HISTORY 1803

A few thousand years back, in India, we had the old five element theory in Sanskrit. Those elements were five forms of energy perceivable by our five senses. But when that notion on to Greece around 600 BC, the Sanskrit was very badly translated and it was thought that the five elements were five "things" like earth and water, fire and air. But the Sanskrit cannot be translated that way. Vayu means wind, not air, and Tejas means that which shines, not fire. Agni means fire.

In 1803 and English chemist, John Dalton, borrowed the word elements from the older theory because "The alchemists couldn't show their ware," and used it as we use it now for the chemical elements of the atomic table.

In 1805 another chemist, Prout, noticing that the atomic weights went up stepwise, suggested that all the chemical elements were made of hydrogen. That was some sixty years before we had the atomic table, and it was more than a hundred years before we knew that one chemical element could be made into another.

When I was kid in the 1920s it was still taken for granted that the chemical mix of the Universe had been given at the time of creation, if there was a creation, or had been around forever, if there was a forever. No one thought then that the other chemical elements could have been made from hydrogen.

By 1930 we knew that the chemical mix of the Universe was changeable, and the Big Bang cosmologists thought they could get the mix from the Big Bang. But they couldn't. Then, in the 1950s, M. Burbidge, G. Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle wrote a paper on the "Synthesis of Elements in Stars." They pointed out that in smaller stars like our Sun the hydrogen is fused first to helium, then to carbon and oxygen. But in larger stars, where the temperature is higher, the fusion continues through silicon, sulfur, etc. to iron which collapses to a neutron star with such a release of energy that the outer portions of the star are blown away. The heavier elements are made in the supernova explosion itself, and are also scattered far and wide.

By then the European physicists knew that the physical Universe is made out of hydrogen. But no one knew where the hydrogen came from. The Big Bang people wanted to get hydrogen from the Big Bang, but they had no source for that. The Steady State people wanted to get the hydrogen from the "C field," but they had no source for that.

If we want to understand the origin of the hydrogen we'll have to go back again to those old physicists in India. They said there has to be, underlying what we see, and existence not in time and space, changeless, infinite and undivided. If, my mistake, we see that as in time and space, the changeless, the infinite, the undivided must show through in what we see. You can't mistake your friend for a ghost without seeing your friend. As I see it, the changeless shows through in physics as inertia, and the infinite and undivided show through as the electrical and gravitational energies.

Those old physicists said the Universe is made of energy. I think that that energy shows through in the physical world as hydrogen and what it does. It's not as though the physical world is made of something else.

Those old physicists spoke of three spaces, the Consciousness Space, the Mind Space, and the Great Space. As I see it Shiva-Shakti represents the perceived in the Consciousness Space where there is on a duality, the perceiver and the perceived. The Mind Space I take to be the genetic space where we are involved in a plurality of interpersonal relationships. The Great Space I take to be the space of our physics where we see an electrical duality against a gravitational plurality, without being involved in either one.

It's only the physical world in the Great Space that's made of hydrogen. And there, in the Great Space, only the hydrogen arises by Vivarta, by the mistake. Everything else in the physical world arises from that hydrogen by Parinama, by transformational causation. Chevies don't arise by Vivarta, they come from Detroit.

John Dobson

Hollywood, 2004

For Swami Swahananda