CONCEPT OF ENTROPY IN VEDAS

Entropy is a concept used in various fields, including thermodynamics, information theory, and statistics. In thermodynamics, it represents the measure of disorder or randomness in a system. In information theory, it measures the uncertainty or information content of a random variable. In statistics, it’s a measure of the impurity or randomness in a dataset. Overall, entropy captures the level of uncertainty, randomness, or disorder in a given context.

In the field of particle physics, it has been established by many scientific experiments that the universe had a beginning in the remote past and it will have an eventual collapse in some remote future. In this context, the Second Law of Thermodynamics asserts that the processes occur in a certain direction but not in the reverse direction. A cup of hot coffee left on a table in an office, for example, eventually cools, but a cup of cold coffee on the same table never gets hot by itself, that is, the heat can only flow from hot to cold bodies. The science of thermodynamics deals with “equilibrium states” and it declares that a system, which is in equilibrium, experiences no changes when it is isolated from its surroundings. For example, a system is in thermal equilibrium if the temperature is same throughout the entire system. And in this state there are no unbalanced driving forces within the system. A reservoir that supplies energy in the form of heat is called a source and one that absorbs energy in the form of heat is called a sink. When source and the sink are both at the same temperature, there is no flow of energy and, therefore, there is no movement. In the same way we find that life is an effort to climb the slope that ‘matter’ descends. Matter moves increasingly toward a state of disorganization or of increasing randomness, and Consciousness or Life moves towards increasingly complex forms of purposeful organization or decreasing randomness. These are known as what the Bhagavad-Gita calls as the two cosmic tides of pravritti and nivritti, symbolically known as the ‘path of night’ and the ‘path of light’ or the ‘path of action’ and the ‘path of reflection’ respectively.

And, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the universe is slowly moving towards a state known as “heat death”, that is, a state of existence when all the stars and galaxies will have dissipated their energy in the form of heat and radiation and the whole universe will attain one uniform temperature. This concept of Heat Death is very similar to the Hindu concept of pralaya or dissolution of the universe, and Lincoln Barnett describes it with rare clarity. In this state, the existence of the universe can be described as follows: “All space will be at the same temperature. No energy can be used because all of it will be uniformly distributed through the cosmos. There will be no light, no life, no warmth- nothing but perpetual and irrevocable stagnation. Time itself will come to an end. For entropy is a measure of randomness. When all system and order in the universe have vanished, when randomness is at its maximum, and entropy cannot be increased, where there no longer is any sequence of cause and effect- in short, when the universe has run down, there will be no direction to time, there will be no time. And there is no way of avoiding this destiny.”

Hymn of Creation

This very phenomenon is explained in the Rig Veda (verse X.129) in a famous hymn known as “Naasdeeya Sooktam” or the Hymn of Creation. This verse in Sanskrit describes the vision of the universe, as it existed before its creation. Many scholars and sages have translated the Naasdeeya Sooktam into English.

Prof. Juan Mascaro had described

As follows:

Naas_daaseenno sadaa_seett-daanee

naaseedra_jo no vyomaa paro yat

kimaa_vareevah. Kuh kasya sharmann

ambhah kimaaseed_gahnam gabheeram.

na mrityu_raasee_damritam na taarhi

na raatya ahna aaseet_praketah

aaneedavaatam svadhayaa tad_ekam

tasmaa_ddhanyan_na parah kim chanaas …..

…iyam visrishTiryat aab_bhoova

yadim vaa dadhe yadi vaa na

yo asyaadhyakshah parame vyoman

so aNga ved yadi vaa na ved.

Translated to English it means:

In the beginning … …

There was neither existence nor non-existence.

There was not then what is not, what is not.

There was neither sky nor any heaven beyond the sky.

What power was there?

Where?

Who was that power?

Was there an abyss of fathomless water?

There was neither death nor immortality then

No signs were there of night or day.

The One was breathing with its own power,

in deep space.

Only the One was.

And there was nothing beyond.

The darkness was hidden in darkness.

And all was fluid and formless.

Therein, in the void,

By the fire of fervor arose One.

And in the One arose love.

Love the first seed of the soul.

The truth of this the sages found in their hearts:

Seeking in their hearts with wisdom,

The sages found that bond of union

Between being and non-being

Between the manifest and the unmanifest

Who knows this truth?

Who can tell, when and how arose this universe?

The gods came after its creation.

Whether this universe was created or uncreated

Only the God who sees in the highest heaven:

He only knows, when came this universe

And, whether it was created or uncreated

He only knows or perhaps He knows not?

In this hymn an attempt is made to describe the nature of the Ultimate Reality, and it is beautifully explained by Yogi Krishna Prem:

He says that in the beginning, the One without a Second polarized itself or expanded itself to become Many. While it is absolutely absurd to attempt to explain how the polarization of parbrahman, the One without a second, occurs, it may be useful to make a few suggestions as to how we may conceive it as occurring. The manifestation of a Cosmos depends on the polarization of the One, the parbrahman, into the transcendental Subject, the shaant atman, and the transcendental Object, the mool prakriti. So, far beyond all thought or imagination is that One, Parbrahman, the causeless Cause or the First Cause of the Western thought. Since it cannot be known as an object of knowledge, therefore, “It” is only to be conceived as Darkness. Since it is unknown, therefore, it is called darkness and in that darkness was buried the potentiality of all existence and by the power of tapas, literally, heat or self-limitation arose the Atman or the Unitary Consciousness.

The modern day astronomers call this “darkness” as the Dark Matter and Dark Energy of the universe, and of which they have very little knowledge. As recently as February 2003, scientists using NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), during a sweeping 12-month observation of the entire sky, have captured the new cosmic portrait, capturing the afterglow of the big bang, called cosmic microwave background. The WMAP team found that the universe is 13.7 billion years old and the contents of the universe include 4 percent atoms or the ordinary visible matter, 23 percent of an unknown dark matter and 73 percent of the mysterious dark energy. The measurements even shed light on the nature of the dark energy, which acts as a sort of an anti-gravity. This is what the Rig Veda means when it says: “The Darkness is hidden in Darkness.”

The actual first impulse to creation, according to the Hindu scriptures, is forever hidden in that Darkness, and that is why even Buddha, the Enlightened One, when queried on this subject, remained silent and refused to go beyond desire. According to the Rig Veda, the gods who were in the levels of manifested consciousness came into being later. In other words, consciousness cannot penetrate to its own root. The first impulse to creation, therefore, can only be called the Lila the ‘divine spectacle’ or ‘divine sport’ of the Supreme. The ultimate root is, however, even beyond atman. Nor even for atman can Brahman be an object of knowledge, for to know It is to merge in It and in that merging the separate “knower” comes to an end. In this essay, only a few paragraphs of this hymn are tackled, as a full explanation of this cryptic hymn is beyond its scope.