Cosmology Old and New

Author(s): G R Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 31

THE PROLOGUE
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relative to the observer on the earth but there is a magnetic field round the same conductor with respect to the stellar observer. We arrive at the strange conclusion that the charged conductor is giving rise to and not giving rise to a magnetic field at the same time. What is the absolute truth? Is there a magnetic field round the conductor or is there none? No answer can be given to this question. Einstein says, "We can only know the relative truth, the Real Truth is known only to the Universal Observer." Universeal Observer of Einstein is none else but the Almighty (Sarvajña Deva) with infinite powers of knowledge and bliss.
According to Einstein, even the mesurement of Space and Time is relative. Says Eddington in the Nature of the Physical World:
"A fast moving traveller lives more slowly. His cycle of digestion and fatigue; the development of his body from youth to age; the watch which ticks in his waistcoat pocket; all these must be slowed down in the same ratio. If the speed of his travel is very great, we may find that, whilst the stay-at-home individual has aged 70 years, the traveller has aged one year."
This probably furnishes an explanation of the long age of thousands of years enjoyed by Devas and of the long durations after which hunger is excited within them. It is quite possible that the Vimanas (aeroplanes) in which they live and move are moving with tremendous velocities relatively to us.
Thus we see that the truth investigated by science is relative and not absolute and its theories are ever liable to change. The reader might well ask: "What is the value of science if it does not reveal the reality which surrounds us? How are we to discern, through ever-changing theory, the true outline of the world in which we live?" Remember that science has failed to answer these questions. Again in the words of Leopold Infeld, "What is the use of introducing these great questions of metaphysics into the sphere in which we are only just beginning
7. J. L. Jaini, in the Jaina Hostel Magazine (Vol. VII, Number 3 page 10) has observed that there is a fixed proportion between the respiration, feeling of hunger and the age of the celestial beings. The food interval is 1,000 years and the respiration one fortnight for every Sagara of age. The proportion of food interval to respiration is thus. I to 24000. He has further observed that it a man lived like a god, we should have a legitimate feeling of hunger only once in the day. A normal person has 18 respirations to the minute, or 18 X 60X24 25920 in 24 hours, roughly 24,000.