What Does the Firmament Mean in the Bible?
The firmament represents the world that can be perceived in the present moment.
The perception of the world is limited for consciousness both in space and in time. The point of perception is the present, which continuously progresses according to the laws of perception. This limitation of perception is necessary so that we may be able to distinguish and recognize the laws that define the world.
The past and the future exist just as the present does, but the laws of perception — that is, the laws of time — make their existence a process.
We always perceive the present directly, but only to the extent that our senses and our knowledge make it possible.
For consciousness, the past and the future are knowable only to the extent of the knowledge it possesses. According to our current knowledge, we imagine what happened in the past and what will happen in the future.
Therefore, the imagined past and the imagined future differ from the actual past and the future that comes into manifestation, because every law influences what appears in the material world, not only those laws that consciousness has already come to know.
The differences between the imagined future and the future that comes into manifestation point to the presence of laws that are beyond our current knowledge. During our experiences, we recognize these laws and connect them to our current knowledge.
The repetition of experiences also reveals when we have interpreted previous experiences incorrectly and therefore possess false knowledge.
Our image of the past also continuously changes as our knowledge increases. The more laws we know, the more clearly we see the events of the past.
Therefore, for us, the past and the future change according to our knowledge. In reality, however, only our knowledge changes. The past and the future exist just as the present exists.