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processes are concerned the fast moving traveller lives more slowly. His cycle of digestion and fatigue; the rate of muscular response to stimulus; the development of his body from youth to age; the material processes in his brain which must more or less keep step with the passage of thoughts and emotions, the watch which ticks in his waistcoat pocket; all these must be slowed down in the same ratio. If the speed of travel is very great we may find that, whilst the stay-at-home individual has aged 70 years, the traveller has aged 1 year. He has only found appetite for 365 breakfasts, lunches, etc., his intellect, clogged by a slow-moving brain, has only traversed the amount of thought appropriate to one year of terrestrial life. His watch, which gives a more accurate and scientific reckoning, confirms this... the two men have not lived the same time between the two meetings."
Thus we see that the statement “If two people meet twice they must have lived the same time between the two meetings is true from one point of view and not from another. It all depends upon whether both of them have been stay-at-home or one has travelled to a distant part of the universe and then came back in the interim.
It is on the relativity of length, mass and time that the magnificent structure of the Theory of Relativity has been raised and the miraculous results obtained as quoted on page XXII f.n. of the Prologue. To summarise what we have said in the foregoing pages, even the commonplace statements, viz., the length of this table is 5 ft., the mass of this body is 174 lbs. or the age of a certain person is 70 years, are relative statements, i.e., they may or may not be true depending upon the point of view.
As the modern theory of relativity has worked wonders in the domain of physics, so did svadvāda or anekantavāda (the philosophy of stand-points) produced revolution in metaphysical thought. It served as the key to unlock the doors of wisdom and the sole means of establishing uniformity amidst diversity of views. It aims to bring within a single fold the apparently divergent systems of philosophies by interpreting their truths from various stand-points. In the words of a great American thinker “It promises to reconcile all conflicting schools, not by inducing any of them necessarily to abandon their favourite stand-points but by proving to them that the stand-points of all others are alike tenable or at least they are representative of some aspect of truth which under some modification needs to be represen
