Toss a stone.
“What do you see?”
“I see the stone moving and I see the stone stationary at the end of its journey. Actually, the whole process occurs at the same time.”
“And where is it going?”
“Nowhere. It looks like it is moving from some place, yet it is always at the same place! It is like a pattern appearing in the foreground that bursts into motion across the landscape, then slowly fades. This fading doesn’t occur at the same time along its trajectory, but begins to fade at the point of origin, continuing along the path it’s traversing, until all that remains is the object at its final resting place. Which is the same as the place it began.“
“Wait a moment.”
We sat in silence. I could see his brow wrinkled with concentration. Then his body visibly relaxed and his breathing slowed down – he was connecting with his inner nothingness, Ein Sof.
“That is an excellent description from the viewpoint of greater density. However, for those whose existence is not in this space-time, it would not be described that way.
“Let me try and explain. Think of an insect that only lives for two days. You might look with pity on this poor little being whose life is so short – just as someone might look at you and may have the same sentiment.
“However, from the insects point of view, it lives for two millennium. In fact, it starts of as a pupa that takes a millennium to form, emerging into 500 years of light, then plunged into 500 years of darkness — both of which it might be aware of as a totally different phenomenon to the way we experience it. It might live its life completely unaware of day and night, and might note other patterns in its environment that it uses to count “time”. For it lives (or experiences) this world very differently from the experience we have of it. The pace at which things occur – or rather, the things that it is aware of occurring – is perhaps far greater than the one we experience.
“Its perception of time is far more dense – i.e., has a greater frequency – relative to our “reality”. This insect has experienced 1000s of events in the time it takes us to experience a single one. In other words, it has a completely different experience of “time” to ours.
“You could brush aside this way of explaining a different time-space, but I have two counters to bolster my idea. The first is more intellectual, the second more human.
The complexity of our cognisant abilities is far greater than that of an insect, thus the time it takes us to comprehend something and react is far longer than that of an insect. In addition, it is much more aware and connected to the bejillions of chemical and biological reactions that are happening around it. It will not spend any time discussing the morals and pros and cons of the reaction - it will just react. So its moment to moment life is very swift, and much happens to it all the time it is alive. From that perspective, if one conceived of “insect time, it would seem much longer than it is compared to our time. I addition, if that insect lived in a balanced, healthy environment, it would be able to tell time by the regularity of the occurrences that take place in its environment.
“The second is referred to as African time. It is obvious that when your major form of movement is walking in comparison to moving around in a car, time would have a different meaning for you.”