Dravyasamgraha

Author(s): Nemichandra Acharya, Vijay K Jain
Publisher: Vikalp

Page 76

Verse 15
from moment to moment. If we analyse our feeling of selfcontinuance, we shall observe that our consciousness feels itself enduring in time, that is to say, that it knows itself to be constantly surviving the past, and emerging, whole and entire, in the present, together with an awareness of having performed some sort of a movement or ‘journey' from moment to moment. The consciousness of the progress made is not the consciousness of a journey made in space, but of one made in an entirely different manner. It is a journey which leaves the traveller exactly where he was before in space, but implies his progress in duration. Now, since we cannot have a consciousness of travelling or change, except when some kind of movement is actually executed, the progress of consciousness in Time must be a real motion in some way. Analysis discloses the fact that the movement of continuity is not a process of translation from place to place, but a sort of internal revolving, so that each revolution gives us a new ‘now', while, at the same time, leaving us where we were before, in all other respects...
... The Jainas define Time as a substance which assists other substances in their continuity. Just as the central iron pin of a potter's wheel is necessary for its revolving, so is Time, i.e., the substance of Time, necessary for the 'revolving' of substances in nature. These revolutions, however, are not to be taken as an actual whirling round of elements and things, since consciousness 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...
...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 around them, is obvious from the fact that they are necessary for the continuance of all
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