Resurgent Culture - Chapter-1.2. Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, May 16, 2021. 07:26.AM.
Chapter 1: The Goal of Life-2.
2. Modern Science: Its Implication : 
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Extending this observation to the entire world of perception, we come to the conclusion that, if at all it should be possible for us to know any such thing as a world—its contents and diversities—we have to accept, by implication, that our consciousness should be at least as wide as what we know, and this consciousness cannot be subject to separation or isolation as the perceptible objects are. Here we come to the crux of philosophy, the pivot of true scientific thinking. Are we in a world of truth?

And what is truth? A great philosopher-saint of ancient India, Swami Vidyaranya, has observed in his great work, the Panchadasi: Satyatvam Badharahityam-Truth is that which stands the test of the principle of non-contradiction. What is never seen to change at any time, what is not subject to transcendence by any kind of experience, what is not dependent on anything else, what is its own proof and requires not other proof to establish its existence, is truth. Truth is that which is absolutely necessary to account for our experiences in life, and which, when negatived or abrogated, contradicts all experience, and cuts the ground from under our feet. Truth is the ultimate Reality of the universe, internal as well as external—gross, subtle and causal. 

*2. Modern Science: Its Implication :

As students of modern science, and as enlightened persons interested in studying the advances of present-day researches in the realm of physics, you would be acquainted with the fact that science today has surpassed the old view that the world is made up of crass material stuff, or that it is really diversified in the manner we ordinarily see with our senses. Once upon a time we were told that the constituents of the physical world could be reduced to less than a hundred ultimate principles—call them chemical substances. 

Later came the discovery that these substances are not really ultimate but could be reduced to minuter elements called atoms which were supposed to differ from one another in certain specific characters they possessed. But research did not end here. Today we are said to be placed in a mysterious universe of forces, of electrical charges, of dynamic powers which are discovered to be the essence of even the atoms. Even the pluralistic notions involved at the present moment in the concept of the stuff of which the atoms are made are slowly getting narrowed down to the recognition of an immanent energy which is supposed to be the matrix of all things, the essence of the world, of our own bodies. 

We are in a world of energy, in which there cannot be any further differentiation, and which is not merely the cause of the substances of the world but is itself the real substances. We are told that this energy is called light when it has an impact on the retina of our eyes, is called sound when it impinges on the eardrum, is itself taste, touch and smell in accordance with the senses by which we come to feel its presence. It looks, of course, a wonder that we assert our own segregated bodily existences, with their passions and prejudices, while intellectually we are made to conclude that even our bodies are in essence parts of the cosmos of forces. And if we have to believe in what we understand to be the truth, we have no right even to think as individual personalities. 

We are the cosmos!

To be continued ...

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