Vishnu with Discus and Conch
Both the discus and the conch represent the spiral. In this statue, Vishnu also stands on a lotus flower, which is a symbol of spiral phenomena in nature.
Vishnu
Vishnu, the god of home and family values, represents stability and order. Vishnu is recognizable by the four symbols he often carries: the discus, the conch, the club, and the lotus. The discus and the club are both weapons, signifying his omnipotence in destroying evil.
The lotus represents fertility and regeneration and the nourishment of the soul that occurs through devotion to this deity.
Vishnu’s conch bore the name Panchajanya, which means "having control over the five classes of beings." In India, the conch shell is blown like a trumpet during many sacred rituals. It is considered to make the purest of sounds, which was the source of all creation at the beginning of the world.
Read more about Hindu Worship on the Smithsonian site:
Contemporary Painting of Hindu God Vishnu
Notice the whirlpool at his foot and how he holds a spiral object in each hand.
Click to see larger image
The Goddess Kali
with Conch
Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and Eastern Mysticism
Excerpts from interview of Fritjof Capra by Renee Weber from The Holographic Paradigm
“I had several discussions with Heisenberg. I lived in England then [circa 1972], and I visited him several times in Munich and showed him the whole manuscript chapter by chapter. He was very interested and very open, and he told me something that I think is not known publicly because he never published it. He said that he was well aware of these parallels. While he was working on quantum theory he went to India to lecture and was a guest of Tagore. He talked a lot with Tagore about Indian philosophy. Heisenberg told me that these talks had helped him a lot with his work in physics, because they showed him that all these new ideas in quantum physics were in fact not all that crazy. He realized there was, in fact, a whole culture that subscribed to very similar ideas. Heisenberg said that this was a great help for him. Niels Bohr had a similar experience when he went to China.”
Einstein and Tagore (a.k.a. Gurudev)
In the summer of 1930, Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein met in Caputh, Germany. Einstein regarded Tagore with the greatest esteem, and Tagore, in turn, viewed Einstein as a like-minded savant.
Shiva's Cosmic Dance at CERN (right)
In 2004, the European Center for Research in Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva unveiled a new landmark: a two-meter-tall statue of Shiva Nataraja, the Indian deity and Lord of Dance.
"Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics."
Fritjof Capra
Stephen Hawking's Universe: An Introduction to the Most Remarkable Scientist
by John Boslough
In an interview with the author, Hawking expresses his firm disbelief that there is any connection between Eastern mysticism and contemporary physics.
Excerpt from the book:
Recently, some physicists have come to see a relationship between their work and the ideas behind Eastern mysticism. They believe that the paradoxes, odds, and probabilities as well as the observer-dependence of quantum mechanics have been anticipated in the writings of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Quantum mechanics, these so-called new physicists are fond of point out, is really only a rediscovery of Shiva or Mahadeva, the Hindu horned god of destruction and cosmic dissolution.
Shiva, mentioned as early as the third or fourth century B.C., takes several forms. One of them is Nataraja, the four-armed Lord of the Cosmic Dance pictured dancing on a prostrate demon. The god’s dance symbolizes the perpetual process of universal creation and destruction. Matter has no substance at all; it is merely the dynamic, rhythmic gyration of energy coming and going.
David Bohm, professor of theoretical physics at Birkbeck College, is one of these new theoreticians. He thinks the human mind’s ability to grasp higher realities is denied or ignored by conventional science. Standard science is a dead end because it analyzes experience into discrete pieces. The human mind—and particularly the mind of the physicist —has an overwhelming need to impose categories on experience.
As a result, the seamless web of physical reality is divided into separate events that seem to occur only side by side or in different parts of time and space. By understanding Eastern mysticism, Bohm suggests, physicists can free their minds, at least briefly, from this self-created prison in order to attain an instant of scientific creation.
At Cambridge, one of Hawking’s colleagues, Brian Josephson, actively practices Eastern meditational techniques. Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1973, Josephson worries about the relationship between human intelligence and the world it observes. He has come to think that by understanding Eastern mysticism he will gain insights into objective reality.
“I think it is absolute rubbish,” said Hawking. I looked up from my notebook at him. “Write it down,” he ordered. “It’s pure rubbish.”
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The world rests as the lotus in the
palm of my hand,
the cosmos revolves around my
finger like a discus.
I blow the music of life through
my conch and wield my mace to protect all creatures.
Vishnu, in the
Krishna Upanishad
Indian Painting, circa 1785
Click to see larger image
Painting of the Hindu pilgrim Sudama approaching the golden city of Krishna.
The Great Serpent King of the Underworld
This naga, or serpent god, embodies the power of earth and water. Snakes, like labyrinths, wind around a “treasure” at the center of their coils, thereby protecting it.
Particle Physics & Hindu Theology
Contemporary Scholars discuss the Flow of Ideas between Science & Religion
Vishnu Reclining on the Serpent Ananta
India, circa 1850-1870
The Hindu deity Vishnu is often depicted lying on the many-headed serpent Ananta, floating on the ocean while dreaming the universe into existence. Ananta, which means “endless,” represents eternity and the ceaseless cycle of cosmic birth and death. The serpent is also known as Shesha, which means “remainder,” and represents all that remains when the universe ends—and that will fuel the recreation of the universe during the next cosmic cycle.
Hindu Priest Blowing Conch
Click to see larger image
The conch, or shankh, is held as sacred and is frequently depicted in Hindu art in the hands of nearly all of the Hindu pantheon. Lord Vishnu’s conch reminds worshippers of the waters from which the universe was formed. Blowing the conch is associated with the original sound of creation and the divine sound "Om.”
The conch is also a symbol of sovereignty, and every great Indian king and army chief had his own particular shankh. It was blown on the battlefield to signal the start and the end of a day’s fighting.
World Religions > Hinduism
