Exploring the Universe the Upanishadic Way

by Jayaram V

Please do not look for complete answers or information in these. They are fragments of thoughts which deal with only certain aspects of the chosen subject

Exploring the universe the Upanishadic way. In August and September1977, NASA launched two spacecraft's named Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 to explore planets like Jupiter and Saturn and travel beyond into the interstellar space. In the last 33 years, as of September 2013, Voyager 1 traveled about 19 Billion Kilometers from the sun and Voyager 2 about 15.5 Billion kilometers.

From our standpoint this is a great achievement. For the first time a manmade object exists billions of miles away from the earth, beyond the solar system. However, if you compare the size of the universe to the earth, the distance traveled by these two combined would not amount to even a tiny dot on the surface of the earth.

The truth is there are certain limitations to what we can explore and how far we can physically travel into space. The Upanishadic seers had no means to travel into space and explore its secrets. Not many had even traveled beyond their local regions. For most of them, the Indian subcontinent was the world.

However, they used another method to explore the universe. They believed that the body and the consciousness of a living being represented the body and mind of the universe on a tiny scale, and concluded that by studying and understanding the inner workings of them, one could find some truths about the universe and the world in which lived.

Today, we know that the body contains the same elements as the rest of the universe and functions according to the same natural laws. Therefore, by studying the body minutely at the atomic and subatomic levels, we can certainly understand some truths regarding the inner working of the unverse.

We do not yet know whether the consciousness is a mere configuration of numbers, mathematical equations and the play of natural laws or something more. Our seers saw that consciousness depended not only upon the mind and body for its functioning, but existed beyond the mind and the body also.

This is one finding, which science is yet to establish and confirm. It is yet to prove that consciousness can exist independent of the mind. << >>