Observations placeholder
Ouspensky, P D - Tertium Organum - Extension in space and existence in time
Identifier
006305
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
P D Ouspensky – Tertium Organum
…..extension in space and existence in time are not properties appertaining to things, but just the properties of our sensuous receptivity; … in reality, apart from our sensuous knowledge of them, things exist independently of time and space; but we can never [ordinarily via the senses] perceive them out of time and space, and perceiving things and phenomena thus sensuously, by virtue of it we impose upon them the conditions of time and space, as belonging to our form of perception.
Thus space and time, defining everything that we cognize by sensuous means, are in themselves just forms of our receptivity, categories of our intellect, the prism through which we regard the world - or in other words, space and time do not represent properties of the world, but just properties of our knowledge of the world gained through our sensuous organism. From this it follows that the world, apart from our knowledge of it, has neither extension in space nor existence in time; these are properties which we add to it.
Cognitions of space and time arise in our intellect during its touch with the external world by means of the organs of sense, and do not exist in the external world apart from our contact with it.
Space and time are categories of intellect – properties which are ascribed by us to the external world.