Tag Archives: science

Q. 355 – Faith in a Path

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Q: How do we get the conviction to go on a spiritual quest?  Unlike science, there are no indicators to give feedback if this is even the right path. We need to have blind faith in the general idea itself before we venture into it. Can we only do this through negation of the other paths, where apparent validations are possible by material feedback.

A devil’s advocate argument could be to dismiss everything associated with the vedas/upanishads as nonsense, since nothing can be proved. Another way to look at this is to acknowledge that the ancient sages have come up with practices such as yoga and meditation, which sort of proves their intellect and extrapolates on their ability to see things farther than a average person can and thereby have faith in their judgements.

 I am not able to articulate my question very well but I hope I got my point across.

Answers are provided by: Ramesam, Dhanya, Ted and Dennis.

A (Ramesam): Man, by his/her very nature, feels incomplete. He seeks fulfillment of what he lacks through effort using his natural or acquired talents.  In fact, it is this “lack” that drives his passion for action along the path of the means chosen by him suiting to his comfort-level.

At the most basic level the drives that motivate a man for action are the biological and physiological needs.  As described by the Psychologist Maslow, the subtlety of these needs changes from a lower to higher level in the following manner: Continue reading →

Two-Icings on the Cake of SAND-2013:

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For AV PostSAND-2013 has undoubtedly matured.

There is a greater participation of  Scientists well-known and respected in their fields of study spanning from Cognitive science to Computational Neuroscience, Lucid dreams to Non-linear mathematical models, Physics to Consciousness.

Susana Martinez-Conde from Barrow Neurological Institute was a pleasant surprise. A number of years ago I wrote  to her and her colleague Stephen, after seeing their work on the Perception-Reality Disconnect, about how Non-duality considers the world as an illusion and if they would like to explore this line of thought. They had no interest and disposed off my mails as if it’s all quack science. They may not remember the correspondence, but the change in their perspective is very welcome!

The highly popular Non-dual Teachers like Francis Lucille, Rupert Spira and others were also there. Continue reading →

On Reductionism

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Dr. ChurchlandWay back in the sixties, that is over half a century ago, it was quite common to hear many spiritual teachers in India, haranguing to large audience how science was analytic and philosophy was synthetic in approach.  The strength of the ancient Indian wisdom, according to them, lived in its spirit of synthesis. So people were exhorted by these speakers to cultivate a habit of developing a conjoined view of diverse systems, rather than decompose them through a rigor of analysis. A current joke at the time was that a specialist was one who knew more and more about less and less until he knew almost everything of nothing.

Perhaps that approach was the need of the hour in India which had attained the status of an independent sovereign republic only a decade earlier through the coming together of many differently administered provincial units. But to extend that political logic based on the social needs of integration to the realms of philosophy and more so to Vedanta and pushing the spirit of questioning, almost derisively, to the bottom was an unfortunate development. How can I say so? Continue reading →

S&T Developments You may Like To Take Notice Of

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If our valued Readers are interested, I propose to start a New Series of Posts on some of the latest Scientific advances that could be of interest to our Community of Advaita Thinkers and Philosophers. These Posts will be infrequent and in the form of simple “Alerts” on the current research findings. What gets reported by me will obviously be constrained by at least two of my own limitations:

(i)  The conscious and or unconscious ‘filtering mechanism’ exercised by my mind in selection of the topics; and

(ii) What research papers happen to come to my notice.

For the present, here is a sample Post to show how I propose to structure this venture taking selections from the works published during the last couple of weeks:

[If Dennis agrees and if there is sufficient interest, we may continue and improve upon this idea.  Readers may like to send their views to Dennis (in confidence, if desired).] Continue reading →

Traditional Teaching and Deep Sleep – III. mAyA & Creation

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Part – I              Part – II              Part – III

[The latter part of the article requires a bit of mathematical (or at least arithmetic) orientation in the reader. If you know the addition, 1 + 1, that is enough. Otherwise, it could prove slightly boring!]

We shall tackle now the question of how we wake up to be what (we think) we were before we went to bed.

I said in my previous argument that our waking up to a new morning and into an awake state is comparable to another cycle of creation.  So I suggest we examine how creation itself takes place.

From a scientific perspective, creation seems to be happening from ‘nothingness’ and dissolving back into nothing.  Vedantins prefer to call nothingness as ‘Beingness’ simply because even ‘nothingness’ has to ‘Be.’

If we go by what Quantum Physics tells us, what we may refer to as ‘nothingness’ is not just emptiness.  There is an enormous amount of energy in ‘Emptiness.’ Physicists have been able to measure this energy of empty space.

The energy within the empty space of the nucleus of an atom is the main reason for the weight of the nucleus (and hence of the matter we are all).  The energy of the emptiness within the intergalactic space is the reason for the expanding universe causing the colossal and mighty galaxies to recede from one another at speeds exceeding the speed of light. This vast energy is the result of constant creation and annihilation of virtual particles smaller than sub-atomic particles. Thus creation-dissolution is an ongoing unstoppable roiling and boiling process from emptiness to emptiness within emptiness!

Continue reading →

Haldane Philosophy

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Here is a short poem, contributed by Ananda Wood (a direct disciple of Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon) and inspired by the book Philosophy of a Biologist by J.S. Haldane.

Here is what he says to introduce the poem:

I recently came across a book by J.S. Haldane, called Philosophy of a Biologist. I found it interesting because of its approach through reflective enquiry. In particular, I was interested by Haldane’s account of Western Philosophy from Descartes and Spinoza onward.

In particular, Haldane discusses philosophical questions progressively: in relation to Physical Science (Ch. I), Biology (Ch. II), Psychology (Ch. III), Religion (Ch. IV). And he concludes with a short chapter called Retrospect, where he approaches God as the inmost spirit of a universal personality. This is done in much the same way as the purusha-prakriti duality is used by Shri Shankara to investigate beyond all “knower-known” or “subject-object” duality.

This led me to write a piece of verse called Scientific enquiry: which tries somehow to summarize Haldane’s line of investigation. Continue reading →

Mithya for Beginners – Is the world illusory?

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Advaita seekers in the West want to find out whether it is true that they are neither body nor mind, but in truth are one, eternal, free and all-pervasive. Most of all they are interested in the answer to the question: „Who or what am I?“ They do not really care what the world is.

But once the true import of the understanding that I am all-pervasive and One dawns, then we can no longer ignore the question about what appears to be a second thing: What about the world?

The knowledge that I am limitless in time and space (one and all-pervasive) is incomplete if no explanation is included in it of that ‘which somehow is also there’. My true nature is non-dual – but body/mind, other living beings, the ocean, the continents, space, objects and possible subtle beings – what about all that? After all this is pure duality, isn’t it! If the mind does not find an adequate explanation for it, a feeling of incompleteness of the Self-knowledge of non-duality is likely to persist. Continue reading →