Will Spirituality Be Taught in Schools in Future as Part of Science? (MTS-FINAL: Towards A Mathematical Theory of Spirituality Based on Advaita)

[Guest guest]

Ref Pages 29-30 of http://sunyaprajna.com/Advaita/Advaita_Math.pdf

 

Spirituality has been more or less the exclusive province of religion since

civilization began. Religions- especially those founded on the worship of a

personality rather than on universal truths- are not overly comfortable with

the idea of scientific enquiry in the spiritual field. For its part, Science as

developed in the West has also generally behaved as though spirituality does not

even exist. That is, Science has tried its best to subsume the vertical axis of

our mathematical model under the horizontal axis, but without any success. The

present relationship between science and religion is one of wary tolerance for

each other, somewhat like the relation between the East and West during the

heydays of the Cold War. An uneasy truce between the two has been accomplished

by erecting an arbitrary “BerlinWall” separating the spiritual from the material

and the “religious” from the “secular”.

 

Advaita is a science that views the spiritual and material realms as one

unbroken continuum. It admits no division between the spiritual (aadhyaatmika)

and the material (aadhibhautika); its sweeping vision of the cosmos folds

everything into one reality. Tattwabodh and similar texts describe the orderly

process by which the gross, subtle, and causal project out of Brahman. Our

experience also confirms this holistic view. As embodied beings, we are endowed

with both spiritual faculties and material bodies. Yet we are not two separate

entities, but one integral whole.

 

If science is uncomfortable with traditional religions, it is far less so with

Advaita. There are a number of reasons for this. One is Advaita’s approach which

is close to that of science itself. Some of the basic tenets of Advaita are no

doubt axiomatic since they must be taken on faith and cannot be absolutely

proved. These axioms however do appeal to our intuitive sense of what Truth

ultimately must be: a) “satyam”- must “ring true” so that the mind naturally

accepts it without need for external proof; b) “shivam”- capable of bestowing

peace on the knower of the Truth; and c) “sundaram”- beautiful in its

simplicity. Using logic, Advaita then develops these axioms into a theory that

covers the full gamut of experience, spiritual and material. In this Advaita is

very much like any other branch of science that starts out with axioms. The

proof of a science lies in how well the statements it makes accord with

verifiable experience. Some of the assertions made by Advaita are verifiable in

our day-to-day lives, while those dealing with the realized state appear

reasonable and also stand attested by the reported experience of Yogis.

 

A second reason for science’s affinity with Advaita has to do with the

discoveries made in relativity theory and quantum mechanics in the last century.

These discoveries have thrust suddenly and irrevocably into fundamental science

what many think is a decidedly spiritual element. The world-view of the new

physics, it has been often noted, shares much in common with Advaitic and

Buddhist teachings.

 

Yet another window to spirituality has been opened with advances in

neurophysiology, concurrent with an increased acceptance by the public of yoga

and meditation. Study after study by researchers equipped with latest

neuro-iamging techniques is bearing out the views long held by Yogis. There is

growing consensus affirming the real benefits that meditation and yoga confer on

the mental and physical health of the practitioners, irrespective of their age,

religion or other background. These studies also provide evidence that the

benefits are not limited to the duration of the meditation, but carry over to

the rest of the daily activities- in other words, they transform life. This

probably marks the first time anything approaching a universal spiritual law has

been scientifically tested and validated.

 

Taken together, these theoretical and experimental developments augur well for

the greater involvement of science in spirituality in the future. It is just

possible that out of this work will grow a new discipline of science of

spirituality bearing, for aforementioned reasons, similarity to Advaita.

 

What role will Mathematics play in this future scenario? The work reported in

the last twelve postings has hopefully demonstrated that some of the concepts of

Advaita can be captured through mathematical models. Admittedly, what is

presented is only a first baby step, a sort of “proof-of-concept”. Yet, it

shows how the entire continuum “from the Knower of the Field to the Field” (i.e.

everything save the Brahman Itself) can be represented by a two dimensional

geometry and the state of spiritual evolution of a jeeva by a single variable.

It also yielded results in the spiritual realm with unexpected similarity to

results from the material world.

 

Is there any experimental validation of the time contraction result derived from

the model? I recently raised this question with Prof Sara Lazar, of Harvard

Medical School, where numerous studies on the effect of meditation have been

carried out. According to Dr.Lazar, there have been no quantitative studies to

measure the effect of meditation on time perception, but expects someone to do

that sooner or later. Regarding contraction in perceived time, Dr. Lazar

however noted in her e-mail that “this phenomenon is often mentioned by

practitioners (along with need for less sleep)”.

 

In pages 29-30, I have mentioned some of the ways that the model could be

developed further with future work. There is of course no guarantee if any of

this work will be fruitful, but we should leave that to the Lord.

 

Time was not too long ago when mystery and secrecy surrounded the practice of

medicine by the village “magic healers”. All that changed with the impressive

progress in life sciences over the last three centuries. Today there is a

uniform standard for the medical profession around the world, a standard built

on “evidence-based” medicine. Very few will deny that the changes to medicine

brought forth by science have been on the whole only beneficial to mankind. Now,

physical and mental health is important to a human being, but spiritual health

is even more so. Could, or should, there be a similar revolution using

evidence-based spirituality?

 

When science and mathematics do succeed in understanding and affirming

spirituality in their own terms, the wall separating science and religion would

have to come down, inaugurating a new era in human history. Spirituality would

become part of the science curriculum in schools. Religion as it is practiced

today would be changed for the better, stressing more on their underlying

universal spiritual laws and de-emphasizing their mere exterior ornamentations.

The effect would be to liberate spirituality from the superstitions surrounding

religions.

 

I end this series with these optimistic thoughts. I thank Ramachandran ji for

inviting me to present my ideas and sincerely appreciate the comments from

readers. Presenting my ideas in this forum has been tremendously useful to me

and I hope some of you also saw some value in reading it.

 

Hari Om! With Pranams to Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda ji,

 

Raju Chidambaram

[Guest guest]

Dear Raju,

A great attempt to combine math and spirituality. Quite a lucid

statement. I am glad Rmachandranji asked you to write something about this

topic. Even for a non mathematician like me it seems to make sense but I

understand some more fine tuning may need to be done by you all. I am also

reading the sunyprajana website posting and I will call you with my questions.

Obviously I am operating with a deficit of lack of math principle but let me

plough thru and get back to you.

Wishing you all the Best inthis quest,

Your friend,

Siva Subramanian

 

 

aiyers wrote:

Ref Pages 29-30 of http://sunyaprajna.com/Advaita/Advaita_Math.pdf

 

 

 

 

Siva and Kalyani Subramanian

 

Yaa DEVI Sarva Bhootheshu Maathru Rupena Samstitha

Namas Tasyai Namas Tasyai Namas Tasyai Namo Namaha !

 

HARA OM HARA OM SADASIVA !

HARI OM HARI OM NARAYANA !!