Science and Religion: Finding Answers In The Mystic's Lab  

By MANI BHAUMIK  

Science and Religion: Finding Answers In The Mystic's Lab  

Since the beginning, human beings have sought answers to spiritual questions, motivated by a basic urge to understand the meaning of life. Our search for answers has led us to believe in a divine being.

This belief in divine power dominated world thought until about 500 years ago when scientific discoveries and innovations began to shake our faith in God. By the 19th century, Karl Marx, whose ideas would significantly influence the history of the following century, was dismissing religion as the opiate of the masses, and Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species discounted the Biblical story of creation. After Friedrich Nietzsche's proclamation that God was dead, we seemed to sink into a slough of despair - and the despair sometimes bordered on panic since we were fearful that we had lost all sense of direction. Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, urged people to regard God as an illusion, nothing more. He said our concept of God only symbolised an infantile desire for a father figure, and that we should outgrow this desire. Science should replace God, Freud decreed, explaining: "Science is not an illusion. An illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give we can get elsewhere."

But science also proved to be a false god, leaving many in despair, including, even, the atheistic philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who referred to the God-shaped hole in the human head through which God had been forcibly extracted. In the 1960s, Time magazine ran a 'God Is Dead' cover story attributing the death of God to science and technology. Indeed, scientific knowledge that spawned technology has totally cha-nged our lives by providing us material abundance and freeing us from drudgery.

But is knowledge everything? No. There is also love and the whole world of subjectivity, including spiritual experience. In terms of fulfilment, these are far more important than the knowledge science can give us. However, subjective experiences alone can misleadus - so a balance has to be maintained to overcome fear and superstition. Here,scientific knowledge can help us see things in a better perspective.

The truth is, both spirituality and science are essential to human beings, and always have been. Ironically, scientific research that once questioned the existence of God, is also now providing evidence to strengthen our belief in a supreme power. Modern physics and cosmo-logy are leading us to the conclusion that we are all an essential part of one single source from which creation itself sprang. Scientists call this source the 'unified field', with consciousness as its apparently inseparable aspect.

There are authentic, non-paranormal ways for us to experience our unity with the consciousness aspect of that source. Each path relies upon access through some type of meditation and prayer that has been established down the ages and in all cultures of the world. The emotio-nal, spiritual, medical, and material advantages of drawing from both science and spirituality are enormous.

Experiencing our oneness with the source of everything, which we call God, evinces a bliss that has been described by so many in so similar terms and in such different times and places that even professed agnostics like Jawaharlal Nehru conceded that there had to be some element of truth in it.

Happiness appears to be elusive. But when we are in tune with the consciousness aspect of the universal field, our window of perception is clearer. By tuning ourselves to the source, we perceive a truer picture of reality, just as a clear image emerges when a TV set is properly tuned to the transmitting field. Our full understanding of the spiritual implications of modern science and cosmology can make a profound contribution to human civilisation and spawn a new age of peace, prosperity, and contentment.

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More from same author see: MANI BHAUMIK  

See also: Science and Religion, Faith and Belief, Spiritual Guidance, God and Religion, Peace on Earth, Peace of Mind, Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Body Mind and Soul)