________________
THE SIDDHANTA.
753
round of elements and things, since our conscionsuess does not testify to any such physical movement; they concern the qualities of substances, and to some extent resemble the process of breathing, if we may employ such a metaphor in respect of simple substances.
Still greater light is thrown on the nature of motion involved in ' temporal' gyrations by a study of the phenomenon of the consciousness of the present,' which all living beings are familiar with. Reflection reveals the fact that our awareness of the present moment is the feeling of a certain type of intensity, or rhythm, of being, which fades away as we try to arrest it, but only to re-appear immediately as the next 'now' of duration. There is a diffusion of attention or intensity in one moment, and a gathering up or re-charging of it in the next. Life stoops, as it were, to conquer duration every moment, and rises conscious of its triumph each time. Awareness of the progress in Time, then, is the awareness of an alternating, yet continuous, rhythm of Life,--intense, less intense, i.e., vanishing, and again intense. Now, if we bear in mind the fact that Life is itself a kind of rhythm, we must say that its alternating intensities are only its own qualitative movements, in the course of which it constantly gathers fresh momentum for its future gyrations in Time.
As a substance which assists other things in performing their temporal' gyrations, Time can be conceived only in the form of whirling posts. That these whirling posts, as we have called the units of Time, cannot, in any manner, be conceived as parts of the substances that revolve round them, is obvious from
59
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org