Veda as brief history of time

Vedas are said to be beginning-less and divine revelations. As a rationalist I have difficulties in accepting this. But as a student of history, I find there is some kernel of truth in it.

As a book, the Vedas are man-made and were composed long time after mankind created language and developed grammar and prosody.

But the contents of Veda date back to the creation of the universe. They describe the creation and subsequent landmarks in the history of mankind. So it can be termed a brief history of time.

How did the universe come into being? Modern science says it was born after a big bang which transformed the primordial chaos into an expanding universe. Rig Veda 10.129 describes this as follows.

1.THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider. That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
3 Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness. All was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.

I have never tried to understand the big bang theory but people say that it very much agrees with the vedic version.

How did the sages know this of the remotest past? It could be their imagination but imagination to soar into that height requires some super human intervention. I believe that the knowledge was revealed to them.

Subsequent events like coming into existence of water and other elements and the appearance of life are not mentioned in the Vedas. Or I have not come across them so far.

But we see the important milestones in the history of mankind. Man at first lived very much like the animals. The first advancement in his life came when he learnt to aim a stone at a running animal.

It was at such a time that fire was discovered which changed human life very much and made him far separated from animals.

About the discovery of fire, veda says that Matarizvan brought fire to Bhrigu. Matarizvan is generally understood to mean wind. Literally it means, one who scratches his mother’s lap. On the basis of the above, I think I can hazard a guess. I visualize that period.

A man is walking in search of a suitable stone to throw at an animal so that he can hunt it and satisfy his appetite. The wind was blowing violently. Dried leaves and twigs fly out. So does the sand on the surface of the earth. When the top surface is thus eroded, the man finds a peculiar stone. He has not come across such stones earlier. He lifts it and examines it. Accidentally it falls down on another stone of the same kind and a spark appears. His curiosity is raised. He picks it up and lets it fall. Again the spark comes. He wondered and went on repeating the experiment. It was a fun for him.

Soon other men came and wondered at this phenomenon. Each of them wanted to do it for himself/herself. When one of them created the spark near a heap of dried leaves, it caught fire. Lo, man has discovered the kindling of fire.
Man has already seen forest fires that occur naturally. He has already known the better taste of animals caught in the forest fire. Now he can produce it with his own effort. His joy knew no bounds.

At first he used the fire to scare away wild animals from which he was always dreading. Wherever he moved, he held a burning stick before him so that no animal would dare come near. So he termed the fire as ag+ni, leading in front अग्रे नयति इति अग्निः. This became the established name of the fire though later he called it by various names.
The man who discovered agni was called Bhrgu. People thought that fire burnt with a sound resembling bhrg, bhrg. (Refer Monier Williams dictionary). Whether the sound was named after the discoverer or vice versa is not known. The wind that scratched the lap of the mother earth and revealed the stones to him. So it was called the scratcher of mother’s lap or matarizvan.

Now that they knew that friction of stones caused fire, they began to experiment with various objects and the people of Bhrgu clan (the bhrgavas भृगवः) found out that friction of wood also produced fire. So kindling became easier. Even then it required great strength to produce a fire. So agni was called the son of strength. (सहसः सूनु).
Fire changed man’s life phenomenally in all spheres. Now he began to live together. Earlier man’s contact with other persons was only for carnal necessities. Now for security reasons, they began to live together. They brought heavy woods from far-off places, which necessitated joining hands with each other. They created a big circle of fire and within it many people took shelter in the night and felt safe from the dread of wild animals. Thus was sown the seeds of man’s social life.

Living together brought its own problems. There arose a need for a strong man to control them and settle their disputes. Thus was born man’s political institution.

He made pots out of clay. Then he made implements out of metals. For all this fire was used. Thus agni played a crucial role in the development of economic life.

Man at that time had no sufficient linguistic skills to communicate his thoughts. But the events remained etched in the collective memory of mankind and passed on to the subsequent generations.

After thousands of years, when men developed language, grammar and prosody, they began to compose poems. Even then the sense of wonder, the gratitude, the reverence, the security that the Bhrgu people felt at the sight of the burning fire continued and found expression in the vedic mantras. They remembered with gratitude the great names of Bhrgu, the Bhrgavas, Matarizvan along with agni.

The next landmark in man’s journey was making of pots. Tvasta was the first man to do it. It seems that the pots made by him were heavy and it was left to the Rbhu brothers to improve on it. They found a technique by which they could make four chalices out of the earth used for one chalice earlier.

Asvins were great physicians and they could treat many people with herbs. They were also great engineers. They are said to have pushed the wells far and raised the walls on it. I infer as follows.

Earlier the wells were not straight pits. They were slopes leading down to the level of water. The well started at one’s doorstep and one went down the slope to reach the water. Now Asvins raised walls closely around the spring up to the surface level. They filled up the slope. Thus the well was, as the veda says, pushed far away. Now the people could draw water from the well with the help of a rope and a vessel.

There was a time when people lived closely in the neighborhood but were not united by a common leader. Those people were called NahuSa (नहुषः). Though later the term came to be applied to all men, it seems, it was the name of the unorganized people. There arose a king and began to collect taxes. Agni is said to have made the nahuSa into viza (विशः) and made them payers of taxes (बलिहृत्). It seems that viza refers to the politically organized people.

Angiras was a rishi. In his time, the material wants of people had been satisfied and there was relative security. He and his people began to inquire into the nature of the universe and discovered that there is an orderliness in the working of the world. Is there someone who created all this? They meditated for a long time. There were, it seems, two groups. One meditated for ten months was called dazagva (दशग्वाः). The other group meditated for nine months and they were navagva (नवग्वाः). Both arrived at the same conclusion that there is a super power above us and worship is necessary. Thus they are described as the first finders of the glory of yajna (worship). यज्ञस्य धाम प्रथमं मनन्त। We know that the word yajna originally means worship and not worship through fire.

After the Angirases, it was left to Atharvan to create a system of worship by offering oblations in the fire.

These three ancestors of makind are reverentially remembered in vedic mantras and one of them is recited during our Amavasya tharpanam, which runs thus- Our Fathers Angirases the Navagvas, Atharvans, Bhrgus deserve the Soma. May these, the Holy, look on us with favour, may we enjoy their gracious loving-kindness.

अङ्गिरसो न: पितरो नवग्वा अथर्वाणो भृगव: सोम्यास: |
तेषाम् वयम् सुमतौ यज्ञियानामपि भद्रे सौमनसे स्याम 10,14.6

vikrama said:

2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider. That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.

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Dear Vikrama Ji,

What was the word used in Sanskrit to denote Death in the original verse?

Becos Sanskrit is the only language so far which uses the same word to denote Time and also Death.

Kala is used to denote both Time and Death.

So I was just wondering if the word Kala was used..becos when there is no Time..A timeless state..even Life or Death cant exists..hence its neither a state of mortality or immortality.

Could you let me know what word was used in that line?

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आनीत् अवातम् स्वधया तत् एकम् तस्मात् ह अन्यत् न पर: किम् चन आस || rv_10,129.2 [/td]
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vikrama said:

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आनीत् अवातम् स्वधया तत् एकम् तस्मात् ह अन्यत् न पर: किम् चन आस || rv_10,129.2[/TD]
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dear Vikrama ji,

Thank you..so the word Mrtyu is used.

History of Universe as described in Nasadiya Suktam

Source:
https://vedaravindamu.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/origin-of-the-universe-nasadiya-sukta-of-rig-veda/

In the tenth book (Mandalam) of Rig Veda, 129th Hymn (Suktam) deals with the origin of the universe and creation. Original text and my translation are given below:
Nasadiya Suktam
नास॑दासी॒न्नो सदा॑सीत्त॒दानी॒म् नासी॒द्रजो॒ नो व्यो॑मा प॒रो यत्।
किमाव॑रीव॒: कुह॒ कस्य॒ शर्म॒न्नंभ॒: किमा॑सी॒द्गह॑नं गभी॒रम्॥१॥
nāsa̍dāsī̱nno sadā̍sītta̱dānī̱m nāsī̱drajo̱ no vyo̍mā pa̱ro yat |
kimāva̍rīva̱ḥ kuha̱ kasya̱ śarma̱nnaṁbha̱ḥ kimā̍sī̱dgaha̍naṁ gabhī̱ram ||1||

न मृ॒त्युरा॑सीद॒मृतं॒ न तर्हि॒ न रात्र्या॒ अह्न॑ आसीत्प्रके॒तः।
आनी॑दवा॒तं स्व॒धया॒ तदेकं॒ तस्मा॑द्धा॒न्यन्न प॒रः किञ्च॒नास॑॥२॥
na mṛ̱tyurā̍sīda̱mṛta̱ṁ na tarhi̱ na rātryā̱ ahna̍ āasītprake̱taḥ |
ānī̍davā̱taṁ sva̱dhayā̱ tadekaṁ̱ tasmā̍ddhā̱nyanna pa̱raḥ kiñca̱nāsa̍ ||2||

तम॑ आसी॒त्तम॑सा गू॒ळ्हमग्रे॑ऽप्रके॒तं स॑लि॒लं सर्व॑मा इ॒दं।
तु॒च्छ्येना॒भ्वपि॑हितं॒ यदासी॒त्तप॑स॒स्तन्म॑हि॒ना जा॑य॒तैकं॑॥ ३॥
tama̍ āasī̱ttama̍sā gū̱ḻhamagre̍’prake̱taṁ sa̍li̱laṁ sarva̍mā i̱daṁ |
tu̱cchyenā̱bhvapi̍hitaṁ̱ yadāsī̱ttapa̍sa̱stanma̍hi̱nā jā̍ya̱taika̍ṁ || 3 ||

काम॒स्तदग्रे॒ सम॑वर्त॒ताधि॒ मन॑सो॒ रेत॑: प्रथ॒मं यदासी॑त्।
स॒तो बन्धु॒मस॑ति॒ निर॑विन्दन् हृ॒दि प्र॒तीष्या॑ क॒वयो॑ मनी॒षा॥४॥
kāma̱stadagre̱ sama̍varta̱tādhi̱ mana̍so̱ reta̍ḥ pratha̱maṁ yadāsī̍t |
sa̱to bandhu̱masa̍ti̱ nira̍vindan hṛ̱di pra̱tīṣyā̍ ka̱vayo̍ manī̱ṣā ||4||

ति॒र॒श्चीनो॒ वित॑तो र॒श्मिरे॑षाम॒धः स्वि॑दा॒सी ३ दु॒परि॑ स्विदासी ३ त्।
रे॒तो॒धा आ॑सन्महि॒मान॑ आसन्त्स्व॒धा आ॒वस्ता॒त्प्रय॑तिः प॒रस्ता॑त्॥५॥
ti̱ra̱ścīno̱ vita̍to ra̱śmire̍ṣāma̱dhaḥ svi̍dā̱sī 3 du̱pari̍ svidāsī 3 t |
re̱to̱dhā āa̍sanmahi̱māna̍ āasantsva̱dhā ā̱vastā̱tpraya̍tiḥ pa̱rastā̍t ||5||

को अ॒द्धा वे॑द॒ क इ॒ह प्र वो॑च॒त्कुत॒ आजा॑ता॒ कुत॑ इ॒यं विसृ॑ष्टिः।
अ॒र्वाग्दे॒वा अ॒स्य वि॒सर्ज॑ने॒नाथा॒ को वे॑द॒ यत॑ आब॒भूव॑॥६॥
ko a̱ddhā ve̍da̱ ka i̱ha pra vo̍ca̱tkuta̱ āajā̍tā̱ kuta̍ i̱yaṁ visṛ̍ṣṭiḥ |
a̱rvāgde̱vā a̱sya vi̱sarja̍ne̱nāthā̱ ko ve̍da̱ yata̍ āaba̱bhūva̍ ||6 ||

इ॒यं विसृ॑ष्टि॒र्यत॑ आब॒भूव॒ यदि॑ वा द॒धे यदि॑ वा॒ न।
यो अ॒स्याध्य॑क्षः पर॒मे व्यो॑म॒न्त्सो अ॒ङ्ग वे॑द॒ यदि॑ वा॒ न वेद॑॥ ७॥
i̱yaṁ visṛ̍ṣṭi̱ryata̍ āaba̱bhūva̱ yadi̍ vā da̱dhe yadi̍ vā̱ na |
yo a̱syādhya̍kṣaḥ para̱me vyo̍ma̱ntso a̱ṅga ve̍da̱ yadi̍ vā̱ na veda̍ || 7 ||






NASADIYA SUKTA - RigVeda

At first was neither Being nor Nonbeing.
There was not air nor yet sky beyond.
What was wrapping? Where? In whose protection?
Was Water there, unfathomable deep?

There was no death then, nor yet deathlessness;
of night or day there was not any sign.

The One breathed without breath by its own impulse.
Other than that was nothing at all.

Darkness was there, all wrapped around by darkness,
and all was Water indiscriminate, Then
that which was hidden by Void, that One, emerging,
stirring, through power of Ardor, came to be.

In the beginning Love arose,
which was primal germ cell of mind.
The Seers, searching in their hearts with wisdom,
discovered the connection of Being in Nonbeing.

A crosswise line cut Being from Nonbeing.
What was described above it, what below?
Bearers of seed there were and mighty forces,
thrust from below and forward move above.

Who really knows? Who can presume to tell it?
Whence was it born? Whence issued this creation?
Even the Gods came after its emergence.
Then who can tell from whence it came to be?

That out of which creation has arisen,
whether it held it firm or it did not,
He who surveys it in the highest heaven,
He surely knows - or no one will ever know!

I changed the last line and the above translation I found elsewhere to make more sense. It is all from my notes some years ago

=======================

But the reference I cited at the top of this post has the following more to say. We can debate the accuracy of the claims from modern science points of view

======================




But Veda is not only poetry; it also goes deep into the cause of the events taking place in the universe and unveils the facts. Modern cosmology tells us that the universe started with a ‘Big Bang’. Let us compare these verses with the statements of the Big Bang theory and assess the scientific approach manifested in Veda.Let me confess at the beginning, I could not do justice to the poetic beauty of the original. I could not do justice to the poetic beauty of the original. In just seven verses, we find ourselves in the ‘no time, no space’ mode, gradually reaching the center of deep darkness, surrounded by smooth, unending plasma.

And lo! Out of shapeless nothing, matter with shape emerges. The whole description is picturesque. Poetry is said to be a window with a frame of words and through this window, we see beyond time and place. Surely these verses awaken the poet in us and make us see far, far beyond.

The beginning and the first moments as described by the big bang theory and the statements from Nasadiya Sukta are given side-by-side for easy comparison:



It can be seen that the modern science is saying the same thing what Rig Veda declared earlier.
Rig Veda says in the sixth verse, who will know and who can declare when and where from it all started since we, the seekers were not there and also the causative forces were not present. They came later. Even gravity broke away from the presumed unified force later. Veda makes it clear that so long you are in search of the causative forces only, you will not get the answer. The same view is expressed by Robert Jastrow (internationally known astronomer and authority on life in cosmos; founder and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies), in his book “God and the Astronomers”. The essence of the mathematical calculations and scientific observations in to the galaxies is:

The universe has a beginning – that it began at a certain moment in time, under circumstances that seem to make it impossible – jot just now, but ever – to find out what force or forces brought the world into being at that moment. The famous British theorist, Edward Milne, wrote a mathematical treatise on relativity and he concluded by saying: “As to the first cause of the universe, in the context of expansion, that is left to the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him.”


Will the universe eventually stop expanding and start contracting or will it expand forever? Stephen W. Hawking, famous theoretical physicist of the present day, says in his book “A Brief History Time”: “If the density of the matter in the universe is greater than the critical value, gravity will stop the expansion at some time in the future” . As we are not in a position at present to calculate the density even to an approximation, we cannot answer the question. Robert Jastrow confirms there is a theory in the scientific world envisaging a cosmos that oscillates forever passing through infinite number of moments of creation in a never-ending cycle of birth, death and repetition. This has the advantage of being able to answer the question – What preceded the explosion? (In his book “God and the Astronomers”). Veda also says that this creation and its ending is a repetitive cycle.


Modern cosmology, on the basis of available evidence, envisages the end will come in darkness. Beginning follows the end. Veda describes the beginning in the same way – darkness concealed in darkness was the state of things.
Cosmology limits its search and research to material universe only. Is molecule simply a sum of its atoms? Ca n we define an atom as only a group of electrons and protons? Man is not a bundle of flesh and bones only? Herbert Reeves, the famous astrophysicist, after discussing about the primordial force of Big Bang and subsequent distinct forces like gravity, asks a relevant question: “Did not the universe, somewhere, aim at achieving self-awareness through the creation of human mind?” (His article in Figaro-Magazine of February 1983) The answer is available in Rig Veda for all thinkers of all ages. The answer does not limit human beings only, but extends to all animate and inanimate worlds. Cosmic mind and primordial desire appeared on the scene. Desire entered the mind. Seeds and forces, we know and will know are manifested. These ‘seeds’ for germination (also procreation) and the ‘forces’ to keep all matter into cohesive shapes, spread throughout to transform into macro and micro worlds.

The cosmic mind is also mentioned as Prajapati in other Suktas. In Satapatha Brahmana (6-1-1-8) it is stated – “prajaapati rakaamayata”, meaning Prajapati desired. Cosmic mind desired and it happened. Same is the case in the microcosmic world of human body. We desire, act and incidents take place.

Every object has not only a mechanical formula but also purpose. All are purposive in tune with the all-pervading purposiveness around. This can only be explained by accepting that the cosmic mind and its forces are all-pervading, within also. The human mind perceives (Vedic word for this is “pasya”) to find out their purpose. Why should we have this desire? Because human mind also emerged from the same cosmic mind and the desire is part of that primal desire. Thus Veda not only defines and describes all “containers” in this universe, but also their “contents”.

The Kavi, Rishi or Wiseman seeking deep in his heart could see the link since both the physical and spiritual hearts (“known” to him) are there. Veda says that is the way to “see” and know.
The last verse is more profound in its meaning. That One, the “author” of all events should know the beginning. Veda says That One also may not know! That breathless One is breathing on its own. The beginning of universe, its expansion, demise and re-emergence – entire process is like involuntary inhaling and exhaling. If someone puts a question to any other one, when did you start that particular inhalation, the obvious answer will be – I do not know. It is a continuous process of which I hardly take notice of. The process is a continuum. Beginning and end are relevant to us, parts and parcels of universe. We float and sink in the ocean of time but not that continuous flow of events or its “author”.

Veda explains all natural phenomena (a) in a poetical manner, appealing to the esthetic mind, (b) gives details in a practical prosaic way to satisfy the pragmatic, down-to-the-earth mind, and also (c) discusses the philosophic approach to meet the demand of the spiritual seeking mind. The knowledge is communicated to all the three facets of the ever-inquisitive human mind, effectively. That is the way the timeless book speaks.

Nature of Space-time and how it agrees with Vedantic vision of space-time

With rapid progress in cosmology in the last 30+ years the world of physics seemingly is caught in chaos with respect to understanding what is real and what is unreal.

As of 1915, with the publication of seminal work on space-time by Einstein, the notion of Time as understood before is dead!

The scientific description of time being that of human experience is more in alignment with Vedantic concepts particularly unfolded by Sri Sankara in his Bhashya (commentaries).

In this post, I just wanted to share the current scientific thinking about the nature of time.

There had been many scientific articles by eminent Scientists and philosophers recently. I decided to use Scientific American articles as reference since its articles are often written by experts in the respective field and targets audience who may not be scientists. The other reason is that such article tends to cover broad spectrum of current research.

I decided to copy and paste select parts of an article in the June 2010 edition of Scientific American titled " Is Time an Illusion" since it is more easily readable by non-science people. Also, since the articles are copyright protected I am sharing parts of the article only. There is an online version of a more recent article in 2014 that I will use as well to make another point.

I have omitted large parts of the paper because they get into too much details. But I have chosen to highlight some sentences that one will see resonate with the vedantic model of the universe.

By the way, Vedanta is not about science at all. It is actually meta-science but it refers to an understanding of space-time arrived at by completely different means.
Modern physics is extraordinarily rigorous but the seminal ideas from today's science seem to be more in alignment with Vedantic vision expounded eons ago,

==================Selections from Scientific American, June 2010 article =========================

As you read this sentence, you probably think that this moment—
right now—is what is happening. The present moment
feels special. It is real. However much you may remember
the past or anticipate the future, you live in the present.
Of course, the moment during which you read that sentence is no
longer happening. This one is. In other words, it feels as though
time flows, in the sense that the present is constantly updating itself.
We have a deep intuition that the future is open until it becomes
present and that the past is fixed.

As time flows, this structure of fixed past, immediate present and open future gets carried
forward in time. This structure is built into our language,
thought and behavior. How we live our lives hangs on it.
Yet as natural as this way of thinking is, you will not find it
reflected in science.

The equations of physics do not tell us which
events are occurring right now—they are like a map without the
“you are here” symbol. The present moment does not exist in
them, and therefore neither does the flow of time.

Additionally, Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity suggest not only that there
is no single special present but also that all moments are equally
real [see “That Mysterious Flow,” by Paul Davies; Scientific
American, September 2002]. Fundamentally, the future is no
more open than the past.

The gap between the scientific understanding of time and our
everyday understanding of time has troubled thinkers throughout
history. It has widened as physicists have gradually stripped time
of most of the attributes we commonly ascribe to it. Now the rift
between the time of physics and the time of experience is reaching
its logical conclusion, for many in theoretical physics have
come to believe that time fundamentally does not even exist.

The idea of a timeless reality is initially so startling that it is
hard to see how it could be coherent. Everything we do, we do in
time. The world is a series of events strung together by time.
Any-one can see that my hair is graying, that objects
move, and so on. We see change, and change is
the variation of properties with respect to time.
Without time, the world would be completely
still. A timeless theory faces the challenge of explaining
how we see change if the world is not
really changing.

(TKS comments - Anything considered eternal has to be timeless.
That means change cannot be observed by anyone.
The biblical model of Heaven and Hell therefore cannot be distinguished from one another!
If time is indeed operational in heaven or hell then it cannot be 'forever' since anything that starts has an end.

Indian hell and heaven is transient - Kathopanishad says that these worlds are all Anithya namely subject to time )




.
.
.
.


Our rich commonsensical notions of time have
suffered a withering series of demotions throughout
the ages. Time has many jobs to do in physics,
but as physics has progressed, these jobs
have been outsourced one by one.


It may not be obvious at first, but Isaac Newton’s
laws of motion require time to have many
specific features. All observers in principle agree
on the sequence in which events happen. No
matter when or where an event occurs, classical
physics assumes that you can objectively say
whether it happens before, after or simultaneously
with any other event in the universe. Time
therefore provides a complete ordering of all the
events in the world. Simultaneity is absolute—
an observer-independent fact. Furthermore,
time must be continuous so that we can define
velocity and acceleration.

Classical time must also have a notion of duration—
what physicists call a metric—so that
we can tell how far apart in time events are from
one another. To say that Olympic sprinter Usain
Bolt can run as fast as 27 miles per hour, we
need to have a measure of what an hour is. Like
the order of events, duration is observer-independent.
If Alice and Bob leave school at 3
o’clock, go their separate ways, and then meet
back at home at 6 o’clock, the amount of time
that has elapsed for Alice is equal to the amount
of time that has elapsed for Bob.

.
.
.
.


In essence, Newton proposed that the world
comes equipped with a master clock. The clock
uniquely and objectively carves the world up
into instants of time. Newton’s physics listens
to the ticking of this clock and no other. Newton
additionally felt that time flows and that this
flow gives us an arrow telling us which direction
is the future, although these extra features are
not strictly demanded by his laws.


Newton’s time may seem old hat to us now,
but a moment’s reflection reveals how astonishing
it is. Its many features—order, continuity,
duration, simultaneity, flow and the arrow—are
logically detachable, yet they all stick together in
the master clock that Newton dubbed “time.”
This assembly of features succeeded so well that
it survived unscathed for almost two centuries.

Then came the assaults of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. The first was the work of
Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who reasoned
that, because Newton’s laws work equally
well going forward or backward in time, time
has no built-in arrow. Instead he proposed that
the distinction between past and future is not intrinsic
to time but arises from asymmetries in
how the matter in the universe is organized. Although
physicists still debate the details of this
proposal [see “The Cosmic Origins of Time’s
Arrow,” by Sean M. Carroll; Scientific American,
June 2008], Boltzmann convincingly
plucked away one feature of Newtonian time.

Einstein mounted the next assault by doing
away with the idea of absolute simultaneity. According
to his special theory of relativity, what
events are happening at the same time depends
on how fast you are going. The true arena of
events is not time or space, but their union:
spacetime. Two observers moving at different
velocities disagree on when and where an event
occurs, but they agree on its spacetime location.

Space and time are secondary concepts that, as
mathematician Hermann Minkowski, who had
been one of Einstein’s university professors, famously
declared, “are doomed to fade away into
mere shadows.”

And things only get worse in 1915 with Einstein’s
general theory of relativity, which extends
special relativity to situations where the
force of gravity operates. Gravity distorts time,
so that a second’s passage here may not mean
the same thing as a second’s passage there. Only
in rare cases is it possible to synchronize clocks
and have them stay synchronized, even in principle.
You cannot generally think of the world
as unfolding, tick by tick, according to a single
time parameter.


In extreme situations, the world
might not be carvable into instants of time at all.
It then becomes impossible to say that an event
happened before or after another.


(TKS comments: Anything which is unreal upon closer examination will cease to exist.
The unreality of nature and that Jagat is an 'illusion' for the want of better word is demonstrated
by rigorous analysis of what time itself is and it seem to be illusion after all. There are other theories in Physics
to explain experiential time is still "real" and I will refer to them in the next post)

General relativity contains many functions
with the English word “time” attached to them:
coordinate time, proper time, global time. Together
they perform many of the jobs Newton’s
single time did, but individually none of them
seems worthy of the title. Either the physics does
not listen to these clocks, or, if it does, those
clocks apply only to small patches of the universe
or to particular observers. Although physicists
today fret that a unified theory will have
to eliminate time, a good argument can be made
that time was already lost by 1915 and that we
and that we
just have not fully come to grips with it yet.
.
.
..


Historically, physicists began with the highly
structured time of experience, the time of a fixed
past, present and open future. They gradually
dismantled this structure, and little, if any, of it
remains. Researchers must now reverse this
train of thought and reconstruct the time of experience
from the time of nonfundamental physics,
which itself may need to be reconstructed
from a network of correlations among pieces of
a fundamental static world.

French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty
argued that time itself does not really flow and
that its apparent flow is a product of our “surreptitiously
putting into the river a witness of its
course.” That is, the tendency to believe time
flows is a result of forgetting to put ourselves
and our connections to the world into the picture.
Merleau-Ponty was speaking of our subjective
experience of time, and until recently no
one ever guessed that objective time might itself
be explained as a result of those connections.


Time may exist only by breaking the world into
subsystems and looking at what ties them together.
In this picture, physical time emerges by
virtue of our thinking ourselves as separate
from everything else.

(TKS comments: We take ourselves to be this individual Jiva separate from the one and only reality there is.
Ignorance of mind causes the notion of time. I have provided a very loose description of our Vedantic vision)

Notion of Time as how we experience it

In this post I just want to summarize the current set of views in Science that while absolute time itself is an illusion (see previous post), time is defined by how we experience it.

The description of five basic elements as described in the Vedas are (akasha/ vacuum space), air, water, fire (plasma), and earth (all the minerals).
Interestingly it does not include TIME and per Sri Sankara's teaching, time is included in space as sort of its opposite. In fact he always used space-time (e.g., Desha-Kala ) as a composite word
together.

Vedanta deals with our human experience and notion time is one such experience.

Rather than write my own summary I will share descriptions of experiential time as well as current thinking about Time in cosmology from a Scientific American article published on Dec 8, 2014 (which is less than a year ago).

I have bolded some sections that may be more readable to get the gist of the current thinking about Time. I have underlined a part which is more in alignment with our Vedic teaching.

In the next post I will connect the dots of some of these in the context of Vedanta.
=================================================

2 Futures Can Explain Time's Mysterious Past

New theories suggest the big bang was not the beginning, and that we may live in the past of a parallel universe
By Lee Billings | December 8, 2014



In the evolution of cosmic structure, is entropy or gravity the more dominant force? The answer to this question has deep implications for the universe's future, as well as its past.
Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 TeamMore on this Topic

• 
  Possibilities in Parallel: Seeking the Multiverse

Physicists have a problem with time.

Whether through Newton’s gravitation, Maxwell’s electrodynamics, Einstein’s special and general relativity or quantum mechanics, all the equations that best describe our universe work perfectly if time flows forward or backward.

Of course the world we experience is entirely different. The universe is expanding, not contracting. Stars emit light rather than absorb it, and radioactive atoms decay rather than reassemble. Omelets don’t transform back to unbroken eggs and cigarettes never coalesce from smoke and ashes. We remember the past, not the future, and we grow old and decrepit, not young and rejuvenated. For us, time has a clear and irreversible direction. It flies forward like a missile, equations be damned.

For more than a century, the standard explanation for “time’s arrow,” as the astrophysicist Arthur Eddington first called it in 1927, has been that it is an emergent property of thermodynamics, as first laid out in the work of the 19th-century Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. In this view what we perceive as the arrow of time is really just the inexorable rearrangement of highly ordered states into random, useless configurations, a product of the universal tendency for all things to settle toward equilibrium with one another.

Informally speaking, the crux of this idea is that “things fall apart,” but more formally, it is a consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, which Boltzmann helped devise. The law states that in any closed system (like the universe itself), entropy—disorder—can only increase. Increasing entropy is a cosmic certainty because there are always a great many more disordered states than orderly ones for any given system, similar to how there are many more ways to scatter papers across a desk than to stack them neatly in a single pile.

The thermodynamic arrow of time suggests our observable universe began in an exceptionally special state of high order and low entropy, like a pristine cosmic egg materializing at the beginning of time to be broken and scrambled for all eternity. From Boltzmann’s era onward, scientists allergic to the notion of such an immaculate conception have been grappling with this conundrum.

Boltzmann, believing the universe to be eternal in accordance with Newton’s laws, thought that eternity could explain a low-entropy origin for time’s arrow. Given enough time—endless time, in fact—anything that can happen will happen, including the emergence of a large region of very low entropy as a statistical fluctuation from an ageless, high-entropy universe in a state of near-equilibrium. Boltzmann mused that we might live in such an improbable region, with an arrow of time set by the region’s long, slow entropic slide back into equilibrium.

Today’s cosmologists have a tougher task, because the universe as we now know it isn’t ageless and unmoving: They have to explain the emergence of time’s arrow within a dynamic, relativistic universe that apparently began some 14 billion years ago in the fiery conflagration of the big bang. More often than not the explanation involves ‘fine-tuning’—the careful and arbitrary tweaking of a theory’s parameters to accord with observations.

Many of the modern explanations for a low-entropy arrow of time involve a theory called inflation—the idea that a strange burst of antigravity ballooned the primordial universe to an astronomically larger size, smoothing it out into what corresponds to a very low-entropy state from which subsequent cosmic structures could emerge. But explaining inflation itself seems to require even more fine-tuning. One of the problems is that once begun, inflation tends to continue unstoppably. This “eternal inflation” would spawn infinitudes of baby universes about which predictions and observations are, at best, elusive. Whether this is an undesirable bug or a wonderful feature of the theory is a matter of fierce debate; for the time being it seems that inflation’s extreme flexibility and explanatory power are both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

For all these reasons, some scientists seeking a low-entropy origin for time’s arrow find explanations relying on inflation slightly unsatisfying. “There are many researchers now trying to show in some natural way why it’s reasonable to expect the initial entropy of the universe to be very low,” says David Albert, a philosopher and physicist at Columbia University. “There are even some who think that the entropy being low at the beginning of the universe should just be added as a new law of physics.”

That latter idea is tantamount to despairing cosmologists simply throwing in the towel. Fortunately, there may be another way.

Tentative new work from Julian Barbour of the University of Oxford, Tim Koslowski of the University of New Brunswick and Flavio Mercati of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics suggests that perhaps the arrow of time doesn’t really require a fine-tuned, low-entropy initial state at all but is instead the inevitable product of the fundamental laws of physics. Barbour and his colleagues argue that it is gravity, rather than thermodynamics, that draws the bowstring to let time’s arrow fly. Their findings were published in October in Physical Review Letters.

The team’s conclusions come from studying an exceedingly simple proxy for our universe, a computer simulation of 1,000 pointlike particles interacting under the influence of Newtonian gravity. They investigated the dynamic behavior of the system using a measure of its "complexity," which corresponds to the ratio of the distance between the system’s closest pair of particles and the distance between the most widely separated particle pair. The system’s complexity is at its lowest when all the particles come together in a densely packed cloud, a state of minimum size and maximum uniformity roughly analogous to the big bang. The team’s analysis showed that essentially every configuration of particles, regardless of their number and scale, would evolve into this low-complexity state. Thus, the sheer force of gravity sets the stage for the system’s expansion and the origin of time’s arrow, all without any delicate fine-tuning to first establish a low-entropy initial condition.

From that low-complexity state, the system of particles then expands outward in both temporal directions, creating two distinct, symmetric and opposite arrows of time. Along each of the two temporal paths, gravity then pulls the particles into larger, more ordered and complex structures—the model’s equivalent of galaxy clusters, stars and planetary systems. From there, the standard thermodynamic passage of time can manifest and unfold on each of the two divergent paths. In other words, the model has one past but two futures. As hinted by the time-indifferent laws of physics, time’s arrow may in a sense move in two directions, although any observer can only see and experience one. “It is the nature of gravity to pull the universe out of its primordial chaos and create structure, order and complexity,” Mercati says. “All the solutions break into two epochs, which go on forever in the two time directions, divided by this central state which has very characteristic properties.”

Although the model is crude, and does not incorporate either quantum mechanics or general relativity, its potential implications are vast. If it holds true for our actual universe, then the big bang could no longer be considered a cosmic beginning but rather only a phase in an effectively timeless and eternal universe. More prosaically, a two-branched arrow of time would lead to curious incongruities for observers on opposite sides. “This two-futures situation would exhibit a single, chaotic past in both directions, meaning that there would be essentially two universes, one on either side of this central state,” Barbour says. “If they were complicated enough, both sides could sustain observers who would perceive time going in opposite directions. Any intelligent beings there would define their arrow of time as moving away from this central state. They would think we now live in their deepest past.”

What’s more, Barbour says, if gravitation does prove to be fundamental to the arrow of time, this could sooner or later generate testable predictions and potentially lead to a less “ad hoc” explanation than inflation for the history and structure of our observable universe.

This is not the first rigorous two-futures solution for time’s arrow. Most notably, California Institute of Technology cosmologist Sean Carroll and a graduate student, Jennifer Chen, produced their own branching model in 2004, one that sought to explain the low-entropy origin of time’s arrow in the context of cosmic inflation and the creation of baby universes. They attribute the arrow of time’s emergence in their model not so much to entropy being very low in the past but rather to entropy being so much higher in both futures, increased by the inflation-driven creation of baby universes.

A decade on, Carroll is just as bullish about the prospect that increasing entropy alone is the source for time’s arrow, rather than other influences such as gravity. “Everything that happens in the universe to distinguish the past from the future is ultimately because the entropy is lower in one direction and higher in the other,” Carroll says. “This paper by Barbour, Koslowski and Mercati is good because they roll up their sleeves and do the calculations for their specific model of particles interacting via gravity, but I don’t think it’s the model that is interesting—it’s the model’s behavior being analyzed carefully…. I think basically any time you have a finite collection of particles in a really big space you’ll get this kind of generic behavior they describe. The real question is, is our universe like that? That’s the hard part.”

Together with Alan Guth, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology cosmologist who pioneered the theory of inflation, Carroll is now working on a thermodynamic response of sorts to the new claims for a gravitational arrow of time: Another exceedingly simple particle-based model universe that also naturally gives rise to time’s arrow, but without the addition of gravity or any other forces. The thermodynamic secret to the model’s success, they say, is assuming that the universe has an unlimited capacity for entropy.

“If we assume there is no maximum possible entropy for the universe, then any state can be a state of low entropy,” Guth says. “That may sound dumb, but I think it really works, and I also think it’s the secret of the Barbour et al construction. If there’s no limit to how big the entropy can get, then you can start anywhere, and from that starting point you’d expect entropy to rise as the system moves to explore larger and larger regions of phase space. Eternal inflation is a natural context in which to invoke this idea, since it looks like the maximum possible entropy is unlimited in an eternally inflating universe.”

The controversy over time’s arrow has come far since the 19th-century ideas of Boltzmann and the 20th-century notions of Eddington, but in many ways, Barbour says, the debate at its core remains appropriately timeless. “This is opening up a completely new way to think about a fundamental problem, the nature of the arrow of time and the origin of the second law of thermodynamics,” Barbour says. “But really we’re just investigating a new aspect of Newton’s gravitation, which hadn’t been noticed before. Who knows what might flow from this with further work and elaboration?”

“Arthur Eddington coined the term ‘arrow of time,’ and famously said the shuffling of material and energy is the only thing which nature cannot undo,” Barbour adds. “And here we are, showing beyond any doubt really that this is in fact exactly what gravity does. It takes systems that look extraordinarily disordered and makes them wonderfully ordered. And this is what has happened in our universe. We are realizing the ancient Greek dream of order out of chaos.”

Is the world just an appearance?

There is a famous quote attributed to Sri Sankara which is





This asserts that the only reality there is, is seemingly hidden from us and that what we understand this word to be is nothing but an appearance of that only reality.
I know my translation is not the best but I wanted to use a description in simple terms as it relates to this topic area.

Some people may have read more eloquent and formal translations of the above by Sri Prasad in other threads.

While it is not possible to do justice to this profound teaching in a single post, we can explore if we can see the truth of this teaching at least partially from what has been described in this thread.

Furthermore, in Vivekachoodamani again by Sri Sankara, there is a verse which states






This further asserts that this only reality (called Brahman) appears as this space-time bound phenomenal world. The one who can exercise their discriminatory faculty (Viveka) can understand this assertion and be able to discriminate between the reality and this phenomenological appearance (that is subject to creation and destruction).

This assertion also means what we take ourselves to be as this body and mind is part of nature and hence subject to destruction (death).

This assertion is not to be swallowed blindly and make it seem truthful by simple repetition. Or it should not be declared meaningless without using Viveka.

A human being is limited in many ways compared to other beings in this universe but this endowment of Viveka is unique to human existence only and is needed to differentiate between what is real and what is fake/uncertain (bound by time).

Using our Viveka means searching for the understanding the truth. In the field of Science, the scientific method which is about assertions and verification enable one to search for the truth is a systematic manner.

Therefore a detailed analysis of the notion of Time reveals that it is not a fundamental notion to describing nature at all.

From post #6: The equations of physics that describes the universe do not tell us which events are occurring right now—they are like a map without the
“you are here” symbol. The present moment does not exist in them, and therefore neither does the flow of time. The description of reality of nature is that, time can flow in either direction which is why one is able to back track and assert that they may have been a big bang some 13.6 billion years ago.

There is a way to understand how time in Physics is not fundamental, through a metaphor.

Most economies of the world of today has this notion of money but money itself is not needed for an economy to operate. For example it is tedious but possible to have economic and business activities by bartering activities alone. Just like money is not fundamental to operations of a nation though highly desirable for smooth operations, notion of time in describing nature is not fundamental.

However we find that in our subjective experience, there is a notion of arrow of time. After all we do not see beings coming from ashes and grave, grow young and go into an womb and disappear as a single cell.

There are ongoing theories to explain the arrow of time (as described in prior posts) and from all these efforts it is clear that absolute notion of time does not exist as a fundamental reality.

Let us see how we can understand the same notion of illusory nature of time from a Vedanta perspective.

Let us ask - what is the present moment as you are say reading 3 or 4 lines here rapidly?
In that 3 seconds that it took to read, can we say 1 second is past, 1 second is present when you recognized the current moment and 1 second is future when you decided that current moment to be that second.

But then one second declared as the present moment can be broken up as 1000 milliseconds. The past would be 500 milliseconds, present would be 1 millisecond, and future would be 499 milliseconds.

Well, we know milliseconds can be broken up into micro seconds with again past, present (which could be 1 microsecond) and future.

Almost any amount of time we declare as present moment can be divided into past, present and future.

This division can continue to infinitely small amount and it can never stop.




We have to declare then that we do not understand what this present moment is !

Present moment has to be something that is indivisible and essentially timeless because if the present moment were to be made of some measurable time, then it will have to be subjected to division into past and future.

Therefore the truth of time is timelessness of the current moment which is one with the subject's awareness. I know this is a big step and requires creative understanding to perceive this truth.

In another thread long time ago I had shared my notes about a verse in Srimad Bhagavatham. If possible I will open another thread in this section to go over some of the profound verses from Srimad Bhagavatham relating to notion of time. I might copy and paste select postings from that thread within the scholarly section (but not in this thread).

Even if the above is unacceptable, the above reasoning should enable one to understand that time is not easily understood either in Scientific analysis or in Philosophical analysis.

If this Time itself is illusory and subjective, what to speak of this entire world which is subject to space and time?

This world being an 'illusion' as asserted by Sri Sankara seem to have some element of truth (at least for some people ).

The point of this post is not to convince anyone but provide a motivation to follow through for further studies if there is interest.

OMG!!! What a waste of "Time" !!!

Continuing from Post #8

All events that we experience with our mind happen only in the present moment.
Even if fundamental laws of science allow for arrow of time to go towards past, in our experience we cannot go to the past.


Neither is the future accessible to us. There could be predictions about the future by science or by astrology or by our imagination. However there is no certain way to know the future.


We plan for the future time only in the present.

We reflect on the past moments only in the future.

Yet, the present moment itself cannot have a unit of time because if it did it will be divisible into past and future. Since passage of time is all about our experience, the moment is actually one *identically* with our awareness or consciousness. In other words the truth of time itself is the present moment NOW which is timeless and is one with our consciousness. This is but one way to understand non-duality of Time with our awareness.

Yet our whole life revolves around passage time. Our scriptures say that the mind can live only in the past or the future as detailed in this thread describing the root cause of human bondage of life of Samsara.

Living in the present moment is seemingly not a willful activity of the mind. We seem to be preoccupied with the past events (and suffer) or preoccupied with the future (and worry). Our mind misses the joy of living in the present moment and even when we think we live in the present Now, that is actually a delusion since our mind only switches between the past and the future.

This experience of Time - let us call this psychological Time - does end for us now and then. That happens in the deep sleep when the worries of the future 'temporarily' ends as well as sorrow of the past . During this deep sleep our sense of who we are described by Ahamkara (sense of doership) goes to sleep. This sleep is an enormous blessing for all beings.

To understand how sleep even helps, we have to imagine an extreme version of sorrow of a mother whose girl has been abducted by human trafficking. Can such a person ever be able to overcome her sorrow, leading a life of living death every waking moment. Even such a person is bestowed sleep unbeknownst to her at which time her mind and sense of who she is comes to an end for small period of Time. Unfortunately the sorrowless and worryless state of the mind ends when the person wakes up.

Now one cannot change the reality of events that happen in our life. How does one find peace even while being awake?

There is a verse from a more recent scripture that addresses this well. It is Sri Lakshmidhara's Advaita Makaranda which beautifully expresses the essence of Vedanta in only 28 verses.

Verse 10 states:


Ahami in the above refers to sense of doership.

Basic translation; As the 'sense of doership' sleeps, during that period suffering, flaws and activity are not experienced. Therefore the life of bondage is due to sense of doership alone and not ME who is the witness of this ahamkara suffering the life of Samsara.



(Note: Part of the reason I have provided references is to ensure that I am not sharing my personal opinions or theories).

In other words, life of suffering has to do with Ahamkara which is bound by experience of Time. The verse from Srimad Bhagavatam states that only Ishvara Bhakti can enable one to overcome this bondage of Time. This is a bit paradoxical because Time itself is an illusion and yet there are scriptures that describe Isvara as personification of TIME.

For example, in Vishnu Sahasranamam (occurring in Mahabharata), one of the names of Lord Vishnu is Kala.







In line with the meaning of the word Vishnu which means that which pervades anything and everything, this name of the Lord describes Him as the one is in every unit of Time.

In Sri rudram, in the sixth Anuvaka Lord Siva is presented as Kalarupa.
I will not cite the verse here since people can readily look up.

The prayer verse that is usually recited before reciting Sri Rudram was referenced in this thread and post.
I will reproduce it here:



In B.Gita Chapter 11, Lord Krishna says he is Kala (Time personified)








Timelessness is the essential nature of Time which is one with our consciousness (post #8).

We cannot attempt stay in the current moment thought everything 'happens' in the present moment only. This is because our mind with ahamkara will not let us.

But Timelessness is our nature and when our Ishvara Bhakti makes us realize we are one with the Lord, we understand timelessness as our nature. The illusion of Time disappears in the Present moment NOW which is being one with Isvara.

The brief history of time in our scriptures begins and ends in Timelessness

Epilogue

Epilogue as prologue


The opening post #1 by Sri Vikrama mentioned the origin of universe as taught in both Vedas and in Science. Subsequently the description there was about tracing the history of mankind through important milestones as noted in Vedas.


The term 'Brief History of Time' became popular with the publishing of a book with this title by Stephen Hawking back in the 1990s. There the focus was on current scientific understanding of this entity called Time, which itself may have a beginning and may possibly end as well!


My own interest has been in understanding what our scriptures and Science have to say about Time as an entity having a 'history' - namely a beginning and ending. The opening post's references to Big Bang and our scriptures provided me an opportunity to just focus on those aspects.


What we find is that Time as an entity seem to be a subjective 'illusion/experience' both from Vedantic teaching and from the current conclusions in Physics.


If it is a subjective experience, then Time, which is synonymous with arrow of time, may have been experienced only by the first life form that is 'intelligent'?

It is interesting that the seers (Rishis) were able to understand Timelessness as the essential truth of Time.


In the context of experience of arrow of time, there is this unfoldment of human milestones from the descriptions found in Vedas. I do not have knowledge in this area. Post #1 is the only description that addresses this area and can be expanded upon by experts at a future 'time' .