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The following article is an continuation from the previous article Nada Sound in Vedic Science | 101. i.e. Vayu and Antariksha are Amrita because these are Amrita (immortal). Pervading is their quality. So these are Yat (motion). This is also ‘Tyat’ because it is indivisible by other thing. So He the Supreme Brahman is the lord of Amrita which consists of above all the four qualities that resides in the field and all this is his essence. This Mantra clearly explains that the consciousness is the cause of matter and not the later of prior one. i.e: “Time, inherent nature, necessity, chance, the elements, the subject are not the authors of the Universe. Not even their combinations as there is what is called as Atma superior to all this. Even Atma is not the ‘Isa’ or controller because it is subject to good and bad. This disposes of the materialist argument as material is always an object of good and bad, knowledge and non-knowledge. This Brahman is purposely called objectless consciousness because the presence of object shows the division of that existence into two subject and object, which means the cognizance or understanding. It is no doubt difficult to understand what consciousness without atleast an element of cognizance is. Yet it can never be the object of any cognizance whatsoever. It is the subject, never completely an object. So the mother of whole Universe according to Upanishads is Consciousness. Cognizance is subject-object relationship whereas consciousness is pure ocean like indistinguishable existence. This consciousness is peculiar because it is seen by some one as subject and some other as object.” Another important inadequacy of science is the destiny of sound. Where does the sound of modern physics go? The answers of the sound physicist of the modern age for the question: where does the sound go after the sound source came to rest? What happens to the waves that the sound produced and released? These questions are halting, hesitant and insufficient. They say sound dissipates at this stage. The sound waves having lost their origin, the vibrating source which has seized to vibrate, do not get the energy to renew themselves, and they get weaker and weaker and, finally, when the waves also seize, the sound ceases. But where is the sound dissipated to? No suitable answer is there to physicist. Justice Mukharji wrote that – “Scientists give an explanation as no energy is lost, the modern physicist applies the theory of the conversion of the energy, to say that the sound energy in waves is conveyed to other energies. How it is converted, when it is converted, and what it is converted are questions left unanswered in physics.” Indian metaphysics objects this dissipation or conversion theory of sound. According to metaphysics sound is deathless and more it is the source of the universe. In the words of Mukharji – “When we say that the vibrating wire has ceased to vibrate, we only speak a degree of truth with an equal degree of falsehood. Everything vibrates. The resting atom has within it the vibrating atomic solar system. It is emanating the cosmic radiations all the time. We, of course, do not see them with our eyes. Sound lasts therefore so long Universe lasts as manifestation. Sound therefore is the eternal condition and companion of the Universe. This view has also has an answer to the query, where does the sound ultimately go? The answer is that it is absorbed into the element of Akasha or Vyoman. It is the claim of metaphysics that if you can fashion and refashion your needle of awareness to fit in different grooves of the concentration of sound, then you can play on the disk of the record of the gramophone of the Universe to reproduce any past sound that ever occurred, whether was sounded millions and millions of years ago or yesterday. That is how silence speaks, solitude sings, and the spheres send their sirens. Sound is the eternal witness. Sound is the eternal record. It is the perennial companion which will not submit to any separation. There is no past that can be irretrievably buried. Every sound is in the record of the Akasha indelibly impressed. Books inks and pens therefore are not our only records, Akasha or the Vyoman is the home of all sounds. This sound is described in the metaphysics as Anahatanada, the unstruck sound which creates, destroy and recreate manifold Universe. The shorter the wavelengths and greater the frequency, the greater is the conquest of distance, and you catch the distant sounds across continents. But even the shortest imaginable wave length cannot compare with sound without wavelength or vibration. It not only conquers continents, but also conquers all time and all space. In the case of this Anahata or non vibratory sound, it is no longer a difference between degrees of wavelengths.” Indian metaphysics explains Sphota the unmanifest, potential as Nadabrahman or Sabda Brahma. Two types of sound exist in the words we utter. One is the cause of the sound and other is the one that denotes the object. The source sound resides in the mind in subtle form before the second sound expresses itself in the uttered words or sound. Justice Mukherji explained this as – “every thought or every idea is sound. The moment you think make a sound, though you do not here it. The moment an idea occurs in your mental canvas, there is a sound, though you do not see it or hear it. It is this sound which is the mother of all forms that constitute the manifest Universe. Sound wells out from the stage of non vibration to the stage of vibration. Sound therefore is not always Dhvani, sound includes both the voice and the word and the sound of so called innate objects. While all this is Shabdha or sound, it has a second and a third part. The second part is the Artha, meaning or the object and the […]
Mathomathis would like to present the article on the Vaimanika Shastras – Vimana Shastras by Maharshi Bharadwaaja Propounded by Venerable SUBBARAYA SHASTRY Translated into English and Edited, Printed and Published by G.R. JOSYER SCHOLAR, HISTORIAN, ESSAYIST, SANSKRITIST Printed at CORONATION PRESS, MYSORE-4, INDIA. The following article would be presented on Types of Vimanas, i.e. different type of flying vehicles or aircrafts or aeroplanes depicted in the Vimana Shastra’s. Before proceeding further on the following article, its advised to complete the previous article on: Types Of Vimanas | Atha Jaatyadhikaranam – Shakuna Vimana | 101 Maharshi Bharadwaaja Sutra 6: “Sundarothha.” | “Next Sundara.” Bodhaananda Vritti: It has got 8 constituent parts. First peetha or ground plate, smoke chimney, 5 gas-engines, bhujya metal pipe, wind blower, electricity generator, and four-faced heater, and vimana nirnaya, or outer cover. The Peetha or ground plate: It should be made of Raajaloha metal only. It should be square or round, and of 100 feet in circumference, or any other desired size. It should be 8 feet thick. Seven times the peetha has to be heated with manchuka or madder root oil. Then spots should be marked in it at 10 feet distance from each other, totaling 24. The size of each kendra or centre is 15 feet. In the center a dhooma-prasaarana or fume distributing naala or pipe 12 feet high should be erected. Naalastambha, hollow mast: The naalastambha should be 56 feet high, and 4 feet in diameter. For storing gas, at its base, a 8 feet long, circular, and 4 feet high vessel should be provided. A six feet size water vessel should be arranged. A 4 feet size oil tank should be fixed at its center. At its foot an electric storing crystal of 1 foot size should be fixed with necessary hinges and keys. The vessel should be filled with 12 parts of dhoomanjana oil, and 20 parts of shukatundika or bignonia Indica? (egg-plant?) oil, and 9 parts of kulakee or red-arsenic oil. To conduct electricity, two wires should be passed through the pipe and fixed to the crystal. In the middle of the naalastambha or mast, for the smoke fumes to be restrained or speeded out, triple wheels with holes should be fixed. In order to work the wheels from outside, two right turning and left turning wheels should be attached outside the pole, and connected to the wheels inside. Three wires should be drawn inside the naala and fixed at the foot, the middle, and at the top. Dhoomodgama Yantra: Because it ejects smoke fumes with speed it is called Dhoomodgama yantra. Hima samvardhaka, soma, and sundaala, in the proportion of 32, 25, and 38, should be filled in pipe crucible, placed in chakra-mukha furnace, and with the help of ajaamukha bellows heated to 712 degrees and properly churned. It will yield excellent dhooma-garbha alloy. With that alloy the dhoomodgama yantra should be constructed. Underneath the centre of the 15 feet long peetha, for the control of the gas fumes a 10 feet high pipe with right revolving wheel should be fixed. On its 2 sides, to south and north, 2 water steam pipes should be erected. At the foot of the 2 pipes 4 feet long 3 feet high pots should be formed for containing the fumes. Two pipes shaped like goblets, 1 foot by 8 feet by 3 feet, should be fixed at the top of the fume container. A water vessel at its foot, and an oil-vessel at its center, and in front of it the switches of the electric ray crystals, as in the dhooma prasaarana naala stambha. On either side of the heat tube, two water jackets should be placed. A pipe with wires should be taken from the electric generator and connected to the hinges of the crystals. Electric current of 80 linkas should be passed to the crystals, whose motion will cause friction and generate heat of 100 degrees (kakshyas). Thereby the oil in the vessel will get heated and boil and emit fumes. The electric power should then be passed through the smoke pipe between the two water jackets. By this the water will be converted into hot steam. The oil fumes should be filled in the oil fume pipe and the steam in the steam pipe. Then by operating the switches, both the fumes will fly up at 500 degree temperature. The switches should restrain the fumes or pump them out as needed. 40 such yantras should be prepared and should be fixed on the peetha in groups on the four sides. Then connected with the bases of the dhooma-naalas, sundaalas or elephant trunks, one foot wide and 12 feet high should be erected on the four sides, to enable the vimana to fly with speed. Sundaala is described by Lallachaarya: The sundaala should be installed. for using the oil fumes and steam fumes for the motion of the vimana. There are. varieties of ksheera vrikshaas or milk-trees according to shaastraas. Vata or banyans, manjoosha or madder root, maatanga or citron?, panchashaakhee (five branched), shikhaavalee (crested), taamra sheershnee (copper crested), brihatkumbhee (big bellied), mahishee, ksheeravallaree, shona parnee (crimson-leaved), vajramukhee, and ksheerinee (milky). From these the ooze or milk should be collected, and in the proportion of 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 8, 7, 4, 7, 30, 12, filled in a vessel. Then granthi metal, naaga or lead, vajra, bambhaarika, vynateya, kanduru, kudapa, and kundalotpala, these in equal parts should be filled in the vessel in equal proportion to the milk contents, and boiled with 92 degree heat. Then the molten liquid should be filled in the milk-cloth machine, and churned. When cooled and put through the levelling machine, it will yield a strong, soft, cool, heat proof, and uncuttable ash-coloured cloth sheet. This cloth should be boiled in rouhinee taila or oil of black hellebore for 3 yaamaas or 9 hours, and then washed with water. Then it should be boiled in atasee or linseed oil as before. Then it […]
Metaphysics is branch of philosophy that concerns with ultimate reality sustaining the apparent world of flux in which life and matter have become cosharers in the space-time continum. Mind is consciousness of life and matter, availing both in the terrestrial process. The space-time continum rolls on these two actualities of life and matter. HENRY BERGSON, in his “Creative Evolution”, accepts this dualism of life and matter. In BERGSON’s philosophy, the world “is divided into two disparate portions, on the one hand life; on the other hand, that inert something which the intellect views as matter. The whole universe is the clash and conflict of two opposite motions; life which climbs upward, and matter, which falls downward. Life is one great force, one vast vital impulse, given once for all from the beginning of the world, meeting the resistance of matter, straggling to break a way through matter, learning gradually to use matter by means of organization; divided by the obstacles, it encounters into diverging currents, like the wind at a street comer; partly subdued by matter through the very adaptations which matter forces upon it; retaining always its capacity for free activity, straggling always to find new outlets, seeking always for grater liberty of movement a mid the opposing walls of matter. The question is two-fold one : one, the process how and second, the principle why life should seek to break through the matter. The chemical evolution has taken water to be the primal matter which the life, at its inception, has broken through. The chemical evolution conceives life as a singular, continuous, uniform phenomenon, though compounds of creation have shared it on gradually ascending orders, having made provision for due completion among the preceding orders. The difference in biological or psychological levels among classes of created beings, is an upgrading of life on planes one higher than the other. Each power order is an incentive for onward progression which marks that there has been continuous stream of life in an uprising course. The natural selection or the survival of the fittest bespeaks of the progression of the simple compounds of the elements of nature into the creation of organic compounds. The data collected by the chemical evolution theory is a recorder of the strides taken by life for its emancipation from the initial appetitive stage for an elevation to the meditative stage. The origin of life, in the chemical evolution theory, has been traced to the alchemy of lighter compounds, diffused freely in nature, in the substantive forms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, combining with each other and resulting into the formation of the basal compounds of water, ammonia and methane. The trans-combination of these simple compounds went into the formation of more sophisticated compounds like glucose, glycerine and the fatty acids, and the process continued until the creation of virus considered to be the first representative of embodied life. Composed only- of nuclic acid, the virus reacted upon another compound of protein and a combination of the two brought about the origin of the nucleo-protein endowed with the faculty of reproduction. The first step towards evolution of animate existence was the origin of appetitive life, possessing nothing more than the mere appetite of reproduction. The fermentation of life came to soon discover that this very crude appetence could not be sustained without being energized from another material source. The primal life assessed in the chrysalis of a single cell, therefore, aspired to come into contact with a source of energy. The Sun has been the single source of energy in the universe. The cellular life came in communion with the Sun. The Sun is the nucleus of the universe, and since a communion could be possible only from nucleus to nucleus, the cellular life, so far not endowed with a nucleus, had to emerge one for generation into it of a substance known as the chlorophyll, meant as an absorbent of solar energy by use of which the appetitive life evolves into the vegetative life. The Sun as a centre of the universe, became also the sustainer of life. The vedic term “Vishnu” understood as the sustainer of all life on earth, is a synonym of the solar energy. This proves the sustenance of life as a singular, continuous, uniform phenomenon making it possible for the components of creation to share life on unlike but gradually ascending orders. In the ascending order of creation, the vegetative life evolved into the animal or the instinctive life which culminated finally into the meditative life, fee life of fee homo-sapien. The advent of the horao-sapien is the apex evaluation of life. It is the homosapien which values life most, and the homo-sapien differs from the lower order only in terms of his power of meditation. The emergence of the meditative life is end of alchemy of evolution. Having created in life the requisite consciousness for higher phases of human existence, the biological evolution has culminated its purpose, leaving the species as they are, without resurrection of those which have become extinct in the struggle for existence and without elevation of all total lower species into homo-sapiens. Such arrival of the meditative life, the biological evolution has come to a stand-still and tire evolutionary process has thereafter rested with reproduction of life on the biological level. Evolution advances, thenceforth, in the meditative life of the homo-sapien. Meditation is an order of thought towards progression. The evolution of meditative life aspires for attainment of values to human life. The meditative evolution is a process of regeneration of values. The “upanishad” has summarized this evolutionary process of life in a terse statement that earth is the sap or essence of the elemental forces of nature, that water is the sap of earth; that the sap of human is vegetation; that sap of vegetation is human life; that sap of human life is mediation, which is “vak” or the reflective sense of speech; that the sap of reflective speech is “rik” or […]
Mathomathis would like to present an article on Purusha Sukta by author Zachary F. Lansdowne Ph.D (who served as President of the Theosophical Society in Boston, has been a frequent contributor to The Esoteric Quarterly. His book The Revelation of Saint John, which provides a verse-by-verse analysis of the entire Revelation, was reviewed in the Fall 2006 issue). The following article is a continuation from the previous article The Purusha Sukta | Human Evolution | 103. Verses 15 and 16 would be presented in the following post. 15. Seven were his altar sticks, three times seven were the kindling bundles, when the gods, performing the sacrifice, bound the beast Purusha. Human beings, like their prototype, face seven inward initiations that are milestones for three interrelated schemes of evolution, are subject to various hierophants who administer these initiations, and remain prisoners of the planet until they complete them. This verse is applicable to either human beings or the Planetary Logos. First, let us consider its application to human beings. Initiations, which are mentioned in the commentary for the fifth verse, occur during inward ceremonies. Bailey writes, “This ceremony of initiation marks a point of attainment. It does not bring about attainment, as is so often the misconception. It simply marks the recognition by the watching Teachers of the race of a definite point in evolution reached by the pupil.” Thus, initiations could be thought of as milestones for the evolutionary journey of human beings. An altar stick burning with fire symbolizes an initiation ceremony that is taking place because, as Bailey says, “An initiation is a blaze of illumination.” In the verse, the seven altar sticks indicate that human beings face, or have as a prospect, seven initiations on their evolutionary journey. These altar sticks are not yet burning, indicating that the seven initiations do not take place at the beginning of the evolutionary journey but instead lie ahead. Bailey has the same time orientation when she writes, “There are five initiations ahead of the disciple, with two more ahead of the Master, making in all seven initiations.” After human beings undergo five initiations, they become a “Master,” which means that they have become a member of the spiritual kingdom and therefore a candidate for the two remaining initiations. The verse says, “three times seven were the kindling bundles.” Here, the phrase “three times seven” is the literal translation of the original Sanskrit words. Some translators carry out this multiplication and assume that the Sanskrit words denote the number “twentyone.” What else could the phrase “three times seven” mean? The number seven has a symbolic meaning in the Rig Veda, as Aurobindo explains: “The number seven plays an exceedingly important part in the Vedic system, as in most very ancient schools of thought. We find it recurring constantly—the seven delights … ; the seven flames, tongues or rays of Agni … ; the seven forms of the Thought-principle … ; the seven rivers … All these sets of seven depend, it seems to me, upon the Vedic classification of the fundamental principles, the tattvas, of existence … In the Veda, then, we find the number of the principles variously stated … But the full number ordinarily recognized is seven.” As in the sixth verse, “kindling” symbolizes the limitations that support the continuation of the evolutionary process. If we regard the number seven as a symbol of completion, then seven “kindling bundles” symbolize a complete scheme of evolution; so three sets of seven kindling bundles symbolize three complete schemes of evolution. These multiple schemes of evolution must refer to different vehicles of consciousness because more than one scheme cannot be associated with the same vehicle. These schemes must be interrelated because they have common milestones. What might these schemes be? Blavatsky writes, “It now becomes plain that there exists in Nature a triple evolutionary scheme … or rather three separate schemes of evolution, which in our system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point. These are the Monadic (or spiritual), the intellectual, and the physical evolution.” The word hierophant comes from the Greek word (hierophantes) that means “one who shows sacred things.” It was the title of the chief priest at the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were outward initiation ceremonies held in ancient Greece. Bailey uses this title to denote the chief officer at an inward initiation ceremony and says that the identity of this officer depends upon the initiation being taken. For example, she writes, “At the seventh initiation … the Logos of our scheme on His own plane, becomes the Hierophant,” which means that the Planetary Logos Himself administers the seventh initiation. A human being is a prisoner of the planet, but, as Bailey explains, such a prison house enables evolution to occur: “Into the prison house of form enter all that live; some enter consciously and some unconsciously, and this we call birth, appearance, incarnation, manifestation … This produces therefore in the world field of awareness a gradual and slow growth towards self expression, self-appreciation, and self realization… Finally the time arrives when the Principle of Liberation becomes active and a transition is effected out of a prison house that cramps and distorts into one that provides adequate conditions for the next development of consciousness.” The symbols in the above verse also apply to the Planetary Logos because Bailey states: “Our Planetary Logos has for objective seven initiations.”36 Bailey goes on to say that “the cycles in the evolutionary process of all these Entities [a Solar Logos, a Planetary Logos, and a human being] may be divided mainly into three groups” and that “the ‘prisoners of the planet’ … [include] the Planetary Logos.” Further, she states that the hierophant is “a Cosmic Logos in the initiations of a Solar Logos, and of the three major Planetary Logo,” and is “a Solar Logos in the initiations of a Planetary Logos.” Here, “Cosmic Logos” denotes a composite Life who is even greater than the Solar Logos. 16. The gods sacrificed […]
Mathomathis would like to publish an article on Cosmos Graphical Mapping presented by Author: JOSEPH E. SCHWARTZBERG. Author in one of his text starts with a category of Underlying Cosmological Conceptions as follows: Commenting on the relative unpopularity of cosmological investigations among modern Indologists, R. F. Gombrich has opined that “the most discouraging feature of traditional Indian cosmology is not its fantastic and uncritical character, but its complexity.” He explains that complexity as follows: Just as the Indian system of social organisation, caste, has grown throughout history by aggregation and inclusion, not abolishing the practices and customs of newly assimilated peoples but assigning them a low place in the social hierarchy, so Indian cosmology which remained largely a branch of Indian mythology- rarely abandoned a theory or idea, but allowed it to remain alongside the new ideas, even if it was inconsistent with them…. Nevertheless, there are certain Hindu texts, the Puranas, composed since the beginning of our era, which concern themselves with [among other things]… the universe in space and time, that is cosmology; and the Puranas do make attempts to reconcile various versions and to present a systematized picture-though no two attempts give quite the same result. Systematization proceeds, as I have just suggested, by aggregation and encapsulation; for instance, different cosmogonies are generally accommodated by making them occur successively, rather than by, say, interpreting one story as an allegorical alternative to another. It is this… which largely accounts for the notorious fact that the dimensions of both space and time in the classical Indian cosmologies are so unconscionably large; two systems are reconciled by putting the one inside the other, and making it a cosmo-graphical or temporal part of a much larger whole In light of these remarks it is hardly surprising that in the lengthy article on cosmogony and cosmology in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, the sections on the Buddhist and Indian views are far longer than for any other religious tradition or world region; the former the longer of the two-is in fact allotted three times the space given to the section on the views associated with Christianity. Of Kirfel’s book, Die Kosmographie der Inder, Gombrich observes, not quite accurately, that it comprises “over 400 large pages with hardly anything more than bare quotations and tables.” Nevertheless, for our purposes the Kirfel text, despite being directed primarily to an audience of Indologists, possesses the great merit of containing what is perhaps the most representative sample of actual photographs of Indian cosmographic productions of any hitherto published work. Among other works treating the several traditions within Indian cosmology at some length, Bastian’s Ideale Welten analyzes at greatest length the specific cosmographic views presented, rather than the conceptual schema underlying them, though not, obviously, from the perspective of a historian of cartography. Sircar’s approach: is not so dissimilar to Kirfel’s and, on cursory inspection, appears to be much in the nature of a catalog; but he strives less for completeness and more for critical analysis and comprehensibility. Moreover, to an extent unmatched by other authors cited in this essay, he considers the real-world referents of the many places named in the cosmographies. Within the present context, it will not be possible to consider, even in a cursory fashion, many of the numerous cosmographical conceptions that have enjoyed currency within the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions. But within each of these traditions I do offer some generalizations on the purposes of the cosmographies; the media employed; their scale, orientation and directionality, use of color, and symbolization; and their degree of conformity to the real world. Finally, I shall consider the pervasiveness of cosmographic imagery in a variety of noncartographic contexts. The inconsistencies in Indian cosmography-Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain-to which Gombrich draws our attention are evident even in the earliest of texts. Sircar notes that in the Rig Veda, composed over several centuries between 1500 and 1000 B.C., there are at least five different words to refer to the earth and that the universe therein was conceived “as consisting of either two or three units, i.e., of either the earth and the sky (heaven), or the earth, the air (atmosphere) and the sky.” Furthermore, “each of these constituents was regarded as having three parts or layers, so that there were either six units of three earths and three heavens or nine units of three earths, three atmospheres and three skies.” To these the later Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda (believed to have been composed between 900 and 500 B.C.) added a hemispheric “world of light, i.e. the vault of the sky,” which was in due course matched by an antipodal nether vault. Thus the world was seen as a disk-a form frequently used in later cosmographies-suspended between “two great bowls turned towards each other,” and that view led in time to the long-enduring conception of the universe as a “cosmic egg” commonly designated Brahmanda (egg of Brahma). A similar early conception is that of the Chandogya Upanishad (date uncertain, but probably composed about the time of the later Vedas), which speaks of the cosmic golden womb (or fetus) (hiranyagarbha) splitting apart to form the heaven and the earth. On the size of the universe the Vedas themselves are silent, but the Aitareya Brahmana informs us that “the distance between the earth and the sky is … 1000 days’ journey for a horse,” while the Panchavimsa Brahmana puts it, more modestly, at “the altitude coverable by 1000 cows standing one upon another.” Whether the conceptions presented to this point were of purely Indian origin or were borrowed from Babylonia is debatable. Kirfel thinks the Babylonian influence is significant, whereas Gombrich finds little support for that proposition. This, however, is an argument we need not enter, since the concern here is not so much with cosmology per se as with cosmography; and of visible representations of the very early Vedic/Indian views we have no surviving example. But at least from the middle of the first millennium B.C., by […]