Science Vs Spirituality

Hello and warm welcome to all the readers of my blog. My name is Tejas Natu and I am an Engineering grad. trying to figure out how this world around us has been 'Engineered'. To start with I am reminded of a famous song from a Hindi movie 'Boond Jo Ban Gayi Moti' which is an ode to the nature and goes as follows:

''Hari hari vasundhara pe neela neela ye gagan
Ke jis pe badalon ki paalaki uda raha pawan
Dishayein dekho rang bhari
Chamak rahi umang bhari
Ye kisne phool phool pe kiya singaar hai
Ye kaun chitrakaar hai, ye kaun chitrakaar''.....

Indeed a beautiful song wherein the teacher (who sings the song for his students) is asking the most vital question that can ever be asked, 'Who is the creator of this universe'? Who is the master painter, the creative genius of whom has given rise to this universe we live in. Who is the choreographer of this great play of existence that we all are a part of? Indeed, this universe that we live in is so mysteriously and mystically beautiful and the journey to unravel its secrets is the greatest adventure one can ever embark upon. 
  
From the moment we become aware of our presence, of our existence, we, as humans, the most inquisitive of all living beings find ourselves in the midst of a gale of questions gushing into our minds that leave us wondering about our own presence & our own existence. Not just ours but everything around us, the trees, the sky, the birds, the wind, the rocks, the soil & everything that our senses can perceive. The first set of questions that strikes our mind is “Who am I”? , “Why am I here”? , “Who created me”? , & “What is the purpose of my existence”?. The desire to unravel the hidden mysteries of the universe is what makes the humans so special. And this quest to go into the uncharted territory has been going on since eons. Almost every civilisation we know of has made an attempt to know the secrets of life and this timeless quest has given birth to two fields of knowledge that we call as ‘Science' & 'Spirituality’ which are the two ways of looking at the same problem. However these two fields of human endeavor have been at loggerheads with each other, often despising the other’s methodology & significance. 

This blog is my personal attempt to understand the ways of the two great institutions of human thought, that is, the way of Science and the way of Spirituality in unraveling the secrets of life. It is a journey that would take us both inwards and outwards. It would be my attempt on this blog to take a holistic view of the two world views. I would really appreciate an active involvement from the readers who would like to share their views, experiences and knowledge. 

Now let us see what Science and Spirituality offer to us.

Science:

               “God is the greatest Mathematician.’’ ~ Stephen Hawking ~

                                                                                

Science could be defined as “knowledge reduced into principles”. It would not be an exaggeration if I call Science as the Western or the Occidental School of Thought. Science believes in procuring experimental data and applying mathematical logic to extrapolate results. Science has historically believed only in what the five senses perceive & has out rightly rejected the possibility of a realm of existence which is beyond the reach of our senses.

It suffices to say that Science is the study of the outer physical world or what is called as ‘Objective World’. Objective World is perceived by us as existing ‘in Time’ and ‘in Space’. Science proposes that the Objective world consists of ‘Things’ & ‘Phenomena’, ‘Things’ which exist in ‘Space’ & Phenomena’ which exist in ‘Time’. However this scientific view which takes Matter or Objective World as fundamental reality has certainly been able to ameliorate the material conditions of life, but is still as remote from providing answers to the eternal questions about our own existence as ever before.

Spirituality:

Spirituality, what I perceive is the Eastern or the Oriental School of Thought. It emphasizes Spirit over Matter and rather discards Matter as mere Illusion or 'Maya'. 
It believes that ‘Things & Phenomena’ do not have an extension in ‘Space & Time’, rather it discards Space & Time as properties of  the World and describes them as properties of our sensory perceptions. Well the question here does arise at first, how can something we see or perceive all the time be a mere illusion. Are we not what we see and what we feel we are? Is there some one who has played some cruel joke on us? We have invested so much on the lives we are living and then there is a mystic (I mean the real ones, not the self proclaimed God men endorsed by News Channels on the 6:30 am to 7:30 am slot) who shatters our beliefs and makes a mockery of our mundane lives. 

Well this is what I think. Spiritual traditions of the East aim at going to the very core of existence. And as the great poet-prophet Jalaluddin Rumi has said- 

                           ''May be you are trying to find among branches ,
                                For what only appears in the roots.''

We exist in our minds and here is the key, the East attempts to go beyond the mind to unravel the secrets. Be it Yoga, Zen, The Upanishads, The Tao etc. or any other school of thought and the spiritual mystics like Krishna, Mohammed, Nanak, Moses, Christ, Gautama Buddha, Mahavira, Sai Baba, Vivekananda, Rajneesh Osho and many others have one common message to give, and that is to go beyond the mind and experience an invisible realm which is beyond space and time, and not just to know this realm at an abstract level but to be one with it. And those who have managed to open these gates are termed as ‘Sages' or 'Prophets’.

Now here lies the bone of contention as these experiences I have mentioned above are purely 'Subjective' and there is no analytical proof of Subjective experiences. So the teachings of Sages and Prophets do not find acceptance in the scientific community as they don’t satisfy the needs of Objectivity. 

Now as I see it, since these experiences take you beyond the mind, how can they be noted down or chronicled, because you need mind to do all that, and to experience that realm of what should i say, 'The Ultimate Reality' one has already transcended the mind, so its not possible to have an analysis of those experiences, the way Science wants it.

But that in no way is the basis to discard the 'spiritual school'. If you cannot understand something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Its quite a cogent argument that spiritual schools have for long been talking about, and that is if there is mind then there has to be a way to go beyond the mind. There has to be something beyond the mind which makes us aware of the mind. Dr. Bob Procter, a world renowned figure and a pioneer of 'The Law Of Attraction' and who can also be seen in the famous film called 'The Secret' has so rightly said, ''The Absence of Evidence is not the Evidence of Absence''. 

Well I want to stop here for now. Its just my first post and I don't wish to make it too big. This post was aimed at giving a brief idea about this blog. I hope that there is a long way to go. In my upcoming posts I wish to deal with a lot of Science stuff, lives and times of some great mystics, new advancements in the fields of physics and metaphysics, various eastern wisdom traditions and other relevant stuff...

'The world is less like a thing and more like a thought'...

Create your own Scientific Spiritual Reality...