Page 31 - Hinduism
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tongue and the hand. In perceiving a rose, for example, we see its red colour through the eye, we pluck it from the plant by the hand and smell its fragrance by means of the nose; we taste its sweetness by the tongue and so on. In the same way, we perceive all other things in the world like trees, houses, lakes, rivers and hills. The world above consists of the sky, the Sun, the Moon and the stars. Geography teaches us that the Earth in which we live consists of countries, continents, seas and oceans and it is a planet which goes round the Sun. India, the country in which we live, is a big country with large rivers like the Ganges, mountains like the Himalayas, trees like the banyan and it is very sacred to us as the land of spirituality. The Sun is the centre of heat and light round which six other planets like Jupiter and Saturn move, and the Moon goes round the Earth. The whole is called the Solar system and every star is said to be a sun with its own planets and moons.
The study of Astronomy impresses us with the vastness of the solar and stellar systems, contrasted with our own smallness. Light travels at the rate of 182,000 miles a second and it takes 31/2 years for the light of the nearest star to reach us. From these we know the greatest mystery, and imagination is staggered by the infinity of space. What is true of space is also true of time. While space refers to co- existence of things, time is a succession of events.
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