Back to Previous Chapter -- Science and Spirituality - Chapter 1
The purpose of our life is to know. But what should we know?? A good question.
Creation is an ocean of surprises. Just see the little planet in the universe – our world, the earth. Count the variety of living and non living things here ! From the amoeba to the elephant, the variety is simply astonishing.
But there are five vital questions about creation. The first one is who created this universe? Religion says that there is a GOD, but the scientists haven’t fully accepted it. The second question is why has this universe been created? The answer is a big “We don’t know” again. No one can answer this question. The third one is when was this universe created? Again the answer is a big. NO. No doubt our scientists and modern physicist are trying to calculate the date of creation, but they are vacillating. The fourth question is, out of what this universe been created? No answer again, though both philosophers and scientists have broken down solid mass into the atom and say it is the fundamental unit of life. That though, isn’t the final answer. Thus the four final questions have remained unanswered till now.
This brings us to the fifth and final question: What is our role in creation? The first possible rational answer is we don’t have any role at all. Like all living beings we are born, undergo metamorphosis, and die. But is that all? Are we mere waves in the ocean? Fortunately not. Why we being the humans have one distinct quality over all other existing species and that is human beings alone ask questions. We alone can raise the above five vital questions about the creation. So we are unique beings and have a unique role to play in creation.
What is that role? That unique role is to know. To know the logic behind the GOD. We humans alone can know. Sri Ramakrishna says: “God no doubt dwells in all but He manifests Himself more through man than through other beings. Is man an insignificant thing? He can think of the Infinite, while other living beings cannot. But what is the use of knowing? Knowledge brings liberation from existential suffering and reunites us with our source.
How do we know? There are two methods: one of science and other of religion.
One is materialistic and one is spiritualistic. One is the eastern and other one is western. Science is the study of the external (macrocosm); religion is the study of the internal (microcosm). The first is objective while the second is subjective. But isn’t science, the objective study of the universe, alone right. Or the subjective view is all complete. Neither of them is complete without each other. Had either of them being complete there would have been no existence of the other. But since both of them are there let us unite them and find out the exact summation and the logic behind them.
Scientist too thought they were right, but many are differing now. Consciousness and universe, they see are interwoven. Down the centuries, science has accumulated much knowledge about the earth, the solar system, stars and galaxies. And they have propounded many theories. However, yesterday’s theories are today’s junk. ! Why because the more we study the more we get confusing and more is left unknown. Secondly, the instrument used for all the studies and sciences, the mind, can’t find answers to all our questions through the five senses.
This leads us to the second path – religion. Religion alone has declared that the universe is only an objective manifestation of the subjective. Let’s never think that the scenes we see on the big screen are real; there is a projector behind. Do not think that only the two dimensions that you can see at one time is the complete view. There exists a third dimension, which makes the thing complete, which cannot be directly seen through the five senses alone.
Religion is the study of man – an in depth study. This study leads to supreme knowledge of everything. How? It was Swami Vivekanand who experienced the grandest truth “The microcosm and the macrocosm are built on the same plan.” To know the human being is to know the universe. Conversely to know the Universe we should know the human. You need material instruments to know the universe, but to know the human being you don’t need instruments. The fine instrument called mind will suffice. Using it, we have to dive deep into ourselves. We should meditate. Meditation leads us to the unseen universe within. The inner universe, says saints, is astounding. This universe will reveal all the knowledge we need. This only can free us. The knowledge of why, who, what etc. will all become perfectly clear once we look within. Sri Rama Krishna declared “A man attains everything when he discovers his true self in Himself that also is the purpose of assuming a human body.” And one who knows Him attains the Moksha (salvation, liberation) even in this life, without dying. In fact, he gets free from the cycle of life and death.
Shankaracharya sang that human birth is the most precious gift of GOD. To expand it in vain pursuits is a colossal and stupendous waste. To utilize it to know is the greatest good. Therefore, let’s all sit down quietly for sometime every day, close our eyes, and dive deep within. This alone, and nothing else will bring us knowledge, lasting peace and supreme happiness. And do it as early as possible. Don’t think that it is a work that should be left for old age only. It is better to first learn the life and then living it than first living it and then realizing the truth at the end. At the ending moments of your life even if you learn the life, there will be no use of it in this life and all the knowledge will be lost when you attain the next life.
We are trained to listen to lie and not to truth. We should question ourselves as to why this is so. Rather than questioning ourselves, we are satisfied with what others tell us. This gives room for genetically inherited errors, and uninspected lies seem to be the controller of us. And therefore we became victims of things that we never question.
We should develop the art of skillful questioning within us. We collect the knowledge about the things around us and within us using three E’s viz. Experience, Education and Environment.
Each of us has a personal agenda and there is a cosmic agenda. This personal agenda is our ‘EGO’. Ego means Edging God Out. We are all caught up in our personal agenda and we feel we are happy in life because we want the world to be aligned to our personal agenda.
The world is not obliged to follow our personal agenda. Now with regard to our personal agenda which you call ‘I’ or ‘EGO’, if you really look at it, our ‘I’ is the result of what society has spoken about us. If society (my boss, colleagues or my recruiter etc.) says that I am a good computer programmer, then only I will think that I am a good programmer. Society has defined what is good and true about me and hence I think it is me. Though we all feel that we are good, our customs, tradition, religion and thoughts and philosophies are true, forgetting that what is good for one society is not good or not taken as good in other society. Therefore, the society is committed more towards tradition than truth.
Hence, we are trained to listen and accept the tradition and not truth, because ‘I’ is the product of the society and society is more interested in convention and tradition which has no relation to truth in most of the cases. So, we are trained to listen to lies and not truth. We accept the tradition and customs without knowing why and how they came into existence. We are curious to know when we are children but get trapped in earning the material things and fulfilling other responsibilities when we grow old.
When one enquires deeply and sees through these myths, then he is not a victim of society, but he becomes the student of the society and tries to understand why the things are as they look. People become victim of their experiences and moments of their life, for example if I am cheated by someone, I have an experience that someone has cheated me. With this experience in mind, I look at a new friend and then say to myself that he also will cheat me. So, I become a slave of my past experience or in other words I become slave of the society around me.
What I am trying to give you through this literature or more precisely I am sharing with you is, education. Education not of anything, but yourself only. When you bring about the education, you are able to see that there are good things as well as bad things in society. Our experiences may be right at one point of time and wrong at another, so filter them. Forget your bad experiences with others and always remember your good experiences. If someone has done badly with you, if you do badly with someone else in turn to retaliate, then in this way you are doubling up the bad things and the same will become a chain reaction. By education you free yourself from the bundle of your experiences and do not limit your knowledge to your experiences only. And if you bring that education within you, that energy is available to listen to truth. Don’t think that you are ‘I’. No you are not ‘I’ you are yourself and hence try to find that self. Where will you find that? in books ! , in cars, house, money, NO, you have to find your SELF in your self only.
Whatever status you have in the society, you have in relation to one or the other things. If you are an engineer, then it is in relation to your profession. If you are a son, then it is in relation with your parents. So it is not complete of you, just a relation of you to others. Try to find out what you are in relation to yourself. Once you find the answer to this question you will reach to the truth.
Your experiences may be real for one instance of time but problem comes when you generalize it for all points of time. Hence, this bound person is familiar with bondage and the bond person is not familiar with truth, which is beyond bondage. Unless you are free, you can never discover truth and so long you are bond you can never understand the beauty of truth. Hence, every individual should be committed towards truth by understanding that we are product of certain lies and we should have the courage to filter these lies. If this happens, life is extremely liberating and in that liberation, if one starts living life, one will find that every moment in the life is a great unique experience. Every incident in life is poetry. Every incident in life is a message. Every incident in life is a ladder to unknown experiences which can’t be defined by words.
I, through these series of article, invite you into that dimension of education where every one of us should be committed. Most of us are literate in today’s time but we are not educated. The heart of education is ‘education of the heart’. And if your heart is committed towards truth, only then you will be able to see something which is beyond lies, in which most of us are prisoners. I invite you into this world of truth, which is so beautiful, which has no tradition, which has no religion, which cannot be defined by any language and no system can confine it. It is in this boundless existence that every one of us is invited by existence; but we regret the invitation, because we never looked into the very beauty of being in truth and the unwisdom of being slave to lies.
These are the two (Science and Religion) prevailing views of all times. These are exactly equal and opposite of each other. Let us give them equal importance and accept them as two hemispheres of opposite arcs, which when combined gives a complete sphere which when viewed in two dimensions look like a zero, a neutral view of GOD showing His zeroness. If you see them through the neutral view without being accepting one and discarding the other, believing in one and disbelieving the other, you will see the complete knowledge with the eyes of CONciousness and SCIENCE which when combined gives us CONSCIENCE, the neutral, the zero. This third dimension is the summation of these two views and knowledge of both will give you the complete knowledge of the GOD and Universe (Religion and Science)
