Concepts of Space, Time, and Consciousness in Ancient India
History and Philosophy of Physics
2007-05-23 v2 Popular Physics
Abstract
This paper describes Indian ideas of the early-Purana/Mahabharata times (centuries BC) on the nature of space, time and consciousness that would be of interest to the physicist. In order to simplify references, we quote mainly from Yoga-Vasistha (YV), which is representative of that period of Indian thought. YV professes to be a book of instruction on the nature of consciousness but it has many fascinating passages on time, space, matter and cognition. This paper presents a random selection that has parallels with recent speculations in physics. It also presents a brief account of the context in which ideas of YV developed.
Cite
@article{arxiv.physics/9903010,
title = {Concepts of Space, Time, and Consciousness in Ancient India},
author = {Subhash Kak},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/9903010},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
14 pages; with minor corrections and a few additional references