POSTHUMOUS PIECES: PART 1 - TIME



The seeker is the found,
The found is the seeker,
As soon as it is apperceived
That there is no Time





CHAPTER 1 : Taking Time by the Forelock



Nearly everyone seems to accept time as though it existed absolutely, for indeed, almost always, everything is discussed and analysed in a time-context as though that were the indisputable foundation of all that is known.

The foundation, of course, it is, but how can it be regarded as indisputable? Has anyone ever produced any scrap of evidence of its objective existence - except the fact that everything depends on its existence, which is very precisely une petition de principe or begging the question?

Therefore to argue about the factuality of 'things' as such, all subject to duration, without considering the validity of this 'duration' on which they all entirely depend, would seem to be a singular lacuna in the logic of any such discussion. We must surely admit that until the validity of apparent 'duration' is established the validity of whatever may depend on it cannot either be established or denied. It is the primary factor, and should have precedence over all else.

Discussing something whose existence is totally dependent on something else for whose existence no evidence has been adduced, or indeed can be adduced, apart from the supposed something under discussion that is dependent upon it, is indeed a performance of some futility! And what current religious or metaphysical discussion does not come into this category?

'Time' - and, of course, 'space' from which it is inseparable - is basic to all phenomena, for without extension in duration and in volume they cannot have any apparent existence at all.

On examination 'time' and 'space' will be found to have no objective existence otherwise than as a conceptual structure in mind, an assumed background without which no phenomenon could appear. 'Time' and 'space', therefore, must be entirely subjective. Closer examination will reveal that they represent a further dimension of measurement (or dimension), conceptually an all-inclusive super-volume constituting what is implied by the term 'subjectivity' itself.

Metaphysically expressed, we may say that I-noumenon manifest objectively what I am, in three directions of measurement, by means of a fourth or super-volume which is interpreted sensorially by divided-mind as what is known as 'space-time'.

If objectively 'space-time' does not exist as any 'thing' perceptible or cognisable, that must be because it can only be an expression of the non-objectivity which is perceiving and cognising, and that is what we are.

What then is 'space-time'? It may tentatively be defined as the super-volume from which we observe, interpreted in a tri-dimensional universe as extension, by means of the consecutive duration of that apparent three-dimensional universe.

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The 'past' is a memory,
The 'future' is a supposition,
The 'present' is passed before we can apprehend it.*

The only 'present' therefore is presence and must necessarily be what we are.
Such presence, then, is inevitably outside time and must be 'intemporality'.


*the processes of perception and conception are complicated and require a lapse of time for their completion.

(© T.J. Gray, 1968.)
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