Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

World-renowned Eng­lish the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist and cos­mol­o­gist Stephen Hawk­ing stat­ed in the pref­ace (March 31, 1993) to his book, Black Holes and Ba­by Uni­vers­es that, "I do not agree with the view that the uni­verse is a mys­tery, some­thing that one can have in­tu­ition about but nev­er ful­ly analyse or com­pre­hend." Hawk­ing be­lieved that if you un­der­stood how the uni­verse op­er­ates, you con­trolled it in a way.

Hawk­ing spent a lot of time work­ing on com­bin­ing gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty and quan­tum me­chan­ics in­to a con­sis­tent the­o­ry. One of his pro­pos­als was that both time and space are fi­nite in ex­tent, but they don't have any bound­ary or edge, much like the sur­face of the earth, but with two more di­men­sions.

The Earth's sur­face is fi­nite in area but it doesn't have any bound­ary. Hawk­ing's own ob­ser­va­tion was that in all his trav­els, he nev­er fell off the edge of the world. He reck­oned that if this pro­pos­al was cor­rect there would be no sin­gu­lar­i­ties, and the laws of sci­ence would hold every­where, in­clud­ing at the be­gin­ning of the uni­verse. "The way the uni­verse would be­gin would be de­ter­mined by the laws of sci­ence. I would have suc­ceed­ed in my am­bi­tion to dis­cov­er how the uni­verse be­gan. But I still don't know why it be­gan."

Un­like cos­mol­o­gists and oth­ers in the rel­e­vant re­search fields who are still search­ing for an­swers, Hin­dus be­lieve that ques­tions as to how and why the uni­verse be­gan have al­ready been an­swered in var­i­ous Hin­du scrip­tures.

For ex­am­ple, the sources of var­i­ous spir­i­tu­al and sci­en­tif­ic per­cep­tions can be traced to the Vedas. These scrip­tures are thou­sands of years old and it is amaz­ing to find in cer­tain hymns, an in­quiry in­to the cre­ation of the world.

The 129th Suk­ta of the 10th Book of Rig-Ve­da says in the be­gin­ning there was nei­ther be­ing (ex­is­tent) nor non-be­ing (non-ex­is­tent); there was no realm of air, no sky be­yond it; what cov­ered in, and where? And what gave shel­ter? Was wa­ter there, un­fath­omed depth of wa­ter?

It goes on to say that in the be­gin­ning one could not say with sure­ty about the im­mor­tal­i­ty or death, nor could one say about day or night. What­ev­er ex­ist­ed (or did not ex­ist) was void and form­less. The hymn raised some fun­da­men­tal ques­tions: Who ver­i­ly knows and who de­clares it; whence it was born and from whence comes this cre­ation and whence it first came in­to be­ing?

In the ear­li­est phas­es of Hin­duism, saints and sages (rishis and mun­ys) chant­ed and med­i­tat­ed up­on the Vedas to in­voke the di­vine pow­ers and un­der­stand the work­ings of the world. They med­i­tat­ed on the ideals be­ing com­mu­ni­cat­ed through mantras. As a re­sult of their spir­i­tu­al oral en­light­en­ment the Vedas be­came ac­ces­si­ble through their un­der­stand­ing and sub­se­quent trans­mis­sion (Srutis).

Hin­du saints and sages di­vined the process of cre­ation as be­ing time­less, fet­ter­less, bound­less, cycli­cal and in­fi­nite. The uni­verse was the medi­um through which the di­vine pre­sent­ed it­self.

Mov­ing along with the dis­cus­sion, it is im­por­tant to first un­der­stand that the process of cre­ation is premised on the fun­da­men­tal con­cept of ya­j­na. In the Eng­lish lan­guage, this word has been stat­ed to mean a sac­ri­fi­cial fire or an act of of­fer­ing obla­tions. In Trinidad, Hin­dus of­ten in­vite guests to a "ya­j­na" or the per­for­mance of Hin­du rit­u­als at their homes. But these ref­er­ences hard­ly ex­plain the deep­er mean­ing of the word.

Ya­j­na is syn­ony­mous with sac­ri­fice. Any act done with the in­ten­tion and knowl­edge for the ben­e­fit of a be­ing be­yond one's self-gain is con­sid­ered ya­j­na. When God un­der­took his cre­ative ac­tiv­i­ty which blos­somed in­to the form of a uni­verse, he per­formed the ul­ti­mate act of sac­ri­fice or ya­j­na it­self.

Lo­cal pun­dits of­ten chant vers­es of the Shuk­la Ya­jur Ve­da called the Pu­rush Suk­ta. These vers­es de­tail that the Supreme pro­ject­ed dif­fer­ent as­pects of the uni­verse from var­i­ous parts of his own body. From his eyes, the Supreme cre­at­ed the sun, from his mind, the moon, etc.

When Hin­dus per­form rit­u­als con­sist­ing of of­fer­ings of wa­ter, flow­ers, clar­i­fied but­ter (ghee), it sym­bol­izes the spir­it of ya­j­na in as much as these obla­tions are made with­out re­tain­ing even an io­ta for the per­former. Of­fer­ing obla­tions dur­ing pu­ja (prayers) in­to the sac­ri­fi­cial fire or fire of ya­j­na is a to­ken recre­ation of the ini­tial cos­mic phe­nom­e­non. In this way ya­j­na can be seen to ex­tend from the uni­ver­sal lev­el (cy­cle of cre­ation) to an in­di­vid­ual lev­el (where peo­ple per­form rit­u­als, etc).

Hin­dus of­ten wor­ship the im­age of Lord Vish­nu (re­ferred to in the Holy Trin­i­ty as the pre­serv­er) where he sleeps on a coiled ser­pent in a milky ocean. They al­so wor­ship Lord Shi­va (re­ferred to as the de­stroy­er) in the im­age of him per­form­ing the "Natara­ja" dance, of­ten re­ferred to as the Tan­da­va or Shi­va's cos­mic dance of cre­ation and de­struc­tion. Un­like mod­ern sci­ence which con­tin­ues to fall short in its de­lib­er­a­tions, Hin­du scrip­tures pro­vide a clear pic­ture of the en­tire process based on a be­lief in these supreme be­ings and an un­der­stand­ing of what they rep­re­sent.

To be con­tin­ued

Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha