The universe begins from a quiet background that holds all possibilities but expresses none. Sāṅkhya calls this Prakṛti, and quantum physics describes it as the undifferentiated quantum field—the vacuum that contains every potential pattern of behaviour. In this original state, nothing is separate. There is no world, no mind, no matter, and no individuality. Only a field of pure potential waiting to move. Alongside this stands Puruṣa, the silent witnessing awareness, comparable to the observer in quantum theory. It does not act, but without it, potentials do not become definite.
When the still Prakṛti undergoes the slightest disturbance, the first form of order appears. This is Mahat or Buddhi. In ancient terms, it is the dawning of cosmic intelligence. In quantum terms, it is the first symmetry-breaking where the basic behaviours of reality appear—attraction, repulsion, oscillation, motion, and balance. This is the beginning of structured behaviour in the universe. Nothing is individual yet, but the field is no longer completely still.
Prakṛti is not a physical point before the Big Bang; it is the totally unmanifest potential where nothing is expressed — no space, no time, no particles, no fields, no laws, no symmetry. When this perfect sameness of guṇas is minutely disturbed, the first expression that appears is Mahat, which is pure cosmic order: the universe’s first structured state, like the perfectly symmetric, massless pre–Higgs early universe where all forces are unified and no individuality exists. Mahat is not particles — it is the first “law-framework” that makes particles possible, just like the unified electroweak field before symmetry breaking. When this initial order further differentiates (Ahaṅkāra), symmetry breaks — exactly like the Higgs field choosing a non-zero value — and now distinct behaviours arise. Actually, with the rapid expansion of the universe after the Big Bang, rapid cooling occurs, and the Higgs field condenses just as water freezes when it becomes cold. Some quantum fields interact strongly with this condensed Higgs field and gain mass (like W and Z bosons), and some remain massless (like the photon). This is the stage where individuality begins. From here, subtle qualities (tanmātras) and then space, forces, energies, and finally particles and matter (mahābhūtas) emerge. In essence: Prakṛti is pure unmanifest potential; Mahat is the first perfectly symmetric order; Ahaṅkāra is the symmetry-breaking that creates separateness; and all matter arises only afterward.
From this early order, a definite identity emerges. This is Ahaṅkāra, the principle that creates “this” and “not this.” Quantum analogies are direct: symmetry breaking, origin of differentiation or duality, wavefunction collapse, decoherence, and the emergence of particles from a spread-out field. Ahaṅkāra is not psychological ego; it is cosmic individuality. It is the moment when a section of the universal field becomes a distinct centre of activity.
Once individuality forms, three streams unfold from Ahaṅkāra. The first is Manas, the coordinating mind. It is not intellect; it is simple internal movement—attention, comparison, and the handling of impressions. This matches quantum oscillations, phase changes, and internal state-shifts. In Sāṅkhya, Manas is the most basic layer of mind—not intellect and not identity—but the simple internal mechanism that receives sensory impressions, shifts attention, compares possibilities, doubts, and coordinates information between the senses and Buddhi. It is fundamentally a movement, a flickering, undecided mental activity. This function matches quantum behavior at the structural level: quantum systems constantly oscillate between possible states, their phases keep changing, and their internal configurations shift rapidly before any measurement stabilizes them. Just as a quantum state exists in superposition, oscillating between alternatives until a collapse fixes it, Manas keeps flickering among impressions without final judgment, leaving decisive understanding to Buddhi. Thus, Manas corresponds to the mind’s continuous, oscillatory, pre-decisional activity, analogous to the quantum field’s continuous state-shifts, fluctuations, and oscillations.
The second stream is the rise of the five Jñānendriyas, the cosmic capacities to receive information: vibration (hearing), force-contact (touch), light-form (sight), bonding-pattern (taste), and density-pattern (smell). These correspond to the five primary types of information present in the quantum world.
In simple quantum terms: hearing is like receiving tiny packets of vibration (phonons) — imagine little ripple-packets that travel through a material and make nearby atoms briefly ring; touch is like feeling invisible pushes and pulls (electromagnetic interactions) — like two magnets sensing a push before they meet; sight is like catching tiny packets of light (photons) that carry color and direction, so when they hit an atom they change its state and deliver a visual signal; taste is like two electron-wave patterns meeting and either harmonizing or clashing — if the electron clouds match in shape and energy they bond (a “pleasant” fit like tasty or sweet dish), if not they repel like repelling bitter poison; and Smell is like tiny quantum particles (molecules) floating around. When they hit another particle, they transfer a little bit of their vibration energy. The receiving particle changes its state because of this small energy transfer. That state-change is the “smell” signal.
The third stream is the rise of the five Karmendriyas, the capacities for action: emission, grasping interaction, motion, release, and replication. An excited electron dropping to a lower level and emitting a photon is like doing work or loosing body-matter and hence getting exhausted by it. Just like the body emits actions outward, the atom releases light outward. An electron absorbing a photon and catching its energy is the quantum version of “grasping” or eating an incoming impulse to grow. A quantum particle tunneling through a barrier is the complex motion or movement exhibited by it. In quantum terms, release is like an atom that briefly holds extra energy and then lets it go as a photon. It is like emission karma. The energy is kept for a moment in an excited state, and when the atom settles back down, the photon escapes into space as its excreta—just as the human system releases what it no longer needs. In the quantum vacuum, energy constantly blossoms into pairs of virtual particles that appear, duplicate themselves for a fleeting moment, and vanish again. This spontaneous sprouting of particle pairs is a far cleaner parallel to replication—something arising from a source, dividing into two, and then returning—mirroring the creative, generative aspect of the Karmendriya. Every physical system from particles to organisms expresses these five modes in some form.
After these capacities arise, the universe expresses five Tanmātras—subtle patterns that underlie all experience. These are not physical; they are the core behavioural signatures of reality: oscillation (śabda), interaction (sparśa), electromagnetic form (rūpa), cohesion (rasa), and density (gandha). In modern understanding, they resemble fundamental field-patterns that guide how matter and energy will behave. They are the bridge between pure subtlety and gross manifestation.
When a child first experiences the world, each sense reveals a subtle behaviour of reality: sound shows that space exists for vibration to travel; touch shows invisible interaction like air, pressure, or warmth; sight shows form, light, and the fire-quality of brightness; taste shows cohesion and blending like water; smell shows density or solidness even before a shape is seen. These five Tanmātras—sound for oscillation, touch for interaction, rupa or form, rasa for cohesion, and smell for density—then generate the five elements: space, air, fire, water, and earth respectively. It means the child understands the character of the five basic elements of outside world by experiencing their five subtle essences, called Tanmātras. In the quantum world the same logic appears in subtler form: oscillation of a quantum field is the proof of space-time itself; interaction among fields is the microscopic version of touch and air; electromagnetic patterns carried by photons create visibility, form, colour, and heat; cohesive forces in atoms and molecules create liquidity and blending; And the subtle drifting of tiny particles here and there gives a clue that, somewhere nearby, their gathering creates a dense form.
When these subtle patterns condense, the physical world appears as the five Mahābhūtas. Space (ākāśa) arises from vibration-patterns; motion or air (vāyu) from interaction-patterns; fire or energy (tejas) from EM-patterns; water or fluidity (apas) from cohesion-patterns; and earth or solidity (pṛthvī) from density-patterns. These five are not metaphors—they are the five classes of physical expression seen everywhere from subatomic behaviour to galaxies. The gross universe is simply the final stage of a flow that began much earlier with pure potential.
A human being grows by repeating the same sequence in miniature. At conception and birth, the individual begins as a packet of pure potential—its own Prakṛti, carrying tendencies, instincts, and latent qualities. When the first internal stirrings of awareness appear, they function as Mahat or Buddhi. As the infant’s consciousness becomes clearer, a sense of “I” forms—Ahaṅkāra. This is the child realising it is separate from the surrounding world. Once individuality is set, Manas begins to operate with simple mental movements, while the five sensing capacities (jñānendriyas) gradually awaken and the five action capacities (karmendriyas) develop through natural growth.
As the newborn senses begin working, the subtle tanmātras are recognised one by one. Through vibration, the child perceives space element in which it travels; through touch, it perceives contact that’s the pure quality of air element as it’s invisible to other senses; through light, it perceives form element; through taste, it perceives bonding or liquidity or water element as everything in mouth become mixed with liquid saliva to be tasted; and through smell, it perceives the nature of solids or earth element because things when dried to solid form start emiting odour. In this way, the gross world is built in the mind through the meeting of inner capacities with outer patterns. The world is not given first; it is assembled through the flow of tattvas. Many people think that the gross world formed first and that the subtle elements emerged from it. This leads to an indirect praising of the gross world, which results in attachment to it. In reality, the reverse is true: the gross emerges from the subtle elements. This understanding leads to an indirect praising of the subtle realm, helping one avoid attachment to the gross world and move toward the subtle realm, whose pinnacle is the soul itself. The subtle realm is the only true realm because it is always present, whether the gross world exists or not. The gross world, however, does not exist when only the subtle realm remains. Even when both appear together, the gross world has no independent identity; its identity lies hidden deep within the subtle realm upon which it is layered. We encounter this subtle realm during deep dhyāna.
Because the universe and the individual follow exactly the same developmental order—from silent potential to ordered vibration, individuality, mind, senses, subtle patterns, and finally the physical world—it becomes clear that they are not two. The human is the cosmos expressing itself on a small scale, and the cosmos is the human writ large. Since the cosmos is directly regulated by the quantum world, this also proves the fundamental sameness between the human being and the quantum entity once again verifying the validity of quantum darshan. This mirroring is the simplest proof of Advaita: one reality flowing through many forms. Quantum theory shows that the observer and the observed arise together; Sāṅkhya shows the same through the tattva sequence. Ishwar of sankhya is the same observer of quantum science causing quantum decoherenc and quantum collapse to build classical world as seen by us in gross form. Both point to a single underlying truth—that the separation between the universe and the individual is only apparent. At the foundation, they arise from the same field and follow the same path of unfoldment.
All bhāvas, emotions, rasas, ṣaḍ-doṣas, and the countless subtle feeling-patterns are not inventions of the human organism. They are primordial forces, woven into the fabric of the cosmos from the very beginning. The human body does not create these states—it merely experiences and expresses the eternal patterns already present in the universal field. What we call “emotion” in a person is only the local manifestation of a cosmic principle. By understanding that all emotions, bhāvas, and inner movements are cosmic patterns rather than personal creations, one can cross the ego barrier more easily. When feelings are seen as impersonal forces passing through the body—not “mine” but expressions of the universe—attachment naturally dissolves. The individual realizes that if the cosmos holds these patterns without suffering or bondage, then there is no need to identify with them or be burdened by them. This shift in perspective brings effortless detachment, clarity, and inner freedom.
In the chapters ahead, we will reveal how these feeling-patterns exist in the quantum substratum, long before any biological or psychological form appears. The structures and behaviours found in the quantum world are the same structures that shape the cosmos at every scale, because the quantum layer is the most fundamental building block of all existence. By understanding the quantum patterns, we understand the cosmic patterns; by understanding the cosmic patterns, we understand ourselves in true way.
First, we will examine human mental functions aka gyanendriyas through the lens of the quantum world—beginning with the Ṣaḍarivarga, then exploring the ashta-bhāvas, and finally the shada-rasas. After this, we will analyse the bodily functions aka karmendriyas of the human organism at the same quantum depth. Earlier in this book, we gave a brief, atomic-level explanation of these processes, but now we will unfold them directly at the level of quantum behaviour one by one in detail, using the electron and other fundamental entities as our reference point.
Demystifying Kundalini 