Dimensional Context

The dimensional context of the ecoself encompasses our being across three fundamental dimensions that shape our existence within the perceptible universe: space, time and simultaneity. 

Space

This dimension is usually the most intuitive because our physical manifestation, i.e., our body, occupies a finite amount therein. While an individual's body takes up a small part of space, the dimension itself is a vast continuum, progressively spanning (from that individual's perspective) first one ecoweb, then a collection of ecowebs (bioregion), then our entire planet, then our solar system, then our galaxy, etc. Thus, each of us exists not only in the space we occupy but in the ancestral or adopted ecoweb we inhabit, the bioregion our ecoweb is located within, and even beyond our planet. 

Awareness of our tangible presence in the entire dimension of space hopefully helps us understand both proximal and distal effects of our own and others’ actions, i.e., across short and long distances. A case in point is fossil fuel burning; prolonged excesses of this ecocidal activity in bioregion 1 (say, North America) has perceptible deleterious effects in bioregion 2 (say, Africa), causing droughts. Why? Because everything and everyone is connected across the dimension of space. 

Time

In general, humans have a difficult relationship with this dimension, which encompasses past, present, and future, because our agency in each aspect of time appears to be different. The past appears completed and unalterable, sometimes leaving us feeling helpless in the wake of certain events that occurred. For most of us, the future seems unpredictable, at times causing worry — and, perhaps, also helplessness — regarding events that have not yet happened. Where we have agency is in the present, the now, when actions, whether ours or others’, often have perceptible immediate, short-term, and/or long-term effects.

Awareness of our movement in and interaction with the dimension of time hopefully helps us understand how past events have formed and influenced us and others, how future events could affect us all, and how our actions or inactions now — in this moment — could shape our own and others' realities. A case in point is systemic racism, particularly that perpetrated by Euro (of European origin) colonial forces on Indigenous peoples across the world. Even though many Euro colonial forces have by now been expelled by the peoples they colonized for centuries, the inferiority complexes the systemic racism created in the ancestors of the colonized still lingers in many of their descendants today. Why? Because the experiences of our ancestors, particularly of trauma, are passed down through time, causing us to carry and internalize these, unless measures in the present are taken.

Simultaneity

Within Euro conceptual frameworks, simultaneity is not a recognized dimension. However, in many systems of Ādi-Knowtep, its existence is not only acknowledged but attempting to expand within this dimension is a cardinal goal of one’s embodied life.

What is the dimension of simultaneity?

An intuitive understanding of it may follow from thinking about how we experience ourselves as a cohesive “I” when we think or feel, despite our bodies comprising millions of different cells that are constantly changing and regenerating. This experience of “I” as a whole entity at once, from the tips of our toes to the crown of our head cannot be explained solely through the causes and effects traversing time and space. No, it is the operation of cause and effect within a third dimension of simultaneity.

An illustrative example from the field of quantum mechanics may help, that of quantum entanglement.

A (subatomic) particle, when left unobserved (e.g., a human is not trying to interact with it through measuring one or more of its properties), can have an axis of spin along any direction (roughly… imagine if the earth were such an unobserved particle, then it could potentially be spinning along any axis, not only along the north-south pole axis). However, in the moment a human tries to measure the particle’s direction of spin, all of the possibilities of spin axes “collapse” and the “outcome” of a spin axis along one particular direction “becomes real.” In other words, when we try to measure the spin of the particle in the vertical direction, the particle’s spin axis becomes either up or down in the vertical direction. In general, for a given particle, we cannot predict whether it will be up or down, just that the probability of the spin being up is 50% and being down is also 50%.

Enter a second particle.

One would think that if we had two particles, we would similarly not be able to determine a priori whether the spin direction would be up or down for either particle. While this is true for two ordinary particles, it is not true for entangled particles created from a parent particle (with zero spin). Let’s call these entangled particles sister and brother. If we separate sister and brother by a very long distance and then measure in the vertical direction first the spin of the sister and then the spin of the brother, they will always be in opposite directions, i.e., 100% of the time (this is a fact of their originating from a zero spin parent). Even when we make the measurements in such quick succession that the sister and brother could not have communicated their spin to each other through the fastest medium in the universe, light.

The phenomenon of quantum entanglement may be an illustration of the dimension of simultaneity. Somehow, the sister and brother are able to ‘know’ the other’s spin — and, thus, quickly adopt the opposite spin when measured — without needing to communicate through time and space (via light).   

Expanding our awareness of ourselves in the dimension of simultaneity may enable us to ‘know’ and/or experience others ‘instantly,’ hopefully helping us to experience the interconnectivity of everything and everyone in the other dimensions of time and space. A case in point is suddenly ‘knowing’ that a person we love, but is far away from us, is feeling sad (and turning out to be correct). Expanding ourselves in the dimension of simultaneity enables us to experience interconnectivity (and empathy) without the need for a complex intellectual analysis, leading us to hopefully think and act in ways that minimize harm to everything and everyone we ‘know’ we are connected to.