Swami teaches... Part 3. Education, Science - With Love

[Guest guest]

Light and Love Swami teaches... Part 3. Education, Science - With Love There are innumerable stars in the sky. Imagine the distance between the Earth and stars. When the creation itself is such an infinite and indescribable phenomenon, how mighty and powerful must the Creator be! He is beyond all definition and God's creation is most wonderful and mysterious. Many describe science today as a powerful acquisition, but, science holds before humanity only a great opportunity. The duty of science is to promote love, sympathy, brotherhood and charity. By bible to enter Heaven, human must transform into an innocent infant. To enter the heaven of science, human has to mould into a humble, unselfish seeker. This is as true as the former statement. Value-based education is not merely the gathering of scientific knowledge; it should endow human with heroism in action. It should instruct human to decide on what has to be done and how. Education must aim at enlarging the heart and awakening the latent intelligence and skills and strengthening the character. If education is devoid of 'design' students (and adults also) character, it brings disaster. It can then cause evil and wickedness. Intelligence can be found to be very high among clever thieves. So, similarly, scientific knowledge can be misused for destructive purposes. The ancients attached the highest value to good character. They considered that if character was lost, all was lost. (Today, people consider that if wealth is lost all is lost).

There are significant obligations and compulsions relating to humans' daily life and the duties which have to be discharged to the family, society, environment and nature. For these purposes and for earning a living, knowledge of the natural and social sciences and culture entwined with human values required. Albert Einstein was the greatest among the scientists. He discovered the profound truth about the relationship between matter and energy. Einstein, who was near to spiritual outlook, did not have expensive equipment, like those you have in modern laboratories, to make their researches. All that he had was a pencil, paper and a waste paper basket. He lived up to the motto: simple living and high study. Many famous scientists 'entered' into deep state of concentration and depth of thought that they would reach to their maximum inspiration and creativity. For example, it is said, the "special theory of relativity" was postulated by Einstein in the state a deep concentration. Einstein himself has noted, "Imagination is everything; it is the preview of life's forthcoming attractions."

 

Time passes and present days science needs a 'mountains' of money to create the ‘clever’ machines for researches. Scientists today want more and more expensive equipments...

 

All scientific investigations are based upon the intellect. All spiritual explorations are based on the heart. (Usually scientists put their faith in machines). Science is caught up in this constant process in most cases of rejecting the old and discovering the new. In the realm of spirituality, there is nothing like old or new. It is ever full, ever-whole. But when scientist's intellect turns at the same time also to the spiritual 'wave', the collaboration with science and spirituality is possible. Many modern scientists have demonstrated a healthy spiritual outlook to the Universe, objects, processes and events in It. At present time scientists explore not only molecules and atoms, but peep what is within protons and neutrons (the core constituents of atoms) and how these tiny 'creatures' behave under various conditions and interactions. Today’s less or more spiritually oriented particle physicists search this 'ever-whole entity' and have reached quite close to this spending an infinite amounts of money for construction the machine - Large Hardon Collider (LHC). Studying the world with a resolution a billion times finer than atomic scales, particle physicists seek a deeper understanding of the everyday world and the evolution of the Universe. It is the realm of physics that comes into view when two elementary particles smash together with a combined energy of around a trillion electron volts, (TeV) in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).

 

LHC now being completed underneath a circle of countryside and villages a short drive from Geneva, will peer into the physics of the shortest distances and the highest energies ever probed. The mammoth machine, after a nine-year construction period, is scheduled to begin producing its beams of particles later this year.

 

It is the radically new phenomena from nuclear reactions (millions of electron volts) to the area trillions electron volts that particle physicists have been investigating. What lies in wait for us at the terascale? No one knows.

 

One man declared, "I alone am one who knows everything." After some investigation, he found that there was a power greater than himself. He then declared, "I am also a Pandit." After further enquiry, he realized that there was a greater power than himself in the world and declared, "The Pandit is one who views equally everything." Proceeding further, he came to the conclusion, "I know nothing."

 

The entire creation is a conglomeration of subatomic particles. These may appear as particles and as waves of energy. All of them emanate from the same source of energy. Even the scientist who knows all about electrons does not seek to find the primary source of all energy - the Supreme Principle. Today's science is engaged in trying to explore the infinitesimally minutest particle in matter. Spirituality is concerned with exploring the Infinite what is vaster than the vastest. It is concerned with "expanding" the consciousness.

 

Scientists hope to peep to the terascale and beyond, they will hope for the first time in human history to know what we are made of and how the place where we briefly live operates at bottom. Studying the world with a resolution a billion times finer than atomic scales, particle physicists seek a deeper understanding of the everyday world and the evolution of the Universe.

 

Significant new physics is expected to occur at these energies, such as the elusive Higgs particle and the particle that constitutes the dark matter that makes up most of the material in the Universe. (Present time many astronomical observations indicates that we live in an approximately flat universe dominated by dark matter and an unidentified form of dark energy that drives cosmic acceleration).

 

Elementary particles of matter such as quarks and electrons would have no mass. Physicists assumed that proton and neutron represent matter of a novel kind. (Luminous matter is made mostly of protons and neutrons in stars). /The mass of a proton (core of hydrogen atom), is only a few percent of its constituent masses. (In fact, three quarks inside proton account for not more than 2 percent of the proton’s mass.) Most of the mass arises through the original form of Albert Einstein’s famous equation, m = E/c2, from the energy stored up in confining the quarks in a tiny volume. Neutron (the companion-particle in atom's core, also with three quarks inside) is slightly more massive than the proton. In our world, a neutron sprung from a nucleus decays into a proton, electron and antineutrino in about 15 minutes. If quark masses were to vanish, a free proton would decay into a neutron, positron and neutrino. By theses analyses physicists have reached to bizarre conclusion that hydrogen atoms could not exist at all. The lightest “nucleus” would be one neutron rather than one proton/.

 

Different structure of atoms result in objects of different kinds like copper, gold or oxygen, which have varying utility and value. But the primary energy which manifests itself in different kinds of atoms and objects is one and the same.

The Vedas indicated this truth when they declared, "The One willed to become the Many", "The Reality is one, the wise call it by many names." If the Universe is itself the manifestation of the one primary energy, everything in it is also an expression of that energy. For instance, a wall which you see as a solid block can be seen as a vast congregation of minute particles when it is viewed through a microscope. Empty space between different particles can also be noticed.

 

The power of Sakthi (energy) is incalculable. A small stone cast on a tumbler of water causes a ripple on the surface. A storm in the sea has the power to sink a ship. Both are manifestations of the power of particles under varying conditions.

 

There is a difference between the appearance of objects as we observe them in daily life and their inner reality. The rising of the Sun in the East and its setting in the West are everyday experiences. But when it is noted that the Earth is a globe revolving round itself and going round the Sun, these phenomena have a different reality. Directions like East and West and North and South and the apparent motion of the Sun are seen to be mistaken. Similarly, when we are seated in a moving train, we are moving along with the train, though we may be stationary. Though the Earth is revolving at a speed of several hundred miles an hour, we are not aware of its motion at all. It is simultaneously moving in orbit round the Sun at 66,000 miles an hour, carrying with it all things on the Earth. The Earth seems firm and unmoving, while the Sun and planets and stars appear to be going round the Earth.

 

Though the scientific reality is one thing, we are guided by the daily experience in which the reality is different. Even the scientist who knows about the Earth's movements, uses the language of daily experience with reference to directions like East and West and the rising and setting of the Sun. The external appearance is based on the inner reality. It is the basic truth of the internal which enables us to experience the external. The basis is the power of the primal energy which is in matter. This basic truth was proclaimed in the Vedic statement:"Anoraneeyaan Mahatho maheeyaan" ("It is subtler than the subtlest and vaster than the vastest"). This means that what is subtle can become the immense. All experiences in daily life are variation in form of the basic reality and not different from it. Experience of this basic reality will reveal how the changes in the primary energy bring about the emergence and the disappearance of material substances. In the Standard Model (the modern combination of two theories of particle physics into a single framework to describe all interactions of subatomic particles, except those due to gravity) the Higgs mechanism differentiates electromagnetism from the weak force. Experiments have tested the electroweak theory, a key element of the Standard Model, over a staggering range of distances, from the sub nuclear to the galactic.

 

(The Standard Model requires a particle known as the Higgs boson*, or a stand-in to play its role. The Higgs, in turn, poses deep questions of its own, whose answers should be found in the same TeV energy range). By physicists the Higgs particle - the last (?) remaining undiscovered 'piece' of our current theory of matter. After this 'last' will appear other particles more last... more, more last, and so on... Before Buddha attained Nirvana, his disciples gathered round him and asked him what stage they have reached in their spiritual journey. Buddha took out a handful of leaves from the branch of the tree under which he was sitting and said, "Children, can you reckon the leaves in all the trees in all the forests all over theEarth? What you have learnt is equal only to the handful of leaves in my palm, compared to what is to be known (that is, all the leaves in all the forests). Physicists contemplate that an atom’s radius is inversely proportional to the electron’s mass, so if the electron has zero mass, atoms - less than a nanometer across in our world - would be infinitely big. Even if other effects gave electrons a tiny mass, atoms would be macroscopic. A world without compact atoms would be a world without chemistry and without stable composite structures like our solids and liquids. It is not the world of Atmic Reality - The Great One? All is one Atmic Reality by Swami. Vedas stated this many thousands years ago. The Atma is a synonym for Brahma, which is nothing but the Chaitanya permeating every human being. Chaitanya that is present in the human body is called "conscience". The all-pervasive Chaitanya is called "Universal or Cosmic Consciousness". (Reet's compilation from, Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 7. "Limbs of the Divine Body," Chapter 14; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 10. "Pride and the fall," Chapter 1; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 15. "Character training," Chapter 18; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 19. "Human values are for everyone," Chapter 5; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 36. "Strive for Unity, Purity, and Divinity," Chapter 1. http://www.sciam.com/physics). * Bosons - several types of subatomic particles (including also photons) with integral spin that is governed by the Bose-Einstein statistics. Namaste - Reet