Q: The end of the world did not come in the year 2000, and you deny any reference to “human time.” What, then, is the sensation of time and where does it come from?
A: There is a spiritual time, which is a sequence of situations (you can read about it in the first part of The Study of the Ten Sefirot – Inner Reflection). The sensation of time in our world is a bit like this: we feel that “time stands still,” or that the hours rush by and “time flies.” But that, too, is still relative, as we now know.
Indeed, time and space do not exist. There is, however, a sensation of “time”: it is how we feel the Light in our desires to delight ourselves. That is the picture that the Light creates as it passes by the inner layers of our desire for pleasure.
When we change the “method” of sensing our environment from reception to bestowal, we learn to evaluate time and space entirely differently, and begin to realize that they are only a result of the effect of our evil inclination, of the “shells,” or forces opposite to spirituality. We begin to see that the sensation of time and space is only a consequence of our handicaps.
When we begin to see the structure of the Upper Forces and their composition, we develop a completely different relationship with the outer world, and live in completely different dimensions of time and space. Then, our hard times or happy times are expressions of our spiritual situations, a consequence of the spiritual degree we are in, and not of a piece of paper in a calendar.
In the spiritual world, the degrees are called “years,” but they are not connected with our calendar. That is why, apart from the changing of the dates in our calendars, nothing happened on that date.