The dark night sky, adorned by twinkling, gem like stars; is perhaps the greatest source of human wonderment. As children we ask, “Twinkle twinkle little star/how I wonder what you are?” As adults we graduate to “How did this universe come to be?”, “How was it created?”, “How does it work?”
Stephen Hawking starts his famous book A Brief History of Time with the apocryphal story of an old lady who thinks that the universe rests on a tortoise’s back. When asked where the tortoise stands, she says, almost mockingly,
“Its tortoises, all the way down”.
At the end of the story, Hawking asks,
“What makes us think we know any better (than the old lady)?”
Clearly, it’s a riddle to which humankind, for all its ingenuity, has yet found no complete answer. Yet, many have tried.
Georges Lemaitre was one such. A priest by profession, yet well versed in Physics and Mathematics, he was vexed with the question of “How did the universe come to be?” His initial efforts to answer this were met with skepticism, and Einstein actually told him
“Your math is correct, but your physics is abominable."
Undettered by the self-doubt such a comment might have certainly brought, Lemaitre persisted. From Edwin Hubble’s experiments, he inferred that the universe was expanding. If we reverse time, he reasoned the universe would have been smaller, and smaller, till it was no more than just a point! He summarized his theory in the following words:
“(The universe was created by) the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation”
He named this the Hypothesis of the Primevial Atom.
As is self evident, he believed that all Universe was once just a point and it exploded one fine ‘day’, and has since expanded to its current state. It is said that upon hearing this, Einstein did a volte-face, exclaiming,
"This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened."
Lemaitre had worked backwards to get to this hypothesis, and here his logic ended. What was there before the explosion? No answer.
“Hypothesis of the primevial atom” seems an unwieldy name for a scientific theory, most of which have short friendly names (perhaps to act as a balance to the complex mathematics they contain!). But such was its name for over a decade.
One man who disagreed vehemently with this theory was the good Fred Hoyle. In a BBC radio broadcast he blurted out something to the effect of
“No big-bang theory can hope to explain the universe”
It was thus that one of the most famous terms in history was coined. The Big Bang Theory. Coined in circumstances as paradoxical as the phenomena it wants to address.
It is today the most acceptable answer Science has to offer on the creation of the universe. It agrees with most experimental data. So what exactly does it say? In short, it says
13.7 Billion years ago, the universe was nothing but a dense, super-hot ball of Energy. For some reason, this ball was rapidly expanding. The energy started crystallizing into sub atomic particles, which later formed atoms, molecules, stars and planets.
What happened before the Big Bang? Well, we can’t say because the General theory of Relativity breaks down at the instant of the Big Bang. One explaination is that there might have been nothing before the Big Bang, and time itself began only after it.
One of the problems of the Big Bang Theory is that it is essentially a back-fitted theory. It has been arrived at by working backwards, and hence leaves many questions unanswered:
1) What happened before the big bang?
2) What is this primevial atom? Why was it so hot?
3) What made the ‘primevial atom’ explode?
4) Why is it continuosly expanding? Expansion requires energy, so what energy drives it?
Much before Lemaitre, Einstein, Hubble or Hoyle (but much after the Big Bang!) existed men who seeked the same answers as we do today. They have not left behind their names, and we do not when they existed or where they lived. What remains of them is thousands of highly obscure, symbolical poems; that we call the Vedas. Many consider Vedas the most authoritative of ancient texts… So might it pay to give them a look?
Rig Veda deals with creation in the 10th chapter; in what is called as the Nasadiya Sukta. It roughly means “The Hymn of the Not non-existant”. Seems suitably obscure a title for the topic!
(Below each stanza, I give my interpretation, based on my readings of translations of Vedas and Upanishads and Indian Mythology. It is almost impossible to understand Vedas today, because we lack the conceptual clarity on them. The Good thing is, Vedas influenced many later books including the Puranas, which attempt to simplify these concepts to discernible levels. I will rely on these to make my own sense of this sukta)
The hymn starts with an assertion,
In the beginning, there was neither truth nor untruth,
Neither space nor sky
Many translations read “in the beginning there was neither existence nor non-existance””. The Sanskrit word in question is Sat. Sat is not really existence, It’s the Limitless, ultimate truth. In simpler words,God. However, we are only aware of part of this truth at any point in time, so we live in Asat or Mithya or Maya.
The first line is a shocking revelation then. When it says there was no truth, it implies there was no God. And there was neither space nor sky.
Suddenly, the assertion is dropped and gives way to enquiry
What lay wrapped there? Where? In whose protection?
Was there water, unfathomable, deep?
The next few lines answer this question
There was no death then, nor was there immortality,
There was neither day nor night,
The One breathed without breath, by its own impulse,
Other than that there was nothing else at all
‘The One’ is the Brahman. Brahman is the ultimate reality, the universal substrate. He is the universe, and is part of everything else within and beyond.
He breathed without breath is a way of saying he came alive, although its not the kind of life we know. Since there was nothing else at all. No water, no air…
Darkness was there, wrapped in darkness,
And all was water indiscriminate,
Then that which was hidden by the void,
That ONE, emerged through his own heat (tapas)
This stanza is startlingly close to the INSTANT of the Big Bang. The first line “darkess wrapped in darkness” serves to paint a stark backdrop for this cosmic event. One can imagine, a bright light, hot as a fireball emerging in the darkness.
This also adds a layer to the extreme heat of the Big Bang. The heat, it says, is the Tapas or the Mental Energy of the Brahman. This is then, the driving force of the Universe
So what happens after that?
In the beginning, there was desire,
The primal germ of the mind,
The seers found the bridge between
The truth and the Untruth
This stanza lays down the ‘Motivation’ behind the expansion of the Universe. Desire it says was the germ. What desire could this be?
Lets seek answers in the Vishnu Purana.1.
In the beginning, Vishnu woke up from his dreamless slumber. From his navel rose a lotus in which sat Brahma. Brahma opened his eyes and found he was alone. Brahma trembled. He wondered who he was. From that desire to know himself, Brahma created the universe.
[Brahma is not to be confused with Brahman. A good way to understand this is that Brahama,Vishnu and Shiva together form the Brahman]
The desire being spoken about, ‘the primal germ of mind’, is the desire of the Brahman to know Himself. This means that the universe, and the life within, is God’s way of discovering his own self!!
After all this, the hymn ends with the ultimate paradox
No one knows how the universe was created,
Whether he made it or he did not,
Only he knows, or perhaps even he knows not
This is perhaps the only sacred scripture in the world that questions the basic premise: Does God himself know how the Universe was created? Perhaps the way to understand this is the fact that the Universe was created for the Brahman to know himself, so he is perhaps yet in the process of finding himself. So, perhaps he knows not.
It is interesting to note that the word Brahman comes from the root “To Grow”. Reference to the expansion of the universe?
It is interesting to look at Big Bang from the lens of the Nasadiya sukta. They seem very complimentary
Big Bang Theory: We do not know what happened before the Big Bang
Nasadiya Sukta: Before the creation there was nothing, just a void, and God lay there.
Big Bang Theory: The primevial hot atom emerged
Nasadiya Sukta: The Brahman rose from the void, in the heat of his Tapas
Big Bang Theory: the primevial atom exploded
Nasadiya Sukta: Out of the Brahman’s desire to expand, and to know Himself
Big Bang Theory: the universe continues to expand
Nasadiya Sukta: as the Brahman continues to find more and more about his own self.
