The experience of mystery

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.

~ Taken from "The world as I see it "  by Albert Einstein.

Faith is blind

More often than not, the highest states of bliss that occur in anyone's life can never be expressed by mere words. And yet, many things that are beyond words happen all the time around us. All that we can think is that impossible can be achieved through innocent faith. With a heart that is pure enough to believe, we begin to think that whatever transpires in the deepest realms of our consciousness will become a reality. The forever vacillating mind seeks proof for the intellect. In this very process, an attitude of surrender loses it way.

The heart that overflows with love cannot doubt but can only believe. Doubt is the child of fear and faith, of love. Where there is love, there can be no doubt or complaints. Consider this - A father rushing his child who is fighting for his life has blind faith in the doctor. Even if any medicine is administered, he doesn't check its constituents before the doctor injects them into the body of the child. This too is blind faith. The subtle, wicked tendencies of the mind encourage us to deny the very existence of God. But, when ego is taken out of the equation, we regain purity of mind and its natural innocence. All faith is blind. Nevertheless, the faith that arises from surrender removes the darkness of ignorance. Love's divine effulgence dispels the shadow cast by doubts.

Who is God?

And so it was one of those rainy afternoons today and I was leafing through a book on 'String Theory.' The fabulous unification of the 'holy grail' of Physics and the 'spout of heaven' troubled me with one question in particular - who really is God? What follows is some thoughts on trying to answer that question.

The prowess of science comes from the underlying scientific methodology that insists on defining every entity, physical or abstract, it deals with. It is the boiled down effort to comprehend better, the history of the natural world and it works with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding. In essence, science attempts to define the nature of reality, which, presents itself in many forms: such as physical, mental, mathematical and now,digital reality, among others. The question is, with so many 'realities,' how do we define absolute reality - the reality underlying all realities. Science, has not yet successfully defined physical reality. That being the case, can spiritual science that deals with absolute reality provide an answer to that question?

On the contrary to what most people think, the answer to that question is an emphatic 'yes.' The predominant focus of all six Indian knowledge systems (Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Sankhya, Yoga, Purva Mimamsa and Vedanta) deals with this grand question. Not just these but all great religions that we know of in one way or the other attempts to unravel this mystery.

The Vedas, define God as One that presents itself as absolute truth and eternal (analogy: Time invariant system); as self-illuminating intelligence; as absolute bliss. This absolute reality is described as 'sat-chit-anand' (Truth-Intelligence-Bliss). Further, it is described as all pervasive and as one that is absolutely pure and infinite (shudda and apar). The upshot is: according to the Vedas, the absolute reality is the one having all the above mentioned qualities. And that, is the definition of God.

Now, if God can be defined, can we see God? can we perceive this absolute reality? According to Vedanta, Our intellect cannot know God as an object of knowledge. But the same intellect can know God when the darkness of ignorance is dispelled or when illumined by the knowledge of great Vedic dictums such as "Aham Brahmasmi" (I myself am Brahman). By this process, God becomes known as our own Self, pure and infinite.

Now then, intellect cannot and can know it being two contradictory statements, how do we arbitrate that? First off, intellect cannot illumine but God illuminates intellect. Secondly, God can be perceived only through a pure intellect. But, the pure intellect cannot know God as a result of cognition but by cognition itself becoming one with God. To put it in a simpler form, God is self-illumining and omnipotent.

God is not a inert reality but pure bliss. The unified field theory, the string theory that science is seeking to understand with the help of higher dimensions other than the three space dimensions and one time dimension that human brain can conceive does not seem take into account the dimension of absolute reality. God exists in the smallest of particles, yet to be discovered by science and is infinite at the same time. This perhaps should be the holy grail of Physics.