Music Of The Spheres”: Fundamentals of Indian Cosmogony
Explore the Indian concept of cosmogony of Brahma Muhurtam, the moment of perfect balance before creation, and its parallels with Western science’s Big Bang theory. Delve into the Gayatri Mantra, its rhythms, and the ancient Indian dialectic of creation.
The basis of Indian cosmogony is its view of that perfect moment when there was nothing… neither night nor day, neither time nor space. It was a complete balance, very potent with everything, but nothing was perceivable. It was a complete stillness Indian cosmogony terms as Param Brahma, a deep consciousness with form or attribute. Neither “nothing” nor “anything”. And then something happened, which western science described as Big Bang in 1931. Thousands of years ago, Indian cosmogonists had termed this AUM
There is a word in the Sanskrit language: Brahma-Muhurtam. The infinitesimal nano second, or may be the micro-mini-nano second… The best analogy to explain this is as my tutor told me: “Throw a ball high up in the air. The force, or energy you have charged the ball will take it up higher and higher, till that energy is expended. Then gravitation will pull it downwards. But between the ball rising and coming back, there is that nanosecond when the ball is neither rising nor yet falling. At that point, the ball is in perfect balance. That MOMENT is what has been described as Brahma’s Time, or Brahma Muhurtam.
There is one important of caution. This term, although Brahma, is essentially a secular term. There is nothing Hindu about this science. It was what one kind of seers used at a time when there was nothing called Hinduism at all. Hinduism is a term that became fashionable much, much later, and especially gained rapid currency only under the British for their colonial goal of diving India into Moslems with The Other… the Hindu. For the British, it was a matter of political exigency, a tool for its divide and rule, which till now under the current political dispensation has been the same tool. So Brahma is a secular science term with any religious tag to it.
Till that time when perfect balance remained, and when there was everything in a potent consciousness but nothing was perceivable, the universe was a absolute void. Interestingly, that this Brahma Muhurtam was a secular concept comes through when western science described it thus:
On the Creation of the Universe)
“A non-physicist might see something like this: into a void, so absolute as to mock any human concept of emptiness, appeared a single point of raw potential. And at that very instant of the creation of this point, bearing all matter, all dimensions, all energy and all time, burst forth, spewing out its content. “At that instant of its origin, all matters and all forces were indistinguishable from each other.” John Boslough in “Stephen Hawking’s Universe”
Exactly the same as Indian cosmogonists have described. That is why the regret. The Indian rightists and leftists have both failed to grasp this. The rightists because their regrettable lack of intellect, and the leftists because of their regrettable lack of imagination. The question is this, what happened at that point? Boslough is not just correct but very pictorially described this: at that very instant of the creation of this point, bearing all matter, all dimensions, all energy and all time, burst forth, spewing out its content.
Western cosmogony called this the Big Bang. Bang represents a huge sound. Indian cosmogony is less dramatic, more aesthetic and far more rational. We have envisaged that there initially emerged a massive but subtle vibration. AUM, Since till then there were no solid objects at that moment, as nothing solid formed immediately, then this subtle sound vibration was unstruck. It was a self-emanated anaahad shabd Brahma. Ut us from this vibration that there emerged a great visualisation… The Gayatri.
This Gayatri, this Mother of all vibration, like everything that we see, hear, smell, touch or taste, was always there, and shall be there, for very simply put, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. For Gayatri is the essence of all the rhythms which all things past, present and future must abide by. The physical, perceivable world cannot escape Gayatri, for the physical world has been born because Gayatri was inbuilt in them.
This is what Albert Einstein had described as the “Music of the Spheres” in his quote: The fanatical atheists…are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional ‘opium of the people‘—cannot bear the music of the spheres.” (Walter Isaacson, (2007).“Einstein and Faith” Time 169 (April 5:Pg 47.)
I shall avoid here falling into any discussion on the metaphysical aspect of Gayatri. It is inherent in Indian science that physics and metaphysics are intertwined in any concept of formulation of the ancient sages. There are lots of such spiritual issues that are overgrowths on the body of the original Gayatri. There are spiritual benefits of uttering the Gayatri Mantra, But hose are not our concern.
The Gayatri says: Bhurbhuva swah tatsavitur varenyangbhargodevaswah dheemahi dhiyo yo nah prachodayat. The hymn had been visualised by Rhishi, or Sage Vishwamitra, of the age of the Rig Veda, and he had composed the Third Mandala of the Rig Veda, including the Gayatri. So, what does the Gyatri say? A study of the Gayatri is a must to understand ancient Indian cosmogony.
The mantra says, very simply put: Bhuh, bhuva swah, the world below the universe, the universe, and the existence above the universe, these are the three universes. (So Rib Veda had already contemplated the ide of the multiverse) We worship that enormous power of the Birth Giver (or Prasavita) who has created everything seeable and everything that exists. But dialectics is also inbuilt in Rig Veda for the Gayatri makes a clear distinction when it uses the word varenyang, or the beneficial energy. For the Veda recognises that any energy is not necessarily positive. That in the dialectic of creation, every force is matched by its opposite force, and positive energy is matched by ab equally powerful negative energy.
So, the Gayatri Mantra says that we prey to and wish to imbibe that positive energy that has created everything in all the universes. Most people misconstrue the Sanskrit word Savita, which is one of the several score of words meaning The Sun. but the Veda and Gyatri mantra visualises a massive energy that has created trillions of universes.
The Gayatri then lays out the seven rhythms whose interplay had caused the Creation. These rhythms are called Chhanda, and since they are all at the core of the mantra, Gayatri is thus called Chhanda Maata, the mother of all rhythms¸ So this is in brief Indian cosmogony. So what are these seven rhythms? Inherent as a part of the Divine Game of Brahma is expansiveness, or Vrihati. This is the basis of Creation: the Unmanifest Absolute (“At that instant of its origin, all matters and all forces were indistinguishable from each other.” – Boslough). Everything is in a seed form and from that state, it expands.
There is an apparently spiritual and devotional aspect to this cosmogony. This says that why did that Absolute decide to manifest into two, Param Brahma and Parama Prapkriti? The Sanatan Dharmi scholars insist that the Absolute did so because “It willed to play (Leela), and since there can be know play all by oneself, the Absolute decided to take two forms, and hence Prakriti and Purush, which again is a dialectic. The Param Purush is not a male, in the MAN sense. Nor is Parama Prakriti the WOMAN.
Param Purush is largely the Consciousness force, but that force is also there in Parama Prakriti, as is Parama Prakriti is there within the Purush as the Action force. This dialectical pattern of thought aggregation marks India’s entire ancient science research. As we have seen in the case of Gayatri mantra, that it speaks of imbibing the Positive energy of the Creator or Prasavita, or birth giver. That means ancient India sciences accepted that for every positive force, there is also a negative force. The law of opposites was always there in ancient Indian science.
It is another question that some may reject this concept of the Leela, or the Absolute’s desire to play as the reason behind why Creation started. But even if they reject that, the basic cosmogony of India remains steadfast on its feet.
Before moving on, we must quote a giant of modern western science, As Hans-Peter Duerr, Emeritus President of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, says: “Matter and energy are the two sides of the same coin; they are not two distinct entities at the subtlest level.” Trying to look at matter at its subtlest level for the last 35 years of his scientific pursuit, Hans-Peter realised “that there is no matter distinct from energy at that level. That vast omnipotent energy is the universal consciousness (or God)”. And he added for good measure: “Whenever I give a lecture on Quantum Physics, I feel I am talking about Vedanta.”
This is precisely what the Gayatri says. “We worship and desire to imbibe the beneficial aspects of that energy of the Eternally Luminescent One, who has given birth to the fourteen realms (to which we shall come shorty) that comprise the entire universe.”
(Up Next: Gayatri, Vrihati and Music of the Spheres)
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