Space-Time / Conscious Universe

Einstein would often say, 'the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion'. “Time is what we measure with a clock and space is what we measure with a measuring rod” he would add. 

Is he suggesting that space and time are merely conceptual conventions defined in terms of the operations by which they are measured?

The illusion here is that we reify these concepts, assuming, or firmly believing, 'they' actually exist 'out there' in the universe, independently of our conceptual formulations. 

Actually they merely serve to hold our conceptual matrix of 'reality' together. They are entirely fabricated, reified constructs without independent existence.  Check it out!

Believing in them however, is always entertaining, amusing,  even disturbingly distracting. We live our entire lives in this conceptual matrix.

Surely anyone can see the 'Space-Being' in the photo above?

What is happening 'out there' is actually happening 'in-here'. It's the continuously renewed immediacy of awareness itself:
 a knowing presence observing awareness.

The only 'time' in the intrinsic awareness of pure and total presence is now. It is always now, the ever-present ineffable experience of the suchness. This is the still point of the turning world... Where awareness is aware of being a witness, without an 'I'dentity... simply a relaxed presence.