Motion in space is impossible

One thing it is of vital importance to understand is that when one moves from “here” to “there” in space, one is not actually moving in space; rather, one is moving in time. When I arrive “there,” “there” is not the same “there” to which I determined to move when I was “here.”

Let me explain in detail. Let’s say I am standing at a position X at 7:01 PM. We’ll combine this to read X7:01, a timespace position. I determine that I wish to move to position Y (perhaps Y is a spot across the room, over by the sofa). I do so, arriving at Y at 7:02 PM. Y7:02. When I look back to X from Y7:02, I am looking back at X7:02, not X7:01. X7:01 is now in a part of a space which I can no longer see. It is part of the past. Likewise, when I was standing at X7:01, looking across the room and deciding to move to position Y, I was actually deciding to move to Y7:01. But instead, I moved to Y7:02. I did not move across the intervening space from X7:01 to Y7:01. I moved across the intervening time from X7:01 to Y7:02. One can never be in two spatially contiguous places at the same time. I can never move from X7:01 to Y7:01. Nothing can ever move from X7:01 to Y7:01. Motion through space is impossible, without also moving through time.

Indeed, the part of me that determined to leave position X7:01 never actually left it. Even as I arrive at Y7:02, that other part of me is still there at X7:01. When I stand at Y7:02 and look back at X, I do not see that part, because I am looking at X7:02, not X7:01.

How are spaces connected in time? What velocity is necessary to move me from one moment to the next, from one position in time to another? I don’t mean spatial velocity, the force I need to achieve to propel myself from X to Y. I mean, what force, what velocity through time, is necessary to move me from X7:01 to X7:02? Because a force, a velocity, must be required, whether I am moving or stationary in the spatial part of timespace. We are all of us being propelled through timespace whether we wish it or not. Some velocity, some force, must therefore be exerted upon us to propel us from X7:01 to X7:02, in addition to the force I must exert to move from X7:01 to Y7:02.

An idea about time

The common view of “block time,” where everything that has happened, is happening or will happen, exists statically in a sort of three-dimensional block, is wrong. In such a model, the perception is that each moment of time is merely a slice of a greater whole, separated from one another by some sort of space, forming a block. That is, each moment of three dimensional space is but a slice of the block, each slice being an entire three dimensional universe stacked one on top of the other until a block is formed.

But this is an error. In actuality, each moment exists superimposed with all other moments, in a sort of jumble. For example, The block view would have my life strung out in a sort of temporal space, with, say, a million versions of myself strung out in a sort of line, each one separated from the others by some sort of distance. But such a view is too spacialized. This is how it really is: my nine-year-old self coexists in the same space with my current self, just as my current self exists in the same space with my ninety-year-old self. We are bound into a whole by the temporal dimension; space and time are bound inextricably together. But they are not a singular spacetime, as relativity would have us believe, and they are not bound together in the manner of the “block” view, where time is reduced to a merely spatial dimension. They are each unique and separate, yet bound into a whole in such a way that they cannot be separated, in much the same way that none of the supposed three dimensions of space can be isolated from the others. Much as my body has a volumetric extension in space, that spatial volume, at one and the same time, has a temporal component; not a component that is “stacked” as in the “block” view, but rather a component that occupies the same spatial position, but in a different temporal position—but yet not even really the same spatial position, for the space itself, seemingly the same, occupies a different temporal position. My consciousness spans the whole of my life, right now and at every moment. The consciousness I am thinking with now is the exact same consciousness that my nine-year-old and ninety-year-old self are also thinking with, “right now.” Every moment of my entire life is sort of “plugged in” to the same consciousness. Or, put another way, each moment of my life is like a different “frequency” to my consciousness, which is “global” to my whole temporal lifespan. “We” are all here, right “now,” each aspect of me being merely a different spatio-temporal side, much the way a cube has different spatial edges. That same cube also has a temporal “edge.” For example, suppose I sat and stared at a motionless cube for years. Each and every moment, though it looks the same, it is actually presenting me with a different aspect of itself. I am, as it were, seeing it from a different side, each and every moment, for I am viewing different temporal sides of it, much in the same way that, were I to walk around it, I would see different spatial sides of it. Yet in each case it is the same cube.