Relink
science to spirit
Author: Francois Gautier
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: January 1, 2001
www.hvk.org
Will science
and spirituality ever meet? This was the topic of a recent seminar at the
prestigious Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Indian scientists, one
after the other, expounded, on how reason, rigour, logic and the spirit of
inquiry are the most important parameters of scientific discovery. None of them,
except for Abdul Kalam, made references to ancient Indian science. All of them
spoke of science from a western point of view.
Truly western
science, because of its immense material resources, has come to dominate the
world. Billions of dollars is required these days for research which India can
not afford. Since it is unable to remunerate honorably its scientists and
engineers many of them have migrated to the West.
Western science
is like a blind man, because it dissociated itself from the spirit in the 17th
century. Reasons are several: First, because the powerful Christian church
interfered in government matters. Thus it was very rigid and backward in
scientific topics, believing until very late that the earth was flat or that the
world started in 4003 BC. And whoever disagreed with these views was burnt at
the stake!
Many thinkers
of the 17th century, particularly French philosophers such as Descartes or
Pascal, had unilaterally decreed that the only valid scientific and
philosophical tools of inquiry were reason and logic. A third factor came in the
20th century with the advent of Marxism and Communism, which decreed that
spirituality poisoned people minds and hence had to be eradicated.
Was this
divorce of science from the spirit beneficial to the West? Well, western
scientists have been able to devise the most sophisticated weapons to kill man;
but man is still not capable of killing his own ego. The West, in spite of its
huge prosperity based on its tremendous technological and scientific
achievements, is becoming a sick society, where children go on rampage killings;
where every other person in the US is under psychiatric treatment for depression
or insomnia. Where out of five marriages, three end up in divorce.
Nobody in the
conference, except Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who was a guest of honour, also
bothered to ask this question: has Indian science kept in touch with the spirit?
Well, major discoveries in Indian science, such as the position of the stars,
the calculation of solar eclipses, or the concept of the zero, were made at the
time when there were no instruments. How were they made? Because of a profound
and everlasting quest for the spirit in India. It is in this manner that Buddha,
was able to say, long before western science, that everything in our Universe is
constituted of atoms, constantly changing, dying and being reborn at each
moment. And this is the first theorem that any scientist should apply: Know
Thyself, Know Thy mind. Because If you know your own mind, then you can fathom
all other minds; if you know one particle of the world you know all the
particles of the world. This is the truth that India has been practicing for
millenniums.
Finally, nobody
in the symposium cared to mention that western science owesa lot to India.
Pythagoras, pioneer of modern geometry, was inspired byIndian mathematics;
Egyptians built their pyramids by means of Indianarithmetic; 18th century French
astronomers were using Hindu calculationsof the positions of the stars and the
solar eclipses.
But
unfortunately, Indian science today is very westernized, because the scientific
knowledge taught in the universities lacks a connection with the spiritual, and
never mentions India's ancient tradition of scientific inquiry.
The British
colonials imparted through education a certain western bent of mind.
Additionally, many of India's top scientists today have a strong connection with
the West. The ultimate achievement for them is to have a chair in a foreign
university, where some of them brand India as a backward, fundamentalist
country. Isn' it so Mr Amartya Sen? But the real issue is: how can Indian
science re-link itself again with the spiritual? There is no question that the
Spirit is very much present in India: everywhere you go, you find ashrams,
yogis, sadhus, ordinary people practicing meditation or pranayama.
The natural
tendency here is to understand the levels of consciousness beyond the surface
materiality. Other than Indian Nobel laureates there have been geniuses like
Ramanujan, who, with no sophisticated means, were able to devise stupendous
mathematical theorems. But Indian science has to look within and delve in its
scientific past. The secrets of the Vedas, for instance, both spiritual and
scientific, have never been fully deciphered; Sanskrit too has never been
analyzed in a modern manner. Indian science mustshow the West how to reestablish
the spiritual link and at last unite matter and spirit.
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