Did you know that there are a lot of parallels between Einstein’s thoughts on time, space, nature and divinity and our own Indian philosophy?

A philosophical understand of Einstein’s famous time and space equation is enriching – for example, to our senses, the earth is stationary and the sun is continuously in motion. To our mind, the earth is going round the sun. But to our soul, there’s a continuous exchange of rhythmic and purposive energies between these two composite parts of the Universe.

No human mind can conceive space because the eye can see it but not cognize it. The mind can cognize it but not grasp it .The heart can grasp it but not describe it. Space is ever-existing, a sort of boundless background in which entire Universes rise and fall. It is Indian philosophy’s ‘ever-present’ in which births and deaths occur. Space is invaded with forms of life having cells, atoms, sub-atoms and molecules and yet the human mind cannot calculate it either. The thinker, the philosopher, the scientist and the occultist can ‘experience’ space beyond sense-perception because it is a giant void (Upanishads call it Shoonya) an eternal, absolute, boundless from which nature formed, manifested and dissolved (concept of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh).

In his book, ‘Tao of Physics’, Fritjof Capra says, “Science does not need religion and religion does not need science”. But humanity needs both as Einstein pointed out because mystical experience is essential to comprehend the nature of the soul and science is essential to human life. Einstein’s famous statement, “God does not play dice” means that there is a perfect order and harmony and the whole of nature is a memorial tablet since every form of nature is a life-energy, containing within it and on its surface its own life-story whether it’s a blade of green grass or a green emerald.

Those who study only appearances with the aid of senses are men of science. Those who reflect on the processes with the aid of the mind are thinkers and philosophers. But those who in all reverence and humiliation allow Nature to radiate its light, life and love (Satyam, Shivam, Sundram) within their whole being, are mystics.

Einstein says, “Time is relative”, that is, it’s an illusion. Nature compels us to see everything in a time-space context because time is immutably pre-supposed in our thinking process and space is a necessary condition of our perceiving-process. Time is the essence of movement and space is the essence of location; the location being mere mental-conditioning which divides that part of eternal-reality we call “future” from that part we call “past”, for example, those escaping death by a hair’s breadth report that during the few seconds of unconsciousness, they experienced the entire history of their life. Another example – We nap for an hour and dream that we are touring Europe. The entire tour was covered in an hour’s time.

For a person in sleep or in coma, there is no time because time is subjective-consciousness. What we call ‘past’ is merely our memory. Our ‘future’ is merely our imagination. We ‘believe’ we are living. Einstein only substantiated Indian philosophy because his ideas of time-space delineated the four states of consciousness in our ancient Indian scriptures, such as Jagrat, Swapna, Turya and Samadhi.

So you see, from God to man, universe to atom, from a star to a ray of light, from the sun to the vital heat within a matchstick, this world of different forms is an immense chain where everything is inter-blended in harmony. The scientist thinks he knows everything. The astronaut is proud because he has travelled in space. Yet, man is so ignorant of the millions and zillions of miles called space beyond the solar system which is a mere drop in the cosmic ocean! Space is all around us, with us, near us and within us. To comprehend time, space, nature and divinity, you don’t have to go anywhere. There’s nowhere to run except ‘within’ because as Einstein said, “The entire Universe is in your mind.”