Vedanta

[Guest guest]

Vedanta - Synthesis of Science and Religion

 

The spirit of enquiry finds expression in any department of scientific study in

the gathering of relevant facts and their rational interpretation. The practice

of religion is nothing but a ceaseless quest after the facts of the inner life.

A dispassionate study of these facts constitutes the science of religion, which

seeks to unravel the mystery of our inner being-, the lights that guide us and

the laws that mould us.

 

If 'man, the known', constituted of his body and its environing world, is the

subject of study of the natural sciences, 'man. the unknown' is the subject of

study of the science of religion. The synthesis of both these sciences is the

high function of philosophy as understood in India. It is this function which

Vedanta has performed in this country (India), ever since the time of the

Upanishads. Exercising a pervasive and effective influence on our national

thought and culture, Vedanta has spared us not only the fruitless opposition of

reason to faith and vice versa, but also the more dangerous manifestation of

this opposition in the form of intolerance, persecution, and suppression of

opinion.

 

The need for a Vedantic approach to science and religion is insistent today when

both have shed their respective prejudices and come closer to each other, imbued

with the passion to serve man and save his civilisation. It is only such a

synthesis of philosophy which blends in itself the flavour of the faith of

religion and the reason of science that can reconstruct modern man, by restoring

to him the integrity of his being and the unity

 

The 'Within' and the 'Without' of Nature

 

Explaining this Indian approach to religion and the cause of the

misunderstanding between science and religion, Swami Vivekananda said:

 

"Religion deals with the truths of the metaphysical world, just as chemistry and

the other natural sciences deal with the truth of the physical world. The book

one must read to learn chemistry is the book of (external) nature. The book from

which to learn religion is your own mind and heart. The sage is often ignorant

of physical science, because he reads the wrong book - the book within and the

scientist is too often is ignorant of religion, because he, too, reads the wrong

book - the book without".

 

The practice of religion is a ceaseless quest after the facts of a man's inner

life, at the innermost depth of which it finds the truth of God, which it

defines as infinite existence, infinite knowledge, and infinite bliss, the

Sat-Chit-Ananda Brahman it comes across, at the intermediate depths, and all

higher values which find expression in man's ethical, moral, and aesthetic

experiences. A dispassionate study of these facts constitutes the science of

religion, the science of art of the spiritual life.

 

It is the eternal glory of Vedanta that the great thinkers of the Upanishads

grappled with these questions: What is this universe? What is man? What is his

destiny? Long ago they discovered that the universe of experience consists of

two broad categories, the subjective and the objective. It is important to

remember that this idea is basic to an understanding of Vedanta and to an

understanding of whither science is going today. Now, when we apply this

classification to the whole universe, we get the corollary that modern science

is the study of only one of the two categories, namely, the objective field. But

modern science is also trying to understand the subjective field.

 

Psychology is one such science. But Western psychology has suffered from too

great a dominance by psychology . By resorting to time and space methodology, we

get a knowledge of the 'without' of things, but not of their 'within'. Much of

psychology in the West is behaviouristic psychology: it is a study of the human

mind through the study of human behaviour.

 

But Western psychologists have also tried to break from this kind of limitation

and have developed, through psycho-analysis, the beginning of what is called

depth psychology. This is just the beginning of a great movement in modern

psychology which, if continued steadily and penetratingly, will bring it to the

truth of the real nature of man which Vedanta reached ages ago in India - the

eternal, undying Self of man, the Atman.

 

Vedanta and modern science are close to each other in spirit and temper. They

are close to each other in their objectives and in very many of their

conclusions as well. Even in the cosmology of the physical universe, we find so

many points of contact. The fundamental position in the cosmology of both

science and Vedanta is what Swami Vivekananda calls the postulate of a

self-evolving cause. Vedanta says that there is one self-evolving cause,

Brahman, behind the universe. Science says that behind this universe there is

one self-evolving cause, the background material, in the words of astronomer

Fred Hoyle.

 

Both believe in the theory of a cosmic evolution. There are a number of such

similarities. The truths expounded in the Upanishads are impersonal, Apauruseya,

not deriving sanction from any person. Scientific truths are similarly

impersonal, objective, not deriving sanction from any person. Because they are

impersonal, they are universal, and provide a clear insight into the nature of

the world. That is science.

 

When we study the development of science during the last hundred years, we can

trace the higher reaches of science slowly appearing on the horizon, and trace

also the slow emergence of a non-materialistic outlook in science.

 

Swami Ranganathananda