Science and Spirituality : Two Aspects of a Single Reality

by Prof. P. Krishna *

The scientific quest and the spiritual quest have been the two great
quests of humanity but somehow a feeling has developed that science is
antagonistic to spirituality. We should examine whether this is really
so or it is because we give to science and spirituality rather narrow
meanings. The scientific quest is to discover the order in the external
world of space, time, energy and matter. The spiritual quest is to
discover order in our consciousness. Since the whole of reality is
built up of both matter and consciousness why should the quest for the
understanding of order in the external world be antagonistic to the
quest for the understanding of order in the inner world of our
consciousness ?

If we look at their origins, we find that both quests have originated

out of human inquisitiveness. We human beings want to inquire into our
surroundings, into what is happening within and around us. We want to
observe in order to find out. If we ask the question, "Why are we
inquisitive ?", there is no answer. It is not always for a purpose. We
are inquisitive by nature. The purpose is a by-product, it is not the
aim of the inquiry. For instance, technology is the by-product of
science, but it is not the reason for science. The scientific quest
was there much before any technology developed. We were inquiring into
why the sky is blue, why the sun rises and sets, why trees grow, why
there are so many species around us, why eclipses occur and all that,
much before any technology came into being.

In the same way, questions like - Who am I ?, What is the purpose of

life ?, Why is there so much conflict and violence within me?, Is it
possible to come upon some kind of order within my consciousness ?,
What is death ?, Is there something beyond death? - are all questions
in the field of spirituality. Out of this quest the different organised
religions have evolved as a by-product. There were great enquirers who
came upon a certain truth in their consciousness, who came upon a
certain order - we may call that that order love, compassion, harmony,
whatever.

Out of that state, they tried to communicate the truth which they had
seen, and they became spiritual leaders around whom the organised
religions were built up. Thus, institutionalised religions developed as
by-products of the spiritual quest just as technology developed as a
by-product of the scientific quest.

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*Rector, Rajghat Education Centre, Krishnamurti Foundation India,
Varanasi-221001, India
Why is it that the scientific quest has advanced so much but when it
comes to the understanding of our consciousness, humanity as a whole
has been an utter failure ? One of the reasons why the scientific quest
has progressed so much is because there is a tremendous order out there
in nature. Nature follows a plan, it works according to certain laws
and science has been able to discover those laws. The scientists have
no idea why there should be laws and why they should be universal, but
they find that it is so. We also do not know why the whole universe
follows an order which we have been able to determine using some
fundamental assumptions, then applying a lot of mathematics and logic
to them and testing the results. We find that the results so obtained
tally with what happens in nature; which means somehow this logic
operates in nature. We can only say that such is the nature of the
order which manifests itself in the universe. We are students of
Nature, which has given us a consciousness which can observe and think.
We can not answer why Nature is the way it is.

The other reason why the scientific quest has developed so much is
because it is possible for the observer, by and large, to be separate
from the observed. When my consciousness or senses are viewing
something and doing an experiment on that object, that object is
separate from me. There is not too much interaction between the
observer and the observed and therefore it is relatively easy to be
objective about what one is seeing. This breaks down only in quantum
Physics, where for a particle like the electron the very act of
observation affects the state of the particle. In science, human
errors are detected quickly because conclusions are put to test by
other people. This way science tries to eliminate the subjectivity of a
particular observer. When we come to the religious quest we are looking
at ourselves and the observer is the observed. There is no dualism
here. One can illustrate this by an example. If we try to observe how
we go to sleep, our awareness decreases because in sleep we are not
aware. So the mind cannot watch itself going to sleep.

In the scientific quest our understanding is additive in nature. What

Newton did in a whole lifetime we can now learn in two or three years
and build on it to discover further. In the spiritual quest, knowledge
is not helpful. In fact, it can even be a hindrance if one gets
attached to it. What the Buddha discovered and stated, I can read and
come upon the knowledge of Buddhism, including all that has been said
about the Buddha. All that knowledge would make me a Professor of
Buddhist philosophy, but the Professor of Buddhist philosophy is not
the Buddha ! I cannot come upon the order that was there in the
consciousness of the Buddha merely through knowledge. So Buddha's
students have to observe all over again and rediscover what the Buddha
discovered in order to come upon that order in their own consciousness.
One cannot simply learn it like knowledge. One requires something
beyond knowledge, namely an insight into the truth. Without that
insight, which is a direct perception of the truth, there is no
alteration of our consciousness.

In the field of science also an insight is essential but only for the
first person who discovers the truth. If Einstein did not have a deep
insight into the questions of space, time, matter and energy, his mind
could not have come upon a totally new perception which was not there
in classical physics. His mind had all the knowledge of classical
physics, but it must have also had a certain amount of freedom from the
known in order to have an insight into a truth which was then totally
outside the field of the known. All great scientific discoveries are
results of such insights. But after the scientists have had the insight
and come upon a truth, they put it in the form of an equation, deduce
it and verify it logically. Thereafter, it is taught not through
insight but through logic. Science is not taught to students the way it
actually happened, it is taught through rational, logical ways.
Knowledge and logic have a sequence and learning that sequences is
enough since it works, even though one may not have the insight ! In
the spiritual quest, if one does not have an insight one only has ashes.

So there are several intrinsic difficulties with the spiritual quest.

Just as there have been great scientists like Einstein, Newton,
Galileo, Darwin and so on, there have also been great spiritual
teachers. People respect those great spiritual teachers because they
came upon a certain state of consciousness which was one of love and
compassion, a universal consciousness which was not divided from the
rest of the world. But what did their followers do ? The followers
said, "This teacher is our guru, our saviour, our leader, so let us
worship him". They took his words and propagated them. They evolved a
system, an organisation which became the religion. The followers did
not come upon the truth, they were satisfied with propagating the word.

Suppose the scientists had done the same, if they had built a temple to
Newton and said, "We are Newtonians, Newton is our leader, whatever
Newton said alone is true and we are going to propagate it" and another
group of scientists did that for Einstein and said, "We are
Einsteinians", would we have called them scientists ? We would have
said: "You have to learn science, study and discover the order in
nature, come upon the understanding and knowledge of science, only then
you are a scientist".

But in the field of spirituality, we have been very gullible. If a man

wears a certain type of dress, goes and does a certain ritual, lights
the lamp in a certain way and so on, we accept him or her as a holy
person. We have lost sight of the fact that this is also a quest, an
enquiry. Unless human beings come upon order in their consciousness,
they are not religious. It has nothing to do with rituals, with the
dress we wear, with the words we utter or the books we read. It has
nothing to do with some ability or knowledge we have in our head either.

The other factor that has very seriously bogged down the spiritual
quest is belief. What does belief mean to a person who is in quest of
truth ? We have to regard it the same way as a scientist regards a
theory. The theory is not the truth, the model is not reality. We have
to do experiments to find out what is true. But when we have a belief,
we are merely accepting something without evidence, which has little
value. Quickly rejecting an idea also has no value. The acceptance is
as false as the rejection. It is only when we listen and consider, and
neither quickly accept nor reject but live with the question and
explore it through our own observations, that we may get some truth out
of it. The spiritual quest has not gone far because we have interpreted
it to mean belief and the practice of certain rituals and so on. We
think that it is going to get us peace of mind, that it is going to
bring us to something divine.. That is an illusion. Worship may give
us a certain peace of mind temporarily, but for the same reason for
which the mind was disturbed yesterday, it will be disturbed tomorrow
because the same causes are still operative. If the problems do not
dissolve at the source, the cause is still there and the effect is
bound to be there.

The third thing which institutionalised religions gave was a moral

code - what is right, what is wrong, what to do and what not to do. We
must examine whether one can come upon virtue through the practice of
pre-meditated virtuous actions. A particular action, when repeated,
soon becomes a habit and one can feel virtuous without having come
upon virtue. That is a serious difficulty of the spiritual quest. If I
am aggressive, violent, hateful, can I practice non-violence ? I
project an idea that non-violence means not hitting another person, so
I hold myself back. I get angry, I feel like hitting the other person,
but I don't hit saying I am practising non-violence. But in my
consciousness there is still hatred, there is still aggression. I have
merely prevented the outer manifesta- tion. Surely there is non-
violence only when there is the ending of violence in the
consciousness. As long as I am inwardly violent and I think I am
practising non-violence, it is only "control". And self control is
something totally different from the self-realisation which ends
violence within us.

Virtue is a state of mind. There is virtue only when disorder ends.

Violence, fear, jealousy, possessiveness are all a part of the disorder
in our consciousness. One cannot impose order on disorder through
discipline. If we do that, it is still part of disorder; it is only
control and that control is still part of the disorder. The need to
impose order on oneself arises only when there is disorder in the
consciousness. Therefore imposed order is really disorder.
Suppression is violence with oneself; so the violence is still there
and nothing changes inwardly. Of course the external action also
matters and to that extent self-control may be necessary but it changes
nothing inwardly. We are still in conflict when we are only
controlling. If we are suppressing, fighting with ourselves, then what
is controlled one day will have to be controlled everyday, which means
all of life becomes a battlefield. It is not a spiritual life to be
constantly in battle with oneself. All disorder has a cause and so long
as the cause exists the disorder will exist. So the spiritual quest is
an inquiry into the causes of disorder in our mind. Just as scientists
clean their instruments and lenses to ensure that they do not distort
the observation of facts, the spiritual seekers have to eliminate the
disorder in their minds since that is the instrument with which they
observe. Disorder is caused by illusions and the illusions end only
with the direct perception of the truth. The spiritual quest is
therefore a quest for self-knowledge and virtue is a by-product of that
quest.

Such an approach to spirituality is independent of any denomination and

is therefore universal, like science. Just as there is no such thing
as Indian science or American science, there is also only one spiritual
mind - the mind that has come upon love, compassion, peace and harmony.
It is not a Hindu mind or a Christian mind or a Buddhist mind. These
divisions arise because we have equated belief with religion. The
truly spiritual mind is in quest of truth which it posits as the
unknown. Science also posits the truth as the unknown and continually
refines its models in trying to approximate to it. It is our illusions
that divide us into separate religious communities. The different
institutionalised religions are historical by-products of the spiritual
quest and need to be distinguished from the quest itself.

Similarly we need to distinguish between science and technology.

Science is the quest for truth whereas technology is a by-product
resulting from the human desire for power and comfort. The unbridled
use of power has created all the ecological, social and political
problems the world is facing today. They are a result of human greed
and not of the scientific quest itself. Humanity needs to go on with
the scientific and spiritual quests without getting too entangled in
their by-products.

Actually, the spiritual and scientific quests are two complementary

inquiries into reality. Any feeling of antagonism between them is a
product of a narrow vision. Science deals with what is measurable;
religion with what is immeasurable. The two quests have to go hand in
hand. We not only need to have an understanding of the laws that
govern the phenomena occurring in the external world around us but also
we need to discover order and harmony in our consciousness. Human
understanding is incomplete unless it covers both aspects of reality.
Reality is one undivided whole which includes both matter and
consciousness. Our thoughts, being limited by our experience, divide
the external world from the inner world of our consciousness, in much
the same way as our mind divides time from space though they are both
two aspects of a single continuum. Education needs to address
itself to the creation of an inquiring mind which is both scientific
and spiritual at the same time if we are to avert the crisis facing
humanity today. To discard all spiritual inquiry along with all
religious beliefs in the name of secularism is like throwing away the
baby with the bath-water.

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