Hindu cosmology

Hindu cosmology is the description of the universe and its states of matter, cycles within time, physical structure, and effects on living entities according to Hindu texts.

• Hinduism’s cosmology was prodigious in scope and depth, but India did not stop there. She went on to advance what was probably the most daring hypothesis man has ever conceived. We ourselves are the infinite, the very infinite from which the Universe proceeds. Everything in Hinduism works to drive the point home... While the West was still thinking, perhaps, of a 6000-year-old universe—India was already envisioning ages and eons and galaxies as numerous as the sands of the River Ganges. A universe so vast that modern astronomy slips into its folds without a ripple.
  • Huston Smith. source: The Soul of a People India and the Infinite, Huston Smith. Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.

• All the universe rests within your nature, in the ocean, in the heart, in all life.
  • Rig Veda IV.58.11, as quoted in David Frawley, Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization, 2000.

• Law and truth from the power of meditation were enkindled. Thence the night was born and thence the flooding ocean. From the flooding ocean the year was born. The Lord of all that moves ordained the days and nights. The Creator formed the Sun and Moon according to previous worlds; Heaven and Earth, the atmosphere and the realm of light (X. 190).

• The creative Sun upheld the Earth with lines of force. He strengthened Heaven where there was no support. As a powerful horse he drew out the atmosphere. He bound fast the ocean in the boundless realm. Where the ocean overflows its boundaries, the creative Sun, as the Son of the Waters knows that. Thence came the world and the upper region, thence Heaven and Earth were extended (X. 149.1-2).

• In the beginning there was darkness hidden in darkness, all this universe was an unillumined sea (X. 129.3).

• When the Gods stood together in the sea. Then as dancers they generated a swirling dust. When, like ascetics, the Gods overflowed the worlds, then from hidden in the ocean, they brought forth the Sun (X.72.6-7).

• From the ocean the blissful wave has arisen, together with its wave it attained immortality.... All the universe rests within your nature, in the ocean, in the heart, in all life. That which is borne in the confluence of the waters, may we attain that blissful wave of yours, oh Gods (IV.58.1, 11).

• Endless wide paths encompass Heaven and Earth from all sides. The bull, the ocean, the radiant bird, has entered into the home of the original Father (V.47.2-3).