The Eternal Quest

Book excerpt: Since the prehistoric times, humans have wondered about the world around us. Ancients thought that the universe consisted of heaven and earth. With scientific knowledge, we know that the portion of the universe we can see has billions of galaxies. The great Maharishi scholars of the past and the brilliant scientists of our time pondered the key issues about the creator and the creation of this majestic universe. Modern science has been able to describe the development of our universe in great detail from just after the big-bang to the present time. The science of cosmology behind the understanding of the growth of the universe is very elegant and beautiful. There is simplicity behind the bewildering complexity of the scientific theories. Still, there are some important issues to be resolved. Many scientists are working to develop a theory of everything to address these deficits. This book describes the related scientific ideas at the conceptual level. Unfortunately, some of the key issues cannot be resolved by current science. This places us at the boundary between science and philosophy. One of the two key issues is how reality immerged out of the metaverse, an environment that did not have the elements of reality. The other issue is that the science can describe the laws of nature accurately but not how those were built into everything in reality. The ancient scholars also pondered about the creation issue and faced the same problems. They developed philosophical models based on creator centric ideas to explain creation. This book considers the ancient philosophical models and modern science of creation as a continuum of human thought. The philosophical models provide possible ideas that are beyond the scientific method. The four ancient models presented in this book are relevant in the modern times.