The Lotus Effect

In the vast Sanskrit literature one finds this maxim " utpala-shata-patra-vyatibhéda-vat" which translates to " "Like the simultaneous piercing of a bundle of hundred lotus-leaves." Lotus leaves are very soft. Hence a stack of hundred such leaves can be pierced with a sharp needle in no time, almost instantaneously, and yet the actual process is linear or one leaf at a time.

A complete description as to why or how the maxim came into existence requires an inordinate amount of time, so much so that Kaala Bhairava, the embodiment of time, alone can determine and grant. For all practical purposes it means less than a "truti" which could be anywhere from a millionth to a billionth of a second.

Shlokavārtika says, "You say the example of lamp and light as an instance of simultaneity of cause and effect, but still there is a finite little time, just like piercing hundred lotus leaves." So we can surmise there was knowledge that light has a finite speed, just as it was known that sunlight takes about 8 minutes to reach the Earth.

For comparison sake in modern computers, including smart phones, the smallest time unit is called the "clock speed" which measures the number of cycles the Central Processing Unit (CPU) executes per second, measured in GHz (gigahertz) which translates to a billionth of a second.

If you thought science beat the rishis, what if the rishi tells us the stack of leaves can be of any size? Then the smallest time to pierce is based on the method used, which ranges from a needle to a laser beam. Applying quantum tunneling, this simple thought experiment becomes intractable or mind boggling.

On the macro scale, buddhists thought completely swapping two stacks of rings around two poles, using a third pole, by transferring one ring per day means the end of time. Our rishis went beyond with larger scales of time comprising yuga, mahayuga, kalpa, brahma kaala, etc.

What about the physics lesson time is relative? The physicists subscribing to the relativity theory inspired a hollywood movie called Interstellar where they used the axiom that clocks slow down near massive objects such as black holes due to gravity. Some physicists took atomic clocks atop the tallest building then, Burg Khalifa, and concluded that clocks slowed down. Did our rishis miss this fundamental aspect? Not really. Because they were talking about time whereas the physicists are talking about clocks, both biological and physics, that are subject to quantum effects.

Of much interest to everyone: "How long will I live?" or "When will XYZ pass away?". The rishis wrestled with these never-wracking questions and incorporated them in treatises that comprised siddhanta, jyotish and samhita. Most people think the aayush calculated by vedic astrologers, say using Parasara Sutras, variously called Pinda, Amsa, Nisarga, etc. is the answer to the perplexing questions where sampurna aayush means a 120 year long life span. For illustration, the oldest human, a French woman called Jeanne Louise Calment, lived to be 122 years. So Sage Parasara who made his Sutras 5000 years ago remains credible.

A more common time related question in democracies is "How long before the ruling party collapses prematurely?" For this there are Tarot Readers, Oracles, Palmists, etc. as jyotish pertained to Kingdoms where the ruling party was an individual that could be the king, queen, prince, etc. So bobbing heads on TVs during elections claiming to be jyotish are, in a sense, doing a disservice to their audience.

Therefore, the rishis like Parasara, Jaimini and Aryabhatta based their predictions on calculations made out of observation. Did they use telescopes? One vedic scholar found evidence in a Hampi temple built before Kepler (circa 1500 AD) in the form of stone carvings showing rishis peering through "tubular" objects. Many a time our rishis predicting that there are other Suns associated with various lokas and earth has a third degree of motion, besides rotation and revolution, in the form of axis tilt, had a darshan of the terrestrial and celestial worlds in tapas. Hence they are collectively called "drashtas" in vedas.

I find no need to mock the frailty of astronomy in predicting anything credibly, even with the help of the powerful Jame Webb Telescope orbiting the earth because they dish out excellent photographs of what's happening in the universe via NASA website. There are also the "influencers" in various social media platforms who monetize such fodder, not to mention the main-stream-media tooting their horns.

In all humility, as I see scientists are trying very hard to disprove vedas which have only 7-12 extant branches left on the last count, down from 1132 during Sage Vyasa's time, possibly because of invasions on Bharat,, and many more branches that missed the Sage's edits. In sum, during Bharat's indentured period the invaders usurped the vedic knowledge and claimed it as their own by touting the observe-theorize-predict-experiment paradigm without due credit to vedas that did all the work.

Regards