Miracle of a Second

A moment of blunder made,
To be resented for a lifetime.
A second's thought of triumph,
To bask in glory for years to come.

A minute's whim,
To make one curse for ages.
An 'either-or' option,
To mutilate your destiny.

And a lax mind,
That brings untold misery,
For whole future.

An instant flash,
When two eyes dash,
Is all that requires,
For love to bloom, or enmity to brew,
For a fit of action or a bit of compassion.

An instantaneous idea, A moment’s mistake,
A random error, A flashy bang (big-bang),
Is all that is needed,
To create life and to end it.
To push a man to grandeur Or pull him to abyss.

In a second,
Lies the thread of destiny,
Tied to the fate of Universe
To be played upon
In the hands of Nature.

Photo courtesy: Ruban Rex

Man Vs God - Who created Who??

I, Venkatesh, an orthodox brahmin iyer of age 17 was on one of my family tour/outing/pilgrimage with my family to tirupati when my uncle reminded me that Lord Balaji was a very ‘powerful God’ and so I should pray to Him devoutly. I didn’t put much thought into it and did as I was instructed. I prayed to the Lord for everyone’s well being, for good marks in twelfth and to get a good college. As my life progressed, I was attracted towards the philosophy propagated by Adi Sankara, the Advaita philosophy. I started pondering over it and found that the crux of the philosophy was ‘Aham Brahmaasmi’, ‘I am God’!! Being a science student, I was always interested in the cosmic space that existed out of the world; the galaxies, nebula, black holes, star clusters etc which led me to the big bang theory and documentaries of Stephen Hawkins, the theoretical physicist. At this juncture, my mind started comparing the two incomparable – philosophy and science; Advaita and Big bang theory since in essence, both were similar with minor modifications in each. What advaita referred to as Brahman, Big bang theory called it as the start of the Universe – The big explosion.

Almost five years after the tirupati trip I went for another ‘family tour’ to a different shrine where I heard a similar statement being said. About the powerfulness of God, the existence of different Gods with different forms, different characters who even fought each other at some instances. The mind which was pondering over big bang and advaita for a long time, suddenly found the idea of God dumb and stupid. During the course of five years, so much had occurred which had shaped the way in which I see and understand happenings around me. The only question that remained was, “Why did the great Adi Sankara who had such immense knowledge of proposing a version of Big bang theory two thousand years ago without any scientific proof, also bring in the concept of Smartha and Shanmatha tradition of worship?”

Actually the answer was very simple and was connected to the way of Indian lifestyle and religion. Ancient Vedic Religion and the predecessors of these folks worshipped Nature. They had the habit of worshipping anything that was useful to humans and helps them. From the air we breathe in (Vayu Dev) to the energy source of all life on earth, the Sun (Suryanarayanan), everything is worshipped and deified as God. Some of them are: rivers (Ganga, Yamuna etc), food providing plants, elephants (Ganesh), monkey (Hanuman) and even mother Earth herself (Bhooma Devi). The interesting thing to note is that according to Hindu Dharma and Advaita Philosophy whoever the God is, He/She must always come under the reign of the Siva (in Saivism) or Vishnu (in Vaishnavism) or both (in Advaita).

So this brings up another question. What about the other Gods like Rama, Krishna and a whole lot of human-like Gods. They are probably just humans who due to their great deeds and the high respect they earned among their people were praised, their actions were exaggerated and in few generations they were apotheosized and believed as the incarnations of Siva or Vishnu. Rama would have probably been a very good king and his rule should have been so just that they still keep his reign as the gold standard and is referred to as ‘The Ram Rajya’. Similarly Krishna would have probably been a very naughty child from a rich landlord family who in his life turned out to be a very cunning diplomat who managed to change the tides of the great Kurukshetra war! Thus in a similar manner every person who had done good, appreciable deeds have been pushed to the status of God in the course of time.

So my hypothesis is that, the Indians who had the habit of worshipping anything that interacts with the humans and after many generations deified them as Gods, ultimately found the fact that all the elements surrounding and interacting with them always followed a strict ground rules within which they were supposed to exist. These undefined rules should have probably confused them and those unnamed rules were hence called Siva (in Saivism), Vishnu (Vaishnavism) or The Brahman (Advaita) under whom all the other Gods surrender and are answerable to Him alone. Interesting thing to be noted is that in Saivism and Vaishnavism, it was made sure that the presence of Lord Siva or Lord Vishnu be made inaccessible. Hence Siva was given a place in one of the highest peaks of Himalayas near the Mansarovar Lake and Vishnu was given a place in the deep trenches of the Indian Ocean. Had it known that such scientific progress would be made to conquer the mountains and oceans, ancient vedic Indians would have probably shifted both their habitats to other planets or stars!!!

Science on the other hand, by experiments and hypothesis ultimately found the secret behind all the rules within which ‘they’ existed. All such rules were compiled together and a name was given to them collectively. And it’s called ‘PHYSICS’, the laws of nature!!! So my ultimate hypothesis is that Indians who tried to apotheosize every form of nature and every great human who existed during those times also noticed that they were all controlled by and they obeyed according to some unknown rule which they weren’t able to identify and hence named them as Siva or Vishnu, but in reality the rule was nothing but Physics.

The Force and The Brahman

At around 800 C.E a baby was born in Kerala, by name Sankara to a brahmin couple who wanted a son but weren't blessed with one. Myth says that the couple prayed to Lord Siva at Vadakkunathan temple for a son. The Lord accepted their prayers and gave them a choice. Either to have sons who would live long lives but with mediocre intelligence or a single son with short life but highly intellectual. It is said that the couple chose the latter choice. Sankara like a dutiful brahmin boy went to gurukul, learnt scriptures, Vedas etc in a very short span. Unable to being bound by the earthly lives, he embraced sanyasa and started propagating his ideas and cerebrations through the length and breadth of the country.
So what is the idea propagated by Sankara? The answer is too simple. His ideas which are referred to as Advaita philosophy simply means lack of duality, a Singular Power. Adi Sankara referred to the Singular Power as 'The Brahman', the ultimate soul.
Advaita states that every individual is a part of the eternal soul, The Brahman. There is no difference between each and every living and nonliving thing. Everything originated from Him and will end in Him. Each and every individual is separated from Him by the worldly distractions that surrounds him and prevents him from attaining the ultimate knowledge, the truth about 'The Brahman'. Sankara even details out these distractions and the measures to be followed to come out of the worldly web which is beyond the scope of the blog! Perhaps I will save it for some other day.

The next question that arises is who is the 'Him' and where is the 'Him', about who Advaita and Sankara shower encomiums? He is not the one to be visualized. You are Him. Everything around you is Him. Every single constituent in the universe is a part of Him. Him is nothing but the energy that flows through the cosmic space, into each and every organism, that which makes our heart beat, pump blood, think about Him etc.

Around 1100 years later a german theoretical physicist by name, Hans Albert Einstein stumbled upon the idea of Theory of Relativity and gave a simple equation E=mc2, which became the platform for other scientists to expand and prove the existence, creating and the current position of our Universe.

Theories about Universe started developing based on Relativity and finally they came up with 'The Big Bang model'. The model provided insights to how a big explosion occured at some point of time after which the universe which was of size less than a quark started expanding rapidly to reach this present state. The theory states that when big bang occured, the laws of physics, gravity, force etc came into being. If there had been a minuscle change in the laws during the creation, then i'd probably not writing this blog, the world wouldn't have existed and the whole universe would have collapsed within femto seconds after the big bang.

Hawking even goes a step beyond this and contemplates that even as we talk new universes are created with a big bang outside our dimension. The laws required to stabilise a universe may not always be created during the Bang. Gravity may not be thr in some universe, gravity may repel in others, conversion of mass to energy and vice versa may not occur, entropy may decrease etc leading to collapse of the other Universes.

So after this successful big bang thingy, matter - antimatter interaction occurred and matter emerged triumphant, quarks, protons, neutrons, electrons and atoms were formed, hydrogen came up, H2 under gravity came close, created intense heat resulting in fusion of H2. Then came the mini stars which produced helium as they died, along with carbon, neutron mass and some light elements. During death, the explosion that followed threw the elements to far away regions. The cycle continued and finally heavy metals like gold, platinum, uranium, silver etc were also formed by the same mechanism. A similar formation of a star with many elements resulted in the birth of Sun and its planets. And that's how earth was formed. Life evolved as time progressed in it and finally the life which formed, started thinking about its creator, for which many different names were given as time progressed. Adi Sankara calls the creator as 'The Brahman', Christianity as 'Lord' or 'The Father' and Islam as 'Allah' but modern physicists call them simply as Force, Nature or Physics.

So from the big bang point of view, everything originated from the big bang. Everything around you, including you, your pen, your PC, the breakfast you had in the morning, the stars, planets, moons, galxies etc all originated from the big bang. Everything gets recycled again n again.

Now scroll up and look what advaita says. The crux of both the philosophy and theory are the same. Just the name of the Universal set comprising of all things in the Universe differs. Advaita calls it as The Brahman whereas modern theoretical physicists refer to it as Raw force and Physical laws governing the Universe.

The main aim of advaita philosophy is to prevent future births for every life on earth. To attain 'moksha'! To escape from the continuous cycle of birth and death and mingle together with Him. Having proved Advaita is almost similar to Big Bang, the previous point or the aim of advaita may seem to be an anomaly or flaw in Advaita which 'The Big bang' fails to vindicate. But it is not. As I already mentioned, everything originated from the big bang.

Hypothetically let us consider a star 'X', which was formed by hydrogen fusion, resulting in helium. The helium, under gravity moves towards the core where further pressure and temperature at later stages of the star increases resulting again in fusion and creation of heavier and denser elements like carbon, nitrogen which again undergo the same processes and finally heavy metals are created. During death of the star, the star bursts and the elements are spread throughout the cosmic space. A portion of it reaches a dense mass of hydrogen gas area (nebula 'Y')and thus develops a new star out of it called Sun and other planets including earth. So whateva that is present in the earth comes from the star 'X' and nebula 'Y' including humans.

So from where do we come from? Star 'X' and Nebula 'Y'. Now let us go into the future. Five billion years from now, the Sun would have used up all of its hydrogen, starts using helium, it puffs up like a giant red balloon and would engulf all the planet of the solar system. When the Sun explodes it throws out chunks of essential elements and molecules to outer space just like the star X. Thus a group of hydrogen atom formed during big bang formed 'X' from which our earth came, human body came and finally the elements go to some other nebula becoming cradles for new stars and planets and may be even new life.

Something strikes a bell?? U can always scroll up and check for the advaita aim. There isn't much difference between the two. Does it? So does tat mean that Sankara knew about the big bang model, cosmic space, birth and death of stars etc? If so why doesnt he explain it properly then? Considering the superstitions, the understanding capability and IQ of humans 1200 years back, Sankara would probably have thought that it was better to coat the bitter truth with the sweet flavor of God instead of breaking the truth directly and be ostracized.