SPACE TRANSCENDING

I thought the following quote puts much into perspective about our time on this earth.

"The same kind of transcendence of course applies as well to space as to time. The baby learns on the scale of inches before he is big enough to grasp anything in the range of feet. Yet even when he can understand that his crib is a yard long, larger units like acres or miles might be infinite for all his comprehension of them. And it is only when he is big enough to take long walks that his world attains the span of a mile. From there on, the transcendent relativity of space becomes increasingly noticeable to him and the miles (like years) shrink and go by faster as they increase in number - and in a similarly inverse proportion.

"By the time he is grown up and studying astronomy, he will get an inkling of what a light-year is. Then come parsecs and even megaparsecs, which relegate miles (relatively) into the microcosm. And all of this verifies Einstein's statement that neither space nor time are fundamental. Which means they are basically only illusions of this finite phase of earthly existence, out of which the law of transcendence is progressively and inexorably taking us. Moses seems to have agreed when he said in the Ninetieth Psalm that "a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." Later David added that, "as for man, his days are as grass." And, likening him to a flower of the field, "the wind passeth over it, and it is gone: and the place thereof shall know it no more."

"Please don't get the idea that the sweep of transcendence through time and space need ever disrupt your sense of where or when you are. For the acceleration of dimensions is generally too gentle and natural for that. Certainly you do not have to lose the minute as you gain the hour. Nor let go the year to grasp the century. In fact I can read a chapter of the book of life now in as few clock hours as it took me to read a single sentence in my childhood, yet I'm sure I understand most sentences of that chapter much better than I understood the single sentence I once struggled with. By simple extrapolation I can even predict that when you and I are a billion earth years old and a finite century unrolls in a twinkle, whatever world we are in (assuming it includes the time dimension) we will still have ample "time" to take in every minute of every year. We may feel then what we can barely deduce now: that time is just as relative a dimension as space, with width and depth as well as length.

"And so with space, the astronomer with his telescope who thinks in megaparsecs and supergalaxies need have no difficulty in switching, if need be, to a microscope and measuring molecules in microns and angstroms. For you do not lose the inch when you encompass the mile, nor the mile when you discover the light-year. And no one of the finite units of space or time excludes or diminishes another."

(from The Seven Mysteries of Life by Murchie)