Recently a few of my friends and acquaintances reached out to me and congratulated me on starting the blog but with an interesting comment that my subjects are very hard to understand and probably I should stick to writing about day-to-day life. It struck me how far we Indians have moved away from the core philosophies propagated by our ancestors!
We had the world’s oldest university, the Nalanda University. Whereas in the ancient past, the world looked up to India as a land of knowledge and came to India to study, instead of taking inspiration from the scientific spirit of the past, we have shrouded ourselves in religious dogmas. The architects of Quantum Physics, Neil Bohr, Erwin Schrodinger, and Werner Heisenberg all looked up to the Upanishads for inspiration. Neil Bohr had famously said, “I go into Upanishads to ask questions.” Schrodinger was also influenced by Upanishads and Advaita Vedas and firm believer in universal consciousness or Brahman. He once quoted, “There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads.” Heisenberg too admired Rabindranath Tagore and after having in-depth conversations with him, had concluded there are parallels between the teachings of the Vedas and Quantum Physics. He famously said, “After understanding Indian philosophy some of the ideas that seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense“.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who invented the atom bomb, read Bhagavad Gita and remarked that the explosion brought to his mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Today Elon Musk is a well-known figure, so much so that we Indians too encourage our kids to look up to him as a role model. For Elon Musk, Nicolas Tesla, who invented numerous electrical devices using AC current, was a worthy role model. But not many Indian know that Nicolas Tesla was highly influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and took a keen interest in the Vedas. He understood the concept of ether, the mysterious 5th element mentioned in the Vedas, and ‘prana‘, the life force, and was familiar with many Sanskrit words.
These people were not only great scientists but also great philosophers with a spiritual bent of mind who pondered over questions on the creation of the cosmos and the nature of reality and found many of their answers in eastern philosophy. Of course, the Vedas or Upanishads did not provide them with empirical evidence or answers. However, it did provide them with much-needed inspiration to look beyond the perceived reality and conclude that we human beings are limited if we rely solely upon 3 dimensions and 5 sense organs. Surprisingly although these quotes by the above-mentioned scientists are well documented, most Indians are unaware of them, and many do not even hesitate to dismiss them as false propaganda.
If we look back at our history too we find many sages who have also contributed tremendously to science but have not gotten due credit in history. Charaka Samhita written by sage Charaka covers extensively human anatomy, diseases, their symptoms, and treatments. It also provides guidelines on diet and hygiene. Susruta Samhita composed by sage Susruta is the foundation text of Ayurveda and describes a detailed account of surgery and medicines. He is believed to be the first to perform nose surgery. Patanjali is the author and composer of ‘yoga sutra‘. Aryabhatta was one of the finest mathematicians and astronomers of his time who discovered methods to calculate the square root and cube root of a number. He also calculated the value of pi to the 4th decimal, worked on linear and quadratic equations, and made contributions to the sine table for trigonometry. He is credited to have discovered that it is the earth that rotates the sun, much before Copernicus proposed that idea. Brahmagupta’s notable work involves composing Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta which includes rules to compute with zero. He made many contributions to algebra and geometry. Both Bhaskara 1 and Bhaskara 2 were also great mathematicians and astronomers who provided many equations that form the basis of mathematics that we learn today. Sage Kanada was the first to propose that everything in this world is composed of a very small entity called paramanu which later on was used as a synonym for atom in Indian languages. The list is big and I cannot cover all names in this blog. But these were a few great scientists and mathematicians of their time. All of them studied the Vedas and Upanishads and drew their inspirations from them. We can understand the western world’s ignorance of their work. But unfortunately, it is the people of their motherland who have betrayed them.
Today, when anyone talks about being spiritual, many Indians imagine a person who is ready to renounce the world and spend his/her days giving religious discourse. Some even confuse it with religion. But that is only a minor aspect of spirituality. You can lead a normal life and yet be spiritual because spirituality is an inward journey to search for reality, and understand one’s purpose in life. In fact with rising depression and other mental diseases all over the world, depleting natural resources, and turmoil in many parts of the world due to infighting and uprising amongst countries, religions, and races, it is only if we move toward spirituality we can find inner peace which can ultimately bring overall peace to the world. Why is it then the Indians are not ready to embrace their root? Whereas today the western world is adopting yoga and meditation from India, which has tremendous benefits, Indian are adopting the western lifestyle and rock music from them, which is not harmful, but inconsequential and brings little incentive. Cultural exchange is an excellent phenomenon. I love to celebrate Christmas and participate with equal zeal in celebrating Halloween with kids. However, it pains me to see Indians forgetting their ancestors who made great contributions to our civilization and trivializing the study of the Vedas and Upanishads as a waste of time.
Perhaps we should keep in mind that the Vedas gave the concept of zero and infinity. Albert Einstein once said, “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.“
