Space cannot exist without time, time cannot manifest without space. Continuous and contiguous space and time do not exist, concepts of absolute space or absolute time are just approximations, mental drags which give a foggy panorama of that contingent reality that we cannot escape; our consciousness is strictly limited by the external as well as by its mental and intellectual environments. Mind creates these environments through being originated within spacetime. But, speaking of mind in this context, a distinction is necessary: here spacetime is equated to Mind, (with a capital "M") in the sense of the cosmic substratum of the universe, while human mind is defined as allocated spacetime, a bounded indefinable entity within that infinity which it cannot comprehend. The brain perceives space, static (sensory) frames, while the mind - allocated spacetime - blends them into time, that is, adds life to the frames bringing the process into awareness; this, in a limited sense, defines consciousness. But it is sort of like quantum particles where you cannot measure simultaneously both the frame and the time containing it nor, inversely, the time flowing though the frame without affecting the measurement and that is why you cannot "freeze awareness", apparently you cannot stop the wavy progression of mental activity although some systemic processes (or interferences: for example, fear or other emotions at a mental level, or drugs or damages on the physical level) allow to alter it.

If we could stop - literally halt - a quantum particle in its trajectory, it would no more be neither a particle nor a wave. We don't know, it might disintegrate, or break down into quarks, or it might transmute into something else, perhaps anti-quantum but, according to the principle of the conservation of energy it would not vanish, annihilated. This metaphor is now applied to what was said above about awareness, what would happen if it could be stopped - frozen? The neurological machinery into our black box bringing it to the surface would very likely cease to work properly, or definitely stop or, possibly, to "be" since the perception of flowing time would vanish and with it the perceiving mind, the allocated spacetime. The great illusion of being would vanish and the sustaining reality would appear: to itself!

This means that "life is not our experience, but we are an experience of Life".

Life is the experience of allocated spacetime which feeds spacetime; death is both the loss and the dissolution of allocated spacetime. Frozen awareness - the total loss of consciousness, of allocated spacetime - corresponds also to the dissolution of spacetime, of the cosmos - into its own matrix - albeit not its (the matrix's) experience since the matrix is static and unconditional; yet the matrix builds on it.

Human awareness, our consciousness - as hinted above - can be variously modified which means that allocated spacetime can be volitionally tampered with, particularly with drugs. The states perceived or related experiences are altered states of awareness, they are not reality but mental processes modifying allocated spacetime, faked imaginary realities (which can be terrifying, or lackadaisical, or eventually so-called spiritual realizations or mystical experiences; this is related to the exclusive psychical frame of the subject experiencing it) to which the gullible attribute particular plans or powers. They are, however, delusionary and often psychotic experiences, even if it cannot be denied that many great minds, particularly at the close of the last century, were indebted to psychoactive substances for many valuable insights; among them, however, not a few were pure visionaries.

Here, to remain on the subject of human consciousness, whether in the awake and apparently conscious sate, or in the dream state, or in a state of altered consciousness or mental derangement, we cannot but bring our attention to the fact that mental life is prevalently symbolic, it is made up of an almost uninterruptible concatenation of symbols reflecting our normal environment as well as imagery of the most rich type where nothing is impossible and this is indeed particularly manifest in works of art, literature and poetry. Worlds, events, dramas from dimensions beyond what we define as past or future, created from unexplainable nothingness into apparent nothingness, by pasting together incredible images which apparently come from nowhere, structures which cannot exist on the physical plane and all sort of things which cannot belong to the physical plane. Presently, with the aid of technologically advanced and sophisticated brain-scanning equipment, we have reached a stage where thinking processes can be displayed on a computer’s monitor; this can indeed explain something in so far as it relates to the functioning of the brain but it won’t tell anything about the medium fueling the machine in such diverse and mysterious ways. And that the mind, the allocated spacetime, can occasionally transcend its apparent boundaries into the boundlessly seemingly tapping into something that it cannot bring back into full awareness, some paradox like the sentence" the matrix is static and unconditional; yet the matrix builds on it", something indescribable which is beyond time and space, something which we imagine as the cosmic source or otherwise define, alas! even fanatically, within religious beliefs which do not anymore stand the test of an evolved intellectual capacity remains, and sure enough will always remain, beyond human understanding. The incredibly complex and wonderful machinery that our brain is, notwithstanding remains a physical, restricted biological organ with incredible malleability but inescapable limits.

The mind is the canvas whereon the picture of the present moment, as the summation of past events, appears together with the set of probabilities which might materialize subsequently; the psyche is the translator of the picture which will relay the composes, presumptively to the actuator, the brain, which translates it into action, overtly or covertly to man that, as a whole psychophysical entity, is the actor in the comedy of life.

"Cogito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am) is still an unsolved conundrum. Are the brain and the mind two different things or a single thing?

The brain, that incredible biological mass of tissues which is only 2% of our total bodyweight but which uses 20% of the body's energy can, at least theoretically, be ultimately reduced to molecules, then to atoms, then to quantum processes and there is little, if any doubt that in our sight this is a single and unique thing that we have painstakingly reduced to very the least terms.

Looking at a bare electrical wire conducting electricity we see a single thing, the wire but of course, if we touch it we have that shocking sensation which brought about the marvelous invention of the electric chair. So is the electric wire a single thing or are the electric wire and the electrons traveling through it in a state of conduction two different things?

We may aptly apply this analogy to the brain, in particular now that it has been proven that the brain generates an electrical field that influences its own activity, an incredible feedback process. If we reduce the brain to atoms we have no doubt that these atoms, to be such, need to have orbiting electrons around their mass and here there is no doubt: the nucleus of the atom and the electron are two different things. But if we want a brain, the atom must be thought of as a single thing with its peculiar properties and orbiting electrons. The point now is that the electrons carry around all sort of brain currents and this activity generates an electrical field which can be perceived and measured, so that we can very well state that the brain, and its electrical field which to be such must be some kind of allocated spacetime, are two different things. And here we see the point : is the brain's electrical field, this projected electricity - an incessant and unremitting activity - something that we can equate to the human mind? After all, for all its marvelous complexity and mystery, the brain is an elaborating machine, a sort of unique and single biological computer which serves just the purpose of elaborating the input it receives and channeling the output to some sort of receiving equipment which will respond to its signals; in our world this may be any kind of organism from the ant to the human being or his pet.

Changing perspective, we may think as the brain as an incomparable artist unceasingly brushing the canvas of the mind with a myriad of living colors and images, so that the artist and the canvas are two separate entities. This is not the end of the story however, this myriad of living colors and images have different purposes which go from such simple automatic tasks as to regulate a small organism to such complicated tasks as to bring intelligence, consciousness, awareness and language to an evolved (this is presently doubtful if we take due notice of how things go by in our human societies!) ape like the human being.

Hence, here we need something else to observe, translate and use the brain's projection on the mind, an additional and necessary process which is affected by such activities, which can grow and build on them, and which can give its own feedback to the brain: the human psyche. Another impalpable which, to cure our neuroses and paranoia, has been, somewhat arbitrarily, split into so many hypothetical compartments by big minds such as Freud and Jung but which nevertheless remains an impalpable and mysterious entity, however with a most interesting property: it is interactive with both the mind and the environment; it acts upon, causally, and can be acted upon, for good or for worst and ultimately it is the grand conductor of the symphony of our life. Here we come, on a different plane, to the medium fueling that machine - the psychic world - in such diverse and mysterious ways that its influence ultimately is the outcome of personal and collective destinies.