The Oldest Faith in the World

Hinduism

Swan: The white color of the swan symbolizes the ability to discern reality from illusion, similar to the mythical swan Paramahamsa. The greatest masters of Advaita Vedanta are called paramahamsas, which means "great swans".

Lately, I have been reading some of the Hindu classics and philosophical traditions of this ancient religion. Hinduism is over 4,000 year old and practiced by over one billion people, making it the world's third-latgest religion behind Christianity and Islam. They must be doing something right!

I had originally taken an undergrad course at the University of Arizona and enjoyed it, but it was a bit heavy for me at 20 years old, with my wandering mind and all. Any idea where my mind was wandering? What's odd is how real those mental “excursions” seemed! My body responded as if they were real too.

What struck me is how well developed and varied Hindu philosophy is and how much work the sages, chiefly through meditation. In one school of thought, Advaita Vendata, the developed a theory of consciousness that is very compatible with Quantum Mechanics.

From Wikipedia: “Classical Advaita Vedānta states that all reality and everything in the experienced world has its root in Brahman, which is unchanging intelligent Consciousness. To Advaitins, there is no duality between a Creator and the created universe. All objects, all experiences, all matter, all consciousness, all awareness are somehow also this one fundamental reality Brahman. Yet, the knowing self has various experiences of reality during the waking, dream and dreamless states, and Advaita Vedānta acknowledges and admits that from the empirical perspective there are numerous distinctions. Advaita explains this by postulating different levels of reality, and by its theory of errors (anirvacaniya khyati).”

and

“Absolute and relative reality are valid and true in their respective contexts, but only from their respective particular perspectives.[Relativity anyone?] John Grimes explains this Advaita doctrine of absolute and relative truth with the example of light and darkness.From the sun's perspective, it neither rises nor sets, there is no darkness, and "all is light." From the perspective of a person on earth, (the) sun does rise and set, there is both light and darkness, not "all is light", there are relative shades of light and darkness. Both are valid realities and truths, given their perspectives. Yet, they are contradictory. What is true from one point of view, states Grimes, is not from another. To Advaita Vedānta, this does not mean there are two truths and two realities, but it only means that the same one Reality and one Truth is explained or experienced from two different perspectives.”

further

“The term Advaita literally means "non-secondness", but is usually rendered as "nondualism", and often equated with monism. It rejects the Samkhya-dualism between Purusha, pure awareness or consciousness, and Prakriti ('nature', which includes matter, but also cognition and emotion) as the two equal basic principles of existence. Instead, it proposes that Atman-Brahman (awareness, purusha) alone is ultimately real, and, though unchanging, the cause and origin of the transient phenomenal world (prakriti). In this view, the jivatman or individual self is a mere reflection or limitation of singular Ātman in a multitude of apparent individual bodies. It regards the material world as an illusory appearance [In other words, a sensory experience of the mind.] (maya) or "an unreal manifestation (vivarta) of Brahman,” [thought experiment: consider the chair you are sitting on. It seems real enough, right? In reality, it is mainly empty space, as that atoms that the chair is composed of are the latter as proposed by the 13th century scholar Prakasatman.”

From Google: “Yes, atoms are considered to be mainly empty space, with the vast majority of an atom's volume occupied by the space between the tiny, dense nucleus and the orbiting electrons, which are spread out over a much larger area; meaning most of an atom is "empty" space, although not completely devoid of anything due to the presence of electric fields within that space.”

Anyway, it is some fascinating and deep stuff and I suggest you have a look.