Sri Aurobindo on Time and Space.
This development and progress of the world according to an original truth of its own
being implies a succession of Time, a relation in Space and a regulated interaction of
related things in Space to which the succession of Time gives the aspect of Causality.
Time and Space, according to the metaphysician, have only a conceptual and not a real
existence; but since all things and not these only are forms assumed by Conscious-Being
in its own consciousness, the distinction is of no great importance. Time and Space are
that one Conscious-Being viewing itself in extension, subjectively as Time,
objectively as Space. Our mental view of these two categories is determined by the idea
of measure which is inherent in the action of the analytical dividing movement of Mind.
Time is for the Mind a mobile extension measured out by the succession of the past,
present and future in which Mind places itself at a certain standpoint whence it looks
before and after. Space is a stable extension measured out by divisibility of substance; at
a certain point in that divisible extension Mind places itself and regards the disposition of
substance around it.
In actual fact Mind measures Time by event and Space by Matter; but it is possible
in pure mentality to disregard the movement of event and the disposition of substance and
realise the pure movement of Conscious-Force which constitutes Space and Time; these
two are then merely two aspects of the universal force of Consciousness which in their
intertwined interaction comprehend the warp and woof of its action upon itself. And to a
consciousness higher than Mind which should regard our past, present and future in one
view, containing and not contained in them, not situated at a particular moment of Time
for its point of prospection, Time might well offer itself as an eternal present. And to the
same consciousness not situated at any particular point of Space, but containing all points
and regions in itself, Space also might well offer itself as a subjective and indivisible
extension,—no less subjective than Time. At certain moments we become aware of such
an indivisible regard upholding by its immutable self-conscious unity the variations of the
universe. But we must not now ask how the contents of Time and Space would present
themselves there in their transcendent truth; for this our mind cannot conceive,—and it is
even ready to deny to this Indivisible any possibility of knowing the world in any other
way than that of our mind and senses.
Volume: 18-19 [SABCL] (The Life Divine), Page: 133
In any case, if Spirit is the fundamental reality, Time and Space must either be conceptive
conditions under which the Spirit sees its own movement of energy or else they must be
fundamental conditions of the Spirit itself which assume a different appearance or status
according to the status of consciousness in which they manifest. In other words there is
a different Time and Space for each status of our consciousness and even different
movements of Time and Space within each status; but all would be renderings of a
fundamental spiritual reality of Time-Space. In fact, when we go behind physical
space, we become aware of an extension on which all this movement is based and this
extension is spiritual and not material; it is Self or Spirit containing all action of its own
Energy. This origin or basic reality of Space begins to become apparent when we draw
back from the physical: for then we become aware of a subjective Space-extension in
which mind itself lives and moves and which is other than physical Space-Time, and yet
there is an interpenetration; for our mind can move in its own space in such a way as to
effectuate a movement also in space of Matter or act upon something distant in space of
Matter. In a still deeper condition of consciousness we are aware of a pure spiritual
Space; in this awareness Time may no longer seem to exist, because all movement
ceases, or, if there is a movement or happening, it can take place independent of any
observable Time sequence.
If we go behind Time by a similar inward motion, drawing back from the physical
and seeing it without being involved in it, we discover that Time observation and
Time movement are relative, but Time itself is real and eternal.
Time observation depends not only on the measures used, but on the consciousness
and the position of the observer: moreover, each state of consciousness has a different
Time relation; Time in Mind consciousness and Mind Space has not the same sense and
measure of its movements as in physical Space; it moves there quickly or slowly
according to the state of the consciousness. Each state of consciousness has its own Time
and yet there can be relations of Time between them; and when we go behind the
physical surface, we find several different Time statuses and Time movements coexistent in the same consciousness. This is evident in dream Time where a long sequence
of happenings can occur in a period which corresponds to a second or a few seconds of
physical Time. There is then a certain relation between different Time statuses but no
ascertainable correspondence of measure. It would seem as if Time had no objective
reality, but depends on whatever conditions may be established by action of
consciousness in its relation to status and motion of being: Time would seem to be purely
subjective. But, in fact, Space also would appear by the mutual relation of Mind-Space
and Matter-Space to be subjective; in other words, both are the original spiritual
extension, but it is rendered by mind in its purity into a subjective mind-field and by
sense-mind into an objective field of sense-perception.
Subjectivity and objectivity are only two sides of one consciousness, and the cardinal fact
is that any given Time or Space or any given Time-Space as a whole is a status of being
in which there is a movement of the consciousness and force of the being, a movement
that creates or manifests events and happenings; it is the relation of the consciousness that
sees and the force that formulates the happenings, a relation inherent in the status, which
determines the sense of Time and creates our awareness of Time-movement, Timerelation, Time-measure. In its fundamental truth the original status of Time behind
all its variations is nothing else than the eternity of the Eternal, just as the
fundamental truth of Space, the original sense of its reality, is the infinity of the
Infinite.
Volume: 18-19 [SABCL] (The Life Divine), Page: 361
All that is in the kinesis, the movement, the action, the creation, is the Brahman; the
becoming is a movement of the being; Time is a manifestation of the Eternal. All is
one Being, one Consciousness, one even in infinite multiplicity, and there is no need
to bisect it into an opposition of transcendent Reality and unreal cosmic Maya.
Volume: 18-19 [SABCL] (The Life Divine), Page: 461
…Time itself is nothing less “than the conscious being's way of looking at some
uninterrupted continuity or, it may be, eternity of existence as an indivisible flow which it
conceptually measures by the successions and simultaneities of the experience through
which alone that existence is represented to it.”
Volume: 18-19 [SABCL] (The Life Divine), Page: 504
Time is the great bank of conscious existence turned into values of experience and
action: the surface mental being draws upon the past (and the future also) and coins
it continually into the present; he accounts for and stores up the gains he has
gathered in what we call the past, not knowing how ever-present is the past in us; he
uses as much of it as he needs as coin of knowledge and realised being and pays it
out as coin of mental, vital and physical action in the commerce of the present which
creates to his view the new wealth of the future.
Ignorance is a utilisation of the Being's self-knowledge in such a way as to make it
valuable for Time-experience and valid for Time-activity; what we do not know is what
we have not yet taken up, coined and used in our mental experience or have ceased to
coin or use. Behind, all is known and all is ready for use according to the will of the Self
in its dealings with Time and Space and Causality. One might almost say that our surface
being is only the deeper eternal Self in us throwing itself out as the adventurer in Time, a
gambler and speculator in infinite possibilities, limiting itself to the succession of
moments so that it may have all the surprise and delight of the adventure, keeping back
its self-knowledge and complete self-being so that it may win again what it seems to have
lost, reconquering all itself through the chequered joy and pain of an aeonic passion and
seeking and endeavour.
Volume: 18-19 [SABCL] (The Life Divine), Page: 509