Brahman is eternal and unchanging while Shakti is eternal and always changing.

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"jagbir singh" <adishakti_org Sat Aug 28, 2004 8:22 am The shortest distance to the Mother is within yourself.> > The Devi of the Devi Mahatmyam came to us in Sanskrit that was > written by Aryan peoples, who worshiped masculine deities. They had > poured into India from the north, over the mountains, conquering, > and eventually living off, the dark peoples who grew crops there. > The Devi belonged not to the

invaders but to the growers of crops. > > Mystics from each of these two traditions report they have glimpsed > behind the veil of their deities' human forms and personalities, a > formless impersonal Godhead. Aryan mystics called that Godhead > Brahman. Another name is Satchidananda, which is a linking up of > three Sanskrit words meaning Existence-Knowledge-Bliss that > describes as nearly as possible their understanding of Brahman. And > similarly some followers of the Devi have encountered behind the > Mother's form and personality, a formless, impersonal Godhead they > named Shakti. > > Descriptions of Shakti and Brahman are exactly the same—except in > one particular. Brahman is eternal and unchanging while Shakti is > eternal and always changing. The two actually are one, Ramakrishna > said, "like fire and its power to burn." According to East Indian > cosmology

Shakti's creative force spews out and develops this > universe, which after an "age" draws back into itself to rest in the > blissful, unchanging being of Brahman, only to spew out again > through Shakti's restless power. This model is not so different from > the theoretical model, proposed by some contemporary physicists, > which depicts the universe exploding from a tiny and > incomprehensibly dense core of existence to expand farther and > farther until finally, drawn by gravitational pull, it falls back > upon itself into a tiny and incomprehensibly dense core of > existence, which will once again explode and expand. >

Feature Article

May 2004 issue

COSMOLOGY

The Myth of the Beginning of Time

String theory suggests that the big bang was not the origin of the universe but simply the outcome of a preexisting state

By Gabriele Veneziano

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Image: ALFRED T. KAMAJIAN

Sidebar: Overview/String Cosmology

Was the big bang really the beginning of time? Or did the universe exist before then? Such a question seemed almost blasphemous only a decade ago. Most cosmologists insisted that it simply made no sense--that to contemplate a time before the big bang was like asking for directions to a place north of the North Pole. But developments in theoretical physics, especially the rise of string theory, have changed their perspective. The pre-bang universe has become the latest frontier of cosmology.

The new willingness to consider what might have happened before the bang is the latest swing of an intellectual pendulum that has rocked back and forth for millennia. In one form or another, the issue of the ultimate beginning has engaged philosophers and theologians in nearly every culture. It is entwined with a grand set of concerns, one famously encapsulated in an 1897 painting by Paul Gauguin: D'ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous? "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" The piece depicts the cycle of birth, life and death--origin, identity and destiny for each individual--and these personal concerns connect directly to cosmic ones. We can trace our lineage back through the generations, back through our animal ancestors, to early forms of life and protolife, to the elements synthesized in the primordial universe, to the amorphous energy deposited in space before that. Does our family tree extend forever backward?

Or do its roots terminate? Is the cosmos as impermanent as we are?

 

The ancient Greeks debated the origin of time fiercely. Aristotle, taking the no-beginning side, invoked the principle that out of nothing, nothing comes. If the universe could never have gone from nothingness to somethingness, it must always have existed. For this and other reasons, time must stretch eternally into the past and future. Christian theologians tended to take the opposite point of view. Augustine contended that God exists outside of space and time, able to bring these constructs into existence as surely as he could forge other aspects of our world. When asked, "What was God doing before he created the world?" Augustine answered, "Time itself being part of God's creation, there was simply no before!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image: SAMUEL VELASCO

Sidebar: Two Views of the Beginning

 

 

Strings abhor infinity. They cannot collapse to an infinitesimal point, so they avoid the paradoxes that collapse would entail.

 

 

Einstein's general theory of relativity led modern cosmologists to much the same conclusion. The theory holds that space and time are soft, malleable entities. On the largest scales, space is naturally dynamic, expanding or contracting over time, carrying matter like driftwood on the tide. Astronomers confirmed in the 1920s that our universe is currently expanding: distant galaxies move apart from one another. One consequence, as physicists Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose proved in the 1960s, is that time cannot extend back indefinitely. As you play cosmic history backward in time, the galaxies all come together to a single infinitesimal point, known as a singularity--almost as if they were descending into a black hole. Each galaxy or its precursor is squeezed down to zero size. Quantities such as density, temperature and spacetime curvature become infinite. The singularity is the ultimate cataclysm, beyond which our cosmic ancestry cannot extend.

Strange Coincidence The unavoidable singularity poses serious problems for cosmologists. In particular, it sits uneasily with the high degree of homogeneity and isotropy that the universe exhibits on large scales. For the cosmos to look broadly the same everywhere, some kind of communication had to pass among distant regions of space, coordinating their properties. But the idea of such communication contradicts the old cosmological paradigm.

To be specific, consider what has happened over the 13.7 billion years since the release of the cosmic microwave background radiation. The distance between galaxies has grown by a factor of about 1,000 (because of the expansion), while the radius of the observable universe has grown by the much larger factor of about 100,000 (because light outpaces the expansion). We see parts of the universe today that we could not have seen 13.7 billion years ago. Indeed, this is the first time in cosmic history that light from the most distant galaxies has reached the Milky Way. ...

So, when did time begin? Science does not have a conclusive answer yet, but at least two potentially testable theories plausibly hold that the universe--and therefore time--existed well before the big bang. If either scenario is right, the cosmos has always been in existence and, even if it recollapses one day, will never end.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00042F0D-1A0E-1085-94F483414B7F0000

 

GABRIELE VENEZIANO, a theoretical physicist at CERN, was the father of string theory in the late 1960s--an accomplishment for which he received this year's Heineman Prize of the American Physical Society and the American Institute of Physics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

 

 

 

 

 

“Science is not truth. Today it might appear, tomorrow it disappears. Today you may think it is correct, but every hypotheses is challenged, every law is challenged. That's no law!”Shri Mataji, Brahmapuri, India,December 29, 1989

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

 

 

 

 

 

“But to begin with, if I say before starting all this creation, who was created first, it is most interesting and may not be very congenial to the mind of a scientist. It is much beyond science I am talking now, that much before anything was created on this Earth.”

H. H. Mataji, Gandhi Bhawan, Delhi University in Feb. 1979.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi

 

 

 

 

 

“This is meta-modern science (of Spirit), above modern science. But do we who are Indians know we have this heritage of ours? We believe more in the English language and knowledge. We should believe in our own culture and our own knowledge. Sahaja Yoga is very ancient. Nanak has said, `Sahaja samadhi lago.' Every saint has described it. Spirit is what we have to be. That's the ultimate goal of our life. All the rest of them fall in line, and that's what we have got from every scripture, from every incarnation, from

everywhere. Let us now just think that. Let us become the Spirit and then let us become a realized soul, a master.”

Shri Mataji, Madras Public Program, December 7, 1991