What in fact was the Big Bang?Getting back to our 'three ways of knowing', it remains to indicate the third. One might call it 'yogic sight'. Now this mode of knowing constitutes presumably the means by which the objective Tattvas or 'cosmic principles' of traditional Indian philosophy can be brought within mental or supramental view — beginning with the five bhutas. We may safely suppose, however, that yogic sight is unable to reach 'below' the corporeal level to the physical.
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by Wolfgang Smith
(April 02, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In this article we wish to consider the so-called 'big bang' from a Vedantic point of vantage. Before addressing this question, however, it will behove us to reflect, at least briefly, upon the general theme of 'Indian philosophy vis-a-vis modern science'.
There was a time, to be sure when almost everyone in the West thought that the victories of physics had 'disproved' the supposedly primitive speculations of ancient Hindu Philosophers regarding the nature of the universe. Meanwhile, however, it appears that the opposite view has been steadily gaining ground: the belief, namely, that modern physics has in effect rediscovered some of the basic 'mystical insights' pertaining to the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. How, then, does the matter stand?
To begin with, the claim that modern science has invalidated the cosmological tenets of traditional Indian philosophy is evidently based not on the positive content of scientific findings, but upon certain scientists beliefs for which there is no scientific support at all. With the advance of physics, moreover, and especially the discovery of quantum mechanics, these scientistic beliefs have in turn become suspect, to say the least. As regards the second view – the position which has been so effectively put forward by Frithjof Capra in his best-selling treatise "the Tao of Physics' — We would like to note, first of all, that it too is based upon scientistic (as opposed to scientific) grounds. And while it appears to be 'friendly' vis-a-vis Indian tenets, it turns out to be in fact more dangerous to the cause of Indian wisdom than the previous view. For as Ken Wilbur points out (in his book, "quantum questions') with reference to Capra's position:
In the greatest irony of all, this whole approach is profoundly reductionistic. It says, in effect; since all things are ultimately made of subatomic particles, and since subatomic particiles are mutually inter-related and holistic, then all things are holistically one, just like mysticism says. But all things are not made of subatomic particles: all things, including subatomic particles, are ultimately made of God.
We would only add that the last phrase 'made of God' is of course elliptic in the extreme and needs to be interpreted in consonance with the metaphysical traditions; not in the sense of pantheism, therefore, but in the sense of srishti or theophany, to be exact. What needs to be understood, above all, is that the integral cosmos consists of a hierarchy of ontological planes, each of which answers to a corresponding mode of knowing. It will not do simply to ask what exists 'out there': for indeed, what presents itself to our view depends, so to speak, on the 'lenses' through which we look. The objects with which we deal are thus in a way relative — which is not to say, however, that they are simply subjective, fictitious or non-existent. Vedantically speaking, it can no doubt be said that there is in reality only one Absolute Object. Meanwhile we humans are forced to deal with lesser things — the kind of which St. Augustine has said: 'an existence they have, because they are from Thee; and yet no existence, because they are not what Thou art.'
It behoves us to distinguish between three modes of knowing. The first of these is sense perception; and the corresponding ontological domain is what we shall term the corporeal world. The second is constituted by the modus operand of the physicist: and the ontological domain to which it lives access is what we shall term the physical universe. Now, the essential characteristic of modern scientific knowing is that the object is 'perceived' — not directly – but by way of a corporeal instrument, with which it is made to interact. In a world, the physical universe comes into view through measurement. However, contrary to a widespread opinion, the corporeal world does not reduce to the physical. Corporeal objects, thus, are not simply 'made of subatomic particles'. And if, in certain sense, subatomic particles do in fact enter into the constitution of a corporeal object, so no doubt do other principles. One has every right to surmise, moreover, that the so-called 'five elements' of the traditional cosmologies may indeed have a part to play in the formation of corporeal entities. Are these not the 'essences' by virtue of which a thing can be perceived? Generally speaking, it appears that the traditional sciences deal mainly with the essential aspect of things, as distinguished from the material or substantial (in the original sense of sub stare, 'to stand under').
Getting back to our 'three ways of knowing', it remains to indicate the third. One might call it 'yogic sight'. Now this mode of knowing constitutes presumably the means by which the objective Tattvas or 'cosmic principles' of traditional Indian philosophy can be brought within mental or supramental view — beginning with the five bhutas. We may safely suppose, however, that yogic sight is unable to reach 'below' the corporeal level to the physical. It has been jokingly said that when a Brahmin loses a cow he will search for it in the Vedas — and rightly so. For the Vedas do in a sense contain all things that can be apprehended through the God-given instruments of buddhi, ahankara, and the rest. But they do not 'contain' electrons and quarks. In other worlds, these entities — which cannot be apprehended through 'natural' means — are missing on the cosmological maps of ancient India.
By the same token, however, the physicist — quay physicist! — can know nothing at all about such things as bhutas and tapmatras, let alone the more exalted evolutes of prakriti — not because these things do not exist, but because they cannot be grasped through the particular modus operandi by which physics as such is defined.
Let us then consider what this modern science has to say concerning the origin of the universe. Now, in the first place, one sees that the findings of physics pertain – not to the integral cosmos – but to the particular ontological stratum which we have termed the physical universe. The so-called scientific cosmologies of our day have thus to do with the development or evolution of this domain. There is no reason to doubt, moreover, that certain major conclusions have been established with a high degree of certitude. But it is to be noted (on the basic of what we have said before) that the modus operandi of physics does not enable us to understand the genesis of the corporeal world — let along of the biosphere, or the so-called phenomenon of man. Let us be clear about it: it is foolish to propound Darwinist dreams in the name of science when that science is in fact unable to explain the origin of a stone. For a stone, as a perceptible entity, is something more than an atomic or subatomic aggregate – to say it again.
What, then, can physics tell us concerning the origin of the physical universe? As is well known, it affirms, roughly speaking, that the universe originated some fifteen billion years ago in a kind of stupendous explosion commonly termed the big bang. And let us add that there is a strong body of evidence in support of this theory, and that despite recently publicized difficulties having to do with the formation of galaxies, it appears that the big basing hypothesis is yet very much alive and well. Contrary to what almost everyone believes, however, the evidence does not in fact point to an initial explosion. What it actually indicates is that the cosmos contracts as we go backwards in time, and that eventually one reaches an 'early universes' in which matter is concentrated at staggering densities and temperatures.
However, as one pushes further in this journey into the past, one reaches at last — not an initial explosion or big bang - but what mathematicians call a singularity, precisely. It is a point which belongs to our mathematical charts, if you will, but no longer corresponds to a spatio-temporal reality. It thus represents, as it were, a 'hole', a 'void' where there is nothing at all — nothing physical, in any case.
Now, to be sure, such a 'hole' or 'void' is of great metaphysical significance. One is reminded of a verse in the Tao te ching: 'Thirty spokes of a wheel uniting at the nave are made useful by the hole in centre where nothing exists.' But that 'centre', clearly, is nowhere in space-time: and thus, in a sense, it is 'everywhere'.
According to Vedic tradition, every ontological plane of the cosmic hierarchy has an 'aperture' of this kind, and together these make up, symbolically speaking, the 'channel' of the axis mundi, by which all things are connected to the unique Source and prime Reality. Now, it is no doubt indicative of the correctness — and indeed profundity — of modern physics that this discipline has been forced, on the strength of its methods, to the recognition of such a 'cosmic perforation' in the form of an initial singularity: and let us add, in this context, that according to a major result of hawking and Penrose, the existence of an initial singularity can in fact be formulated as a rigorous theorem of general relativity. It is only that not everyone who undestands the physics has also a sufficient grasp of the metaphysical traditions to perceive the deeper significance of the results in question.
Finally, let it be noted that the big bang doctrine does indeed connect with the time-honoured notion of srishti. For as we have seen, it betokens the fact that the universe has emerged from a 'void' — or better said, from avyakta, the unmanifest. And this emergence — whether of world or of particular beings — is a matter of srishti: of 'expression' or 'manifestation'.
The singularity theorem of waking and Penrose, if you will, obliges us to conclude that such an enigmatic transition must indeed have taken place; but this is as far as physics can take us. Its modus operandi is geared after all to the investigation of things that already exist: that have been created ex nihilo or projected into manifestation from an antecedent state that eludes our cognitive grasp. Classical physics had sought to dodge the question of origin by assuming that the universe had always existed but this gratuitous hypothesis has now proven to be untenable. And this recognition not only 'exonerates' the metaphysical traditions, but opens the door to a deeper understanding of physics as well.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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