What is our universe made of? What are its building blocks and fundamental reality? Greek philosopher Democritus came up with the idea of atoms being fundamental in 400 BC. Over the succeeding millennia, one went from Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham’s idea of light being composed of particles as promulgated in his work Kitāb al-Manāẓir in the 11th century and Sir Isaac Newton’s corpuscular theory expounded in his work Opticks to the work of pioneers like Robert Hooke, Christiaan Huygens and Augustin-Jean Fresnel on the wave-like nature of light. Going into the 20th century, with the advent of quantum physics, and the work of luminaries such as Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Louis de Broglie, Arthur Compton, Niels Bohr and others, the whole conflict of whether entities were fundamentally wave-like or corpuscular went from the domain of light to matter, thereby encompassing all entities in the Universe, at its most fundamental.
The resolution of the same was put forth as the renowned Wave-Particle Duality, which saw one of its first major milestones in Louis de Broglie’s note Ondes et quanta, presented at a meeting of the Paris Academy of Sciences on September 10, 1923, which extended the wave considerations to any massive particles.
While quantum mechanics was good at explaining a number of phenomena, when one reconciled quantum mechanics (physics at the most miniscule) with special relativity (particularly physics at extremely fast velocities), one got a more natural coming-together of the wave-like and particulate nature of entities in the idea of fields. Quantum field theories provide us with one of the most comprehensive conceptual frameworks to describe physics across scales today. According to this theory, nature is made of fields and the Universe is pervaded by universal quantum fields. What we know as particles are just stable excitations in these fields. These fields, when unexcited, compose a quantum vacuum. Unlike our idea of vacuum in day-to-day life, this (quantum) vacuum is a teeming, frothing sea of particles and anti-particles zooming into existence and popping back into an un-manifested state, within the vacuum. Thus, most of physics, from that described by electromagnetism to the weak interaction and strong interaction (quantum chromodynamics), can be conceptualised in terms of everything manifested coming out of an apparent nothingness and going back to it after a while.
There is a quantum vacuum associated with the different kinds of fields (such as a QCD vacuum for Quantum Chromodynamics). These vacua may potentially arise from one true unified field quantum vacuum — the universal void, if the unification programme of contemporary physics succeeds.
It is in this void that I believe was thought of as Shiva in yore, albeit spiritually and metaphorically rather than empirically or scientifically, given that seers posited that everything comes from Shiva and goes back into Shiva, as per the Shaiva Agamas, Pancabrahma Upanishad and Ganapati Atharvashirsa. Nirvakam Shatakam by Sri Adi Sankaracharya speaks of Shiva as being ‘devoid of duality, existing everywhere, pervading all senses, neither attached, neither free nor captive’, thereby highlighting the transcendent, fundamental essence of Shiva.
In Sri Adi Sankaracharya’s conception of Shiva, it is not as much the nothingness that comes from the absence of any entities, but rather something more fundamental. Since this conception connects the idea of Shiva with that of Brahman (in Vedanta), this nothingness is the transcendent void beyond existence and non-existence.
The idea that Shiva is Mrityunjay — ‘victor of death’ — arises from the idea that the spiritual aspect of the Universe transcends and is beyond the constructs of mortality or physicality. That which underlies the layer of reality involving creation and destruction is indestructible, endless, beginning-less, truly immortal. The elements adorning the person of Lord Shiva also has transcendental and metaphysical import. Shiva is shown as having a third eye, which means that his perception is beyond the dualities, binaries and multiplicities of life. While the physical eyes can see the physical and the relative, the third eye is said to be able to transcend these and see beyond. Shiva’s acolyte Nandi is a symbol of eternal waiting, patience and meditative introspection. Nandi, while sitting, is not anticipating or expecting anything but just waiting. This is the quality that is highlighted as the essence of receptivity and the prerequisite to be able to transcend the worldly.
Meditation means one is willing to ‘listen’ to existence, to the ultimate reality of the Universe. Shiva uses the moon as a decoration on his head because he is a great yogi who is intoxicated with transcendental realisation all the time, but also as one who sits in great alertness in the worldly. The moon represents this since it is called Soma in Sanskrit (Shiva is called Somasundara as well), with Soma also being the term for an intoxicating drink.
One of the most important facets of Shiva is expressed in the Shiva Purana. One cannot identify Shiva in terms of any binaries, multiplicities or dualities. One cannot identify Shiva with relative constructs or relations. He is everything and he is nothing. He is the most beautiful and the ugliest. He is the best and he is the worst. He is the most disciplined and yet the most intoxicated (in spiritual realisation). He is the most realised and yet very gullible (as Bholenath). As paradoxical as these descriptions, this is what makes Shiva, and similarly Brahman in Vedanta, the most fundamental layer of reality and the Universe. This is why, in Hindu mythology, he is regarded as the deity to whom gods, demons and all kinds of creatures worship and also end up getting boons from. He best reflects the underlying non-duality of the fundamental layer of the Universe.
Entirely contradictory aspects of life are built into the personality of Shiva, and such a complex amalgamation of all the qualities of existence have been put into Shiva to trivialise the absolute value of these qualities, which all dissolve and become irrelevant at the fundamental layer of reality. This is also expected to be the case in unified physics, when the four fundamental forces of nature are hypothesised to converge to one overarching unified force. At this stage, the various associated degrees of freedom are hypothesised to reduce to potentially one or a few parameters that can describe all phenomena, and going one further, this parameter or degree of freedom may itself be a perturbation/excitation in a more fundamental void.
Shiva is shown as the destroyer because it is in the destruction of the material, the worldly and the immanent that transcendental realisation and union with the fundamental reality of the Universe comes to be. In the parlance of modern science, it is with greater symmetries and unification of various forces that we can reach this reality. It is with the spirit of inquiry and impartial seeking of truth, be it by spirituality or science, that we must orient ourselves, without recourse to biases, and this is the message of Shiva over and above all else — alignment and union with the truth and fundamental reality of the Universe.
*The writer is a postdoctoral fellow at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and an associate of Nobel Laureate in Physics, Prof. Brian Josephson, at Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, working on Unification Physics. He is also a science communicator.
