How do I achieve Asana Siddhi to gain Gyan about the universe and cosmic nature?

Answer: First of all, let me clarify what Asan is and what Gyan is. So, Gyan is basically the word used for knowledge, wisdom, and enlightenment. And, Asana or Aasan or Asan (आशन) is a word used for the cloth where you sit to meditate or a type of Bida (बिडा) where the spiritual practioner sits to perform various rituals. There are many types of Bida (बिडा) and the Aasan is one of them.

Bida is prepared for various purposes. There's one Bida made for Kamman (कम्मान) purpose and there's one Bida made for meditation purposes, there are many other types of Bida. Kamman (कम्मान) is a state in Devata language when the energy of the Devata enters the body of the person temporarily, for a few minutes. While the person prepares, whether it's a Dhami, Jhakri, Bhagat, Aghori, or anyone, we put some leaves of Mango tree on top of the Bida and we also decorate it with flowers. Then, we also put a Kalash of pure water next to it and a holy plate with Aksheta (अक्षेता) on it, which are some raw rice grains. And, then after burning the incense sticks and Diya lamp, the related person sits on the Bida. That's one simple form of Bida.

If you are starting from scratch, for meditation purposes only, the Aasan or Bida takes 2–3 months at least to get ready and become Siddh. It's not done overnight.

Let me make a few things clear. When we sit directly on the floor for meditation, our body starts producing vibrations and cosmic energy through our head and Kamal Navi (Bellybutton). The energy starts falling down and it gets absorbed by mother Earth. So, to prevent that, we need to have an Aasan or a Bida where we sit. I am not talking about the various Yoga positions, I am talking about the cloth where we sit.

To make Aasan Siddh, a red coloured Aasan is the best for beginners. When you go into your prayers room, always clean it first with Ganga Jal water or pure water before placing your Aasan on it. Now, before placing the Aasan, touch the Earth with your right hand and do Pranam or Namaste (🙏) saying “Om Prithivye Namah” (ऊँ पृथ्व्ये नमः ). Doing this will pay tribute and respect to mother Earth or mother nature.

Then, pay respect to the Bhumi Devata (भुमी देवता) and also the Kshetrapal Devata (क्षेत्रपाल देवता), whoever they are in your area, suppose there's Jagannath as the Bhumi Devata in my locality and then I will pray to him or pay tribute to him in any way and sit on the Aasan.

After sitting on the Aasan, make a Suraksha Ghera or protective shield around it to stay safe from negative energies. For this, you can either lit a Diya Lamp in four different directions in the name of your Ishta Kul Devata and request them to provide protection from all four directions. Additionally, you can request Lord Hanuman and Lord Bhairav or Lord Jagannath to protect you. After praying to them for protection, bring both your hands behind your neck and touch the tip of the finger with the fingers of the other hand, and bring both hands forwards and clap slowly. Do this three times. And, you can also do the Kawach Mantra given by your guru and blow air in all directions to provide protection from all directions.

Now, to make Aasan Siddh, there's no any specific Mantra, I don't know if there's one. If you have any specific Mantra to make Aasan Siddh, then let me know in the comments. As far as I know, you just have to follow a set of rules and when the energy keeps falling on the Aasan, it gets automatically Siddh. The more you chant Mantra on that Aasan, the more energy keeps falling on that Aasan, it starts becoming more active and Siddh. The Mantra that I am talking about here is any Mantra that you are doing Sadhana of.

The rules are simple such as, do not let a third person sit on the Aasan. That Aasan belongs to you only and if a third person sits on it, no matter whoever it is, your brother, sister, or anyone in your family member, or a third person from outside, do not let anyone sit on that Aasan cloth. Because if you do this, the energy stored in that Aasan could get contaminated. You don't know what kind of energy they are carrying. It could be positive, it could be negative, pure, impure, we don't know, they could just contaminated it by sitting on it.

Moreover, if you let anyone else sit on that Aasan, they could also absorb the energy stored on the Aasan and take it away with them. So, be careful about this and do not let anyone sit on it, no matter who that person is.

Also, you can clean the Aasan if it gets dirty with pure water and dry it. If the Aasan gets old and torn, then don't throw it. Buy a new similar Aasan and when you go to meditation, put that new Aasan on top of that old Aasan. I don't recommend anybody to sit on the bed meditation or put the Aasan on the bed for meditation because the bed might have sexual activities conducted on it and it can just contaminate the energy.

Always put the Aasan on a pure clean place on the floor. Do not sit on the chair unless you have some medical issue. Suppose if you have a medical issue and cannot sit on the floor, and you can only sit on the chair, you will require two Aasan, one placed on the floor, and one placed on top of the chair.

And, as you keep meditating on the Aasan for longer period of time, it starts absorbing energy automatically and it becomes Siddh. That's how Aasan Siddhi is done. Every time before you stand up or leave the Aasan, put one drop of water on the Earth below it saying the same Mantra “Om Prithivye Namah” 3 times, meaning 3 drops of water and 3 chant of the mantra.

Also, request Lord Indra to not to steal the shakti or energy produced from that Aasan by saying these Mantras:

1. Om Indraye Namaha (ऊँ इन्द्राये नमः)
2. Om Sakraye Namaha (ऊँ सक्राये नमः)
3. Om Sachepate Namaha (ऊँ सचेपते नमः)

So, that is how Aasan Siddhi is done. I apologise for any accidental mistakes. Hope this helps.

Is the universe finite or infinite?

 

The universe is finite. When it comes to things outside the sense-perception of man, it’s a matter of which authority we accept information from. Personally, I accept the authority of the Vedic tradition.

In fact, we know jack squat about the universe, except what we’ve been told by a bunch of clowns from NASA.

Sadaputa Das (Dr. Richard Thompson Ph.D) once made the point that if all the stars we see in the sky were suns, as we are told by NASA, we’d have constant daylight by now.

The modern way of thinking has fostered the idea that the universe is infinite, but the universe is not infinite.

In the Vedic version the universe is described as finite. When God in His form as Maha-vishnnu exhales, billions of universes emanate from His skin-pores, and when He inhales, all these universes are again subtracted into His body.

The duration of our universe is 311 trillion solar years. That means, one breath of God lasts 311 trillion years. The expansion of God generating matter is called Maha-vishnu - the great Vishnu. We can hardly imagine how big you must be, if your one breath lasts 311 trillion years and universes are generated from your skin-pores.

Our particular universe is four billion miles in diameter. Those 4 billion miles of space are encased in 8 material layers consisting of earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence, and false ego. These 8 elements are the material elements from which the world is composed.

The first layer of covering is the same as the diameter of the universe - 4 billion miles. The next layer is 10 times that, the following layer is 10 times that, and so on.

The material layers covering the universal space are so thick, that the universal space is something like a pea in the middle of a football field. This is not an exact analogy, it is just to give an idea of how thick are the layers covering the universe.

Outside of the material universes is the infinite spiritual sky.

Lord Brahma (god of creation) says:

"Let me offer my respectful obeisances unto the Original Personality of Godhead Govinda whose plenary portion is the Mahavishnu. All the Brahmas or the heads of the universes live only for the period of his exhaling after the universes are generated from the hair holes of His transcendental body." —Brahma samhita 5.48

What is the most amazing fact about the universe?

 Might not be the most amazing fact but definitely a great piece of trivia.

The immense forces (mainly the gravitational pull) acting in the vast universe are baffling and mesmerising.

In 2013, Hubble Space Telescope captured this beautiful phenomenon. This photograph is generally called the The Penguin and its Egg!

In reality, these are two galaxies 400 million light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation Hydra.

The blue spiral galaxy, NGC 2936 (which has fondly earned the moniker of 'Penguin Galaxy') is twisted by the gravitational pull of the smaller elliptical galaxy NGC 2937 ('The Egg') below it.

The amazing fact here is the realisation of mammoth gravitational pull of a relatively smaller David-like galaxy, which has the "guts" to deform another bigger Goliath-like galaxy!

Inspiring, indeed.

References: Photo: Hubble Spies Galactic Penguin and Egg.

The Largest Known Structure In The Observable Universe

 Quipu, the largest known structure in the observable universe, is a colossal cosmic web spanning approximately 1.3 billion light-years.

Discovered through advanced astronomical surveys, it comprises an intricate network of galaxies, galaxy clusters, and intergalactic gas bound by gravity.

This megastructure, named after the Incan knotted-string system, contains an estimated 200 quadrillion (2×10^17) solar masses, dwarfing typical galaxy clusters.

Its immense scale challenges our understanding of cosmic structure formation, as it pushes the limits of homogeneity predicted by the cosmological principle, which assumes the universe is uniform on the largest scales.

Quipu’s vastness is shaped by dark matter, forming a scaffolding that draws baryonic matter into filaments, walls, and voids.

These structures channel galaxies into dense regions, with Quipu’s mass dominated by dark matter and hot gas, alongside millions of galaxies.

Its discovery, likely aided by tools like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey or future observatories like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, underscores the universe’s hierarchical organization.

Studying Quipu helps astronomers probe dark energy’s role in cosmic expansion and refine models of large-scale structure formation, revealing the universe’s complexity over unimaginable distances.

#Quipu

What is the Multiverse, and how is it different from our Universe?

 Multiverse is a theoretical or mathematical concept by Tenmarg and other scientists. Where all natural laws, physical parameters are different.whats outside of observable universe? What's before big bang?it needs to construct a holistic approach to answer that.

Though multiverse is not a scientifically proven theory till date , but all possible outcomes should exist by quantum mechanics. It's called many world interpretation theory.

Our universe is one of them. There we may go one universe to other universe by time travel. The timelike path may difference all possible universes.

Is there a comparison to how small we are to the universe?

 Universe is very, very, very big. In fact, our size is insignificant at a larger scale. Lets take a look.

The equatorial circumferance of Earth is 40,075 kilometres. We all know that we are extremely small on our own planet.

To know how small we are in the universe, let us start from our planet, and slowly go farther and farther away from it. Lets begin our journey.

This is an image of Earth taken by ISS, from a distance of 408 KM away from Earth. At this scale, we begin to feel that we humans are really small compared to our giant planet.

Next, let us recede.

This is photo of our planet from the moon, taken by the Apollo 11 team from a distance of 384400 kilometres.

Lets go more far. You can see a small but bright dot in this picutre marked with an arrow. That dot is our planet Earth seen from Saturn, i.e, from a distance of 1,448,409,600 kilometers.

Now lets go more far from our planet- 6 billion kilometres away. That’s a distance beyond Pluto.

This is how the Earth looks from that distance.

That small dot which is circled is our entire planet. All of 7 billion humans, the huge buildings we built, and everything we see, from a distance of 6 billion kilometres. This is an image taken by Voyager 1.

6 billion KM is a very small distance at the scale of the entire universe. 6 Billion KM is not even close to distance of light year, and this is a picture taken from inside Solar System itself.

Distances in the universe are measured in light years. And 6 Billion Kilometres is nowhere near a light year which is more than 9 trillion kilometres.

If even just from the farthest edges of Solar System our Earth looks so small, just imagine, how small it would be in the entire universe!

Our Solar System with Sun and all other planets is a one of the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way….

….which is a part of the local group of galaxies,

…. and local group in turn is a part of the Virgo Superclustre which contains many other galactic clustres.

Which is a part of Pisces cetus supercluster complex, a galaxy filament-

Which is a part of the universe that contains all the galaxy filaments, super clustres, clustres of galaxies, galaxies, and star systems which contain planets.

THats how big the universe is. At the scale of the universe, we are so small, that we become insignificant.

Thats how small are we in this huge cosmos.

What Powers the Brightest Objects in the Universe?

 

The brightest object in the universe is a quasar. Now what is quasar? It is like headlight of a car (galaxy) where supermassive black hole(SMBH) is the engine of that car. It's the best simple way to analog galaxy, supermassive black hole and quasar. So that SMBH Powers the brightest object.

When matter infalling to a black hole, it spirals and forming an accretion disc. For friction and spinning property of black hole, this region's temperature goes to million to billion kelvin. At centre where quasar is, gravity turns into light and high velocity (nearly equal to velocity of light)relativistic jets are emerged. That quasar for milky Way galaxy is 1000 times brighter than that of milky way itself. It can shine whole galaxy.

So the answer is SMBH powers the brightest object (Quasar)in the universe.

Image source: google

What Galaxy do we live in?

 We are living in a galaxy that we simply call “The Milky Way”. It is a middle sized spiral galaxy, or more precisely a barred spiral galaxy, with spiral arms and a kind of straight structure in the middle.

I cannot show you a picture of the Milky Way from the outside, since we are all living on the inside of it and we have not yet been able to send a space probe to the outside. But there are other galaxies that are of the same type, and they all look similar to the picture below (which actually is a computer rendering of our Milky Way).

The Milky Way have two distinct spiral arms, and a few additional, less bright and less clear arms or “spurs”. Our Sun lies near a small, partial arm called the Orion Spur, located between the Sagittarius and Perseus arm, in the “suburbs” so to speak. If the Milky Way was New York and the galactic center was Lower Manhattan, we would be living in Poughkeepsie.

The Milky Way is part of a small cluster of galaxies, called (perhaps not so imaginatively) “The Local Group”. The biggest galaxy in the neighborhood is the Andromeda Galaxy, which is in fact slightly bigger than our own. The Triangulum Galaxy is much smaller, and than there are a bunch of smaller, irregular dwarf galaxies.

As it happens, the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy are on a collision course with each other, and are expected to collide in about 4.5 billion years.

This sounds more dramatic as it is - in fact, the galaxies contain so much empty space, that two galaxies can easily pass through each other without any stars actually colliding. Earth, or whatever is left if it, will probably not smash into something nasty. A stellar collision is less likely than two flies buzzing around in St. Peter’s Basilica colliding with each other in midair.

But the two galaxies will still eventually capture each other with their gravity and go through a series of oscillations to finally merge into one massive, distorted galaxy, like the two galaxies being in such a merge in the Hubble photo below.

Another cool fact is that in the heart of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole, called Sagittarius A* (yes, it is actually pronounced a-star).

When this black hole was still young, it was still surrounded by gas clouds and stars. Having a black hole in this area was a bit like a placing a hungry tiger amidst a flock of sheep. It went into a feeding frenzy, devouring everything in its vicinity, growing for each swallowed star, belching out leftover matter and radiation that could not fit into its gaping throat at once. During this time, our galaxy was probably what astronomers call a “quasar”: the most luminous objects that ever existed, shining brightly as a beacon through the entire Universe.

Sgr A* however is now sleeping: it is dormant, dark and docile, having devoured everything in its vicinity a long time ago.

Frightening as a supermassive black hole in the center of our own galaxy might be, the Milky Way does not revolve around it. In spite of the black hole’s incredible mass, it dwarfs to insignificance when compared with the entire galaxy. Its gravitational effect on the galaxy is comparable with one of your eyelashes affecting your body with its mass.

So what holds the galaxy together? Why does it not fall apart? Given their incredibly fast rotation, galaxies should in fact fly apart into a thousand pieces, like a marshmallow attached to a lathe.

This is actually a very tricky question, and one that we still do not have a definite answer to.

We however believe that all galaxies are held together by something called “dark matter”. This is not just ordinary stuff that happens to be “black”, or “stuff that is in the shade”, but something fundamentally different. Dark matter does not interact with any electromagnetic force. You cannot shine a light onto it. It does not cast a shadow. It is in fact fully transparent. It is all around you as you read this, but you cannot observe it in any way. The only thing it has is gravity.

We today believe that dark matter is the most usual “stuff” in the entire Universe. And it does not get diluted as the Universe expands since it is most likely concentrated inside the galaxies, which do not get affected by cosmic expansion on a local level.

Scientists say the universe is 14 billion years old. What if it has always been here and never had a beginning?

 Well, this is not only NOT IMPOSSIBLE but one of the many possibilities being explored.

But possibilities aren’t enough. Evidence is everything!

So, the real question is: do we have any evidence or strong theories that hint at an everlasting universe that has always existed?

Let’s check out what we already know about the universe.

Image Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-physicists-ever-prove-multiverse-real-180958813/

The Beginning Paradox

Before we dive into the physics of this question, let’s take a quick stock of the philosophy and psychology of it. I’ll keep it brief.

From your question, you’re clearly inclined to believe that our universe had no beginning at all, and it always existed. Perhaps it brings a sense of comfort, knowing that this universe has always existed.

We humans have always abhorred change since the prehistoric era. In those primitive times, a change almost always meant death. Moving to a different place meant new, unknown predators and threats. A changing climate meant the wrath of the weather. You get the gist.

So, we hate change. A universe that had a beginning will also present the possibility that it might have an end. An eternal universe obviously brings a sense of comfort. It doesn’t matter that none of us would live beyond our own puny lives to be affected by the universe either way.

While the emotional side of our mind seeks – perhaps even needs – a permanent universe, the rational side abhors it.

Our logical brain thinks about the universe’s beginning and wonders, “Well, if it began at some point, what came before it?”

The problem with this question is that it does not have an intuitive answer. The Big Bang Theory tells us that time began at the Big Bang. There was no “before” it.

Our rational minds cannot comprehend it. We cannot imagine something happening and there being nothing before it. If there was no time before time, how did time choose to begin at the point of the Big Bang? If something triggered the Big Bang, it clearly must have happened before the Big Bang, and ergo, before time’s creation, but how can that be?

For these questions, there are no intuitive answers. We have mathematical answers that explain how time and space came into existence at the same time. In physics, time is just another dimension like the X, Y, and Z axes. Just as they have a ZERO point, so does time. Pure and simple, but not intuitive.

In a nutshell, whether the universe had a beginning or not, the knowledge is not going to bring you any peace, whatsoever. Only more questions. And we’ll never be satisfied with mathematical answers alone.

Whoever said knowledge sets you free!

Why We Think the Universe Began 13.8 Billion Years Ago?

Because the universe says so!

In 1927, a brilliant Belgian priest and physicist by the name of Georges Lemaître solved Einstein’s equations to make a theoretical prediction that the universe should be expanding.

(Don’t be so surprised by Lemaître’s seemingly conflicting credentials. Many have been men of both God and science. Lemaître, Mendel, and Copernicus, to name a few)

Two years later, in 1929, Hubble provided empirical evidence that supported Lemaître’s theory. So, for the first time, we knew for sure that the universe is expanding at enormous speeds – much like particles in an explosion.

However, we still didn’t know when the universe began. We did, however, know that there would be leftover evidence of the Big Bang. And we accidentally discovered it in 1965 as the cosmic microwave background. It helped us broadly estimate the universe’s age as 10-20 billion years.

The most accurate estimates of the universe’s age would have to wait until the 21st century. The Plank satellite from ESA provides us the most accurate data on the age of the universe at the moment, and it’s 13.8 billion years, give or take 20 million years or so.

So, you see, we went back in time. Today, we have an expanding universe (much like an explosion), and we went back in time to calculate when the expansion began. Using leftover radiation from the Big Bang, we can calculate the age of that radiation. That’s how we know the universe is 13.8 billion years old.

But Could the Universe Exist Forever, Despite the Big Bang?

Before I get into this speculation, I need you to understand that “could” doesn’t mean “is.”

That said, serious scientists are working on several potential models of the universe in which time didn’t begin at the Big Bang. We can take a look at some of them.

Heat Death and Spontaneous Inflation

Heat death is the most likely endgame for our universe. Everything in this universe would eventually be destroyed, either through decay or explosive destruction. Even black holes, free interstellar gas, rocks, and even protons. Everything will turn into radiation.

After a long time – so long that it’s pointless even to discuss the number – the universe will cool down to its final energy state, hitting infinitesimally close to absolute zero temperature.

In such a vast, empty, cold, and dead universe, quantum tunneling and quantum fluctuations can create a new Big Bang and an entirely new universe with its own laws of physics.

Maybe it happens in several far-flung patches of the universe – each patch so far away that no two will ever experience any kind of interactions for all eternity, resulting in the creation of multiple bubble universes – a sort of multiverse in our own universe. 

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Now, here’s the big question: what if our own universe and its Big Bang are part of a bigger multiverse?

Maybe creation is just nested multiverses inside other nested multiverses, each with their own Big Bang. In such a scenario, time could have a beginning or not. We have no way of knowing.

If you think this is just intellectual masturbation, you’re probably right. But that doesn’t mean scientists don’t do it, or that it can’t be a reality. You’d be surprised how much of theoretical physics is just that!

Cyclical Universes

I’m not going to touch upon every cyclical universe theory because there are many, and none of them offer enough credibility as a viable explanation for what we know about the universe. In some cases, their predictions cannot even be measured.

The biggest problem with most cyclical universes is that they require entropy to reverse one way or the other, which we know isn’t possible. Some models predict the universe is a series of Big Bangs and Big Crunches, while others opt for a bouncing universe.

Still, Roger Penrose’s Conformal Cyclic Cosmology theory deserves a mention because it takes a different approach. It’s close to the heat death scenario we discussed earlier. Instead of several Big Bangs happening in isolated regions, Penrose posits that each heat death of the universe results in the Big Bang of a new one. So, it’s just a never-ending cycle of Heat Death-Big Bang-Heat Death for the universe.

Interestingly, Penrose’s model posits that in the heat death of the universe, time and space will lose all meaning. Hence, each new Big Bang could be interpreted as the beginning of time itself for that universe, which he calls an aeon.

If we exist in one such aeon, time began at the Big Bang as far as our universe is concerned. Saying that there existed time before it, or that it would exist after the heat death would make no sense, because each aeon is self-contained - connected only mathematically. There is no time continuity here.

Evidence of an Older Universe

If we’re able to find evidence of the Big Bang that happened 13.8 billion years ago, is it not reasonable to expect to find evidence of an older universe or time before the Big Bang?

Well, you’re not alone in thinking that.

If something existed before the Big Bang, it would have affected the Big Bang itself. This influence would have been amplified during the inflationary stage of the Big Bang, resulting in clear evidence of an earlier universe.

Do we see such anomalies in the Cosmic Microwave Background, which is the leftover radiation from 380,000 years after the Big Bang? Well, we have, but those anomalies can be explained by other phenomena and are not so inexplicable that they could be attributed to an earlier universe or time.

So, the search is on and we may or may not find such evidence in the future.

Final Thoughts

We know a great deal about the universe, but we still know very little about it.

So, it’s possible that the things we know to be true for now would be proven otherwise by future discoveries.

That doesn’t mean we start questioning everything we know, just because we don’t like it.

For now, there’s mounting evidence that the universe is 13.8 billion years old. Until we find evidence contradicting this, it’s better to speculate and titillate our minds, but not get consumed by our need for “more” to start believing unsubstantiated theories over proven ones.

There’s a reason why theoretical physicists have a reputation for being mad geniuses. They live and breathe the unsubstantiated before it “becomes” real!

But most amateurs going down this rabbit hole just become mad! Let professionals do what they do best. We’ll wait for the answers.