The Appearance of Space-Time by Swami

Krishnananda
swami-krishnananda.org/disc/disc_394.html

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(October 21, 1996, the concluding day of the Navaratri Puja)

Swamiji: God is existing, and was existing even before He created space and time.
Inasmuch as He was existing before space and time, you cannot say there is a
relationship. He can exist without space and time. Existence does not require space and
time. Space and time is a kind of externality that is projected by Pure Being, and God has
no externality. It is only for us.

If you are acquainted with modern physics and its great developments, there are no such
things as space and time, really speaking. They don't exist. It is a kind of deception
created by the wrong movement of consciousness in the same way as there is a
deceptive space and time in the dream world by which, through which, on account of
which, the consciousness that dreams feels there are things outside in the space-time of
dream. It can see a whole world, but that whole world that is seen can be there only if
there is space-time. If there is no space-time, there cannot be a world.

Now, the space-time in dream actually did not exist by itself. It is a peculiar trick of
consciousness. Like a magician projecting something which is not actually there, the
consciousness externalised itself in a manner which the intellect cannot understand.
Consciousness cannot be externalised. It is pure subject. It cannot become the object. It
cannot be other than what it is. So when it projects itself, as it were, in the form of an
externality which is space and time, it is in a world of total misconception. So the world of
dream does not exist.

This is an analogy to explain what is happening in the waking condition. The Absolute,
which is Pure Being and Consciousness, appears to be engaged – we have to use words
very carefully here; it is not engaged in anything, it appears to be engaged – in an act of
externalising itself, and space and time is only a name for the force of externalisation.
Space and time is consciousness forcing itself to be other than what it is. It is a total
illusion, and therefore it follows that the world also is an illusion, finally. It is valid for all
those people who are involved in the dream. You are a dream subject, and you cannot
say the dream world is unreal because you are part and parcel of the structure of the
dream world. The subject and the object are on a parallel level in dream. In dream, the
world outside is as real as the beholder of the dream. The subject and the object, the seer
and the seen, are on a parallel line. Therefore, as you yourself are involved in this
externalisation, it looks as if the world is real. This does not apply to the Supreme Being

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because if the Supreme Being also is externalising itself, it ceases to be being; it will be
becoming. Becoming is a process of transition and fluxation – something becoming other
than what it is. God cannot become other than what He is.

So the whole world of perception is a kind of phantasmagoria, we may say, created by the
world consciousness, which is studied very deeply in modern physics in the theory of
relativity and quantum mechanics. If you read that, you will find that you are in a
dreamland, and you cannot know that you are in a dreamland because you are yourself
involved in that land. If the judge in a court is himself the client, what judgment can he
pass? Likewise, we are the judges of this world, but we are also involved in this very
structure of the world. Therefore, no human being can understand what this world is
unless you transcend your human nature and expand your consciousness to the level of
universality, wherein you will never see externality. The particularity and externality is the
opposite of universality. If your consciousness can raise itself above this particular
perception and externalised observation, and feel the all-inclusiveness of Being as such,
the question itself will not arise.

In India we have a great scripture called the Yoga Vasishtha. It tells the same thing which
Einstein and Max Planck tell today. Before Einstein and Max Planck were born, the Yoga
Vasishtha told all these things: the relativity of space and time, and the impossibility of
there being an external world. Intellectually it is not possible to grasp it because the
intellect is a part of your personality, and the personality is involved in this structure of
externality. Hence, nobody can understand anything unless, by the power of yoga and
meditation, you somehow or other extricate yourself from the externalising pressure of
consciousness, and bring it back to the Universal that it is. Yoga is a great feat of spiritual
exercise, and I cannot talk to you much about it. It is a strange subject.

A visitor: Swamiji, time is also limitless.

Swamiji: Why are you bringing time now? I told you it doesn't exist at all except as an
involvement in a confused perception. It is a perceptional error which is infecting
everybody who sees it. It is a common error which is injected into every person,
everyone, even an insect, which sees the world outside. This is called samsara, total
entanglement, and one cannot know that there is entanglement because the person is
already inside it. Anyhow, you know the importance of this matter. It is very serious. It is
the be-all and end-all of our life, worth considering deeply, impartially, and at deep leisure
on this.

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