Indian tradition, Vivekananda and Darwin

DR Satish  K Kapoor

The Purusha Sukta of the Rigveda (X.90,-1-16) describes the cosmos as the body of Purusha, who ejects the world out of himself . He is metaphorically presented as having thousands of heads, thousands of eyes and thousands of feet, and so on. ‘From that Cosmic Man, super-luminescence is born and from super-luminescence, again the creative factor is born. Expanding, He exceeds the earth backward and forward both.’

The factor of expansion of the universe, mentioned by a Vedic seer, some millennia ago, was validated in principle by Alexander Friedmann in 1922 and by US astronomer, Edwin Powell Hubble in 1929.

Purusha, called Prajapati in the Brahmanas, is Jiva, the individual, Paramatman, the Supreme soul, in the Upanishads, and the soul, as opposed to matter, in Samkhya darshana of sage Kapila. Purusha and Prakriti are respectively the static and the dynamic principles of existence, which lead to creation.

In Hiranyagarbha-hymn of the Rigveda (X.121: 1-10),the mighty creator is Hiranyagarbha (lit. golden egg), who is ‘ source of golden light’, ‘Lord of all created beings’, ‘the protector and supporter of all creatures’, and so on. Hirannyagarbha is sometime likened to the ‘fire-ball’ of George Lemaitre’s Big Bang theory(1927) – the fire-ball from which the world is said to have ensued.

Swami Viveknanda did not regard Charles Darwin as the final authority on the subject of evolution. Darwin rejected the Special Creation theory of the Bible on the basis of fossil records and studies in comparative anatomy and embryology. But his contention that the ‘present-day species have evolved from simpler ancestral types by the process of natural selection’, was not acceptable to him.

Darwin’s laws of the struggle for existence and of the survival of the fittest, are at work in the human and the animal worlds. But while an animal is led solely by instinct, man is guided by reason, and can improve upon his state of affairs. Darwin’s theory is not in consonance with the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali (IV.2) which says that the transformation of one species into another, is affected by the ‘in-filling of nature’ (prakrityapurat).

The primal matter required for creation is not provided by some invisible agency, but was already a part of prakriti, nature, which evolutes like the spider’s web, as per the Samkhya philosophy explained by Swami Vivekananda. Nature, the causative force behind phenomena, comprises of three elements –sattva, rajas and tamas – which remain in equilibrium till the time of creation, when they mix with one another and manifest in different forms. This manifestation undergoes certain stages, starting with mahat or buddhi-cosmic intelligence, out of which emerges consciousness. Out of consciousness are evolved manas, mind, five organs of knowledge and five of action, and five tanmatras (particles of sound, touch etc.). Out of these ‘fine particles’ come pancha-mahabhuta, five gross elements. From chitta or mind stuff is generated prana, the vital force which, in its fivefold forms - prana, apana, vyana, udana and samana - along with their subsidiary aspects, governs an organism. All objects of creation thus emerge from ‘permutation and combination’ of cosmic elements, which differ as per their structure and role.

Christian cosmology postulates a beginning to the universe, which implies ‘bringing into being’ of something which was not there. The doctrine affirms that ‘the world was created along with, not in time.’ The mainstream Hindu view, however, is that creation was not created at any point of time, but is only a projection of the Infinite, as expressed in the Sanskrit word, srishti.

Basing his view of creation mainly on the Samkhya model, Swami Vivekananda argued at the World’s Parliament of Religions on September 19 1893, that the Vedic theory of creation was in perfect consonance with the laws of science which affirm that the sum total of cosmic energy is the same in all. The question arose, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? ‘Some say it was in a potential form in God. In that case, God is sometimes potential and sometime kinetic, which would make Him mutable. So, God would die, which is absurd. Therefore, there never was a time when there was no creation.’

In a lecture delivered in San Francisco area, dated April 9, 1900, Swami Vivekananda asked with sarcasm : ‘Six thousand years ago God woke up from his dream and created the world (and) before that there was nothing? What was God doing then, taking a good nap’ He argued that everything has a cause, and there never was a time when nature did not exist, because the cause has always existed. But, for argument’s sake, if one admitted that nothing existed at one time, the venture of creation would mean thrusting much more energy into the universe, which was impossible.

The One becomes many when it wills. Evolution is preceded by involution, and vice versa: the causal form evolves into subtle, subtle into gross, and the gross reverts to the causal, in cyclic movement, from manifestation to dissolution to manifestation once again. The period of one manifestation of this universe, is known as kalpa - cycle or era. At the end of each kalpa, which is divided into 14 manvantra (epoch of a Manu), everything returns to the primal state, where it halts for some time, before throbbing the world of phenomena.

(Dr Satish K Kapoor, former British Council Scholar, Principal, Lyallpur Khalsa College, and Registrar, DAV University, is a noted scholar of Hinduism)