It's mid-April 2019 as I write this. The scientific world has been buzzing about the first photograph of a monster black hole at the center of a distant galaxy. As I looked at this photo (below), I was immediately struck by the unmistakable parallel to God as Shiva, who most Hindus believe will smash the universe to atoms so they can be re-emanated at the end of the present yuga (spiritual age). After all, that's what happens to anything sucked into a black hole. Now the question is what happens when everything has been sucked into the biggest black hole of all and is so compressed it becomes unstable? Does it explode in another Big Bang, a new act of creation? I think the Hindus are on to something here.
The super-massive black hole at the center of Galaxy Messier 87. Could this be Shiva Himself? Photo by the Event Horizon Telescope, via Wikimedia.
In the 11th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, "The Vision of God in His Universal Form", we find a scriptural example of this. The warrior Arjuna has listened to Krishna's explanation of various spiritual topics for the past ten chapters. Now he somewhat foolishly asks to see Krishna in his Universal Form. Krishna tries to talk him out of such a dangerous notion, but Arjuna insists. Arjuna soon wishes he hadn't insisted quite so strongly, as his mind is blown at the sight of entire worlds going down to destruction in God's flaming mouth, and a lot of other really scary stuff. Arjuna begs Krishna to remove the vision and return to His comforting and friendly form. Krishna naturally obliges, as he still has seven more chapters to fill up.
