Science and Spirituality E-Book

Bettina Sharada Bäumer

• Herausgeber: D.K. Printworld
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 448

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

A dialogue between science and spirituality is a necessity in our times where both, differences and mutual enrichment of the two great fields of human approach to reality, are taking place. This volume addresses this need from the perspective of different areas of science and spiritual traditions. The starting point is the intention of the founder of the IIAS, Dr S. Radhakrishnan, who saw that “both the practice of science and experience of spirituality are intimately related to being human”. Although much thought has gone into their relationship, the present volume intends to broaden and deepen the possibility of a harmonious integration, necessary to overcome the present-day crisis of humanity.
From the side of science, the contributors come from the fields of physics, plant biology, neuroscience, psychology, ecology and philosophy of science; and from the side of spirituality, following traditions and spiritual masters are represented: PÀtaðjala Yoga, Trika Œaivism of Kashmir, VedÀnta, Buddhism, Christianity, Theosophy, and Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda and J. Krishnamurti. The deliberations included topics such as Awareness in plants, Neuroplasticity and Habit, appropriate use of terms such as “Consciousness” and “Energy” in different contexts, clarifying several issues concerning the on-going dialogue. The contributing scholars have built “bridges of understanding”, thus encouraging the reader to proceed further in this quest.

Leseprobe

Science and Spirituality

Science and Spirituality

Bridges of Understanding

Edited by

Bettina Sharada Bäumer

Shivam Srivastava

Cataloging in Publication Data — DK

[Courtesy: D.K. Agencies (P) Ltd. <[email protected]>]

International Seminar on “Science and Spirituality:

Bridges of Understanding” (2016 : Indian Institute of

Advanced Study)

Science and spirituality : bridges of understanding /

edited by Bettina Sharada Bäumer, Shivam Srivastava.

pages cm

Papers presented at an International Seminar on “Science

and Spirituality: Bridges of Understanding” held at the IIAS in

November 2016.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9788124610435

1. Hinduism and science – India – Congresses. 2. Religion and

science – India – Congresses. 3. Spirituality – Hinduism – Congresses.

4. Spirituality – India – Congresses. I. Bäumer, Bettina, 1940- editor.

II. Srivastava, Shivam, editor. III. Indian Institute of Advanced

Study, organizer. IV. Title.

LCC BL1215.S36I56 2016 | DDC 294.51650954 23

ISBN: 978-81-246-1190-6 (E-Book)

ISBN: 978-81-246-1043-5 (Hardbound)

First published in India, 2020

© Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla

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Contents

Inaugural Address

- Chetan Singh

Introduction

- Bettina Sharada Bäumer

1. Science and Spirituality

- Partha Ghose

2. The Perilous Bridge of Vijñāna: A Perspective from Pātañjala Yoga and Psychology

- Stephen A. Parker

3. Perception and Awareness in Plants

- Sudhir Kumar Sopory

4. Trika Śaivism of Kashmir and Its Insights for a Dialogue with Science

-Bettina Sharada Bäumer

5. In Search of Rationality in Our Habit: Spirituality in the Light of Neuroplasticity

- Gopal Chandra Bhar

6. Rabindranath Tagore’s Belief in Holistic Science

- Martin Kämpchen

7. Neuroscience and Freedom

- Günter Rager

8. Sacred Secularity as Synergy of Science and Spirituality

- Varghese Manimala

9. A Non-dualistic Relational Model of Reality: Science and Buddhist Insights

- Michael von Brück

10. Swami Vivekananda’s Concept of the Harmony of Science and Religion

- Swami Atmapriyananda

11. Two Complementary Quests for Truth: J. Krishnamurti’s Approach

- Padmanabhan Krishna

12. Science and Spirituality: Compatible Paradigms?

- Vijaya Shankar Varma

13. Thought: Its Genesis and Growth in the Light of Theosophy and Neuroscience

- Atul Bhatnagar

14. Vedānta and the Possibility of a Heart-centric Education

- Arpita Mitra

15. Ancient Indian and Modern Scientific Perspectives on Ecology

- Kishor Dere

Contributors

Index

तत्रापि च पलाशपर्णमध्यशाखान्यायेन आब्रह्मरन्ध्रात् अधोवक्त्रपर्यन्तं

प्राणशिक्त ब्रह्माश्रयमध्यमनाडीरूपतया प्राधान्येन स्थिता।

There itself (in the body)

the Universal Consciousness remains principally

in the form of the Central Channel

whose substratum is Brahman as Life Energy,

right from the opening at the top of the skull

down to the lowest opening

like the central rib of a leaf.

– Kṣemarāja, Pratyabhijñāhr̥dayam 17

Gaze on them as they grow, see how the plant

Burgeons by stages into flower and fruit,

Bursts from the seed so soon as fertile earth

Sends it to life from her sweet bosom, and

Commends the unfolding of the delicate leaf

To the sacred goad of ever-moving light!

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,

The Metamorphosis of Plants

Inaugural Address

Chetan Singh

Dr S. Radhakrishnan, the founder of this Institute, had visualized it as a place for intellectual engagements of exactly the kind that we shall be pursuing for the next two days. He had sought to create an institution that would contemplate upon, and understand, the human condition. He argued that, “Both the practice of science and the idea and experience of spirituality are intimately related to being human”.At a personal level, I find it gratifying that the last national seminar of my tenure as Director should be on a theme that extends beyond confined disciplines, and treads upon domains that are relatively unmapped. This is something that the founder of this Institute and eminent scholars who preceded us here would have been greatly appreciative of. There is good reason to believe that the intellectual exchange at this seminar will be very enriching. When good thinking minds agree to get together in this manner, theresults can be magical!

My expertise to speak on either of the ideas contained in the title of this seminar on “Science and Spirituality: Bridges of Understanding” is inadequate. So, my comments here are likely to display some amount of ignorance or innocence; depending on which way you wish to look at it. We know that the Enlightenment project had an enormous impact on human thinking and in effect created the modern world. As a result, the dominance of scientific thinking is quite evident everywhere today. A large number of people broadly understand and appreciate what the term science means. There is an element of certainty in their relationship with the idea of science: a realization, as it were, that science fundamentally affects their lives in every respect. About spirituality, however, there seems to be some ambivalence. Unlike science that is collectively experienced and shared, spirituality remains elusive. What is the connection between spirituality and the human? As I leave my house for work every morning, there is a forest that I have to walk through. I walk alone amongst the trees and the experience is exhilarating. It is also deeply personal. One feels an almost tangible intimacy with nature. I often ask myself: Is it simply the walk that I am enjoying or is this a spiritual experience? Is there a difference between experiencing the immense joy of being a part of this world and appreciating it as a spiritual experience? Or are they the same? I don’t know.

The need for a bridge to connect science and spirituality arises because the two are regarded as being based on essentially divergent foundational principles. Yet, paradoxically, both science and spirituality are themselves seen by their practitioners as bridges for understanding reality and truth. The concept of spirituality, on account of its long history, has meant diverse things to various people living in different historical periods. What it shares in common with science and some other methods of acquiring knowledge is a professed search for truth as a means of understanding the universe and humankind. But the nature of truth is itself highly contentious. So is the idea of reality. This poses a problem that participants in this seminar will need to deal with: that is, the relationship between two rather fluid but fundamental concepts.

Many of the core ideas that seem to “bridge” or connect science and spirituality are themselves rather slippery to negotiate. This is because the processes creating, sustaining and recreating these ideas or “bridges” are continuous and unending. For instance, even an understanding founded upon supposedly enduring ideas in religion, ethics and morality is subject to change. Large elements of what we understand by religion, ethics and morality grow out of a particular historical context that alters with the passage of time. There was a time when religion and spirituality were seen almost as equivalents. This is no longer the case. With changing attitudes these concepts have come to be differently understood. Clearer lines of demarcation seem to be drawn around them. Nevertheless, both science and spirituality endeavour to search for, and engage with, phenomena that are broadly regarded as sacred. This part of a shared engagement probably creates some space for overlapping ideas and interests.

While spirituality is frequently understood in personal and experiential terms, the idea of religion harbours a greater sense of community, normative practices, prescriptions and an organized pursuit of the legitimate and the sacred. Amidst all this, matters pertaining to the ethical and the moral constitute the core of human thought and social organization. But moral and ethical issues are not merely “bridges” that might connect science and spirituality. As they were integral to the evolution of human thought, moral and ethical concepts, too, have evolved. They are part of the unceasing processes that have transformed human society. Science, too, has experienced similar trajectories of development. Scientific methods developed historically through their interaction with the material world. As a result, distinct methodologies emerged. We can, therefore, legitimately argue that the concepts of spirituality, too, have continued to change? If a person’s inner experience is influenced by interaction with the external world, why would not the nature and understanding of this experience change as the external world changes? If science, religion, ethics and belief systems change with the passage of time, why not spirituality! Spirituality may conceptually deal with the eternal and the unchanging, but its practice and methods have changed over time.

This brings me to how some social scientists have viewed the question. In 2009, Peter van der Veer1 wrote an interesting article on spirituality in modern society. One may disagree with some of the ideas presented but they might, nonetheless, be worth taking note of. Though the early origins of spirituality are deeply embedded in mysticism, gnosticism and other related practices known since antiquity, van der Veer suggested that spirituality, as practised today, is very modern. It has evolved into a capacious concept that links and accommodates diverse belief systems and traditions from across the world. This, apparently, makes it somewhat similar to the idea of secularism. The appearance of the spiritual and the secular as alternatives to institutionalized religion occurred simultaneously with the growing dominance of European–American modernity. Van der Veer sees spirituality as being situated at the heart of modernity. In fact, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the West began to search for a universal morality or spirituality that it shared with other religious traditions. The Unitarian World Parliament of Religions held in Chicago (1893) exemplified this. Representatives of the world religions met on a common platform. It signified the emergence of spirituality as a concept that tried to include a range of traditions under a universal morality unburdened by the baggage of competing religious institutions. He suggests that a globalized concept of spirituality emerged as an alternative to both secularism and institutionalized religion. This new alternative represented the universal aspect of modern spirituality.

However, van derVeer perceives a peculiar contradiction in the concept of spirituality today. It is projected as being universal in character, but is in practice tinged by the influence of specific civilizations and linked to notions of national identity. The idea of “Indian” spirituality is one such example. A crucial political role has been played by the idea of spirituality in contemporary Indian history as well as in creating a nationalist conviction that Hindu civilization is especially respected for its spiritual qualities. This would apply equally to Chinese and several other Eastern ideas about spirituality. The Oriental perspective of European Romanticism strongly influenced the nationalist view of Hindu civilization. Van der Veer suggests that Vivekananda presented a modern version of religious ideas and practices for a modernizing middle class. Even Gandhi and Tagore were inclined to posit Indian nationalism against Western materialism. While the latter resulted in warfare and colonial exploitation, the spirituality of the East provided an alternative leading to world peace and prosperity for all. The reality may be quite different because India’s desire for material prosperity is hardly less than that of the West. Moreover, the unprecedented levels of production and consumption occurring in both India and China have been combined with the successful marketing of spirituality and philosophies of well-being. Modern spirituality is profitably aligned with neo-liberalism and capitalism in the marketplace. Spiritual leaders and lifestyle gurus are regular invitees to important business meetings and for lecture tours to leading business schools. Modern spirituality has in many ways replaced both apathetic secularism and institutionalized religious life.

Late last night, I read the abstract of Prof. Sopory’s lecture for this seminar. Apart from the many perceptive observations he makes in it, he also looks closely at some of the other living “things” on this earth that we almost invariably neglect: plants. It is with touching sensitivity that he understands and explains to us the complex network that not only enables them to thrive but also makes them essential for our own existence. One wonders at the fascinating way in which everything – living and non-living – in our planet is interconnected. I lost my father in January this year. There have been moments thereafter, when I have wondered about the meaning of life; about one’s existence in the world that we are trying to understand and about the cosmos that we know so little about. It is in this context that Prof. Sopory’s words reminded me of a poem by Jalaluddin Mohammad Rumi (also known as Mohammed Balkhi) a Sufi saint-poet of the thirteenth century. Though deeply committed to Islam, it was his great spiritual insight that enabled him to preach and write in a manner that appeared to go against the grain of the sectarian perspectives that must have been quite common during his lifetime. His poem reproduced below is one such example.

I died as a mineral and became a plant,

I died as a plant and rose to animal,

I died as animal and I was Man.

Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

Yet, once more I shall die as a Man to soar with angels blest;

But even from angelhood I must pass on,

All except God doth perish.

When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,

I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.

Oh, let me not exist! For Non-existence,

Proclaims in organ tones, “To Him we shall return”.

– tr.A.J. Arberry

1 Peter van der Veer, 2009, “Spirituality in Modern Society”, Social Research, 76(4): 1097-1120.

Introduction

Bettina Sharada Bäumer

anyadevāhurvidyayā ’nyadāhuravidyayā ।

iti śuśruma dhīrāṇāṁ ye nastadvicacakṣire ।।

vidyāṁ cāvidyāṁ ca yastadvedobhayaṁ sa ha ।

avidyayā mr̥tyuṁ tīrtvā vidyayāmr̥tam aśnute ।।

– Īśa Upaniṣad 10-11

Something is expressed through wisdom,

something else through conventional knowledge,

thus we have heard from the wise who explained it to us.

He who understands both wisdom and conventional knowledge as one,

through conventional knowledge passes over death,

and through wisdom attains immortality.

Dr S. Radhakrishnan, the founder of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, envisaged as a topic to receive special attention in the deliberations among scholars: “Indian and Asian contribution to the synthesis of science and spirituality”. The present volume, which is the outcome of an international seminar on “Science and Spirituality: Bridges of Understanding”, is an attempt to contribute to this important subject. It was the desire of Radhakrishnan that this Institute be a place of meeting and dialogue, not only between disciplines and cultures, but also between the so-called “objective” disciplines and spirituality, an essential dimension of the Indian traditions.

The first question which will be asked is: which science? and which spirituality? Another question will be, why not science and religion? Should we not narrow the topic down to be more focused? But the purpose of this seminar having been a dialogue at different levels, the topic was purposely left open, to be defined by the scholars of the various disciplines and spiritual traditions and their underlying philosophy in their own context and understanding. However, one question has to be addressed at the outset: We know that ancient and medieval Indian sciences, which are partially still alive today, were spiritually oriented, their ultimate aim being expressly mokṣa. It may be Āyurveda, Vāstuśāstra, Jyotiṣa (both, astronomy and astrology) and the Śāstras of the various arts like Saṅgītaśāstra and others, they were embedded in a spiritual world view. Thus they were not in need of “bridging the gap”. Even if we witness a rediscovery, these sciences are under the pressure of the all-dominating modern science and its offshoot technology.

This seminar was not addressed to these Śāstras, but to our present predicament of being situated and sometimes caught between modern science and spirituality, whether based on a specific tradition such as Buddhism for example, or independent of it, as in the case of J. Krishnamurti, among other spiritual movements and personalities of recent times. The focus of the seminar was thus not historical – that would require another approach and methodology – but contextual in our present world. And yet, being open to a multilayered dialogue, nothing was excluded, especially whatever is conducive to such a “bridge of understanding”.

At the outset I only want to point to some issues which are important to keep in mind while approaching the “other” discipline and getting into a dialogue.

The first problem which comes to mind is the question of language itself. Scientific disciplines and spiritual traditions cannot help but use many of the same words and concepts in describing their respective contents, insights and discoveries, but they may have a very different meaning and connotation. I may only mention some concepts which are central to both:

• Energy

• Consciousness

• Void

• Light, etc.

Energy to a physicist means something else than to a follower of Tantra. Consciousness in neuroscience, psychology and cognitive sciences has a different connotation than cit/caitanya or saṁvit translated equally as consciousness in Advaita Vedānta or in non-dualist Kashmir Śaivism for example. The void in physics cannot be identified with the Buddhist śūnyatā and so on. And yet, being human experiences expressed in language, these concepts are also not so totally different as not to allow for any attempt at mutual understanding. The problem here is one of the level at which a concept is understood – physical or spiritual. But precisely in the context of the latest developments in sciences such as neuroscience and quantum physics, attempts have already been made to bridge this gap.

The limitations of language in expressing an insight have to be overcome on both sides:in science by taking recourse to mathematical formulas, and in spiritual traditions of Indian origin in the form of condensed Sūtras. Both, the formulas and the Sūtras can be understood and interpreted only by those experienced in their respective disciplines.

A question which emerged in this seminar is, on the one hand: are we aiming at spiritualizing science? or at making spirituality more scientific? Some great scientists have already attempted the first, and present-day gurus want to prove the effectiveness of their spirituality by undergoing scientific experiments, through neuroscience, etc. The “New Age” wave, especially in America, provides many examples of such syntheses. In India I may just mention one example, Prof. A.K. Mukhopadhyaya of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, who, being a neuroscientist, has written extensively on Yoga and on the spiritual paradigm which he calls the “Akhaṇḍa Paradigm”. The Austrian-born American physicist Fritjof Capra is deeply engaged in a dialogue with spirituality, as evidenced in his books and in his teaching (see The Tao of Physics, The Turning Point). The examples could be multiplied. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been engaging in a dialogue with scientists in an on-going way at his ‘Mind and Life Institute’, with a series of meetings between mainly Buddhists and eminent scientists (neuroscience, etc.). All this work was in the background of our present seminar, and yet we can contribute our own insights and exchanges to this process.

Another important topic for such a dialogue is the question of insight, inspiration or intuition – in Sanskrit pratibhā. How does a scientist make a path-breaking new discovery? Is it only the result of a long and costly experimentation? Many scientists have admitted that their important discoveries were not the result of experimentation or rational deduction but of intuitive insights, also sometimes received in dreams. A famous example is the genial mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan who asserted that he received his extraordinary mathematical equations from his Goddess.The accounts by Werner Heisenberg and Hans-Peter Dürr about how they arrived at the insights leading to Quantum Physics are astounding. Radhakrishnan writes in his introduction to the lecture on “Intellect and Intuition”:

If all knowledge were of the scientific type, the contemporary challenge to religion would seem to be conclusive. The problem thus narrows itself to the reality of intuitive knowledge and the conditions of its validity. Is there or is there not knowledge which by its nature cannot be expressed in propositions and is yet trustworthy?

Most of the schools of Indian philosophy take such trustworthy knowledge from perfected beings, siddhas and yogīs, as expressed in the concepts of yogīpratyakṣa or āptavacana.

A bridge has to be built from both sides, and this is the challenge.

The German Quantum Physicist Hans-Peter Dürr, close collaborator of Werner Heisenberg and long-time Director of the Max Planck Institute of Physics, has stated in a published dialogue with the philosopher of religion Raimon Panikkar:

The dialogue between science and religion is for me not only significant to find out whether we ultimately mean the same, or at least intend the same, but also whether from our common insights we can derive indications of what is to be done practically in order to meet the present-day challenges we encounter in the world we live in, in a constructive way. How is it possible to make this world dominated by materialism move in another direction, guided by spirituality? ...It is essential that we bring the spiritual component back in this world, otherwise we are moving towards an endless suffering. I feel myself responsible.

– Dürr and Panikkar 2008: 153

This seminar was intended to be more than just an academic exercise. It is also an expression of our responsibility towards this situation.

~~~~~

The present volume contains contributions by international scholars to an interdisciplinary seminar held at the IIAS in November 2016, with some additional articles by scholars who could not be present. Prof. Chetan Singh, the Director of the Institute, inaugurated the event with his Inaugural Address in his inimitable style. Prof. Partha Ghose, an eminent Physicist and Philosopher of Science opened the deliberations with his exhaustive Keynote Address in which he raised many issues to be addressed by the scholars present from their respective disciplines.

Since the PātañjalaYogasūtra provides the basis for almost all Indian spirituality or yoga, Dr Stephen Parker presented what the title of the seminar was all about: a bridge in the sense of vijñāna, which implies both spiritual and scientific knowledge. Prof. S.K. Sopory, an internationally acclaimed scientist and plant biologist, has thrown new light on the question of consciousness in plants, on the basis of his own research and discoveries. This article presents a convincing “bridge” between the scientific method and its results which enlarge our perception of the plant world.

Bettina Sharada Bäumer provides an introduction to a lesser-known Indian philosophical and spiritual tradition, commonly called “Kashmir Śaivism”, which is based on the early non-dualist Tantras and their commentators like Abhinavagupta. This tradition offers a number of “bridges” for a dialogue with modern sciences like Neuroscience and Quantum Physics, especially with the theory of interconnectedness of all things, and insights into the nature of reality as pervaded by Consciousness.

A few papers address the subject of Neuroscience from different perspectives and are complementary to each other. Prof. G.C. Bhar focuses his presentation on the aspect of neuroplasticity which he also relates with traditional insights from Indian scriptures. Prof. Günter Rager of the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) probes deeply into the question of human freedom in the light of Neuroscience and disproves the reductionist approach of a certain kind of neuroscience.

Dr Martin Kämpchen presents Rabindranath Tagore’s approach to a holistic science and his criticism and warning of what he called “the machine”, i.e. the technological outcome of science. We are reminded of Tagore’s conviction that it is the transformation of mankind alone that can make it capable of sagaciously using scientific applications. Being a poet he could bridge the two in a poetic style of spirituality.

Dr Varghese Manimala approaches the subject from the point of view of secularity and sacredness, a synthesis proposed by Raimon Panikkar, also in the light of an open Christianity. The vision embraces the cosmic, the human and the divine aspects of reality (cosmotheandric). Prof. Michael von Brück of the University of Munich (Germany) presents an argument which relates a basically dualist scientific view to a non-dualist Buddhist response, building up to an interdependent explication of the “implicate order”. Swami Atmapriyananda, monk of the Ramakrishna order who was also a Physicist, presents the views of Swami Vivekananda who stood at the threshold between India and the West, and also espoused a position of harmony between Science and Religion.

Among the great spiritual geniuses of twentieth century, J. Krishnamurti stands out in that he questioned traditional religion but taught an all-encompassing dialogue with all fields of human knowledge. His dialogues with the noted Physicist David Bohm are an outstanding example of his approach to science. His words, “The religious mind is really a scientific mind – scientific in the sense that it is able to observe facts without distortion, to see itself as it is”,1 express a profound insight into the relationship. Prof. Padmanabhan Krishna, in-charge of the Krishnamurti Study Centre (Varanasi) and former Professor of Physics, has presented Krishnamurti’s insights on the subject in his own inimitable way. Prof. Vijay Shankar Varma, also an eminent Physicist and National Fellow at IIAS, has expressed a sceptical view of the possible compatibility between science and religion, and provokes a discussion.

Dr Atul Bhatnagar, Professor of Dentistry at the Banaras Hindu University, has elaborated on the processes of thought and memory in the light of theosophy and contemporary experimental findings from cognitive and neuroscience. Dr Arpita Mitra, Fellow at IIAS, has presented Upaniṣadic–Vedāntic spirituality as directed towards a holistic and heart-centric education. Ultimately the whole dialogue should find an application in the field of education and hers is the only article pointing in this direction. Finally, Dr Kishor Dere, an advocate at the Supreme Court of India, has applied the ancient Indian insights about harmony with Nature to our present-day ecological crisis, and suggests ways of inspiring an ecological awareness based on the traditional wisdom.

It is hoped that the articles contained in this volume will contribute to a further and deeper dialogue between the spiritual and the scientific worlds, which is essential to face the challenges of our times, East and West. In the words of Erwin Schrödinger, a pioneer of Quantum Physics:

This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi, this is you. Or again, in such words as “I am in the East and the West, I am above and below, I am this entire world”.2

– Meine Weltansicht, 1961

1 The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, 1962, vol XIII, 7th Public Talk, London.

2 Here Schrödinger is referring to the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 2.2.11.

1

Science and Spirituality

Partha Ghose

Introduction

Science has reached a stage of development where it can confidently trace the history of the entire universe all the way back to its birth some 13.8 billion years ago as an intensely hot and dense fireball, only a tiny fraction of a second after the so-called Big Bang. The actual moment of Big Bang, if there was one, is still shrouded in mystery because Einstein’s theory does not apply to such a condition. If I am allowed a little poetic liberty, I would quote the first line of mantra 15 of the Īśopaniṣad:

हिरण्मयेन पात्रेण सत्यस्यापिहितं मुखम् ।

hiraṇmayena pātreṇa satyasyāpihitaṁ mukham ।

The face of truth is covered by an effulgent vessel.

The fireball expanded and cooled, and in the process over aeons the observable universe came into being in various stages. As far as science can tell, for about 70 per cent of its time the universe was inert, dumb and desolate. The Solar System formed about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. The planets basked in the sun for ages. Then life appeared on a tiny little planet called the earth in the form of a tiny little cell only about 4 billion years ago. As Tagore put it:

With its gift of growth and power of adaptation it faced the ponderous enormity of things, and contradicted the unmeaningness of their bulk. – Tagore 1931

Evolution of life proceeded in its many splendoured branches and forms in water, land and air, till it reached mankind only about 200,000 years ago. In Onthe Origin of SpeciesDarwin writes:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.

We human beings are fond of believing that we are very special in Nature because of our consciousness, empathy, altruism and knowledge. It turns out that these qualities are not unique to us at all; animals need them and have them too, in varying degrees, for their survival. But there they stop. We human beings have gone beyond that – our inner sense tells us that there is a whole wide world that transcends us, a world that fills us with sublime wonder. In Darwin’s words:

Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature: no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. – Darwin1839: 604-05

Einstein also expressed something similar:

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitutes true religiosity; in this sense, and this alone, I am a deeply religious man. – Pais 1994

Einstein called this sense of wonder “cosmic religiosity”. He went on to say:

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.

Language and the Surplus in Man

Tagore has called this inner sense the “surplus” in Man (Tagore 1931), his “personality” that transcends the biological needs of survival. This surplus is due largely to language which is unique to Man. It has given Man the power and imagination to explore the world and give it meaning. Think of a child who is born blind, and who, at a tender age when she is just capable of learning words, is led by her mother to a shower which she turns on. As the water strikes her naked body, the mother says to her, “That’s water”. That is the exhilarating moment of creation for her – she begins to create the external “thing” we call water in her mind and associating the word or name with the sensation. That is what the world of experience is to Man: nāma-rūpa. The Biblesays: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” This may not be true of the world as such, but it is certainly true of Man’s world. Language gives human beings the power to make abstractions and generalizations which other animals lack. Give sticks to apes to get bananas from tall trees, and they will use them correctly. But show them the sticks and then place them behind their backs. This time they cannot use the sticks to get the bananas. They need to see both the bananas and the sticks at the same time. They cannot imagine sticks behind them that can be used. Man is capable of imagining a world that is not visible to him, theorize on it and make use of it in the most creative ways.

We use cups and dishes, glasses and cutlery to serve food and drinks, but they are not merely functionally designed for us – we take care to design them to satisfy our sense of beauty. Even when we design swords to kill, we decorate them with beautiful patterns. Our houses are designed not only to give us protection and comfort, we want them to be aesthetically designed to give us that inner satisfaction without which life would be a monotonous drudgery. Similar is the case with our clothes. We also sing and create new music all the time. Birds also sing, but their songs are merely repetitive. They are purely instinctive responses to biological needs. They have not changed for thousands of years. We draw and paint pictures and write poems and novels. We take risks to go to difficult terrains like the summit of Mount Everest or the depths of oceans, or to distant planets. Even if these urges were to be actually related to our survival instincts in some way, the relationship must be of a very intricate nature. For example, psychologists have established that without the sense of joy and the capacity to revere that sense, human beings may have attacks of depression and go insane. This is probably unique to humans. This is the essence of their spirituality.

The question has been raised as to whether the universe as a whole has been “designed” for a purpose. Nowadays in the West the ideas of “intelligent design” and “creation science” have become quite popular. But design always limits the creation by its purpose. Creation need not have a purpose; it can be spontaneous and joyful. Raso vai saḥ (Taittirīya Upaniṣad 2.7). If you listen to a Mozart symphony, it is so full of light and joy; there is no trace of any purposeful design in it, except for its overall compliance with the structure of a symphony. The same is true when you listen to someone like, say,Ustad Amir Khan. An incredible variety of spontaneous melodic patterns rises continuously from the depths of a vast ocean and dissolves into it. The only overall pattern that is discernible is that of the structure of a rāga, without which it would degenerate into chaos. The artist has the liberty to create endlessly within the overarching structure of a rāga and the tāla which act as disciplining agents. Jazz is very similar, the disciplining agents there being the chord progression and the rhythm. Beautiful patterns are spontaneously woven around them, creating consonance and dissonance, tension and resolution in beautiful cadences. The same is true of great paintings and great poems. They have no purpose as such, no definite meaning; they are raso vai saḥ, they just give us ānandam. If you look at an abstract painting, you see only lines and colours which have no voice. When asked, they point their finger at themselves. So is this universe. It is there as the vast creation of a supreme Artist, for us to see, wonder and delight in it. To look for a purpose or a meaning would be futile. It is when we start to project our wishes, desires and designs on Him but fail that all our sufferings begin.

Unweaving a Rainbow

The world that presents itself to our senses, however, is only a tiny part of a vast creation. That which is enormously large, the macrocosm, is so far from us that we can hardly see it with our naked eyes. That which is enormously small, the microcosm, is too tiny for our senses to detect. The world presents itself to living beings in a form that their embodied cognition system allows them to fashion out of the sense data, primarily for their biological survival. While all animals seem to be content with this common-sense view of the world, human beings are the only animals who have refused to accept this state of affairs. They have augmented their eyes by building telescopes of incredible power and accuracy coupled to supercomputers to reveal to us a world full of stars, interstellar gases, quasars and black holes, galaxies and clusters of galaxies that are all receding from each other in an ever-expanding space and time. They have also built incredibly powerful microscopes, coupled to supercomputers, to look into the depths of matter, energy, life and the brain. In this process they have discovered with the help of mathematics and creative leaps of imagination, patterns that unite the microcosm with the macrocosm, life with non-life, and glimpsed a unity that binds everything together in a harmonious whole. This is the overall story of science as a non-utilitarian spiritual quest.

Science is often equated with technology which is undoubtedly utilitarian and materialistic. And, indeed, there is a link between science and technology – they go hand in hand. And this has led to many misconceptions and even fear of science as a dangerous pursuit. In PersonalityTagore had this to say about science:

Science has a materialistic appearance, because she is engaged in breaking the prison of matter and working in the rubbish heap of the ruins. At the invasion of a new country plunder becomes the rule of the day. But when the country is conquered, things become different, and those who robbed act as policemen to restore peace and security. Science is at the beginning of the invasion of the material world and there goes on a furious scramble for plunder. Often things look hideously materialistic, and shamelessly belie man’s own nature. But the day will come when some of the great powers of nature will be at the beck and call of every individual, and at least the prime necessaries of life will be supplied to all with very little care and cost. To live will be as easy to man as to breathe, and his spirit will be free to create his own world.

– Tagore 1917: 90-91

Our senses are not only inadequate to reveal to us the vastness and depth of the universe, they sometimes also mislead us. This is why the scientist is wary of them and turns away from them. He has carefully built reliable instruments to replace the senses. For example, he has replaced the eyes with spectrometers to record and measure the colour of light in terms of its frequency of vibration, replaced our flesh and skin with thermometers to record temperature, replaced our ears with sensitive microphones to record sound even beyond our audible range, and many other sensors to augment our senses. This has misled many scientists to dismiss immediate sense impressions as entirely illusory and misleading, reducing the world of colour, sound and warmth to an abstraction that is disenchanted – detached, impartial and impersonal. This is “unweaving a rainbow”, as Keats put it in his Lamia:

Do not all charms fly

At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:

We know her woof, her texture; she is given

In the dull catalogue of common things.

Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,

Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,

Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine –

Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made

The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.

Some scientists like Richard Dawkins have argued that this unweaving has opened up a whole new view of nature that is no less enchanting. Both these views miss the point – the scientific view dismisses the subjective experience of seeing a rainbow, while the poetic view ignores the scientific reality of the rainbow.

We still do not know what causes the electromagnetic waves dispersed and reflected by the raindrops to create the sensation of colours, the qualia, in our eyes. I realized this vividly while trying to teach physics to Buddhist scholars. They could not understand what I meant when I said that light or sound travels from one place to another with a certain speed. They asked, “How can sensations in my eyes and ears travel from one place to another where my eyes and ears are not located?” It was then that I realized how confusing it is when scientists make statements like “light or sound travels from one place to another”. What they should be saying instead is, “electromagnetic oscillations or pressure oscillations in a medium like air travel from one place to another”. How these oscillations are transformed into sensations of light and sound in us is still mysterious. Neuroscientists claim that they have largely unravelled the mystery by showing exactly what goes on in the brain when we see light or hear sound. But these are only “neural correlates” of the sensations, not the sensations themselves. What neuroscientists see when they look inside the brain of a person seeing a rainbow are a whole lot of neurons exchanging electrical signals and releasing chemical substances, not the rainbow itself. The rainbow is neither outside nor inside the brain. Then where is it?

Scientists often commit the fallacy of reification, i.e. the fallacy of treating an abstract belief or construct as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity. Alfred Whitehead argued strongly against this kind of “misplaced concreteness” of abstract theoretical science and the “vacuous actuality” of matter as such. The fallacy entails “taking the abstractions about some actuality that are focused on by some particular science (or science in general) due to its limited interests or methods, to be a complete description of the actuality in its concreteness”. Examples would be to replace the experience of seeing a rose by the scientific description of a rose, or the experience of seeing a rainbow by the mathematical representation of the rainbow. Whitehead wrote:

A complete existence is not a composition of mathematical formulae, mere formulae. It is concrete composition of things illustrating formulae. There is interweaving of qualitative and quantitative elements; for example, when a living body assimilates food, the fact cannot be that one mathematical formula assimilates another mathematical formula. The fact is more than the formula illustrated. – Whitehead 1933: 162

William James used the notion of “vicious abstractionism” and “vicious intellectualism” to critique the idealistic philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Hegel. He wrote:

Let me give the name of “vicious abstractionism” to a way of using concepts which may be thus described: We conceive a concrete situation by singling out some salient or important feature in it, and classing it under that; then, instead of adding to its previous characters all the positive consequences which the new way of conceiving it may bring, we proceed to use our concept privatively; reducing the originally rich phenomenon to the naked suggestions of that name abstractly taken, treating it as a case of “nothing but” that concept, and acting as if all the other characters from out of which the concept is abstracted were expunged. Abstraction, functioning in this way, becomes a means of arrest far more than a means of advance in thought. […] The viciously privative employment of abstract characters and class names is, I am persuaded, one of the great original sins of the rationalistic mind. – James 1911

Apart from scientists, there are men and women with a complementary disposition who have also chosen to go beyond their senses, not in search of the external reality as scientists do, but in search of an inner reality which is only rarely revealed in a direct mystical experience of oneness with everything. That path has more readily been recognized as a “spiritual” path than that of science because of its emphasis on values and meaning, ethics, morals and aesthetics. Some scientists have, however, argued that whereas science is reproducible and communicable, this kind of inner spiritual or mystical experience is not. That is supposed to imply that it is not worthy of serious consideration. The force of this accusation is gradually weakening with the advances in scientific knowledge itself. With the advent of Chaos Theory and the theory of complex systems it is now evident that reproducibility holds only for systems in Nature which respond in a small and controlled manner to small perturbations. Such systems are simple and linear, but they are very atypical in Nature. Most natural systems are complex and non-linear. Complexity is a relatively new approach to science that studies the relationships between parts that give rise to the collective behaviour of a system, and how the system interacts with its environment. Non-linear systems are extraordinarily sensitive to small perturbations, and show unpredictable and chaotic behaviour, although the underlying dynamics is deterministic. Such chaotic behaviour is known as “deterministic chaos”. For example, the flapping of the wings of a butterfly here and now can influence the course of a distant hurricane weeks later. It is called the “butterfly effect”.Complex systems, on the other hand, respond in unpredictable but organized ways. They allow only predictions of patterns of behaviour. Complex systems live on the edge of chaos, i.e. on the borderline of order and chaos. The human brain is the most complex system in Nature, consisting of a hundred billion neurons of various types forming a complex network. No wonder it does not show reproducible behaviour like a simple linear system. This is only to be expected scientifically. So, in today’s perspective it would be brash to dismiss mystical experience as spurious simply because it is not reproducible.

Limitations of Language and

Two-valued Logic: Avaktavyam

What about the accusation of incommunicability of mystical experience? Scientific progress has traditionally depended on precision of concepts and on an unambiguous use of language for communication. The logic of classical science, including Einstein’s relativity theory, has been that of Aristotle in which the principle of the excluded middle (tertium non datur) is accepted as a law of thought. A proposition is either true or false; it cannot be both true and false or something in the middle. However, this kind of language or logic has its limitations. For example, it is in conflict with the nature of the atomic and subatomic domain described by quantum mechanics which is notoriously difficult to understand. As Paul Dirac wrote:

It has become increasingly evident in recent times, however, that nature works on a different plane. Her fundamental laws do not govern the world as it appears in our mental picture in any very direct way, but instead they control a substratum of which we cannot form a mental picture without introducing irrelevancies. – Dirac 1930

The difficulties have been expressed in terms of certain paradoxes like the paradox of wave-particle duality, the Schrӧdinger cat paradox and the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) paradox. In quantum mechanics an “unobserved” microscopic system like an electron or an atom is described as if it is in several places at the same time or in different energy states at the same time (as in a hydrogen atom).It is like saying that when nobody looks at it, a table is everywhere in a room, but the moment someone looks at it, it appears in a definite place. Similarly, whenever an electron is observed, it appears in a definite place at a definite time or with a definite energy, and the “ambiguity” of its unobserved state is resolved. This is also somewhat like what happens when we toss a coin. If it is a perfect coin and the tossing is fair, it is in an indefinite state (neither “head” nor “tail”) while in the air, but when it drops back on the table and finally settles down, it is always found to be either “head” or “tail”. It is impossible to predict what an individual outcome of a toss will be, but if a sufficiently large number of fair trials is done, one finds that “heads” and “tails” appear with equal probability, i.e. with 50-50 chance. This is because the mid-air state of the coin does not follow the principle of the excluded middle. We cannot use ordinary language to describe such a state. The same is true of microscopic quantum entities. An electron is not something we can “see” with our eyes or feel with our body like water. It is an abstraction that has to be imagined. There is therefore no compulsive reason why it should be made to conform to familiar sense objects. Quantum mechanics says it must be in all possible states at the same time until an observation is made on it, and it is the best theory we have of microscopic entities. Following the Jaina theory of Syādvāda and P.C. Mahalanobis (1954), I would call such a state an avaktavyam state, i.e. an ineffable state, an ambiguous state. When a scientist insists on observing such a state, she forces it to appear in an ordinary state with the help of her measuring apparatus which must conform to Aristotelian logic. This is necessary in order to communicate the observed results to other scientists in an unambiguous manner so that they can verify them. The probabilistic outcome is a consequence of that – there is no causal link between a state that defies Aristotelian logic and a state that does not. This, I think, is the origin of quantum indeterminacy or uncertainty.

Schrӧdinger was quick to point out that since there is no intrinsic length or mass scale in quantum mechanics, this state of affairs should also apply equally to familiar macroscopic objects like, for example, cats. Imagine a cat locked up in an opaque box inside which there is also a radioactive substance, some poisonous gas in a glass flask and a hammer which breaks the flask, releasing the poisonous gas and killing the cat the moment a radioactive decay occurs. However, nobody can predict with certainty when a radioactive decay will occur – it is a completely random process with an average lifespan. Hence, according to quantum mechanics the cat can be both dead and alive within the average lifespan of the radioactive substance. He called such a state of a cat a “grotesque” state to emphasize the point that such states do not actually occur in Nature: whenever one opens the box, one finds the cat to be either alive or dead.

According to quantum mechanics, an unobserved system like the cat in a box evolves in a deterministic fashion following the Schrӧdinger equation. But, when a measurement is done on it, for example by opening the box and looking at the cat inside, the cat undergoes a sudden mysterious change which is not quantum mechanical and which results in a definite outcome with a predictable probability, i.e. a dead or a live cat with definite probabilities. This is called the “measurement problem” of quantum mechanics – quantum mechanics requires a mysterious non-quantum process for its own completion. I think this problem of incompleteness of quantum mechanics that Einstein consistently emphasized has its origin in the unobserved state of quantum systems being non-Aristotelian or avaktavyam. Such states can however be described mathematically as vectors in a Hilbert space.

Werner Heisenberg, who discovered the Uncertainty Principle, came to Kolkata in 1929 to meet Rabindranath Tagore. Here is an account of the visit written by D.M. Bose:

Heisenberg appeared one day without any previous introduction in the University College of Science. Some of us ... arranged a lunch at Firpo’s for Heisenberg. Rabindranath was in Calcutta at that time. Heisenberg having expressed a desire to see him, it was arranged that we were to take him the same afternoon to Jorasanko (the poet’s residence). On arrival, we found that [the poet’s son] had arranged a fine tea for us. We left Heisenberg to have a talk with the poet. I do not remember what was the substance of his talk, but Heisenberg was very much impressed by the poet’s illuminating personality which reminded him of a prophet of the old days. – Sen 1985

Unfortunately, no one recorded the conversation. However, in his book Uncommon Wisdom, Fritjof Capra writes:

In 1929 Heisenberg spent some time in India as the guest of the celebrated Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, with whom he had long conversations about science and Indian philosophy. This introduction to Indian thought brought Heisenberg great comfort, he told me. He began to see that the recognition of relativity, interconnectedness and impermanence as fundamental aspects of physical reality, which had been so difficult for himself and his fellow physicists, was the very basis of Indian spiritual traditions. “After these conversations with Tagore,” he said, “some of the ideas that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense. That was a great help for me.” – Capra 1988

In an interview with David Peat, Heisenberg said:

The point is we are bound up with a language, we are hanging in the language. If we want to do physics, we must describe our experiments and the results to other physicists, so that they can be verified or checked by others. At the same time, we know that the words we use to describe the experiments have only a limited range of applicability. That is a fundamental paradox which we have to confront. We cannot avoid it; we have simply to cope with it, to find what is the best thing we can do about it.