Vedic Cosmology and Cosmography

Vedic cosmology which gives rational theories on creation that are found to concur with the findings of modern science, has some clues on what the Universe looked like before Big Bang. This article discusses whether this is the same as a research finding that a mirror image of our Universe existed before Big Bang.

Vedic cosmology is compatible with most of the modern scientific theories regarding the origin of the universe such as the Big Bang theory, String theory, concepts of multiverse and parallel universes.  Although there is a convergence on the idea of Brahma in both the Vedic cosmology and the Modern cosmology, the latter is still not able to find the answers of the Ultimate Reality. This essay attempts to compare and contrast Vedic and modern perspectives on cosmology in some of the fundamental areas of cosmological inquires, such as cause of creation, origin of the universe, Multiverse, and Brahma (the Ultimate Reality). While the Vedic scriptures have a detailed comprehension on Brahma or the Supreme Consciousness, modern cosmologists are still fathoming the creation of Brahma in form of mathematical and physical laws. Despite multiple points of tangency between Vedic and modern cosmology, for understanding the Ultimate Reality and the creation of Him, science needs to go beyond mathematics and harmonize with Vedic perspectives.

The Vedas tell us that the gods (deva in Sanskrit) reside within the mind. But since physical reality is also experienced as a construction of the mind, therefore, one may see the Vedic gods in the physical space and its relationships. These conceptions led to the detailed exposition of the devas in yoga, tantra as well as in architecture and iconography. 1 The Vedic way recognizes that reality is a synthesis of opposites. We are suspended between being and becoming, between hazy memories of the past and fears for the future. Within each of us lie not only sublime thoughts but also avarice and greed. We are the battlefield of a struggle between the gods and demons. The opposites require an act of balance so that the individual's relationship to Truth is articulated only partly by means of abstract ideas, and it needs art-in performance and representation-to complete the picture.

Rajasuya is famous Yajnya in Vedic Sacrifice System , done by Emperors. This sacrifice is done by Chakravartin Kings i.e. Emperors only. Here we will review ancient mentions of this sacrifice in Vedic & Puranic Sanskrit texts and analyse its given negative impacts on the world .

"Selected proceedings of the “First International Conference on Ethnoastronomy: Indigenous Astronomical and Cosmological Traditions of the World”held at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 5-9 September 1983."

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Vedic Astrology by Master Deepak Ji. Genuine Indian astrology Master Deepak Ji and Jyotish informations along with Bhava, Nakshatra, Rashi, Concept of Houses. Rashis & Lords, Rashi & Lord Planets, Zodiac Signs & Lord Planets, Rashis ... OR RASHIS & THEIR LORD PLANETS IN VEDIC ASTROLOGY OR JYOTISH ...There are 12 Rashi or Signs in Vedic Astrology. Each sign plays an important role in determining various aspects of a persons life.

A word-by-word explanation of the translation of the so-called creation hymn of Rigveda. The translation is very different from traditional ones.

As I demonstrate, the hymn has been completely misunderstood by previous translators.

The hymn has nothing to do with the origin or creation of the Universe. It is in fact, simply a prayer to God.

A new, consciousness-first scientific paradigm, incorporating Supreme Consciousness, Cosmic Mind and subtle sub-atomic cosmic intelligence agents called microvita, can replace the present materialist paradigm. The new paradigm can provide new insights into the origin and nature of living beings and the observed upward evolutionary trend of life in the universe. In the new paradigm, a Cosmic Cycle of Creation starts from unexpressed infinite Supreme Consciousness and creates a Cosmic Mind and within it the universe containing matter, individual living beings, and human beings with developed minds. Each human mind ultimately completes its Cosmic Cycle by finally merging with unexpressed infinite Supreme Consciousness to spiritually fulfill the goal of human life, according to spiritual guru Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. According to P. R. Sarkar, life is the “ceaseless fight to restore an unstable equilibrium.” Prominent in different phases of the Cosmic Cycle are the actions of microvita—subtle sub-atomic living beings emanated from the Cosmic Mind, that act as evolutionary cosmic intelligence agents. They move the Cosmic Cycle forward at every step, starting within the formation of fundamental physical particles from microvita. Microvita produce the anti-entropic or upward evolutionary trend of the universe that is currently unexplained. This upward evolutionary trend continues inexorably despite the current laws of physics, especially the second law of thermodynamics, which predicts that the universe as a whole is continually moving from a lower to higher state of entropy or disorder. Microvita participate in upward evolutionary processes from the formation of subatomic particles and atoms, to producing complex biochemical molecules life and minds, to forming new species including human beings, causing and curing diseases, to helping human civilization to advance, and to composing Divine Grace that helps human beings complete their spiritual journey. Scientific research on microvita is urgently needed at all levels, to the discover the natural laws that describe all these actions of microvita, so that many urgent problems facing humanity today can be solved in ways that are beneficial to all.

Семененко А.А. О прародине индоиранцев (ариев) // Власть и общество: история взаимоотношений. Материалы Десятой региональной научной конференции (г. Воронеж, 19 марта 2016 г.) / под общ. ред. В.Н. Глазьева. — Воронеж: "ИСТОКИ", 2016. — С. 339–343.

Per la seconda volta in Italia, dopo Tommaso Iorco, quest'importantissimo inno del Rg Veda viene tradotto in lingua corrente italiana. Tradotto dal sanscrito originale, appoggiandosi alla versione inglese di Ralph T. H. Griffith (1896) ed anche alla parziale traduzione di Raimon Panikkar in "Veda-Mantramañjarī" BUR, 2016, da lui operata solo relativamente alle strofe più importanti. Segue commento dell'autore, Kenan Digrazia, che fa propria la tesi di come ci si trovi, in quest'inno, di fronte alla testimonianza dell'unicità monoteistica dei culti antichi, precisamente in quella fase storica ove emerge il politeismo come trasformazione successiva. Il commento è anche formativo-spirituale, nel rispetto della tradizione indiana, e comparativo con la tradizione biblica occidentale.
Naturalmente si tratta di un lavoro sintetico, essendo che i temi e le suggestioni di quest'inno potrebbero occupare almeno 300 pagine di analisi dettagliata, strofa per strofa.

At some level a religious tradition can be thought of as distinguished by, or even defined by, its creation story – i.e. its cosmological narrative-and the Hindu/Vedic tradition is no different in this regard although it has many nuances and variances that distinguish it from Western theological traditions. If we approach the mythology as codified in the Hindu literature with an open mind – and myth in the Hindu tradition runs very deep-we can see strong undercurrents of Vedic philosophy from within the creation narratives themselves, speaking to the importance of philosophy from the very earliest texts we have from the tradition. The deep philosophical history of the Indo-Aryans, what we today call Vedanta (which Yoga is very closely related to and from which Buddhism emerged), ultimately sprung forth from these ancient creation stories, the mythological tradition as it were, which in turn yielded over time an in depth, scientific and analytical approach to the nature of mind and its relationship to liberation and experience of the divine which forms the basis of Yoga in all its forms.

Hindu philosophy views the cosmos to be holonomic and self-similar in nature. The procedures and methods used in the construction of Hindu temples bear a striking resemblance to the procedures of fractal geometry, including discretization, fractalization and extensive use of recursive procedures, with self-similar iteration. The instructions given in ancient Vastu shastras (texts on architecture) work like general programmes to generate various types of temples. The presentation draws attention to the similarities between the procedures and resulting forms in computer graphics and Hindu temple architecture, explain the relationship that exists between the form of the temple and the concepts of Hindu philosophy. It is proposed that Hindu temples may be viewed as examples of 3-dimensional fractal architecture and that the fractal principles used in them along with the parametric and algorithm based-form generation processes, have special significance to the emerging new discipline of Fractal Architecture world-wide.

The second part of the paper shows the applications of the fractal procedures as seen in contemporary architecture as a new methodology of creating architecture which follows a parametric, procedure based form-generation approach, rather than the intuitive approach. The fractal approach leads to an architectural output that is organic and holistic, with an integrated physiognomy similar to that found in natural structures. Fractal principles are drawing great attention in the architectural community, and a large body of work is emerging both as conceptual and also built architectural forms. The presentation illustrates with examples of contemporary works of fractal architecture – both conceptual and built architecture – ranging from individual structures to community networks using parametric modeling; and how thousands of temples in India and Asia built centuries ago provide excellent examples of fractal architecture created through parametric form-generating algorithms.

Presented at the Second International Academic Conference on Modern Oriental Art,
Moscow, 17–20 October, 2017

It is observed that relatively little has been published in the field of Indo-European cosmology in relation to the output of comparative mythology as a whole. Lyle’s comprehensive scheme of cosmological structure is reviewed in the light of Georges Dumézil’s work, and sources are examined. On the basis of comparisons from Indic, Iranian, Greek,  Anatolian, Celtic and Germanic traditions an alternative triad is suggested  for the visible world. Both systems are examined and compared in terms of explanatory power; issues of geographical distribution; the likelihood of cultural contact with neighbouring ancient civilizations, e.g., Mesopotamia; change and development in Indo-European over the millennia before written texts; comparisons across the Indo-European linguistic area; and applications to other aspects of the cultures studied. On the basis of what has survived in the various language groups, an attempt is made to explain the differences between Lyle’s system and the one outlined below. The proposed model is extended to include Allen’s “fourth function” that deals with what is beyond or outside of the tripartite cosmos, providing a system intended to outline an earlier Indo-European vertical cosmic structure, as expressed in later literatures and iconography.

Colonial and racial stereotypes imposed on the Rigveda have led to serious misreadings of this text, many of which stubbornly survive in endlessly recycled secondary sources. This paper revisits the alleged military context of the hymns by scrutinizing the Rigvedic horse, chariot, spoked wheel and alleged warfare. It highlights faulty or forced interpretations at every step, which wilfully ignore the transparent hints that the Rigvedic hymns never fail to offer us.

The causal relationship between cymatic pattern and Hindu-Yantra exposes the essential pattern underlying the universe. Phenomena that confirm this blueprint are convergent evolution, stigmergy (swarm-intelligence), chaos/complexity theory, exaptation, gestalt, Plato’s-problem and perhaps even sympathetic magic.
The unified-field and collective unconscious are the same; science explains the metaphysical. Ancient Yantra-Mandalas catalogue the morphology of the unified-field.
Cross-referencing quantum theory, biologist Rupert Sheldrake, Carl Jung and media-analyst Marshall McLuhan reveals this new Gestalt. Symbols are the keys to understanding reality. Systems Theory is an important new paradigm.

The article contains all the three parts of the paper read at the 12th World Sanskrit Conference (WSC), Helsinki, Finland. The complete paper was accepted for publication by the original editors (Asko Parpola, Masato Fujii and Stanley Insler) of Vedic Investigations, Papers of the 12th WSC, but the first two parts of it were omitted later due to the limitation on the number of pages by the publisher (Motilal Banarsidass).

This article is a summary of ideas about microvita given in the book "Microvitum in a Nutshell", a collection of talks introducing the subject of microvita by P. R. Sarkar, given between 1986 and 1989. Microvita are described as subatomic living entities giving rise to the formation of matter, life and mind in the universe. The concept of microvita may be helpful in expanding the subject of cosmology to include a cosmic mind as the creator of our universe as existing within a cosmic mind.

Of Stars, And Travels:
An astronomic cycle in the main portal of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice* is the English version, revised and enlarged, of an article appeared in Italian in ABAV- Annuario dell'Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia 2014 (2015), pp. 235-275. Some errors have been emendated, and text and pictures have been increased.
The main portal of San Marco in Venice (second half of the thirteenth century), contains an hitherto unnoticed solilunar calendar, carved into the sculptural cycle of the lower archivolt and intradox. The figures (hybrid figures, animal chases, etc.) do not have a merely decorative purpose, as believed up to now, nor they respond to a generic allegorical-moral program; rather, they represent single stars or constellations, arranged in a calculated order, as to compose a rigorous model of the celestial sphere.
Stars and constellations are not always represented  according to the Western Greek-Latin  tradition, but with symbols that refer to a plurality of legends and cultures of the Mediterranean, the Near, and the Far East, according to the cosmopolitan vocation of this town of travellers.
These visual symbols have become now totally obscure; but they were probably of common access in an epoch in which the celestial navigation was at the base of the long journeys, not only by sea, but also by land.
The astronomical representations of this portal are also connected with the system, no less obscure, of the Venetian patere, the characteristic round stone ornaments on the facades of the oldest civil buildings and of some churches in town. Thanks to the contextual clarification of the symbols offered by the Marcian cycle, the patere can now be read as possible emblems of traveling merchants, placed on the facades to remember or indicate destinations and itineraries.
The name of the great master who sculpted this cycle, a contemporary of Antelami and of the Master of the Ferrara Months, is not known. Who was the remarkable artist, which were the sources of his astronomical information, who were the patrons and political advisors that encoureged a so powerfully innovative work as the stone clock of St. Mark?
A multidisciplinary research in depth, ranging from iconography, ancient astronomy, celestial navigation, Oriental languages ​​and cultures, will be probably be necessary to further the very complex world that St.Mark’s oldest extant portal is beginning to reveal.

This essay uses Vedic and classical sources to present a synoptic vision of the universe in ancient India and shows its continuity across different periods. This vision was based on an assumed equivalence of the outer and the inner cosmoses and it is embodied in architecture, music, and art. It provides an archaeoastronomical window on Indian monumental architecture.

This book describes the Aśvamedha rite and its symbolism to explain distinctive aspects of the Vedic sacrifice system. Several questions related to the Aśvamedha are posed and answered in the context of Vedic epistemology. This rite has three important functions: (i) it presents and equivalence of the naksatra year to the heaven, implying that it is rite that celebrates the rebirth of the Sun; (ii) it is symbolic of the conquest of Time by the king, in whose name the rite is performed; and (iii) it is celebration of social harmony achieved by the transcendence of the fundamental conflicts between various sources of power.

This is a critique to Dr Raj Vedam's article tilted "When did we first celebrate Makar Sankaranti?" dealing with the mis-conception of synchronizing Makar Sankaranti with winter solstice (Uttarayana) and the debatable views on 'Fall of Abhijit'.

Research into the early history of the Vedic sacrifice with a focus on parallels in related Indo-European cultures, particularly into the role of sodalities and their function as mediators between the sphere of the gods and the settled pastoral society. Attempts at understanding crucial institutions like sabhā, vrātya and the game of dice.

so clearly shows in his dissertation, between the 8 th and 14 th centuries there were illuminating phenomenological distinctions that were considered essential to understand the great perfection practice of awareness, becoming aware of awareness. These distinctions were primarily made by the Nyingma masters of meditation. The most basic distinction is between the mind of dualistic experience (sems) and the primordial awareness of naturalistic non-dualistic experience or primordial knowingness (ye shes) or (semde). This ye shes is non dualistic knowingness. Unfortunately, many Buddhist texts describe dualism as deluded and non-dualism as non-deluded. This language of delusion is highly prejudiced and is nihilistic in tone and devalues the oneness of the two truths (conventional and absolute reality). They devalue the indivisibility of appearance and awareness and moreover, challenge the validity of the foundational human experience of oneness and difference or duality within non duality. This negative use of language unhappily challenges the divinity of appearance and invalidates the human experience of the Nirmanakaya dimension which is ordinary life. The differentiation and distinction of mind from awareness prevents the bewildering confusion of mind and awareness resulting in the negation of either the experience of non-duality or the experience of duality. Much of the understanding about the difference between mind and awareness was presented in the unfolding of the seventeen Atiyoga tantras that brought forth the heart essence tradition (sying thig). These teachings and instructions are part of the instructional teachings of Dzogchen. These teachings are instructional in the forms of skillful means or praxis for bringing the experience of awareness of awareness into completion. This completion is experiencing the fullness of experience of personal awareness within the vast infinite and multidimensional field of awareness. The essential method is to experience directly and completely primordial knowingness as well as the manifestations of this primordial knowingness such as mind, innermost subjectivity and external phenomenal appearance. Mind, subjectivity and all appearance are the manifestation of primordial knowingness itself. Primordial awareness is the primordial and abiding pervasive condition. Our experience of non-conceptual knowingness or non-conceptual perception opens us to the direct understanding and direct non-conceptual experience that everything and anything is the manifestation of primordial or ground awareness. Primordial awareness is radiance openness or radiant emptiness. Primordial awareness is not simply emptiness alone but the oneness of openness and radiance spaciousness as light. The incompleteness of emptiness alone is recognized by the 14 th century Nyingma master Longchenpa. Awareness is the union of spaciousness and radiance.

In the literature of classical Indian medicine, Āyurveda, writers and commentators remark from time to time that the world is divided in nature into a binary taxonomy of Agni and Soma. The category of Agni-related items includes everything of a hot, fiery, dry, or parching type, while Soma-related items are moist, nourishing, soothing, and cooling. Items so classified range from medicinal herbs to mountain ranges to the seasons of the year. “The whole world,” says one author, “is of the nature of Agni and Soma.” From the earliest Vedic hymns to Agni and Soma, through the later philosophical, medical, alchemical and tantric literatures, these two categories of classification and thought were used continuously as an explanatory device. Where does this classification begin, and what can it mean?

The Paper depicts development of the imagery of hell in South and Central Asia. Unknown to the oldest Indian literature as a place of punishment the imagery has developed in later Vedic Brahmanic / Hindu literature, in Jainism and Buddhism and penetrated across Asia.