Excerpt from an Orientation to TSK (in Sacred Dimensions of Time and Space)
“Time and space offer beauty beyond measure and power beyond reckoning. When knowledge can free itself from the barriers to understanding that we have imposed, we know this to be so. Within each point of time or space infinite depths are available. In the field of space, the potential for transforming insight beckons, inviting us to claim our rightful inheritance.
Long ago-perhaps when we were children, or perhaps when the human race was still young-we chose a way of knowing that put time and space at a distance. Ever since, we have structured our lives accordingly.
Yet the narrow line we choose to walk, the tunnel into which we compress our being, does not fit our experience or our capacities. Our lives are filled with countless reminders that time and space are more than we imagine. Despite the limiting identities we assign, the radiance of being shines through. The moment we look, a different kind of knowledge is available.
The Time Space Knowledge vision (TSK) initiates an inquiry that invokes our own inborn capacity to know. It asks us to take full responsibility for the knowledge we live by and the choices through which we shape our lives. TSK introduces us to the sacred symbols of time and space, which have the power to reveal the whole of knowledge to the whole of mind.
TSK engages the knowledge that guides us, the time that offers us opportunity, and the space that allows us to participate in reality. The more we understand how these three elements interact, the more the limits we have learned to take for granted dissolve. We do not have to proceed step by step; we can turn reality around … just like that! This freedom is our birthright.
At present we are bound to a particular understanding of space and time, one that makes certain limits seem very real. For instance, we accept that time unfolds from one moment to the next, that our thoughts can only move from one type of thing to another in a predictable sequence, and that specific events invariably take a fixed length of time. The idea that we could experience an hour in a single minute seems sheer nonsense.
Similarly, while everyone agrees that space can accommodate a vast range of appearance, we do not ask how to benefit from that allowing. We know that there is no going outside space, but we do not see the presence of space everywhere as an offer and an invitation. We assume that space operates in certain well-defined ways. But who has set these limits? Could there be space within space? What if we discovered that vast realms can fit into very small enclosures?
Such examples could be multiplied. We think in terms of ‘here' and ‘there', divide time into past, present, and future, and classify knowledge into known and unknown. Intent on sizing up what appears in terms of its characteristics, we forget to notice that form itself depends on both time and space. Determined to use knowledge to our own advantage, we fail to ask whether there are ways of knowing that operate beyond our claims of ownership.
In our present way of understanding, time and space recede into the background. Yet time and space are more than just the background for appearance and experience, and also more than special sorts of ‘things'. They are the partners whose dance whirls existence into being. Knowing that, we step into a different world.
Dialogue of Being
Fortunately, space and time are not affected by our attempts to tame them, nor is knowledge cut off from appearance when we fail to acknowledge it. This ongoing availability of time and space and knowledge lies at the heart of the TSK vision.
TSK invites us to see ourselves as an expression of time, space, and knowledge. This suggestion will seem surprising until we actually begin to put it into effect. Then we start to notice the restricted patterns that presently shape our lives, and to understand the patterned dynamic that has set them in place. As insight moves from the realm of theory to actual embodiment, remarkable possibilities open.
The key to activating the vision is inquiry. We can use imagination, visualization, speculation, common sense-whatever helps to sharpen our questions and awaken our intelligence. Good questions are an invitation to knowledge to sit at our table as our honored guest. Having accepted our invitation, knowledge brings with it time and space. If we treat all three with appreciation and respect, they soon begin to speak among themselves, giving us the rare privilege of listening in.
Inspired by the ongoing dialogue of time, space, and knowledge, inquiry deepens of its own accord. New knowledge arises, and while we are not its authors, we can certainly be grateful participants, joining in as creative vision and dynamic action begin to manifest. If the invitation we have extended is genuine, and if we hold it open by vigorously exercising the knowledge already available to us, there seem no limits on what knowledge can do and where it can lead us.
Multifaceted inquiry has a vast, transforming effect. Space grows more spacious, and seems infused with light. Its countless dimensions easily accommodate mind, easing the tensions that thoughts and emotions so readily accumulate. Responding to the openness of space, time begins to show us new faces. We discover we can find ways to enter into the rhythms that move beneath the surface of time's linear directionality. In turn, a knowledge attuned to space and time is able to command appearance differently. Our human problems may become much more workable.
All this happens of its own accord. It is as though space has been holding open the door, time has been waiting for us to dive in more deeply, and knowledge has patiently held itself available until the moment we are ready to ask. Now that time has come. Now we can enjoy the freedom that is our birthright.
Setting Knowledge Free
If each of us embodies time, space, and knowledge, why must we make special efforts to activate that embodiment? The answer is that we have adopted a narrow approach toward knowledge, turning it into a prized possession. But our attempts to hold on to knowledge have a paradoxical effect. Instead of opening freely, knowledge is cut off, forced into tight corners.
Each of us learns to seize on certain fundamental facts as true, and these become our body of knowledge. But because we cling so tightly to this treasure of knowledge, we may distort it. At the least, we cut off its capacity to grow and take on new forms.
Suppose that the inspiration of new knowledge convinced us to open our clenched hand and let knowledge go free. Would we have lost anything? Or would knowledge at last be able to celebrate its own power, shifting and metamorphosing into something far more splendid that we had been able to possess?
One way to set knowledge free is to rethink the most simple and fundamental questions: Who am I? What am I doing on this earth? How shall use my time? It is easy enough to come up with answers in words-even TSK words. For instance, we could say: “I am knowledge … I am time … I am space.” But these are just words. Can we question the one who gives those answers? Can we question how to question? Can we invite time and space to give the answers?
In TSK, it is questioning that matters, for answers are just one more thing to hold on to tightly. Questioning loosens our grip on the presupposed. Each time our questions bring an assumption into the light of inquiry, we experience the sense of freedom that comes with greater access to time, space, and knowledge. Questions let us test our experience and challenge the structures we take for granted. Through questioning, we enact a vision of time, space, and knowledge as the great guardians of being.
The TSK vision invites us to initiate our own questioning, and to judge for ourselves how valuable such inquiry can be. That is the whole of its message. Once the qualities of knowingness are in operation, the clarity at which philosophy aims, the radiant purity that inspires ethical conduct, and the penetrating certainty sought in religious traditions develop of their own ac-cord as an outpouring of vitality and sensitivity.
In TSK, knowledge is primary. The growth of knowledge automatically promotes all disciplines and fulfills all goals. Once we learn to set it free, knowledge can celebrate its own capacity, quickly transcending the structures of repetition on which we so often rely.
Questioning as Knowledge
Throughout human history, there has been a tendency to try to capture knowledge in the form of labels, words, and specific belief systems. But such structures, useful though they may be as tools, do not do justice to knowledge. Systems of belief are the tracks that knowledge leaves behind. If we substitute them for knowledge itself, they begin to proliferate, crowding out a deeper knowing and the inspiration it can bring. When this pattern is operating, creating an opening for real knowledge to enter will require tremendous effort.
Questioning and open inquiry offer a far more immediate approach to knowledge. When we question our own experience and the nature of what appears, we let knowledge inspire and bring alive what time and space present. When this dynamic has been engaged, knowledge develops freely of its own accord, and life becomes far richer.
When knowledge is understood as the specific beliefs and convictions we happen to consider true, the value of questioning can easily be misunderstood. From such a perspective, it may make sense not to question what seems well-established, not to risk the destruction of what has been carefully constructed. Knowledge has taken on a substance of its own, and the integrity of this construct must be preserved.
The TSK response to such concerns is a renewed invitation to inquiry, to awaken a different kind of knowledge. If there are truly limits on what the human mind can know, we need not fear coming up against them. But if those limits are self-imposed, if they arise out of convictions whose origins remain obscure, it seems wrong to cut off inquiry. Why settle for less than might be possible? Why not explore the alternatives?
Whatever we know or experience as real is also an object of human knowledge. Since we have named it, we know that it depends on the naming power of the mind; since we experience it, we know that it arises out of our ability to interact with whatever appears. In other words, reality as we know it must reflect our own capacity for knowledge. This does not mean that the mind creates reality, but it does mean that mind and what the mind knows are inseparable.
In that case, could the mind know differently? Simply leaving this as an open question gives inquiry the scope it needs. By inquiring, we get feedback from our inquiry, allowing us to refine our questions. The answers we arrive at and hypotheses we pursue may prove inaccurate, but as long as we do not seize on these answers as the truth, that is a secondary concern. Mistaken views can also be the foundation for growth and new perspectives. Like time, knowledge has its own dynamic. As it changes through time, it also grows, allowing for transformation.
TSK is not concerned with adding to the positions and definitions that make up the standard body of knowledge. Even its most surprising-or plausible-theories and hypotheses should be heard as speculations, as invitations to inquiry rather than pronouncements about what is so. Nor does TSK ask us to abandon the beliefs we may have developed. It is no friend of an easy skepticism or cynicism. Instead, TSK asks us to look for the knowledge within conventional knowledge-the knowledge that founds our beliefs and certifies our convictions.
The TSK approach is like adding a catalyst to a chemical reaction: Suddenly things that had long lain dormant began to fizz and bubble, sending off bursts of light and energy. Solids melt away, revealing time, space, and knowledge at work. We awaken our own intelligence and discover something fundamental about our own being.
Like anything else put into words, TSK can become a set of beliefs or a methodology-one that some people possess and others do not. There is nothing surprising in this, for history shows that human beings love to lay claim and incorporate; to insist on their identities, their ownership, and their being ‘right'. For TSK, however, such an approach is deadly. If TSK is established as a system or an ‘ism', it loses its power to free time and space from the ‘truth' of what we already know to be so. Then the ongoing boycott of knowledge will continue in operation.
To deal with this danger, TSK requires our full participation. Can we strengthen knowledge through our questioning? Can we invite it into the innermost part of our own lives? Can we pound on the ‘is' of each ‘ism' and question each establishment?
Once we commit ourselves to knowledge-to exploring it, allowing it to open, and sharing it with others- knowledge itself will do the rest. Focusing on our own experience, our own awareness and thoughts, our own embodiment, we create the conditions for mind to unite with space and time. We can relax our demanding, allowing the fullness of space to open and the dynamic of time to emerge.” (SDTS, pp. xix-xxvii)
