Why is Adi Sankara considered the most intelligent human being ever?

There are two fundamental features about almost all basic phenomena in nature - that they are symmetric and/or cyclic. This can be noticed in the form and functioning of all tangible and intangible matter and phenomena around us. Almost all ancient civilizations across the globe have noted this and have developed their own postulations and philosophies about nature. Many of them have even developed the concept of an all powerful God based on these observations. However, for an impartial and unprejudiced observer, none of the civilizations have approached a near perfection in these aspects as the Vedic civilization of India. Some of the theories intrinsic to Vedic civilization like Adi Sankara’s Maaya theory are indistinguishable with those of the most modern Science.

India’s Vedic civilization started at immemorial times with the revealing or recitation of Vedas and continues unabated in the core of India even now. Many historians want to contain it within a specific period but have failed miserably because of the simple fact that Indian continues to the only ‘civilisational” entity that remains essentially unchanged in the entire world, despite the worst atrocities by the invading Muslim forces and the colonial masters for about one thousand years. All the other civilizations like Chinese, Greek, Mayan, Japanese, Egyptian etc., have undergone paradigm changes and maintains only minimal or no continuity with their glorious pasts. The main reason for this remarkable achievement is the contribution of our own Sastras and outstanding Gurus like Adi Sankara.

Sastras and Science

Many of the concepts and words which are central to India’s prestigious ancient language viz. Sanskrit have suffered from translation. Sastra and Dharma are just two of them. Very often Sastra gets wrongfully interpreted as modern Science and Dharma as Righteousness as we use now. Many of the outstanding postulations and literary works by ancient Rishis of India get ridiculed in modern times, especially by Indians with very clear vested interests, mainly because of this utterly wrong translation. In ancient India, all those fields of knowledge which has a rational base were considered Sastras. This is in stark contrast with modern Science which is all about measurement, objective evidence and zero nonconformity. 

Quite in keeping with such a rational definition of the Sastras, we have several branches of knowledge like Astrology, Vaastu, Ayurveda, Yoga, Yagam, Tantra, Temples etc in ancient India which are continuing to catch our attention even today. All of them have solid rational basis but many of the theories within these fields may not have the solid proofs that modern Science is asking for. But that does not belittle the importance of all these fields of knowledge in the lives of common Indians. Despite India’s great achievements in modern Science, most of the Hindu Indians still continues to abide by these Sastras in their individual lives. Quite surprisingly, the latest developments in the field of modern Science has started matching with these Sastras in recent times.

Sankara’s Advaita

Ever since the Europeans started illegitimately and immorally colonizing the rest of the world, they have usurped the leadership in Science from the ancient civilizations like India, China and Japan. Quite expectedly history of Science is also being written by the Europeans because Indians are one of least history-conscious people in the world. Though the latest mathematical tool of Calculus was quite popular in India in 14th century (Madhava of Sangamagrama), European historians have given the credit for its discovery to Newton and Leibnitz who lived in the 17th century. And when almost all the Vedic literature refers to heavenly bodies as Golas (meaning Spheres), the claim goes to Greek and Roman astronomers. Luckily the credit for the modern numeral system and zero still belongs to India even though it is designated as Arabic numerals because Arab traders carried it West from India.  

Physics has always been the cutting edge branch of Science that has shaped modern history of mankind. Modern Physics owes its development so far to the continuous thread of development from Aristotle to Galileo to Newton to Einstein. It has successfully established Big Bang and answered most of our questions with Stephen Hawkings in the lead. But for the unexpected development in Quantum Theory, Albert Einstein, the most brilliant scientist in history so far would have attained his Theory for Everything. The spooky behavior of minute particles at a distance resulted in the failure of Einstein who sincerely hoped that God will not play dice. As it stands today, most of the definite measurement theories of Physics fail at the sub atomic level and only probabilities are possible. It has been proven that the same particle can be present at different points of space at the same time. Current talks about eleven dimensional multiverses (Edward Witten) make it more evident that God is indeed playing dice.

The latest developments in our relentless pursuit for unraveling the universe bring the European Sciences face to face with Hindu India’s Sastras once again. One of India’s greatest Rishis, Shri Adi Shankaracharya (CE 788-820) had established almost 1500 years ago that the world we see is really unreal, which essentially means it is only probabilistic. The crux of his Advaita theory is that Brahman (not Brahma or Brahmin) alone is real, and the phenomenal world is unreal or an illusion. Modern Science is coming to the very same conclusion. Based on the quintessential symmetry and cyclic nature of universe, it is quite possible that there are trillions and billions of Micro Bangs occurring every nanosecond and what we perceive as reality is the sum total of the interference of the after effects of these staggered Micro  Bangs. Jagat is the Sanskrit word for the universe and it literally means Create, Sustain and Destroy. No wonder the most brilliant mind that humanity produced so far is called Jagatguru Adi Sankaracharya.

God Definition

The bitter fight between fanatic atheists like Richard Dawkins and uncompromising believers like Deepak Chopra has reached highpoint. In a way it looks progressive because the set of blind followers who believe in a Man look alike God breathing down the nose of all believers, watching and determining the life of each one of us is fast dwindling the world over. Church goers are few and far between among the Europeans and never ending violence and eternal bloodbath is questioning the very foundations of the youngest religion supposedly founded on brotherhood and peace. Days are numbered for both the major organized religious ideologies in the modern era when Big Bang will be taught in nursery schools. The relevance of a God which claimed to have created the universe some six thousand years ago is almost expired.

Nevertheless we cannot let the God debate go on forever in an unhealthy manner. There is no doubt that it has started affecting the evolutionary progress of Man. It is time for Homo sapiens who are about four hundred thousand years old to evolve further. But for unnecessary controversies and acrimonious debates time is ripe for the advent of a Super Race of humans as predicted by Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950). Only a synergy of Science and Religion can provide all the required tools for the evolution of entire mankind into the next stage that is vital for its survival when our life giving star Sun start turning into a Super Nova engulfing the entire planetary system. Neither Science nor Religion can achieve this yeoman task independently.

We are living in a glorious era when Science has established the Big Bang that occurred about 13.72 billions ago without any iota of doubt. Matter and energy for the entire universe as we see today was created within a brief moment of time following the Big Bang. But who or what created or resulted in the Big Bang can never be explained by Science. Many argue that it is Consciousness. It is here that a confluence can occur between Science and Religion which can take the entire human race onto its forward path of evolution without any conflict. All that is required is to define God as follows:-

“God is that which created the Big Bang and continue to be omnipresent as the passive Consciousness”

Multiversal Reality

Scientists have already established that our universe came into existence almost 13.7 billion years ago as a result of Big Bang. Barring the glorious theory of Advaita, which postulates an omnipresent God, all other religious theories about a universe, beings and humans (in His own form ! ) created by God sometime around 6000 BC have been debunked in its entirety. Only a few hardcore idiots and those who are afraid of religious establishments believe in such figments of misleading imagination by a clever few to establish their power over the meek followers. It is difficult to believe but proven true beyond any doubt that all the sub-atomic particles that make up our universe were created within a brief period of the Big Bang.  We are not capable of adding or subtracting anything from it, but only of changing from one form to another. With great efforts, we have already gone back 13.7 billion years in history and now we are stuck at that point.

Biggest question in front of current scientists is about who or what caused the Big Bang. Some scientists avoid the question with their argument that there need not be a reason for everything. But the instinctive rationality of human beings will not be satisfied until and unless the question is answered. For those who are agnostic (like me) it is easy to find an answer by attributing it to the unknown God for the time being, until someone with a fertile mind and intellect come up with another hypothesis. In fact, many such theories have already come up and best one that looks promising is the concept of a multiverse. Mathematicians have already succeeded in their hypotheses upto 11 universes existing simultaneously. And a few outstanding theoreticians have attributed the cause of Big Bang to the clash of two such wobbling universes when both happened to be perfect planes, which is of infinitely miniscule probability. So far the theory looks logical and it will drag out history by few more billion years. But then the question arises as to who or what created the multiverse.

An interesting offshoot of the multiverse theory is the reflections of reality in many of the phenomena mentioned in The Bhaagavada, by far the most mundane and most complex ancient text that mankind has seen. Perhaps there is no better way to think of Bhagawan’s Viswaroopa than by accepting the reality of simultaneous presence of multiple universes. It must be definitely possible for an omnipotent God (or even ghosts and souls) to be present partially and fully in a multiverse, and give the images to the realized souls as described in The Bhaagavada. And those who claim to have got a sight of God might have really done so during an accidental or deliberate peep into the neighbouring universes. It is possible that a warp like reality of a multiverse can become the much wanted connecting point for Science and Scientific Religions (Sanatana Hindu Dharma).

    

General Theory of Theology

It was not very long ago that Newtonian Physics was considered the last word in Physics because it could explain and predict all phenomena that we see around. It could even explain the motion of celestial bodies. But the whole edifice collapsed when we started dealing with the sub-atomic particles. Special and General theories of relativity were required to reach a reasonably acceptable level of hypothesis that could explain everything. We are passing through an identical phase in the case of metaphysics now. The theory of God (theology), which is central to all religions, has entered its final phase now. Rigid Science which is nothing but the other side of Blind Religion is dead and irrelevant to modern Man. Pure, impartial and realistic Science has made tremendous progress and it is challenging many of the hitherto unchallenged tidbits of Science contained in some of the holy texts. Time has also come for proposing a General Theory of Theology to explain the Science of God who is supposedly ‘controlling’ the whole universe (or multiverse).

Different religions and their own versions of God have evolved in different isolated pockets around the world at different times. Exchange of ideas and debates on the various concepts of God were physically impossible during yesteryears. Vested interests in each society kept their own concepts of God in isolation and prevented all forms of challenges to their own supremacy for obvious reasons. With the unprecedented growth in Science and Technology in the past two centuries, many such limitations have vanished. Details about any religion or any concept of God are freely available in the internet now. So also the latest in Science and Technology. But religious bigots are still trying to retard the progress of mankind by preventing free enquiry and debate. We should not allow this to happen and all progressive sections must make the debate continue without any break.

Need for God

The Big Bang theory and all pervasive Higgs-Bosons (God Particles) have been confirmed by Science. We now know for sure that our universe is 13.7 billion years old, our beloved planet about 5 billion years and Man a few million years old. All these unquestionable facts have serious implications. It will take some time for its effect to percolate into all fields of human knowledge. But it will definitely change everything we can think of. The simplicity of having everything originating from a single entity and having something that is present everywhere cannot be ignored. Though some scientists may sound over confident in their explanation of everything, the fact still remains that there is indeed ‘something’ which maintains order and evolution of universe in a particular direction. But equally important is the fact that, as a bare minimum, the very ‘something’ has to be omnipresent, omnipotent and permanent in order for everything to be as it is. All variables can be appreciated and measured only against something that is invariable in every sense.

Need for God becomes inevitable in the context of the order we see in the universe. Scientists believe that everything started off from zero energy and it was a slight tilt in the universal plane just after the Big Bang that created all the various particles constituting the universe which is still of zero energy. Then the question remains as to who or what created the ‘slight tilt’ that resulted in all that we see around. Why not attribute it to something known as God? Another important aspect is the fact that Science can talk with absolutely certainty only about physical aspects of the universe. How about all other aspects of the universe like relationships between various animate and inanimate objects? What about the social, emotional and evolutionary aspects of those with life, especially of humans? And what about the most certain and yet the most misunderstood aspects of birth and death? All these unknown aspects call for a need for God, which is nothing but the ultimate answer to everything.

Use of God   

Most part of most religious thoughts deal with human issues. Makers of religions put forth their own theories that can provide answers to various problems that confront humans. God is an essential content in all religious thoughts and each of them define it in their own convenient ways. And then they forget the simple fact it is the very same God that they have reinterpreted. Clash of religions starts from that point. It was understandable in old days because only the religion makers thought about God and claimed to have understood it. That is not the case anymore. In this age of information everyone can know about everything if one wants to. Once all of us realise the simple fact it is the very same God that we are talking about, there will be nothing more useful to us than the concept of God.

An ideal world would be one when each human being will have his own religion with a version of same universal God. This would sound an impossible dream but the concept of personal God in ancient India refers to such an ideal state of affairs. There are many who ridicule the talk about 330 million Gods in Hindu Sanatana Dharma (HSD) with out realizing the fact it is something much above their own understanding. Having a God of your own who can teach you, make you realize things, scold you, pamper you and even play with you will make all the difference in any human being, who is nothing but a bundle of flesh with ego, emotions and maximum helplessness that only he or she knows. All great men are those who have effectively used such Gods to get the best out of themselves and had immense faith within. This would include even the most acclaimed atheists among us.       

A General Theory of Theology assumes great importance in contemporary context. The best definition for God is that it is an Energy, Matter or Consciousness (all interchangeable) that is omnipotent, omnipresent and permanent. And more importantly, God is definitely not something that is making, managing and monitoring everything (especially humans) for providing rewards and punishment. It is possible to have other universes where the same God is in control but it does not matter to us. All things in this universe are evolving against the background of a permanent and unchanging God. Morality and righteousness are something that is natural in the make-up of evolved humans. While certain collective virtues take us forward in the path of evolution, the negative elements impede our progress. And ultimately it will all end up gradually only to be reborn again because the entire universe is cyclic, symmetric and of zero-energy in nature.          

Bigger Bang

There is a growing belief all over the world that the year 2012 is going to be a significant one for reasons unknown so far. Some have fear and some others are hopeful and positive as ever. The fear of World War III (WWIII) has been lurking for sometime and the growing defiance of Iran over the most sensitive nuclear issue strengthens our negative fears. A nuclear capable Iran is sure death bell for Israel. It is foolish optimism to expect inaction by one of the world’s most powerful and determined states in such a scenario. In the prevailing international air of terrorism, islamophobhia and aggressive evangelism, it is not very improbable to have a war between two tribes escalate into one between religions and civilizations. The much predicted WWIII for drinking water may get postponed as WWIV, if at all there is scope for another one. However there is still optimism to look forward to a more positive and incredible development in the year 2012.

One of the major ongoing projects that can give some good news by 2012 is the CERN experiment. It is almost a century since the theories of Big Bang started and it would be a grand finale if the experiments could prove it without any remaining ambiguity. It would be a much bigger bang if Big Bang is true and everything indeed started from a single entity. Consequently, so many half cooked hypotheses and card board postulates will have to be thrown out of our realms of knowledge. The effect of a bigger bang can resonate in so many fields other than science and technology. It can shake the entire foundations of beliefs in all walks of human life. If everything that we can think of started with a single big bang, how can there be so much diversity other than with an underlying string of unity. There can be only one truth and only one direction for approaching the truth. Concept of God and religious beliefs will have to be rewritten.

Scientific Shastra

Shastra in India covers a much bigger area of knowledge than its western counterpart of Science. Indians have always considered anything that can be analysed systematically to be Shastra and that included almost all fields of knowledge. Authentic works like Dharma Shastra and Kama Shastra proves this beyond any doubt. While Western Science was over dependent on instruments, Indian Shastra could go much beyond with the help of meditative and instinctive thoughts. If Western Science insisted on solid proof for every hypothesis, Indian Shastra was content with intuition and faith in profound theories. That is one of the main reasons why Indian Shastras have gone much beyond the frontiers achieved so far by modern Science. Modern scientists realized this difference only when Newtonian physics gave way to its Quantum version in the twentieth century. It is no wonder that almost all physicists of the modern era look so reverently towards Hindu Sanatana Dharma (HSD) ideology.

Despite the dubious efforts of our colonial masters and Islamic invaders, a sizeable part of Indian works on various Shastra is still intact and available to us in its original forms. Distrustful commentaries and sinister interpretations by Christian missionaries and colonial experts have not succeeded much in their intentions. It is ironical to note that some of the most virulent proponents of HSD ideological literature in modern times are the present generations of the very same colonial masters. HSD is beginning to flourish in its pristine beauty once again in the West rather than in its land of origin. Almost all of the major works have been digitized and a mere cursory look though them can tell us the vast expanse of knowledge that has been covered. For anyone impartially interested it would be a great surprise to note that HSD literature covers almost all the current frontiers of Science, most of it allegorically in the least expected forms of stories and mythology.

Advaita Again

Truth of Big Bang is bound to re-emphasize many beliefs in Hindu Sanatana Dharma and dismantle with greater intensity the concept of God in all the Semitic religions. If the cause of everything that we can think of is the single big bang, humanity has no choice but to accept the theory of Advaita. A final seal of authenticity on Big Bang will mean that consciousness, energy and matter are all interchangeable and in fact one and the same. This is nothing but a blunt statement that all matter (me, you, animals, planets, stars etc.), all energy (light, sound, heat etc.), all concepts (God, science, shastra etc.), all ideologies (religions, isms etc.), all ideas etc., in fact everything that we can think of, are essentially one and the same, because everything has emanated from the same source. All the so-called creations have taken place from a single source and quite possibly will go back to the same source, for the cycle of bang and collapse to repeat.

Another offshoot of Big Bang is the authentic seal on the Theory of Evolution, which Hindu Sanatana Dharma has always supported on all planes of thought. There is the shade of evolution in everything connected to HSD ideology. God evolves in various forms and Man is always on an evolutionary path to reach God. Since everything has its origin in the same source, the evolutionary path connecting the minutest organism to the loftiest ideal of God makes perfect sense. All those who prophesied creation of Man by a separate entity called God can roll back their theories and accept defeat in the best traditions of a philosophical debate. All theories of creation will prove to be absurd and shall stand exposed as made up theories aimed at subjugation of Man by Man. There can be no sons or messengers of God, but only incarnations of God in various forms. A majority of humans will stand revealed of their mistake and their leaders exposed of deception.

It is possible that after-shocks overdo the original earthquake in their intensity. The after-effects of Big Bang will be in this fashion. A purely scientific discovery is going to upset the entire world of religious faiths and beliefs when it is getting the final seal of authenticity by the year 2012. Centuries old unfounded theories of creation and prophesy will stand completely exposed with no more followers but the uninformed, illiterate and those with vested interests. The entire scientific community and those with scientific temper will have only one choice. Claims of Vedanta as the eternal truth with no beginning and no end will stand completely vindicated. And Advaita which has always expounded the basic oneness of God and Man will take over the entire humanity to lead us to a world of knowledge, peace and complete understanding. All of us will see only one thing encompassing the entire universe – Brahman, made up of Brahmons (http://www.pseudodictionary.com/brahmons).