We call it superluminal flight because it is the recognition that perception at that level is nothing but the illumination of the Absolute essence of Being. There is the perception of this mysterious depth, and its glimmerings are the manifestations of the various dimensions, the various star systems. Whereas in the second journey, the manifestations of Being continually shift from one to the next in a dynamic movement of the soul’s unfolding experience, in the third journey the unfolding is no longer a movement through time but a constant arising of all experience from the absolute source in the now. There is no spatial travel, no sense of process taking us to another dimension. The dimensions manifest spontaneously and instantly, as the continual emanations from the mysterious essence of reality. It is as if you remain in the same place, and experience merely manifests differently, through and around you, revealing new dimensions and realizations. This is in contrast with the first two journeys, which involve traveling in both space and time.

However, inquiry can be so open ended, so open and free, that sometimes it even allows certain fixations or positions for a while. Positions are different states you can experience: “I am this, I am that. I am peace, I am stillness, I am love, I am space. . . .” In its intelligence, inquiry can recognize that one of these positions might be useful for a period of time. So when you recognize the value of taking a particular position temporarily, your Being will allow you that. Within the perspective of inexhaustibility, you can take a position, but you do not adhere to it; you are able to get off that position. The shifting from one position to another has to remain free. In this sense, the infinite number of positions is itself the inexhaustibility. No matter what form inquiry takes, it is always responsive to the unfoldment of Being because it is an invocation of that unfoldment. Inquiry is inseparable in some basic way from the unfoldment. At some point, the inquiry and the unfoldment become one thing: the process of manifestation, of Being manifesting what it loves to manifest. That is the point when you enter into the third journey. When the hyperdrive becomes completely established, your experience becomes an uninterrupted unfoldment in the eternal now. This is what we have called the superluminal drive.

With the superluminal drive, travel is no longer spatial or even hyperspatial. Hyperspatial travel means that you are traveling in spaces—such as hyperspace, or subspace, to use another term from Star Trek—that are not regular space. But these still have limitations because they are still defined by the concepts of space and time, even if they are not ordinary space and time. But since absolute openness has no limitations of any kind, our inquiry is not limited even by the concepts of time or space. Superluminal travel is more like time travel, but not conventional time travel, because here the concept of time is transcended. Traveling superluminally means experiencing the very creation of time, as the unfoldment of all that exists. In superluminal flight, we cannot even talk about the drive as coming from the openness of Being’s essence. It is more that the openness is the vehicle itself. So the essence of Being, the mysterious emptiness, creates time. As it creates time, it creates experience, and this creation of experience is instant and immediate realization. In other words, in the third journey, the traveling is an immediate and continually spontaneous manifestation of realization.