The Mask

"Could you get me two pieces of paper and a pen, please?" I asked her.

She looked at me, puzzled.

"Sure." She said and slipped out of the bed to get some paper and a pen from her pile.

I drew a large X on one piece and cut a slit across the other as she watched.

Then I ran the slit over the X.

"Now it looks like there are two objects at a distance from one another," I said.

We were looking at only the parts of the X beneath that were visible through the slit above.

She watched keenly as she brushed her hair aside. She kept her legs crossed and her graceful slender curves stretched down the bed.

"Uhuh."

I slid the paper further.

"Now we have advanced in time and the objects appear to have moved closer to one another. They could be.... uh... say, galaxies."

"Or people!" She added.

"Yeah, people."

As I slid the paper further, the objects get closer and closer until they touched.

"The people meet each other," I said softly.

She nodded her head.

As I slid the paper further, the objects parted and grew distant from one another again.

"Oh, that's bad." She exclaimed.

I just kept silent.

Then I lifted the paper with the slit away and revealed only the X underneath.

"On the plane where there is no time or space, they have always been and will always be connected to each other," I explained.

"This is what we experience." I waved the piece with the slit. "We are the chess pieces. Our experience is constrained by time and space. We develop all our perspectives based on what our senses can detect or our machines can read. All our knowledge, theories, formulas are based on this."

"Space and time is the mask that the universe created to reserve its true face only for those who seek."

"Did I?" she asked.

"Yes, you did. On the balcony."

She clasped her hands over her mouth again and whispered, " Oh, I did...."

I place the piece with the slit down and waved the one with the X.

"This is the chessboard. There is no time, no space on this plane."

"It is the absolute reality and our experiences are only shadows of that reality."