SCIENCE & SPIRITUALITY
We were waiting at the tarmac of the helipad at Kedarnath on a September morning, hoping to catch the first sortie back to Uttar Kashi. The weather was not favourable. Looking back towards the temple, we could see the dull white blankness of the clouds. Suddenly the weather cleared. Lo and behold! The Himalayas were shining in all their glory, their beautiful white snow cover bathed in the morning sun. A few minutes later, in a dramatic reversal, yet again, inclement weather returned. The majestic Himalayas hid behind the clouds. All that could be seen was the blankness of the clouds.
On another occasion, I had the opportunity to go scuba diving in Lakshadweep. The colours of the marine world were far beyond any painting seen so far. Who designed the logic of this creation? What is the algorithm and who is the coder? And what is the purpose of this creation?
Throughout their existence, humans have tried to answer this question in multiple ways, through logic, philosophy, religion, spirituality, etc.
Vedanta answered this question long back. And Modern Science is evolving its view gradually. Is there any convergence emerging between these two?
LAWS OF PHYSICS
The French Mathematician Henri Poincare in his book, Science and Method, says: “The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.”
In the 17th century, Isaac Newton came up with the Three Laws of Motion and the Law of Universal Gravitation. This explained the working of the world around us and how things moved. However, Newtonian mechanics considered time and length (consequently ‘space’), to be absolute, regardless of the inertial frame of reference.
In 1915, Einstein proposed the General Theory of Relativity. This suggests that mass distorts and bends space-time causing it to curve, and gravity is essentially the result of motion in this space-time. At velocities nearing the speed of light, relativity applies instead of Newtonian Physics because of space-time curvature.
In Newtonian Physics, theoretically we can travel as fast as we want as long as we have the requisite force. However, as per the General Theory of Relativity, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. And this theory transformed the way we understood the universe.


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In 1925, a 23-year-old Werner Heisenberg, spending his time on an island, Helgoland, literally meaning Sacred Island, envisioned the mathematical structure of Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Theory. Quantum Theory revolutionised various domains of Science and Technology, from the foundations of Chemistry, the functioning of atoms, solids, plasmas and dynamics of the stars to the origins of the galaxies and technologically from computers to nuclear power. It powers many scientific and technological advances of today. Yet, it remains profoundly mysterious.
Neils Bohr had already come out with formulas that predicted properties of chemical elements before even measuring them, like the frequency of light emitted when heated and the colour they assume. However, he also assumed that electrons in atoms orbited around the nucleus only in certain precise orbits, at certain precise distances from the nucleus and with certain precise energies and magically leaping from one orbit to another.
Using observable quantities of frequency and amplitude of emitted light and replacing physical variables (numbers) with tables of numbers that have orbits of departure in their rows and orbits of arrival in their columns, Heisenberg describes the leap from one orbit to another. On 7th June 1925, things started falling into place. Heisenberg says, “At first, I was deeply alarmed. I had the feeling that I had gone beyond the surface of things and was beginning to see a strangely beautiful interior, and felt dizzy at the thought that now I had to investigate this wealth of mathematical structures that Nature had so generously spread out before me.”
Einstein says, “The ideas of Heisenberg and Born have everyone in suspense, and are preoccupying anyone with the slightest interest in theory.”
With Wolfgang Pauli’s calculation, Heisenberg’s matrices computed the very values of energy predicted by Bohr and also the intensity of the emitted light. But this was all about quantities that are observable. Heisenberg’s article on his theory starts with the phrase: “The objective of this work is to lay the foundations for a theory of quantum mechanics based exclusively on relations between quantities that are in principle observable.”
The question arises, what do electrons do, when not observed.
In 1926, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger comes out with a set of equations that electron wave must satisfy in an atom. He suggests that Bohr’s trajectories are the approximations of the behaviour of an underlying wave. He names this the Greek letter ‘psi’. It is also called the Wave Function.
However, since an electron, when revealed by a detector, is at one point and not spread out as wave, it becomes gradually clearer that ‘wave mechanics’ is no clearer than ‘matrix mechanics.’
Max Born recognizes that Schrodinger’s hypothesis actually describes the probability of observing an electron at the point. It turns out that Heisenberg’s version also predicts probability and not certainty.
It was in this context that Einstein famously asked, ‘Does God play Dice?’.
PERCEIVED REALITY
In his captivating book on Quantum Physics, Helgoland, Carlo Rovelli says, “Einstein relished figurative language and had a predilection for using ‘God’ in his metaphors, despite his declared atheism. But in this case his phrase can be taken literally: he loved Spinoza, for whom ‘God’ was synonymous with ‘Nature’. Hence: ‘Does God play dice?’ means literally: ‘Are the laws of nature really not deterministic? ‘As we shall see, a hundred years after Heisenberg and Schrodinger’s bickering, this question is still open.”
Describing the context of where Schrodinger comes from, Rovelli says, “Schrodinger, too, is a product of that lively early twentieth century Viennese philosophical and intellectual milieu: a friend of the philosopher Hans Reichenbach, he is fascinated by Asian thought, in particular Vedanta Hinduism, and passionate (as Einstein was) about the philosophy of Schopenhauer, which interprets world as ‘representation’.”
Representation? Does it sound familiar?
After bathing in the Ganga, Shankaracharya and his disciples were walking towards the Kashi Viswanath temple for darshan. Seeing a Chandala coming across, one of his disciples shouted: ‘Move, move’. Chandala’s response astonished the great teacher. He asked, “Who should move, the body or that all pervading reality that is occupying it?
Acharya replied in five verses, known as Maneesha Panchakam.
The first verse goes like this.
Jagratsvapnasushuptisu sphutatara ya samvidujjrmbhate
ya brahmadipipilikantatanusu prota jagatsakshini |
Saivaham na cha drishyavastviti drdhaprajnapi yasyasti ce
ccandalo: stu sa tu dvijo: stu gururityesa manisha mama || 1 ||
If a person has attained the firm knowledge that he is not an object of perception, but is that pure consciousness which shines clearly in the states of waking, dream and deep sleep, and which, as the witness of the whole universe, dwells in all bodies from that of the Creator Brahma to that of the ant, then he is my Guru, irrespective of whether he is an outcaste or a Brahmana. This is my conviction.
So, Shankaracharya calls the world around us as Drisyavastu, an object of perception!
This is the crux of Vedanta too. That the world around us is the manifestation of an underlying unity that pervades everything. Just like the clouds that hid behind them the majestic Himalayas that are always there, mentioned at the beginning of this article, the clouds of ignorance mislead us from the understanding of this all-pervading unity. And the world around us that we experience is nothing but a manifestation of the underlying reality.
In his deeply researched biography of Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, Unsung Genius, Kunal Ghosh quotes a letter by Bose to Rabindra Nath Tagore about a lecture he delivered at Royal Institution in London on 10th May 1901. In the peroration of the lecture, he mentioned:


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“I have shown to you this evening, autographic record of responses of the living and the non-living. How similar are the writings! So similar indeed that you cannot tell one from the other apart. We have watched the responsive pulses, wax and wane in the one as in the other. We have seen response sinking under fatigue, becoming exalted under stimulants and being ‘killed’ by poisons in the non-living as in the living.
Amongst such phenomena, how can we draw a line of demarcation, and say, here the physical process ends, and there the physiological begins? No such barriers exist.
Do not the two sets of records tell us some property of matter, common and persistent? Do they not show us that the responsive processes seen in life, have been foreshadowed in non-life? – that the physiological is, after all, but an expression of the physico-chemical, and that there is no abrupt break, but a uniform and continuous march of law?
…it was when I came upon the mute witness of these self-made records, and perceived in them one phase of a pervading unity that bears within it all things — the mote that quivers in ripples of light, the teeming life upon earth, and the radiant suns that shine above us. It was then that I understood for the first time a little of that message proclaimed by my ancestors on the banks of the Ganges thirty centuries ago —
‘They who see but one, in all the changing manifoldness of the universe, unto them belongs eternal truth-unto none else, unto none else!’”
Now comes the question, who is the one who perceives.
The 7th verse of Mandukya Upanishad captures it so beautifully.
नान्तःप्रज्ञं न बहिःप्रज्ञं नोभयतःप्रज्ञं न प्रज्ञानघनं न प्रज्ञं नाप्रज्ञम् |अदृश्यमव्यवहार्यमग्राह्यमलक्षणमचिन्त्यमव्यपदेश्यमेकात्मप्रत्ययसारंप्रपञ्चोपशमं शान्तं शिवमद्वैतं चतुर्थं मन्यन्ते स आत्मा स विज्ञेयः || 7 ||
Nantaḥprajnaṃ na bahiḥprajnaṃ nobhayataḥprajnaṃ na prajnanaghanaṃ na prajnaṃ naprajnam | adrshyamavyavaharyamagrahyamalaksanamacintyamavyapadesyamekatmapratyayasaram prapancopasamam santam sivamadvaitaṃ caturthaṃ manyante sa atma sa vijneyaḥ || 7 ||
Turiya is not that which is conscious of the internal (subjective) world, nor that which is conscious of the external (objective) world, nor that which is conscious of both, nor that which is a mass all sentiency, nor that which is simple consciousness, nor that which is insentient. (It is) unseen (by any sense organ), not related to anything, incomprehensible (by the mind), uninferable, unthinkable, indescribable, essentially of the nature of Consciousness constituting the Self alone, negation of all phenomena, the Peaceful, all Bliss and the Non-dual. This is what is known as the fourth (Turiya). This is the Atman and it has to be realised.
(‘Consciousness’ as the nearest English word is used.)


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Here, Turiya simply means, ‘the fourth’. After the three states of wakefulness, dream and deep sleep that every being goes through, almost on a regular interval, the state that is beyond the three, the fourth one is ‘Turiya’, where clouds of ignorance disappear and the all-pervading unity beyond is revealed.
Swami Vivekananda wanted to express this in a mathematical model. In 1896, while in America, he had multiple interactions with Nikola Tesla, the genius who gave us ‘alternating current’. In her painstaking six-volume documentation after three decades of research, titled Swami Vivekananda in the West, Marie Louise Burke mentions the suggestion by Tesla for a meeting with Swamiji in his 45 East Houston Street laboratory.
A meeting was arranged. On 13th February 1896, Swamiji writes to Mr Sturdy: “Mr Tesla thinks he can demonstrate mathematically that force and matter are reducible to potential energy. I am going to see him next week, to get this new mathematical demonstration. In that case, Vedantic Cosmology will be placed on the surest of foundations. I am working a good deal now upon the cosmology and eschatology of Vedanta. I clearly see their perfect unison with modern science.”


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Burke goes on to say (in 1982), “It is only during the last ten years or so that the Big Bang theory — the theory of a universe rushing outward from an initial explosion — has been accepted by almost all scientists; and this is merely a small part of Vedantic Cosmology, a part taking place after (immediately after, perhaps) the evolution, or formation of ‘Prana’ and ‘Akasa’, Energy and Matter. That the physical universe will fall back in on itself, to expand again, and so on cyclically forever, is today a theory entertained by a number of reputable physicists, but is as yet (1982) unproved. Swamiji’s “Electrical Sphere”, on the other hand, where the “Prana is almost inseparable from Akasa,” was established by Einstein long ago; his term “mass-energy” embodies this interchangeability of matter and energy. But what this “mass-energy” is, no one at this writing seems to know. Yet it was this — the state beyond matter and energy, the state out of which matter and energy evolved — that Swamiji had hoped Nikola Tesla could mathematically demonstrate. He could not.”
The convergences are just far too many. A time is long due for a much deeper dialogue between Vedantic Philosophy and Modern Science to build on these foundations, so as to benefit both.
*The writer is an architect, and Secretary General, Vijnana Bharati.