Since time immemorial human beings have been intrigued about their origin and that of the Universe. Various reasons ranging from God to big bang have been given for the creation and even today with some of the best brains working on it with huge amount of research money and resources the mystery of our origin still remains.

Nevertheless the old Sankhya philosophy provides a possible explanation for the origin of Universe and comes quite close to the accepted scientific explanation.

According to Sankhya philosophy the interaction of Purusha and Prakriti produces matter and the worlds. Purusha is described as omniscient, omnipresent and indivisible entity. Prakriti (nature) which is always active interacts with Purusha to produce worlds.

We can think of Purusha as multidimensional space and Prakriti as time. When they work together the creation and evolution of universe and visible world takes place. Sankhya philosophy also states that in the beginning three forces Sattva, Rajas and Tamas were in equilibrium and when that was disturbed they interacted with Prakriti to form worlds. Sankhya however is silent on what disturbed the equilibrium.

This is similar to what some of the modern scientists talk about the birth of universe. They say that in the beginning, time and multidimensional space were in equilibrium. The Universe came into being when that equilibrium was disturbed. Why that equilibrium was disturbed we do not know. Various theories abound like big bang, multiverse, brane world etc., but why the big bang took place nobody is sure.

A possible answer according to Sankhya could be that multidimensional space wanted to “become” or to experience! This space which is sometimes called Akash or God space by Adi Shankaracharya in his Vivek Chudamani or as Purusha in Sankhya philosophy, just wanted to experience!

After the space-time equilibrium was disturbed, time came out and multidimensional space started flowing. This flow of space produced gravity and eddies which are the cause of visible matter and galaxies. Eddies are small vortex formed when anything flows. These are clearly seen in the flow of water in rivers and canals. In air they give rise to production of drag on airplane and sometimes produce bumpy rides. Formation of eddies is like a new structure being formed from the flowing material. These space eddies apparently gave rise to the matter which formed the visible world. This is what scientists call as production of matter from vacuum. This interplay of time and multidimensional space giving rise to the visible world is similar to the interaction of Prakriti (time?) and Purusha (space?) as enunciated in Sankhya philosophy.

Eddy formation is a continuous process and with time more and more space is used up for these structures to form the visible world. The rest of the space still remains invisible and could be the basis of dark matter and dark energy that the physicists and astrophysics talk about.

This production of eddies and hence galaxies will keep on happening till the space is “exhausted” (though we do not know how much percentage of original space will that be) and then the reverse cycle of converting visible world to invisible “God space” will commence which will finally lead to time and space coming in equilibrium. This is the eternal Brahmakala cycle at the end of which all life is destroyed.

This exhaustion of space takes place since Purusha has experienced and has become satisfied. Similarly Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras says that the cause of visible world is to satisfy the Universal consciousness!

The visible world seems like a crystallization of the higher dimensional space and is akin to the production of bubbles forming and dissolving on the surface of ocean - a constant example that Shri Ramakrishna used to give when describing the formation of beings and worlds from Universal Consciousness.