The great Sage D.V.Gundappa has written an epic Magnum Opus called the Mankuthimmana Kagga, which has knowledge that is all-encompassing, often compared to the immortal works of Valmiki and Vyasa. In sweetness, it nears the Bhagavad Gita. Verily, it is the much-needed armour against the vicissitudes of life. Composed of over 900 verses, this is, in the words of the great teacher/scholar : Dr Gururaj Karjagi, as vast as the sky. The sky has the life-giving sun. The moon’s cool rays soothe us. The stars add beauty to the night sky. If nothing else, there is the dense darkness on a new moon day, that can be scary. The sky encompasses everything and inspires different emotions based on its different aspects. The great work of the sage D.V.G is nothing less.
The first verse of the Kagga is as follows:
ಶ್ರೀ ವಿಷ್ಣು ವಿಶ್ವಾದಿಮೂಲ ಮಾಯಲೋಲ,
ದೇವ ಸರ್ವೇಶ ಪರಬ್ಬೊಮ್ಮನೆಂದು ಜನಂ||
ಆವುದನು ಕಾಣದೊಡಮಳ್ತಿಯಿಂ ನಂಬಿಹುದೊ|
ಆ ವಿಚಿತ್ರಕೆ ನಮಿಸೊ - ಮಂಕುತಿಮ್ಮ|| (೧)
They call it Shri Vishnu, the root cause of the Universe (Vishwa Adi Moola), they also call him the all-encompassing Parabrahman (Parabomman - old Kannada). That which cannot be seen or perceived by ordinary senses, yet the people worship with loving faith. To that wonder, bow your head, oh Manku Thimma!
Isn’t it wonderful indeed? We do not ordinarily perceive God, and yet most astikas (believers) believe in that power. The logic is that there is a causal force that has created the universe and all in it. Some call it God. Some call it Spirit. Some call it force. Some just call it the living, breathing Universe.
And even if you so choose not to believe, you need look no further than physics to be equally baffled. As I was reading the wonderful classic “The Dancing Wu Li Masters - An Overview of the New Physics” by the great American mystic Gary Zukav, I felt over awed by what Physics reveals about our reality. Gary Zukav set out to write an overview of the new Physics, especially quantum mechanics for the layperson. His opinion was that most people did not want to know about the new physics because they were intimidated by the math involved. Hence he decided to write a book about the new physics with as little (or no Math) as possible. He wrote this masterpiece, and his exploration into the new Physics gave him such mystical experiences that his next book was on Spirituality. He treaded a different path, and wondered just like Dr. D.V.G says at the power that has created this unfathomable Universe that we live in. The strange reality of the subatomic world, where particles are created, destroyed, bombard with each other to create different particles. It is verily a cosmic dance. Just like Dr. Fritjof Capra said, this dance of creation, destruction, transmutation of particles at the subatomic world is akin to the dance of Shiva (Nataraja).
Perhaps that is why Gary Zukav titled his book, the Dancing Wu Li Masters. Taoist masters, who wade through life dancing as it were, in fluid motion, fully cognisant of the world around and within them.
The fascinating world of the subatomic particles described by Quantum Mechanics talks about a reality of probabilities and possibilities. There is only a probability of the existence of certain particles. The particles, depending on the observation and context, behave sometimes as waves and sometimes as particles. The solid world around us, when examined minutely at the atomic and subatomic levels, reveals a strange world, which is very hard to explain. The certainty that one finds in the Newtonian world vanishes like darkness before light. To view a particle as an entity having existence and not as a field or a wave is like separating the Dancer from the Dance (Is that possible?)
On the other hand, at the vastness of galaxies, stars, and planets,
Einstein’s general theory of relativity talks about space and time being
a continuum and the universe being 4-dimensional and gravity being nothing but warping of space-time due to matter. Matter itself is energy. When you delve deep down, everything is energy. Massive stars burn themselves out and due to gravitational pull condense into black holes, where the gravitational pull is so massive that even light cannot escape from the surface (called an event horizon). Now there is a theory which links black holes to quasars (quasi-stellar radio sources). Though quasars are not big, they give off light almost equivalent to that of a galaxy. One theory is that anything that goes into a black hole goes to the centre of a black hole (called the singularity) and supposedly what happens after that is right out of science fiction. The object that reaches the singularity supposedly emerges out of a quasar in another universe, or at a different point in space and time in the same universe. So is the light we observe from quasars actually matter coming from another point in our universe’s space-time continuum or from a parallel universe.
When you read all this, isn’t it mind boggling to say the least? Is there little wonder that many physicists like Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Einstein, Dr. Fritjof Capra, and Gary Zukav became like mystics after their explorations into this new physics? Didn’t they also bow down to the wonder that the causal reason behind this mysterious universe is the mysterious universe itself, and it appears to gobble up certain parts of this universe? Didn’t they bow down before the mysterious force that causes subatomic particles to sometimes behave like particles and sometimes like waves? Didn’t they bow down to the wonder that beneath this solid world, at the subatomic level, everything seems to be probabilities and possibilities? Don’t you feel like bowing before this awesome force that has manifested this universe, is this universe, and swallows the universe?
