Sikh Cosmology
-Damanjit Singh
Lecturer, Department of Physics,
Baba Kuma Singh Engineering College, Amritsar, India
Every bird needs a sky to fly. Every flower needs a space to blossom. Every heart
needs a cosmos to beat.
Modern science has made sincere efforts in understanding the cosmos.
Various pictures of the universe came forth. Friedmann-solutions, based on the
general theory of relativity, predicted that the universe emerged with a big bang
from a singular point where the density and the curvature of the universe were
infinite. All the theories of science based on "smooth" space-time broke down and
predictability vanished. The space-time had a boundary and a beginning at the big
bang. On the same basis, the existence of black holes was predicted by Roger
Penrose. The difficulties of description of the early stages of the universe in the
big bang model were removed by Alan Guth in his Inflationary model. On the
contrary, the Quantum theory of gravity, which was based on Euclidean spacetime, predicted the possibility of space-time's finiteness in extent and yet having
no singularities that form boundary or edge. Space-time would be like the surface
of the earth but with two more dimensions. An important point to make here is that
in the scientific description of universe, there is significant participation of the
imaginative faculty of the mind in creating the picture of the universe.
There have been numerous attempts by the great masters of science to merge
the partial theories of physics to construct a complete ‘Unified theory of every
thing.’ Einstein spent most of his later years in the same quest. The search is still
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going on. Whether the partial theories are additive in their very nature is
debatable.
At this place, it becomes very important to share the critical comments of
Ouspensky on science. He asserted that science never entertained Kant's ideas of
visualizing categories of space and time as categories of perception and thought.
Scientific thought proceeded apart from philosophical and psychological thought.
According to him, the Scientific understanding of space and time had always an
objective existence and there were no serious attempts at a psychological study of
space and time. The acceptance of the propositions, that every mathematical
formulation must have a physical equivalent and that every physical phenomenon
can be expressed mathematically, arrested the progress of thought along the very
lines where progress was most necessary. Ouspensky gave his New Model of the
Universe, where time had three dimensions and with three dimensions of space
forms a six dimensional "Euclidean Continuum". He insisted that "general time"
does not exist and every separately existing system have its own time. Separate
time is always a completed circle with eternity being the curvature of time. The
six-dimensional universe is illogical in its very nature and its space can contract
and expand. There is exact unity of space and time and the difference between
them as well. The space can pass into time and time into space. Every point of
space includes the whole of time and every moment of time includes the whole of
space. i.e. Everything is everywhere and always.
The French philosopher Henry Bergson in his work "The Creative Evolution"
unfolded new visions of space-time and different dimensions of existence.
According to him, the theory of knowledge and the theory of life are inseparable.
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The two inquiries should join each other and push each other unceasingly. He
insisted that the primary inner experience is the "flow" of life. The mechanism is
the external form of inner spiritual activity. Condemning the mathematical
conception of scientific time, he finds "pure time" or "real duration" as a
representation of flowing irreversible succession of states melting into each other
and forming indivisible process. He disposes the deterministic image of "spatial
conception of time" as it is the choice already made and not the choice in making.
Rejecting the materialistic view that the consciousness is either identical with
brain activity or existentially dependent on brain activity, he claimed that there is
vastly more in a given occasion of consciousness than that in the corresponding
brain state. There is "pure" memory, which is wholly spiritual and much more than
mechanical memory. It is where whole past resides. It retains all our conscious
states "in the order in which they occur". Thus all the past psychological states
have real, though unconscious, existence. Bergson considers it unjustified to
consider perception as a kind of photographic process and as a cognitive function
whose aim it is to provide knowledge. There is a "pure" perception free from any
admixtures of memory images. That which has never been perceived, which at the
same time is simple, and which is necessarily ‘unforeseeable’ forms "pure
perception". It is an original moment and an original history. On the contrary, the
perception whose evolution is regulated by the evolution of the nervous system,
will be directed towards "action" and not true knowledge.
Natural sciences form their conception of time and motion. Static abstraction
is produced. There is negation of the nature of time by ignoring the crucial
element of "becoming". So Bergson claimed that science can never provide a
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complete and adequate account of the universe. It need to be supplemented by
some other discipline. Criticizing Darwin's theory of evolution, he gives a vision
of cosmos where evaluation of life is creative and not mechanistic. This doctrine
of "vital impetus" sees a "supra-consciousness" penetrating matter, giving rise to
living bodies and determining their course of evolution. The same "supraconsciousness" animates innumerable planets in the universe resulting in a
creative cosmic evolution.
The considerations doesn't end here. Muhammad Iqbal' views the vitalism of
Bergson as ending in dualism of will and thought. To him, Bergson has a partial
view of intelligence. Thought has a deeper movement also. Although it appears to
divide reality into static fragments, its real function is to synthesize the elements of
experience by employing categories suitable to the various levels that experience
present. It is as organic as life. In conscious experience, life and thought permeate
each other and form a unity.
In an intense conscious state, whole cosmos converges at a single point.
During the moment of blessing, whatever happens to consciousness, happens to
the whole cosmos. The cosmos changes. The world remains no more the same.
Every phenomenon takes new shape and blossoms in a new fragnance. The very
sense of space-time, the basis of all phenomenal, perception, covers new
dimensions. Such moments hold the supreme status in building the foundations of
any civilized existence. Such moments are firmaments of the civilizations.
Although we are in the initial stages of the process of discovering the
foundations of Sikh cosmology, but some glimpses can be shared. Our sense of
history is not based on a dead linear conception of time. It is a living entity. Khalil
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Gibran says, "Every inspiration has a song." Our history is a living song.
Conceptualization is necessarily an obstacle in our path of spiritual realization.
Our institutions needs to put a check on this.
The understanding of the relationship of our subjective self with matter will
help us in bringing forth our political, social and economical systems. The
understanding of Sikh space-time will bring forth the Sikh sense of Architecture.
How does it happen that matter cuts the space in such a way that it crosses death?
What should be the role of appreciation in criticism? What will be the centers of
creativity?
What is the cosmic truth of that civilization where air is divine, where
breathing is a religion, where living is a blessing, where dreams are collective and
lives are perfume. Where birds, trees, skies, oceans are not mere objects but are
worshippers. Where life is not an imagined fear but realized love and devotion.
The search for Sikh cosmology is on.
Damanjit Singh is Lecturer in Department of Physics, Baba Kuma Singh Engineering
College, Amritsar, India and can be reached at [email protected].
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