2026-04-12 · Philosophy
There is a popular critique of religion that goes something like this: humanity invents gods to fill explanatory gaps. We didn't understand thunder, so we made Thor. We couldn't explain the sun, so we made Ra. And today, some people invoke Vishnu or Allah to explain the Big Bang because physics hasn't yet told us what came before it. Gods, on this view, are just placeholders — variables in an equation we haven't solved yet, to be replaced as science advances.
The argument has real force. For many religious traditions, it is essentially correct. But it misses something important about Hinduism: our philosophers were asking the same skeptical questions thousands of years ago — and they didn't stop at "a god did it." They kept pushing until they arrived at answers that are, to put it mildly, surprisingly abstract, and possibly complete.
What follows is a rough sketch of that journey, from questioning the gods, to replacing them with an impersonal principle, to describing how a unified whole gives rise to a diverse universe — in ways that rhyme, sometimes uncomfortably well, with modern physics.
The Rigveda's Nasadiya Sukta (Rigveda 10.129) is arguably the world's first agnostic cosmological text. It doesn't say "Indra created everything." It says:
नासदासीन्नो सदासीत्तदानीं नासीद्रजो नो व्योमा परो यत्।
किमावरीवः कुह कस्य शर्मन्नम्भः किमासीद्गहनं गभीरम्॥
"Neither non-existence nor existence was there then. Neither the realm of space nor the sky beyond. What stirred? Where? In whose protection? Was there water, unfathomably deep?"
को अद्धा वेद क इह प्र वोचत् कुत आजाता कुत इयं विसृष्टिः।
अर्वाग्देवा अस्य विसर्जनेनाथा को वेद यत आबभूव॥
"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?"
This is the Rigveda itself saying: the gods don't know either, and an acknowledgment that the origin of existence exceeds all gods and all human comprehension.
By the time the Upanishads came around, we had an answer. Uddalaka Aruni teaches his son Svetaketu about an impersonal, all-pervasive being:
सदेव सोम्येदमग्र आसीदेकमेवाद्वितीयम्।
"In the beginning, my dear, this was Being alone, one only, without a second." (Chandogya Upanishad 6.2.1)
No Vishnu. No Brahma. Just Sat, pure existence, undifferentiated. Then comes the famous:
तत्त्वमसि श्वेतकेतो।
"That thou art, Svetaketu." (Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7)
The substance that constitutes the cosmos is the same substance that constitutes you. Note that this is millennia before we knew about the Big Bang. We are getting glimpses of what will eventually become Advaita philosophy. Everything is one, but acting as the observer and the observed.
The Mundaka Upanishad describes Brahman in terms that sound eerily similar to various fields of the Standard Model:
ब्रह्मैवेदममृतं पुरस्तात् ब्रह्म पश्चात् ब्रह्म उत्तरतो दक्षिणतश्चोत्तरेण।
अधश्चोर्ध्वं च प्रसृतं ब्रह्मैवेदं विश्वमिदं वरिष्ठम्॥
"Brahman alone is all this immortal being, in front, behind, to the right and the left, below and above. Brahman alone is all this universe, the supreme." (Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.11)
We move from a person-god to a kind of field: omnidirectional, all-pervasive, constituting everything. The Mandukya Upanishad opens with:
ॐ इत्येतदक्षरमिदं सर्वं तस्योपव्याख्यानं भूतं भवद् भविष्यदिति सर्वमोंकार एव।
यच्चान्यत् त्रिकालातीतं तदप्योंकार एव॥
"OM; this syllable is all this. All that is past, present, and future, all of it is OM. And whatever transcends the three times, that too is OM." (Mandukya Upanishad 1.1)
The Upanishads describe the act of creation not as a god making things from external material, but as a single consciousness differentiating itself. The Aitareya says:
आत्मा वा इदमेक एवाग्र आसीत्। नान्यत्किञ्च मिषत्।
स ईक्षत लोकान्नु सृजा इति॥
"In the beginning, this was the Self alone. Nothing else existed. It thought: 'Let me now create the worlds.'" (Aitareya Upanishad 1.1.1)
The act of creation is the Self splitting into Prakriti, which fills up the universe. But this splitting does not deplete the Self. As the Isavasya Upanishad says:
पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते॥
"That is whole. This is whole. From wholeness, wholeness proceeds. Taking wholeness from wholeness, wholeness alone remains."
The Mundaka puts the mechanism of creation beautifully:
यथोर्णनाभिः सृजते गृह्णते च यथा पृथिव्यामोषधयः सम्भवन्ति।
यथा सतः पुरुषात्केशलोमानि तथाऽक्षरात्सम्भवतीह विश्वम्॥
"As a spider spins and withdraws its thread, as plants grow from the earth, as hair grows from a living person, so from the Imperishable, this universe arises." (Mundaka Upanishad 1.1.7)
The universe emerges from Brahman the way a web emerges from a spider. The substance of creation is not separate from the creator. The spider doesn't use external material; it produces the web from itself.
You can draw parallels to quantum field theory: Purusha is the field. Prakriti is the field in excitation. The particles, forces, and structures of the universe are not separate from the field — they are the field, vibrating. And when those excitations cease, the field remains; whole, unchanged, exactly as it was.
It is fascinating to me that modern science and these ancient dharmic thinkers were asking the same question: what is the fundamental nature of reality? Science uses mathematics and experiment. Our philosophers used pure reason and introspection. They arrived at surprisingly similar answers. Make of that what you will.