Roscoe Lee on the Space Time Continuum

This is the penultimate sixth book in a series of seven small books that I wrote, printed and bound as gifts for friends and family between 1993 and 2009. 

Roscoe Lee was a rescue cat who categorically chose me when I stopped by the shelter in April of 2006. He was a deja vu cat, I used to say, because he constantly reminded me of the cats I’ve most loved in my long life, Elsie, Aslan, Agatsu, and Maceo. One day in October he disappeared from our yard, and I had the premonition that he wouldn’t return, that he had places to go and things to do. In the morning, there he was, all sanguine and relaxed, in the basket on the doorstep that I’d left out for him. A month later, he disappeared for good. The following Spring, I stopped by the shelter again, just to see… and another dark tabby, Maceo, chose me categorically in the same way Roscoe Lee had, jumping up on my lap, hurling himself against my belly, and purring loudly, harmonically. I knew that Roscoe Lee’s resonance was present with me again. What follows is his explanation of how this kind of thing happens all the time. I asked if I could share it and he agreed. This is the text of his lecture. 

Greetings, class. 

My name is Roscoe Lee, at least for the purposes of this instruction, and I am a cat essence, uniquely qualified to deliver this non-standard physics lesson, to assist your comprehension of non-standard reality. 

 Let’s begin with the sadly tattered and incomplete idea you refer to as “the space time continuum.” Many of you may recognize this as a concept from a television show called Star Trek, which features a cat named Spock who is portrayed as a person from the planet Vulcan. Originally, however, the space time continuum was imagined by a physicist person, by the name of Albert Einstein. He was able to grasp the idea that space is three dimensional and not separate from the fourth dimension of time. You grasp this idea now also: here is here, there is there, and getting from here to there takes time, right? Albert thrilled the scientists when he added that if you speed way up, approaching the speed of light, time slows down. 

All this was very good, as far as it went. But Einstein was busy thinking about big things that move fast, like stars and planets and space ships. Looking out at the sky on starry nights he loved to dream up equations to scribble on his blackboard. His cat, curled up asleep on his armchair, was actively demonstrating the missing side of the equation. Einstein never noticed. 

No matter, I will go ahead and deliver the rest of the lesson his cat was demonstrating right now…

Very simply, a cat knows that when you slow way down, as in dreaming reverie, you can move easily amongst the points of space and time with impunity. In the space time continuum, the relative quality of speed is not linear, it’s circular: The more you slow down, into deep rest and dreaming, the more easily you can move freely in time simply by choosing the time, rather than having to physically go to the corresponding space.  Even appearing to “die,” that is physically coming to a permanent full stop, you are then free to move around in space, and even go faster than the speed of light to whenever you want in time. Your science has no instrument to measure this speed, because the instruments doing the measuring are not living beings, and are thus limited to a velocity based only on its current physical location. Physical objects cannot measure consciousness.   

Cats can do this easily, as can humans, if they bother to notice. Living creatures have physical bodies that are born, live for a while, and then die. The body is like a space suit or capsule that the living being creates in which to visit a particular time. The space capsule aligns with the chosen environment where the creature can be safely nourished and supported so that the time coordinates chosen will align with that of their friends and collaborators. Thus, people are born into families and communities, and their cats, dogs and animals join them in a particular environment. Over and over again. 

The fun of it is that each time and space are kaleidoscopically different from every other time and space, and also constantly changing. They all belong to the continuum, connected, like infinite silky noodles, in an infinite Bowl of Being. Different adventures, surprises and revelations happen to these constantly changing gatherings of creatures at every point among the space time continuum. 

Now maybe you’ve dozed off, which is fine. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know on your deep creature level. The fact is, memory, imagination and dreaming are just different views from your space capsule in which your consciousness moves. We cats know this, and never bother to analyze further. If you glance out the space capsule window, what you see is all moving and flowing in the Bowl of Being. You arrive from and you depart for this Bowl of Being all the time while you live your life here and now. Your body, your space capsule, is constantly constructing and discarding its cellular components in mid-flight during your lifetime with every inhale and exhale, every meal and poop, resting, changing, reorganizing, and becoming fresh every day.

Now, the Math Bunnies among you who paid attention in science classes might get stuffy about gravity in this discussion, but really, what cat takes gravity seriously? It is but a surface from which to launch, a mere point of reference in the execution of a brilliant rampage at high speed. The same can be said of time. Cats are supremely confident about jumping from here to there in space, now and then in time, and back again. 

In the Bowl of Being, time is actually simultaneous; if you live in one moment, you live in them all. That means, you’re as dead now as you’ll ever be. You were fully alive and consciously choosing before you were born. There is no beginning and no end to you, there is only creative expansion and contraction, all of which is going on all the time. Living, breathing now is happening whether you live in your space capsule or not. Nothing is lost and everything is changing all the time. Living in the present moment, you are always here, right here, right now, in this space. Your space capsule might be in one space, with a cat sleeping on your lap, and you might be in a decade hence, collecting your Nobel Peace Prize, or a decade ago, washing dishes at the kitchen sink, dreaming. 

Just as you have chosen to be here now, your cat has chosen you, and truth be told, this is why any being, your dog, your donkey, your duck, even the spiders in your closet have chosen you, and you have chosen them. We’re here to share the adventure with our loved ones, past, present and future, of any and all species, each in our own way. 

Would you be having more fun if you actually believed what I’m telling you? You’d be having way more fun. You actually knew this when you first arrived in this life, and you’ll know it when you land again somewhere in the continuum, without your space capsule, and meet up with your loved ones from across the kaleidoscopic range of your adventures. Give my regards to any of your cat friends currently sharing your space time coordinates, and pay close attention to what you can learn from them and from your own consciousness. Ask Alden; she’ll tell you to take a nap. 

Best wishes of the season to you all. Class dismissed.