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Seven Astonishing Ideas in Indian Cosmology

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Sep 28, 2020, 7:09:08 PM9/28/20
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Seven Astonishing Ideas in Indian Cosmology

September 25, 2020 Authored by: Subhash Kak

Post Views: 1,946 The Indian cosmology, with its expansive notion of the
equivalence between the outer and inner, produced many …


The Indian cosmology, with its expansive notion of the equivalence
between the outer and inner, produced many original ideas. Imaginative
notions, such as those of airplanes, space travels, weapons that can
destroy the world, embryo transplantation, multiple babies from the same
embryo, remote viewing, space travel are to be found in the Mahabharata
and the Puranas. Lest I be misunderstood, we are not speaking of real
airplanes, bombs, and biotechnology, but rather of the conception of
their possibility. Here is a list of the seven most astonishing ideas:

An Extremely Old Universe: The idea that the universe is very old is
quite startling, when one notes that humanity’s collective memory
doesn’t go further than a few thousand years. The Puranas speak of the
universe going through cycles of creation and destruction each of 8.64
billion years, together with longer cycles (the universe is actually
supposed to be infinitely old). The figure of 8.64 billion years is
about right based on current astrophysical estimates. The revolutionary
nature of this idea becomes clear when one notes that only a couple of
hundred years ago the dogma in most Eurasia was that the world was
created in 4004 BC.

An Atomic World and the Subject/Object Dichotomy: According to the
atomic doctrine of Kanada, there are nine classes of substances: ether,
space, and time that are continuous; four elementary substances (or
particles) called earth, air, water, and fire that are atomic; and two
kinds of mind, one omnipresent and another which is the individual. This
system also postulates a subject/ object dichotomy, as was done in
Samkhya and Vedanta as well. In these systems, the conscious subject is
separate from the material reality but he is, nevertheless, able to
direct its evolution. The atomic doctrine of Kanada is much more
interesting than that of Democritus.

Relativity of Time and Space: That space and time need not flow at the
same rate for different observers is a pretty revolutionary notion. We
encounter it in Puranic stories and in the Yoga Vasistha.

Here’s a passage on anomalous flow of time from the Bhagvata Purana 9.3:

Taking his daughter, Revati, Kakudmi went to Brahma in Brahmaloka to
inquire about a husband for her. But when Kakudmi arrived there, Brahma
was busy in a musical concert of the Gandharvas. Therefore, Kakudmi
waited. At the end of the performance, he saluted Brahma and made his
desire known. Hearing his words, Brahma laughed loudly and said, ‘O
King, all those whom you may have decided within the core of your heart
to accept as your son-in-law have passed away in the course of time.
Twenty-seven caturyugas have already passed those you chose are gone,
and so are their sons, grandsons, and other descendants. Even their
names are lost.’

Evolution of Life: The Puranas have a chapter on creation and the
origins of mankind. It is said that man arose at the end of a chain
where the beginning was with plants and various kinds of animals. Here’s
a quote from the Yoga Vasistha 6.1.21:

I remember that once upon a time there was nothing on this Earth,
neither trees and plants, nor even mountains. For a period of eleven
thousand years the Earth was covered by lava. Then demons (Asuras), who
were deluded and powerful, ruled the Earth as their playground. And then
for a very long time the whole Earth was covered with forests, except
the polar region. Then there arose great mountains, but without any
human inhabitants. For a period of ten thousand years the Earth was
covered with the corpses of the Asuras who had roamed the Earth.

The urge to evolve into higher forms due to the changing ratios of the
gunas is taken to be inherent in nature. A system of an evolution from
inanimate to higher life is spelled out in the system of Samkhya. At the
mythological level, this is represented by an ascent of Visnu through
the forms of fish, tortoise, boar, man-lion, the dwarf, finally, into
man. Aurobindo has argued that this evolution of intelligence is still
at work.

A science of Mind, Yoga: Yoga psychology, described in early texts and
systematized by Patanjali in his Yoga-sutras is a comprehensive
description of the nature of the human mind and its capacities. It makes
a distinction between memory, states of awareness, and the fundamental
entity of consciousness. It analyses mind processes with such clarity
and originality that it continues to influence scholars and laymen.
Several kinds of Yoga are described in the Bhagavad Gita. They provide a
means of mastering the body-mind connection, Indian music, dance, and
other arts have an underlying yogic basis.

Binary Number System, Zero, Infinity: A binary number system was used by
Pingala (450 BC, if we accept the tradition that he was Panini’s
brother) to represent metres of songs. Perhaps this number system
contributed to the inventions of the sign for zero that appears to have
taken place around 50 BC – AD 50. It is true that the binary number
system was independently invented by Leibniz in 1678, but the fact that
the rediscovery had to wait almost 2,000 years only emphasizes the
originality of Pingala’s idea.

The idea of infinity is understood correctly in that it is unchanged
when infinity is subtracted from it.

A Complete Grammar, Limitation of Language. The Ashtadhyayi is a grammar
of the Sanskrit language by Panini (450 BC) that describes the entire
language in 4,000 algebraic rules. The structure of this grammar
contains a meta-language, meta-rules, and other technical devices that
make this system effectively equivalent to the most powerful computing
machine. No grammar of similar power has yet been constructed for any
other language. Panini’s book is one of mankind’s greatest achievements.

The flip side to the discovery of this grammar consists of the idea that
language (as a formal system) cannot describe reality completely. This
limitation of language is ascribed to the fact that the language basis
is finite, whereas the world is infinite. Parallelin

Härra Ramob

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Dec 29, 2021, 3:36:46 AM12/29/21
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