I watched a Youtube video of a foreigner who was trying to understand about Hinduism. And in course of this he expressed disbelief of how the Rishis in their samadhi or deep absorption could have revelations of the fundamental truths, principles of the universe.
Interestingly the very next day I was watching a video by Swami Sarvapriyananda of Swami Vivekananda's experiences at Almora.
And just before that I was reading about Big Bang.
And suddenly all these came together to enable me to make the following comment under that YouTube video which I am reproducing here.
"Regarding how the Rishis intuited the universal truths through their meditation - which Westerners find difficult to believe - I will give one relatively modern example to drive home the point.
Swami Vivekananda is a 19th century saint, teacher revered by many. His devotees consider him to be incarnation of a Rishi i.e. sage.
And I am going to tell you of a well documented incident. At a place known as Kakrighat near Almora, India, in the Himalayan foothills he went into deep meditation which is called samadhi - and when he came out of it, he told his brother-disciple that he understood a mystery which he really wanted to know about - he saw the universe as a atom. Now this is late 1890s, much before Big Bang was proposed in the 1940s. And even as per Big Bang, the time from where we can measure things is from 10 to power -35 sec after Big Bang. By then the universe was the size of a pea, much bigger than an atom.
So what Swami ji saw in his samadhi is much closer to origin of universe. And he said an atom - because in his time the smallest particle known was atom. Only a few years later were electrons, protons etc discovered. Maybe he had seen an even smaller particle than an atom, but there was no word for it then.
Here is a modern, recorded example of a person who intuited something, not through modern rational thinking and its mathematical or physical tools, but through the power of connecting to the One Consciousness that pervades everywhere.
