Of time it may be said: time times.

Of space it may be said: space spaces.

The customary notion of time and space takes offense at such talk, and rightly so. For in order to understand it, we need the thinking experience of what is called identity.

Time times—which means, time makes ripe, makes rise up and grow. Timely is what has come up in the rising. What is it that time times? That which is simultaneous, which is, that which rises up together with its time. And what is that? We have long known it, only we do not think of it in terms of timing. Time times simultaneously: the has-been, presence, and the present that is waiting for our encounter and is normally called the future. Time in its timing removes us into its threefold simultaneity, moves us thence while holding out to us the disclosure of what is in the same time, the concordant oneness of the has-been, presence, and the present waiting the encounter. In removing us and bringing toward us, time moves on its way what simultaneity yields and throws open to it: time-space. But time itself, in the wholeness of its nature, does not move; it rests in stillness.

The same is to be said about space: it spaces, throws open locality and places, vacates them and at the same time gives them free for all things and receives what is simultaneous as space-time. But space itself, in the wholeness of its nature, does not move; it rests in stillness. Time's removing and bringing to us, and space's throwing open, admitting and releasing—they all belong together in the Same, the play of stillness, something to which we cannot here give further thought. The Same, which holds space and time gathered up in their nature, might be called the free scope, that is, the time-space that gives free scope to all things. Timing and spacing, this Same moves the encounter of the four world regions: earth and sky, god and man—the world play.

The movement of being face-to-face with one another within the world's fourfold generates nearness to its own—it is nearness as nighness. Should that movement itself be called the occurrence of stillness?