The universe is truly mysterious.
Sir James Jeans realized this and quoted a few lines from Plato. He did not support Plato in toto, but when he could not make out the workings of the universe, he came to respect his opinions.
What does Plato say? “I was then told how far the universe was manifested before us and how far it remains unrevealed to us. Men live in a cave. Their hands and necks are so tightly fettered that they cannot move. They can only see in front of them. A little behind and above them there is a great fire pit. Between the furnace and the men is the great highway of life. If you look, you will see a wall running along in front of them, like a screen in a puppet show.”
The men cannot go forward or penetrate the wall. So Plato has said to us. Scientists have given many demonstrations of how the universe has manifested. They have only seen, however, the shadows in front of them, fettered as they were with chains. Sir James Jeans realized the truth of this observation and turned his attention from matter to life. He wanted to see what was behind matter. But he got no final answers in his search. He wrote, “I cannot feel that life comes from matter. Are living bodies made up only of chemicals, such as the soot-like carbon we see in our kitchens and chimneys? Hydrogen and oxygen are in water and nitrogen is the atmosphere. Everything needed for life is in the universe. Gradually the elements of the world are adapted to our use. Are they of themselves the builders of life? Is life a component of atoms or is something else added to them? Is it composed of both things? Or can atoms alone do the trick ?”
(The Mysterious Universe, p. 6, 7.)
The universe is so vast and infinite that anything about it seems inconceivable, and we call it a mysterious universe. We give an example. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. If we were to ride at this speed, we would reach the sun in eight minutes and within a few hours we could tour the whole solar system. In four years we could reach Centaurus in the southern sky. After travelling for thirty years we might come to the Milky Way, whose surface is so large that it would take 50,000 years for us to cross it.
Our heads begin to whirl when we think of such big things. Is it possible to conceive of such a universe? Sir James Jeans could not retain faith in man’s ability to conceive it all. He said, “It is not conceivable that the universe was made only to evolve life like our own. From these preliminary discussions we can guess that our lives are useless to the creation, We are far from being the centre of the world.” (The Mysterious Universe, p.128)
Some of the things discovered by scientists in this modern age are very hard to grasp; others are easy. Present-day scientists say there is no matter or atom. Energy and matter, they say, cannot be distinguished. It cannot be said yet what distance, if any, lies between them. We can only guess that atoms are there where there is motion.
It is hard to bring out new truths about the universe, though we are in desperate need of them and try desperately for them. We strive hard to crack the hard shell of Nature, but the fruits of our labours are meagre. We know next to nothing. Sir James said, “Someone may very well say that the triumph of twentieth century discoveries lies not in the law of gravitation or the Quantum Theory or the splitting of the atom, but in the realization that nothing has yet been understood about the mystery of the universe. According to Plato, we are still in the cave fettered with chains. Light is behind us. We see only the wall before us on which shadows play. It is the duty of all scientists to explain the shadows that we see.”
Brahma is manifested and always being manifested in creation. All that we see is Brahma or God. Planets and stars are also He. We cannot measure them. We could not even get a good look at them if we travelled for thousands of years at light-speed. They are eternal and endless. God is, say, eternal and unbounded along with time and space. Sir James Jeans said, “Modern scientists would lead us to think that in this way the Creator is creating His being in infinite stages.” (The Mysterious Universe, p.165) He is beyond time, an endless and infinite creator, and His creations are manifestation of Him. Modern scientists have said many things about the universe, but mostly conflicting. They discover many things but yet cannot agree. Sir James Jeans has said, “A slur may be cast on them if I say the scientists are always changing their opinions. Their opinions are never decisive. They are researching daily and their experiences are not leading them to the ultimate. They have worked for long years with great sincerity and come to no final answer. The more they come to know the farther recedes the horizon.” (The Mysterious Universe, p. 147)
Scientists can’t say from where life comes, but philosophers say. Philosophy is the culmination of thought, the distillation of what we see and think written down in a book. In philosophy the finest analogies are made, because presumably the world was created with some ideas and purposes. Sir James says, “Scientists are of the opinion that every advance of knowledge indicates a further keenness of mind lying behind this material world. The universe is not a machine, but is made of mind.” (p. 148) Life has descended from supreme consciousness in the shape of some chemical combinations. Actually the Supreme Father is the source of life. No one but Him could have fashioned it. This universe is also His doing, though it is itself infinite. And man……man, we say, was created in His image. So far man has not been able to create as He has done, and anyway all that man has done is His.
We can see progress possible in two ways: 1) science will one day prove our philosophical conceptions : 2) science will move forward when she overcomes all the prejudices that would keep her from the inner truth. Probably Sir James Jeans felt especially keenly this second observation. He wrote, “We can say only as far as our knowledge goes, and our knowledge is so infinitesimal and incomplete that we cannot say anything definite. I could include this sentence in every paragraph of this book. Not doing that, I may say that all that I have written and all the problems I have raised are left in a vague and uncertain state.” (p. 149) In the last chapter he wrote, “We have discussed whether it is possible or not for science to give any answers to what men could so far not fathom. Probably we cannot say or dare insist that science has been able to do anything by way of answers.” (p. 150)
Our philosophy has divided the world into three planes: the purely spiritual, the spiritual-material, and the material. Still unity pervades the world, it says, just as steam, water, and ice are but three forms or planes of one thing. Behind the gross is the fine, and behind the fine lies the ultrafine or the finest. Because man has descended from the Supreme Soul he has knowledge of all three: gross, fine, and superfine. Plato says men are in a cave of shadows; may be, yet we are to know the universe. Man has every power to know the purely spiritual and material world.