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Philosophy of Dr. Radhakrishnan
93
The Absolute is timeless. In other words, it is eternal. Time begins with creation, The Newtonian conception of time as a prior framework within which events take place, is given up. Time has no existence apart from events. It is a conceptual construction from the experience of successive events. The world is a totality of events in time. Its evolution and happenings are not illusions. Time is also real for God as God executes designs. But, the world and so also time, are finite, as they have a beginning and an end. If we would give up this belief, we would have to believe that the world is eternal. But the Absolute is eternal not in the temporal sense. It is eternal not in the sense that it is in all moments of time. It is eternal in the sense of being timeless. It transcends time in the sense that time is irrelevant to the Absolute.
The Absolute is described as Infinite. It is infinite because it cannot be finite. The finite is finite because it depends on other thing for its existence. The Absolute being the ultimate reality is the ground of everything. It does not need the support of anything else for its own existence. Therefore, it is infinite. It must be remembered that it has infinite power also. God is one of the infinite powers of the Absolute. The Absolute is God from the cosmic point of view. The Absolute conceived in limitation is God, which appears as Supreme Wisdom, Love and Goodness. The eternal is reduced to the personal and finite reality. Reality, apart from the cosmos, is the Absolute and in relation to the universe is God. When viewed in infinity, indeterminateness, timelessness and transcendence, the reality is conceived to be the Absolute. But with finite personality and relation, the same reality is God. Radhakrishnan says: "We call the supreme the Absolute, when we view it apart froin the cosmos, God in relation to the cosmos. The Absolute is the pre-cosmic nature of God, and God is the Absolute from the cosmic point of view.:'7
The Absolute is changeless because it is infinite. Being infinite it is self-existent and hence complete in itself. To change mears to become something which implies that the changing things lack something. As the Absolute lacks nothing, it is complete in itself.
