RAVI RAVINDRA

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy finger’s, the moon and the stars, which thou has ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? Psalm 8

Throughout human history, in every age and culture, whenever human beings have been struck by the grandeur of the cosmos and its workings, they have wondered what place they have in it. What meaning could our life, with all its limitations and smallness, have in the midst of very large forces operating in the universe’? Is our earth significant when galaxies are continuously emerging and dissolving? Is ~three score and ten years” of our existence, or a ‘~hundred years as the Vedas say, meaningful in the billions of years of cosmic expan- sion and contraction? What purpose does our life have when each year. on the average, one hundred million of us die? We die and are replaced by others, like you and me——with our ambitions, fears and hopes. Why? For what’?

Every human being sometimes wonders about the universe he lives in: its vastness, the variety of manifestations in it, with its endless transformations of substances and energies, and the intricate laws by which all this is regulated. That the universe exists is a wonder! And that it works and continues to exist is even a greater wonder. Each one of us is thus some sort of a scientist. We may not undertake inves- tigations of the cosmos, and the forces and laws governing it, in any systematic manner or rigorously, but we could hardly be uninterested in the place where we have our being, where the Spirit manifests itself, where all the aesthetic possibilities are realized, where precise intellec- tual formulations find their concrete expression.

Ravi Ravindra, Ph.D., is professor of religion and physics at Daihousw Urn- versity, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Dr. Ravindra has published papers in several fields (notably in seismology, history and philosophy of science, conscious- ness and yoga, and comparative religions) and two books: The Theory of Seismic Head Waves and From the Village to the Mountain: Spiritual Search —- East and West. He was the first director of the Threshold Award. He is interested in the relationship of contemporary culture with perennial wisdom.

And, not to wonder about one’s own existence— its meaning, function, and purpose? is that possible? Unless one is determinedly partial and fragmented, one could hardly be oblivious either to the mystery of one’~ own existence, or to the mystery of the cosmos. Both mysteries exist, perhaps parts of one larger mystery. In the vastness of the universe, I am a small particle, a mere nothing! But, equally truly, I am the center of the cosmos, of my cosmos! What is MY SELF? How am 1 related with all there is? What perception is needed for me to hold the truth of my nothingness and my centrality in proper perspec- tive? These and such questions are not new; they are as old as man- kind, in different forms and languages—myths, ideas, colors, musi- cal notes, sculpture—these questions have engaged human beings everywhere. When we are driven by other necessities of survival, or assertions of our ambitious egos, we may forget these questions for short or long periods. But something in us is always deeply unsatisfied unless we keep returning to some form of inquiry about our own nature and our relationship with others and the cosmos. Who am I? Why am I here? It is hard to imagine an intelligent human being who is not inter- ested simultaneously in the entire psycho-somatic complex of the cosmos and the animating spirit behind it. Whether one considers this at the scale of an individual body-mind and soul, or at the scale of the whole universe and the Cosmic Spirit, neither the perceived nor the perceiver can be ignored. In the language of the Bhagavad Gita (13.2), ~‘knowledge of the field and of the knower of the field is true knowl- edge.” In Sanskrit, other words which are often used to describe the two realms are prakriti and purwha. Prakriti is nature in all its vari- ous aspects and levels of subtlety, including also the subtle psychic and parapsychic phenomena; it is the total domain of materiality and laws, everything that can become an object of study or thought or perception. Purusha, on the other hand, is the perceiver, the self and the spirit. Just as there is an underlying unity behind all natural enti- ties and processes, all having arisen from common subtle matter obeying the same laws, there is an underlying unity behind all the knowing selves or consciousnesses. individual consciousness is differ- entiated from a larger common consciousness through different mind-bodies, the material instruments of perception and action. This is one of the resounding affirmations of the Upanishads, namely that atman is Brahman. This is one of what are called “great utterances” (mahavakya) in the Indian tradition: individual consciousness is iden- tkal with the consciousness of the All, in essence. Or, as Krishna (the highest Purusha) says to Arjuna (who symbolizes an awakening mdi- vidual consciousness), ‘know me as the Knower of the Field in all fields,” (Bhagavad Gita 13.2).

Anyone who wishes to know Krishna must learn to know his own innermost self, for Krishna is not any particular being, horn at this or that place, of this or that form or shape or color, but the inner- most and the highest Purusha who is seated in the heart of everyone, the essential self of all selves.’ lie is represented in dark colors pre- cisely because he is mysterious and unknown. He is often painted blue because he is vast as the sky or the ocean, as is our own self, which as said earlier, is declared by the Upanishads to be the same as Brahman (literally, Vastness). However paradoxical it may appear on the sur- face. to come to one’s own innermost self, most of us need guidance and instruction. The various spiritual paths and disciplines, often quite varied in their emphases and methods owing to different periods and places of their development and different types ol psyches to which they are addressed, aim at precisely this: to prepare a seeker to come to and to stay in front of the naked truth in the deepest level ol his being, without fear and anxiety which lead one to take the crutches ot some doctrine or belief, Here is a remark of the Zen master, I). T. Suzuki: ~Meditation opens the mind of man to the greatest mystery that takes place daily and hourly; it widens the heart so that it may feel the eternity of time and infinity of space in every throb; it gives us a life within the world as if we were moving about in paradise; and all these spiritual deeds take place without any refuge into a doc- trine, but by the simple and direct holding fast to the truth which dwells in innermost being. “2 As long as a person is interested both in the Spirit and its dwel- ling place, Brahman and Brahmanda, one’s inner self and the cosmos. purusha and prakriti, the knower of the field and the field, realm of purpose and that of action, one cannot but be interested both in the ‘This is a point worth emphasizing; otherwise Krishna can become a sectarian god in competition with others, as Jesus Christ has become in Christianity. Here we have in Christ a true messenger of the highest God, who like the Upanishadic sages says that he is one with the Father (atman is Brahman) and in order to follow whom, we have to leave our ordinary selves aside and delve deeper into our forgotten Ground. But Christians generally put an ordinary self on him with particularities of name, form, and place, and turn him into a sectarian miracle worker in whom they then believe with all the exclusivism and emotional vehemence of a frightened man, substituting believing for seeing and the crutch of dogma for the sword of gnosis. 2Quoted on page 312 of The ,.4merican Theosophast. vol. 68, no. 10, 1980. spiritual traditions and science. Although, as the Bhagavad Gita (13.26) says, all existences, moving or unmoving, arise from the union of the field and the knower of the field, human beings are particularly endowed with the possibility of the self-awareness of their real nature. This self-awareness itself has many levels and is something that needs to be cultivated and deepened, and should not be confused with any supposed characteristic of homo sapiens which at some stage in his- tory become a part of man and which he now automatically has from birth. Also, one must not fall into the easy temptation of thinking that since there is some sort of unity of spirit and body in all the crea- tures, nothing needs to be understood further. To refer to the Bhaga- vad Gita (13.34) again, real discernment of the differences between the field and the knower of the field is essential for coming to the supreme goal of liberation. It is also good to remind ourselves that any real reconciliation of the demands of the spirit and those of the body is not a matter of general mental abstractions such as “science” and “religion.” It is only in a unique particular in an individual’s soul that any such reconcilia- tion has any meaning. It is only in the Concrete existential situation in which 1 simultaneously experience and intentionally embrace the different forces of the two realms of spirit and body or religion and science that I have a possibility of wholeness. Otherwise, one remains fragmented, thinking about or wishing for wholeness. However, there are occasions when we reflect, from the outside as it were, about science and religion as cultural and social endeavors, and consider their procedures and presuppositions, their similarities and differences. The first thing a person notices both about the spiri- tual traditions and about science is their internal diversity. Not all traditions are alike, any more than all the sciences at different periods or in different cultures are exactly alike. After all, the keepers of the Jewish tradition differed enough from the Christian understanding to crucify Jesus Christ! And the orthodox Brahmins for centuries strug- gled against the Buddha and the Buddhists. In every tradition there have been many heretics; and many of these were far more passionate and divinely inspired about Truth or God than the orthodox. There is an inevitable hardening of any tradition with the passage of time, although, clearly, a tradition can be periodically renewed from within by those who are willing to seek beyond the dogmas and comforts of religions and are able to recapture the original vibration of the im- uncovers and reveals afresh for a new generation. “I have seen,” the Buddha says, “the ancient way, the old road that was taken by the formerly All-Awakened, and that is the path I follow” (Samyutta Nikaya 2:106). Yajnavalkya, in the oldest upanishad, quotes verses which are already old by his time, and which mention the narrow path which stretches far away,” by which “the wise are set free and ascend” ( Brihadaran aka Up. ~:8). And nobody arrogates the honor of being a high priest to himself: he is called by God, as was Christ in the succession of Melchizedek (Hebrews 5:1—10). Nevertheless, all teachings and great revelations degenerate; they get defiled by men like us—self-seeking and self-important. We move from inquiry to dogma, from exploration to explanation, and from spiritual paths to religions. In the process, we are once again trapped in beliefs and doubts, fears and desires. From seeking ways for free- dom and love, we get taken by the means for possession and control. In the ancient simile of the many fingers pointing to the moon, rather than a transformation of our being so that we may come to the one- ness of the moon of the spirit, we get continually occupied with the exclusivist fingers of religions and sects. Science too is not the same everywhere and at all times. The Chinese science and the European sciences are different from each other in their fundamental attitudes toward nature. Within Europe, there are profound differences in the procedures and assumptions of post-sixteenth century modern science and the earlier sciences. I have elsewhere tried to point out some of the presuppositions of modern science, which are persistent and continuous with the contemporary sciences in spite of some major revolutions within modern science in the twentieth century.3 Here, let me mention only three of these assumptions. The first one is that in the modern science, in complete contrast to all traditional sciences, creation is assumed to be from below upward. Matter somehow came into existence, then chrono- logically later and ontologically dependent on matter arose intelli- gence, and later still, if it is admitted at all, somehow came the spirit. In that sense alone (and not in the sense of being interested only in lower things of life) are scientists professionally all materialists, that is to say, they regard matter as prior to and the basis of everything else. For them, it is the body which has the spirit, whereas in the tradi- tional cosmologies, it is the spirit, which for its own purpose and according to natural (not supernatural but subtlenatural) laws, takes on a body. For example, in all the Indian languages, one would tradi- tionally say that a person who has died, “has given up the body.” Presumably, now he has gone into another form of existence and he may, if necessary according to the laws of prakriti, be reincarnated in another body. In a summary form, one might say that for the tradi- 3See R. Ravindra: ‘Experience and Experiment: A Critique of Modern Scientific Knowing”; Dalhouse Review, vol. 55, 1976-76, pp. 655-74. tional cosmologies, matter is worsened spirit, whereas for modern scientific cosmology, spirit is organized matter.4 Another extremely consequential aspect of the modern scientific procedures is that whatever is investigated is in principle capable of being subjected to control and manipulation by the scientists-tech- nologists. The subject matter under investigation may be an elemen- tary particle. or another culture, or human mind, or extra sensory perception; the general scientific attitude is of manipulation and con- trol. What does this insistence on control and manipulation amount to in knowing something? Does it not guarantee that we cannot know, by these methods, anything subtler or more intelligent than we, anything that is higher than we are, if such a being, or force is not susceptible to our control? If scientists speak of lacking evidence of anything higher than man, that is to be expected, for their procedures specifically preclude the possibility of such evidence. The third aspect that needs to be mentioned here is the fact that, according to the metaphysics of modern science, the state of being of a scientist is irrelevant to the type of science he produces.5 A related aspect is that in much of contemporary science, given enough research grants, a scientist can so set up his experiments that the actual collec- tion of data, precisely the place where he actually observes something about nature, can be done by a computer. This is as true in experi- mental psychology as in physics. The state or the nature of the scien- tist is irrelevant to his observations, or more precisely, only those observations will be admitted into science to which his state is irrele- vant. Whether it is the Buddha or an automaton collecting scientific data, only the aspects of their perceptions which are common to both will be accepted. In this impoverishment of our perceptions, the reverse principle naturally operates. Nothing in science can in prin- ciple change anybody’s level of being; at least nothing in science as we know it now, as we practice it now. This change of a person’s level of being, on the other hand, is the sole raison d’etre of spiritual paths. To point to these differences in some of the fundamental con- cerns and assumptions of the modern (and contemporary) science and the concerns of the spiritual traditions is not to say that an mdi- 4lt is worth remarking that in neither case is it easy, if possible, to give a clear, rational explanation of how one level of existence arises from another. A very intriguing and engaging contemporary attempt is made by G. Gurdjieff as reported by his pupil, P. D. Ouspensky, in In Search of the Miraculous (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York, 1949). See especially, Chapter V. ‘in this connection, see R. Ravindra: “Modern Science and the Spiritual Paths,” The American Theosophi.st, vol. 68, 1980, pp. 340-8. vidual scientist cannot approach his work in the spirit and attitude of a spiritual discipline. Science, like all other activities, has the possi- bility of being a spiritual way, a ladder connecting different levels of being. for its practitioners. A noteworthy contemporary example is that ot’ Einstein.6 For him, certainly, an engagement with science was a matter of a spiritual vocation, a response to an inner call, a way of freeing oneself from one’s egocentricity. But this attitude is as possible today as it was a hundred years ago, or three hundred years ago; and it is as little practiced now as it was then. An integration of our intellectual and spiritual tendencies, or of science and religion as Einstein understood them — without meaning thereby anything denominational or institutional—is essential for the healing of ourselves and of the whole culture. It is important to stress, however, that the primary reconciliation that is needed is a harmoni- zation of the various aspirations in the same person. The locus of reconciliation is within the soul of a single human being. The more an individual is integrated in his various faculties the wiser he is likely to be, in whatever specialty his own particular calling and capacities engage him. What makes any career a spiritual path are the breadth of view with which one understands its purpose and the motives for which one pursues it. So long as an occupation is primarily motivated by ambition for self-advancement and self-aggrandizement, or by fear and insecurity, or by gratification of personal pleasure and inclina- tions, it cannot become a spiritual path. Freedom from oneself is a necessary prerequisite for apprehending reality as it is rather than as we wish it to be. Freedom from one’s personal subjectivity, however, is not obtained by appealing to a collective subjectivity which remains an extension of oneself in a horizontal plane. Real objectivity seems to include an altogether different dimension. When Christ says, “He who would follow me must leave self behind,” he is calling for move- ment along a vertical axis of being. in this connection it is worth recalling a remark of Einstein as well: The value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.”7 When science does serve as a spiritual path, then there are moments when one is bathed in the wonder of it all. One stays in front of the mystery in amazement. It is a mystery that broadens and deepens with contemplation. It is not a who-done-it type of mystery

6See R. Ravindra: “Science as a Spiritual path,” Journal of Religious Sf udies. vol. 7, 1979, pp. 78-85. ‘Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York, Crown Publishers, Inc., 1954), p. 12. (Italics are in the original.) which will sooner or later be resolved by a new theory or a fresh clue or an innovative experiment. It cannot be resolved; it can be loved and deepened. One comes to the mystery of oneself and the mystery of it all. One knows somewhere that one must ask questions, one must do science, just as some others must write poetry or make music. All this is man, and precisely why the Old One, as Einstein occasion- ally called God, must be mindful of him as of everything else, it seems we must theorize to go beyond theory, we must intellectualize to come to a stillness of the mind, and we must make music to come to the silence.

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