At a time when reasoning and explanations have drifted apart from being philosophical and spiritual and are deemed to be correct only if can be produced on a piece of paper and a simulation of it can be articulated in the laboratory, wouldn’t it be interesting enough to speculate the standoff between science and religion — between fact-based and faith-based ways of thinking and explaining the world?
No wonder, in the last 100 years or so the marvels of modern science has changed our lives in the most unimaginable of the ways, and there absolutely is no turning back from here, but also is it not possible that the most important questions of our – either left unanswered even by the meticulous experiments over the time by science, or is still striving too, can be answered by plunging deep into ancient religious scriptures from the age-old civilizations? Well, let’s see how far it can be deciphered into, making it as short as possible.
Even when described in the poshest of the words, science may be described as ‘acquisition and systemization of knowledge which are truly cumulative and progressive’, not to mention, whatever science has achieved so far, and even as tirelessly strives to achieve it does so by considering every component into measurable physical parameters, even be it life. From the very Newtonian mechanics and to the quantum physics, it is the mass, dimensions, and velocity of the particle that has been taken into account.
The first resistance put to this world-view would probably be, “Nah! Not everything present is perceptible by the senses, that is clearly what the science has wholeheartedly taken account into, there is much beyond perception. Your feeling, emotions, solace in times of desperation, they can’t be perceived, but that’s the essence of life.” One could go a step ahead to say, perception is intertwined with survival, and that’s exactly what science through its marvelous wonders is doing, life has become accessible and quite easy than it was 100 years ago, that’s the exact science. But all to life is mere survival?
Spirituality, while answering this is very explicit, a clear No. As having been demonstrated by intelligent sages and enlightened masters from the time unknown, the accounts of whom have been well recorded in the scriptures of the Hindu dharma, they have accomplished wonders with their mind and body! A new dimension to life, knowledge unknown before have been explored! Exploration! That’s what at the center of spiritualism, and if we were to take a minute off from the usual humdrum of our ‘normal, nothing but merely surviving life’, and ponder about the meaning of life, we might as well realize it.
There are dimensions beyond intellect in our own bodies, that is there to explore, and for science, all of it is in the atoms! What is survival mode, via trying to put all dimensions of life through that very process, well intellect and dimensions beyond intellect can’t be deemed through physical parameters, you can’t try and fit intelligence in the parameters of logic. No! weird it might sound, we cannot have a mathematical solution to a being’s intelligence and emotions! And that very thought lies in the center of spirituality.
Spirituality governs mysticism or the apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to intellect, it answers the core questions about the utility of human life and purpose of creation of the universe and through satirical it may seem about the existence of God, but by embracing the core fact, beyond intelligence is too the dimensions of knowledge left to be unexplored. It is beyond moving the identity of an individual or the world around us, not all the knowledge that we know, or to what I refer to as identity is the end of exploration, in fact it is just a tiny fraction of what we have known, spirituality embraces that and continues the process of further exploration.
Science too does the same thing, but it considers intellect, or most of the times even narrowed to something mere as logic, as the end of the world, and it does so by splitting of an atom or even a subatomic particle, by simulations of brain and neural functions in a laboratory and by splitting and recombination of the 27000 genes of the human body. You can always do that, and knowledge too will be there, you just can’t find it. There just are some things you can’t try and fit in the physical parameters and can’t answer by logic.
If I were to make an analogy about that, Science even at its best is trying to reach out to the core questions of spirituality with a physical wand, how speculative is that!