Science and Spirituality walk into a Bar — Part 2

(In Part-1 of this conversation Spirituality had started discussing how the Universe came to be…)

Spi: I’ve been thinking a lot about how the Universe started. How did all this begin? It turns out, there are three main energies: the energy of creation, the energy of sustenance (what keeps things going) and the energy of transformation. In India they call these three energies Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, respectively.

The cool part that I’ve come to realize is that Brahma & Vishnu energies are contained within the Shiva energy. We live in a Universe in which everything is transforming. The creative and sustenance energies just help with this eternally continuous transformation. You know there’s a story I heard as a kid. It depicted the three energies as people. Brahma and Vishnu were naturally really irritated that Shiva would get to be the all pervading one, once Universe was created, So they decide to go look for Shiva to have some words with him. As they approach him, Shiva grows to a massive size! They decide to split up, Brahma went looking for his head and Vishnu went looking for his feet. The figured one of them would have to find him. As the legend has it, Shiva expanded so much and so quickly, that neither of them could find him! That explosive expansion of the Shiva energy is what makes this Universe the way it is now.

(At this point Sci looks stunned.)

Sci: I can’t believe you just said that. I have also tried to figure out how this Universe came to be. The one thing needed to make the Physics work is a rapid explosive expansion right at the big bang moment of creation. It’s called Inflation. Inflation is the process by which the early baby Universe underwent massive expansion in a very short span of time. The Universe expanded several hundreds of orders of magnitude in size in almost the blink of an eye. Without Inflation, we just can’t explain how the Universe came to be the way we observe it now. I’m shocked you’re saying the exact same thing.

B: Wait a minute!?!?! You both have known this for so many years but never spoke to each other about it! Really? Come on dudes!!

Sci: Cut us some slack B. We just didn’t hang with the same circles, so we never had a chance to talk about it.

You know, there something else that’s been on my mind too…..

TO BE CONTINUED…

(Disclaimer: I am by not an expert Physicist or a Spiritual Master. I am just a guy who has seen both sides of this coin. I have a PhD in Chemical Engineering and I teach Meditation under the expert guidance of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. I am simply connecting the dots between what I’ve read in books on Theoretical Physics and what I’ve heard Sri Sri say in his talks.)