Keepers of the Kalachakra

by Ashwin Sanghi

‘We refer to quantum physics as science and Vedanta as philosophy, but they are one and the same. From Aristotle all the way to the nineteenth century, the term “natural philosophy” was used instead of science. There was a reason for it. A good scientist has to be a philosopher and a good philosopher must also be a scientist.’

What we call reality is the combination of observer and observed. We seem to create our reality and that is precisely what Vedanta wants us to understand.’

I agree, I have no evidence, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’

‘Mythology is a set of lies that people rarely believe,’ Brahmananda said and paused. ‘And history?’ ‘A set of lies that people have agreed to believe.’

Don’t you think it will be just a matter of time before we show that there is life in everything, including the everyday objects that we consider lifeless?’

‘Reality cannot be explained by words, because it lies beyond the realms of the senses and the intellect,’ said the monk. ‘It can only be intuitively experienced. When the rational mind is quietened, the intuitive mind awakes.’

The distance between Earth and the sun is one hundred and eight times the sun’s diameter. The distance between Earth and the moon is one hundred and eight times the moon’s diameter. The diameter of the sun is one hundred and eight times Earth’s diameter.

There’s a touch of belief within every doubter and a touch of doubt within every believer.

Modern man thinks of time as linear, a straight line. But the ancients of the East realized that time is circular. Hindus believe that time moves in cycles and that each cycle has four great epochs or yugas—Satya, Treta, Dwapar and Kali. Once over, the epochs start all over again.’

‘He said that Hinduism is the only faith that is dedicated to the idea that the cosmos itself undergoes an infinite number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only dharma in which time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night, to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long, longer than the age of Earth or the sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.’

‘The Buddhists see time as measurement of change,’ replied Mikhailov. ‘A month is simply the change in the moon while it revolves around Earth. Or a woman going from one menstrual cycle to the next. That’s why it is the “wheel of time”. Everything that has happened will happen again. Everything that will happen has already happened. Time is relative. The sages of the East were giving us something akin to Einstein’s prediction, but without its mathematics.

‘It is arrogant of humans to assume as a given that we are the only life form in the universe,’ said Mikhailov. ‘Our sun is just one star among the two hundred to four hundred billion stars in our galaxy—the Milky Way. And remember that the universe consists of two trillion galaxies like the Milky Way. If we were to represent the entire universe as Earth, then Earth itself would proportionally be the size of a billionth of a pinhead. So it does seem strange that we can even entertain the notion that we are unique.’

Yojananam sahastra dwe dwe shate dwe cha yojane aken nimishardhena krammana namostute.

Kill one and the other will also die. In fact, killing the quantum twin is the cleanest way to kill high-powered leaders—who are always surrounded by several layers of high security—without leaving the slightest trace!’

‘It means that every place and every event would lie in that continuum,’ said Vijay. ‘You would simply be observing a point along that continuum. It also means that there is no sequential behaviour. Everything that is happening to you has happened before. Everything that has happened in the past will also occur in the future. In fact, there is no past, present nor future. Everything just is.’