The Wheel of Time

A Quest into the Nature of Time

Among the great mysteries of the universe, few have exerted so strange a fascination upon the mind of man as that of time. Indeed, time is not a mere enigma. Unfathomable at its deepest core, time is, in its own right, a mystery of mysteries.

Throughout the centuries, this mystery has persisted and captivated the world’s greatest intellects: Solomon, Pythagoras, Plato, St. Augustine, Newton, Descartes, each fell in turn irresistibly attracted to it. Even in our days, it has troubled great scientists like Einstein and his “successor,” Stephen Hawkin.

However, already at this point we are assaulted by wonder. For it appears that Einstein was not the first, nor was he the only, to discover that time is relative to space. From time immemorial, such knowledge has been in the possession of the ancient Hindu people, as some of their most sacred texts – particularly the Puranas – corroborate (a point upon which I shall elaborate later on). As to Hawkin, he was not long ago wondering if time merely advances in a linear fashion, as the orthodox physics has always postulated, or it rather does it by circles – as has always been conceived by the Eastern traditional doctrines.

We will do well, therefore, to review two of our deepest-rooted notions – namely, that it is only in the last few centuries that the greatest scientific discoveries have been made, and that the ancient peoples had absolutely NO scientific knowledge of the world at all.

A third example will help us reinforce this point. Based on radioactive measurements, the modern science has for some time been estimating the age of the Earth as approximately 4,500 millions of years since it was formed within the solar system. More recently, the analysis of stones from the Moon has produced an even more accurate – and apparently definitive – length of time: 4,310 millions of years, a figure I unfortunately have not been able to verify although it certainly matches the former. Well, this length is nearly identical to that of 4,320 million years which, according to the Puranas and some Indian astronomical treatises, is the duration of what the Hindus call a “Brahma’s day” (or kalpa) within the immense cycle of cosmic manifestation.

It may, indeed, be argued that the Hindus came by this figure by mere accident or that it simply was invented, as was also invented everything connected with the ages and cosmic cycles. To refute such objections we would need to determine whether the whole of these notions is backed up by other sacred writings of the world – i.e. whether there is agreement on these issues between the Hindu scriptures and other sacred books of the world – and then, as a collateral evidence, to establish whether the remaining information the said scriptures contain is reliable enough; all this with a view, at least at a preliminary stage, to cloak them with a certain degree of respectability when faced to the most obstinate skeptics, those who plainly make fun of these theories.

This is a task I will leave for my next post… time and God permitting of course.

(First published Qassia Jan 23, 2008)