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TERM PAPER

CONCEPT OF ENERGY

Advaita and Science-

According to some followers of Advaita, it may very well be a place where the scientific world intersects with
the spiritual world. They point to the relationships between mass, frequency, and energy that 20th century
physics has established and the Advaitic 'Unity of the Universe' as the common ground. They feel that these
relationships, formalized as equations by Planck and Einstein, suggest that the whole mesh of the Universe
blend into a One that exhibits itself as many (namely, mass, energy, wave etc), and that this follows Advaita's
view that everything is but the manifestation of an omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent "One". They also
connect the De Broglie waves of modern physics to Aum in Hindu philosophy. Conversely, scientist Erwin
Schrödinger was also a Vedantist and claimed to have been inspired by it in his contributions to quantum
mechanics. Fritjof Capra's book, The Tao of Physics, is one among several that pursue this viewpoint as it
investigates the relationship between modern, particularly quantum, physics and the core philosophies of
various Eastern religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism.

Big Bang Theory: Vedanta's Version Of the Big Bang  

In vedanta, the second capsule of the Brahma Sutras is the most fundamental, cardinal, sacrosanct, and is also
the most famous. Janmadyasya yatah - Brahman is that from which the birth and the evolution of the universe
follow. It says Brahman is that ultimate 'world’ which we gain access to by distilling the world down to its
inmost content, or the furthest stop from where we get off by travelling backwards in time-space. Astronomical
observations have confirmed more or less beyond doubt that stars, galaxies and clusters of super galaxies are
receding from the earth and from one another. The clinching evidence comes from the Doppler Effect or the
Red Shift. The shift in the spectral lines towards the longer wavelengths identified by the red colour in the
spectrum confirms that the source of light is moving and is not at rest.  What is more, even the speed of the
recession can be easily calculated with the help of high school maths. If the whole universe is expanding at a
rate that is calculable, then by regress, we can go back to the starting point of this expansion. That is, we can go
back in time to meet janmadyasya yatah . And when we do, we meet this janmadyasya some 14 billion years
away in an extremely dense and absolutely inconceivable concentration of time-space-mind-matter-energy. It is
now established more or less beyond doubt that the world started out from a big bang. The most clinching
evidence comes from the prediction of the existence of a sea of background microwave radiation in the universe
and its subsequent detection.  At the beginning of time, and at the beginning of space, all the matter-energy and
its container, the time-space-mind, were concentrated in a primeval 'fireball’ of extreme inconceivable density
and temperature. From a massive explosion, the big bang, the universe started and has been expanding ever
since. So this is that Inmost Content and the Furthest Stop - janmadyasya yatah - this primeval 'fireball’. There
is nowhere to progress from here, for the three-dimensionality of being collapses here. Where the 3-D of the
world crumbles is the zero point of the world - the final content and the last stop. Prior to the big bang there was
nothing existing. Absolutely nothing. To exist, a thing needs space around it to exist in. To be is to be in space.
Prior to the big bang there was no space and therefore there was nothing existing - not even a God or heaven.
The primeval 'fireball’ which exploded to become the universe was not existing in a space, but, on the contrary,
space was existing within that 'fireball’ in extreme inconceivable density or concentration. This zero degree of
being is absolutely unimaginable. Thus in that primeval 'fireball’, we meet God face to face, and look Him in
the eye. God is that primeval 'fireball’ which blew up this sea of time-space-mind-matter-energy through the big
bang. The janmadi or birth and evolution of the world is the blow-up of the God-stuff. The world stuff and God
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stuff are one and the same that is, 'The creator is in the creation and the creation in the creator’ (Kabir) and
world stuff-God stuff is the primordial 'fireball’ which 'existed’ before the big bang and which suffuses the
universe after the big bang. After the big bang, whatever is there within that blow-up is its own distortion -
vikara as vedanta puts it. Perhaps 'fireball’, 'big bang’, and 'explosion’ are not the exact words for it. Perhaps
our insight and terminology need to be something finer, but anyway we are with the substance. We have
identified God. His identity mark is the point where the 3-D of the world collapses. In Vedanta the big bang is
vak sphota from which AUM originates first and from AUM, the whole world. The constituent three sounds A,
U and M make the three dimensions of space and from their interaction the whole 'audio’ and 'video’ of the
world follow. The evolution of the world from Brahman and AUM is called vivarta meaning unfolding or
opening out. Its opposite is avarta meaning folding, closing in. The world is the vivarta or parinama (
atmakriteh parinamat , B S-1.4.26) of Brahman of the world stuff through the medium of vak sphota, and what
existed before the big bang, janmadyasya yatah , is its avarta or avarana.

The energy concept

The energy concept has a long history of development:

 Isaac Newton (1642-1727) formulated laws of motion and defined potential and kinetic energy.
 Fahrenheit (F) and Celsius (C ) invented temperature scales.
 A long debate took place regarding what was heat.
 Quantities of heat measured, with the help of temperature scales.
 Thompson (1753-1814) discovered conversion of mechanical work to heat, while making cannons.
 Thomas Young (1773-1829) coined the term energy in 1807 from the Greek words energia (in work) to
unify many aspects of energy.
 James P. Joule (1818-1889) determined energy equivalence of heat, and work equivalence of electric
energy (1 cal= 4.184 J).
 Max Planck (1858-1947) explained the energy aspect of light.
 Albert Einstein developed the special theory of relativity and gave the energy equivalence of mass, E =
m c2 (rest mass of electron = 511 keV).

Advaita Vedanta

The universe does not simply possess consciousness, it is consciousness, and this consciousness is Brahman.
According to Adi Shankara, knowledge of brahman springs from inquiry into the words of the Upanishads,
and the knowledge of brahman that shruti provides cannot be obtained in any other way. In Advaita Vedanta,
Brahman is without attributes and strictly impersonal. It can be best described as infinite Being, infinite
Consciousness, and infinite Bliss. It is pure knowledge itself, similar to a source of infinite radiance. Since the
Advaitins regard Brahman to be the Ultimate Truth, so in comparison to Brahman, every other thing, including
the material world, its distinctness, the individuality of the living creatures are all untrue. Brahman is the
effulgent cause of everything that exists and can possibly exist. Since it is beyond human comprehension, it is
without any attributes, for assigning attributes to it would be distorting the true nature of Brahman. Advaitins
believe in the existence of both Saguna Brahman and Nirguna Brahman, however they consider Nirguna
Brahman to be the Absolute Truth.When man tries to know the attributeless Brahman with his mind, under the
influence of an illusionary power of Brahman called Maya, Brahman becomes God (Ishvara). God is the
reflection of the Brahman in the environment of illusion (Maya). Just like reflection of moon, in a pool of water.
The material world also appears as such due to Maya. God is Saguna Brahman, or Brahman with attributes. He
is omniscient, omnipresent, incorporeal, independent, Creator of the world, its ruler and also destroyer. He is
eternal and unchangeable. He is both immanent and transcedent, as well as full of love and justice. He may be
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even regarded to have a personality. He is the subject of worship. He is the basis of morality and giver of the
fruits of one's Karma. He rules the world with his Maya. However, while God is the Lord of Maya and she (i.e.
Maya) is always under his control, living beings (jīva, in the sense of humans) are the servants of Maya (in the
form of ignorance). This ignorance is the cause of all material experiences in the mortal world. While God is
Infinite Bliss, humans, under the influence of Maya consider themselves limited by the body and the material,
observable world. This misperception of Brahman as the observed Universe results in human emotions such as
happiness, sadness, anger and fear. The ultimate reality remains Brahman and nothing else. The Advaita
equation is simple. It is due to Maya that the one single Atman (the individual soul) appears to the people as
many Atmans, each in a single body. Once the curtain of maya is lifted, the Atman is exactly equal to Brahman.
Thus, due to true knowledge, an individual loses the sense of ego (Ahamkara) and achieves liberation, or
Moksha.
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“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God
(?) and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should
be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and
spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any
religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.”

“I came — though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents — to a deep

religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve.”

“I do not think that it is necessarily the case that science and religion are natural
opposites. In fact, I think that there is a very close connection between the two. Further,
I think that science without religion is lame and, conversely, that religion without science
is blind. Both are important and should work hand-in-hand.” (Quote possibly attributable
to Rabindranath Tagore).

“A Jew who sheds his faith along the way, or who even picks up a different one, is still a
Jew.”

As an adult, he called his religion a "cosmic religious sense".

In The World As I See It he wrote:

“You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar
religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man...

For the latter God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose
punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a
being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may
be tinged with awe.”

Owing to this aforementioned suspicion for a personal God - of Jewish or Catholic origin,
his taste for impersonal clinical thinking is clearly demonstrated and further influences
his religious beliefs.

In response to the telegrammed question of New York's Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in

1929: "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words." Einstein replied "I believe
in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God
Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." Spinoza was a
naturalistic pantheist.

Scientific philosophy

In favor of the deterministic view are the following statements of Einstein:

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“But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is
every whit as necessary and determined as the past.”

“People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present,
and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

His devotion to Schopenhauer can be cited:

“I do not believe in freedom of the will, but in Schopenhauer's words: ‘Man can do what
he wants, but he cannot will what he wills.’”

Einstein believed that true theorists always take some position on the metaphysics
behind what they do.

Albert Einstein — Rational Vedanta —Eastern & Western Schools of Thought — Pythagoras —
Plato — Socrates — Sukadeva

Spinoza's views on religion provided something of a way around the hostilities, and they validated ideas that
were already germinating in Einstein's mind. "I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, " he said, "but admire
even more his contribution to modern thought, because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body
as one, and not two separate things." Einstein viewed the human being as a single unit, and scoffed at the idea
of a soul which transcended death.

"I am not an atheist."

Einstein's ideas on spirituality enjoyed some influence due to his revolutionary work in physics. Some
theologians felt threatened by his scientific theories, and Einstein was frequently asked to contribute articles
about religion, perhaps in part to demonstrate he was not an atheist attempting to disprove the existence of God
or to demonstrate he was, since both sides interpreted Einstein's ideas to suit their own agenda. These articles,
interviews and essays are some of the best evidence we have of Einstein's philosophy.

One, titled "Science and Religion, " presented at the 1940 Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in
New York, became the center of controversy. "A person who is religiously enlightened, " he wrote, "appears to
me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is
preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonal value." He
then went on to define religion as "the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely
conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect."

Einstein concluded his paper with a statement about the conflict between science and religion, which he
believed has its root in the concept of a personal God. Theologians attending the conference were in an uproar,
misinterpreting Einstein's statement as a denial of God. He was asked straight out if he believed in God, and he
replied: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God
who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." One faction took this to mean Einstein was a
believer in God as they understood God. An opposing camp said Einstein's believing in Spinoza's nonpersonal
God was the same as believing in no God at all.
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In an attempt to define why and in what way he was "religious, " Einstein said, "Try and penetrate with our
limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there
remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can
comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious."

One person asked Einstein to define God. He replied in this fashion: "I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can
call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many
languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not
understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the
arrangement of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most
intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but
only dimly understand these laws. Our limited mind grasps the mysterious force that moves the constellations."

Einstein was blunt in his rejection of the central tenets of Western religion. "I cannot conceive of a God who
rewards and punishes his creatures, " he said, "or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither
can I, nor would I want to, conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear
or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the
awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to
comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

An unusual aspect of Einstein's beliefs, again following Spinoza, was in "determinism, " the position that every
event or occurrence is determined, that is, could not have happened other than it did. For Spinoza, the feeling of
being free is simply the state of ignorance concerning the cause. Einstein's belief in determinism was in part
behind his lack of acceptance of quantum mechanics, which held one could not deduce the future state of the
universe from the present one. He famously said, "God does not play dice with the universe." However, despite
his best efforts, he could not disprove quantum mechanics.

The "cosmic religion "

Einstein summarized his philosophy in what he termed the "cosmic religion, " which is characterized by a
feeling of awe and an experience of the mysterious that he declared to be the source of his religiosity. In this
experience, God does not punish or reward. Although his cosmic religion does not include a personal God (i.e.,
Ishvara), which he believed was devised due to fear of the unexplained, Einstein believed, "The religious
geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no
God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it." At this
point, for Einstein, religion and science meet, for the cosmic religious experience "is the strongest and noblest
driving force behind scientific research."

In response to a question about whether or not modern science can offer spiritual insights where organized
religion has failed, Einstein said, "Speaking of the spirit that informs modern scientific investigations, I am of
the opinion that all the finer speculations in the realm of science spring from deep religious feeling, and that
without such feeling they would not be fruitful. I also believe that this kind of religiousness, which makes itself
felt today in scientific investigations is the only creative religious activity of our time." Einstein said that
science cannot teach men the importance of ethics and morality, for the simple reason that science deals with
what is, and ethics with what should be.

The search for a unified field theory

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In 1933, Einstein renounced his German citizenship and accepted a position in the United States at the new
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He spent the rest of his life as an American citizen in
Princeton with his wife, Elsa. They lived in a simple house, and most mornings he walked a mile or so to the
Institute to work on his unified field theory. He was attempting to link all known phenomena to explain the
nature and behavior of all matter and energy in existence, work that caused some excitement among
nonscientists then and now. Paramahansa Yogananada praised the physicist in his 1946 autobiography.
"Reducing the cosmical structure to variations on a single law, " Yogananada wrote, "Einstein has reached
across the ages to the rishis who proclaimed a sole fabric of creation: a protean maya."

More recently, Eknath Easwaran wrote in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita that Einstein's quest is a theme
found in Hinduism: "One of the most fervent hopes of Einstein was to find an overriding law of nature in which
all laws of matter and energy would be unified. This is the driving question in some of the ancient Hindu
scriptures, too. Mundaka Upanishad 1.1.3 asks, 'What is That by knowing which all other things may be
known?' "

Einstein's search for proof of a unified field eluded him his entire life, although his perception of existence
seemed as clear to him as it was to the rishis. He wrote, "A human being is a part of the whole, called by us
'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something
separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free
ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole
of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in
itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."