Classic Western Physics, and in fact mainstream Western culture, ignores experience, consciousness, and assumes an objective reality the same for all observers, though recent experiments indicate that the observer affects the observed.

John G. Bennett postulated a six-dimensional universe, attempting to integrate science with mysticism, facts with experience. The first three dimensions, called Space-Time or the outer dimensions, cover all that science considers the Universe. The second three dimensions, called Time-Space or the inner dimensions, cover experience, consciousness, everything that mysticism deals with.

Science deals only with what it can measure. Measuring means comparing one thing to another. You can measure an object’s length by comparing it with a marked ruler or tape. But with what can you compare experience? With memory? Sure, but one experiences memory only in the present moment.

There is only one experience: the here-and-now. You cannot measure it because you cannot compare it to anything.

Time, in the usual sense, that is time measurable by a clock, means motion of something. Without any kind of motion, time in that sense would lose its meaning. People first used days, and the motion of the sun, moon, and other celestial bodies in the sky. The alternation of day and night and the movement of the sun across the sky marked days, the waxing and waning of the moon months, and the movement of the sun from North to South and back again years.

“Now” transformed to today, yesterday, tomorrow. Morning became tomorrow. Early English “morrow” = morning, to-morrow. German “morgen.” Evening became yesterday. Czech “vcera” from “vecer,” evening. German “gestern” from “stern,” star.

People later used sundials, sand and water clocks, and other moving materials for more accuracy. In Japan, one unit of time used the burning of an incense stick. Galileo discovered the regular motion of the pendulum by comparing it to his heartbeat.

Later developments used cogwheels, and then the vibrations of quartz crystals and then atomic vibrations. More accurate, but still something moving.

Our experience begins with one. We experience only one consciousness and only one Time-Space: here and now. Projection outwards of that experience leads to the one God religions. Abstraction or projection of the experience of one-ness creates the idea of one God – something “out there” emulating this experience of one-ness.

So the first dimension of Time-Space is time – not in the usual clock or calendar time sense, but in the sense of how we experience time, as the present moment – consciousness.

Bennett’s second dimension of Time-Space invokes eternity or forms – not in the sense of unending time, but as a different dimension. Just as infinite extension of a line never makes a plane, infinite extension of time does not create eternity. Jesus used the metaphor, “the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Humans fundamentally differ from animals in their ability to perceive, manipulate, and create new forms, thanks to their three-layered brain. Humans devote much of their time and energy to playing with and exchanging forms – reading, looking at pictures and videos, listening to music, conversing with others.

You can’t experience anything until your nervous system makes it into a form. The human nervous system translates sense impressions into forms. Furthermore, we can experience a world of forms separate from the senses.

The dimension of forms leads to the third dimension of Time-Space, which manifests as will or decisions. Decisions exist independently – one does not “make” a decision, one contacts a decision. Decisions transcend time (clock or calendar time); thus a decision affects both the future and the past. For example, someone decides to go see a film. By buying a ticket, they affect the profits of the film, but they also influence the past decision to make the film.

If you decide to buy an egg, you influence the decisions of the people who keep chickens and sell their eggs, and also, in a minor way, the decisions in the remote past to domesticate chickens and breed them for their eggs, and the related decisions up to the present.

We cannot directly perceive the world of decisions, we can only see the consequences.

As modern Western civilization emphasizes Space-Time and relegates Time-Space to a somewhat “unreal” status, so the Western educational system so warps human common sense that a “well-educated” person cannot distinguish between experiencing something and thinking about that thing.

For a modern Western person to experience Time-Space requires at least elementary meditation exercises. First, stopping thought (breaking the chain of associative thinking), then the state variously called focusing, centering, concentration, “one-pointedness,” etc. If one succeeds in stopping thought and enters this state, one becomes aware of the total field of awareness. The perceiver enters Time-Space.

One cannot directly experience “the flow of time,” as the meditator can attest. But the present dominant culture equates linear time with reality. This model works well for accomplishing large scale physical projects such as constructing buildings and vehicles and keeps people working for their paychecks.

Past “magicians” invented the concept of linear time in order to control people. Probably the adoption of agriculture triggered this. People had to learn to wait for the seeds to grow to reap the harvest, and then required the discipline to refrain from eating some of the seeds in order to plant them for the next harvest.Thus the cultures integrated “past” and “future” and yearly cycles. We planted the seeds, now we harvest them. We will plant seeds for future harvest. Hunting and gathering peoples didn’t need such concepts.

Agriculture and herding also led to the new “magic” of counting and mathematics. which in turn eventually birthed the idea of money. So many heads (capital) of cattle, sheep or goats, so many bushels of rice, corn or wheat. This tied in with linear time: I give you so many animals or measures of grain now, in future you give me back so many.

Number and mathematics work with pure form which brings in the fifth dimension. The powerful concept of credit and debit (you owe me and I owe you), the driver of our modern dynamic, pan-planetary civilization, taps into the cornucopia of all forms. Not limited to the actuality of “here-and-now,” well symbolized by the magic ring of Maruf: “I have plenty. When my caravan arrives I shall repay you two for one.”

The higher dimensions organize the lower. Thus, will or decision controls form and form or potentiality controls time. Those who succeed realize that decisions come first and forms follow. Accept a decision, commit to it, and the Universe organizes forms to actualize that decision.

Then, as in the saying, “Life imitates Art,” activity follows forms. Engineers and artists invent new forms and society actualizes them.

As far as we know, one can subdivide (clock) time indefinitely. Scientists have found no “atom” or smallest unit of time, though they recognize a theoretical “Planck time.”

In our modern culture, with its punch clocks and precise schedules, we assume that units of time remain the same: a second is a second, an hour is an hour… Work so many hours and get paid so much… But in our experience, time varies enormously. Sometimes a few seconds experientially equal months or even years of other time.

One might ask, how did the great people of history accomplish so much in such a short time? How did Jesus lay the foundations of a great religion in about three years? How did Alexander conquer half the known world in ten years? How did Shakespeare write all his immortal works in twenty years?

These people, and many others, understood that time is not just time – they knew how to “stretch” time, and to work with forms and decisions outside of time.

The physical body exists in Space-Time and thus it begins and ends, like every process in Space-Time. The present moment neither begins nor ends.

We directly experience Time-Space; we must infer Space-Time. Thus, the great break-through of modern science depended on scientific societies and journals – comparing one scientist’s experience with other’s. They did not accept anything as “objective” unless others could repeat the experiments and observations and realize the “same” results. “Same” meaning, of course, by measurement, not by subjective experience.

Bennett, himself a mathematician and industrial engineer, hoped that others would continue the work he started. In order to create a biophiliac, biosphere-caretaking, all humanity-supporting, galaxy-exploring civilization for the new epoch, we must integrate objective science with subjective experience.