Creation

Hinduism is the only religion that propounds the idea of life-cycles of the universe. It suggests that the universe undergoes an infinite number of deaths and rebirths. As in modern physics, Hindu cosmology envisaged the universe as having a cyclical nature. The end of each kalpa brought about by Shiva's dance is also the beginning of the next. Rebirth follows destruction.

Hinduism, according to Carl Sagan, in his book, Cosmos wrote:

"... is the only religion in which the time scales correspond... to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of the Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang" 

Long before Aryabhata (6th century) came up with this awesome achievement, apparently there was a mythological angle to this as well -- it becomes clear when one looks at the following translation of Bhagavad Gita (part VIII, lines 16 and 17), 

"All the planets of the universe, from the most evolved to the most base, are places of suffering, where birth and death takes place. But for the soul that reaches my Kingdom, O son of Kunti, there is no more reincarnation. One day of Brahma is worth a thousand of the ages [yuga] known to humankind; as is each night." 

Thus each kalpa is worth one day in the life of Brahma, the God of creation. In other words, the four ages of the mahayuga must be repeated a thousand times to make a "day ot Brahma", a unit of time that is the equivalent of 4.32 billion human years, doubling which one gets 8.64 billion years for a Brahma day and night. This was later theorized (possibly independently) by Aryabhata in the 6th century. The cyclic nature of this analysis suggests a universe that is expanding to be followed by contraction... a cosmos without end. This, according to modern physicists is not an impossibility. 

(source: Astronomy and Mathematics in Ancient India).  Watch Carl Sagan and Hindu cosmology – video

Dr. Sagan in his book Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science, remarks:

"Immanuel Velikovsky (the author of Earth in Upheaval) in his book Worlds in Collision, notes that the idea of four ancient ages terminated by catastrophe is common to Indian as well as to Western sacred writing. 

However, in the Bhagavad Gita and in the Vedas, widely divergent numbers of such ages, including an infinity of them, are given; but, more interesting, the duration of the ages between major catastrophes is specified as billions of years. .. "

"The idea that scientists or theologians, with our present still puny understanding of this vast and awesome cosmos, can comprehend the origins of the universe is only a little less silly than the idea that Mesopotamian astronomers of 3,000 years ago – from whom the ancient Hebrews borrowed, during the Babylonian captivity, the cosmological accounts in the first chapter of Genesis – could have understood the origins of the universe. We simply do not know.

The Hindu holy book, the Rig Veda (X:129), has a much more realistic view of the matter: 

“Who knows for certain? Who shall here declare it?
Whence was it born, whence came creation?
The gods are later than this world’s formation;
Who then can know the origins of the world?
None knows whence creation arose;
And whether he has or has not made it;
He who surveys it from the lofty skies,
Only he knows- or perhaps he knows not."

(source: Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science - By Carl Sagan   p. 106 - 137).

Hinduism is not a single religion, rather it is a multifaceted matrix of beliefs, philosophies, practices, myths and epics. Within this matrix there are many myths of cosmogenesis. The Sanskrit word for creation is srishti, which means projecting a gross thing from a subtle substance. Srishti does not mean bringing out existence from non-existence or creating something from nothing. Creation implies something arising from nothing, or non-existence becoming existence. Hindus declare that non-existence can never be the source of creation. Thus, the universe is more accurately said to be the projection of the Supreme Being rather than a creation. 

To the Vedic sages, creation indicated that point before which there was no Creator, the line between indefinable nothingness and something delineated by attributes and function, at least. Like the moment before the Big Bang Theory. These concepts preoccupy high wisdom, the Truth far removed from mere religion. The Bible begins with the Creation. Before the Creation, however, there was the Creator, but does even He know what was there before He existed ?

Long before such philosophical questions occurred to other historical peoples, Vedism posited the existence of something more ultimate than the one God. Whatever must have created Him. That is presuming the absolute and basic reality. Or is it?  

Hymn 129 of the Rig Veda speaks: 

Hymn 109 says: " Then neither Being nor not-Being existed, neither atmosphere, nor the firmament, nor what is above it . . . The One breathed windless by its own power. Nought else but this existed then.

In the beginning was darkness swathed in darkness: all this was but unmanifested water. Whatever was, that One coming into being, hidden by the void, was generated by the power of heat.

In the beginning desire which was the first seed of mind overcovered it. Wise seers, searching in their hearts, found the bond of Being in Not-Being . . ."    (Rig Veda - translated by Ralph Griffith  575 - 6).

In this hymn the One, may refer to the creator god Brahma, his breathing and desire bring the world into existence. Before this was a void which can be described only by a paradox, Being nor Not-Being.

Creation accounts in the Vedas speak of a cosmic egg or embryo from which " the lord of creation" was born as the great oceans heated up. But later hymns were increasingly skeptical of such symbolism; the tenth book of the Rig Veda includes a verse asking,

 "Who truly knows, who could here declare when was born, whence comes this creation?' 

Cyclic Creation 

In one of the story of The Upanishads, referred to by Joseph Campbell in his series of interviews with Bill Moyers, Brahma is the creative force behind a series of universes:

Brahma sits on a lotus, the symbol of divine energy and divine grace. The lotus grows from the navel of Vishnu. who is the sleeping god, whose dream is the universe. . . . Brahma opens his eyes and a world come into being . . . Brahma closes his eyes, and a world goes out of being. (Campbell 63)

This story is similar to some modern ideas on the creation of the universe in continuous cycle, like the  one proposed by John Wheeler, all constants and laws of previous cycles are lost at the end of the contracting phase, and new universes can be created in an infinite number of cycles. 

(Artwork courtesy of The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International, Inc. www.krishna.com).

Princeton University’s Paul Steinhardt and Cambridge University’s Neil Turok, have recently developed The Cyclical Model. 

They have just fired their latest volley at that belief, saying there could be a timeless cycle of expansion and contraction. It’s an idea as old as Hinduism, updated for the 21st century. The theorists acknowledge that their cyclic concept draws upon religious and scientific ideas going back for millennia — echoing the "oscillating universe" model that was in vogue in the 1930s, as well as the Hindu belief that the universe has no beginning or end, but follows a cosmic cycle of creation and dissolution.

(source: Questioning the Big Bang -  msnbcnews.com).

(source: Astronomy and Mathematics in Ancient India). 

(Refer to Visions of the End of the World - By Dr. Subhash Kak - sulekha.com).

For more refer to The Infinitesimal Calculus: How and Why it Was Imported into Europe - By C. K. Raju and 
Computers, mathematics education, and the alternative epistemology of the calculus in the Yuktibhâsâ  - By C. K. Raju

Continuous Creation

Another view of creation expressed in Hindu literature is the idea that being is eternal. The universe was not created, it will not be destroyed. It simply is. This selection from the second teaching of the Bhagavad-Gita, speaks of this type of creation:

"Indestructible is the presence that pervades all this; no one can destroy this unchanging reality. It is not born, it does not die; having been, it will never not be; unborn, enduring, constant, and primordial, it is not killed when the body is killed." 

The beauty as well as the horror of this ground of being is revealed to Arjuna later in the Gita when Krishna reveals his true form as the god Vishnu. Vishnu is usually referred to as the preserver, the background behind all being. Stephen Hawking in describing his mathematical model of the universe has used a similar description.

Whereas in Western religions a creator god precedes man and the universe, the Hindu gods are preceded by creation; the origin of the world is envisaged not so much as an act of creation but as one of organization, the making of order out of chaos. The universe is often said to be born from the sacred syllable Om, or from an inert void in which " there was neither being nor non-being ... death nor non-death", a single principle from which emerged the diversity of life. From this void desire was born, and from desire came humans, gods and creation."

(Note: For more on yugas, refer to One Cosmic Day of Creator Brahma. Refer to A Map of Sacred Stories of the Ancient World  - Contributed to this site by Dom Sturiale of Sydney, Australia.  Refer to The World of Myth - By Ramesh N Rao - sulekha.com).

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For many thousands of years, it is argued, the mystics have had a cosmological and epistemological view of things that the Western world is just beginning to understand. Cosmologically, Western science has understood only recently that the universe is extremely old. In 1965 the temperature of the universe was measured for the first time, resulting in our present estimate of the age of the universe as 15 billion years old. In the ancient literature of the India one does not, of course, find such precise figures. Instead there are analogies such as the following. Imagine an immortal eagle flying over the Himalayas only once every 1,000 years; it carries a feather in its beak and each time it passes, it lightly brushes the tops of the gigantic mountain peaks. The amount of time it would take the eagle to completely erode the mighty Himalayas is said to be the age of the present manifestation of the universe. Such a conception of time, which predates modern science by thousands of years, is thought to be remarkable, especially when it is compared to the slow realization of Western science and religion to the possibility of a less humanlike time scale.

Eastern mysticism is also consistent with the results of quantum physics. The mystics have always rejected the idea of a hidden clocklike mechanism, sitting out there, independent of human observation. The number one truth is that reality does not consist of separate things, but is an indescribable, interconnected oneness. Each object of our normal experience is seen to be but a brief disturbance of a universal ocean of existence. Maya is the illusion that the phenomenal world of separate objects and people is the only reality. For the mystics this manifestation is real, but it is a fleeting reality; it is a mistake, although a natural one, to believe that maya represents a fundamental reality. Each person, each physical object, from the perspective of eternity is like a brief, disturbed drop of water from an unbounded ocean. The goal of enlightenment is to understand this--more precisely, to experience this: to see intuitively that the distinction between me and the universe is a false dichotomy. The distinction between consciousness and physical matter, between mind and body, is the result of an unenlightened perspective.

Maya (Sanskrit: "illusion") is a fundamental concept in Hindu philosophy, notably, in the Advaita (Non-dualist) school of the orthodox system of Vedanta. Maya denotes the power of wizardry with which a God can make human beings believe in what turns out to be an illusion; by extension it later came to mean the powerful force that creates the cosmic illusion that the phenomenal world is real.

Maya, as per Hindu thought, is illusion, and what mankind understands to be reality is in fact the dream of Brahma. Brahma is the creator and great magician who dreams the universe into being. The dream itself is maintained by Vishnu, the Preserver, who uses maya to spin the complex web that we know as reality. It is not that the world itself is an illusion, only our perception of it. Whereas we suppose the universe to be made up of a multitude of objects, structures and events, the theory of maya asserts that all things are one. Rational categories are mere fabrications of the human mind and have no ultimate reality.

In much of Hindu thought maya is illusion, and what humankind understands to be reality is in fact the dream of Brahma. He is the creator god and great magician who dreams the universe into being. The dream itself is maintained by Lord Vishnu, the Preserver, who uses maya to spin the complex web that we know as reality. It is not that the world itself is an illusion, only our perception of it. Whereas we suppose the universe to be made up of a multitude of objects, structures and events, the theory of maya asserts that all things are one. Rational categories are mere fabrications of the human mind and have no ultimate reality.

The symbol is that of Ananta, the great Adisesha of infinity and eternity, which is always represented, coiled up in a horizontal figure of 8 just like the leminiscate. 

Lord Vishnu is said to rest in the coils of Ananta, the great serpent of Infinity, while he waits for the universe to recreate itself.

***

Modern Indian spiritual teachers assert that if the West had followed the Greek philosopher Heraclitus rather than Plato, the history of ideas would be very different and the concept of maya would be central to Western as well as to Eastern thought. Although Plato's teaching resembles maya when he writes that "the visible world is a pale shadow of a true reality beyond", he believed that each aspect of the world had a separate, distinct identity. Heraclitus posited instead a theory which was based on the assumption of the inseparable interconnectedness of the universe. His theory of Becoming asserts that all things are in a state of constant flux; always in the process of becoming something else. This hypothesis is echoed today, some 2,500 years later, by Chaos Theory, which the American science writer James Gleick defined as "the science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being".

Maya is thus that cosmic force that presents the infinite Brahman (the supreme being) as the finite phenomenal world. Maya is reflected on the individual level by human ignorance (ajñana) of the real nature of the self, which man has mistaken for the empirical ego but which is in reality identical with Brahman.

So why does all this worldly illusion exist? Ramakrishna called the world, "The Great Play of the Mother of the World." This is the "play" of Matter--the material world. It is somewhat like a stage play. We are all creatures of spirit with various coatings of matter hiding the spirit from the light. As we act out our Karmic roles in this great play, we remove the coatings of matter and release the light within us. The more light we accumulate within us, the more we can see the light hidden in other people and things. In reality, the whole world play exists for us to seek God Consciousness. All people are either striving toward the light or hiding from it. Those who are hiding are caught up in the Maya.

So, everything which has existence, everything in the phenomenal world is Maya. It is safe to say that "Everything is Maya." How does that affect us in our daily life? It affects the choices we make and therefore the Karma we make for ourselves as a result of those choices. So how should we deal with the Maya of existence? We should try to look for the Reality behind the veils of Maya. Primal Energy is the Infinite Transcendental Essence which permeates all existence. It is like Infinity in manifestation, if such a thing were possible. But to carry this analogy further where it is more understandable, we can best see everything in the universe as a differentiation or gradation of Primal Energy. 

Thus, at the root of all existence--all Maya--is Primal Energy. Primal Energy is also the Great Aum, "The Word," or even God, if you will. Thus, when Hindus clasp their hands together and bow towards each other, they are saying, in effect, "The God within me greets the God within you."

Water of Illusion

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus used a river as an analogy for his Theory of Becoming, teaching that one cannot step into the same river twice. Maya, too, is often associated with water, the medium that forever changes as it flows from place to place. Water is often a symbol and an agent of illusion. When Lord Vishnu is compelled to lift the veils of maya for the benefit of his followers, water is never far away. 

A well-known Hindu parable tells of a sage (Narada)  who underwent such rigorous penance that he felt entitled to demand fro Lord Vishnu the secret of maya. The god responded by ordering the mortal to dive into a nearby river. When the sage emerged, he did so as a woman, oblivious of her former existence. After a lifetime of success and failure, happiness and tragedy, she finally threw herself in despair onto the funeral pyre of her husband who had been murdered. The fire was instantly quenched by water. The sage regained his former body, and in that moment Lord Vishnu appeared. " This is Maya," he said, and the sage came to understand the nature of illusion and the workings of the universe. 

(Refer to Visions of the End of the World - By Dr. Subhash Kak - sulekha.com). Refer to A Map of Sacred Stories of the Ancient World  - Contributed to this site by Dom Sturiale of Sydney, Australia. Refer to The World of Myth - By Ramesh N Rao - sulekha.com).

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Churning of the Milky Ocean or Samudra-Manthana 

In this great story of Samudra-Manthana, the Devas and the Asuras, the bright and the dark powers, both combined to churn the milky ocean to obtain the elixir of immortality.  We do not have the absolute dichotomy of good and evil that is there in the Semitic traditions; the bright and dark powers, the Devas and the Asuras, are, in fact, related within the whole theory of duality.  Promising them a share, they invited the demons (Asuras) to take the tail of the serpent Vasuki, wrapped about the giant churning pole like a rope. The pole was fixed to the bottom of the ocean and the waves it made in twisting one way and the other way threatened to destroy the three worlds. Lord Vishnu incarnated himself as a tortoise Kurma, taking the pole on his back to prevent the commotion. Glorious treasures emerged from the churned milk: Kamadhenu, the all-giving cow; Kalpavrksa, the wish-fulfilling tree; Accaisrava, the divine horse; Airavata, the divine elephant; Mahalaxshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity. These and other great gifts appeared and were happily divided between Asuras and Devas. The ultimate objective was the pot of ambrosia, the elixir of immortality, the amrta kalasa. 

Suddenly,  a  terrible poison the came forth. Lord Shiva, the great primal divinity, aloof from avarice and materialism of the Devas and Asuras, appeared. He collected the poison in a cup, and as he drank it his throat turned blue, hence one of the names of Shiva is nilakantha, the blue-throated one.

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Shiva Natarja (Cosmic Dance)

Throughout southern India, Lord Shiva is worshipped as Shiva Nataraja, Lord of the Dance. In the words of Ananda Coormaraswamy, a pioneering Hindu philosopher and historian of Indian art, Shiva's dance is the "clearest image of the activity of God which any art or religion can boast." The image of Shiva as Nataraj is indelibly stitched into the Indian  imagination.  

The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another’.

Lord Shiva, the cosmic dancer - an image that now stands in the plaza of the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva. Hinduism the only religion whose time-scale for the universe matches the billions of years documented by modern science.

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According to Sir Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), leading English Sculptor. After studying with Rodin in Paris, he revolted against the ornate and pretty in art, producing bold, often harsh and massive forms in stone and bronze. has written about Shiva Nataraja:  

"Shiva dances, creating the world and destroying it, his large rhythms conjure up vast aeons of time, and his movements have a relentless magical power of incantation. Our European allegories are banal and pointless by comparison with these profound works, devoid of the trappings of symbolism, concentrating on the essential, the essentially plastic." 

(source: Let There Be Sculpture - By Sir Jacob Epstein  1942 p. 193).

The late scientist, Carl Sagan, in his book, Cosmos  asserts that the Dance of Nataraja (Tandava) signifies the cycle of evolution and destruction of the cosmic universe (Big Bang Theory).

"It is the clearest image of the activity of God which any art or religion can boast of." Modern physics has shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of all living creatures, but also the very essence of inorganic matter. "

For modern physicists, then, Shiva's dance is the dance of subatomic matter. Hundreds of years ago, Indian artist created visual images of dancing Shiva's in a beautiful series of bronzes. Today, physicist have used the most advanced technology to portray the pattern of the cosmic dance. Thus, the metaphor of the cosmic dance unifies, ancient religious art and modern physics. 

Shiva's dance is a symbol of the unity and rhythm of existence. The unending, dynamic process of creation and destruction is expressed in the energetic posture of Shiva. He dances in a ring of fire that refers to the life-death process of the universe. Everything is subject to continual change, as energy constantly assumes new forms in the "play" (lila) of creation, except the god himself whose dance is immutable and absolute. The pictorial allegory of Nataraja indicates the so-called "five acts" of the deity: the creation of the universe, its sustenance in space, its final dissolution at the end of the cycle of four world ages (yugas), the concealment of the nature of the godhead, and the bestowal of true knowledge. 

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) first prime minister of free India, was more than a deeply moral human being. He yearned for spiritual light. He was particularly drawn to Swami Vivekananda and the Sri Ramakrishna Ashram. In his book - A Discovery of India he wrote:

"The statue of Nataraja (dance pose of Lord Shiva) is a well known example for the artistic, scientific and philosophical significance of Hinduism."

(source: A Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru  p. 214).

Shiva's dance is a symbol of the unity and rhythm of existence. The unending, dynamic process of creation and destruction is expressed in the energetic posture of Shiva. He dances in a ring of fire that refers to the life-death process of the universe. 

***

Fritjof Capra (1939 - ) Austrian-born famous theoretical high-energy physicist and ecologist wrote:

"Modern physics has thus revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction. The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another’’.

For the modern physicists, then Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter. As in Hindu mythology, it is a continual dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all existence and of all natural phenomenon. Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our times, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance."

(source: The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism - By Fritjof Capra p. 241-245).

 The posture and balance of Nataraja's dancing form show Lord Shiva in the aspect of tamas, the expansive centrifugal force that creates and destroys the universe. This is the first of the three "tendencies" (gunas) that permeate the universe in Samkhya philosophy. Tamas (darkness), symbolized by Shiva, is responsible for the constant birth, change and death of all living things; the force sattva (tranquility) represented by Vishnu the Preserver, holds the atoms of every object together. These two "tendencies" - one holding the atoms of the universe together and the other ripping them apart - create a " friction "  (rajas) that "vibrates" the world's atoms and creates the gravity to hold them to the earth. This is the third tendency, symbolized by the deity Brahma. It is the building stuff both of matter and of subtle energies such as perception and thought. 

Consciousness inhabits all living things and has permeated the universe since it was created from its original bindu (energy center). The first stave of the universe was filled by "space" : the potential area in which the world will "expand" with the energy of Shiva's aspect as tamas. At the end of Kali Yuga (the current age of ignorance), the expansion accelerates, everything merges and Shiva performs the terrible tandava dance of destruction. 

The most important Shiva image during the Chola dynasty was that of Shiva as Lord of the Dance, or Shiva Nataraja. In this form, Shiva is a summation of Indian religion, philosophy and culture. Shiva's dance is of cosmic significance and represents five principle manifestations of eternal energy: Creation, Destruction, Preservation, Salvation, and Illusion. He holds in his upper right hand a small drum, the symbol of the sound of creation. In his upper left hand is a flame representing the final destruction of the universe. His lower right hand makes the gesture "fear not." With his lower left hand he points to his raised left foot, the place of refuge and salvation for the devotee. His right foot is planted on the back of the demon Apasmara Purusha, the personifying illusion of ignorance over whom Shiva triumphs. In Shiva's hairdo sits the river goddess Ganga, the personification of the Ganges river which is said to spring forth from Shiva's head.

The dancing lord Shiva represents the constant process of creation, preservation and destruction of the universe. He trods on the dwarf, symbolic of Ignorance, which must be eliminated if a believer is to attain release from the eternal cycle of birth and death. In Shiva's upper hands are a drum, symbol of creation, and fire, symbol of destruction. This magnificently modeled bronze image is a superb example of Chola workmanship.

The entire Universe is then engaged in movement and endless activity, in an uninterrupted cosmic dance of energy. In Hindu iconography the images that represent this dance are shown with Nataraja dancing with four arms and waving hair and should be read as pictorial allegories. 

The upper right hand holds a small drum shaped as a clepsydra, which according to Zimmer keeps the rhythms of sound, the vehicle of the word transmitting revelation tradition and enchantment.  The opposite hand, on the top left, with fingers postured as half moon, (ardhachandra mudra), carries a Flame, the element of destruction of the world on the palm of the hand.  In the balance of the hands creation and destruction are shown as counterweights in the game of the cosmic dance made evident even by the quietness and serenity of Shiva's face at the centre between the two hands. The second right hand is making the gesture of 'motto fear ' that gives peace and protection, while the last left hand, suspended at the height of the breast, points toward the left foot symbolising liberation from the enchantment of Maya. 

Universally regarded as the quintessential image of Hindu art and culture, representations of the god Shiva dancing in joyous abandonment within a circle of flames graphically depict his five cosmic acts of creation, preservation, destruction, unveiling of illusion, and liberation of the soul. His creative aspect is symbolized by the hourglass-shaped drum, in his proper upper right hand, which reproduces the primordial sound of creation. Shiva’s preservation of the universe is suggested by his lower right hand held in the gesture of reassurance and safety. The flame in his upper left hand and that encircling the aureole represent the fire by which he destroys the universe in order to recreate it. He lifts the veil of illusion through his engendering act of dancing. His liberation of the soul is shown by his upraised left leg, which tramples on a prostrate infant signifying forgetfulness and is thus a source of grace.

While Shiva is believed to dance in various forms and locales for differing purposes, in this pose as Lord of the Dance (Nataraja), he is praised by the renowned eighteenth-century South Indian poet Thayumanavar as performing the “Dance of Bliss in the Hall of Consciousness.” The dance of bliss is specifically associated with Chidambaram, the sacred center of Nataraja worship, where Shiva is said to have first performed it in order to convert a group of holy men who were engaged in heretical practices. Chidambaram is also the site of the great twelfth-century temple specifically dedicated to Shiva’s aspect as Lord of the Dance. The temple has a silver image of the dancing god as its main icon, and the gateway around the complex is adorned with sculpted depictions of the 108 basic postures of classical Indian dance, Bharata Natyam, which has been performed since at least the second century B.C.

South Indian copper alloy images such as this were originally carried in processions during religious festivals; ropes were inserted through the square holes in the base to tie it to support poles. The distinctive elliptical shape of the aureole and slender figural style indicate that it is one of the earliest surviving images of this type.

He evokes the most intense adoration from devotees for he fascinates even as he terrifies. He dances for cosmic re-creation. Shiva's dance of bliss is the catalyst for the destruction of one period of time and the creation of a new cosmos. He has a third eye in the center of his forehead, the skull and crescent moon in his headdress.

 He has long, matted hair and there is a small female figure of the river goddess Ganga in the loose locks of hair twirling around head. The Indian genius for expressing movement in sculpture derives in large part from the high aesthetic value that dancing holds in Indian tradition. It is the posturings and movements of the dance that inspire the imagination of the sculptor. The four arms display the powers of Shiva. The upper right holds the drum or vibrant rattle of creation. The upper left holds the flame of destruction. The lower right hand is raised in the gesture of protection. The lower left hand points to the upraised foot that symbolizes escape from illusion, represented by the dwarf whom he crushes beneath his right foot. The drum is a symbol of rhythm and sound. The matted hair symbolizes his power (like Samson). Crescent moon is the symbol of growth and birth

Richard Waterstone has written in his book: 

Einstein and Shiva's cosmic dance 

'There is a striking resemblance between the equivalence of mass and energy, symbolized by Shiva's cosmic dance and the Western theory, first expounded by Einstein, which calculates the amount of energy contained in a subatomic particle by multiplying its mass by the square of the speed of light: E = mc2. "

(source:  India: Living Wisdom - By Richard Waterstone p.135).

(Refer to Visions of the End of the World - By Dr. Subhash Kak - sulekha.com). Refer to A Map of Sacred Stories of the Ancient World  - Contributed to this site by Dom Sturiale of Sydney, Australia.  Refer to The World of Myth - By Ramesh N Rao - sulekha.com).

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The Serpent of Infinity 

The late scientist, Carl Sagan, in his book, Cosmos  asserts that the Dance of Nataraja (Tandava) signifies the cycle of evolution and destruction of the cosmic universe (Big Bang Theory). 

"It is the clearest image of the activity of God which any art or religion can boast of." Modern physics has shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of all living creatures, but also the very essence of inorganic matter.

For modern physicists, then, Shiva's dance is the dance of subatomic matter. Hundreds of years ago, Indian artist created visual images of dancing Shiva's in a beautiful series of bronzes. Today, physicist have used the most advanced technology to portray the pattern of the cosmic dance. Thus, the metaphor of the cosmic dance unifies, ancient religious art and modern physics. The Hindus, according to Monier-Williams, were Spinozists more than 2,000 years before the advent of Spinoza, and Darwinians many centuries before Darwin and Evolutionists many centuries before the doctrine of Evolution was accepted by scientists of the present age.

"The Hindu religion  is the only one of the world's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, to those of modern scientific cosmology.  Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.  And there are much longer time scales still." 

"The most elegant and sublime of these is a representation of the creation of the universe at the beginning of each cosmic cycle, a motif known as the cosmic dance of Lord Shiva. The god, called in this manifestation Nataraja, the Dance King. In the upper right hand is a drum whose sound is the sound of creation. In the upper left hand is a tongue of flame, a reminder that the universe, now newly created, with billions of years from now will be utterly destroyed." 

(source: Cosmos - By Carl Sagan Random House ISBN 0375508325  p. 213-214).

According to Hindu belief, the universe is destroyed at the end of each kalpa ( life of the creator god, Brahma). Between the destruction of the world and its re-creation, at the end of each cycle, Lord Vishnu is said to rest in the coils of Ananta, the great serpent of Infinity, while he waits for the universe to recreate itself. At the end of Kali Yuga, the present age, it is believed that Lord Vishnu will descend in the form of the tenth and final avatar - as Kalki, the warrior, riding upon a white horse. He will destroy ignorance, drive invaders from India, and save the good from whom the people of the golden age, the Satya Yuga will descend.             

Lord Vishnu is said to rest in the coils of Ananta, the great serpent of Infinity, while he waits for the universe to recreate itself.       

Refer to Indian Institute of Scientific Heritage and Watch Carl Sagan and Hindu cosmology – video          

***

For more than a century European and American scholars have held to the conclusion that Indian astronomy must somehow have been borrowed from the Greeks following the invasion of Alexander the Great, even though the Indians have no tradition of this, and Indian astronomy has a form quite unlike Greek astronomy. This conclusion is supported by the following facts:

• there was extensive trade between India and the West during the Hellenistic period
• Indian astronomical science is united with a form of astrology very similar to that cultivated by the Greeks during the Hellenistic period
• there are no historical records or accurate chronology to substantiate the Indian's own traditions of the origin of their astronomical science
• These scholars concede that Hindu cosmological time cycles, the form around which Indian astronomy is built, are indigenous to Indian culture, but they believe them to be crude number speculations.

For many thousands of years, it is argued, the mystics have had a cosmological and epistemological view of things that the Western world is just beginning to understand. Cosmologically, Western science has understood only recently that the universe is extremely old. In 1965 the temperature of the universe was measured for the first time, resulting in our present estimate of the age of the universe as 15 billion years old. In the ancient literature of the East one does not, of course, find such precise figures. Instead there are analogies such as the following. Imagine an immortal eagle flying over the Himalayas only once every 1,000 years; it carries a feather in its beak and each time it passes, it lightly brushes the tops of the gigantic mountain peaks. The amount of time it would take the eagle to completely erode the mighty Himalayas is said to be the age of the present manifestation of the universe. Such a conception of time, which predates modern science by thousands of years, is thought to be remarkable, especially when it is compared to the slow realization of Western science and religion to the possibility of a less humanlike time scale.

Eastern mysticism is also consistent with the results of quantum physics. The mystics have always rejected the idea of a hidden clocklike mechanism, sitting out there, independent of human observation. The number one truth is that reality does not consist of separate things, but is an indescribable, interconnected oneness. Each object of our normal experience is seen to be but a brief disturbance of a universal ocean of existence. Maya is the illusion that the phenomenal world of separate objects and people is the only reality. For the mystics this manifestation is real, but it is a fleeting reality; it is a mistake, although a natural one, to believe that maya represents a fundamental reality. Each person, each physical object, from the perspective of eternity is like a brief, disturbed drop of water from an unbounded ocean. The goal of enlightenment is to understand this--more precisely, to experience this: to see intuitively that the distinction between me and the universe is a false dichotomy. The distinction between consciousness and physical matter, between mind and body, is the result of an unenlightened perspective.

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Ancient Indians already operated with a time span of astronomical proportions long before the earliest signs of natural science in ancient Greece. It is undeniable that ancient Indian texts present astonishingly exact scientific calculations even by today's latest scientific standards, such as the speed of light, exact size of the smallest particles and the age of the universe.

The Surya Siddhanta, a textbook on astronomy of ancient India - last compiled in 1000 BC, believed by Hindus to be handed down from 3000 BC by aid of complex mnemonic recital methods still known today - computed the earth's diameter to be 7,840 miles, the distance earth - moon as 253,000 miles. These compare to modern measurements resp. as 7,926.7 miles and 252,710 miles for max. dist. moon-earth.

Manu's texts in Sanskrit propounded evolution thousands of years before Lamarck & Darwin. "The first germ of life was developed by water and heat. Man will traverse the universe, gradually ascending and passing through the rocks, the plants, the worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, wild animals, cattle, and higher animals. These are the transformations declared, from the plant to Brahma, which have to take place in the world."

Brihath Sathaka operates with divisions of the time of one day into:- 60 kalas or ghatika - 24 mins each. Subdivided into 60 vikala (24 secs.each) 60 para then into tatpara, then into vitatpara then into ima then into kasha.... the smallest unit, equal to approx. o.ooooooo3 of a second (one 300 millionth). This smallest unit (3 X 10 -8 second) is surprisingly close to the life-spans of certain mesons and hyperons, according to some Western physicist who was interviewed on the BBC World Service in the early 1990s.

The 14th century 'Rigveda of the Sun' (dated by manuscript age only), says that the sun covers 2,202 yoganas in half a mimesa - which calculates as 300,000 metres a second, fairly exactly the speed of light.

(source: Science, the Critical mind and Dissent - By Robert C Priddy).

Speed of Light: 

One such book is the celebrated commentary on the Rig Veda by Sayana (c. 1315-1387), a minister in the court of King Bukka I of the Vijayanagar Empire in South India. In his commentary on the 4^th verse of the hymn 1.50 of the Rig Veda on the sun, he says: 

Tatha cha smaryate yojananam sahasre dve dve shate dve cha yogane ekena nimishardhena kramamana namo ‘stu ta iti 

Thus it is remembered: O Sun, bow to you, you who travers 2,202 yojanas in half a minute. 

The Puranas define 1 nimesha to be equal to 16/75 seconds. 1 yojana is about 9 miles. Substituting in Sayana’s statement we get 186,000 per second.  

Sayana’s statement was printed in 1890 in the famous edition of Rig Veda edited by Max Muller, the German Sanskritist . He claimed to have used several three or four hundred year old manuscripts of Sayana’s commentary, written much before the time of  Romer. Further support for the genuineness of the figure in the ancient book comes from one of the earliest Puranas, the Vayu, conservatively dated to at least 1,500 years old. The Puranas speak of the creation and destruction of the universe in cycles of 8.64 billion years, that is quite close to currently accepted value regarding the time of the big bang.

(source: The Wishing Tree - By Subhash Kak   p. 75 - 77).

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Shri 108 & Other Mysteries

The number 108 is very auspicious for Hindus. It is the number of beads of a rosary and of many other things in Indian cosmology. But why is this number considered to be holy?

The answer to this mystery may lie in the fact that the ancient Indians took this to be the distance between the earth and the sun in sun-diameter units and the distance between the earth and the moon in moon-diameter units.

Two facts that any book on astronomy will verify :

Distance between earth and moon = 108 times moon-diameter

Indian thought takes the outer cosmology to be mirrored in the inner cosmology of the human. Therefore, the number 108 is also taken to represent the 'distance' from the body of the devotee to the God within. The chain of 108 'links' is held together by 107 joints, which is the number of marmas, or weak spots, of the body in Ayurveda.

We can understand that the 108 beads of the rosary must map the steps between the body and the inner sun. The devotee, while saying beads, is making a symbolic journey from the physical body to the heavens.

108 is a number which resonates throughout the universe, as this shows. There are also several other numbers which are repeated throughout creation.

The reason why we do our mantra jap 108 times is because its a symbol of our journey towards our higher/spiritual self (sun) from our material self (earth).

(source: Shri 108 & Other Mysteries - By Subhash Kak - sulekha.com and The Cycle of Time).

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