Preparing for the Miraculous

198 eleven talksAccording to the current Big Bang theory, the universeoriginated from something smaller than an atom, evensmaller than the nucleus of an atom, labelled a “singularity.”Reducing, in accordance with the laws of physicsand cosmology known at present, the expanding universebackwards to its ever smaller past, the theorists have endedwith something that was an unknowable, something ofwhich only one instance existed. The astronomically bighad, oh wonder, originated from the indefinably small. Allhad originated from nothing.This is an example of how science, epitome of the rationaland opponent of the mystical, accepts the undefinable,even as a basis of its theoretical constructs. (Anotherexample was Newton’s gravity, exerting a magical action ata distance.) All the same, it must be said that serious sciencehas never been comfortable with the explanation. Extrapolatingbackwards, from the known to the unknown (fromthe perceived universe to an inexplicable event 13.7 billionyears ago), is a risky and scientifically unjustifiable way ofproceeding. This is why string theory and M-theory, muchflaunted but as yet little proven, propose several solutionsto the problem, accept a universe or universes before andafter the Big Bang, and even fantasize about a “multiverse”with an infinite number of dimensions which would explainall things imaginable.Sri Aurobindo gives the solution of the mysterious andmomentous happening at the origin of the universe: a gasbelched out from some invisible fire. This places the “singularity”squarely in dimensions which must remain foreverforeign to materialistic science, but without which Reality,including material reality, will never be explainable. Forthe “invisible fire” in question is not what is commonlyunderstood as “fire,” it is Agni, the mystic fire of the Vedas“which is hymned as the upbuilder of the worlds, the secret