Mind Creates Space and Time from the Infinite
The ultimate reality is a timeless, spaceless, unconditioned field of pure awareness. This infinite potential is the source and substance of all that is. Yet, our everyday experience is characterized by the seemingly concrete realities of time and space, populated by finite objects with distinct boundaries. How does this finite appearance arise from the infinite ground? By the activity of thought and perception, which limits the infinite nature of consciousness. This limitation or refraction creates the appearance of discrete subjects and objects in space and time.
To use the analogy of a prism, when a single, unified light is refracted, a spectrum of colors is created, each appearing distinct and separate. These colors were not inherently present as separate entities in the original light; they are the result of the light interacting with the prism.
Similarly, our thoughts and perceptions act as the prism that refracts the infinite nature of consciousness, creating the illusion of time and space and the appearance of finite objects within them. Thought, with its inherent linearity and sequential nature, separates the timeless now into a perceived past and future. Perception, through sensory inputs and the mental constructs that interpret them, creates the illusion of discrete objects existing within a spatial framework.
From the pure, unconditioned viewpoint of infinite consciousness, there are no boundaries, no divisions, no before or after. There is only ever-present awareness. The concepts of past and future, this and that, are mental fabrications, interpretations imposed upon seamless awareness.
It's not that the infinite consciousness is somehow hidden behind or beyond the finite appearance, waiting to be discovered. The infinite is not separate from what we perceive as finite. Rather, the infinite is the very substance of the finite. The seemingly limited forms and fleeting moments of our experience are nothing other than expressions within a limitless consciousness.
The water that constitutes the wave is the same water that constitutes the entire ocean. There is no “finite water” distinct from the “infinite ocean.” The finitude is in the form, the appearance, not in the underlying substance.
In the same way our experience of the world—the feeling of being a separate individual in a world of separate objects, moving through time—is an appearance created by the way our minds structure and interpret the infinite potential of consciousness. There is no truly finite entity, no truly separate object, only the appearance. All is the infinite consciousness appearing as finite through the lens of thought and perception.
This understanding facilitates the dissolution of the fundamental sense of separation. The limitations we perceive in time and space are understood as mental constructs, not ultimate realities. By becoming aware of the workings of our own minds, of how thought and perception create these boundaries, we can come to understand this about reality: the infinite is all there is.