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NATURE OF TIME
change (and therefore of time, kşana). If this is held to be an irreducible absolute unit, it will follow that what we represent as the Time-continuum is really discrete. Time is of one dimension. Two moments cannot co-exist; neither does any series of moments exit in reality. Order in Time is nothing but the relation of antecedence and sequence, between the moment that is and the moment that just went before. But only one moment, the present, exists. The future and the past have no meaning apart from potential and sub-latent phenomena. One kind of transformation to which a thing is subject is that it changes from the potential to the actual, and from the actual to the sub-latent. This may be called the change of mark (lakṣaṇa-pariņāma) as opposed to change of quality (dharmapariņāma) and the change due to duration or lapse of time (avasthā-pariņāma). The present is the mark of actuality, the future the mark of potentiality, and the past of sub-latency, in a phenomenon. Only one single moment is actual, and the whole universe evolves in that one single moment. The rest is but potential or sublatent.
Vijñānabhikṣu points out that this does not amount to a denial of Time. It means that Time has no real (or objective) existence apart from the moment. But the latter is real being identical with the unit of change in phenomena (gunapariņāmasya kṣaṇatvavacanāt). But even this is real only for, our empirical (relative) consciousness (vyutthitadarśana), which intuits the relation of antecedence and sequence into the evolving Reals (Gunas), in the stage of "empirical intuition" (savicārā nirvikalpaprajñā). The "intellectual intuition" (nirvicārā nirvikalpaprajñā), on the other hand, apprehends the Reals as they are, without the imported empirical relations of Space, Time, and Causality."28
It is interesting to contrast this view with the one upheld by Bergson. According to this Samkhya view, the moment is real while the duration is mental construction. Bergson's view is quite opposite.. There moment is unreal and duration is real. Moreover, duration of the Samkhya seems to be a series of discrete moments; there is no real ‘interpenetration between a moment that is and a moment that just went before; that is, one does not 'melt into the other, so to say. On the other hand in Bergson's durée moments are continuous forming one indivisible flow; its moments 'melt' into one another and form an organic whole. I feel that this Samkhya view of time is not in tune with their theory of change (parināmavāda). They maintain
