Indra

Its amazing what we can learn out of a simple thing called Fire. The something we see everyday but it never crossed our minds on what it could convey to us. During my Vedic research, and even till today, I find that many other Deities/Dynamics/Mechanisms, whatever you may call them, really do have Agni as their basis which allows them to be converted to living things. It also actually looks like everything leads to Agni. A very Zorastrian thought but true in nature. Agni seems to the central point of attraction, like a feminine surrounded by men who admire her beauty. The Egyptian texts have in fact depicted their Agni counterpart, Shu, as feminine. Well, the Egyptians too new about this commonality and I was amazed at the correlation between Vedic Ideology and the Egyptian Ideology. The Egyptians too converted all dynamics into living things and explained concepts in a dramatic style. At some point in my blog, I will definitely post a tour of the Egyptian Sacred Texts. I'm hoping to find the same in the Greek Mythological Texts and once I do I will post a tour of it probably right after the Egyptians. And if I do the same for the Sumerian Texts of Mesopotamia also, we will complete the Alexandrian Empire.

INDRA:

The Rig Veda describes Indra to be the one who joins two ends to make a cycle. And so they termed him as the Thunderbolt Bearer. Thunder... something that signifies that there is going to be a good amount of rain. Rain is something that connects the sky to the ground and whatever amount of water evaporated from the ocean falls back there. Geologists call this the Water "Cycle". Everything is a cycle in nature. There is also a nitrogen cycle. It ensures sustainability. So if you have to sustain life, we need a cycle. Don't we? We breathe in oxygen and let out carbon-dioxide which the plants take in and let out oxygen for us. It's a balance between the "want" factor. We want oxygen and they want carbon-dioxide, and we give each other what we want in return for getting what we want. Balance... another reason why a cycle is meant for. We can definitely break down the meaning like this, "If someone slaps your left cheek, you don't slap his right cheek, you slap his left cheek because its easier to do so since the other guy's hand isn't in the way already".

Making two ends meet is like drawing any closed loop or shape. It define the shape as a single separate entity. Our body structure for example is a closed loop. Have you ever seen those crime scenes where the the police draws on the floor a neat drawing of the awkward position the victim died? There's a closed loop there. Have you ever heard of closed loop integrals in mathematics or physics? It's the same idea. If you think deeper, even light and sound, or lightning and thunder, (just to conform with Indra in our discussion) are cyclic in nature. They only differ in frequency. You can come across the common spectrum chart that shows from audible frequencies to radio frequencies to the visible spectrum to the non visible spectrum or may be the heat spectrum (infrared and ultraviolet) to the dangerous spectrum. Everything is cyclic or in some form of closed loop.

If you are an electrical engineer, you would have heard the Kirchoff's Voltage Law that says sum of all voltages in a "closed loop" equal to zero. Zero... that signifies a "balance". For the non electrical engineers, that's the same as saying that if a beaker has a 1 ml capacity, you can pour different liquids in it uptil the 1 ml limit, but it should be filled completely. The difference between the total amount of liquid and the maximum capacity become zero. So the "balance" factor creates limits of what can be done... limits mean its bounded or there are boundaries to the solution... boundaries are closely associated with closed loop structures. If I had to draw this, I will draw a circle (which is in the shape of a "cycle"), draw three lines from the center to show three different parameters for example, and draw a new set of boundaries and still get a closed loop structure.



You might have noticed by now that even time is cyclic. The whole purpose of the clock is to serve that. Propagation or communication also occurs in rings that "circular" in nature. Music also follows a cycle. Ask a musician, he/she will tell you that if a composition starts from one harmonic set, it ends in the same harmonic set to make sure it sounds complete. That also suggests that the music of our speech follows the same thing. The Rig Veda actually describes this as everything following in a cyclic manner by saying that Indra rules everything. May be not at the time of creation, but only in the end when he eventually rules everything. So the fact is everything follows the cycle or a closed loop fashion and is not a cycle or a closed loop fashion and so the sacrificing part doesn't belong to Indra. Remember I included the fashion part with closed loop. So it redefines things to follow a closed loop fashion. So since the sacrificing part is not a property of Indra, this suggests that real learning cannot happen by just looking at how things look like. This sort of learning, if in case it occurs, is "bounded" and doesn't show you anything beyond it. Therefore illusion is an aspect of Indra. Indra as a ruler doesn't want show you everything, just like a ruler of any country who tries to create an illusion to the public about his/her actions and motives.

So if ancient texts talk about someone uprooting Indra or defeating Indra, it means that someone became an expert in illusionary craftsmenship. Indrajeet... Indian Mythology says he was the first one to master illusionary crafts.

There's another interesting thing the Vedas talk about. It is the relation of Indra as Agni's brother. I will dedicate my next post to explaining this relationship in detail. For now to give you a hint, we can understand this relationship by just taking one of the characteristics of each one and see how they are linked. Let's take the "learning" aspect of Agni and the "cyclic" aspect of Indra. It suggests that learning can happen through some sort of feedback. Hmmmmm... I gave an example of a chemical analysis in my previous post. The chemist "gives" the chemical compound a test compound, which reacts to it and turns red in color. This is "seen" by the chemist and he/she "infers" that the chemical compound is a sugar-based compound. Neural engineers would have understood this immediately. They call learning through feedback as unsupervised learning. Commercial industries use customer feedback to learn how their products reach their customers. It definitely can't tell them everything, but its a start. Just like how learning starts. The apple fell on Newton's head which didn't tell him everything immediately about why the apple fell down and why it didn't go up. But it was a start for him. He delved deeper and found the real reason.

Therefore looking at how things look like is just a start. Delving deeper can tell you a lot more of the matter and the real reason of why it existed. A good way of saying this: "avoid prejudice"... it can save you from a lot of trouble. Relying on Indra can lead you into trouble... which is why most Puranas depict Indra as a trouble-maker.

Agni

So I found something that talked about what I was looking for. I'm not the only person in this world who realized such a thing. Our ancestors too new about it and they used it in their daily lives.

All these general concepts are actually webbed together. So in order to understand one completely, you need to understand the others completely. That leaves you wondering where to actually start from. Its like finding a starting point in a circle or any closed loop. Anything can be a starting point and you can go in any direction or path. You will still learn the same stuff.

The Rig Veda starts with Agni and so I will also start from there. But I might take a different path than the Rig Veda and guide through my way of understanding.

AGNI:

Agni means Fire. This concept is by far the most easiest concept to understand because we know Fire well, what it is like and what it can do. We just need to look beyond what we already know.

The most important aspect of Fire is its attribute of consuming something to give out something else useful. We know that Fire consumes wood, oil-based liquids, certain gaseous substances to give out light, heat and smoke which are useful. Scientifically any substance that is subjected to its ignition temperature exhibits this property. What we are interested in is the property. Living thing also do the same thing. Don't they? Every living thing consumes something to give out something else useful. Plants consume Water, Carbon Dioxide and Sunlight to create or give out glucose useful for the plant to survive. Animals consume plants or other animals to give out all forms of energy useful to them for survival as well as waste that will be useful for the soil. What actually happens is conversion. Producing something out of something else is called conversion. So life forms do some sort of conversion.



The above diagram shows a block diagram depiction of a conversion process. Another aspect of Fire is the light giving part. Light gives us the ability to perceive things. We know its much easier to find things when there is light than when it is dark. This aspect of Fire was put to common use by all civilizations and still it is used today. Since light is associated with perceptibility, and perceptibility is an aspect of learning, light can also be associated with learning which is in fact true. We all know that a good amount of lighting is required for studying purposes. Words like "Enlighten" or phrases like "Throw Light" follow from this.

Now we have Agni being broken down into "Life Form", "Conversion" and "Learning". All these three are inter-associated. It actually provides clarity that when "learning", you can "convert" the physics of a system under consideration to and comprehensible model to gain insights of it. Also relating or "converting" the concepts into "life forms" enhances better understanding.

Chemists use this Agni concept a lot when analyzing a compound. I remember in chemistry lab, when I put a drop of some chemical on the chemical liquid under analysis, the colorless liquid turned into a red liquid signifying that it was some sort of sugar-based liquid. Here the colorless liquid turned into or got "converted" to red color liquid that aided visual perception of the contents in the sample. In fact all sciences depend on the Agni concept for development.

Now imagine if there was no such thing as "conversion". It will mean that there will be only one thing and one thing only. The earth wouldn't have had its splendor of variety in color and texture. There wouldn't be rivers, mountains, trees, etc. There would just be rock and only rock and no "life". The Rig Veda goes ahead to say that Agni is the basis of everything in this world right from the Creation of the entire Universe. Agni, according to the Vedas, made a sacrifice for the creation of the Universe and so its quality became the basis of everything. I will explain later in my blog the whole governing mechanism of sacrifice. At this point it is beyond the scope of understanding so far. For now just learn that when something makes a sacrifice for something, the former becomes the basis for the latter. In war, when the soldiers sacrifice their lives to protect their country, their patriotic quality becomes the basis of cultural development of that country. Hence sacrifice is something you should be very careful about. Sacrificing wrong things may lead you into big trouble. Another simple example, living things obtain the qualities of the food they consume. Scientifically, whatever contents were there in the food get possessed by the consuming body. So if the food had Beta-Carotene in it, the consumer would get the same and the Beta-Carotene would maintain its eye sight.

Sacrifice is actually a quality of Agni also. This quality is an extension of the heat giving aspect of Fire. Understanding this is again beyond the scope so far but I will explain later in my blog when I come to explaining the "Maruts". Metallurgical industries use Fire as the basis to manufacture metals with different properties. Here the main metal undergoes a sacrifice to be subjected to high temperatures that would disorient its original form to allow other metals and chemicals to be mixed with it to give it better properties/qualities. Similarly "learning" is also a "sacrifice". In order to learn you need to create room for other knowledge to blend/mix well with what you already know. So you undergo a "sacrifice", like sacrificing your ego that you know everything to loosen up what you already know, allowing room for more information. This is called being transparent, i.e. letting "light" pass through. "Learning" is an aspect of intelligence which is present in all "life forms".

So we have just figured out that "Life Forms", "Conversion", "Learning" and "Sacrifice" are inter-associated and this collective inter-association is termed by the Vedas as Agni/Fire.

Now a little more on the sacrifice part... if evil qualities exist in every human being, it actually means that at some point of time in the Earth's history, an evil human being committed a sacrifice. And all the evil qualities he had become a basis for mankind. To counter react against this, beings of supreme spirituality will also have to do the same. It's just like someone consuming a poisonous substance and then taking several antidotes to cure it. Why I made this point is to explain that sacrificing wrong things can lead you to big trouble which may take quite some time to cure.

The reader must understand that discussions of these general concepts can go beyond imagination and this blog cannot fit them all. So what I have explained so far in this post is not everything about Agni.

A note before starting

Now that we have some idea of what Vedic science is all about, the following posts will explain the general concepts that can be applied to any field. Be it discovering scientific truths or formulating a value based life, the concepts can help you. You have a freedom of choice. So this blog will not advise the reader on how to live a value based life or talk about deep scientific matters. Instead, the reader will be able to work it out on his/her own by plugging in the general concepts to see the outcomes for himself/herself.

During the period I was learning these concepts, I witnessed the utter cruelty of mankind. Although it's not supposed to seem to exist in my perspective, it does exist. A kind of ghostly parasite on my shoulders. Even right now, as I'm writing this blog, it exists. And it amazes me about how the planet's most intelligent species can behave utterly stupid. I was able to jot down on rough paper the whole scenario of the problem using the general concepts explained in the Vedic scriptures, and figured out that because all doors were closed at the critical moment of decision, the problem is now unsolvable. If the problem had to be solved, time travelling backwards will be required. And we all know that's impossible an this leaves the problem unsolvable at this current time frame. People are only worried most on how things are "supposed" to look. Blindfold belief in rumors. The sadistic pleasure of destroying another person's life as if that person doing it was going to be awarded a Nobel Prize for it.

Things are supposed to look like fantasies, we usually watch in movies. If it doesn't, believe me, the concerned people will go to any extent to make sure it is like that. Even if nature obstructs it!!! They will go against nature to bloody make sure that things are like their fantasies. And if it doesn't work out, they don't understand, so they do more and more damage. I'll tell you how this sounds like... just because a glass artifact didn't look like how you wanted it to look like, you break it. And now that it's broken and still doesn't look like the way you want it to look like, you break it more. And then you don't understand why it still doesn't look that way, and you break it even more and more and more... I'm not joking, I have witnessed this sort unruly, mindless behavior. Another problem with people is they want to blame someone for their mistakes. A very common problem. And so people have in fact woven religion to accommodated that. Make a mistake, blame the victim that because he/she didn't pray hard to God, that shit happened to him/her. We blame even God!!! Religion has actually pictured God to be MONSTER!!! And because of that if people feel like backing out of religion, they are tortured even more "in the name of religion"!!! What have we people become?



In the above video, you'll find a famous person's perspective of religion. It has frustrated him so much that he concludes not to believe in God. Well that's what we people have made it and so we can't blame him.

Now let me tell you about how I discovered this commonality in various fields I have been talking about in my previous posts. It happened during the summer of the year 2005 when I was doing my practice school during my undergraduate study in Dubai. Just in the previous semester, I had completed a course on Microprocessor Architecture and Programming. So now you know that I'm an Electrical Engineer. In my practice school, which was Rotopacking Materials LLC, they assigned my partner and I to do a complete ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) map of the entire company's operation and communication to enable them to use their new ERP package. As engineers, we had to learn right from the chemistry of printing and packing to the finance, marketing and sales to draw the complete map. Somehow while drawing this map, I felt that communication between the departments were acting like microprocessors that also perform acknowledging or handshaking. Each department had input pins and output pins and some of them were both. I'm not sure whether it was because of my obsession towards microprocessors that made me think like that, but all I remember doing was imagining that I was building a computer while drawing the map. That was when I realized that there exists some generality in everything. I thought that may be if I figured out the generality, I would be able to learn any field without any troubles. But it wasn't an easy task. In fact it was the most difficult task ever. I really found it difficult to enumerate the general concepts that work in every field. I did try and come up with something, but it wasn't a good model. Also being a Hindu, I was really interested to know more about the Vedas, which everyone talks great about. I found a website that had Max Muller's translation of the Vedic scriptures. If you want to know the website, here is it,

http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/index.htm
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/vedaread.htm (Recommended if you are a beginner)

In the beginning I couldn't appreciate its greatness. It was just a bunch of explanations about natural calamities, and too many unfamiliar Gods with explanations that made no sense at all to me at that time. But I didn't leave it there. Being a Hindu, and from the so-called top class, Brahmin cast, Vedic chanting was part of my life. I always used to wonder which senseless natural calamity am I chanting right now. I never could ask anyone my biggest doubt because it wouldn't have been encouraged in the first place. I kept recollecting the descriptions in the website to make sense out of it during my free time. During my undergraduate life, quite a number of things went against me. Ugly rumors were spread by my own batchmates who were so interested in damaging my name completely to the entire college. It was something I couldn't fight back against because I knew by that time the people I would encounter against were the most arrogant people ever. I began hating people from my country. I only could pray for a situation to come up that would favor my retaliation. But till that time came, I became lonely and to keep me occupied, I used to think deeply about the descriptions of these Vedic Deities.

Vedic science was also a popular discussion at that time. I came across books that tried to relate Vedic content to explain the internal structure of atoms. And then there was Vedic mathematics. A very popular thing even till today. So that's when I felt there was a connection between science and mathematics on Vedic content. Vedas were also the basis of the Hindu religion. I really couldn't get that relation in my head. A relation between science, maths and religion? I stuck to the science and maths part. Then I came across Solid State Electronics. Electrons and holes were like some kind of liquid that had a diffusion process. They also would jump off from their valence band to conduction band and back down upon thermal conditions. This sounded like water evaporating, due to temperature, to the sky and falling back down as rain. Rain!!! Something that the Vedic scriptures talk about often. It kind of change my perspective towards Vedic understanding. And that's where it all started.

Science as a living thing

In my previous post, I stopped to show that science is an omnipresent thing and that every field that exist today is a science. But the word "science" actually sounds quite narrow to give a real picture of how this world is interconnected together. But we can start from there. It's better to start from what we already know to discover more. So I said science is omnipresent. This omnipresence is usually termed by scientists or mathematicians as the "general model". A model in which you can plug and play with different values to come up with a different result or make a sub-model. So you may be able to notice that the different fields that exist today work somewhat differently. I said "somewhat differently" meaning that there are quite a number of similarities because they all belong to the same general model. And it is because of this we humans are able to grasp their mechanism and make sense of it or understand that it makes sense. A simple example, say language... every language have their own way of expressing things. Some languages gender things, while others don't. But do we humans find that a problem? Absolutely not. We some how make sense of it but when asked, we say we don't know. We simply say its just the way it is. And if we think of the time when the language was maturing, we stop to ponder why on earth did we want to complicate things? But in the end we can translate perfectly from one language that genders things to language that doesn't and viz. Now when Natural Language engineers try to solve the problem through a general model, boy they have a tough time being accurate.

So there exists in us a mechanism that makes sense out of everything that makes sense. And when we want to explain that to someone who doesn't know that particular thing, we break it down to a simple model that he/she can understand to explain it. Stop here for a sec... isn't that the same thing as translating from one language to another? The key thing we just found here is translating. Its a general thing. Scientists rely on this to understand complex concepts or to explain complex concepts to the "general" public. Now let's get back to the understanding part. The thing that made the scientist understand it in the first place. There was something that helped him make sense out of it. Science!!! It sounds like it spoke to him breaking things down to a model he understands well. Now we can argue that it was his ingenuity that made him understand the concept. Well yes, that is bloody true... but we need to know that it was because he reached to that level of scientific knowledge that helped him understanding it. What helped him was the scientific knowledge he gained. If he didn't have that knowledge, he would have never made sense out of it.

As humans, we love give life to everything. Even variables in an equation. We often hear professors saying "this guy" (pointing to a variable) "is the guy that decides the bandwidth (for example)". Why do they do that? We love to relate to humans, which is why the professor didn't say "this cow is the cow that decides the bandwidth". No student would have liked that in the first place because it sounds funny. Why only cow, why not dog? By saying "guy" students picture it now as a dictator, like Hitler, and they like that. So the scientist might have pictured a human being (having the collective scientific knowledge) trying to explain the concept to him. That human could have been himself, the inner enlightened self.

This is exactly how the Vedic scriptures have been written. The authors gave life to every general concept that exists and in a dramatic style (we love movies) to convey them well to ones who are learning. So the mechanisms remain as mechanisms which humans can model as behaviors of living things for learning and explaining purposes only. Actually thinking that they are in human form is not quite acceptable.

These mechanisms that exist in every field also apply to the living world. So just like in a machine there exists communication within various parts and guidance of materials to be used all in a safe manner so that no other part gets damaged, and if in case that happens some corrective measures will be taken, to ensure that the whole governing system still functions properly, our living world can be thought to be like the same machine that communicates to various living things and guides them all in a safe manner to ensure that no other living thing gets hurt in the process and if in case that happens, a balance will be created, just to ensure that the system is still working well. And there's nothing wrong in imagining that this mechanism is some form of a higher being that communicates with us or to help us communicate with it.

Introduction

Vedic Science... sounds like a combination of religion and science. But is it possible? It's hard to even visualize a connection between religion and science. It's like saying that the Law of Gravity is religion. What is religion? It is a code of conduct followed by group of people. And the source of or the person who brought about this code of conduct is the God of that religion. In fact it is more oriented in believing that particular person is a God and not following his code of conduct. And if anyone denies that the person is a God, its disaster. Why do we get angry for a person whose time has passed? Shouldn't we just feel lucky that such a person came to this world to bring a community to live in a benevolent way? And then we separate ourselves from one another. Science doesn't have such separations. Every school child is exposed to different scientific concepts to help him/her choose his/her path. It can be agricultural, biological, physics, chemistry, electrical, electronics, economical, etc the list goes on. So that's why its difficult to visualize a connection between science and religion. Religion doesn't allow you choose your path of life. If in case you do, you stamp-marked as an atheist and treated as a social outcast. Now there is a separation between science and religion. The more you believe in science, the more atheist you are considered.

But let me tell you a truth. There does exist a connection between science and religion. By this I do mean that the code of conduct you follow is a science by itself. The science of benevolence. The authors who wrote the Vedas saw natural reality and extended that reality into ways of living benevolently. Indians date the Vedic scriptures to the inception of mankind when there were no differences among people. The concepts explained in these scriptures were used and still can be used in any aspect. In my later posts, I will explain these concepts in greater detail. The reader will be brought to new reality.

So in brief, Vedic Science is a science that intelligent beings can visualize. A science of the little experiences we have on a daily basis. Science means knowing the content and mechanism of a system. So a biologist knows the contents and mechanisms of a biological system. A chemist knows the contents and mechanism of a chemical reaction or a system. An electrical engineering knows the contents/components and the mechanism of their electrical behavior in the electrical system. An economist knows the contents/parameters that drive the economical system and the mechanisms they follow. So it is ubiquitous. I can literally take the three keywords, Knowing, Contents and Mechanism to describe any field/system. Can you feel its omnipresence? I do. That is the basis of Vedic Science. So the science of benevolent living means knowing the various contents/actions and the mechanism of how they influence the benevolent way of life. My later posts will explain this science in detail.