Astrophysics and Ramayana

 

Two pages from two books illustrates the soul of Astrophysics and Indian philosophy. Left side is a page from "Black Holes and the Universe" by Igor Novikov and right side is a page from "Sita" by Devdutt Pattanaik. 

We can easily appreciate (not necessarily understand) the mind blowing equations in astrophysics and concepts like, non-euclidean space, closed universe, finite space with no boundaries etc. We are ready to ridicule questions like "Where this space exist?". Has anyone thought that this question is "topologically" same as "Who is the creator of God?". When we talk about "Kurma" incarnation of Vishnu, it is often considered stupid to invoke the world from ocean. But we don't have any hesitation to believe in the ocean of neutrinos existed nowhere.

When I almost finished reading the first book (Black holes ... ) and took the second (Sita), one interesting thought came to my mind. Astrophysics talks about closed universe, and Indian Philosophy talks about Cyclic Time. Are they not same concepts? As per Einstein,"Time is an illusion" and modern science consider time as another dimension of space. When we say time is cyclic, it automatically implies Space is closed. From a moving bus, we can either say trees are moving or bus is moving. Theory of relativity helps us to believe both are correct. Let me extend this to the concept of time. In one viewpoint, we can hold our consciousness still and imagine that the surroundings/universe is changing/evolving. In other viewpoint, we can imagine that the consciousness is moving while unraveling a still Universe. This is like a video player reading data from a tape. None of the data is newly created. Entire data exist always in the tape and the sensor is sensing one incident at a time. We can consider the path traced by our consciousness as time. When Astrophysics tells Space is Closed in first viewpoint, it is same as telling Time is Cyclic in second viewpoint.

It is true, that there is no experimental proof for many of these great thoughts. What about the theories in modern science? Many times the prediction by theories are proved much later. One important thing to remember is that the Universe is not following any theories. We are creating theories to explain the Universe. Imagine how funny it will be, if Universe has to do all complex calculations before moving every photon and colliding particles.