The Wholesome Scientist

A wholesome scientist is a person that researches Life through the disciplines of science, religion, philosophy and yoga. In the past, great men of science were also great philosophers as well as people of deep faith, but modern days see scientists specialize into narrow niches of the particular research with little or no time to explore beyond their field of interest. The volume of scientific knowledge is now so vast that man would probably need a few lifetimes to master it all, but even if we agree that specialization is necessary, everybody should actively seek answers to the basic questions of existence. Where are we coming from; how did we become what we are; why are we here and where are we going?

A wholesome scientist is one who is actively seeking answers to these questions by using all the available knowledge resources with one restriction; that the correlated data thus gathered expands his understanding of Life and its purpose. If you ask a skeptic he will tell you that there is no particular purpose to Life; it is aimless and there is no apparent goal that we should strive for (apart form achieving “success” and having a “good time”). If you ask a believer he will tell you that the purpose is to be good and earn a good place in Paradise after one is gone from this place.

A small digression here; rationalists argue that if God designed the world, it should be nothing less than prefect. As Cornelius G. Hunter explains in his book “Science’s Blind Spot”, this argument is stemming from religious concerns; but we should add in here that it is not supported by religion. By the closer examination we will find that all believers (whatever the religion) believe in a better afterlife, which means that this place (earth) is far from perfect. On the other hand, religion teaches us that God is all powerful, all knowing and omnipresent, so He must have designed the universe as it is: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.“ (Isaiah 45:7)

Therefore, the universe as it is must be perfect for whatever purpose God intended it to have, because He doesn’t create imperfect systems, right? What man regards as perfect does not necessarily mean it’s deemed perfect by God, and until man attains the full knowledge of this drama of creation, he can hardly grasp the Perfection itself. As a being created in His image (Genesis 1:26) man displays too little of the omniscience and omnipotence inherited from the Father and is essentially ignorant about the origin of the world and of himself. No parent wants uneducated children, so also God wants us to wake up to our own abilities as His offspring.

The other thing is that if this place would be perfect, then everybody would stay in it forever. However, after experiencing enough of the ever-alternating pleasure and pain, man exclaims: ‘Stuff this, I’m going Home!’ (see Luke 15:17) God does not want us forever apart from Him; as Moses tells us in Genesis, He was happy with the design of this universe only after finishing all of the necessary evolutionary stepping stones for the consciousness, locked down in matter, to go back into its source in Spirit.

Nevertheless, the existence of evil is a great puzzle for man. Paramhansa Yogananda explains its role in his book “God Talks with Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita” (BG): “Certain dogmas try to ‘explain away’ evil by saying that God is perfect and cannot know evil; yet Jesus prayed to God: ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,’ (Matthew 6:13) i.e., ‘Do not allow us to succumb to the influence and test of the evil created by Thee.’ The Omnipresent Lord knows that He is the creator of evil as a test to encourage human beings to shun sin and thus recover their inner divine nature. By creating a film of light-and-shadow images and passing it through a movie projector, a director manipulates the one beam that projects the pictures of both the villain and the hero on the screen; the villain was included to make people disgusted with his ways and, by use of discrimination, applaud the great hero. For the same reason, evil exists to turn people’s attention to the better ways of virtue…”

“Good and evil must ever be complements on this earth. Everything created must bear some guise of imperfection. How else could God, the Sole Perfection, fragment His one consciousness into forms of creation distinguishable from Himself? There can be no images of light without contrasting shadows. Unless evil had been created, man would not know the opposite, good. Night brings out the bright contrast of day; sorrow teaches us the desirability of joy. Though evil must come, woe to him by whom it comes. He who is enticed by delusion to play the villain’s part must suffer the villain’s sad karmic fate, while the hero receives the hallowed reward of his virtue. Knowing this truth, we must shun evil; becoming good, we ultimately rise to God’s high estate – beyond both evil and good.” (BG V:15)

Can science itself prove or disprove the existence of God? It seems that over the past few centuries science gradually adopted the naturalistic framework into which every new theory must fit before even being considered as a theory. Apart from this established naturalistic view of the world, all other views (e.g. theistic) are simply ignored leaving them out of the research scope. Such attitude is geared toward removing God from the picture, but is science really sure that it knows and understands all of the ‘variables’ in Life’s equation?

It seems that there is a very good reason for such thinking though. Few hundred years ago, modern technology like space travel, satellite communications or television might be considered crazy, impossible or even supernatural, but these days we regard them as perfectly natural because we understand the principles they operate upon. Poking into the genetic framework of Life might be even considered blasphemous, but all of this is proving how tremendously science has advanced in the last century (and there seems to be no end to it). So it is perfectly natural for a scientist to assume that if we can’t explain something today (by the means of the existing natural framework) it doesn’t mean that we won’t be able to do so in the future. Hence, skepticism and rejection are common reactions to any theory that has theistic postulates.

Nevertheless, by definition, God is supernatural. The new theory “The Geometric Concept of Matter” confirms that God is the universal substance out of which everything was created. This universal substance vibrates to create matter, hence this substance cannot itself be material but is rather immaterial (or spiritual if you prefer). And this is the transcendent God that religions talk about; the One who is unruffled by all the commotion created by the above mentioned primordial vibration, and is rather its cause and its origin (see Swami Sri Yukteswar’s book “The Holy Science” – HS, chapter 1, sutras 1-3).

So, here we are, science can prove that God exists! The above mentioned new theory does exactly that, if we believe what religion told us about the Lord in the first place – that He is the cause of this vibration and that He is the substance that vibrates. “Spirit, being the only existing Substance, had naught but Itself with which to create.” explains Paramhansa Yogananda (see his book “The Second Coming Of Christ” – SCC, Discourse 1) and also writes that “The intelligent cosmic energy of Aum that issues forth from God, and is manifestation of God, is the creator and substance of all matter. This holy vibration is the link between matter and Spirit.” (BG I:15-18).

The question is, can science really “measure” the Infinite; can it tell us what God is and what are His qualities? Well, science deals only with the created stuff, the natural; it restricted itself to search only within the naturalistic domain. What is supernatural (beyond creation) cannot be measured by science in the strict sense, but glimpsed through inference by studying its effect – the creation itself. Here is where religion and philosophy come into the picture and this is why science will never be able to “stamp out” religion; it simply cannot provide the same types of answers that religion and philosophy do.

The above mentioned new scientific theory does confirm (if positively verified by a broader scientific community) the following religious beliefs: “God is the source of all”, “God is omnipresent”, “God is omnipotent”, “God is eternal (i.e. outside of space and time)”, so we see that science is a very useful tool in man’s pursuit of God, but we also need to recognize that the same applies to the religion and philosophy. Each one of these aims at the particular sphere of man’s search for the bigger meaning. Science is searching the natural, religion is searching supernatural and philosophy is “marrying” the two (through the common sense) and applying them in everyday life. Do not ask from science to be more religious, nor religion to abandon God; it seems as though these have to be as they are in order to provide the perfect backdrop for the hide and seek that God is playing with us.

OK, so we covered science, religion and philosophy, but what about the yoga, why do we need that tool? Isn’t it just a set of physical exercises and some weird postures that “nobody” can perform? Before we answer this, we should ask ourselves how did the above mentioned ideas and knowledge of God become part of the religion in the first place? They tell us that it was received directly from God by the people that could communicate and be intimate with Him, but is it possible that each one of us would also be able to communicate directly with our Father?

Fortunately, there is an “instrument” which can be tuned up to the divine frequencies and that instrument is man’s mind. This tuning is achieved by yoga, which is a step by step process (see Patanjali’s Yoga sutras) that man must follow to quiet his restless mind (i.e. to still the waves of emotions, impressions, wandering thoughts and so on) and make it suitable to listen to the very subtle Lord: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) By yoga, man is gradually united with the Lord, and by expanding his consciousness into the Infinite, he experiences what God is and receives the answers to all of his questions.

About the form of yoga named Kriya Yoga, Paramhansa Yogananda writes in his “Autobiography of a Yogi” (chapter 26): “Kriya is an ancient science. Lahiri Mahasaya received it from his guru, Babaji, who rediscovered and clarified the technique after it had been lost in the Dark Ages. ‘The Kriya Yoga which I am giving to the world through you in this nineteenth century,’ Babaji told Lahiri Mahasaya, ‘is a revival of the same science which Krishna gave, millenniums ago, to Arjuna, and which was later known to Patanjali, and to Christ, St. John, St. Paul, and other disciples.’ …”

“Kriya Yoga is mentioned twice by the ancient sage Patanjali, foremost exponent of yoga, who wrote: ‘Kriya Yoga consists of body discipline, mental control, and meditating on Aum.’ Patanjali speaks of God as the actual Cosmic Sound of Aum heard in meditation. Aum is the Creative Word, the sound of the Vibratory Motor. Even the yoga-beginner soon inwardly hears the wondrous sound of Aum. Receiving this blissful spiritual encouragement, the devotee becomes assured that he is in actual touch with divine realms…”

“Untying the cord of breath which binds the soul to the body, Kriya serves to prolong life and enlarge the consciousness to infinity. The yoga method overcomes the tug of war between the mind and the matter-bound senses, and frees the devotee to reinherit his eternal kingdom. He knows his real nature is bound neither by physical encasement nor by breath, symbol of the mortal enslavement to air, to nature’s elemental compulsions…”

“The yogic science is based on an empirical consideration of all forms of concentration and meditation exercises. Yoga enables the devotee to switch off or on, at will, life current from the five sense telephones of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Attaining this power of sense-disconnection, the yogi finds it simple to unite his mind at will with divine realms or with the world of matter. No longer is he unwillingly brought back by the life force to the mundane sphere of rowdy sensations and restless thoughts. Master of his body and mind, the Kriya Yogi ultimately achieves victory over the ‘last enemy,’ death.

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men:
And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then. (Shakespeare: Sonnet #146). “

Because man’s mind and experiences cannot be easily plotted out, the results of the spiritual research performed within by a yogi are not easily shared or perhaps are not sharable at all. Though the steps are simple and clearly defined, each man will have different obstacles to overcome, different mind to start with and will in general need different time to master each step. Clearly, this is not a domain where research results are readily comparable and verifiable, so how does a wholesome scientist “compare” notes in this field of his or her research?

Yoga defines what God is, so by becoming one with the Lord through the practice of yoga, man starts displaying the divine qualities and hence testifies about the reality of such definitions. For example, God is Love and Joy (HS I:2), so when a yogi starts feeling this more often than not, then he or she can be sure that they are on the right path to become one with the Love and Joy they seek. God is also everywhere and in everything, so when a yogi beholds the whole mankind as his brothers and sisters and respects all creatures as expressions of God’s consciousness then he testifies about God’s omnipresence.

As one can guess, the “research notes” in the domain of the spiritual activity are not so much writable on paper or verifiable in an argumentative scientific discussion; rather they are more suitable to be noted down in one’s book of life and to be exposed and verified through one’s deeds and kind words. But, because so many saints and sages (of all religions) testified with their lives that such research is not just possible but the desired results are attainable, we can be confident that we will get the same results if we (diligently) follow in their footsteps. Isn’t the desire for such certainty the main principle behind the scientific method?

Nito

Dwapara 308 ( A.D. 2008 )

Tags: science, religion, philosophy, yoga, Life, existence

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