INDIAN CONCEPTION OF TIME

   By:Arjit Mishra

According to the Vedas of ancient India the basic definition of time reads as- Time is an active potency of the supreme in manipulating the material energy or more lucid definition would be “The means through which matter and energy are connected(during emergence) and separated(during dissolution) is called time”. Since eternity we’ve have known various aspects of macrocosmic definition of time such as- the frame of period from creation of universe to it’s dissolution, and repetitive cycles of such periods, it’s various scalable units and many more things. But only few ones know the microcosmic definition of time or in layman’s language “how time works?” so here is how Vedas describe it- A thought wave that occurs in the mind is termed vritti. For a jiva, time is the space between two successive vrittis. Moreover the screen on which this motion picture of time and space with birth, death, creation and dissolution runs is termed consciousness. Vedas basically tends to merge the concepts of time, space and consciousness and declare that they are all one. In spiritual realm our consciousness is contained in an energy based life form while in the material realm our consciousness is contained in a matter based life form.  Time is an energy which has both spiritual and material aspect, in the spiritual realm time passes but nothing gets older or deteriorated because spirits are not under the jurisdiction of time while in material realm time causes change and is ultimate destructive agency.  

There is one more curious aspect concerning the nature of time, In the vedic system the events are somehow known in advance and this also curiously enough has some relationship with the Theory of relativity. How?

In Einstein’s Theory of relativity time is like a geometrical coordinate which is some sort of space and so events of the future are there in a different region of space. In fact, in Einstein’s theory it is even possible to shift between the dimensions of space and the dimensions of time, so they are sort of interchangeable. Thus everything that is going to happened, everything that is happening and everything that has already happened exist in a sort of timeless domain or are laid out in a continuum. Einstein believed this stuff and quoted “the passage of time is simply an illusion”. He even mentioned human being as a “space-time worm”.

So it turns out that the missing keys of the modern physics are present in Vedas in a very superficial manner.

If Vedas and modern science will work together, a revolutionary development would hit human race very soon.

 

 “Vedas are the most rewarding and the most elevating book which can be possible in the world.”