Think about it. The Hindus are one of the first cultures to invent the idea of infinity, an element that plays a huge roll in cosmology, physics, and mathematics. Consider also their incredibly large numbers. For instance, the incarnation of Vishnu while sleeping is Brahma, and Brahma sits on a lotus that sprouts from Vishnu's navel. Brahma watches the dream of Vishnu, which is the dream of the universe. When Brahma blinks a world age ends and another begins. A world age is 360 human years. The dream is divided into four stages, which are the various yugas. The first, the Krta being 4800 Divine years (1,728,000 human years); second being the Treta Yuga being 3600 Divine Years (1,296,000 humans years); third, the Dvapara Yuga being 2400 Divine Years (864,000 human years), and finally the Kali Yuga being 1200 Divine Years (432,000 human years). All together the length of Vishnu's dream is 12,000 Divine Years, or 4,320,000 human years. And that is only half the Cosmic Day! So Vishnu spends another 4.32 million years doing house cleaning (usually setting everything on fire and starting a flood) and then goes back to sleep to start the whole cycle again. Now these are immensely huge numbers. Of course, we know that the universe is roughly 13.75 billion years old (give or take 170 million years). This means that the Hindus were off by a lot (1 : 0.000628). Which is the equivalent of thinking New York City and Los Angeles are about 1.5 miles away from one another. Then again, according to the Christian timeline in which the universe is 10,000 years old LA and NYC are about 9.5 feet apart!
Okay, so we know things are way bigger than we had originally thought two millenniums ago, but certainly the Hindus captured the spirit of this idea. So? They were still wrong... or were they? It is entirely possible that the ancients knew far more than we given them credit for, and they were probably far more advanced than we think. I believe that Christian, Judaic and Muslim scriptures still captures the spirit of modern science, we just have to look beyond the dogma. Consider again how long Vishnu's dream is : 4.32 million years, which is similar to the length of the Kali Yuga (or Dark Age), which is 432,000 years. 432 is not an arbitrary number, for it crops up in other religions and in science. Here :
- In Norse mythos multiply the number of doors in Valhalla by the number of Einherjar that will pass through each door : 540 x 800 = 432,000.
- In the Bible 1656 years pass between Creation and the Flood, which is 86,400 weeks (or 43,200 x 2).
- In biology an average healthy human heart beats once per second. 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours = 86,400 heart beats per day (once again, 43,200 x 2).
- In astronomy the number of years it takes for the spring equinox to pass through all the zodiacal constellations, known as the Procession of the Equinox, is 25,920. Divide 25,920 by 6 equals 4320.
It is entirely possible the ancients knew far more about the structure of the universe and nature than we give them credit for. The Kali Yuga is 432,000 years, which would coincide with the Procession of the Equinox. Kali, being the Goddess of Death, also means "black" (hence Dark Age). But Kali also means "time", hence our link between death and the procession of time. Now, we can accuse Judaic religions for being ignorant and believing the universe is only 10,000 years old, but we can see clearly above that they understood a number far larger than 10,000 and understood the Procession of the Equinox. So why don't they just say it? Usually the best way to save information from being lost is to work it into a belief system. A king may be advised that eating pork is bad for human health, but just because the king says we shouldn't eat pork doesn't mean we will (consider the Prohibition on alcohol). But if the clergymen say it is a sin to eat pork, that is another story. The same could be said for pork as not mixing dairy and meat, since raw, unpasteurized dairy has bacteria that can spoil meat during digestion; or even tattoos, which can get infected, and people died of infections back then. It is entirely possible (and this is speculative) that ancient astronomers knew that the earth is really old, millions of years old. But who would believe that? To save this knowledge they would have worked it into their myths, the science of their age.
Look again at Vishnu's dream sequence. There are four yugas, which can be considered the four stages of sleep (not including REM). Could they have understood stages of sleep? Or is this speculative? What about something else, such as the four elements : earth, air, fire, and water. We know now that substances are made of elements from the periodic table. But the four elements could be an understanding of the four states of matter (not including the fifth state of condensates) : solid (earth), gas (air), liquid (water), and plasma (fire).
Understanding modern science requires a foundation, and that foundation so happens to be the myths of antiquity. It is easy to underestimate the scientific knowledge of myth. But dig deeper and we can learn so much more about the underlying structural comprehension of science. We consider progress as something that is correlated to time, and as time marches on progress propagates. Likewise, we assume if we go backwards in time progress is reversed. By that deduction we assume we are smarter than our ancient ancestors. But illumination of the myths show that they were right on par with us, which seems to be the very antithesis of progress and time. That being said, how do we explain why there are cocaine traces found in an Egyptian mummy? Cocaine being strictly a Meso / South American crop, unless there was intercontinental trade 2,000 years before Columbus. How do we explain the dead accuracy of Mayan predictions of Venus's orbit, which is in 0.1% error? That is unless they had more accurate tools for studying the stars 1,500 years before the telescope.
It is naive to think we are better than our ancestors. As Foucault said (and I paraphrase) : "The ideas of one age are no better than the ideas of another age. They are just different."
The structure of the Universe :
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