Departments of Physics and of Comparative Religion
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
As a young man I was a member of the Youth Hostels Association of India. Their
motto used to be, and I imagine it still is, Charan vaµi madhu vindati
(wandering one gathers honey). Only recently I re-encountered this in Abitareya
Brauhmana (7.15.5) with delight. I would like to offer this paper to wanderers,
travellers and path-makers all over the world.
Juxtaposition Without Conquest: One of the outstanding features of our
age since the Second World War is that now a juxtaposition of two major cultures
or worldviews does not necessarily mean that one of them has to be the victor
and the other the vanquished. This is one of the important features of post-modernism
in the West. The modernist project in the West, dearly beloved and strenuously
pursued during the period from the European Renaissance to the Holocaust in
Nazi Germany and the Atomic incineration in Japan, was predicated on many assumptions
and attitudes. Among these was the assumption – very much supported both
by the Western intellectual tradition and by the major Western religion –
that there is one expression of and one way to truth and that the West has it,
religiously in the form of Christianity and epistemologically in the form of
modern science. Since the Second World War it has been difficult for the Western
intelligentsia to seriously hold this view. This may still be the case in ordinary
mass psychology, but most of the intellectuals no longer subscribe to this attitude,
certainly not as strongly as they used to. In liberal scientific circles it
is fashionable now to acknowledge other ways of knowing; and in liberal Christian
circles the official Church dogma Extra ecclesia nulla salus (Outside
the Church there is no salvation) creates various degrees of embarrassment and
is often denied and downplayed.
There are several reasons for this massive shift in attitude, some of which
are consequences of inherent elements in the two Western institutions mentioned
above, namely, science and Christianity. The amazing acceleration and increase
in the means of transportation and communication brought about by modern science
and technology has resulted in a large number of people from different cultures
interacting with people from other cultures –businessmen, students, teachers,
volunteers, immigrants, tourists, scholars.
Christianity has also in its activities contributed to the major attitudinal
difference, more as an unintended consequence. Although very much an Asian religion
in its origins, Christianity has for the last sixteen hundred years been culturally
primarily associated with Western culture. The conversion of Emperor Constantine
in the fourth century CE made Christianity very much an imperial religion. All
the major Christian doctrines were established in the first seven Councils which
were all convened by imperial initiative. The relationship of Christianity with
the centres of power in Europe has continued for so long, including later the
association of Christianity with the colonial powers of Europe, that a deep
Eurocentricism and a sense of superiority adhere to Christian dogma and practice,
including the conviction that no one can be saved without conversion to Christianity.
The conversions themselves have resulted in a shift of religious demographics.
Until 1920, more than 80% of all the Christians in the world were of European
descent. Since 1980 however the majority of Christians in the world are of non-European
descent. And a great many of the Christians now live in places where they are
a religious minority. Coupled with a general decline of European colonialism,
this has activated a dialogue of worldviews. About a decade ago, the World Council
of [Christian] Churches was meeting in British Columbia, Canada. A television
report on one of their open meetings was a particularly colourful spectacle,
much of the colour being in the delegates present there from various ethnic
groups.
However, the Eurocentricism, and the associated sense of superiority of the
European races and culture, which has very much coloured Christian doctrine,
does not seem to have yet suffered the fact of the shift in religious demographics.
The late Paulos Mar Gregorios who was the Metropolitan of the Syrian Orthodox
Church in Delhi told me of an incident which illustrates this. Metropolitan
Gregorios was a man of much substance: in addition to his religious qualifications
he was a distinguished scholar. At one time he was the President of the Indian
Philosophical Congress. He was also for some time the President of the World
Council of [Christian] Churches. In this capacity he had an audience with the
present Pope at the Vatican.
Metropolitan Gregorios asked the Pope what he thought was the reason for such
a small percentage of Indians having converted to Christianity although it had
been in India for so long. The Pope said to him the reason was that the Indian
mind was not developed enough to understand the subtlety of thought of St. Gregory
of Nyssa or of St. Thomas Aquinas. Somewhat taken aback Metropolitan Gregorios
asked the Pope if he had read Shankara or Nagarjuna. He was immediately shown
out of the room where the audience was taking place. I found the incident merely
amusing because I did not find this surprising at all, but he had been much
saddened by it, for the issue was more personal for him. As he said, he realized
for the first time and first hand that every Indian Christian is considered
to be a second class Christian in the Vatican. This was even more galling for
him because he belonged to a branch of Christianity as ancient as any.
In due course, all this is bound to change. However strongly entrenched, such
attitudes hardly represent the best of Christianity. Non-Western cultures of
the world, and certainly India, have brought forth or have fostered quite distinct
sorts of Christian understanding, resulting, in the case of India, from interactions
between Hindu and Christian worldviews and theologies. Some people, such as
Father Bede Griffiths, have set up Christian ashrams in India where they
have tried to incorporate many distinctly Indian ceremonies and rituals. Many
others have learned meditation in the context of Hinduism or Buddhism and have
set up Christian ashrams in the West. However, the transformations needed
are much deeper than these.
Inter-pilgrim Rather Than Inter-faith Dialogue: These days when I visit
my family in the city of Chandigarh, I hardly meet a person who does not have
a relative, at most one removed, who has not been to one or another Western
country. Dialogue of worldviews is not merely an academic matter for discussion
in learned assemblies. When people brought up in very different cultures, with
different religious and musical backgrounds, whisper to each other sweet nothings
in intimate embraces, much non-verbal and direct dialogue of worldviews takes
place. A great deal of such dialogue is now going on, especially in large urban
centres all over the globe. In the felicitous words of Shakespeare, "in
the marriage of true minds let me not admit impediment." Certainly the
impediment of either the presence of words or their absence.
And the products of such dialogues include scholarly cross-cultural and comparative
studies of many kinds as well as literature, films, theatre, music which is
not bound by one geographical or national boundary or influence. Many examples
of very fruitful cross-cultural experimentation in the arts can be given. Above
all, an increasing number of children of different ethnic and cultural parentage,
often highly beautiful and intelligent, are by their very existence culture
jammers and embodiments of worldviews in dialogue.
Culture is not imbibed only from books. The festivals celebrated in one's family,
the music in the background, the myths and legends, the food one eats and much
more embody a culture. We all know of the musical dialogues between Yehudi Menuhin
and Ravi Shankara, and the attempts of Peter Brook to portray the intricacies
of the Mahabharata in theatre. These days the Governor General of Canada is
a woman of Chinese origin; and the premier of the Province of British Columbia
last year was an immigrant from Punjab. It was amusing to see a couple of years
ago in the financial section of a Canadian newspaper a photograph of the CEO's
of two large airlines which had just decided to merge, United Airlines and U.S.
Air. Both the CEO's were of Indian origin. I gather the people of Indian origin
in North America now constitute the wealthiest minority on a per capita basis.
All these people are engaged in a dialogue of worldviews, not necessarily under
such a title, but in their daily activities. There are more and more interactions
at various levels between people coming from quite different cultural backgrounds.
They may not be self-consciously engaging in dialogue, but exchange and dialogue
take place in any case.
I myself have now lived longer in the Western world than in India. For many
years now I have largely thought and expressed myself in a Western language.
Also, for years I was trained in Physics which surely has been the Western yoga
of knowledge par excellence, and I am married into Christianity and the Western
culture. I sometimes ask my friends, or organizers of the symposia where I am
sometimes invited to represent the East, what makes me an Easterner. I am happy
enough to be an Indian or an Easterner, but what makes me an Easterner? Place
of birth? Skin colour? Certain philosophical or religious inclinations?
The reason for raising such a simple question is that most of the symposia concerned
with East-West worldviews or interfaith dialogues seem to me to be too much
bound by the past, and do not appreciate the dynamic nature of cultures and
religions. If you have never seriously met someone from another culture or religion,
interfaith or inter-cultural conversation is obviously a good idea. But I wish
to suggest as strongly as I can that interfaith dialogues are at best a preliminary
stage of human to human dialogue and can even be an impediment to a deeper understanding.
Similarly a dialogue of cultures and worldviews can fix these faiths and cultures
into the entities that they were. In fact these cultures and religions are alive
and dynamic and are undergoing large and serious transformations right now.
An inter-pilgrim dialogue, which is of necessity somewhat trans-cultural, trans-religious
and trans-disciplinary, is needed to move into a future of a larger comprehension.
We don't need to stunt the growth or prevent a radical reformulation of the
traditions by insisting on everyone declaring their adherence to one or another
version of the past. Every major spiritual teacher, especially the really revolutionary
ones like the Buddha and Krishna and the Christ, pointed out both the great
call carried in the subtle core of the traditions as well as the betrayal
(a word which comes from the same root as tradition) of the real living
heart of the Sacred by them. To fix the other, or myself, in some past mould
and thus to deny the possibility of a wholly unexpected radical transformation
is surely a sin against the Holy Spirit: treating the other as an object rather
than a person, an 'it' and not as a 'Thou.'
I am also the father of children nourished by two great cultures; they are double
breeds. They willy-nilly carry on a dialogue of worldviews in their cells. They,
and so many of their friends who are in and out of our home, are more and more
transnational and transcultural in their attitudes, tastes and perspectives.
They are not convinced of the necessity of denying the great wisdom and practices
of other religions because of an adherence to some exclusivist dogma of one
or another religion. They can take delight in and be nourished by not only the
two cultures of their parents but even others because they are not wholly hemmed
in by the conditioning of one particular culture. Freedom of movement from one
position to another, from one language to another, bears the seeds of movement
without position – a dance of delight, a taste of Brahman, the Vastness.
Shadows of the Sun: As long as we speak in terms of defined identities
and engage in inter-faith or inter-cultural dialogues, we add to the entrenchment
of the 'faiths' and 'traditions' of the past and interfere with their dynamic
transformations which alone bespeak of the life and vitality of the traditions.
Here I will take an illustration of two of the very subtle insights, one of
India and the other of the Biblical tradition, to indicate how the past formulations
of these insights, possibly their highest insights, have produced their shadows.
From India, we take the insistence of all the sages on the oneness of all there
is. This is one of the fundamental truths of Sanatana Dharma, a more
appropriate label for the Indian tradition, from the Rig Veda through Gautama
Buddha, Mahavira, Nagarjuna, Shankara, Kabir, Nanak, Ramakrishna to Ramana in
our own times. Sometimes this insight is expressed in a stark and transpersonal
manner, such as Shankara's realization that all is Brahman and therefore Brahman
satya jagat mithya (Brahman is truth, the world, if seen apart from It,
is false) and sometimes in more personal terms such as in the Bhagavad Gita
that all there is is Krishna. In spite of the differences in the formulations
over several thousand years, the degree of realization and embodiment of this
essential truth marks the degree of largeness of being and wisdom of a sage.
Attachment to an exclusive traditional formulation in terms of oneness
has mitigated against the recognition of uniqueness of each individual
manifestation. In the realm of encountering other religions, an abstract commitment
to the essential unity of all religions in the Indian mind has not often permitted
a detailed study of and enjoyment of the wondrous and quite remarkably different
manifestations of various religions.
It is often claimed by well-meaning liberal Hindus that Christianity is the
same as the Bhaktimarga of Hinduism and leads to the same truth. A practical
implication is that very few Hindus have ever made a detailed and serious study
of Christianity or of any other religion. There are happy exceptions, but very
few in the long history of the encounter of India with non-Indian religions.
Can a person, or a religion or a culture, be satisfied and feel acknowledged,
if they are told that they are all essentially Divine, or lead to Divinity,
and that therefore there is no need to engage with their particularity? In an
analogy to be found in the Chandogya Upanishad (6.1.4), and much quoted and
admired by the Vedantists, it is said that clay alone is real, while its modifications
are only names arising from speech. However true this statement may be at the
mountain peak of consciousness, a vantage point vouchsafed to very few persons
in human history, is it not here below a facile and destructive dismissal of
all art, uniqueness, and individuality? Is an exquisite Chinese vase the same
as a lump of clay?
From the Biblical traditions we could take the very subtle and powerful enunciation
of monotheism in the Jewish Shema: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is
one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy might" (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). This has had
an enormous impact on Christianity and Islam as well. Monotheism is often considered
by pious people and scholars in the West to be the acme of religious understanding.
But no other religious notion has had a more pernicious consequence in creating
bigotry and fanaticism than monotheism. 'Monotheism' everywhere has resulted
in 'My-theism' leading to warfare against other people's religious forms. No
one would say that there is one God and it is not my God but yours. The late
Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz once said:
"We owe to monotheism many marvelous things, from cathedrals to mosques. But we also owe to it hatred and oppression. The roots of the worst sins of Western civilization – the Crusades, colonialism, totalitarianism – can be traced to the monotheistic mindset... For a pagan, it was rather absurd that one people and one faith could monopolize the truth."1
Octavio Paz (who was appointed the Mexican ambassador to India in the sixties,
a position which he regarded highly important both in his life and in his work
as witnessed in various books written during his stay In India, especially The
Grammarian Monkey and East Slope) could not be unmindful of the fact
that beautiful sacred buildings could hardly be said to be exclusively related
with monotheism – witness the marvelous temples of the 'polytheistic' and
trans-theistic Hindus and Buddhists. Many of these temples were destroyed by
the monotheistic fervor which views every other religion's sacred images and
buildings with lack of respect or even hatred.
The subtlety of understanding which insists that the Ultimate cannot be captured
in any image or form cannot be sustained by the mind unprepared to live without
crutches of form, colour and name. Every religion has idols; it is only other
peoples' idols the monotheists find troublesome, not their own. All scriptures,
theologies, liturgies, no less than images and idols, are particular expressions
of religious understandings. Mental idols are more pernicious than idols made
of wood and stone because they cannot be so easily seen or seen through. Here,
largely owing to shortage of time and space, I would simply quote the distinguished
scholar of religion, Wilfred Cantwell Smith (with whom I was privileged to teach
a course on Religions of India many years ago):
"For Christians to think that Christianity is true, or final, or salvific, is a form of idolatry ... Our conclusion, then, is this. In comparative perspective, one sees that 'idolatry' is not a notion that clarifies other religious practices or other outlooks than one's own; yet it can indeed clarify with some exactitude one's own religious stance, if one has previously been victim of the misapprehension that the divine is to be fully identified with or within one's own forms. Christians have been wrong in thinking that Hindus are formally idolaters. We would do well, on the other hand, to recognize that we Christians have substantially been idolaters, insofar as we have mistaken for God, or as universally final, the particular forms of Christian life or thought.""Christianity – for some, Christian theology – has been our idol."
"It has had both the spiritual efficacy of 'idols' in the good sense, and serious limitations of idolatry in the bad sense."2
If we keep hanging on to 'faiths' frozen in some past formulations, we certainly
make them into idols in the pejorative sense of this word. Then it is difficult
to see how one would reconcile the insistence on the oneness of all there
is with the uniqueness of each manifestation, and the clarity of knowing that
the Ultimate is beyond any forms whatsoever and the generosity that sees the
Divine in all forms and celebrates image making as an aid to seeing the Divine.
Inter-pilgrim exchanges are different by nature. Much can be exchanged on
the mountain slope when one pauses with pilgrims from different directions
for refreshment and for learning the dangers which lie on the journey ahead.
It is only the actual voyagers on the spiritual paths, the sages and saints
in all the traditions, who simultaneously experience the oneness and uniqueness
of each creature, and who stress the ineffability of what they have experienced
on the mountain peak while being grateful for all the images, forms, icons,
scriptures, prayers and rosaries they used as helpful aids on their journeys.
One may wonder if future pilgrims nourished in the global culture would still
feel constrained to label themselves as Hindus or Christians. Even if they
do, they will be Hindus and Christians of very different sorts from the ones
in the past. Lest we should think this is all too romantic, we have already
had models of such with great beings (mahatmas) with large perspectives: J.
Krishnamurti, Shri Aurobindo, Thomas Merton, Father Thomas Berry, Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, to name only a few. Roaming in many landscapes,
physical and cultural, one can gather much insight.
Looking at Ganga and Jordan from an Aeroplane: We can count on, or at
least hope, that the holdback religions will give way to world spirituality
and world theology. I am occasionally criticized by reviewers who are offended
by what they regard to be 'spilling Ganges water into the Jordan.' It is certainly
true that my eyes have been affected by the light reflected from the Ganga.
It is also true that the world I live in now and most of the people I encounter
have been more influenced by teachings either spoken loudly or whispered on
the banks of the Jordan. If the ancient texts are going to have contemporary
relevance, both the Ganga and the Jordan will have to be kept simultaneously
in view. I could not have arrived where I am now without flying over many rivers,
including the Ganga and the Jordan. A view from an aeroplane surely does reveal
different aspects of our planet than does the view from a camel by the Jordan
or from a bullock cart by the Ganga.
It surprises me that so many people who are convinced of the universal and objective
nature of scientific knowledge work so diligently to find in the latest discoveries
of the sciences an exclusive vindication of statements in the Vedas or in the
Qur'an or of dogmas accepted by the Church Councils at some stage in history.
That we are Hindus or Jews or Christians largely depends on where we happened
to have been born. It is extremely difficult to believe that truth suddenly
changes across a border defined by a river or a mountain range which correspond
to political boundaries of past or present empires. I do not have any rigorous
data about this, but I imagine that easily 98% or even more people in the world
sooner or later – especially at the time of marriages or funerals –
revert to the religion which they inherited from their forefathers, with minor
variations on the theme. This is quite understandable for, just like the ordinary
languages, much of our emotional-religious language is acquired in early childhood
and we make sense of the deeper religious aspirations with the aid of these
acquired categories of feeling and thought. It is very likely that people who
vehemently adhere to one creed or dogma would equally vehemently adhere to another
if they had been born in another religious context. The recognition that others
exist, as thinking, feeling and autonomous beings sometimes engaged with ultimate
concerns, is a step towards freedom from self-occupation and self-importance,
a step of crucial import in spiritual awakening.
Attunement to the spiritual dimension surely is an attunement to a quality
of vibration, not exclusively to a particular form of the instrument producing
the vibration. It has not been easy for some to accept that one can have a
transfusion of blood from those whose skin colour is different from their
own. It is much harder to allow the possibility of spiritual nourishment underneath
religious and racial skins. In my own case, I was born a Hindu. There is much
that is good and wise in the Hindu tradition. I am certain I could have been
dealt a worse heritage. But the Hindus do not have and cannot have a monopoly
on Truth or Wisdom or Insight. One wishes to and strives to grow up, a part
of which is to develop a connection with a level of unitive consciousness
indicated by the remark of Maharishi Ramana, "There are no others."
This is not an elimination of others in self-occupation, but seeing through
the otherness in a integrative perception. It will sadden me if I am merely
a Hindu at my death, restricted to my own selfhood defined by contingencies
of history or geography. The past is always with us and in us, but future
vision needs to be based on some ability to fly with freedom from the past.
"Sir," answered the woman, "I can see you are a prophet. Our
ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you people claim that Jerusalem
is the place where men ought to worship God." Jesus told her, "Believe
me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this
mountain nor in Jerusalem... Yet an hour is coming, and is already here, when
those who are real worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth.
Indeed, it is just such worshippers the Father seeks. God is Spirit, and those
who worship Him must worship in Spirit and truth." (John 4:19-24).
In spiritual matters what is most relevant is how the quality of the person
is affected by whatever theology or philosophy or ritual one finds helpful.
The person cannot be left out of these concerns, neither oneself nor others.
Inter-faith dialogues are good and possibly helpful, inter-pilgrim dialogues
are likely to be much more fruitful. We need to be careful not to fix these
faiths and the faithful in them. Surely the important thing is to see and
to relate with the person behind the faith. It is not they are Jews and we
are Jains, it is more that some of us have a Jewish background and heritage
and some others of us have a Jain formation. At our best, we would wish to
be related to the Ultimate or to God who all our sages say is neither Jewish
nor Jain. If we are permanently restricted to relate to each other only as
a Hindu to a Christian, and not as a person to a person, I wonder if we can
ever relate as a person to the Person.
As and when religions do their job of insisting on the primacy of the person
over any system – theological, metaphysical, economic or political –
they are naturally occupied with the cultivation of wise and compassionate people.
When such people engage in science, or any other activity, they are naturally
concerned for the welfare of all beings, including the earth – not only
as generalizations, but also in concrete relationships. As we draw inspiration
and instruction from the wise sages and prophets of the past, we shall not be
occupied with only our personal salvation, but also for the enlightenment of
those who will welcome the dawn with song when we are no longer here. The development
of a comprehensive person, one who is closer and closer to the First Person
Universal, less 'I am this' or 'I am that' and more as 'I AM,' is a calling
of all religions, so that we can awaken from the dead, as St. Paul beautifully
said (Ephesians 4:13), to "mature manhood, measured by nothing less than
the full stature of Christ."
However, dogmatic churches and institutions have a strong hold and much vested
interest in preventing a free flow of ideas. Many years ago I had written a
book called The Yoga of the Christ.3 This was a loving look at the Gospel
According to St. John, and somewhat to my surprise it was translated into several
languages. I had such a pitiful request from the Greek publisher to allow him
to change the title, for as he said, "The Orthodox Church will have our
publishing house burned down if we published a book with a title containing
both 'Yoga' and 'Christ.'"
There are signs everywhere of pilgrims on the spiritual paths, and even cultures
on the large finding something of value in the other – not only because
the other is much like us in many aspects and at many levels, but precisely
because the other is different from us, a unique manifestation of the spirit,
and can teach us perspectives which have been excluded by our specific cultural
conditioning. At a cultural level, the turning of the East to the West has been
going on for some time and hardly needs to be elaborated in the context of India.
But there is also a serious turning in the West to the East, felicitously expressed
in the title of a book by Harvey Cox, Turning East.
I can give an example from a personal experience. In 1963, while a graduate
student in Physics at the University of Toronto, I was involved with a few friends
in organizing a symposium on various aspects of religion. We had many well-known
scholars, some of whom – such as Marshall McLuhan, Northrop Fry and Emile
Fackenheim later became great luminaries in a variety of fields. Given our limited
budget, we could not invite speakers from outside the Toronto-Boston-Montreal
zone. However, this is not a negligible region from the point of view of intellectual
competence. But we could not find anyone willing and able to speak about mysticism.
It was very difficult to find in the bookstores anything about or by any of
the many very great mystics in Christianity, not to speak of other religions.
A minister of one of the large Protestant sects in Toronto even went so far
as to say, "Mysticism has nothing to do with Christianity." When I
had the temerity to mention the names of St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of
Avilla, Meister Eckhart and several others, he blurted out something which he
immediately wished to retract, "If mysticism exists in Christianity, it
is just a Catholic heresy." Nowadays, one cannot go to any religion oriented
bookstore in Toronto or any other city in the Western world, including in the
small bookstore in the basement of the church whose minister had offered the
above insight, which is not chock-full of books on mystics and mysticism. There
has been a marked shift in interest towards inner spiritual experiences. In
the process, no doubt aided by the exposure of some Western pilgrims to the
Eastern traditions, there has been a joyous discovery or re-discovery of the
inner dimensions of Christianity.
The Lame and the Blind: "It is no exaggeration to say," remarked
A. N. Whitehead, "that the future course of history depends on the decision
of this generation as to the relations between religion and science." The
future travellers would also have to be very careful what sort of religion and
what sort of science they are going to try to relate. It is my expectation that
Indian scientists and scholars of religion, even more so the sages, will have
a great deal to contribute to an understanding of a sane relationship between
science and religion. Here, after some preliminary remarks, I shall discuss
only one issue in order to show that science-religion relationship cannot be
understood without a great deal of clarity about religion itself, as well as
about science.
One can imagine that science simply means knowledge, as it does etymologically,
and that any reasonable and systematic study of phenomena is science. It is
easy to forget that there are certain basic presuppositions of scientific inquiry
in the modern (post-sixteenth century) world, essentially derived from a particular
stage in the European and Christian philosophical and religious history, which
set modern science apart not only from the sciences of China and India but also
from the ancient European sciences. These presuppositions involve the very essence
of what makes any culture distinctive from another, namely issues dealing with
the place and meaning of human beings in the cosmos, the nature and aim of knowledge,
the relevance and importance of external experiments and internal experiences
as providing data and evidence, the value and significance of faith in the development
of science, and the like. Since the East – with all the immense variety
derived from the ancient, vast and at times mighty cultures of Egypt, Persia,
India, China, Korea, and Japan, and now comprising nearly three fifths of the
human race – has several very different perspectives on all of these basic
questions, it is not surprising that the Eastern views of science are also very
different from the Western view, in spite of the fact there is something basically
trans-national and trans-cultural about science. In part, it is an acknowledgment
of the importance of science and technology in the modern world that there are
different perspectives on them, for it is only on relatively unimportant matters
that people can easily agree.
It is not very easy to come to an agreement on what a phenomenon is, and certainly
not on what is reasonable, and therefore on what science is. For example,
a question can be raised whether a systematic internal investigation of various
subtle energies in the human body is a scientific study. Is Yoga a science?
The hesitation of the Western intellectuals in agreeing with this is understandable,
because science is not just any reasonable and systematic study of phenomenon,
as one may be tempted to think. It is a particular kind of study which is
based on identifiable philosophical assumptions and worldviews and which requires
external evidence, independent of the level of spiritual development of the
researcher and subject to repeatability, prediction and control.
These considerations and difficulties, involving the nature of reason and the
specific rationality underlying scientific procedures, are germane to the extremely
important question of the relationship of science and Spirit. Of course, it
is even more difficult to clearly define what Spirit is. However, one remark
may be made here: traditional knowledge asserts that Spirit is higher than and
prior to body-mind, sometimes for simplicity called only body. Even though
the various spiritual traditions may express it differently, they can all understand
and endorse the essence of 'In the beginning was the Spirit.'
As between different religions, so between religion and science. We need to
search for the best aspirations and the most universal truths of both. There
is a remark of Einstein that "Science without religion is lame, religion
without science is blind."4 This sounds so congenial and heart-warming
that one is inclined to accept it with enthusiasm. But a look at this and a
parallel remark of Ishvarakrishna in the Samkhyakarika from the second
century BCE reveals some quite interesting contrasts between the Eastern and
Western perspectives on knowledge and science. In speaking about Purusha
and Prakriti – which we may translate as Spirit and Nature –
Ishvarakrishna says, "Purusha without Prakriti is lame, Prakriti without
Purusha is blind."
The two statements are so widely separated in time, space and cultures –
and so clearly from independent and seminal minds – that we should celebrate
the happy similarity, but if we look at the two statements closely, we shall
discover a whole world of difference. Whatever else we understand by the metaphors
of 'blind' and 'lame', we certainly associate insight, clarity, light, illumination
with the opposite of being blind. All the great teachers say in one way or another
that we have eyes but we do not see, and that we have ears but we do not hear.
To see clearly is a mark of wisdom. Being lame, on the other hand, implies inability
to act, lack of will, incapacity, lack of movement and of involvement.
Therefore we can understand Einstein to say that vision – insight, wisdom,
clarity, illumination – comes from science, but motivation, action, will
and emotion come from religion. For Ishvarakrishna, on the other hand, insight
(prajñau), knowledge (jñauna), wisdom and enlightenment
(bodhi) belong to Purusha. Action, movement and emotion, the whole realm
of gross and subtle nature, belong to Prakriti.
We would all agree, including Einstein if he were here and willing to engage
with us using the same language, that the whole realm of science has to do
with Prakriti which literally means 'Nature,' which is what the natural sciences
try to study. Religion on the other hand is understood to deal with the Spirit
and with what is supernatural. This raises some interesting questions about
what we understand by science and by religion and of our expectations of these
two, and about the contrasts in the views of the East and of the West.
How do we reconcile these two similar sounding statements from two very great
minds? A paradox can lead us to conclude that only one side must be right
and the other wrong. This kind of conclusion may be warranted in matters involving
ordinary contradictions, but a profound paradox does not provide a contradiction
to be removed by choosing one side or the other. Such paradoxes often remind
us about the limitations of language, logic and thought when it concerns really
important things. Niels Bohr used to say that the opposite of a great truth
is another very great truth.
In the East, the basic diagnosis of the human situation is that our whole predicament
arises from ignorance (avidyau). The root cause of all our difficulties
is ignorance. From that arises, according to Vedanta, the confusion between
the Self and the non-Self, or between nitya (eternal) and anitya
(transient) and a clinging to the world of anitya. Thus arise fear and
fantasy and dukkha (suffering), mauyau (illusion), asmitau
(egoism). Gautama Buddha, Shankara, Patañjali and all other great teachers
of India have regarded the root of all our problems to be ignorance. If we know
rightly, right action will naturally follow. If insight leads to and controls
action and guides it, then there is right order – both internally and externally.
In other words, when Purusha – consciousness, spirit, seeing (which is
the sole function of Purusha the Seer, according to Patañjali) –
sees and leads Prakriti, there is awakening, enlightenment, freedom, moksha,
nirvana, and the like. Otherwise, a person is bound by dukkha, mauyau,
asmitau and kleshas (obstacles).
In the Western Biblical religions, the situation is quite different. The basic
human problem is not regarded to be ignorance, but rather self-will. In general,
from the Biblical point of view, to say that we are waiting to engage in right
action until we know rightly is mere self-justification. God has revealed what
needs to be known; we know what the right action is. Our problem is that we
do not want to obey the commandments and undertake right action. We want to
follow and act according to our own self-will, rather than God's will. "Nothing
burneth in hell except self-will," says Theologia Germanica (chapt.
34). The whole choiceless agony of the cross – the way of the Christ –
is in his last words in the Garden of Gethsamane: "If it is possible, let
this cup pass me by. Yet, not my will, but thine be done" (Mark 14:36).
In the East, in order to remedy the general human situation the need is for
true knowledge because right knowledge leads to right action. In the West, the
need is for right action – in obedience to the will of God; that is the
definition of faith according to St. Paul – for right action leads to right
knowledge. When Vivekananda speaks of bringing science and religion together,
for him, unlike for Einstein, science has to do with the dimension of action,
and yoga with that of true perception and insight.
At least on this score Einstein very much belongs to the Biblical Tradition
and it is not surprising that he should place religion on the side of action,
movement, motivation and the like. Insight for him belongs on the side of
science, a study of the dance of Prakriti, and itself is a part of Prakriti.
For Ishvarakrishna, insight is obtained through the practical spiritual discipline
of yoga. Following the usual practice, we can extend the usage of yoga to
include any spiritual path. which can happily include science as a spiritual
path for those who undertake it with that motivation. Then one would say that
in science and spirituality we have two different kinds of knowledge or insight,
not knowledge on one side and faith on the other, except in quite esoteric
sense of faith which is subtle and worthy. There is one kind of knowledge
in the sciences and another kind in spiritual disciplines such as Yoga, Sufism,
Zen, or Prayer of the Heart. However, the nature of insight, of knowledge,
and of the related perceptions, in the domain of science is quite different
from that in the realm of spirituality. One can take examples from the actual
practice of science and the practice of spirituality; but these cannot be
pursued here in detail.5
The purpose of all spiritual disciplines – which are not the same as religions
– is to relate us with the spiritual (which is to say non-prakriti, non-material,
including subtle material) dimensions. This tuning into the subtler dimensions
is possible only by cleansing our ordinary perceptions, and by quieting the
mind. The requirement of meditation as well as of any serious prayer is to be
present with stillness and a silence of the body, mind and the emotions, so
that one might hear a rose petal fall, the sound of the thoughts arising, and
the silence between thoughts. The arising of thoughts and emotions is a part
of the play of Prakriti, and watching this play with complete equanimity, without
being disturbed, belongs to Purusha. Without the presence of the seeing Purusha,
Prakriti is blind, lost in agitated movement and action; but Purusha needs Prakriti
for purposive activity. Alert without agitation, a centred-self without being
self-centred, a sage does nothing, nothing of his own or for himself, but everything
is accomplished. As Christ said, "I am not myself the source of the words
I speak: it is the Father who dwells in me doing His own work" (John 14:10).
Elsewhere, the scripture says, "The Lord shall fight for you; what you
need is to be still" (Exodus 14:14).
The core of all spiritual practice is freedom from the selfish, isolated and
isolating ego so that one can see more and more clearly and be related with
all more and more lovingly and selflessly. There can be no significance to insight,
wisdom or truth unless it expresses itself in love and compassion. The sages
in all the great traditions have said, in myriad ways, that Love is a fundamental
quality of the cosmos. Not only a quality but a basic constituent of Ultimate
Reality. The Rig Veda (X,129.4) says, "In the Beginning arose Love."
And the New Testament affirms: "God is love, and he who abides in love
abides in God, and God in him." (1 John 4:16) . The search for this great
Love at the very heart of the cosmos is both the beginning and the end of the
spiritual paths, expressed as service, mercy, compassion and ultimately as oneness
with all other beings. In the very last canto of the Paradisio in the
Divine Comedy Dante expresses his vision of the highest heaven:
There my will and desire
Were one with Love;
The love that moves
The sun and the other stars.
The great traditions, in wondrously different ways, have maintained that the
Highest Reality – variously labeled 'God,' 'First principle,' 'Original
Mind,' Brahman (literally, The Vastness) or simply 'That' – is Truth and
is Love. In our own days, Mahatma Gandhi maintained, almost like a practical
spiritual equation, less to be preached and more to be lived, that God = Truth
= Love. Theologia Germanica (chapter 31) says, "As God is simple
goodness, inner knowledge and light, he is at the same time also our will, love,
righteousness and truth, the innermost of all virtues."
The realization of this truth, vouchsafed to the most insightful sages in all
lands and cultures, is not something that can be abstracted, bracketed or packaged.
This insight needs to be continually regained, lived and celebrated. Only when
and wherever this realization is made concrete, is there an abundant life of
the Spirit. Spiritual disciplines are all concerned with integration and wholeness;
above all with the integration of Truth and Love. Love is required to know Truth,
and knowledge of Truth is expressed by love. "The knower of truth loves
me ardently," says Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita (7:17) but also, "Only
through constant love can I be known and seen as I really am, and entered into"
(11:54). I believe it was Meister Eckhart who said, "What we receive in
contemplation, we give out in love." A more contemporary remark is by Archimandrite
Vasileios of Mount Athos: "For if our truth is not revealed in love, then
it is false. And if our love does not flow from the truth, then it is not lasting."6
Of course, the search for Love can become merely a personal wish for comfort
and security, just as the search for Truth can become largely a technological
manipulation of nature in the service of the military or of industry –
of fear and greed. Whenever truth and love are separated from each other, the
result is sentimentality or dry intellectualism in which knowledge is divorced
from compassion. Partiality always carries seeds of violence and fear in it.
Thus in the name of 'our loving God' many people have been killed, and many
destructive weapons have been developed by a commitment to 'pure knowledge.'
But such is not the best of humanity – in science or in religion. Integrated
human beings in every culture and in every age have searched for both Truth
and Love, insight and responsibility, wisdom and compassion. Above the mind,
the soul seeks the whole, and is thus able to connect with wisdom and compassion.
How should we now recast the statement of Einstein or of Ishvarakrishna? Should
we say, for example, that 'Insight without compassionate action is lame, and
that compassion without wisdom is blind?' After all, all the sages have said
that true insight naturally flowers into compassion and love, like the fragrance
of a rose. To say that a Buddha – one who is discerning – is without
compassion is an oxymoron.
Any true reconciliation of science and spirituality is not found in a coexistence
of abstractions. Spiritual truth – unlike the scientific one – is
always a matter of direct perception which is whole and precisely because of
that reveals 'Minute Particulars' in the sense of William Blake or Patañjali
who says in Yoga Sutras (1:49), "The knowledge based on inference and testimony
is different from direct knowledge [obtained in the higher states of consciousness]
because it pertains to a particular object." This is why, the Biblical
traditions have tenaciously held to the experience of God who is a Unique Person
– or Purusha Vishesha in the language of Yoga Sutras (1: 24). It may even
be that in still higher states of consciousness, perception shifts from that
of minute particulars embedded in wholeness to that of Undifferentiated Oneness
so that what remains is Pure Seeing without any thing seen apart from it. Whatever
be the experience in these exalted states on the mountain top as it were, spiritual
vision always remains a matter of direct perception.
Einstein's own view of God is not based on an I-Thou encounter of concrete and
minute particulars. He finds it impossible to reconcile science and faith in
a personal God. He says, for example,
The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion
and of science lies in this concept of a personal God.... In their struggle
for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up
the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up the source of fear and hope
which in the past placed such a vast power in the hands of priests. In their
labours they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable
of cultivating the Good, the True and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This
is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.7
Whatever difficulties Einstein may find with the notion of a personal God, spiritual
perception is not of the same kind as a philosophic or scientific generalization
or abstraction. Pascal is truer to the Biblical understanding of God whose experience
led him to forever keep on his person the declaration 'God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob – not of the philosophers and scholars' because for him God is
a matter of experience, not an inference from a philosophical proposition or
a scientific hypothesis.
Both the direct spiritual super-sensuous perceptions and reasoned scientific
theorizing and experimentation, and corresponding philosophic abstractions,
can in principle reside in the same person – however rare the actual instances
of this may be. It is in the soul of the same whole person that a reconciliation
needs to take place – so that there can be purposive action without self-centredness,
individuality without egoism, and oneness with the all without loss of uniqueness.
Coming back to our paradox, could we say that 'Religion without scientific knowledge
is ineffective, but science without spiritual perception is insignificant'?
Above all, more than to any form whatsoever, scientific or religious, we must
turn or return to the presence of the Mystery. Let me bring again a quote from
Einstein:
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science... To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the centre of true religiousness.8
Let us not conclude for the conclusion or the Truth is in Vastness beyond
all formulations and forms. In being alive to the search one is alive. Openness
to the Sacred always calls for sacrifice, primarily of one's smallness, which
is buttressed by an exclusive identification with a particular religion or nation
or creed. A person who occupies neither this place nor that – physically
or intellectually – may be uneasy, but this is the price of being free
and in movement.
The only one realization which is needed is that there is a subtle world, and
that I am seen from that world. My existence now, here, is in the light of the
subtler world. To realize the presence of the subtle world and to live in the
light of that vision requires a continual impartial re-visiting of oneself,
which in its turn requires a sacrificing of self-occupation. What is needed
is the bringing of the religious mind (which is by definition quiet, compassionate,
comprehensive and innocent) to bear on all matters. Not only to science, but
also to technology, arts, government, education and other affairs.
And the religious mind – which is the mind which is suffused with a sense
of the Sacred – is cultivated in an individual soul. It is not a matter
of bringing knowledge systems or abstractions, such as science and religion
or theology, together. What is needed is a cultivation of a religious mind.
Without a transformation in the quality of the academic mind, the same old parochial
and fragmented mind will write histories and commentaries in the science-religion
arena rather than on other subjects. A transformation of the inquirers is needed.
Unless the researchers are transformed, not much will be gained by a change
in the field of their inquiries.
The new paradigm is always the perennial one. It is possible to have a level
of consciousness-conscience that sees the uniqueness of each being as well as
their oneness with the All. This is largely a matter of metaphysical and spiritual
transformation which requires an on-going sacrificing of one's smallness –
even more in the heart than in the mind. The new forms will naturally be different.
Truth has no history; expressions of Truth do. The new dawn, when we will no
longer be there to look at it with the usual eyes, will bring a new song and
a new word. But the Essential Word shall abide, often heard in the silence between
words.
Endnotes:
1 Los Angeles Times "Global Viewpoint" Interview by Editor Nathan
Gardels with Harvard Prof. Samuel Huntington, author of Clash of Civilizations.
http://www.lats.com/oneshots/ATTACK/c-102201.htm.
2 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, "Idolatry in Comparative Perspective", in
John Hick and Paul F. Knitter, eds. The Myth of Christian Uniqueness,
Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, U.S.A., 1987; pp. 553-68.
3 R. Ravindra, The Yoga of the Christ, Element Books, England, 1990;
re-issued in 1998 by Inner Traditions International in U.S.A. under a misleading
title of Christ the Yogi.
4 In his essay called "Science and Religion" in Ideas and Opinions,
Crown Publishers, New York, 1954, p. 46.
5 Some of these issues are discussed in more detail in my Science and the
Sacred, Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Chennai, India, and Wheaton,
Illinois, U.S.A.
6 Hymn of Entry ; trans. Elizabeth Briere; St. Vladimir's Seminary Press,
Crestwood, New York, 1984, p. 26.
7 "Science and Religion," op. cit.
8 Ideas and Opinions, op. cit.