By BL Bhola
In Times Of India
It is commonly thought that the areas of science and spirituality are not coterminous. The ambit of science terminates at a point but that of spirituality goes much beyond where it intuits and churns out concepts which science might not be able to verify in order to accept or reject them.
Werner Heisenberg aptly said, “It is quite true that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet.”
Today, however, increasingly, the philosophical implications of modern science are being figured out. Deep insights offered by mystics — that were accepted solely on faith — are now being verified through science.
Science and spirituality are different areas in the sense that knowledge of science may be learnt from books, its understanding may come steadily, if not speedily but discernment of mysticism may not occur. It is an experience, an insight and an intuition, which takes its own time to come.
The mechanist, fragmented world view is being reviewed and augmented by the organic world view of mysticism, which is gaining global popularity. One may venture to gauge essential harmony between science and spirituality for modern science reaches beyond the limits of technology. Like Plato’s geometry (God is geometer) it can lead to spiritual knowledge and self-realisation.
Knowledge that science imparts is, as Buddhists call it, ‘relative’. It measures, quantifies, classifies and analyses. But as Heisenberg says, it “has only limited range of applicability”. On the other hand, mystics aim at direct experience of reality, which is not only beyond intellectual thinking but also beyond sensory perception. This knowledge comes through meditation or mystical consciousness, which is a “potential form of consciousness entirely different”. “It is a heightened state of concentrated awareness where one is neither tense nor hurried and certainly never slack.”
And exploration of the parallels between scientific postulates and mystic insights and intuitions can be drawn in many cases, out of which some of them are being hinted at below.
Sand, rocks, water and air are composed of vibrating molecules and atoms. When cosmic rays fall upon them, they react and destroy each other’s particles. It is a sort of ‘cosmic dance of energy’. Ancient Hindu wisdom depicts it as the ‘Dance of Shiva’ as Adi Dev .
In connection with the description of hadrons in particle physics, D T Suzuki remarks: “Buddhists have conceived an object as an event not as a thing or substance.” What mystics realised through their meditative insight has now been established through experiments.
The ‘bootstrap’ hypothesis implying that subatomic particles reflect the impossibility of separating scientific observation from observed phenomena, when pushed to the extreme, convey to us that structures we observe in nature are only creations of our own mind. Asvaghosha expressed the same idea in the Awakening of Faith: “All phenomena in the world are nothing but the illusory manifestation of the mind and have no reality of their own.” Eastern sages call this maya ; Buddhists call it avidya .
So we do find echoes of mysticism in the depths of basic tenets of science. Mystic insights are borne out by modern scientific theories indicating essential harmony between science and spirituality. Science can be like spirituality — “a path with a heart, a way to knowledge and self-realisation”.
In Times Of India
It is commonly thought that the areas of science and spirituality are not coterminous. The ambit of science terminates at a point but that of spirituality goes much beyond where it intuits and churns out concepts which science might not be able to verify in order to accept or reject them.Werner Heisenberg aptly said, “It is quite true that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet.”
Today, however, increasingly, the philosophical implications of modern science are being figured out. Deep insights offered by mystics — that were accepted solely on faith — are now being verified through science.
Science and spirituality are different areas in the sense that knowledge of science may be learnt from books, its understanding may come steadily, if not speedily but discernment of mysticism may not occur. It is an experience, an insight and an intuition, which takes its own time to come.
The mechanist, fragmented world view is being reviewed and augmented by the organic world view of mysticism, which is gaining global popularity. One may venture to gauge essential harmony between science and spirituality for modern science reaches beyond the limits of technology. Like Plato’s geometry (God is geometer) it can lead to spiritual knowledge and self-realisation.
Knowledge that science imparts is, as Buddhists call it, ‘relative’. It measures, quantifies, classifies and analyses. But as Heisenberg says, it “has only limited range of applicability”. On the other hand, mystics aim at direct experience of reality, which is not only beyond intellectual thinking but also beyond sensory perception. This knowledge comes through meditation or mystical consciousness, which is a “potential form of consciousness entirely different”. “It is a heightened state of concentrated awareness where one is neither tense nor hurried and certainly never slack.”
And exploration of the parallels between scientific postulates and mystic insights and intuitions can be drawn in many cases, out of which some of them are being hinted at below.
Sand, rocks, water and air are composed of vibrating molecules and atoms. When cosmic rays fall upon them, they react and destroy each other’s particles. It is a sort of ‘cosmic dance of energy’. Ancient Hindu wisdom depicts it as the ‘Dance of Shiva’ as Adi Dev .
In connection with the description of hadrons in particle physics, D T Suzuki remarks: “Buddhists have conceived an object as an event not as a thing or substance.” What mystics realised through their meditative insight has now been established through experiments.
The ‘bootstrap’ hypothesis implying that subatomic particles reflect the impossibility of separating scientific observation from observed phenomena, when pushed to the extreme, convey to us that structures we observe in nature are only creations of our own mind. Asvaghosha expressed the same idea in the Awakening of Faith: “All phenomena in the world are nothing but the illusory manifestation of the mind and have no reality of their own.” Eastern sages call this maya ; Buddhists call it avidya .
So we do find echoes of mysticism in the depths of basic tenets of science. Mystic insights are borne out by modern scientific theories indicating essential harmony between science and spirituality. Science can be like spirituality — “a path with a heart, a way to knowledge and self-realisation”.
No comments:
Post a Comment