Space-time, as a compound category, draws together two of the most consequential theoretical tensions in the depth-psychology corpus: the Einsteinian-Minkowskian insight that space and time form an inseparable four-dimensional continuum, and the psychological implication that psychic life is not straightforwardly bound by that continuum. The corpus approaches the term from several distinct angles. Aurobindo treats space and time as two aspects of a single Conscious-Force, subjective and objective respectively, available to dissolution at higher levels of awareness. Von Franz and Jung press the term into service for parapsychological argument: if telepathy and precognition are real, they contend, then the space-time barrier is annullable and the psyche must be understood as partly trans-spatial and trans-temporal. McGilchrist subjects the compound to sustained hemispheric critique, insisting that space and time are phenomenologically and neurologically asymmetric despite their physical entanglement—time is emotive, irreversible, singular; space is pliable, multiple, substantive. Nhat Hanh and the Avatamsaka Sutra tradition read Einsteinian relativity as scientific confirmation of Buddhist interdependence, where a single moment contains infinite space and time simultaneously. Rudhyar, writing from an astrological-holistic standpoint, contrasts the abstract Einsteinian space-time continuum against a cyclological, psychobiological time grounded in creative moments. What unifies these positions is a shared refusal of Newtonian absolutism: space and time are relational, observer-dependent, and open to psychological or contemplative transcendence.
Space and time are thus inseparably connected and form a four-dimensional continuum—which is generally called the Minkowski-Einsteinian block universe.
Von Franz situates the Einsteinian space-time continuum within a broader comparative framework, linking modern physics to ancient cosmological intuitions about the simultaneous creation of space and time.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
the space-time barrier can be annulled. The annulling factor would then be the psyche, since space-time would attach to it at most as a relative and conditioned quality.
Jung argues that psychic phenomena such as telepathy constitute evidence that the psyche transcends the space-time barrier, possessing an essentially trans-spatial and trans-temporal nature.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
Spacetime is not necessarily something to which one can ascribe a separate existence, independently of the actual objects of physical reality. Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended.
McGilchrist, citing Einstein, argues that spacetime is not an independent container but is constituted through the relational extension of physical objects, dissolving the concept of empty space.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Spacetime is not necessarily something to which one can ascribe a separate existence, independently of the actual objects of physical reality. Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended.
McGilchrist, citing Einstein, argues that spacetime is not an independent container but is constituted through the relational extension of physical objects, dissolving the concept of empty space.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
The Avatamsaka Sutra says that time and space contain each other, depend on one another for existence, and are not separable by knowledge. The Relativity Theory of Albert Einstein, born 2,000 years later, confirms the inseparable relationship of time and space.
Nhat Hanh reads the Einsteinian space-time continuum as a scientific corroboration of the Buddhist Avatamsaka teaching that space and time mutually contain and depend upon each other.
, The Sun My Heart, 1988thesis
Time and Space are that one Conscious-Being viewing itself in extension, subjectively as Time, objectively as Space.
Aurobindo reinterprets space and time as two modalities of a single self-viewing Conscious-Force, dissolving their apparent duality into a unified subjective-objective continuum.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
we become aware of a subjective Space-extension in which mind itself lives and moves and which is other than physical Space-Time, and yet there is an interpenetration
Aurobindo distinguishes a subjective mental space-extension from physical space-time while affirming their interpenetration, arguing that deeper consciousness reveals time as relative and space as ultimately spiritual.
, The Life Divine, 1939thesis
Time is relentless, like another being’s will, where space is pliable and may be fashioned, though not without limits, to our own. Time is emotive; space is bland.
McGilchrist insists on the profound asymmetry between time and space despite their physical coupling, arguing that their conflation in the concept of spacetime obscures fundamental phenomenological and psychological differences.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Time is relentless, like another being’s will, where space is pliable and may be fashioned, though not without limits, to our own. Time is emotive; space is bland.
McGilchrist insists on the profound asymmetry between time and space despite their physical coupling, arguing that their conflation in the concept of spacetime obscures fundamental phenomenological and psychological differences.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
The former starts from a strictly causal, intellectual, external viewpoint of the universe, conceived as extended in an abstract space-time continuum, in which time is interpreted as an extra spatial coordinate.
Rudhyar contrasts the abstract Einsteinian space-time continuum, which spatializes time as a mere coordinate, against his cyclological model of psychobiological time grounded in creative, holistic moments.
, The Astrology of Personality: A Re-formulation of Astrological Concepts and Ideals in Terms of Contemporary Psychology and Philosophy, 1936supporting
By assuming the existence of this empty and ‘immovable’ space—this space that is at rest relative to any and all motion—Newton was then able to calculate the motion of the moon or the earth relative to this absolute space
Abram traces the history of absolute versus relational conceptions of space and time from Newton to Einstein, situating the modern space-time concept within a critique of alphabetic civilization’s abstraction from embodied place.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996supporting
Time thus belongs to the masculine Yang principle… its female counterpart, Yin… is associated with space. These two together manifest the Tao, the secret law which governs the cosmos.
Von Franz maps the space-time dyad onto the Chinese Yang/Yin polarity, reading the Taoist cosmology as an archetypal expression of the same inseparability that modern physics formalises in the space-time continuum.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014supporting
place is from the first a qualitative matrix, a pulsing or potentized field of experience… a mode of space, then, that is always already temporal
Abram argues that oral and indigenous cultures experience space as inherently temporal and qualitative, offering a phenomenological analogue to the physicist’s space-time that resists alphabetic abstraction.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996supporting
space and time are considered as fundamental categories of nature, that is, as categories of the Idea as exteriority, the Idea as juxtaposition or separation, Being-outside-itself
Derrida, reading Hegel’s Encyclopedia, situates space and time as the fundamental categories of Nature conceived as exteriority and self-externalization of the Idea, providing a dialectical counterpoint to psychophysical accounts.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting
mind per se also transcends space. For, as the… mind, in its pure, primordial, unmodified, natural condition, is transcendent over what sangsāric man calls time.
The Tibetan tradition, as presented by Evans-Wentz, asserts that primordial mind transcends both space and time simultaneously, resonating with Jungian claims about the psyche’s trans-spatial and trans-temporal nature.
, The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, 1954supporting
the ‘moment’ as referred to by Eastern sages such as Dōgen is entirely without dimensions, and is thus ‘simultaneously unmeasurably brief and everlasting, always present’
McGilchrist uses Dōgen’s and Kierkegaard’s formulations of the dimensionless moment to interrogate physics’ treatment of time, arguing that eternity and the instant mutually illuminate rather than exclude each other.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
the ‘moment’ as referred to by Eastern sages such as Dōgen is entirely without dimensions, and is thus ‘simultaneously unmeasurably brief and everlasting, always present’
McGilchrist uses Dōgen’s and Kierkegaard’s formulations of the dimensionless moment to interrogate physics’ treatment of time, arguing that eternity and the instant mutually illuminate rather than exclude each other.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
A kṣaṇa is defined as the time it takes for an aṇu to move from one point in space to the next point.
The Yoga Sutra commentarial tradition defines the minimal unit of time relationally through spatial displacement, anticipating in a non-mathematical idiom the relational conception of space-time.
, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009supporting
Movement is not possible without the existence of both sp[ace and time]
McGilchrist briefly acknowledges the inseparability of space and time as the precondition of movement, using it as a bridging observation between his phenomenology of time and his broader hemispheric argument.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside
Movement is not possible without the existence of both sp[ace and time]
McGilchrist briefly acknowledges the inseparability of space and time as the precondition of movement, using it as a bridging observation between his phenomenology of time and his broader hemispheric argument.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021aside
That which has been and that which is to come are not elsewhere—they are not autonomous dimensions independent of the encompassing present in which we dwell.
Abram argues that past and future are embedded in the depth of living place rather than constituting independent temporal dimensions, offering an experiential ecology of space-time immanence.
, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, 1996aside