The Sanskrit language has several words denoting different aspects of the time concept:
1) Kāal: to calculate, enumerate, also death.
2) Diṣṭa: time assignment, appointed moments. .
3) Añca: incomparable, unattainable, unobstructed.
4) Samay: right time to do anything involving the study of energy and force in time-space.
Time is all pervading, it concerns all of us; man lives in time, is aware of time, reckons with time. Time is the matrix of all distinctions.
Human self-conscious experience is inseparable from time. Every human activity or experience, whether physical or psychological, social or environmental, is inexorably linked to the passage of time.
In the traditional Vedic conception of time, time has two aspects: the timelessness of eternity, Mahākāla, within which all events take place in relative time, Kāal.(Vatsayana K, 1996) The structure of Vedic culture aimed to return to mokṣa i.e. to Mahākāal’s timeless eternity from within the bonds of Kāla time. The eternal was regarded as the unmanifest source of all the laws of nature governing every aspect of existence within time, a state of Absolute Pure Being, itself Self-Referral and self-sufficient.
Time has been described by different schools of ancient philosophy in two categories:
(1) Divisible time: ongoing physical, relative time, dwelling in the depth of mind, and measurable in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and centuries, or tithis, vāras, pakshas, āyanas, samvatsāras, yūgas, kalpas, manvantāras, and
(2) Non divisible time: rooted in timeless time characterized by Akarma–Akrama– Akāla concerning the absolute.
Time presents a mystery; time is a matrix of all differentiation, the passage between the succession of events; time is awareness, consciousness of past-present-future. Time dwells in the depth of a full mind, moving in one direction only. Time flows always, a moving image of eternity that moves without machine. Our conscious life is embedded in time; time is inseparable from human self; time and space are interpenetrating, time cooks all things, time is the unfailing recorder of everything it is neither merely objective nor purely subjective.
Real time is not possible within the dualistic vision time is not manifested by adhava but-by kriya when time becomes ritual and absolute it speaks of the following terms salvation, liberation, enlightenment, divinization, glorification, nirvāna, mukti. All are beyond-time — rooted in pure consciousness.
There are physicists who offer evidence for a five dimensional universe which would include a realm beyond the fourt-dimensional space-time world of physics-a realm that has been called the “eternity domain”. Certain properties of the Eternity Domain can be deduced from the fact that it lies beyond both space and time in the physical sense. No physical measurement can bemade in that world because measurements are made with material measuring rods and clocks,and because matter has no place in a non-physical world….. we May expect that there is a casual relationships between events in the physical and the non physical worlds. Thus some of the philosophical conclusions of modern scientists are:
- The world is rational. Its happenings are not determined by caprice but by law. There exists in the world what May be called a ‘pattern of events’.
- If,then,there is a pattern, there must be some sort of loom for ever weaving it.
- Matter is not the inert,lumpy thing of the old physics, but an active and a sensitive thing,with a marvellous architecture of its own.
- The stream of live runs its cycles and all the cycles run their course within the field of cosmic control.
What is the greatest significance in the new development in the physical sciences is the emphasis on structure. Modern physics speaks repeatedly of the harmonics of consonances and dissonances. ‘Nature’, it is asserted, ‘takes on the structure of music’.
To cite yet another poetic message, ‘nature, throughout, has a unique quality, because it is dominated by divinity, and in our moments of our artistic innocence we intuit and appreciate nature as thus spiritualised. That is the reason no man be a great scientist unless he is a poet.
These are the philosophical conceptions that are found to be common between the modern philosophies of science and the description of the ancient Riġvedic poet-seers. The commonness lies in their aesthetic approach to probe cosmic reality. Attempt will now be made to present a brief estimate of the Riġvedic seers aesthetic vision and their conception of the cosmic scheme both within and beyond the space-time structure and the philosophical value of this conception to human life.
TIME IN VEDIC TEXTS
Veda is pure knowledge, with two aspects, Mantra and Brāhmaṇa, knowledge and organizing power. There are a lot of verses describing about time and space. It will be very difficult to mention each and every verse here but I’m sharing a few verses fir giving you a context .
1.(kālo aśvo vahati saptaraśmiḥ sahasrākṣo ajaro bhūmiretāḥ| tamā rohanti kavayo vipaścitastasya cakrā bhuvanāni viśvā||1||
Time is like a steed running with seven reins (rays), thousand-eyed, Ageless, rich in seed. The Ṛśis thinking holy thoughts mount him, All beings (worlds) are his wheels. )
2.(sapta cakrānvahati kāla eṣa saptāsya nābhīramṛtaṁ nvakṣaḥ| sa imā viśvā bhuvanānyañjatkālaḥ sa īyate prathamo nu devaḥ||2||
With seven wheels Time doth ride, seven naves has he, Immortality is his axle. He carries hither all these beings (worlds). Time, the first god, now hastens onward. )
3.(pūrṇaḥ kumbho’dhi kāla āhitastaṁ vai paśyāmo bahudhā nu santaḥ| sa imā viśvā bhuvanāni pratyaṅ kālaṁ tamāhuḥ parame vyoman||3||
A full jar has been placed upon him; Time, verily, we see existing in many forms. He carries away all beings (worlds); they call him Time in the highest heaven. )
4.(sa eva saṁ bhuvanānyābharatsa eva saṁ bhuvanāni paryait| pitā sannabhavatputra eṣāṁ tasmādvai nānyatparamasti tejaḥ||4||
He surely did bring hither all the beings (worlds),
he surely did encompass all the beings (worlds). Being their father, he became their son; there is, verily, no other force, higher than he. )
5.(kālo’mūṁ divamajanayatkāla imāḥ pṛthivīruta| kālo ha bhūtaṁ bhavyaṁ ceṣitaṁ ha vi tiṣṭhate||5||
Time begot yonder heaven, also these earths. Urged forth by Time, That which was, and that which shall be, spread out. )
6.kālo bhūmimasṛjata kālo tapati sūryaḥ| kāle ha viśvā bhūtāni kāle cakṣurvi paśyati||6||
Time created the earth; in Time the sun burns; in Time all beings exist; in Time the eye looks out. )
These above Riġvedic passages describe the cosmic loom that weaves the pattern of events. The universe, according to the Riġvedic seer-poets , is the actualised body of the Supreme Imagination. All things spring from that one source “The Ruling Reason Of The Universe”.
The conception of the cosmos as the outcome of the juxtaposition of the infinite and the finite is clearly brought outin theVedic passages. These are the two aspects of the Ultimate Reality, one producing all the worlds and the other, remaining beyond, being little known or unknown. As the ‘Satapath Brahmaṇ’ expresses it, Prajāpati himself has two aspects, the limited and the limitless, the finite; the manifest and the u manifest; death and immortality. The ‘Maitri Upanishad’ says, “ There are verily two forms of Brāhmaṇ, time and timeless. That which is prior to the Sun is the timeless, without parts. But that which begins with the Sun is time, which has parts.
This co-presence of the finite and the infinite is cryptically describes in passages of Riġved standing for cosmic order and ‘satyam’ for the ultimate realty. Philosophers like Ramanujan regard this organic relation of reality to the cosmic order as that of the soul to the body.
It is the spirit that is the reality causing as well as constituting all this ‘stir’ in space and time. It is itself space, time and circumstances. The original status of reality is spaceless and timeless. Space, then, would be reality in its self-extended status. And time would be the self-same reality in self-extended movement. The two would be the dual aspect as one and the same activity of self-extension by the cosmic eternal.
