In a book called Why the Universe is the Way It Is, the author makes a passing comment to the effect that
Psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and theologians have also identified a relational property of time. They note that without time, relationships are impossible (Ross, emphasis mine).
I take that comment personally, since I was a psychologist, and I resent any insinuation that I can be lumped in with sociologists. Moreover, I'm an amateur theologian, so I really resent being lumped in with psychologists.
However, I do agree with the part about the relational property of time, even if I'm not entirely sure what that even means.
Yet. In this post we'll try to find out what it means. I say "try," since the whole subject of time is notoriously tricky. It's like what old Jeremiah says about the heart of man: deceitful above all things, so who can know it?!
Speaking of which, what else does the Bible say about time -- not just explicitly, but implicitly? Well, for starters, just like modern astrophysics, it claims that it had a beginning.
Which right away lands us in paradox, since our everyday understanding of time is that it is "divided" into three very different modes: past, present, and future. How can there have been a time when time didn't have a past?
We've discussed this in previous posts -- the idea that these three categories or domains are so vastly different, and yet, somehow a single dimension of the cosmos. The past consists of events that have happened and are therefore unchangeable, while the future doesn't exist at all. In between is the present, in which the future comes into being and transforms into the past.
Which is not helpful, Bob.
I'm aware of that, Brain. We're just getting started. We will get beneath the clichés, if it takes allpost.
Time is difficult to define. Unlike space, accessible to humans in three dimensions, time is accessible to us in only one. And try as we might, we can neither stop nor reverse the arrow of time. What's more, it's impossible for any human to get outside the cosmic time dimension and observe all its properties (Ross).
Is that so? What am I, a sociologist? I get outside the cosmic time dimension all the time(less), and I can't be the only one. As far as I'm concerned, this is one of the principle purposes of religion: to provide us with an extra-temporal perspective on things.
Yes, I'm talking about the vertical, which is at a right angle, so to speak, to our 4D cosmos. Animals, for example, are completely immersed in those four dimensions, such that they have no transcendent view of reality. But humanness is defined by this transcendent position that is simultaneously in and out of time.
Yes, we are historical beings to the extent that we are partly of time; but we are not totally of time, because we clearly have access to an atemporal realm of timeless truth. Math, for example, is immaterial and changeless. But so too are a lot of other things without which we wouldn't be human.
To be sure, we're in an ambiguous situation, stretched between the abyss of time and the... other abyss of timelessness. But let's get real.
Literally, since the human journey, if I'm not mistaken, consists of assimilating the Real into the unreal, and Bob, I dare you to explain what the hell that means.
I accept the challenge, Brain! Here's a clue as to how it works, courtesy of Schuon: the prime directive for the upright Vertical Man is to remain
motionless in his contemplative inwardness -- or his "being," if one prefers -- while moving towards his infinite Center. Spiritual immobility is here opposed to the endless movement of external phenomena, while spiritual movement, on the contrary, is opposed to the natural inertia of the fallen soul (emphasis mine).
See how it works? A fully orthoparadoxical motionless movement in the vertical, detached from the endlessly falling inertia of the horizontal, where it takes all day to get precisely nowhere. Fortunately I am retired, so it takes me no time to be everywhen.
In other words, I've been liberated from the Conspiracy, so I am free to abide in the slack that is at a 45º angle to the world. Or rather, if I don't do that, I have no one to blame but my Brain, which isn't as simpleminded as it could be:
The soul must withdraw itself from the dispersion of the world; this is the quality of Inwardness. Then the will must vanquish the passivity of life; this is the quality of Actuality. Finally, the mind must transcend the unconsciousness of the ego; this is the quality of Simplicity.
To perceive the Substance intellectually, above the uproar of accidents, this is to realize Simplicity. To be one is to be simple; for Simplicity is to the One what Inwardness is to the Center and what Actuality is to the Present (ibid.).
Which is all there ever really Is, Brain.
Bob is out of time. To be continued...
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