Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 779

758
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
ing in his claws a giant tortoise and a huge elephant who were engaged in fighting with each other and who are ultimately devoured by him. This points to the natural antagonism between Spirit and Matter as well as to the power of Time as the Destroyer of embodied life, symbolised by the tortoise, and of material compounds of which the elephant is an excellent symbol on account of its bulk.
From the foregoing explanation of the nature of Time, it is obvious that no philosophy which ignores the elements of continuity and succession can ever succeed in solving its mystery. Most of the philosophies of the world have taken it to be synonymous with succession, and, consequently, failed to understand its true nature. Some have even gone the length of eliminating it from the list of existing substances, forgetting that things continue and undergo changes of form only in Time, not otherwise. In one of its aspects, then, Time is the source of continuity, and in the other, is a kind of force which makes it impossible for things to leap over succession and orderliness, by making them travel, point by point, or step by step, on the path of evolution. Take away Time as an all-pervading force from the universe, replace it in the form of capsules of energy in the individuals, and you destroy the possibility of succession, i. e., orderly causation, at a stroke, since in a world without Time things might well occur and vanish like the beautiful palace of Alladin of the wonderful Lamp. Remove Time altogether from
* See ante, p. 220.