Oh really???? LOLOL! Dear brother in Christ, you are a master of understatement!
But then you wrote this fascinating essay, proposing to fill in some of the details using what looks to me like a very promising model involving some striking and sophisticated notions regarding time, associating them with different intangible levels of consciousness. Our "ordinary" consciousness — direct perception — operates at the level of linear time. Time on this view is seen as an irreversible succession of "moments" moving from past to present to future. Yet activities of the soul are not confined to this level, or perhaps we should say dimension. So you differentiate two other "levels" of time, the planar and the volumetric.
Correspondingly, with respect to consciousness, you distinguish it according to different aspects of "soul": ordinary consciousness, a/k/a direct perception (the lowest ranked), the soul itself (concept formation and decision making), and Spirit (expressing that which is universally divine, and thus "timeless" in life and consciousness), the soul being intermediary between the other two. I'm not sure this is a good way to frame it. But in any case, for the sake of discussion, we need to define our terms here.
Just some thoughts about possible definitions. When I think of "soul," I think of "formal cause" of the particular human person, preeminently including his bodily expression in "matter." Of Spirit, I think of "God's thumbprint" (so to speak) — that human quality summed up under the term imago Dei. It is that which shows us to be innately, distinctly, essentially human and which marks us apart from the beasts, even quite "smart" ones such as Albert.
It seems planar time is required for decision making. The "step-by-step" process inherent in linear time affords no way to make choices. At best all it can offer is a model of a determined system that inexorably consists (looking backwards) of a virtually limitless chain of cause and effect that is utterly beyond human control because, to us human observers, its is a string of past events relative to our present "position" in time. Which quickly becomes past for us. In short, linear time cannot account for free human choices. And yet it is plain that human beings do deliberate and decide choices regarding their own future actions. (Note that "future" in linear time is not yet created relative to the present; so future considerations can have no real meaning or possible bearing on the present in which human beings decide.)
For all these reasons, we need planar time at minimum to understand the human ability to make free decisions. Man is not "bound" to linear time, and cannot be "explained" in its terms. As the only truly free actor in Nature, something more than the concept of linear time is required. To me, your planar time is an excellent candidate.
Perhaps we could say that planar time is the natural temporal habitat of the human soul — which is a divinely created unique, particular "self." But the stamp of imago Dei is common to all humans by virtue of their created nature. The dimension planar time cannot capture this distinction any better than linear time could capture the idea of a soul at liberty to choose.
But it seems to me your "volumetric time" fills the bill here and quite nicely. It comprehends the "time of all times" involving the human kingdom of Nature. In this superior "time of all times" are enfolded the linear and the planar.
Thus it appears the nature of time is not as we directly experience it (linear time), but has three expressions or dimensions. Or maybe we could say that linear and planar time together constitute a complementarity (in Niels Bohr's sense) that can be reconciled only in the "mother system," which in your model would be volumetric time.
Just some food for thought. It seems to be consonant with some of your own conjectures. But you are the best judge of that, dear brother in Christ!
You raise some truly fascinating issues, MHGinTN. Thank you ever so much for this outstandingly marvelous essay/post!
I'd like to bring three observations into the discussion.
The first is that man cannot close the time gap between his physically sensing a thing and his cognition of having sensed it.
The second concerns volumetric time and the term "eternal now." In Zen Buddhism the terms means living in the moment - which New Agers take up as something akin to "if it feels good, do it." In Jewish mysticism, eternal now means that all of time (past, present, future) is "present" to God. Also in Jewish mysticism as well as Christian belief, eternal now is the awareness of timelessness while yet in the flesh, i.e. the intersection of time and timelessness.
The third is that "timelessness" is more appropriate when meditating on God's Name I AM. Time, whether linear or volumetric - and with or without limitation (eternity) is still part of the creation and not a property of the Creator.