Big Bang and the Bhagavad Gita

[Guest guest]

Namaste, Has anybody read the above book ? If yes, then any thoughts/comments ?

 

http://www.bhavans.info/store/bookdetail.asp?bid=30&bauth=R.+A.+S.+Kocha

 

Title: Big Bang and the Bhagavad Gita

Author: R. A. S. Kocha

 

regards,

Shailendra

 

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Namaste:

 

Honestly, I don't expect any affirmative response to your first

question. Several Indian authors have written books on similar

topics. Most of them try to imply that the modern scientific facts

can be found in the Vedic scriptures. Relatively speaking, Hindu

scriptures are more science based than the scriptures of other

religions. We have to be very careful while making any claims and

there are greater possibilities for exageration if emotion takes

control over the facts. Carl Sagon in the book, "Cosmos" did

acknowledge that the predictions stated in the Vedic scriptures come

close to the "Big Bang" theory.

 

Though I didn't read the book, the title of the book appears to be

somewhat misleading. The author has added the entire Bhagavad Gita as

a part of the book and the title just implies that the book contains

both Big Bang and Bhagavad Gita. From whatever little that I know,

Bhagavad Gita is a spiritual text and Veda Vyasa's goal was not

certainly to prove scientific facts through Gita.

 

I find the attached book review below quite useful (also objective)

in the context to your question.

 

Warmest regards,

 

Ram Chandran

 

===============================================

Book Review Vedic Physics

Raja Ram Mohan Roy

248 pp, paperback, 1999

Source:http://entropy.brneurosci.org/reviews/vedic-physics.html

Name of the Reviewer: T. J. Nelson (tjnelson

 

 

Of all the great ancient religions, only Hinduism gives an age of the

universe with numbers resembling those obtained by modern science.

According to the Bhagavad Gita, one kalpa or (12-hour) day of Brahma

lasts for 4.32 billion years. The Brahma lasts for 311.04 trillion

(3.1104x10^14) years overall, after which the universe is destroyed.

Hindu texts are very specific and precise in their description of the

relevant time intervals. They are also unique in their description of

the creation process and of forces of nature in often inanimate terms

or, at most, personified in a highly sophisticated symbolic

representation of inanimate forces.

The means by which the Hindus arrived at this information is equally

mysterious. The Hindu monks would purify their minds by depriving

themselves of food, and then meditate in silence, in effect inducing

a form of sensory deprivation. The belief was that in so doing,

sensory input from the outside world would be eliminated, and

information from the Universe would then become accessible.

 

Unfortunately, finding the original sources for these beliefs is

difficult because of the large amount of original material. Also,

most of these ancient writings are quite difficult to interpret, as

they are written in a poetic, symbolic language in which forces of

nature are personified, and they are full of obscure literary

allusions. The end result is that to a contemporary Westerner, these

works appear as mostly gibberish.

 

Thus is is no surprise that the Rig Veda, Upanishads, and Bhagavad

Gita are accompanied by an extensive commentary, and it should also

not be surprising that different commentators derive opposite

meanings from the same text. For instance, the gunas (three

properties of Prakriti or Nature) are described as fundamental forces

of matter in The Bhagavad Gita (as translated by S. Nikhilananda),

but as personality characteristics in The Principal Upanishads by S.

Radhakrishnan. Commentators often try to impose their own views on

the text. The editor of The Principal Upanishads, for example,

interprets each paragraph in terms of how similar it is to some

passage in the Bible or works by Aristotle and other Greek

philosophers.

 

The Rig Veda is generally regarded as the most obscure of the Hindu

writings, and consequently is the most misunderstood. Compounding

this is the fact that the Rig Veda is a little weak in biology. For

instance, one verse says that cows descended from horses, and goats

and sheep descended from cows. This is not even taught in Kansas.

 

However, even a cursory reading of the Upanishads, which elaborated

and explained the Rig Veda, will reveal that the Hindus had a

sophisticated concept of space and time. For example, Brahman is not

the name of a deity but is a term for the extended space-time

continuum which supposedly has attributes resembling a sort of

consciousness.

 

The Rig Veda is also full of statements like "emanating from the

unmanifest", suggesting that rather than being about cows and sheep

as it first appears, it is actually describing the ancient Hindu

cosmological beliefs. There is clearly some physics, or something

like it, in the Rig Veda. It is therefore reasonable to ask, as the

author does, whether any other beliefs in this work may resemble

theories and facts that have been arrived at scientifically. If so,

it would have great significance not only for understanding the

people of the Indus Valley region but, if the information is as

accurate as their chronology of the universe, may even provide ideas

of possible use as hypotheses worthy of scientific investigation.

 

On the other hand, it would be a mistake to jump in and start drawing

speculative parallels between Vedic texts and modern cosmology. To do

so would only discredit these misunderstood ancient writings further

and discourage future investigation of any such parallels. One only

has to look at the many fanciful interpretations of the so-called

prophet Nostradamus and his nonsensical prophesies to find an example

of what can result. Many of the post-Vedic interpreters similarly

came up with nonsensical, fanciful, and mutually contradictory

interpretations of the Veda. The author of Vedic Physics continues in

that tradition.

 

For example, the verse "Three fourths of the Purusha [the Conscious

Principle] is above, his one fourth is born again and again. Then he

covered them all, those who eat, and those who don't" would seem to

have something to do with reincarnation and possibly something

biological. But the author informs us, with no convincing reason,

that 'eating' in fact refers to a transformation of matter into

energy in the Big Bang, and that this insight is confirmed since the

subsequent verse refers to Virata [Purusha] "dividing after being

born". Similarly, "Purusha ... is beyond also in ten-fingered form"

is interpreted to mean that the Purusha is actually a god who is

outside the universe in a 10-dimensional space, an implausible

interpretation at best. The book continues relentlessly in this vein,

interpreting Varuna (the name of a god) as 'electrons', Pasumedha

(animal sacrifice) as 'quark confinement' and so on, ultimately

culminating in more and more fanciful attempts to relate magnetic

monopoles, neutrinos, and even gamma-ray bursts to the Rig Veda.

 

A few of the interpretations in the book are somewhat plausible, such

as the interpretation of a growing golden egg as a fiery big bang.

But most are clearly nothing more than simplistic overinterpretations

of the Vedic scriptures.

 

The book completely overlooks the more interesting questions like the

meaning of manifest/unmanifest, and seems to have only the most

superficial understanding of Hindu metaphysics. Instead, the book

advocates a simplistic one-to-one substitution of Vedic words for

popular concepts from physics. In so doing, the book does a grave

disservice to this great historical work, a disservice to historians

and scholars who tried to understand the Rig Veda, and a disservice

to physics, and, worse, is not even good science fiction. I must

admit that after reading about two thirds of this book, I tossed it

in the trash and threw banana peels and coffee grounds on it and

stamped on it. (OK, I didn't really do this, but I wanted to).

Although Hinduism is a fascinating religion, full of suggestions

about a deeper reality, anyone seeking an understanding of its

progenitor work, the cryptic and mysterious Rig Veda, will have to

look elsewhere.

 

====================================

advaitin, Shailendra Bhatnagar

<bhatnagar_shailendra> wrote:

> Namaste, Has anybody read the above book ? If yes, then any

thoughts/comments ?

>

> http://www.bhavans.info/store/bookdetail.asp?

bid=30&bauth=R.+A.+S.+Kocha

>

> Title: Big Bang and the Bhagavad Gita

> Author: R. A. S. Kocha

>

> regards,

> Shailendra

>

[Guest guest]

i have considered this matter & though not a scientist i do feel

this to be true:

 

na tv evaham jatu nasam

na tvam neme janadhipah

na caiva na bhavisyamah

sarve vayam atah param

 

"Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these

kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be."

 

which, to my way of thinking, discounts the big bang theory.

 

om peace!..

rudrani

[Guest guest]

advaitin, "rudrani" <rudra_yogini> wrote:

>

>

> i have considered this matter & though not a scientist i do feel

> this to be true:

>

> na tv evaham jatu nasam

> na tvam neme janadhipah

> na caiva na bhavisyamah

> sarve vayam atah param

>

>

Namaste R-ji,

 

I beg to differ with you on this. Whether the universe manifested

everywhere at the same instant or was a big bang is academic really.

First of all we are talking in illusion and secondly you aren't

taking into account pralaya and mahapralaya, where the universes are

in potential. So still existing, along with all the jivas and

samskaras, in the unified potential of Saguna

Brahman..........ONS..Tony.

[Guest guest]

Tony wrote [[Whether the universe manifested everywhere at the same

instant or was a big bang is academic really.]]

** i agree, the conversation is more logical than chronological.

nothing to disagree w/actually, its just a personal opinion that

the 'universe' & 'time' & 'space' have always existed & always

will. whether 'it' or any of 'it' was created millions of years ago

or yesterday matters not.

 

frankly, im not interested in cosmology or the process of creation

b/c i see all such endeavors as symbolic & mythical. even the words

used are nothing but vibrations we have applied in order to grasp

concepts beyond our conscious reality.

 

om peace!..

rudrani