PDA

View Full Version : Maya and duality



realdemigod
14 July 2012, 08:55 AM
Dear all,
I'm reading a book called 'Brains and Realities' and the author quotes Paramhansa Yogananda. According to Yogananda the physical world operates under one fundamental law of Maya, the principle of relativity and duality. God is absolute Unity. The illusory dualistic veil he wears is Maya.

In ‘her’ own domain, Maya is eternal and inexhaustible; future scientists can no more than probe one aspect after another of her varied infinitude . Science, therefore, will remain in a permanent flux, unable to reach finality; fit to discover the laws of an already existing and functioning cosmos but powerless to detect what is beyond

My question is how true is that duality of the physical world is caused by maya.

And if the physical world is dominated by maya the experiments of LHC will never prove the absolute Brahman?

realdemigod
15 July 2012, 01:41 AM
nobody has a clue what I'm talking about?

IcyCosmic
15 July 2012, 03:33 PM
Maya is one of my favorite hindu philosophies. I don't think scientists will tap into brahman - (definetely not in the near future), even if they do they will have a minimal explanation of the cosmos, or one aspect of it, and that to a very minute explanation. It won't fully explore reality as hindus are taught it.
That is my opinion.

Vasa
18 July 2012, 12:38 AM
Maya is one of my favorite hindu philosophies. I don't think scientists will tap into brahman - (definetely not in the near future), even if they do they will have a minimal explanation of the cosmos, or one aspect of it, and that to a very minute explanation. It won't fully explore reality as hindus are taught it.
That is my opinion.

I have to agree. Brahman is beyond the physical world, impossible to detect with physical instruments. It would be like trying to explain the Sun based upon the shadows it casts on Earth.

Sanja
02 December 2012, 10:21 AM
Namaste,


My question is how true is that duality of the physical world is caused by maya.

And if the physical world is dominated by maya the experiments of LHC will never prove the absolute Brahman?

This is a really interesting subject, but I think the duality of the physical world is not caused by maya, it is maya itself. The duality is what it needs to become physical. Because everything is Brahman and by dividing some aspects into duality it lowers the frequency so the physical can materialise.

As science is based on empirical research and can only focus on measurable matter it cannot prove Brahman, for Brahman is the origin of matter and science is a resut and a consequence of that matter.

That´s how I understand it. :)

sanjaya
07 December 2012, 12:22 AM
Without knowning much about the context of Yogananda's statement, I have to observe that a world in which science constantly changes could, depending on one's definition of "change" be confusing and perhaps even intellectually untenable. Maybe he means that science is constantly adapting to new measurements, in which case I absolutely agree. Indeed, scientists seek to constantly better our understanding of the world, and are generally agreeable to revisiting and discarding incorrect ideas. But there's also a general tendancy towards consensus. In the end, theories that were proposed one or two hundred years ago are still relevant, if not absolutely correct (e.g. Newtonian Gravity, which despite being "wrong" sent men to the moon in the 60's).

Yogananda's comment is also correct in that we only detect the laws of an already existing cosmos, but not what is beyond. But one must ask: what is there besides the universe? One could say "God." But in Hindu philosophy God is not entirely separable from the universe. True, Brahman trascends the physical creation. But any scientist who is not an outright atheist (and to clarify, I most certainly believe in Bhagavan!) would concur that God is beyond our ability to probe with science. To say that science can "only" probe the known universe is almost a non-statement. When making such a comment, one is admitting that science reigns in the only realm that is relevant to our physical existence! It's certainly a powerful statement, and agrees with what scientists would claim. Of course science can't probe the existence of God. The atheist would make some ridiculous statement about pink unicorns, and the rest of us would simply say that Bhagavan transcends the universe, but we both agree that God's existence can't be disproven by science.

As to this business about high energy particle interactions at the LHC, I would caution against any misunderstanding about the so-called "God Particle," i.e. the Higgs' Boson. In Peter Higgs' original theoretical paper on the subject he wanted to call it the "God Damn Particle" because it was predicted to be elusive to particle physics experimentalists, and his editor forced him to make the name less inappropriate. Hence "God Particle." The Higgs' Boson is no more spiritual than a graviton, which I will point out is also a Boson* since it has an integer spin quantum number. As a physicist (OK, I'm only an astronomer) I would be remiss not to say that any science that comes from the LHC is of great importance to our understanding of the physical world. But it's not going to tell you anything about God.

*A note to my fellow Indians here: bosons are defined as any particle with a spin quantum number of 0, 1, 2, etc. They are named after the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, who made significant contributions to the fundamental physics field of quantum mechanics.

Nirguna
08 December 2012, 10:22 AM
Namaste All,


My question is how true is that duality of the physical world is caused by maya.
Maya "covers" and "camouflages" Brahman to us, so that we cannot "see" brahman, moreover, it reflects a whole false world, which is dualistic.


And if the physical world is dominated by maya the experiments of LHC will never prove the absolute Brahman?
Science can never reach brahman. Since science is based on conceptualization of the mind, which is dualitic and limited.
I would just like to add that not only will science not able to touch Brahman, but also Maya.
Maya is "anirvacaniya" that which is indescribable. All ideas/concepts/words/etc. are in Maya. Every concept: time, space, causation, etc. are in Maya. So the lotus of our ideas and concepts are in Maya, and do not touch it or reach it, but remain subject to it.