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Concepts of Space, Time, and Consciousness in Ancient India

Subhash Kak
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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.

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Subhash Kak. 1999-03-29. Concepts of Space, Time, and Consciousness in Ancient India. https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/9903010

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