Time, Space & Knowledge: A New Vision of Reality

This book guides the reader to an understanding of time and space by an unusual means. The author states a proposition, discusses it in the context of other views, and gives the reader a chance to find out on his/her own through a series of experiments or exercises. Heidegger would be proud.This is a book to be taken as seriously as any other major contribution to twentieth-century philosophy, but I don't think its intended audience has responded as it ought to. I'm afraid that the poor design of the text may have limited its readership; the abrasive 1970's cover art is now badly dated, and the new-agey look undercuts the book's credibility among the more narrow-minded of intellectuals. It just doesn't look like the book it is. Further, the fact of the author's background as a Tibetan lama may keep those uninterested in "Eastern" spirituality away. While the author is in fact a Buddhist teacher, this is NOT a book about Buddhism. Check your Orientalism at the door. (Funny that Heidegger's nasty Nazi history doesn't deter a serious and rigorous approach to his philosophy in the way that a Buddhist background might have.)Looking for a dissertation topic in philosophy, psychology, or even physics? Poke around in Time, Space, and Knowledge. There are plenty of leads here to investigate. Have fun and enjoy the field!

Time, Space, and Knowledge delves questions of personal identity and of time and space like few other books.Practical, extensive exercises are included to demonstrate the concepts. One of these includes the visualisation of an immense human body and its detailed exploration until one becomes familiar with it. Then the form is superimposed on one's own body, which is then similarly explored down to the microscopic, even to the quantum effect, where we can see: where does yourbody 'end' and the 'outside' world begin? In effect, parts of the 'world' are enclosed by you, and the world encloses you. The exercise results in a liberation of ideas from previously-rigid concepts and a reassessment of one's self as an identity.I rate this 5 out of 5 for fascinating and 1 out of 5 for bedtime reading.

I read this book several years ago, and have never forgotten its impact upon me. The book delves very profoundly into these three aspects of reality: time, space, and knowledge, and opens them up to a radical degree that is hard to convey in this short space. I was especially blown away by his analysis of time, which discusses the way the sequential nature of moments (past - present - future) is only a phenomenon of our vastly limited perspective, which is itself given by 'time.' How our confusion, our misperceptions, and ultimately our suffering in life are given by 'time'. This probably makes little sense, but if you're interested in time, you will love this book. The book is not easy to read, but it is extremely clearly written. It's difficult because the concepts are so radical, and challenge pretty much everything you 'know'. It comes with lots of experiential exercises that are designed to help you truly 'see' the vision that is being discussed. The exercises are very challenging, and I found myself not doing them but feeling guilty about it. (Many demand a high degree of visualization ability, which I've never had much talent for). If you want to read a superb, but much more accessible book by this author, try "Gesture of Balance," which is probably the best book on meditation I've ever read.

If you are already a student of Tarthang Tulku and you haven't read this or it's successor "Knowledge of Time and Space", you need to go ahead and take the plunge. If you've studied Einstein's Special and General Relativity and consider yourself broadminded and astute, throw that idea out the window. Religion and philosophy do not fit in here either. If you haven't studied Tarthang Tulku's other books and begun to peal away the layers of belief that lock you into this world, you're not ready for this. If you will study "Time, Space, and Knowledge : A New Vision of Reality", really study it and practice the exercises, you will go a long way toward beginning to break apart the fixed ideas of reality you've built up in your life.