VEDIC PHYSICS: Scientific Origin of Hinduism

The Vedas can be read at many levels, it is said. Those who have heard the chanting of the Vedas by trained priests will be overwhelmed by the sounds that transport one to a different world. You may not know enough Sanskrit to understand a word but the combination of sounds will make your body a tuning fork resonating to some cosmic sounds. You can read some good translations and find in the Vedas an uplifting philosophy and a beautiful metaphysic.

What it is, says Dr. Roy of the University of Toronto, is a treatise on cosmology, and it challenges some of the hypotheses that modern physicists have come up with till now about the nature and size of the universe. The Rig Veda is a book of science, and the only reason that we have not been able to understand the science in it is because of the layers of ignorance and mis-interpretations that have accumulated over the millenia, says Roy in this intriguing book, Vedic Physics: Scientific Origin of Hinduism (1999).

The sages considered the universe to be made of "fluid" (not as fluid as in water but "the flow of matter particles"), and that it was rotating. The rotation's effect on this spherical volume of fluid makes it take the shape of a spheroid (the shape of an egg). In the standard Big Bang model the universe is not rotating but its constituents are. The Big Bang theory has been challenged, for example, by those proposing a steady state model, and the book provides quick but precise summaries of those opposing theories. The Big Bang model also proposes that the mass-energy before the universe came into being was concentrated at a single point. The Vedas instead tell us that in the beginning there was no mass-energy. It was a complete void. Ed Tyron in 1973 put forward a theory that makes the same argument. The Vedic sages considered the creation of mass-energy to be continuous and that it was being created on the surface of the universe. If you wonder how a void can have a surface Roy has some fascinating explanations. In the Vedic model the universe has a center which is at absolute rest. There is an axis of the universe passing through this center around which the universe is rotating. Space can be divided into two, manifested and unmanifested, and the creation of matter and antimatter will continue as long as the universe is expanding. While in the Big Bang model the universe can be open or closed, the Vedic model suggests differently. And the cyclic model proposed by scientists, that is the universe will expand and contract continuously is also modified in the Vedic model. It suggests that each cycle is independent of the other and there is no limitation on how many cycles there can be. Roy supports all his claims by providing the specific location of the verse in the scriptures. The verses have been translated into English, and the scientific meaning of the verse is explained by dissecting the words and providing other supporting evidence from elsewhere in the Vedas.

"Roy's basic premise is that the mind ­ by analysis, reflection on everyday phenomena, and grasping the nature of its own self ­ can discover a considerable amount of science, and this is what the Vedic rishis did.... Roy's method goes counter to the orthodoxy that outer knowledge cannot be discovered by an analysis of the inner. But there is accumulating evidence from cognitive science and biology that the inner and the outer are connected. For example, biological systems are equipped with clocks tuned to the motions of the sun, the moon, and other astronomical phenomena. Indian thinkers have always insisted on the presence of such connections, claiming that this is how the mind is able to know the physical world. In Vedic thought this is expressed by the notion of 'bandhu' that connect the biological, the terrestrial, and the astronomical.... The Vedic focus on mind and consciousness is paralleled by the central place of the observer in modern physics. In quantum mechanics the state changes in an abrupt fashion when an observation is made and this has prompted some physicists to claim that consciousness should be the primary category of the universe, distinct from physical matter" (p. xiii, xiv).

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