[Background: Stages in Vedanta - time, space, and causation]
The phrase - time, space, and causation - is often used by Vedantins to refer to Brahman or the Absolute as something beyond the three. But without clear definitions or real-world or commonsensical examples, people like me simply read and imagine a funny state of enlightenment! One without basis in understanding, let alone experience.
An attempt at a logical explanation:
Time is better phrased as Change since time does not work without change. Change of one thought to another makes one aware of thinking, for example. If the number and variety of one's thoughts increase, one perceives the thinking instrument or thinking mode is working faster or in less time.
Many terms used in time are recursive and difficult to define from first principles. E.g., duration or length of time or a unit of time is based on counting a repeating event. So many oscillations of a Cesium atom is one second. How do scientists know the Cesium atom oscillates eternally and so the number of oscillations is constant without referring to or measuring the time taken? Think about it!
It is easier to understand change, though. Change could be with respect to anything - space, time, thoughts, ideas, parts of one's system, direction, movement, and so on.
From observing constant change comes the idea of something that does not change at all, and is the backdrop against which other changes occur. E.g., when an object moves from one place to another, there is change in space and time. When it stays in the same place, there is change only in time. When it stays the same as directly observed over thousands of years and as indirectly observed over an even longer time, one may consider it eternal or even beyond time.
Now a problem is nothing tangible or physical seems unchanging in time. Even if change is gradual and over millennia, it still occurs. So humans started abstracting away things or attributes that change. At the same time, they had revelations or inspirations, or even better, internal experiences of subtler and subtler states with fewer and fewer attributes. This led to something having only three basic and very abstract features (not even attributes which may change):
- it exists or is existence itself
- it is consciousness itself, and
- it is bliss itself.
Perhaps, these three can even be combined or reduced by saying consciousness and bliss exist eternally, before time. (Or perhaps not, see below). By eternally we mean quite simply that everything we sense and think about - around us and inside us - comes from something that exists positively (i.e., not absent or virtual or non-existent) before Creation and returns to it at Dissolution.
There is a very subtle problem here. Why should Creation, or better, Manifestation, occur at all? And if Brahman is static, what causes it to move and become this incessantly moving universe? There is no satisfying answer. Just two observations, or experiences, of eternal stasis at the transcendental level and eternal movement otherwise.
Thus far about Change and Time.
Space is independently arrived at, by observing things that have a limited shape or body, and then seeing spaces - empty areas or volumes between those things. Initially, air was probably considered as space. Later, air and space get separated since that which occupies space - matter, including air - moves around while space does not. Thus space manifests first, and then the things that occupy it manifest.
So far, so logical.
Going to an even subtler level, from the idea of existence itself comes something a bit more concrete and amenable to objective measurement (distance, direction, dimension, etc.). And here's the amazing part - since space manifested from Brahman - existence, consciousness, bliss - space gets them for free. That is, space now exists, is conscious, and is "bliss-y". Anything else that manifests also has these three features. Except that the degree of Consciousness and Bliss may vary. Arguably, I as a human - a volume of space encased in flesh and blood - am more conscious than a bit of outer space. And more bliss-y, as in more intensely happy.
From Change, leading to time and space, has come the idea of something beyond time and space. Now for causation.
When something is beyond time, or exists before time started and after time ends, it is beyond our usual notions of cause and effect. Normally, we look at simple, short intervals of time for cause and effect. Thus, I move my hand and hit a glass, which falls down, and breaks. So, my hand is the cause of the breakage of glass. Or if I am a glassmaker, I might make a glass and replace the broken one. Again cause and effect. Now, if something exists eternally - beyond Change or Time, would the question of its cause - how, and so when it occurred - arise at all? Obviously not! And hence, that something is beyond causation as well as beyond space and time.
Please note I don't claim this argument is the Truth or Reality. Just that it is possible to understand why time, space, and causation are oft-repeated like a mantra in Vedantic commentaries. And is more commonsensical than one would suppose from the bare phrase.
