74. Vanuit deze dingen kan vaststaan dat de tijd één maakt met het denken vanuit de aandoening; want het hoedanige van de staat van de mens is daaruit. Dat de afstanden in de voortgang door de ruimten in de geestelijke wereld één maken met de voortgang van de tijden, kan vanuit vele dingen worden toegelicht; want de wegen worden daar inderdaad ingekort volgens de verlangens, die van het denken vanuit de aandoening zijn, en omgekeerd worden zij verlengd. Vandaar is het ook dat ‘tijdsruimten’ wordt gezegd. In zodanige dingen echter wanneer het denken zich niet verbindt met de eigen aandoening van de mens, verschijnt de tijd niet, zoals in de slaap.

Time is an aspect of the physical world, but it is not an aspect of the spiritual world. The same is true of space: There is no space in heaven. This is hard for us to grasp or even visualize, because we live in physical bodies with physical senses that are filled with physical elements existing in time and space. Our minds are schooled and patterned in terms of time and space, and have no reference point to imagine a reality without them. Consider how you think for a second. In your mind you can immediately be in your past or in some speculative future; in your mind you can circle the globe seeing other lands and faraway friends, or even zoom instantly to the most distant stars. Such imaginings are insubstantial, of course, but if we could make them real we would be getting close to what spiritual reality is like. Indeed, the mind is like a spiritual organ, which may be why physicians and philosophers have had such a hard time juxtaposing its functions to those of the brain. What this means in the Bible is that descriptions of time -- hours, days, weeks, months, years and even simply the word "time" itself -- represent spiritual states, and the passing of time represents the change of spiritual states. Again, we can see this a little bit within our minds. If we imagine talking to one friend then talking to another, it feels like going from one place to another, even though we're not moving. The same is true if we picture a moment from childhood and then imagine something in the future; it feels like a movement through time even though it's instantaneous. Changing our state of mind feels like a physical change in space and time. The Bible simply reverses that, with marking points in space and time representing particular states of mind.