The Reification of Time - VII
Feeling is spatial; that is, what we call space is merely the sense of having feelings and what we call time is the sense of having thoughts – hence everyone’s need for their own personal space or right to their own feelings, and their own time to make up their minds. Physical, three-dimensional space is a symbol for feelings, just as time is a symbol for thoughts; hence space still exists in the dream state, but time doesn’t – at least not in the same sense in which it exists in the waking state. Our sense of personal continuity in the dream state is not based upon a linear, sequential, unfolding of events, as it is in waking. Things jump around too much in dreams for us to be able to operate on the assumption of personal continuity such as we make in waking consciousness. Rather, our sense of selfhood in dreaming is based upon an awareness of self as experiencer (i.e., of death).
That vibrant, alive quality which characterizes dreaming is actually awareness of death. In dreams we are aware of death every second, willy-nilly, because there’s nothing solid in dreams to cling to: there’s no way of toning down the intensity of what we are experiencing. We’re face-to-face with death every second. That’s why we feel more alive in dreams than we do in wakefulness – because we are seeing with the eyes of death.
The point is that what we call time is a falsehood. To us moderns space and time are real, and feelings and thoughts are symbols for space and time; but in fact, exactly the reverse is true. Linear time is an illusion similar to the illusion of motion produced by the series of still pictures which make up a movie. Babies (and even young children, who sometimes talk about memories from other lifetimes) are not as centered in a one-track existence as adults are. Babies and young children are consciously impinged upon by influences (feelings) from other lives and probable realities which most adults have learned to ignore. The same socialization process which props up a baby’s sense of being a unitary, abiding, separated individual also imprisons that individual in a furrow of inexorable linear temporality.
In other words, the illusion that time is linear – that there is a sensible progression from one moment to the next – is merely an agreement that human beings make. Just as during courtship people focus entirely on the positive aspects of their relationship and ignore the negative ones; and later when the marriage falls apart all they focus on are the negatives and ignore the positives; in the same way people focus all their moment-to-moment attention on that which seems to be familiar and persistent. But the truth is that each passing moment is an entirely new ballgame with completely different rules: nothing persists, and everything is ineffable. Familiarity is a lie people tell themselves and each other to keep from completely losing their marbles: “Oh no, I’m not completely disoriented here, everything’s just fine and dandy!” It’s this lie that makes society (waking consciousness) possible.
(continued …)