Last night, when my brain was hanging somewhere between sleep and consciousness, I felt - an extreme surge to write my views on Lord Shiva and The Cosmic Connection of Advaita Vedanta. This state of my mind was perhaps resul...ted from a brief informal chat on Lord and His Cosmic Dance that frequently take place between me and Dr Anand Prakash in the chatter-room (situated in the middle of the ICU-OT complex at SGPGI), where all consultants intermittently take small breaks during, which we watch News, movies, songs, take lunch and coffee or tea etc., following a Minimally Invasive “Concomitant Open-Heart Surgery along with Minimally Invasive Laparoscopic removal of a infected gall bladder in a 18 year old unmarried girl.
Modern Science and Metaphysics seem to be polar opposites of each other. The pioneers of Quantum Mechanics, c.f Max Plank, Neil Bohr and Albert Einstein, however, believed it to be otherwise. Their groundbreaking theories and experiments, are astoundingly close to what is described albeit cryptically in the annals of Vedic philosophy especially Rig-Ved.
Neil Bohr, who was a Danish physicist and Nobel laureate, once said - “I go to the Upanishad to ask questions,” reveals a lot about his respect for the ancient wisdom of India.
Erwin Schrodinger, an Austrian-Irish physicist who was also awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1933 for his famous wave equation, wrote in his book "Meine Weltansicht" (Translation: My view of the world) - “This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; Tat Tvam Asi, "तत्त्वमसि", translated as "Thou art that," That thou art, That art thou, You are that, or That you are, or You're it. This is one of the Grand Pronouncements in Vedantic Sanatana Dharma that originally occurs in the Chandogya Upanishad. In simple terms it can be explained as -This Is You. Or “I am in the East and the West, I am Above and Below, I am this Entire World.”
This is nothing but a मुंदक (Mundaka) Upanishad mantra which pronounces the connectivity of all living beings as in We Are All But ONE or Continuum of “Unity-in-Diversity”. In Vedanta this -unity and continuity are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics and is consistent with the Vedanta concept of “All in One”. This is what Schrodinger got the Nobel prize for in 1933 while referring to each particle in the universe as a wave function.
German physicist Werner Heisenberg’s was awarded the Nobel prize in 1932 on “Uncertainty Principle”, which states that we cannot measure both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time. Interestingly, this is also a reflection of the Advaitic Vedantic aphorism of rope and snake; “ When a snake is seen in the place of a rope, only the snake is seen as real. But is it INDEPENDENTLY REAL?”
Albert Einstein, the considered Father of the Theory of Relativity and the developer of Quantum Mechanics also believed in the “Unity of the Universe”. In his book, entitled - The World as I See It, Einstein wrote “I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling are the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research”.
American scientist and inventor, Nikolo Tesla, - a contemporary of Thomas Alva Edison was the one who understood very clearly the inextricably intertwined link between quantum physics and the spiritual concepts of the ancient world. In his seminal book – “Man’s Greatest Achievement”, Tesla wrote, “All perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all The Space (The Akaasha or The Ether), which is acted upon by the life-giving Prana (The creative force), calling into existence, in never-ending cycles all things and phenomena.”
Mr Tesla and Swami Vivekananda, also shared their views. Swami Vivekananda, once wrote - “Mr Tesla was charmed to hear about the Vedantic Prana and Akaasha and Kalpas, which according to him are the only theories modern science can entertain. Both Akaasha and Prana are produced from the Mahat (महत्) or the Universal Mind and also the “Cosmic Ideation”, which refers to the first principle evolved out of the union of Purusha (Male Principle) and Prakriti (Female Priciple). It is actually the “Universal Intelligence” variously called as Divine Thought, Mahâbuddhi, or Ādi-Buddhi. Mahat (महत्) in reality is “The Third Logos” or the “The Manifested” out of the Synthesis of the Seven creative rays, the Seven Logoi. Mr. Tesla firmly believed that he could prove and demonstrate through maths that – “Force and Matter” are reducible to Potential Energy but failed due to financial reasons but until his end he continued to believe in the concept of “Free or Zero-point energy”, well elucidated in Advaita vedanta principles of universe and its creation.
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