From this ākāśa springs the atomic ākāśa or kāryākāśa, which is the cause of the manifestation of sound. All powers of hearing, even though they have their origin in the principle of egoism, reside in the ākāśa placed in the hollow of the ear. When soundness or defect is noticed therein, soundness or defect is also noticed in the power of hearing. Further, when of the sounds working in unison with the power of hearing, the sounds of solids, etc., are to be apprehended, then the power of hearing located in the hollow of the ear requires the capacity of resonance residing in the substratum of the ākāśa of the ear. This sense of hearing, then, operates when it is attracted by the sound originated and located in the mouth of the speaker, which acts as a loadstone. It is this ākāśa which gives penetrability to all bodies; in the absence of this, all bodies would be so compact that it would be difficult to pierce them even with a needle. In the _Sāṃkhya-sūtra_ II. 12, it is said that eternal time and space are of the nature of ākāśa. So this so-called eternal time and space do not differ from the one undifferentiated formless tamas of which we have just spoken. Relative and infinite time arise from the motion of atoms in space—the cause of all change and transformation; and space as relative position cannot be better expressed than in the words of Dr. B. N. Seal, as “totality of positions as an order of co-existent points, and as such it is wholly relative to the understanding like order in time, being constructed on the basis of relations of position intuited by our empirical or relative consciousness. But there is this difference between space order and time order:—there is no unit of space as position (_dik_) though we may conceive time, as the moment (_kshaṇa_) regarded as the unit of change in the causal series. Spatial position (_dik_) results only from the different relations in which the all-pervasive ākāśa stands to the various finite objects. On the other hand, space as extension or locus of a finite body, or deśa, has an ultimate unit, being analysable into the infinitesimal extension quality inherent in the guṇas of prakṛti.”[44]