You are the cosmos. The cosmos is you.

As I read this NY Times op-ed on "our cosmic selves," I was, yet again, reminded of the mahavakyas, especially "तत् त्वम् असि"

Ok, I am getting ahead of the story.

A question that practically everybody on this planet would like to know the answer to is this: where did we, and everything else, come from?  An awesome mystery ever, right?

If you are talented and creative enough, and have enough charisma, you can then offer your own narrative and gain a few followers.  If the numbers keep growing, then you gain notoriety as a cult leader.  If your cult manages to survive for a hundred years, which will mean you are dead by then, that cult becomes a religion based on the narrative that you offered.

I grew up with interesting narratives that had survived over the centuries.  But, after a while, the puranas, which are stories about the gods, didn't deliver any meaning whatsoever.  They just seemed like awesome soap-operas, with complex subplots.  And, yes, most stories had some element of moral instruction too.

Then there was the fascination with prophets, who turned out to be as clueless as I was--but were master manipulators.

Source

The narratives that appealed to me during the final phase of the religiously agnostic life were whatever I could understand of the vedantic approach.  There were no stories here. No prophets. Only ideas.  Thus, there was no trivial discussion like whether Sita was chaste enough after her time away from Rama, or whether Krishna's rasa lila with the gopis were metaphors to illustrate the deeper points about the soul.

The vedantic ideas were abstractions.  It was like doing math. Imaginary numbers--in this context, you, too, will find it interesting that "i" is discussed there!  Anyway, the vedantic stuff is where I came across the mahavakyas.  And I found it interesting that a commentator on these vedantic aspects was Sivananda, who was from grandmother's village, Pattamadai.  His childhood home was only a couple of doors from grandmother's.  How about that!

One of those mahavakyas is  "तत् त्वम् असि": That thou art.  You are that.  The sentence and the philosophy works well even without bringing in any creator into the discussions.

A wonderful philosophical idea that once we strip from ourselves all the identifications that we use to define who we are, well, the self is "that."  In the vedantic philosophy "that" refers to the "brahman."  (Not to be confused with the brahmin.)

In physics, "that" is cosmic dust.

The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones and the oxygen we breathe are the physical remains — ashes, if you will — of stars that lived and died long ago.

We are all stars ;)

science continues to show just how intimately connected life on Earth is to extraterrestrial processes. In particular, several recent findings have further illuminated the cosmic origins of life’s key ingredients.

You and I are all the same. Whatever our skin colors ;)

Amid the material comforts and the relentless distractions of modern life, the universe at large may appear remote, intangible and irrelevant, especially to those of us who are city dwellers. But the next time you catch a glimpse of the Milky Way in its true glory, from a dark outpost far from city lights, think of those countless stars as nuclear factories and the starless hazy patches as molecular breweries. It is not much of a stretch to imagine the inchoate seeds of life emerging in the distance.

The universe has never seemed "remote, intangible and irrelevant" to me.  Towards the last couple of years of my "Indian" existence, I felt that deep connection to the vast universe via "तत् त्वम् असि".  Now, it is via cosmic dust.  

And, dust to dust it shall be in a few more years.  Before then, there are papers to grade ;)

From nothing came infinity

What was there before the Big Bang?  Did all these come out of something, or out of nothing at all?

Won't it be awesome if humans figured this out?  That question has probably been driving us humans crazy ever since we started to think. How did we get here is, to me, far more exciting and challenging, and mysterious compared to why we are here. When it comes to the why, I am far more tempted to explain it with George Carlin's answer!  

As Stephen Hawking observed (at least, in my understanding of his book) time itself began only with that biggest of bangs the universe has ever known. What was there before means that even the word before does not apply--there was no time prior to the Bang.  Aaaaah!  But, dammit, where did the Bang come from?

We may never, ever find out. Isn't that a shame!  A tragedy. I am with Neil DeGrasse Tyson--I would love it it if some superior life form on some other planet knew the answer and could tell us--but, I would probably be dead before that happens, and won't do me any good.

Other than the curiosity aspect of it all, does it matter even one bit whether or not we figure out the cosmos before that Singularity?  But, dammit, what an awesome thing it will be to crack that puzzle.

Different religions and traditions have their own narratives on how all these came about. Growing up as a curious kid in a traditional, Hindu Brahmin family, I got more than the typical dose of the religious and philosophical explanations compared to most, I would think.  It was that curiosity that led me to "shunyam."  Shunyam is not zero.  Zero is something specific. It is neither a positive number nor a negative number.  Zero, thus, represents a value.  It is "poojyam."

Shunyam is more like null. Empty. Vaccuum. I have a vague recollection of a Vedic chant that was about this Shunyam. But then maybe I am imagining it.

The Rig Veda has a wonderful hymn that deals with Creation, and this site has a translation by Wendy Doniger--yes, that same controversial Doniger.  Set aside the controversy, and focus on the content here:

There was neither non-existence nor existence then.
There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond.
What stirred?
Where?
In whose protection?
Was there water, bottlemlessly deep?

There was neither death nor immortality then.
There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day.
That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse.
Other than that there was nothing beyond.

Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning,
with no distinguishing sign, all this was water.
The life force that was covered with emptiness,
that One arose through the power of heat.

Desire came upon that One in the beginning,
that was the first seed of mind.
Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom
found the bond of existence and non-existence.

Their cord was extended across.
Was there below?
Was there above?
There were seed-placers, there were powers.
There was impulse beneath, there was giving forth above.

Who really knows?
Who will here proclaim it?
Whence was it produced?
Whence is this creation?
The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
Who then knows whence it has arisen?

Whence this creation has arisen
- perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not -
the One who looks down on it,
in the highest heaven, only He knows
or perhaps even He does not know.

I love the "perhaps even He does not know."

The old tradition in the old country recognized that from that nothing came about the infinite. While the world salutes India for inventing the zero, I am not sure if the world outside of India was familiar with the concept of infinity either.

The rhythmic and mellifluous chant of this couplet is a sheer joy to listen to in a real world setting:

puranam adah, purnam idam, purnat purnam udacyate

purnasya purnam adaya purnam evavasisyate.

which translates to:

That is infinite, this is infinite;
From That infinite this infinite comes.
From That infinite, this infinite removed or added;
Infinite remains infinite

Of course, the infinite that is referred to here is way more than mathematical concept, and if often interpreted through hours and hour of lectures that are devoted to each and every word in the couplet.

What always has impressed me, and continues to impress me, despite the atheist that I am, is that the Vedantic text and discourses in the old country made that wonderful and powerful link between nothing and infinity, and attempted to provide a narrative on how everything came about.

Here we are, a couple of thousand years later, struggling to figure out a narrative that is not merely based on conjectures but on evidence.  It is a frustrating project, I would think, to those in the quest for the answer via evidence and for people like me who would like to understand that evidence.  But, hey, that quest is not for nothing. Wait, it is for nothing!