Think of time and space as having a similar relationship to that of a seed grown into a tree. Both are in reality one entity begun as a spec of pollen on a flower. Just as the same point in space cannot co-exist, so the same point in time cannot. The adaptation of space through time is represented through birth and death, from one to the next. On the other hand, the relationship of time to space would be of the child to its future adult self. Neither can co-exist yet neither could exist independent of the other.
The concept of self arises as we experience this reality through our lives as human beings. Just as it is foolish to think the child as completely the same as the parent, so it is equally foolish to think of the child as completely the same as it’s self in the future. It is only the illusion of experiencing this reality from one perspective in space at one moment in time that we assume there is separation where there is not and sameness where there is diversity.
We experience reality subjectively, that is from our small vantage on a small planet within an ocean of space-time looking out through space and through time. Can the entirety of space and time be said to exist? In the sense which we understand life and death, no. The space-time cannot exist in time or space.
What is space-time if not the sum of all that exists, across all space in all time? We understand it must be true that the sum of space-time exists since we exist in it. So the question is in what sense does it exist if it cannot be said to exist in any way we can conceive? I tend to think it’s a limitation of our primate monkey brains rather than of the whole of reality.
Do we then exist in non-existence? Or is this very experience of reality we call life in the same relation to the whole of space-time as is a dream to its creator.
In what sense does the dream truly exist? In what sense does reality as we know it exist? In what sense does space-time exist? The closest analogy is of the parents to the child and of the child to its future self.
Genesis 1:29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
Perennial Zen 