परमार्थसार (महामाहेश्वर अभिनवगुप्त - त्रिक-दर्शन, अद्वैत शैव साधना एवं सान्वय सटीक)

Paramārthasāra of Abhinavagupta 31
chains of ignorance and finitude, is known as a paśu, a bonded
being.
Carrying further the phenomenal evolution, Lord Anantanātha
shakes up Māyā-tattva and expands it into five kañcukas or
sheaths that cover and hide the divine nature of the ātman and
present it in the form of a bonded being called paśu. Depriving it
of its omnipotence and limiting its powers to do, it appears in it
as kalā, a limited capacity to do just a little. Contracting the
omniscience of the ātman, it appears there as the impure Vidyā, a
finite capacity to know just a little. Limiting further scope of the
kalā and Vidyā of the ātman, Māyā appears as niyati, the law of
phenomenal causation, and restricts the kalā, Vidyā and rāga of
the finite being at each and every step. Contracting the very person
of such a being, Māyā appears as kāla, the sense of time, on
account of which he does neither do nor know anything without
conditioning these activities by the sense of time appearing as
past or present or future. Such sense of time becomes so deeply
impressed on his person that he does not even think of his very
existence except within the terms of past, present or future.
Time, according to Śaivism, is an imagined sense of succession
with regard to events and actions. Such sense of time is based on
the imagination of the finite being living at the plane of Māyā,
Such successions are either regular as those of the apparent move-
ments of sun and moon, change of seasons, blossoming of flowers,
ripening of fruits and grains and so on: or these are irregular as
those of the routine actions of individual beings. We very often
measure all the irregular series of successions with some regular
successions mentioned above and say that such and such person
lived a life of one hundred years; such and such book was read by
me in one month; today you slept for eight hours, and so on.
Time in Śaivism is thus a mere conception and not any substance.
It is a special type of relativity which is itself a substanceless con-
ception based on human imagination. The finite I-consciousness,
shrouded by Māyā and these five tattvas of limitation, is termed
as puruṣa, a bonded finite being known as paśu or aṇu or jīva and
so on.
अधुनैव किञ्चिदेवेदमेव सर्वात्मनैव जानामि ।
मायासहितं कञ्चुकषट्कमणोरन्तरङ्गमिदमुक्तम् ॥ १७ ॥