describe time units from the
infinitesimal truti, lasting 1/1,000,0000 of asecond to a mahamantavara of 311 trillion years.
Hindu sages describe timeas cyclic, an endless procession of creation, preservation and dissolution.Scientists such as
have expressed amazement at the accuracy of space and time descriptions given by the ancient rishis and saints, who fathomedthe secrets of the universe through their mystically awakened senses.(source:
Hinduism Today
April/May/June 2007 p. 14).
"European scholarship regards human civilization as a recentprogression starting yesterday with the Fiji islander, and ending todaywith Rockefeller, conceiving ancient culture as necessarily half savageculture." It is a superstition of modern thought that the march of knowledgehas always been linear." "Our vision of "prehistory" is terribly inadequate.We have not yet rid our minds from the hold of a one-and-only God or one-and-only Book, and now a one-and-only Science."
~ wrote
(1872-1950) most original philosopher of modernIndia. For more refer to chapter on
).
Unlike time in both the Judeo-Christian religious tradition and the current view of modern science
Vedic time is cyclic.
What goes around come around.
The Vedicuniverse passes through repetitive cycles of creation and destruction.
Duringthe annihilation of the universe, energy is conserved, to manifest again in the nextcreation.
Our contemporary knowledge embraces a version of change andprogress that is linear.
The ascendancy of Christianity brought the first major shiftto historiography as handed down by the Greeks.
Rejecting the cyclicunderstanding of existence
, Augustine (AD 343-430) saw history as moving in alinear path, purposely from point A to point B.(source:
p. 335 and 47).
“The ancient Hindus could navigate the air, and not only navigate it, butfight battles in it like so many war-eagles combating for the domination of the clouds. To be so perfect in aeronautics, they must have known all thearts and sciences related to the science, including the strata and currents of the atmosphere, the relative temperature, humidity, density and specificgravity of the various gases...”
~
Col. Henry S Olcott
(1832 – 1907) American author, attorney, philosopher, andcofounder of the
in a lecture in Allahabad, in 1881.
***
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -
Aldous Huxley
(1894-1963). For more refer to chapter on
).
"Don't let your minds be cluttered up with the prevailing doctrine."
- AlexanderFleming
(1881-1955).***