The Luminous Vehicle and Time

[sdi]

I was musing with boccaderlupo that light is consciousness and consciousness is light. Let's suppose this is so. (Certainly, Proclus thought so: he distinguished three individual bodies, calling the physical body the "shell-like vehicle," the lower (irrational) soul the "pneumatic vehicle," and the higher (rational) soul the "luminous vehicle.")

If that's the case, then the soul—which consists only of consciousness, and thus of light—must travel at the speed of light. But Einstein can tell you that the faster something moves, the slower time seems to pass—and that once you reach the speed of light, time stops altogether. Perhaps this is why people who are outside of their bodies, whether due to a near-death experience or astral projection or what have you, experience timelessness.

Comments

[temporaryreality]

Perhaps too, it's the case for those who identify less with their bodies than with their soul - perhaps due to ill health. It could be that time is a purely physical experience or quality.

Just speculating again about a certain someone's experience of time...

[sdi]

!!!

You're such a treasure, temporaryreality. Thank you for hopping in to say so :)

I hadn't made that connection, but yes, that seems very plausible to me—it certainly explains my experience and those of the people I've met.

[temporaryreality]

aw, gee ... :)

this might also "explain" how that which we correlate with change over time is in the material plane, while the divine plane is noted to be atemporal (eternal? - which I gather is different from infinite?). I guess this train of thought is somewhat derailed by the notion that gods are born and die, and that they change...

eh. not super convinced by my reasoning, but there's some nugget of something there...

[sdi]

On the topic that gods can die, your implied question got me thinking about if for half the day, and I suppose it depends on what you mean by "god."

Per Plotinus, the highest gods themselves are all eternal and can't die, but we can't interact with them directly: we need to go through the intermediary of angels of various degrees. Now, while the higher part of an angel is eternal, their lower parts must be in the sensible world, or else how would they interact with us? But if they have a part in the sensible world, it is subject to time, and can be born and age and die.

Another way to put that is that inspiration, say, is eternal, but Apollo was a particular manifestation of inspiration geared towards a particular region and culture, and He gracefully yielded His Pythian hexameters when His time came. The angel's soul remains, but it sheds it's old body and takes a new one, suited to a new region and culture and time.

This is all to say, yes, I think there's a nugget of something there.