Compiled by London swaminathan

Article No.1925

Date :11^th June 2015

Time uploaded in London: 21-24

I have read an interesting book titled “Vedic World View and Modern Science”, edited by Radhavallabh Tripathi. I wanted to share with you some of the points raised by the authors of various articles in the book. After reading it, I felt that there is a need to rewrite our science books as well. Along with the world view, we must give the Vedic seers’ views as well. Let the students decide who is right and who is wrong.

The second thing that we should do is to convene a conference on Futurology where the scientists and the Vedic scholars may predict what will happen in the next 50 years in the field of science, environment, medicine etc. Let the future generations tell the world who is right and who is wrong.

Youths with scientific bent of mind may ridicule us if we always talk about the past. We must be able to tell them what will happen in future on the basis of our scriptures. I have already written two articles about Hindus’ Future Predictions.

Atman is Motionless, yet it runs Faster!

In one of the articles S C Goswami says,

To say that a thing is stationary and yet it moves faster than mind sounds totally illogical. But logic proves to be a very poor instrument while dealing with the depths of truth.

The Atman (soul) is motionless, yet it runs faster than mind, thus asserts the Isopanishad.

The self is one, unmoving, and faster than mind. It moves, moves not (verse 4 and 5)

Being infinite and all-pervasive, the Atman does not move, but it appears to move because of its association with the moving mind and the senses.

Subtlest and Biggest

How can a thing be smaller than the smallest and bigger than the biggest? But the Kathopanishad says

Anoraniyam mahato mahiyanatmasya jantornihito guhayam

(1-2-20)

Subtler than the subtle, huger than the huge, the self is lodged in the secret heart of every creature.

Big and small are physical concepts which arise from spatial determination. An object in the gross, physical world is big or small in the relative sense. In the quantum world, however an object is small in the absolute sense if the effect of the disturbance caused by the act of observation is not negligible. On the other hand if the disturbance has negligible effect on the state of the object, the object is termed big in the absolute sense.

The moon is a big object because looking at it, observing its motion has no effect in the motion of the moon. An electron or an atom is a small object in the absolute sense, because the unavoidable disturbance (inherent in an act of observation) drastically alters the state under observation.

The small objects exhibit another unique characteristic, viz, wave-particle duality. An electron is a particle that is an object confined to a small volume (anoraniyan). It is also a wave, a probability wave extending to infinity (mahatomahiyan). Incidentally, the core of an atom, that is, the nucleus, occupies a very small space inside the atom (nihito guhayam). By describing Truth as the tiniest of tiny and also the biggest of the big, the Upanishadic Rishi (seer) conveys that even the minutest space conceivable s permeated by the All-pervasive.

Localized and Delocalized

Atman permeates all objects which have shape and form itself remaining formless and changeless in the phenomenal world, asserts kathopanishad,

Bodiless in the embodied, changeless in changeful entities; Swami Vivekanada has beautifully described the relation between man. i.e. localized Self and God i.e.delocalized self. Man, according to him, is a circle whose circumference is at infinity but the centre is located in the body. And god is like a circle whose circumference is at infinity but the centre is located everywhere. This idea is again echoed in the Kathopanishad

What indeed is here is there, what is there is here likewise

Self, which associates itself with limiting adjuncts, viz, body and senses, becomes localized in the individual and appears as being possessed of physical or worldly attributes to the ignorant. That very self, devoid of all physical attributes, a mass of pure consciousness, established in its casual condition as Brahman, is present here, there, everywhere.

Being and Becoming

Being and Becoming and One and Many are both the same thing. One is Brahman and Many is manifest in nature. The immense diversity exhibited by Nature is , in fact, the manifestation of the underlying Unity. All that exists in Nature, animate and inanimate, is the Becoming of the one Self. We must experience the One Being but at no point of time should we cease to see the many Becoming. How is it possible? Through ignorance we identify ourselves with ego, which as Buddha said, does not exist. This false identification leads to a sense of separateness and contradiction. Once we get rid of it we immediately experience our oneness with all beings, we expand to infinite dimension as it were.

The Upanishads are unique in their approach towards seemingly opposite concepts, some of them described above, because they assert simultaneous validity of such opposites. Life in the world, according to them, and life in the Spirit, are not incompatible. Work or action is not contrary, is rather means to knowledge of God. By renunciation it meant the renunciation of the ego, not of life.

Neil Bohr Quotation

Bohr dedicated thirty years of his life in spreading, the message of complementarity in fields outside of physics. One of his favourite maxims was, as told by his son Hans, the distinction between two sorts of truth: trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd, and profound truths, recognised by the fact that the opposite is also profound truth.

The Upanishads do not deal with trivialities. They deal with profound truths.

Who discovered Gravity? Newton or Aryabhatta?

Radhavallabh Tripathi says,

The Vedic seers could visualise many things through their observation or by their intuition, which the latter

Scientists discovered. For example Aitareya Brahmana (III-4) says that the Sun neither rises nor sets, it is the earth which rotates around it.

Yajur Veda further mentions (20-23) that the whole cosmos is rotating, it also suggests that the moon does not have its own science, it reflects the light from the Sun (ibid18-40 and Nirukta 2-6). Authors of Vedic Samhitas were clearly aware of seven colours in sun rays. The gravitational force is hinted upon.

Aryabhatta clearly propounded the theory of gravity eight hundred years before Newton.

Pythagoras Theorem or Vedic Seer Theorem?

Vedic altars were constructed in different shapes and sizes for the performance of Yajna. Strictly set measurements were prescribed for construction of different types of altars for different rituals. This lead to the discovery of a geometrical theorem around 1500 BCE, which after quite a centuries was discovered by a philosopher and mathematician Pythagorus in Greece. The theorem along with several other principles of geometry has been explained in detail in Sulvasutras, the Vedic texts on rituals. They were composed around 1000 BCE.

Cosmology and Carl Sagan

Cosmology is one of the areas in which the ancient seers were particularly interested. Carl Sagan, one of the most brilliant cosmologists said that Indian cosmology gave for the first time a time scale for the earth and for the universe a time scale which is consonant with that of modern scientific cosmology. The Hindu tradition has a day and night of Brahma is 8-4 billion years.

The Vedas are the oldest literary records of ancient Hindu wisdom. Atharva Veda records brilliant thoughts on Time in two of its hymns, both entitled as Kalasuktas (Hymns on Time)

The Upanishads provide in depth analysis of the concepts of time and space.  The terms dik and akasa have been used for space in the Upanishads. Even present, past and future percolate akasa/space and at the same time, are imbued in akasa.

Potter’s Wheel and the Universe

The circuitous movement of this cosmos has been compared by the author of Sri Bhagavata to a potter’s wheel. The potter’s wheel is rotating and hundreds of ants are going on the wheel just as the potter’s wheel rotates, along with it rotate the lump of clay placed by the potter on it and along with rotate the ants. But the ants moving on the wheel also move by own speed and at the same time also rotate with the circuitous movement of the wheel. In the same way the cosmic wheel of time and space is rotating, along with it are rotating infinite number of stars and planets and each of these ants or planets is moving by its own momentum also – Srimad Bhagavatam V-22-2

Einstein Quotation

Physists like Fritzof Capra find the image of Cosmic Dance of Siva a very suitable metaphor to describe atomic reality.

Ken Wilbur, himself a scientist, says that every one of the greatest physicists of 20^th century, Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg etc. were spiritual mystics  of one sort or another. “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is mystical” says Einstein.

Source: VEDIC WORLD VIEW AND MODERN SCIENCE, Edited by Radhavallabh Tripahi, Pratibha Prakashan, Delhi, Year 2006