Space and Time
Divine Life
Society Publication: Chapter 6:Everything About
Spiritual Life by Swami Krishnananda
We belong to two realms of
being, the phenomenal and the noumenal, as philosophers generally tell us. The
phenomenality of our life consists in our limitation to the conditions of
space, time, and causation. We think of everything in terms length, breadth,
and height. This is the quantitative assessment of the things of the world.
Everything is a quantity – it has some substance, and it is measurable in terms
of length, breadth, and height. This is one of the conditions to which our mind
is subject. You cannot think of anything without attributing to it a quantity,
some shape, which is a characteristic of our involvement in spatial
characteristics. The mental involvement in space, whatever it be, compels us to
think in terms of quantity – length, breadth, and height. This is the specialty
of space.
We also attribute a quality to
an object. It is not that a particular thing is only constituted of length,
breadth, and height. It has some quality, a characteristic that determines its
essentiality, individuality, and distinguishes it from other things. If a
particular object has no specific quality of its own, it cannot be
distinguished from other objects. So, the multiplicity of things we perceive in
the world is due to the characterisation of things in terms of the qualitative
measurement.
One thing is quantity, another
thing is quality, and the third thing is relation. Everything is related to
something else. We connect one thing with another, we compare one thing with
another, contrast one thing with another. This process takes place
automatically in our mind, without much of an effort. Every object has a mode
or a condition of existence; it is in some situation, some context, some
predicament. This is a philosophical finding, a way of analysis of experience,
by which we note that quantity, quality, relation, and mode are inseparable
from the object, whatever be that object. This conditioning of the mind is the
phenomenality thereof.
Apart from this fourfold characterization
of any object, there is also a fluxation, a change, and a mutability that we
attribute to things. Nothing exists in the same condition for a long time.
There is, if you would like to put it so, an evolution of things. A thing which
changes its characteristics by the process of self-transformation, or the
evolutionary process, cannot be said to be existing; it is only moving.
Many thinkers have opined that
the world is a process, rather than a thing. It is a movement, rather than a
substance. Everything changes; nothing is static in this world. But, the
awareness that everything is changing cannot be associated with the process of change
itself. Awareness cannot change. Just imagine that the riverbed also flows with
the same speed as the waters of a river; the consciousness of movement will not
be there.
Change cannot know that it is
changing. There should be a witness, an observer, in order that the change can
become a content of the observation. You say that a railway train is moving;
but suppose you also are moving with the same speed along parallel lines, you
will not know that the train is moving. So, movement cannot know movement. A
motionless staticity – something which is to be called permanent – has to be
there in order that the evolutionary process of the world can be conceived.
Change implies changelessness.
There is a non-phenomenal
reality which has to be accepted as the observing medium, so that you can know
that the world is phenomenal. Everything is passing away. There is a deathless
noumenality in us, and also a dying phenomenality in us. That which is
deathless in us – Pure Being, eternal in its nature – when it gets combined
with the phenomenality of passing away, creates a feeling of discomfort and
causes fear of death to arise.
All desires are an asking for
the impossible, because perpetuity in time is not possible as time is a
process, and not an existence. Therefore, neither your asking for endless
possession in terms of having all the objects of the world – the entire Earth
itself – nor your desire for endless living in the time process are
justifiable. Hence, it would mean that desires are unjustifiable movements of
the mind.
Our consciousness is infected with
an impetuous tendency to see outside itself, and never look into its own Self. Being
becomes ‘becoming’ when consciousness projects itself as a movement towards an
object of sense. Being becoming ‘becoming’ is a contradiction. You can know
many things about this world but you can know nothing about your own Self.
Desiring immortality, a hero
on the spiritual path introverts his consciousness and sees what is happening
inside. The Chhandogya Upanishad tells us that the entire space which is so big
– all the stars, the clouds and the rain, the sun that shines, and the moon –
all are inside the heart of a person; and this little heart is as wide as the
space outside.
Really speaking, there is no
bigness about space. It is not vast, as it appears. It is a sensory illusion
that is created by peculiar operation that defies our understanding, as
infinite distance can be seen to the right side, as well as the left side. If
you keep two mirrors on both sides and place yourself in the middle you will
find yourself infinitely projected on both sides. Distance, which is not there,
can be seen as if it is there. There is no depth in the mirror; it is a flat
surface, but it can project a phenomenon of endless distance, both ways. Such a
confusion can arise on account of a misplacement of context in the perception
of things.
Really speaking, there is no
depth in space, and there is no linear movement of time; they are illusions
created by a peculiar kink in the operation of consciousness, as is the case in
the dream world, for instance. The distance in spatial expanse in the dream
world, and the time process to which you are subject in the dream world, are
contained within the little waking consciousness into which the whole world of
dream will be absorbed when you wake up.
Knowing all these things, we
should not be entangled in attachments of any kind, because all attachments,
all desires, are something like the desires that a dreaming individual may
evince in terms of objects that are visualised in dream. They are inside the
waking consciousness only, yet the mind runs outside as if they are outside.
Similar is the case with this waking world. We have separated ourselves from
this organic structure of the universe, and we behold it as if we are an
observer of this world, of which we are really a part. This is the fall of man,
as it is called in the scriptures. Therefore, all attractions and beauties of
life, all things in the world which appear to be desirable, are concoctions, erroneous
evaluation of our consciousness, which has become topsy-turvy in its
observations – the external looking like the internal, and the internal looking
like the external. Knowing this situation, it is up to the seeker of truth to
absolve oneself from these tricky operations of consciousness, which has
wrongly visualised itself as isolated from the Whole to which it belongs.
Continue to read:
Chapter 6:Everything About
Spiritual Life by Swami Krishnananda
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