem strange to describe time as what isn't (everything not now in space) rather than what is, but this lets us begin to envision the possibilities of what may be behind our idea of time.

We study only the appearance of time by noting its direction and meticulously measuring its rate of flow. But we are at a loss to understand anything of its intrinsic nature because we don't see what lies behind its surface. This mystery goes unnoticed by most because time seems so obvious and self-evident. But it is just this obviousness that keeps us from looking at it more deeply. Overcoming this predisposition is the first step in coming to a truer understanding of time, just as overcoming the obviousness that the Earth was flat was the first step in coming to a truer understanding of the world of space. Richard Morris, in The Nature of Reality, admits: “Time, after all, is one of those elusive things that we all think we understand, but which may contain mysteries that we have not yet fathomed.”2 French psychologist Pierre Janet hit the nail on the head, as he wondered (in From Anguish to Ecstasy, vol. 1): “Will not man someday make progress in time similar to that he has made in space?”³

There are three very different schools of thought on the nature of time and space. First, at one end of the spectrum is the mystical stance, probably best typified by Eastern religions but actually including all mysticism, East and West. This maintains that all we take for real, including time and space, is illusory when seen from the broader perspective of the larger, true reality. Our world is at best a fragment of this vaster realm, and to some extreme factions it is a complete illusion. In the true reality, often described as multidimensional in nature, and known only by expanded consciousness, our space fades away, and there is no linear flow of time. All is one, now!

For example, in the East, the Upanishads say: “He is One, without beginning, middle, or end; he is all-pervading.”⁴ And in the West, Thomas Aquinas wrote: “Now although contingent events come into actual existence successively, God does not, as we do, know them in their actual existence successively, but all at once…Hence all that takes place in time is eternally present to God.”⁵

The mystical experience, as reflected in these quotes, is generally taken to be one of divine union with God. But why such an interpretation, just because it so different from and so far above normal consciousness? There's no question it's an awesome event, seeing for the first time a much larger and timeless world, unified with each and every part of it through a new sense, with feelings of rapture and joy. Yet the unveiling of a higher though quite normal mental faculty suddenly apprehending an extra-dimensional reality could account for all of this. Think how stupendous and divine the first flashes of self-consciousness must have seemed to our apelike ancestors and what little understanding they must have had of them.

Edward Carpenter makes just this point:

In the far past of man and the animals, consciousness of sensation and consciousness of self have been successively evolved—each of these mighty growths with innumerable branches and branchlets continually spreading. At any point in this vast experience a new growth, a new form of consciousness might well have seemed miraculous. What could be more marvelous than the first revealment of the sense of sight, what more inconceivable to those who had not experienced it, and what more certain than that the first use of this faculty must have been fraught with delusion and error?6

Nevertheless, it is understandable that the general mystical outlook is that the higher world cannot and need not be described, only experienced, and that the experience is of ultimate reality—communion with God.

Second, the other extreme is positivism, or the scientific stance. It holds that our world is indeed real, in fact the ultimate reality, as outlined by our perfectly “correct” idea of space. As for time, science does not inquire into its hidden nature, but simply describes it as is, i.e., when it seemed to begin, how it seems to relate to space, and the fact that it seems to point in only one direction, past to future, as described by the scientific arrows of time. But let's now look at these scientific descriptions in a new way, in an expanded framework of space, time and consciousness, and see that they are not at all what they seem. They indeed point in one direction, but a different one from what we thought. They point to an extra dimension, and the third different school of thought—extra-dimensional theory.

The first of the three arrows of time is the psychological arrow, which is simple enough: We remember the past and await the future. Unless you're like Merlin from T. H. White's The Once and Future King, who remembers the future but not the past, or the White Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, whose memory “works both ways,” it must seem an obvious fact of life. But is it?

How then, can one explain the phenomenon of precognition, of which there are tens of thousands of impressive accounts and, even more impressive, almost irrefutable, laboratory evidence as well? This must mean that information of the future exists somewhere now and is accessible by some other kind of consciousness. Which way does the arrow now begin to point?

The explanation is that motion in our time is really motion in a higher space. In this larger, extra-dimensional world, everything we normally see in time exists at once, laid out in space; we just can't see it in our normal state of consciousness. We merely sense the passage of this extra dimension through our space an instant at a time, as a momentary and fleeting sensation we call the present. What we have just sensed has disappeared into the past. What we wait to sense has not yet appeared.

The psychological arrow of time is just our own limited way of apprehending a much broader reality, to make comprehensible what would otherwise be incomprehensible. For without this, life would present itself to our normal minds as unfathomable chaos, like music with all the notes sounding at once. The past, present, and future are qualities we impart to the world to separate it, break it down into a sequence of bits and pieces, and bring it into focus for our particular level of consciousness. A continuous flow from past to future enables us to perceive a structure in life, an unfolding of events, cause and effect, and this is necessary to have any meaning or perspective on our conceptual level, three dimensions of space plus time.

 

The beginning of time, according to widely accepted scientific theory, was the Big Bang, which may have occurred some ten to fifteen billion years ago. At that time, the universe was much more compact than it is today, so much so that it was contained in a very dense, very tiny region, virtually the size of a point. But there was then a tremendous explosion, and this primeval fireball rushed outwards in all directions at great speed. Over eons this primordial matter eventually coalesced into galaxies, stars, planets, life, and us.

An interesting point is that the Big Bang was not only the beginning of time, but of space as well. That is, the universe did not expand into existing space but rather space itself expanded, hand-in-hand with time. However, some questions immediately arise: What existed before the Bang—and when—if there was no such thing as time? Must there not have been some kind of available space for the universe to have expanded into? These questions cannot be addressed by science, but they can by extra-dimensional theory.

Reality is extra-dimensional and our perceived universe is only a cross section of it, just as a square is only a cross section of a cube. The larger, extra-dimensional reality had to have been in existence before our universe unfolded along its space. Time, though motion in higher space, generally speaking, is more specifically the interaction between an extra-dimensional space and ours, so our time was created moment by moment as our space rolled along and contacted that higher space. As long as there was motion within higher space, there was something comparable to time before the Bang.

Eminent physicist David Bohm (1917–1992), a modern-day leader in his own way of the extra-dimensional theory, postulated that our familiar universe is just a “relatively independent sub-totality” of a larger multi-dimensional one, which exists in the most real sense, of an “undivided wholeness” of both matter and consciousness. In his acclaimed 1980 Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Bohm speculated how our world of space-time could have begun by unfolding from that vaster realm.

In our approach this “big bang” is to be regarded as actually just a “little ripple.” An interesting image is obtained by considering that in the middle of the actual ocean (i.e., on the surface of the Earth) myriads of small waves occasionally come together fortuitously with such phase relationships that they end up in a certain small region of space, suddenly to produce a very high wave which just appears as if from nowhere and out of nothing. Perhaps something like this could happen in the immense ocean of cosmic energy, creating a sudden wave pulse, from which our “universe” would be born. This pulse would explode outward and break up into smaller ripples that spread yet further outward to constitute our expanding universe.7

In Bohm's example of the wave rolling over the sea, essentially a new two-dimensional cross section is added to an extra (three) dimensional body. Of course in reality our entire three-dimensional universe was added to a larger, extra-dimensional one. Yet another profound aspect of Bohm's theory is that it predicts that each and every part of our normal world contains within it complete information of the multidimensional whole or “implicate order.” Sound familiar? Mystics have always maintained that in the higher world, and seen from that perspective, everything is one, and that the whole is contained in every part of our world.

For example, Plotinus said, “Every thing contains all things in itself, and again sees all things in another, so that all things are everywhere, and all is all. Each thing likewise is every thing.”⁸ And the Tao Te Ching said: “Every being in the universe / is an expression of the Tao [whole].”⁹ This transfinite conception is part of the near-death experience as well. One NDEr says he “simultaneously comprehend[ed] the whole and every part.”¹⁰ Another recounts the experience this way: “God was me and I was God. I was part of the light and I was one with it. I was not separate. I am not saying that I am a supreme being. I was God, as you are, as everyone is.”¹¹

The second major arrow of time is called the cosmological arrow. This is the expansion of our universe proceeding along a line from past to future, which goes hand-in-hand with the psychological arrow of time, in which we remember the past and await the future. The third major one is the entropic arrow of time, also known as the second law of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics states that the total energy of the universe is constant, and thus energy can never be created or destroyed, only changed from one state to another; in other words, you can't get something from nothing. The second law says that when energy is changed from one state to another, whether by nuclear fusion or by burning a piece of paper, a small amount of that energy is rendered unusable, and is in a sense lost. The measure of this lost energy is called entropy.

What this means is that all systems, all processes, everything, suffer organizational decline and thus get worse. Machines rust and wear out, plants, animals, and people grow old and die, even stars eventually burn out. On a cosmic scale, our universe began with a single point of order and is growing more disorganized every second, like a giant clock winding down. Sometimes, it seems this disorder can be overcome; an old car can be restored, for example. But this can only be done when more energy—parts and labor—is brought in from the outside. If the situation includes these outside inputs, there is still an overall decrease in useable energy, or entropy.

The entropic arrow of time is that we see the world moving from past to future as systems move from order to disorder. But this direction becomes cloudy in the realm of the very small. For example, entropy is not something that applies to one or two individual particles but rather to the pattern established by large systems of them. It is a statistical effect, and no single molecule can experience entropy, any more than a single fish can school or a bee swarm. Physicist John Wheeler says: “Ask any molecule what it thinks of the second law of thermodynamics and it will laugh at the question.”12

Moreover, the laws of physics do not forbid individual particles from traveling backward in time, and it is speculated that antiparticles and tachyons do this. But aren't all these inconsistencies exactly what we should expect? For if our description of time, like our worldview, is just another approximation, there should be inconsistencies at its limits, as we begin to see here.

Mainstream science contends that the three major arrows of time—psychological, cosmological, and entropic—complement one another, and it makes the case for time being a one-way street, an ironclad property of reality. But mainstream science is still undecided as to how they relate to one another. Attempts to correlate the entropie arrow with the cosmological lead to enigmas such as: How is it that if entropy increases with time and the universe's expansion, then at the time of the Big Bang the universe was in a state of thermal equilibrium, which is maximum entropy? This plus the fact that the formation of the universe seems to violate the first law of thermodynamics, i.e., you can't get something from nothing. How does gravity in an expanding universe relate to entropy, seeing that one can't determine the entropy of a gravitational field or demonstrate that entropy even applies to gravity?

What we are left with is the fact that motion in our world seems to be in the same, single direction. But isn't this just the way it seemed in the plane world? Even if we passed a ruler or sphere through it from different directions, the inhabitants translated that motion in extradimensional space into motion in one direction in their space. That was the only way they could perceive motion in extra-dimensional space, and this is the only way we are capable of perceiving it, as motion in time from past to future. This is simply the way it must be if we are to have any sense of order, such as cause and effect, in our relatively independent subtotality of three dimensions of space plus time.

Our time is motion in extra-dimensional space, apprehended by us bit by bit as it passes through and contacts our space. We know this as the present, the ever-changing sensation of now. But it is a strange thing, fluid and elusive like quicksilver; we feel it, but can't quite grasp it. Can science?

Science describes the present in terms of a relationship to space by Einstein's theory of relativity. Special relativity (1905) says there is no one “now” common to everyone. This seems to contradict common sense, because when an event occurs in our world, we usually agree on the time. But each observer sees the event only when the light reflected from it reaches him, and someone farther away actually sees the event a little later than someone closer; this also applies if observers are moving at different speeds relative to the event. But all these distinctions are so slight that for practical purposes they don't exist because we live under circumstances where any speed involved is very slow compared to the speed of light (186,282 miles per second). With motion close to this speed however, the differences become pronounced.

Before relativity theory was developed, time was considered to be absolute, flowing through space like a river, at a constant speed and the same everywhere. But in relativity, there is no such thing as absolute simultaneity of time or space. They are both deceptively subjective, and everyone's now is a different space-time coordinate from everyone else's. One person's present is another's past, and still another's future.

Special relativity says our world has four dimensions, three of space and one of time. So time is a dimension, like those of space. This seems to suggest that on both sides of our now, the past and future exist in some real sense along that time dimension, just as a town we pass along the road exists in space before and after we pass it. The present is just the one point we see before us at the moment. And if our time, under relativity, is like this, an axis constituting the fourth dimension, then our present must be, what? A moving point along this axis? It was described this way by mathematical physicist Herman Weyl, in his Philosophy of Mathematics and National Science. “The objective world simply is; it does not happen. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line of my body, does a section of this world come to life as a fleeting image which continuously changes in time.”13 It starts to sound mystical, as did Einstein when, in a personal letter written shortly before his death, he said: “For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.”¹⁴

More important, where does the motion, the change, for this moving point, the now, come from in the four-dimensional blocklike world depicted by special relativity? Einstein worried about this. He once told a colleague that “the problem of the Now worries me seriously…that the experience of the Now means something special for man, something essentially different from the past and future, but this important difference does not and can not occur within physics.”¹⁵ He was right. Our now is the fleeting awareness of motion from outside our continuum, that of an extra dimension apprehended relatively, bit by bit as it passes through our world in time.

The other prominent part of special relativity is the way in which space, time, and mass are affected as speed increases. As seen from a fixed point of reference: (1) space shrinks (in the direction of motion); (2) time slows down (time dilation); and (3) mass increases. Einstein deduced that since the mass of a body increases as its motion increases, and motion is a form of energy (kinetic energy), then the increase in mass comes from its increased energy; hence the famous equation E = mc², with c being the speed of light.

Thus mass and energy are equivalent with mass being simply concentrated energy. The most well-known consequence of this is that as an object is accelerated towards the speed of light, its increase in mass presents more and more resistance, until at the speed of light it would have infinite mass and be immovable. Einstein saw the speed of light as a universal natural law, and according to relativity nothing can ever be accelerated to or beyond this speed.

But the ultimate nature of light itself is unclear, and in fact today it is best understood as vibrations in a fifth dimension. To us, it is basically the limit (supposedly) at which information can be transmitted or received. So is light speed the limit of time itself, or just the limit of our perception of it as is?

If our time is motion in extra-dimensional space, then it is perceived as such, i.e., motion, right up to our limit of sensing it as the speed of light. That is, below this speed we still process information in linear fashion, with the self-conscious mind and its extension, science. But if we could transcend our limitation of perception, we would see this extra dimension in its entirety and our time laid out along it at once in higher space. This is just what one sees in the mystical or near eath experience, by virtue of expanded consciousness. A mystic says: “[There is] a simultaneous eternity of Time in which past, present, and future exist together.”16 An NDEr comments: “It was just all there at once, I mean, not one thing at a time…but it was everything, everything at one time.”¹⁷

In an extra-dimensional reality, information is received at greater than light speed: “everything at one time” But the curious thing is that this larger world is by no means devoid of light, but just the opposite. It's described as a world of unearthly brilliance, of radiant and divine light. In fact, this is one of the most consistent features of all mystical and near-death experiences. It is reported in UFO abductions as well, although to a lesser degree as abductees are usually inside a UFO while in higher space. Theoretical physics provides a clue as to how this can be. Physicists have speculated there is a particle called the tachyon that always travels faster than light speed and which would abound in an extra-dimensional continuum. In the 1930s, an interesting discovery was made, which Nick Herbert reports on in Faster than Light:

Russian physicist Pavel Cerenkov discovered (in 1934) that whenever an electrically charged particle travels faster than light's phase velocity, the particle gives off light—now called Cerenkov radiation. A fast particle's Cerenkov radiation is analogous to a jet plane's sonic boom when it exceeds the speed of sound. Cerenkov radiation is a kind of “optic boom.”…Since tachyons always travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, a charged tachyon is expected to emit Cerenkov radiation continuously. Charged tachyons could be recognized by that special glow.18

So the higher, extra-dimensional faculty may apprehend information carried throughout higher space by tachyons, which have that “special glow.” The Bhagavad-Gita said: “Suppose a thousand suns should rise together into the sky; such is the glory of the Shape of Infinite God.”¹⁹ And the Upanishads: “Thou art the fire, I Thou art the sun.”²⁰ An NDEr: “…it was a brilliant, glowing, breathtaking white light. It was brighter and whiter than looking at the sun…”²¹

Kenneth Ring comments on this NDE light phenomenon as follows: “At this level of consciousness—where we are no longer constrained by the sensory systems of the physical body—we are presumably sensitive to a higher range of frequencies, which may appear to us as light of extraordinary brilliance and unearthly beauty…it is perhaps at least noteworthy that virtually every description that purports to convey a sense of ‘the next world’ depicts ‘a world of light.’”²²

We are below this threshold of perception, where information in higher space is glowing and immediate, and time stops. Nevertheless, it is inevitable that as we get very close to it (the speed of light), time slows down, or dilates, and other properties of our world, such as space and mass, become correspondingly distorted.

Still there is another reason why science is dead set against anything surpassing the speed of light. Because it is the highest velocity at which information can be transmitted, any information traveling beyond it would be effectively able to reach into the past and affect an event prior to its original cause. Thus science has imposed on reality the causal ordering postulate, or COP, which forbids this. It is not however, part of Einstein's relativity and was only introduced later, to explain definite faster-than-light quantum connections (another extra-dimensional phenomenon) while preserving the sanctity of relativity and the current worldview.

The COP permits these connections but not any kind of intelligible signal, thus maintaining the normal order of cause and effect. But if relativity's description of time is not a universal law but another approximation, a statistical effect valid below the speed of light in our relatively independent subtotality, we might expect to see occasional violations of causality in our world, in fact, right in everyday life. This we find in precognition, which also violates the psychological arrow of time.

In 1915, Einstein presented his theory of general relativity which further describes time and space. It says that not only are time and space relative, but the framework of space-time itself is relative to the distribution of matter in the universe. Matter curves space and causes time to flow at different rates. Consequently, gravity is no longer thought of as a force acting upon objects, but a measure of the local space-time curvature, and objects in gravitational fields simply follow the path of least resistance. Time starts to slow down as gravitational fields grow stronger, and the effect becomes significant when gravitational forces are extremely strong. Gravity taken to its known limits, a black hole (a massive collapsed star that even light cannot escape from), becomes a singularity where time and space become fused. Here, just as at the speed of light, we reach a barrier where conventional laws of physics no longer apply.

General relativity essentially says that space and time are curved by gravity, which would seem to indicate that our universe is a threedimensional surface curved in four- (extra-) dimensional space, just as the outside of the Earth is a two-dimensional surface curved in three-dimensional space. However, physicists maintain that this is not so with relativity, that only the geometry of our normal space, i.e., its mathematical representation, is curved. This, like the COP, would safeguard relativity and the current worldview. But John D. Ralphs, in Exploring the Fourth Dimension (1992), refutes this:

If it is possible for a three-dimensional space to be curved without involving a fourth dimension, then it must be equally possible to construct (either physically or mathematically), a curved two-dimensional surface which does not require the existence of a third dimension. To the best of my knowledge, this has never been attempted, nor is it imaginable…Unless such a surface can be demonstrated, the idea is unacceptable.23

Figure 9

Indeed, look at figure 9: here line worlds are just as easily curved or even spiral instead of straight. Yet the line beings would experience them as all the same. Imagine the line world scientists, who suspect their space may be curved, but maintain it is not through a second (extra) dimension—“It's just the mathematical representation of our space that's curved,” they say. But this clearly can't be. Their one dimension of space is not an absolute property of reality, but rather just the way their consciousness is capable of representing an extradimensional reality to them.

Figure 10

Now look at figure 10. Here plane worlds can be flat, curved, or even spherical; and the plane beings would experience them as all the same. After all, even we humans with three-dimensional consciousness thought for centuries that the Earth was flat. The plane beings' idea of space and any kind of plane world geometry is not representative of true reality; it is the only way they can grasp an extra-dimensional reality, albeit in limited scope. In both examples, a higher faculty is needed to perceive that extra dimension their space is curved in. The same applies to us.

Mainstream science, however, is convinced that relativity is the final worldview, or at least an almost final one. There is still one last piece remaining to be fit into the puzzle: the Grand Unification Theory (G.U.T.) or Theory of Everything (T.O.E.), a problem Einstein labored on until his death in 1955. This is a theory that, if realized in the form of an equation, will incorporate everything in the universe from its beginning to its end, and will thus be a description of God. Here God shall be composed of the four fundamental forces (we know of) in the universe, the strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity. But though some of the pieces fit nicely together, others don't, and the Holy Grail of physics remains elusive, at least in the standard four-dimensional space-time continuum.

Many physicists now contend that the pieces can be made to fit in a larger space-time framework, an extra-dimensional one with ten or eleven dimensions. Here light is explained as vibrations in the fifth dimension, and is there and beyond unified with gravity and the other forces. But these extra dimensions are theoretical and not at all like the other three. They are very tiny, curled up, almost to nothing. Why? Two reasons.

First, because we seem not to experience signs of them in our world, that is, as in objects appearing from nowhere, changing shape and color, getting larger or smaller, or disappearing. Needless to say, theoretical physicists hot on the trail of the Theory of Everything are not likely to consider the possibility of UFOs, teleportation, and poltergeists, and how they may or may not fit into their theories.

Second, because according to our mathematics, there can't be an extra dimension of space as we know it. For instance, if the Earth's orbit were calculated with a normal fourth dimension of space (like our other three), it would spiral into the sun. Physicists know that mathematically there can't be an extra dimension like the other three. So, extra dimensions must either be outside the range of science or extremely small. Thus they are proposed as just large enough to incorporate the necessary field activity but tightly rolled up and tucked away safely out of sight.

But remember, our mathematics is merely an extension of our level of consciousness, self-consciousness, and therefore hopelessly inadequate to portray an extra dimension. We need a higher faculty even to apprehend it, and then, we would no longer describe reality with the by-products of self-conscious thought, logic, and mathematics; it would be described by a new and higher language, with logic and mathematics in turn by-products of that higher faculty.

Bohm stops just short of this, saying: “It is important to emphasize that ‘the law of the whole’ (multi-dimensional reality) will not just be a description of current quantum theory to a new language. Rather, the entire context of physics (classical and quantum) will have to be assimilated into a different structure, in which space, time, matter, and movement are described in different ways.”24

Visionary that Bohm was, he leaves out the most important factor, the one needed to perceive an expanded structure of space-time in the first place, namely, expanded consciousness. This brings us to extradimensional theory.

 

This view of time, space, and reality actually started with German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Kant proposed that there is a real physical world, but we don't know it nearly as well as we think; in fact, we scarcely know it at all. It is largely beyond our powers of perception, and the best we can do is impart a simple form to it—space. Beyond this facade lies the real world, but it can only be known as it truly is with a higher and direct form of perception, a “living union” between subject and object.

Kant's view of time is the same. There is something real behind it, but our level of consciousness prevents us from seeing it as it really is. Instead, we see reality as through a narrow slit: that infinitesimal part we are now seeing is the present; that which we have already seen is the past; and that which we have not yet seen is the future. Our time sense presents the underlying reality to us in linear fashion, in effect reducing it to an endless series of separate moments, the relations of which we regard in terms of cause and effect. Thus causality is not a universal principle but rather a condition we impose on the world to reduce it to a structure we can grasp. And this of course, allows for our sense of time to be only an imperfect sense of higher space.

Kant's theory has provoked debate between mystics (especially extreme and fringe factions, who use it as testimony to the fact that all reality is illusory) and positivists, who cannot stand Kant and dismiss him as a mystic. But they both miss the point. Kant is only saying that our physical world is not all there is and that to see the rest we need a higher faculty than we now possess. Kant's philosophy was later applied to different levels of space, time, and consciousness by P. D. Ouspensky in Tertium Organum (1912); the basics of both views are part of extradimensional theory.

The number of spatial dimensions that any being or race of beings perceives at once depends on its level of consciousness. Dimensions not directly perceived are sensed in imperfect and fleeting fashion, in time. In other words, what cannot be apprehended in space is done so in time. To mentally extract an extra dimension of space from time and add it to one's normal field of space, a new and higher faculty of mind is needed.

Our unique sense of time is a function of our level of consciousness, and we use it to measure that which we cannot measure in terms of height, length, and breadth. This is clearly shown by special relativity, which firmly established time as just such a function of consciousness, self-consciousness. This is the point. For it is only our selfconscious mind that lives in the present and experiences that sensation of now. It alone senses motion in time; time does not exist for the subconscious or any other kind of latent consciousness we may have. We live within the confines of reality as sensed by our self-conscious mind.

But our now is actually an awareness of the future becoming the past, a split-second before we can even register the change. The present is behind us before we know it; we only recognize it momentarily in the process of being recorded as the past. This means that the past and future are just as real as the present and exist somewhere beyond the scope of our now. Ouspensky in Tertium Organum, says: “The past and the future cannot not exist, because if they do not exist then neither does the present exist. Unquestionably they exist somewhere together, but we do not see them.”25

So in the broadest sense, everything that ever was, still is, and always will be, and everything that will be or can be already exists somewhere. What a vast realm! Of all this we see but the tiniest fragment at a time, and even this after the fact. The self-conscious mind is stuck in this position. A higher consciousness escapes. Eastern mystic J. Krishnamurti explains how overcoming the constraint of the selfconscious mind leads to an expanded view of time. “The center (selfconsciousness), the observer, is memory. The center is always in the past…. It is a memory of what has been. When there is complete attention (higher consciousness), there is no observer…. Life is broken up and this breaking up of life, caused by the center ‘me,’ is time. If we look at the whole of existence without the center ‘me’ there is no time.”²⁶

The Patanjali Sutras, as described by I. K. Taimni, relate essentially the same view. “The present…has no reality. It is a mere concept for the ever-moving dividing line between the past and the future…. Actually, the present has become the past before we realize its presence and, therefore, ever eludes us. But, though it has no reality of its own it is a thing of tremendous significance because beneath this dividing line between the past and future is hidden the Eternal Now, the Reality which is beyond Time.”²⁷

To us, space appears everywhere at once, and if time is motion in extra-dimensional space, then our time should appear likewise with a glimpse of that space, i.e., time would appear to stand still, to not exist. This is exactly the way mystics who have seen it, and NDErs who have been there, describe it. The ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides said: “Nor was it ever, nor will it be; for now it is, all at once, a continuous one.”28 An NDEr says: “I had a very acute awareness of everything that had ever happened, everything that was happening, or everything that would happen.”²⁹

There are some loose ends to tie up—big ones! Under extradimensional theory, our time—past, present, and future—is laid out along an extra dimension; that's why, with the perception of this, time appears to no longer exist. But if this is the case, if the future exists somewhere now (as the NDEr said, as “an awareness of everything that would happen”), is our fate, indeed every moment of our lives, already fixed and predetermined? Are our personal stories already written as we just move through a script we are powerless to change?

Under extra-dimensional theory this is not the case. The future is not set in stone but rather represents an expanded view of what will occur if events in progress remain unaltered on the path we are heading along. This is what the person having a mystical or near-death experience sees. However, the experience is normally so brief and the expanded view of time so overwhelming that this distinction isn't made. But Lama Govinda perceived it. He maintains that higher consciousness sees all time along an extra dimension, but the future only in a state of as yet unrealized probabilities. He describes the past: “…it loses its time-quality and is converted into something which we can only call a higher dimension of space, for the simple reason that all that apparently has happened in time is seen or sensed simultaneously, and therefore experienced as timeless presence…”³⁰

As for the future, Govinda writes: “…a higher space-dimension, in which things and events exist simultaneously, though imperceptible to the senses. They are in a state of potentiality, as invisible germs or elements of future events and phenomena that have not yet stepped into actual reality.”³¹

Govinda essentially says that although the past and future are laid out along an extra dimension, the future represents probabilities inherent in the direction we are moving but that are not yet finalized. This is not predetermination. As a perfect example of this let's look at precognition from Louisa Rhine's Precognition and Intervention:

A mother dreamed that two hours later a violent storm would loosen a heavy chandelier to fall directly on her baby's head lying in a crib below it; in the dream she saw her baby killed dead. She awoke her husband who said it was a silly dream and that she should go back to sleep as he then did. The weather was so calm the dream did appear ridiculous and she could have gone back to sleep. But she did not. She went and brought the baby back to her own bed. Two hours later just at the time she specified, a storm caused the heavy light fixture to fall right on where the baby's head had been—but the baby was not there to be killed by it.32

This demonstrates that even though the course of events may bespeak a certain conclusion, changes still can be effected. Of course it helps to have a flash of higher consciousness to see what lies ahead.

Actually, the idea of predetermination is the main reason why precognition is unacceptable to many, over and above any scientific considerations. It's philosophically objectionable, for a predetermined future, its critics say, would negate the meaning of our existence. Indeed, where would be the purpose, the freedom of choice, the sport in it all? But there are far too many cases like the above in which individuals make use of premonitions to prevent disaster. These point to an extra-dimensional interpretation, not predestination.

Here is another loose end. Is this extra dimension that our time lies along the last, the ultimate? After all, the perception of it is of time standing still, as not existing. But let's look closer. In On Indian Mahayana Buddhism, D. T. Suzuki describes the general mystical outlook on time in the higher reality:

In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present, and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense…. The past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on.33

The mystical outlook on time actually implies an extra dimension. For if motion in time is motion in higher space, then this explains all our time—past, present, and future—as laid out at once or contained in one moment, and then more motion, i.e., this moment still “quivering” or “moving on.” In fact, virtually all mystical accounts describe something like this—one dynamic and ever-changing “now,” or one present constantly “recreating itself anew.” (This is exactly how we could describe our time!) This suggests further change, motion, although of a different sort and in a still higher dimension.

Near-death experiencers report something comparable. Ring, in Heading Toward Omega, notes that “even though there is no time in these [NDE] experiences, there is a certain feeling of progression.”³⁴ One NDEr, for example, says: “[It] seemed to be in a sequential nature, more or less. I say more or less because time itself seems to have disappeared during this period.”³⁵ This “sequence” or “progression” is likewise motion or change, not like ours, but it is some kind of change nonetheless. Since all change is motion in higher space, this residual motion must represent movement within another extra dimension, still not apprehended in either the mystical or near-death experience.

What would time be like to a race endowed with complete possession of the higher faculty? Far different from ours but still some kind of time. Later, in the UFO abduction phenomenon, we'll find that the aliens who have this faculty and live in a larger, extra-dimensional reality say that the human concept of time is localized, that time with them is not like time with us. Our past and future are the same as today to them. They know about our time, but their time is different!