How Ancient Yogic Cosmology Aligns with Modern Scientific Insights — A Personal Reflection
By Sanjay C Patel
Renowned figures like Nobel laureates Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg, Fundamental Physics Prize recipient Andrei Linde, and distinguished astrophysicists Carl Sagan and Fritjof Capra have all highlighted these intriguing alignments in their papers and publications since 1945.
I still vividly recall how, as a child, I first became aware of this fascinating intersection between science and spirituality. In London, UK, my two brothers and I were walking up a small hill towards Wembley Park train station, near Britain’s famous football stadium. As I walked in rare silence, my brothers excitedly discussed a new book by a Western scientist named Fritjof Capra. He was making headlines for demonstrating how Eastern beliefs intersected with modern scientific truths. “Everyone is talking about it,” they said, and their enthusiasm was contagious. I found myself excited too.
Now, decades later, it feels surreal to contribute in a way that elevates those original discoveries to a whole new level, bridging ancient spiritual insights and modern science.
Interestingly, in my youth, I was actually skeptical about the connections between science and spirituality. I had concluded that they were two exclusive fields, each operating in its own realm.
Exploring Capra, Sagan, and Linde’s Perspectives
Returning to Capra and Sagan’s views on yoga’s worldview, let’s delve into what they observed.
Fritjof Capra, in his 1975 work, noted:
“This idea of a periodically expanding and contracting universe, which involves a scale of time and space of vast proportions, has arisen not only in modern cosmology but also in ancient Indian mythology… evolutionary cosmologies which come very close to our modern scientific models.”
Similarly, Carl Sagan remarked in 1980:
“It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run… longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun, and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still.”
A key point to consider regarding their statements:
Both scientists referred to the ancient insights they came across as “mythology” or suggested any alignment with modern science was “no doubt by accident.” That was in the 1980s. Today, there are numerous such agreements, many published in major, peer-reviewed scientific journals as mine are. These additional parallels suggest what Linde observed was neither mythology nor coincidence. It’s becoming increasingly evident that ancient texts may hold more scientifically relevant information than previously acknowledged.
Similarly, Andre Linde observed:
“When I was studying Indian philosophy, I was extremely excited that what they say sometimes is painfully close to what I think. With many parts of Indian philosophical thought, you never know whether it is an allegorical way of expressing things, or whether it is literally what people thought at that time.”
The Vast Topics Explored by Ancient Yogis
What Capra, Sagan, and even Linde could not yet know was the astonishing breadth of topics the ancient yogis had already explored. They delved into the world of atoms, oceans, the sun and stars, the Milky Way Galaxy, and concepts akin to the Big Bang and infinite space.
Here is a glimpse of their astonishingly scientific worldview:
Rejecting Geocentric and Heliocentric Models
These insightful individuals didn’t advocate for a geocentric model, where Earth is the center of the universe with the sun revolving around it. Nor did they support a heliocentric model, where the sun is the universe’s center. Instead, they demonstrated that the universe has no center. They aptly named it “Supreme Space”—Parama Akasha or Maha Akasha, meaning “Great Space.”
Innumerable Cosmic Worlds