I have written previously about how it is almost ironic that Christian Fundamentalists go out of their way to distort science to make it fit their creation story, whereas science tends to agree with the Hindu view of the Universe. This is despite Hinduism not predicting a correspondence between Maya and spiritual truths, which Christian Fundamentalists see as essential.
I read an interesting article in New Scientist “Did our cosmos exist before the big bang?“, which shows that the latest advances in quantum loop cosmology predict an endless series of universes, a new one being created after the destruction of the previous. Again science confirms what Hinduism predicts, while the Abrahamic 6,000 year old Universe is now discounted by all serious main-stream scientists.
Western Hindu 
I wondered if you read about the way Hindus see Time. There is also the philosophy of Sankya, which I feel(not Know) explains the concept of existence of energy and its transformations, through the principles of Purusha and Prakriti.
Here’s a site for time cycles if you are interested…
http://westgatehouse.com/cycles.html
And for Sankya I would recommend the book
Classical Indian philosophy by J N Mohanty. It isnt bulky
to read and its in the words of that I could understand.
Thank you, I will check out those references, they look interesting. I will check the book out too.
Chris
Interesting point. I always found interesting how western and Indian perceptions of time differ. I think this is one of the main differences between these families of religions and their goals. Say, eternal life (western) and liberation from an eternal cycle (indian).
They don’t just different perceptions of cosmological time, also of historical time. For the ancient Jews history was very important, even more important than doctrine. I find interesting how Hindu scriptures lack any important historical record.
[bold]Alan Watts[/bold], a professor, graduate school dean and research fellow of Harvard University wrote :
“To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of light years is no matter for astonishment to people used to thinking of time in millions of kalpas, ( A kalpa is about 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise men of India have not been concerned with technological applications of this knowledge arises from the circumstance that technology is but one of innumerable ways of applying it.”
[bold]Dick Teresi[/bold] author and coauthor of several books about science and technology wrote :
“Indian cosmologists, the first to estimate the age of the earth at more than 4 billion years. They came closest to modern ideas of atomism, quantum physics, and other current theories. India developed very early, enduring atomist theories of matter. Possibly Greek atomistic thought was influenced by India, via the Persian civilization.”
The cycle of creation and destruction continues forever, manifested in the Hindu deity Shiva, Lord of the Dance, who holds the drum that sounds the universe’s creation in his right hand and the flame that, billions of years later, will destroy the universe in his left. Meanwhile Brahma is but one of untold numbers of other gods dreaming their own universes.
The 8.64 billion years that mark a full day-and-night cycle in Brahma’s life is about half the modern estimate for the age of the universe. The ancient Hindus believed that each Brahma day and each Brahma night lasted a kalpa, 4.32 billion years, with 72,000 kalpas equaling a Brahma century, 311,040 billion years in all. That the Hindus could conceive of the universe in terms of billions.
The similarities between Indian and modern cosmology do not seem accidental. Perhaps ideas of creation from nothing, or alternating cycles of creation and destruction are hardwired in the human psyche. Certainly Shiva’s percussive drumbeat suggests the sudden energetic impulse that could have propelled the big bang. And if, as some theorists have proposed, the big bang is merely the prelude to the big crunch and the universe is caught in an infinite cycle of expansion and contraction, then ancient Indian cosmology is clearly cutting edge compared to the one-directional vision of the big bang. The infinite number of Hindu universes is currently called the many world hypothesis, which is no less undocumentable nor unthinkable.
[bold]Count Maurice Maeterlinck [/bold](1862-1949) was a Belgian writer of poetry, a wide variety of essays. He won the 1911 Nobel Prize for literature. In his book Mountain Paths, says:
“he falls back upon the earliest and greatest of Revelations, those of the Sacred Books of India with a Cosmogony which no European conception has ever surpassed.”
According to [bold]Guy Sorman,[/bold] visiting scholar at Hoover Institution at Stanford and the leader of new liberalism in France:
” Temporal notions in Europe were overturned by an India rooted in eternity. The Bible had been the yardstick for measuring time, but the infinitely vast time cycles of India suggested that the world was much older than anything the Bible spoke of. It seem as if the Indian mind was better prepared for the chronological mutations of Darwinian evolution and astrophysics.”
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita… “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
[b]Robert Oppenheimer
To Pablo hindu,
It is not true that Hindus had no sense of History;The Ramayana and The Mahabharatha are considered as Ithihasas[history in sanskrit meaning”It happened in this way”] .They and the Puranas are Historical in nature.What happened was the Islamic Invasion of India .Due to this ,countless Texts and people who knew the Texts were lost.If at all,it is indeed a Miracle that there is still some Hindu texts left over from all the invasions.It is in spite of the invasions that Hindus and Hinduism has survived.The Muslim invasion cost us by the loss of texts while the Christian one especially the British cost us with a twisted/revised/reinterpreted[to suit the needs of the colonialists and later the socialists] form of History being passed of as True.This process of twisting History is happening even today in India,despite archaeological evidence to the contrary.Today it is being done by the “Secularists”/Socialists who are in control of what is being taught in our schools.The propagation of the Aryan”Invasion”Theory is a good example of this happening.According to the current Political climate,If you say that the Aryans are outsiders who invaded India,then you are” secular”,”rational”m,even though the evidence does not indicate it.If you say that “Aryans-are -indigenous’ the you are a communal pro hindu Propagandist,though logic tells one that this could be True and there are evidences to prove that this is true.
Very well said Sita.
The Pseudo-Seculars aka Sick-ulars have destroyed India slowly.
Please support your statements with sources.
I would like to be educated in this regards.
mail me @ xoforia@gmail.com..TY
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A Hindu – in search of light!