Sanskrit and Interdisciplinary Research
Ram Nath Jha
Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies
JNU, New Delhi - 110067
Sanskrit is, by nature, interdisciplinary.
•List of subjects recorded in Sanskrit (Chhandogya Upanishad VII.2)
5. Itihasa-Purana;
6. Vyakarana (Vedanam Veda);
7. The rites for the manes (Pitryam);
8. Mathematics (Rashi);
9. Disaster-management (Daiva);
Continued.....
10. Mineralogy (Dhatu Parikshana Shastra or Nidhi);
11. Logic (Vakovakyam);
12. Ethics (Ekayanam);
13. Etymology (Devavidya);
14. Science of Pronunciation (Shiksha), Texts of Rituals and Law (Kalpa), Prosody (Chhandas) and Method of lighting of Ceremonial Fire (Chiti) under Brahmavidya; 15. Physical Science (Bhutavidya) 16. Military Science (Kshatravidya), 17. Astonomy (Nakshatravidya), 18. Science of Serpent (Sarpavidya), 19.15. Physical Science (Bhutavidya);
16. Military Science (Kshatravidya),
17. Astonomy (Nakshatravidya),
18. Science of Serpent (Sarpavidya),
19. Subject of Fine Arts (such as Perfumery, Dancing, Music), Sculpture, Painting, Handicrafts, Architecture etc under Devajanavidya
•Two Models of Understanding
1. Nyaya-Vaisheshika/ Classical Sciences
2. Vedanta/ Modern Sciences
•Parallels between Nyaya-Vaisheshika and Classical Science:
1. Atoms
2. Time
3. Space
4. God
5. Reductionist Approach
6. Human-centric Behaviour
•Parallels between Vedanta and Modern Science:
1. Relationship between Parts and Whole
2. Energy/ Shakti
3. Creationism vs. Manifestation Theory
4. Approximate Knowledge vs. Absolute Knowledge
5. Concepts of Fundamentals
6. Ecology, Social Ecology and Eco-feminism
7. Time and Space
Important Books to be Studied
•Sanskrit Vanmaya mein Vijnana ka Itihasa, Edited by Kamala Kant Mishra, NCERT, New Delhi
•The Tao of Physics, Fritjof Capra, Flamingo, London
•The Web of Life, Fritjof Capra, Flamingo, London
•Uncommon Wisdom, Fritjof Capra, Flamongo
Continued
•The Turning Point, Fritjof Capra, Flamingo
•The Hidden Connections, Fritjof Capra, Flamingo
•Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, David Bohm, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
•Physics and Philosophy, Werner Heisenberg, HarperCollins Publishers, New York
•Physics and Beyond, -------------
Continued..
•A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
•Black Holes and Baby Universe and Other Essays, Stephen Hawking, Bantam Books, London
•Modern Physics and Vedanta, Swami Jitatmanand, Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, N.D.
•Holistic Science and Vedanta, Swami Jitatmanand, Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan
Conti...
•Maya in Physics, N.C. Panda, MLBD, Delhi
•The Vibrating Universe ------------
•Vedic Venues, Edited by Shashi Tiwari, Ram Nath Jha and Nicholas Kazanas, Aditya Prakashan, 2/18, Ansari Road, N.D. – 110002
•What is Life?, Erwin Schrodinger, Cambridge University Press, UK
Yoga, Ayurveda and Holistic Health
•Samadosah samagnisca samadhatumalakriyah |
Prasnnatmendriyamanah svastha ityabhidhiyate|| Susrutasamhita XV.41
One whose dosas, agni and functions of dhatu and malas are in the state of equilibrium and who has cheerful mind, consciousness and sense-organs is termed as svastha (healthy).
•Health was defined by WHO (World health Organization) in 1948 as “A state of complete physical, mental and Social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
•Importantly, WHO Executive Board adopted a resolution early in 1998 calling on the World Health Assembly in May of the same year to change the WHO constitution to include the spiritual dimension of health.
Why Comparison?
•“It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet. These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of human culture, in different times or different cultural environments or different religious traditions: hence if they actually meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each other that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that new and interesting developments may follow.”
Werner Heisenberg
•Erwin Schrödinger, an acknowledged quantum physicist, declares:
“I had accepted a post as a lecturer in theoretical physics in Czernowitz and had already envisaged spending all my free time acquiring a deeper knowledge of philosophy, having just discovered Schopenhauer, who introduced me to the Unified Theory of the Upanisads.” (What is Life, Erwin Schrödinger, Cambridge University Press, pp. 169)
•The general notions about human understanding….which are illustrated by discoveries in atomic physics are not in the nature of things wholly unfamiliar, holly unheard of, or new. Even in our own culture they have a history, and in Buddhist and Hindu thought a more considerable and central place. What we shall find is an exemplification, an encouragement, and a refinement of old wisdom.
Fritzof Capra, The Tao of Physics, Flamingo, London, 1991 p.22
•The statement of John A. Wheeler, a Princeton University physics professor and direct disciple of Niels Borh, that:
“My wonderful mentor, Niels Bohr, had gone into deep interest into the Upanisads……..I like to think that someone will trace out how the deepest thinking of India made its way to Greece and from there to the philosophy of our times.”
Conti....
•“Your wonderful analysis of the great questions inspires us all in the great search that follows the spirit of the Upanisads, of Plato’s dialogue and modern science.”
He further says:
Letter written by John A. Wheeler to Swami Jitatmananda published on the cover page of ‘Modern Physics and Vedanta’.
•Schopenhauer:
“There is no study as beneficial and elevating as that of the Upanisads (Vedanta). It has been the solace of my life and it will be the solace of my death”
Preface of Bhagavadgita translated by F. Max Muller
•“Ancient Sanskrit Literature is a storehouse of scientific principles and methodology. The work of our ancient scholars should be thoroughly examined and where possible integrated with modern science.”
Ignited Minds by APJ Abdul Kalam p. 87
•“The firm basis of knowledge on experience in Eastern mysticism suggests a parallel to the firm basis of scientific knowledge on experiment. This parallel is further enforced by the nature of the mystical experience. It is described in the Eastern traditions as a direct insight which lies outside the realm of the intellect and is obtained by waching rather than thinking; by looking inside oneself; by observation.” – Fritzof Capra
• Fritzof Capra, The Tao of Physics, Flamingo, London, 1991 p. 42
•Einstein was so much influenced by Schopenhauer’s philosophy that he could not hesitate to express his feelings as expressed by Walter Isaacson:
“I do not at all believe in free will in the philosophical sense. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer’s saying, “A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills,” has been a real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance.”
•Regarding unification theory as proposed by Einstein Isaacson says:
“ It has been my greatest ambition to resolve the duality of natural laws into unity. The purpose of my work is to further this simplification, and particularly to reduce to one formula the explanation of the gravitational and electromagnetic fields. For this reason I call it a contribution to ‘a unified field theory.”
Einstein: His Life and Universe, Pocket Books, New York, 2007 pp.342
Study of Consciousness
•On January 25,1931, Observer published an ‘Interview with Max Plank’ by J.W.N. Sulivan. In answer to the question, ‘Do you think that consciousness can be explained in terms of matter and its law?’ Max Plank answered that he did not. ‘Consciousness’, Max Plank continued, ‘I regard as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing postulates consciousness.
James Jeans, Philosophical Aspects of Modern Science, (1932) George Allen and Unwin, London, p.12
•Fritzof Capra comments:
“This has been a very successful strategy throughout modern science, but our obsession with quantification and measurement has also exacted a heavy toll.”
Capra, Fritzof, The Web of Life, (1996) Flamingo, London, p.19
•Fritzof Capra, quoting R.D. Laing, further put it emphatically:
“Galilio’s program offers us a dead world: Out go sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell, and along with them have since gone esthetic and ethical sensibility, values, quality, soul, consciousness, spirit. Experience as such is cast out of the realm of scientific discourse. Hardly any thing has changed our world more during the past four hundred years than Galileo’s audacious program. We had to destroy the world in theory before we could destroy it in practice.”
Ibid.
•Michael Talbot summarizes:
“Reality in the quantum world is no more purely objective but is connected with the ‘subjective’ element of the physicist. To describe this phenomenon Michael Talbot in his recent book Mysticism and New Physics uses the word ‘omnijective’. Realities like electron in the subatomic world have always an ‘omnijective’ existence for the physicist, that is, the objective reality is inextricably connected with the subjective consciousness of the scientist.”
Mysticism and New Physics, Michael Talbot
•In 1901, May 10, Bose demonstrated all his experiments in England and concluded with these words:
“I have shown this evening autographic records of the history of stress and strain in the living and non-living. How similar are the writings ! So similar indeed that you cannot keep one apart from the other. Among such phenomena; how can we draw a line of demarcation and say, here the physical ends, and there physiological begins ? Such absolute barriers do not exist…..It was when I came upon the mute witness of these self made records, and perceived on them one of a pervading unity that bears within it all things.
•It was then that I understood for the first time a little of that message proclaimed by my ancestors on the banks of the Ganges thirty centuries ago. “They who see but one, in all the changing manifoldness of this universe, unto them belongs Eternal Truth – unto none else, unto none else.”
Jitatmananda, Swami, Holistic Science of Vedanta, (1993) Bharatiya Vidya Bhavana, Bombay, 1993, p. 2-3
•Werner Heisenberg around 1925 firstly recognized the importance of the role of consciousness as observer in scientific process and proved it mathematically. Later on in 1955 Princeton University physicist John A. Wheeler reinterpreted this theory of Heisenberg and replaced the word ‘observer’ as’ participator’. Swami Jitatmananda by summarizing this discussion says:
•“A purely objective description of the subatomic world is impossible. As physicist John A. Wheeler has said, the detached observer-scientist of classical physics is no more a detached observer looking through a microscope at something separate from himself. But he is also the participator in the quantum drama. He is both the ‘actor’ and ‘participator’ as physicist James Jeans puts it, in the great drama of existence.”
Jitatmananda, Swami, Modern Physics and Vedanta, (2006) Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai, p. 40
•The Yogasutra even goes further and accepts the inseparable state of reality where consciousness and material object merged with each other at the state of nirvitarka Samadhi and at higher state of Samadhi too. Modern physics recognizes this contribution of Patanjalayogasutra as states Fritzof Capra:
•Smrtiparisuddhau svarupasunyevarthamatranirbhasah nirvitarkah | Yogasutra 1.43
•“The idea of the process of knowledge being an integral part of one’s understanding of reality is well known to any student of mysticism. Mystical knowledge can never be obtained by detached, objective observation; it always involves full participation with one’s whole being. In fact, mystics go far beyond Heisenberg’s position. In quantum physics the observer and the observed can no longer be separated, but they can still be distinguished. Mystics in deep meditation arrive at a point where the distinction between observer and observed breaks down completely, where subject and object fuse.”
Capra, Fritzof, The Tao of Physics, (1991) Flamingo, London, p. 364
•Other important issue related with cognitive process is that in Yoga system consciousness through citta moves outward, takes shape of object and acquire knowledge of that particular object. In modern physics Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of quantum physics and Novel Laureate, speaks the same voice:
•“From an inner centre the psyche seems to move outward, in the sense of an extraversion, into the physical world…”
W. Pauli and C.G. Jung, The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, (1955) Princeton University Press, Princeton, N. J., p.175
•Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular.... How does the idea (so emphatically opposed by the Upanishad Writers) arise at all?
What is life? Erwin Schrodinger
•The only possible alternative is simply to keep the immediate experience that consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown, that there is only one thing and that, what seems to be a plurality, is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing produced by a deception (the Indian Maya).
What is life? Erwin Schrodinger
Biotechnology
• Human Memory Capacity - Cubic Miles Of Bytes
The memories of computers are measured in terms of their smallest addressable element, called a byte. A byte usually contains eight binary digits. Nerve cells also have an “all or nothing” binary response. If combinatorial codes are remembered by nerve cells, each combination of firing inputs received by a neuron with 100 dendrites could contain 100 binary digits.
•The possible number of unique combinations of inputs for a single neuron with just 100 incoming dendrites could be computed as 100 x 99 x 98 x 97 x .... x 2 x 1 possibilities. That represents more than 1, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 unique possible combinations! (156 zeros) .
Multiply that number by 100 and divide by 8 to measure the number of bytes of possible memory. A single nerve cell with 100 dendrites can potentially remember that many bytes of singular combinations. Some nerve cells have up to 2,50,000 dendrites! Only the possible existence of such codes can explain the phenomenal capacity of human memory.
125 trillion Synapses
Mathematics
•“I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of Ganges, - Astronomy, Astrology, Metaphysics, etc.”…..It is very important to note that some 2500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn Geometry.”
Voltaire Francois
Mathematics
•We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count through decimal system, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
Einstein
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atyant gyan prad article
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