We are thoroughly used to the expression space-time; beside it, time-space has an unusual ring. Swapping the words points to the power of our habits, but it also hints that the order of our thoughts is sometimes worth reversing. It is as if space, spatial extension, came first, as if it were the more familiar dimension, and only then did time follow: what we cannot make sense of in space, we call time. Perhaps in space-time it is space that stands for permanence, and time for transience? And yet we know that the two are connected, indeed inseparable: without time it is almost impossible to make sense of space.
If we follow the logic of this ordering, then in the concept of time-space it would be time that is the more familiar and constant dimension, and what we cannot make sense of as time we would call space, that secondary and transient factor?
Hegel says that time is a point of space… which is worth pondering. With spatiality we associate the three dimensions of extension, adding time to them as the fourth, while ideas of dimensions beyond these exist mostly in the realm of theoretical mathematics and quantum physics – or in mysticism too? By examining the ultimate concepts of spacetime or time-space we can reach the boundary of thinking and knowing, beyond which the traditional intellectual tools no longer hold.
If we picture ourselves on a bridge, what occurs to most people is that they will cross it, move forward, get to the other side. But what does the bridge connect? What are the two shores it stretches between? And that a bridge can also be walked backwards we can hardly even imagine.
Life is a bridge, its near shore the world of experience, its far shore, as we hope, the home of perfection. Space we travel, come to know and map, and time we try to use and spend meaningfully. Man lives in space and time at once, and, as we hope, exists beyond space-time. And yet it is man, this very part contained in space-time, who perceives both space and time. The living man settles into space and perceives time, he probes it and lives through it, whereas in truth it is space that probes man, and time that measures out his life.
But what if it is also true to say that time lives in man? That space is only a thought, and the world is in the mind, not the mind in the world? To a first approximation we ascribe objective existence to the world, so space and time form a medium in which man moves, in which he is contained. When time passes, its destructive power shows itself, the power that one day puts an end to everything. Then man lives in time. But when time grows full, it carries us, we may hope, nearer to fulfilment, and then perhaps time lives in man. Indeed, perhaps I might even say that time exists through man. If there were no one to experience it, what meaning would time have?
So far, starting from experience, we have tried to reach a higher state of consciousness, that is, to move forward on the bridge, towards the far shore. At times, however, time melts, space bends… A moment ago man was still living in time and space, and now the roles seem to be reversed. It is as if man were no longer moving forward on the bridge, but back towards this side. Perhaps it is by leaving behind a more universal perception of existence – shall we call this a fall? – that we are compelled to experience the world, spacetime, as we now perceive it? We travel through space, and so try to get to the bottom of things; we long to conquer time, and all the while it conquers us.
The path of the human soul leads from law to love, from teachings to freedom, from the moral plane to the spiritual plane. (Rabindranath Tagore)
Space and time, time and space – reverse the direction of movement, and it may be that you set out backwards, yet you are moving forwards. In this way you may understand eternity in the twinkling of an eye.