Where Are We Now?

Hari Om 

Each 'Choose-day' we will investigate the process by which we can reassess our activity and interaction with the world of plurality and become more congruent within our personality.

KINDLE LIFE. We continue exploring points raised by HH Pujya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda-ji in the publication of this name. Remember, you can purchase, (very economically!), the book from  Chinmaya Mission Publications or if you prefer, the Amazon Link. Thus you can read Gurudev's words directly and bring your own voice to the discussion.

In chapter fifteen Gurudev looks at SCIENCE AND RELIGION. A proper context is given and in the following chapter there will be a larger exploration of the place of religion in life.  These two chapters are going to be presented to you exactly as given in Kindle Life as, really, Gurudev's erudition and succinct presentation would be hard to beat.

"The history of the evolution of human intellect passes through four distinct stages, culminating in the perfection which our masters attained. Philosophy and religion relate to the fourth and the final stage of intellectual development, which is far ahead of all scientific knowledge known to mankind.  Not knowing this truth, man scoffed at and rejected religion as antiquated and behind the times; consequently, the progress of human evolution was arrested leading to the stagnation and general decadence that the world suffers today.

In the beginning of human development, man was led by instincts and impulses rather than reason and knowledge.  He merely perceived the phenomena of nature, the sun and the moon , the rain and the thunders, birth and death and so on.  His perception was no better than that of animals for, in both cases, their intellect never reacted to the external world.  He enjoyed himself whenever objects and environment were pleasant and agreeable, but suffered silently when they were unpleasant and disagreeable.  He never questioned or tried to improve what he perceived.  This was 'the age of perception'.

From this crude and barbarous age, humanity marched forward to reach the 'age of observation'. Man was no longer content with mere perception; he began to ponder over the why and the wherefore of the phenomena of nature around and about him. His intellect thus started hunting for causation.

For example, the primitive generation of the age of perception took to shelter when the rains poured down and emerged when the rains ceased.  They merely perceived and experienced rainfall without enquiring into its cause.  As man advanced in his intellectual development, he became more observant and began to wonder at the phenomenal power of nature.  His little intellect observed certain simultaneous occurrences and related them unintelligently to the rainfall. Thus, when he found a mango tree shaking whenever it rained, he attributed the cause of rain to the shaking of the mango tree. This was the age of observation (or superstition!) where effects were traced to causes which were beyond any scientific reason or logic.

As humanity evolved further, man advanced to the 'age of scientific enquiry', when his intellect reached higher stage of development.  He sought to discover the cause of everything around and about him.  He penetrated into the working of the phenomenal world, collected data and facts, experimented upon them, drew intelligent and rational conclusions and laid down a systematic knowledge of laws.  Superstitions and wild belief were substituted by scientific truths.  No more did they believe that the mango tree caused the rains.

The scientific age continues to discover the secret powers of nature for blessing society.  The physicists and chemists, the botanists and the mathematicians, the economists and the politicians are all exercising their efforts and contributing to the endless discoveries of the laws of nature.  This, in short, is the age in which we are living.  As the scientists are continuously pursuing their work in the their respective fields of enquiry, a time comes when they, in their maturity, wonder at the harmony and rhythm expressed in the various laws of nature and start contemplating as to who/what is that eternal law-giver, who orders these laws to function in strict perfection, obedience and reverence?  Thus their objective enquiry is elevated to the subjective contemplation upon the primeval cause for everything that exists in nature and this marks man's entry into the 'age of contemplation'.

All the great religious masters were men of profound contemplation engaged in subjective research of the truth that binds all the laws of nature.  The men of contemplation were not cotent with the mechanical discovery of the laws, but endeavoured to understand and discover The Lawgiver, the controller and regulator of all laws.  It should therefore be quite clear from the foregoing that philosophy and religion are ahead of science and its proud discoveries and those who treat them as ancient and old fashioned have failed to understand their place and significance in the history of human development.

Let scientific discoveries go on and bless mankind; but those fortunate few who have evolved further to understand and appreciate the existence of a common denominator in the phenomena of nature, should progress further and discover the eternal law of all laws, the knowledge of all knowledges."

This was originally given by Gurudev some fifty years ago.  Think of the amazing discoveries which have taken place even since then - not least, the Higgs Boson particle being discovered. How much further can science bring us? There is an understanding among homoeopaths that science simply has not caught up with the principal which drives it.  Similarly, science has yet to catch up with the principal which drives existence.  The grand masters of the intellect, those 'ancient and outdated' Rsis, discovered it and left all the clues for the rest of us to follow. Very few do.

Think!!!