"Incredible creation!" He exclaimed. He was mesmerized with the beautiful scenery on the Pune-Mumbai highway, on our journey to Mumbai. I looked out of the window to see the beautiful fall of water from the green mountain, a soft drizzle, a rainbow, birds flying just above the rising Sun, a deep orange colored sky and the Earth carpeted with green grass. And coincidently all existed together.d it was incredible. But I doubt if it was a creation. When he exclaimed "Incredible creation!” he inherently meant that that scenery was created and (I assumed he meant) God created it.
Was that a creation? Did God create that scenery? Who created this world, Sun, Moon, Stars and the Earth? You see, Earth, such a complex habitat, perfectly suitable for our living. Water, oxygen, carbon, ozone, rain, soil and plants all exists and in correct proportion to sustain life. Can it exist by chance? Randomly? Just by coincidence?
It is very natural for average human being to attribute it to the God. And why not? Our common sense tells us that everything that exists is a creation and God is the creator. Most of the people today believe in this theory. This theory is called Creationism and those who believe in this theory are called as creationists. According to creationists God is separate than his creation. Bible and Qur’an advocate Creationism.
Well, what “Sanātana Dharma” has to say about it? “Sanātana Dharma” is the real name of what we call today a “Hindu Religion”. We got the name “Hindu” in 13th century. Hindu really means people living in the land across the river Indus (Sindhu). The religion taught by lord Krishna in Shrimad Bhagwad Geeta is “Sanātana Dharma”. There are two theories in
द्वैत meaning two i.e. God and universe are two different entities. God is creator and this universe is a creation. अद्वैत meaning 'no two' i.e. God and universe is no different. अद्वैत वेदान्त is considered as the most influential and most dominant sub-school of the Vedānta .
Advaita Vedānta says
“Brahma satyaṃ jagat mithyā, jīvo brahmaiva nāparah”
This means, Brahman (God) is the only truth, the world is an illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Brahman (God) and individual self (or Universe i.e everything that exists).
Just to elaborate, “There is no personality other than God.” Advaita Vedānta does not make any difference between creator and creation. This means God is everywhere. Not so easy to comprehend?
Let us see. How do we get any knowledge about this world? Well only through our five basic sensory organs, eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin. And you see, each of these sensory organs have their own limits. Our eyes can only sense the light if its wavelength falls under a particular range. That’s why we can not see X-ray light etc. Same is the case with our ear. It can only sense the sound falling in the particular intensity range. This is true for all of our sensory organs. This means that we can not know anything that exists but does not happen to fall in the range of any of our sensory organ. Imagine a substance or a living being which exists but does not fall under the range of any of our sensory organ then it just does not exist for us! But with the advent of microscopes, telescopes and other scientific instruments we have kind of broadened the range of our sensory organs and thus we can see the living beings which are not visible to the naked eyes. The gist is that we know very little about the things that are around us. Our perception about this world is limited to the limits of our sensory organs which is bit broadened by the advent of few advanced scientific instruments.And further more, what we perceive from our senses is only true RELATIVE to humans. Well, a red rose is red only for humans. The same red rose is black for a cat and may be blue for some other animal. So what is the absolute color of the rose? Red? Nopes. Then what is the reality? What is the REAL color of rose? Well, the reality itself is RELATIVE. Today’s science says that there is no ABSOLUTE reality.
Advaita Vedānta claims that, there is actually no rose! No red color. There is but one continuous omnipresent God. Not convinced?
Imagine you are in a dark room and your eyes can see very little. You happen to see a snake. You tell yourself that it cannot not be a snake and you try to touch it. Your hand feels the texture like snake and you shout. Someone switches on the lights and you realize that it was actually a rope. Well, your fear was real and your loud shout was also real. And the existence of snake was also the reality but only in that dim light. This (if applied to our red rose example) means, for whatever sensory range human have got, the color of rose is red. But only RELATIVE to the human sensory range.
During the revelation of ‘Srimad Bhagavadgita’, God Krishna had bestowed special incredible sensory range to Arjuna and due to which Arjuna could see the ‘Vishwarup darshna’ the omnipresence of God. When he was bestowed with the special sensory range he actually saw that there was no ‘Kurukshetra’ no chariot no horses no trees no earth no sky no humans and not even himself but only continuous God (omnipresence of God). Then he realized that there is no other personality but God.
It is only due to our own restricted sensory rage that we perceive one continuous omnipresent God to be a rose, a table a chair. How can God be omnipresent? Well, everything is either living being or non living being. All the living beings and even non living beings are made up of matter. Matter is nothing but energy. (E = mc2). So every thing that exist is but the manifestation of energy. And the most subtle form of energy is God. In that way this world and every bit of it is one continuous omnipresent God. In other words, this world and every bit of it is but the manifestation of God.
To put it in the layman's terms, if the God happens to come in front of us and if we try to see him with whatever sensory range we are bestowed with, we will see this universe! We will see exactly what we see daily, a rose, a table, a chair, the Sun, the Moon, the Earth and stars i.e. this universe. And if the God happens to bestow us with that incredible sensory range which he bestowed to Arjuna, we will realize that there is no existence of a rose, a table, a chair, the Sun, the Moon, the Earth and stars i.e. this universe does not really exist. But there exists one continuous omnipresent God. The universe that we see today is but one continuous omnipresent God but due to our restricted sensory range we get the illusion of the existence of this universe.
Advaita Vedānta claims that, the existence of most subtle God is spontaneous (spontaneous meaning without its creator). This argument of Advaita Vedānta is still consistent with the modern day science.edānta rejects the existence of a personal God. Who rewards good and punishes evil. Who listens to our prayers and interfere in the functioning of the universe. It says that universe reacts to your actions and these reactions follows certain laws. If you happen to comprehend these laws you can leverage them to achieve whatever you want. And thus there is no need of personal God to answer your prayers. So much encouraging!
Let us see what the modern day science has to say about it.One of the most elite scientists of today’s world is Dr. Stephen Hawking. He is English theoretical physicist and cosmologist. When pressed on his own religious views by the BBC channel 4 documentary, Genius of Britain, he has clarified that he does not believe in a personal God.
Note that by personal God he means a God that is and can be related to as a person. Generally speaking, the term "personal God" mostly refers to the theistic conceptions of God that exist in the Abraham faiths and certain denominations of Hinduism (like in Dvaita Vedanta. Note the difference between Dvaita Vedanta and Advaita Vedānta both are opposite to each other. Dvaita Vedanta advocates the creationism however Advaita Vedānta advocates one continuous omnipresent God i.e. speculation of God as "the All")
Dr. Stephen Hawking further says, “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”
And Stephen’s latest book “The Grand design” argues that invoking God is not necessary to explain the origins of the universe, and that the Big Bang is a consequence of the laws of physics alone. In response to criticism, Hawking has said; "One can't prove that God doesn't exist, but science makes God unnecessary."
Science argues that the whole universe at the time of big bang was extremely incredibly squeezed in a size of a dot, 13.7 billion years ago. And then during big bang it exploded and expanded (and it is still expanding). But that dot along with the laws of Physics (like the law of Gravity) existed spontaneously (without its creator).
As you can sense modern day science denies the existence of the personal God but it accepts the “spontaneous creation” which is consistent with Advaita Vedānta. Modern day science does not yet accept or even deny the existence of one continuous omnipresent God i.e. the speculation of the God as "the All" who does not interfere in the functioning of the universe.
But the concept of spontaneous existence (of dot and laws of Physics) goes against common sense. Because whatever we know of today is a part of creator-creation chain. We can not think of something existing spontaneously (without its creator). If I say, "There exist something that was not created by any creator" it goes against common sense. There are few things that go against common sense but are perfectly logical. For Example: a concept in the Theory of Relativity that says "Two person's argument may contradict each other but can yet both be correct." Another example could be, "Time and space is no different". Yet another example is "If one can travel beyond the speed of light he can reach the past." - These statements were proved by Dr. Albert Einstein. The statement, "There exists something that was not created by any creator" might go against common sense but can still be correct. We need to understand that our common sense is developed by our day-to-day experience is mostly limited to our habitat, the Earth. But in comparison with the universe and multiverse the existence of Earth is way too insignificant. So our common sense can not be the ultimate just of the ectly logical.
The billion dollar question is, why can't something exist without its creator? Even creationism says that the God exists without its creator. If God can exist without its creator then why can't the whole world exist without its creator? It is not easy for anyone and everyone to question it because it has become our instinct. But paradigms do change. If we are truly rational then we should be able to question "Why there can NOT be an existence of something without its creator?” Thousands of years before "Gravitation" was an instinct of people. Nobody asked "Why things fall down?" It was an instinct, it was so very part of their lives, it was OBVIOUS to them so no one questioned it but one true rationalist did question his instinct. He asked "Why things fall down?" and "Gravitational Force" was discovered. And the whole world embraced his theory. Then years later Newton
Actually, because we (humans) are residing here on Earth and we know very little about the Universe. We tend to think that someone (God) must have created this world. We can’t believe that our complex habitat (Earth, soil, water, oxygen, rain, plants, food, Sun etc and that too in correct proportion which is suitable for our existence) got created at random, by chance, by coincidence. But only if we study the universe we realize that there is no coincidence at all!!! To make things simple, let us first understand what COINCIDENCE is and what it isn’t. Suppose if I wanted “four” on the face of dice. I threw the dice and suppose I got “four” in very first throw it IS a coincidence. Suppose I threw a dice six times (or more than six times) and If I got “four”, it is NOT a coincidence, then.ing is that the probability of getting four on the face of a dice is 1/6. Suppose the probability of existence of this habitat is 1/x (x can be incredibly large) and there are x or more than x planets (habitats) in the multiverse then it is NOT a coincidence at all. And science tells us that such is the case. There are many more planets than x in the multiverse. So it isn’t a coincidence at all. In fact, chances are that there are few more such planets where life exists. Chances are that we humans are not alone. Probability of the existence of aliens is significant.
We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million galaxies that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars. And each star may have few planets orbiting around it. Earth is just one of it. Do you now see that the existence of life on earth is NOT a coincidence? If the existence of our complex habitat (ozone, oxygen, carbon-di-oxide, water etc) had 1/X probability (X be incredibly high) and if there are more than X such planets (habitats) then existence of earth, our habitat and life is NOT at all a coincidence. You see, God is not necessary to explain the origins of the universe, and that the Big Bang is a consequence of the laws of physics alone. One can't prove that God doesn't exist, but science makes God unnecessary.. That’s why Dr. Albert Einstein said "God does not play dice".
Hrishikesh Alshi
Nagpur/Bangalore
Date: 18th June 2011
Source: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Nagpur/Bangalore
Date: 18th June 2011
Source: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
