Indian Philosophy v2.c24.s19.71

v2.c24.s19.71

The form of time is essential to the concrete changes of nature, such as production, destruction and persistence of things. It is the force which brings about changes in non-eternal substances. It is not the cosmic power which causes the movements, but is the condition of all movement.⁷ All perceptible things are perceived as moving, changing, coming into existence and as passing out of it. Discrete things have no power of self-origination or self-movement. If they had, there would not be that mutual relation of things, which persists in spite of all change. The movement is ordered, which means that there must be a reality which has a general relation to all changes. Time is regarded as the independent real pervading the whole universe and making the ordered movement of things possible. It is the basis of the relations of priority and posteriority, simultaneity and non-simultaneity, and of the notion of soon and late.¹ There is only one time which is omnipresent in dimension,² individual in character, and has the qualities of conjunction and disjunction. Conventional notions, as moment, minute, hour, year, etc., are derived by abstraction from concrete time. Though the early form of the Vaiśeṣika makes time an eternal substance,³ later thinkers reduce it to a form of all experience.⁴ We do not know what time is in itself, but our experience is cast in the form of time. It is the formal cause (asamavāyikāraṇa) of the relations of priority and posteriority, while their material cause is the nature of objects, as jar, cloth and the like. Time which is one appears as many on account of its association with the changes that are related to it.⁵