Alpha and Omega of the Universe

2 September 2001, 01:43am IST
K M Gupta.

What plato calls striving after being, vedanta calls brahma jijnasa. according to plato, ``the true lover of knowledge is striving after being. he will not rest at those multitudinous phenomena whose existence is only appearance''. the brahma sutra opens with the capsule, athato brahma jijnasa ``and now, curiosity for brahman''. brahman is being; it is that out of which the world came into being, as set out in the next, second capsule: janmadyasya yatah. the brahma sutra is the orderly and capsulised presentation of upanishadic revelations. brahma jijnasa is the jumping off point for upanishadic thoughts. the upanishad asks, ``have you ever listened to the instruction by which the unheard is heard, the unthought is thought, and the unknown is known?'' and it adds, ``just as all earthen wares are known by just knowing a lump of clay because change in the shape of a thing is just change in words; only the lump of clay is real''. a pot, pitcher, a vase these are changes in names; the basic stuff is the same a lump of clay. what is the `lump of clay' that the world is made of? curiosity for that lump of clay is brahma jijnasa. the same question is asked in other words: by knowing what, can one know all? how can one know the knowing? brahma jijnasa is the loftiest passion of the human soul. it is the drive behind all search for knowledge and truth. it is the motor of all spiritualism. the rig veda asks, ``of what use is this rik to one who doesn't get brahman by it?'' the brihadaranyaka declares, ``he who takes brahminhood as something other than striving for the self, him brahminhood rejects''. brahma jijnasa was the initial motive of all religions and philosophies. but they failed to keep its flame alive as they allowed themselves to be masks for man's baser instincts and passions. there is an eternal and inescapable psychological truth, and it is that the motive of all of man's thoughts and actions is inflating his ego. religions and philosophies fell prey to this psychological `wolf' and lost the flame of brahma jijnasa. it was when brahma jijnasa was dead and gone in religion and philosophy that modern science was born. the supreme virtue of science is that, unlike religion and philosophy, it cannot be made an instrument for inflating the egos of individuals, races and countries. it is truly and supremely impersonal and international. religions and philosophies have their loyalties to keep to for one or the other group psyche; science owes its loyalty only to pure brahma jijnasa. today brahma jijnasa is a flame only in science. einstein said: ``the most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. it is the sower of all true science. he to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. to know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms this knowledge, this feeling, is at the centre of true religiousness''. science's brahma jijnasa is getting consummated in the knowledge of janmadyasya yatah. by looking into the distance in space it is looking into the past and its look has almost reached the birthday, nay, the birth moment, of the universe. nasa's cobe spacecraft, which made more than 300 million measurements and detected the ripples of matter scattered at the time of the `big bang', is said to have deciphered the holy grail of cosmology. the hubble telescope is another manmade machine like cobe, which can take us very close almost to the moment of the birth of the universe itself, probably to the very beginning of time. our technical prowess is enabling us to observe and calculate the alpha and omega of the universe. nasa's latest probe, map, hailed as the cosmic equivalent of the human genome project, with its unprecedented accuracy and precision, is yet another time machine set to take us to the birth moment of the universe, and draw a cosmic map. these `time machines' are the extended arms of brahma jijnasa. they take us to the janma or birth of the universe, and reaching out to its janma is reaching out to janmadyasya yatah.