Time, Space & Consciousness

The mind of an individual is a part of the cosmic universal mind. You must understand that your individual mind is part of the universal mind. The space in this room is an individual space, but it is also a part of a greater space. Because you have four walls around it, you call it your room space. Similarly, the individual mind is a concept and not a reality. Actually there is only universal mind. Individual mind should not be brought into consideration at all. 'Your mind' is a concept and in meditation you have to blow it up. What happens when you break the walls, where is the individual space? It becomes part of the total space. So the whole crux of the matter is the individualisation of the mind which is actually a process of self-hypnotism.

-    Swami Satyananda Saraswati

Whether we want to admit it or not, we live in a reality which is a projection of our psyche.  This is a central understanding of Yoga Vedanta.  In the 18^th century the German philosopher Immanuel Kant declared that space and time were mental constructs.  In the twentieth century Einstein stated, “. . . the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”  However, we are so accustomed to accepting our sensory display as given that we rarely appreciate the consciousness within us that gives rise to it.  Without consciousness there would be no experience of a reality.

We are immersed in and enlivened by a larger being who is none other than ourselves.  At the same time we are, of course, individuals.  We have an individual choice as human beings whether we want to tune into and connect with our greater being or ignore it.  There is a seeming paradox in operation here: one needs to individuate in order to reconnect with a greater wholeness.  When we are embedded in the conditioning provided by our families, culture, media, educational system, etc. we are limited by it.  This is why shamans and yogis have traditionally separated themselves in forests, caves, or ashram communities.  A supportive community is very helpful.  Even then it is most important to tune into the quiet guidance of intuition within. 

Yoga practice helps us to learn to tune into our bodies as antennas.  We can feel things in our bodies before they ever reach our conscious minds.  We can also learn to influence our external reality through our bodily presence.  That presence is our awareness which is fundamentally free from the limits of our spacetime imaginings.  We are beings of interconnected energetic alliances, neurons in the hyperspatial Self.  We are all One.  As Max Planck, one of the originators of modern quantum mechanics, stated, “All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.” 

True meditation enables us to step outside of our personal and collective psychic cocoons, to observe our working models of reality in light of a higher dimensional perspective.  Lama Govinda writes, "If we speak of the space experience in meditation we are dealing with an entirely different dimension." He continues, "Vision is bound up with a space of higher dimension, and therefore timeless." He further explains, "An experience of higher dimensionality is achieved by integration of experiences of different centres and levels of consciousness. Hence the indescribability of certain experiences of meditation on the plane of three dimensional consciousness."  This is also true of certain psychedelic or “entheogenic” experiences.

The “ego” in this sense is that particular software component that keeps us fixated on our individual timespace realities.  It is absolutely necessary if we are to function coherently on in our collective 3D hallucination.  On the other hand spiritual awakening shakes us out of this collective dream and opens us to new possibilities.