Thursday, August 30, 2007

Tract on Space and Time


Time is a formulation of Consciousness.

There are two ranges of Consciousness, the Temporal and the Non-Temporal.

Aditi, the infinite Creatrix, is the consciousness responsible for bringing the non-temporal to the range of the temporal.

The universe is her wheel rolling on the path of time so as to serialise the manifestation of consciousness in temporal succession.

This serialisation of the unmanifest into the manifest is a shift from being to becoming.

The creative dynamism of consciousness, thus, assumes the form of energy in action in the world outside.

Thus Consciousness projects its content diversely on the screen of the universal canvas owing to its tendency of creative manifestation.

It creates the diversity of manifestations, giving rise to time through serialisation.

Time and Diversity are two sides of the same coin. Time is marked by succession of events while the diversity is created through the operation of the tool of succession on the canvas of space.

Due to this sort of relationship between Time and Diversity, all that is objectively manifest is conditioned by Time.

Aditi, as the source of the creative dynamics of Consciousness, is the eternal status beyond time as well as succession in time.

Affirming externally as an objective reality the succession and non-succession both she bears within herself, settles the universe in the space-time continuum and brings forth and dissolves the universe well within herself.

One, who knows this, gets firmly established in Yoga by virtue of having got intimated himself with the supreme unifying principle operating behind the temporal succession as well as the spatial diversification.

In Time is recollected the Timelessness and in the axle of the wheel of Time lies embedded the Immortality.

A yogin reaches the Timelessness by taking hold of the string of Time and is able to dwell in the non-spatial by having found out the source of space.

One of the tools at his disposal for accomplishing all this is his breath as the cycle of his breathing determines his sense of time to a great extent.

The three breaths – inhalation, exhalation and the one that rises in the midst of the two correspond to the past, present and future.

These correspond also to the cycle of perception consisting of the events of sense and object contact, sustenance and dissociation.

Thus, perceiving and breathing are enacted with reference to the passage of time in the three tenses.

In fact, all cycles of creation and dissolution are intimately connected with the rising and sustenance of the vital breath in the body. If the rising and sustenance of the vital breath can measure the span of an individual’s lifetime, equally well they can help in explaining the process of creation and dissolution on the universal scale.

Prana sadhana or pranayama is, thus, a means of recognising the role of the vital breath in the dynamics of Consciousness in course of its manifestation.

While exhaling, the yogin turns outward to objectivity allowing relative contraction in his subjectivity.

When he inhales and rests internally, differentiations vanish to a great extent.

The processes of incessant expansion and contraction are going on spontaneously in the vital being of the yogin.

Through tapas of awareness, the vital breath, he realises the nature of consciousness that transcends time and at the same time remains associated with the cycles of creation, sustenance and dissolution.

Besides awareness of the breaths, another technique he uses for transcending time is to withdraw all the energies of his senses and mind, and establish them firmly in his own nature and free himself of the sense of the passage of time.

Plunging into the essence of time by transcending the past and the future, he enters into the state of timelessness of incessant expansion and contraction of his consciousness, grasps the fleeting instant of the present and frees himself eventually of it as well.

By virtue of having its axis in consciousness, time in spite of creating countless universes, remains all the same intact throughout until the end of the creative process as the dynamics of consciousness.

Though Time creates endless universes yet it is not wearied, says the Veda.

It cannot be analysed either. Though we may divide it, still it survives indestructibility.


After the cosmic dissolution, it rests in the Consciousness with the potentiality of creation hidden in it.

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