Book Title: Tantra and Philosophy
Author(s): Hemant Shah
Publisher: Z_Philosophical_Writings_001802.pdf

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Page 14
________________ 138 Philosophical Writings have begun and are still with us. Some existed, like D, far back in history. Others, like the earth, at C, may seem to have been always there. But our astronomy suggests that in this kind of time the world may have had an infinitely remote beginning, at the central vanishing point of our view of all things. Once, perhaps, when the world began, the frame of the present moment was at the central point, and all the later boxes in the frame are linked to each other by chains of cause and effect". "Indian mythology has represerted it as if it were seen from outside, as in the diagram below (Fig. 2). If we then shift our viewpoint and imagine ourselves looking back outward through the projecting open mouth of the monster (or rocket), just as we did through the automobile window, we get a view of our past and its world not inconsistent with our Western one. It must, of course, look more or less the same. The ancient, distant objects still look far away, almost beyond the reach of our knowledge and experience. We still see things 'receding' from us along the vista of the past into the time-depth of the picture. The real difference is that in this new image time and things did not 'begin' at some imaginary point back in the depths of the picture. They are being projected through each of us; each person's presentframe' is itself a mouth of that monster vomiting Fig. 2 The monster representing time and fertility out his world of experience and knowledge. We will never be able to find the origin or causes of all things 'out there', among older projected things. Their origin is in the projection-mechanism itself, that is to say, within the psycho-physical organism. And what is Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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