Sri Ramakrishna Math : The Vedanta Kesari, THE WISHING TREE: The Presence and Promise of Hinduism

Imagine that archaeologists, digging a thousand year old virgin site in Antarctica, come across an inscription deep underground that shows the sun, and next to it the numbers 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light. What would the world do? More likely than not, this find will not be accepted by scholars. A fraud, they would say, committed for cheap fame. The reputation of the archaeologists will be ruined. Only lunatics will support them, claiming that this proves that aliens have visited the earth from time to time. The high priests of the academy will say that even if the find was genuine it proves nothing; at best it is a coincidence. But what an astonishing coincidence! Just the right number out of an infinity of different numbers! The speed of light was first determined in 1675 by Roemer who looked at the difference in the times that light from Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, takes to reach the earth based on whether it is on the near side of Jupiter or the far side. Until then light was taken to travel with infinite velocity. Even Newton assumed so. The reason why we are talking about the absurd scenario of the archaeologists in Antarctica is because weare confronted with a situation that is quite similar!

I am an archaeologist of texts. I read old texts from the point of view of history of science. One such book is the celebrated commentary on the Rigveda by Sayana (c. 1315-1387), a minister in the court of King Bukka I of the Vijayanagar Empire in South India.

Of a hymn addressed to the sun (RV 1.50), he says that it is `remembered that the sun traverses 2,202 yojanas in half a nimesha.' This statement could either relate to the speed of the sun or to that of light. The units are well known. For example, the Puranas define 1 nimesha to be equal to 16/75 seconds; 1 yojana is about 9 miles. Substituting in Sayana's statement we get 186,000 miles per second. Unbelievable, you'd say! It cannot be the speed of light. Maybe it refers to the speed of the sun in its supposed orbit around the earth. But that places the orbit of the sun at a distance of over 2,550 million miles. The correct value is only 93 million miles and until the time of Roemer the distance to the sun used to be taken to be less than 4 million miles. This interpretation takes us nowhere. What about the possibility of fraud? Sayana's statement was printed in 1890 in the famous edition of Rigveda edited by Max Muller, the German Sanskritist. He claimed to have used several three or four hundred year old manuscripts of Sayana's commentary, written much before the time of Roemer.

Is it possible that Muller was duped by an Indian correspondent who slipped in the line about the speed? Unlikely, because Sayana's commentary is so well known that an interpolation would have been long discovered. And soon after Muller's Rigveda was published, someone would have claimed that it contained this particular secret knowledge. The fact that the speed in the text corresponds to the speed of light was pointed out only recently. Also a copy of Sayana's manuscript, dated 1395, is available. Further support for the genuineness of the figure in the ancient book comes from one of the earliest Puranas, the Vayu, conservatively dated to at least 1,500 years old. (The same reference is to be found in the other Puranas as well.) In Chapter 50 of this book, there is the statement that the sun moves 3.15 million yojanas in 48 minutes. This corresponds to about 10,000 miles per second if considered as speed of light, and 135 million miles for the distance to the sun, if considered as the speed of the sun. Sayana's speed of light is exactly 18 times greater than thisspeed of the sun! Mere numerology? We must also not forget that the Puranas speak of the creation and destruction of the universe in cycles of 8.64billion years, that is quite close to currently accepted value regarding the time of the big bang.

For the rationalists these numbers are a coincidence. Given the significance of these numbers, they'd look very carefully at the old manuscripts of Sayana's commentary. There are others who would say that consciousness, acting on itself can find universal knowledge. Look, they'd say, by examining biological cycles one can know the periods of the sun and the moon. So why shouldn't it be possible to know other universal truths? They'd add that ancient texts speak--and this is true--of embryo transplants, multiple births from the same foetus, air and space travel, slowing or speeding of time, weapons that can destroy the entire world. They'd say that it is more than ancient science fiction, it shows that the human imagination can envision all that can happen.

The tree of knowledge may answer our wishes, but it is so dense that one can get lost in it. The Upanishads tell us that the gods love what is paradoxical (paroksha) and detest what is straightforward (pratyaksha). Not surprisingly, the Upanishads also tell us that those who worship only the material end up in darkness, and those who worship only the spirit end up in greater darkness. The path of wisdom is a narrow path. The pulsations of reality may be subtle, but appearances are structured. Great scientists, who work at the frontier of their field, are aware of the limitations of their knowledge and its transitory nature, but most other scientists are no more open--minded than religious bigots.

When I was a boy, I heard my father tell me about his extraordinary experience during his years of quest. He chose to mention some of these in his fragmentary autobiography, Autumn Leaves. I heard and marvelled but didn't know what to make of it. I shut my eyes and tried to envision everything or nothing, but it didn't take me far. So I chose science. I started out bystudying information; this eventually led me to quantum theory. It was good to see that, at its deepest, science asked as many questions as it answered. I was also interested in grammar, linguistics and machine translation and before long I marvelled at the magnificent creation of Panini. I also found a long--lost astronomy in the Vedic books.

The ancient rishis were incredibly prescient and creative. A lot of what they said is still relevant. After all, their main concern was consciousness, precisely what modern science is trying to understand. This brings us to yoga-- the union of our ordinary awareness with our true self. The promise of Indian wisdom is the realization of our potential. This is done through yoga as a discipline that complements the way of looking at the outer world through academic science. We get gleanings of the spark within by learning to observe ourselves. The universe is woven together and interconnected. The symbol of the interconnectedness of the physical universe is the invisible axis (pillar) around which the stars move; likewise, the unity of our experience is established by the axis of consciousness to which we bind our associations. We are so used to the routine of the everyday that we become oblivious to the extraordinary nature of our commonest experience. It is not just the coming of a new life that is magical, every experience when our senses are truly open is magical. The dance of Shiva happens not only at the cosmic level, it occurs also at each moment, and as one grain of time is gone and dead, the next grain comes along and there is new creation! There lie many adventures in the path to the unfolding of the mystery of consciousness. Each human being is a scientist and historian of sorts: we reason and gather knowledge, we structure all that happens around us. If it all doesn't add up, we must step back and wonder. Mind is the last frontier of science. We observe the physical universe through our mind, yet we have no clear idea how mind functions, how memories are stored and recalled and what is the origin of our subjective feelings. Is this level of ignorance a result of the reductionist nature of the tools that have been used in the study of mind and consciousness? If that is so, will an approach that has a different philosophical basis help? It is for this reason we turn to the Vedas, where the central concern is self and awareness. The Vedic texts consider reality to transcend the duality of matter and mind. This non--dual reality is termed Brahman. Although seen to be present in all its material manifestations, Brahman is understood best as the knowing subject within us. The space of this knowledge is called chit, consciousness. Later literature, like the Yoga Vasishtha and the Tripura Rahasya, self--consciously describes themselves as dealing with the nature of consciousness. The Vedas, and later the yogic and tantric texts, speak of the cognitive centers as individual, whole entities which are, nevertheless, a part of a greater unity. The vocabulary used in these texts challenges the modern reader, but once one has learned the definitions of the operative terms, the structure soon becomes apparent. Vedic mythology is often an explication of understanding of consciousness, and so mastering the Vedic vocabulary provides us a means of unlocking the hidden meaning behind the myths. In the Vedic discourse, the cognitive centers are called the devatas or devas-- deities or gods, or luminous loci. The Atharvaveda (10.2.31) calls the human body the city of the devas. This passage also speaks of the body consisting of eight cognitive centers which, other references suggest, are hierarchically organized. The devas are visualized in a complex, hierarchical scheme, with some being closer to the autonomous processes of the body and others being nearer creative centers. In analogy with outer space, inner space of consciousness is viewed to have three zones: the body (earth), the exchange processes (prana, atmosphere), and the inner sky (heavens). The number of devas is variously given, the most extravagant passages count 3.3 million. The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (3.9.1) remembers a hymn that praises 3306 of them, arguing there are 33 major deities, distributed in three groups of eleven among the three zones. All these devas are taken to embody the same light of consciousness. The mind consists of discrete agents, although it retains a unity.

Since each deva reflects primordial consciousness, one can access the mystery of consciousness through any specific deva. Thus there is a deva for reading and learning, one for recognition, one for friendship, one for generosity, and so on. Physics and the Vedas agree that reality is consistent only in its primordial, implicate form. The Vedas insist that speech and sense--associations cannot describe this reality completely. In quantum physics, use of ordinary logic leads to paradoxes such as the present can influence the past! At a less technical level we may ask: How do we reconcile the determinism of science to the subjective sense of free will? The modern discoveries that are based on a study of consciousness states and the deficits caused by lesions, stroke, injury, or surgery that disrupts the normal functioning of our senses and cognitions appears to uphold the Vedic view. For example, we have the case of alexia without agaphia, in other words, a patient who, due to injury or a stroke, is unable to read, yet able to write. These discoveries suggest that the mind is a complex structure of various localized functions held together by a unitary awareness.

To conclude, India has had a glorious past, but that, in itself, is no reason for us to do anything more than take notice. The more interesting reason for our fascination with Sanatana Dharma is the possibilities it offers to the modern man, curious to know the nature of his self. It is for this reason that we celebrate the tradition, and for this reason alone that this tradition will eventually triumph all over the world.

Note: For more information on the material in the essay, please see the following books:

1. O. Alvarez, Celestial Brides: A Study in Mythology and Archaeology. Stockbridge, 1978.
2. G. Feuerstein, The Yoga Tradition. Prescott, 1998.
3. G. Feuerstein, S. Kak, and D. Frawley, In Search of the Cradle of Civilization. Wheaton, Illinois, 1995.
4. D. Frawley, Ayurveda and the Mind. Twin Lakes, 1997.
5. S. Kak, The Astronomical Code of the Rgveda. New Delhi, 1994,2000.
6. A. Napier, Foreign Bodies: Performance, Art, and Symbolic Anthropology. Berkeley, 1992.
7. T.R.N. Rao and S. Kak, Computing Science in Ancient India. Lafayette, LA, 1998, Delhi, 2000.
8. H. Zimmer, Philosophies of India. New York, 1951.