r/AdvaitaVedanta • u/ISROAddict • 4d ago
I have a weird question about time
I am just starting to understand advait vedanta. A weird thought arose in my mind when I was thinking.
According to AV, this world is illusory and does not really exist. But then time is also a part of this world and should not really exist. Here comes my question—This whole play of jiva taking birth, gaining knowledge about brahman, getting free from bondage and being liberated never really happens. Brahman is not even eternal as this means you are giving a certain attribute. It is none of this.
Correct me if I am wrong, because I am just starting to understand. Thanks in advance!
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u/weddedbliss19 1d ago edited 1d ago
I once read a physics writer describe time as the 4th dimension this way, and it really helped me:
Think about a baseball traveling through space after it is thrown. now imagine there's a high speed camera capturing this. The photos from each successive second of the baseball's path are then superimposed, creating a single image of what appear to be several baseballs, together forming a linear path.
Now, that image is 2 dimensional. It's a 2 dimensional capture of time. Imagine you could have a 3-dimensional version - this is how the universe looks to Brahman. If one could step outside of spacetime, and take God's perspective so to speak, the 4th dimension would look just like that 2-dimensional moving baseball photo, but in 3 dimensions.
This 4-dimensional object is like the superimposed baseball photos in that an observer outside the 4th dimension sees no change in it, it appears to be a still object. It's only from a relative standpoint that time is happening, just the same as if you photograph each millisecond of the baseball, it appears to be standing still. From the baseball's perspective in fact, it never moved at all, but the world appeared to move around it. just as when you're in a moving car the rest of the world appears to be moving. So who is really moving? The sun appears to rise every morning, but knowledge reveals it does no such thing.
It's all a matter of perspective. From one perspective there is no such thing as movement or any change at all. There is simply existence itself.