Vedas

The spirituality obtained during the olden times is by reading of vedas. Anyone who read the vedas become strong spiritually.

When Hanuman met Lord Ram for the first time, Lord Ram seeing the skill with which Hanuman communicated, said to his younger brother Lakshman "look at him Lakshmana, look at how he speaks, only the person who masters the vedas throughly and perfectly only can speak in such a way".

Such is effect of vedas on anyone. We dont have the vedas completely. We have only part of the vedas which are now published.

We all know there are four vedas

- Rig veda

- Yajur veda

- Sama veda

- Atharva veda

The rig yajur and sama vedas are considered as "the triple sacred science" of recieting hymns, performing sacrifices and chanting.

Rig veda deals with hymns, Yajur veda deals with performing sacrifices and sama veda deals with chanting.

The atharva veda deals with the knowledge. It is the latest of all the four vedas mostly composed magical texts and charms. It has 760 hymns of which 160 are in common with rig veda.

The Atharvaveda also contains Mantras used in marriage and death rituals, as well as those for kingship, female rivals and the Vratya (in Brahmana style prose).

Gavin Flood discusses the relatively late acceptance of the Atharva-Veda as follows:

"There were originally only three priests associated with the first three Saṃhitās, for the Brahman as overseer of the rites does not appear in the Ṛg Veda and is only incorporated later, thereby showing the acceptance of the Atharva Veda, which had been somewhat distinct from the other Saṃhitās and identified with the lower social strata, as being of equal standing with the other texts."

"The goal, which all Vedas declare, which all austerities aim at, and which humans desire when they live a life of continence, I will tell you briefly it is Om(Aum)"

There are six technical subjects related vedas called the limbs of vedas

they are

- Phonetics.

- Meter.

- Grammar.

- Etymology.

- Astronomy.

- Ritual.

The famous epic Mahabharata which is written by Lord Ganesh as when narrated by Ved Vyas is called as the Fifth veda because Ved Vyas was well versed in vedas and wanted others to learn it too so he kept many verses from all the vedas in Mahabharata

The ice age !!

It is said that the last ice age was a result of sudden growth of oxygen in the earths amosphere!!

The lack of greenhouse gasses due to trees and plants, the earths atmosphere chilled at high rate producing huge ice sheets from the poles of the planet.

"The sulfur isotope change we recorded coincided with the first known anomaly in the carbon cycle. This may have resulted from the diversification of photosynthetic life that produced the oxygen that changed the atmosphere," Kaufman said.

Two and a half billion years ago, before the Earth's atmosphere contained appreciable oxygen, photosynthetic bacteria gave off oxygen that first likely oxygenated the surface of the ocean, and only later the atmosphere.

The first formed oxygen reacted with iron in the oceans, creating iron oxides that settled to the ocean floor in sediments called banded iron-formations - layered deposits of red-brown rock that accumulated in ocean basins worldwide.

Later, once the iron was used up, oxygen escaped from the oceans and started filling up the atmosphere.

The evolution of organic photosynthesis ca.2.5 billion years ago would have had a profound effect on Earth's surface environments, and potentially on aerobic respiration by eukaryotes.

Once oxygen made it into the atmosphere, the scientists suggest that it reacted with methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, to form carbon dioxide, which is 62 times less effective at warming the surface of the planet.

"With less warming potential, surface temperatures may have plummeted, resulting in globe-encompassing glaciers and sea ice," said Kaufman.

If you think you dont believe in ice age, well , evidences for ice ages are there too.

There are three main types of evidence for ice ages: geological, chemical, and paleontological.

Geological evidence for ice ages comes in various forms, including rock scouring and scratching,glacial moraines,drumlins, valley cutting, and the deposition of till or tillites and glacial erratics. Successive glaciations tend to distort and erase the geological evidence, making it difficult to interpret. Furthermore, this evidence was difficult to date exactly; early theories assumed that the glacials were short compared to the long interglacials. The advent of sediment and ice cores revealed the true situation: glacials are long, interglacials short. It took some time for the current theory to be worked out.

The chemical evidence mainly consists of variations in the ratios of isotopes in fossils present in sediments and sedimentary rocks and ocean sediment cores. For the most recent glacial periods ice cores provide climate proxies from their ice, and atmospheric samples from included bubbles of air. Because water containing heavier isotopes has a higher heat of evaporation, its proportion decreases with colder conditions. This allows a temperature record to be constructed. However, this evidence can be confounded by other factors recorded by isotope ratios.

The paleontological evidence consists of changes in the geographical distribution of fossils. During a glacial period cold-adapted organisms spread into lower latitudes, and organisms that prefer warmer conditions become extinct or are squeezed into lower latitudes. This evidence is also difficult to interpret because it requires

(1) sequences of sediments covering a long period of time, over a wide range of latitudes and which are easily correlated;

(2) ancient organisms which survive for several million years without change and whose temperature preferences are easily diagnosed; and

(3) the finding of the relevant fossils, which requires a lot of luck.

Maybe if all the resources of earth get dimnished and the green house gasses will occupy very less percent of atmosphere leaving the remaining to oxygen, will ice age as predicted by geologists begin ?

Einsteins quotes on spirituality

"Thus I came...to a deep religiosity, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached a conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true....Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience...an attitude which has never left me."

"I don't try to imagine a God; it suffices to stand in awe of the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it."

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own - a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in Nature."

"The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that , compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."

". . . In spite of all this, I don't let a single opportunity pass unheeded, nor have I lost my sense of humor. When God created the ass he gave him a thick skin." Einstein: The Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark, Avon Books.

"Where dull-witted clansmen of our tribe were praying aloud, their faces turned to the wall, their bodies swaying to and fro. A pathetic sight of men with a past but without a future." (Regarding his visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, February 3, 1923)

"Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us."

"I appeal to all men and women, whether they be eminent or humble, to declare that they will refuse to give any further assistance to war or the preparation of war."

"It is my belief that the problem of bringing peace to the world on a supranational basis will be solved only by employing Gandhi's method on a larger scale."

The following is from Elsa Einstein, Albert Einstein's wife, regarding Einstein's development of the theory of general relativity. It's taken from the outstanding book Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer. It's originally taken from Charles Chaplin's autobiography.

The Doctor came down in his dressing gown as usual for breakfast but he hardly touched a thing. I thought something was wrong, so I asked what was troubling him. "Darling," he said, "I have a wonderful idea." And after drinking his coffee, he went to the piano and started playing. Now and again he would stop, making a few notes then repeat: "I've got a wonderful idea, a marvelous idea!" I said: "Then for goodness' sake tell me what it is, don't keep me in suspense." He said: "It's difficult, I still have to work it out."

She told me he continued playing the piano and making notes for about half an hour, then went upstairs to his study, telling her that he did not wish to be disturbed, and remained there for two weeks. "Each day I sent him up his meals," she said, "and in the evening he would walk a little for exercise, then return to his work again. Eventually," she said, "he came down from his study looking very pale. "That's it," he told me, wearily putting two sheets of paper on the table. And that was his theory of relativity."

Einstein's quotes

EINSTEIN QUOTES

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."

"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

"The only real valuable thing is intuition."

"A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."

"I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."

"God is subtle but he is not malicious."

"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."

"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."