SCIENCE

&

SPIRITUALITY

BHAKTIVEDANTA INSTITUTE

Scientific and religious paths are like two streams of the creative human mind. The scientific path tries to explain the nature of reality within rationality, whereas the religious or spiritual path does so within and beyond rationality.

Dr. T. D. Singh
Director, Bhaktivedanta Institute President, Vedanta and Science Educational Research Foundation

I think in this century, science will be admitted to the spiritual aspects of mankind, and vice versa

Prof. Karl H. Pribram

Neuropsychologist, Georgetown University, USA

Science and technology alone

cannot solve the problems of the new millennium. We need additional guidelines for our actions, for the selection of our research projects and research goals. These guidelines have to do with ethics, with philosophy, and with faith.
Prof. Richard R. Ernst

Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Switzerland

Science and Eastern Thought

Our science Greek science, is based on objectificationBut I do believe that this is precisely the point where our present way of thinking does need to be amended, perhaps by a blood-transfusion from Eastern thought.

Erwin Schroedinger

A great breakthrough in the history of integration of science and spirituality has been the experimental verification of the nonlocality of quantum objects.

Amit Goswami

Quantum Physicist, University of Oregon, USA

What is Life? What is Consciousness?

LIFE

Chemical and Biological

Spiritual

Science

Spirit

In my search for the secret of life, I ended up with atoms and electrons which have no life at all. Somewhere along the line, life has run out through my fingers. So, in my old age I am now retracing my steps. A. Szent Gyorgi
1937 Nobel Laureate in Medicine

Although a biologist, I must confess that I do not understand how life came about To me, auto-replication of a macromolecule does not yet represent life. Even a viral particle is not a live organism, it can only participate in life processes
Werner Arber

Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine

We can admittedly find nothing in physics or chemistry that has even a remote bearing on consciousness. Yet all of us know that there is such a thing as consciousness, simply because we have it ourselves. Hence consciousness must be part of nature, or more generally, of reality, which means that, quite apart from the laws of physics and chemistry, as laid down in quantum theory, we must also consider laws of quite a different nature.
Niels Bohr

VEDANTIC PARADIGM

LIFE COMES FROM LIFE

Ontology of Life
Life is transcendental

Consciousness is the symptom of life

RNA alone is not life

I think that life could be beyond the assembly of biomolecules.
Werner Arber

Nobel Laureate in Physiology and Medicine

Consciousness as another Category of Reality

Consciousness is a distinct reality in nature other than particles and waves.
Dr. T. D. Singh

It seems to me pretty plain that there is a third thing in the universe, to wit, consciousness, which I cannot see to be matter or force, or any conceivable modification of either.

Thomas Huxley

There are two kinds of reality or existence; the existence of my consciousness and the reality or existence of everything else.
Eugene Wigner Nobel Laureate in Physics

...consciousness is a principle that fundamentally transcends not only physics and chemistry but also the mechanistic principles of living beings.
Michael Polanyi

Science and Religion point to Reality In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been claimed that scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the world. Although I am now convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on. Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought, for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point. Werner Heisenberg

FAITH AND SCIENCE

Two major assumptions which are the basis of scientific effort are first that the universe is orderly, trustworthy, and it continues the same way, and the second that the human intellect can think through and figure out most of this orderly behavior. Now both of those are assumptions and articles of faith. We cant prove that all the laws of physics are going to be constant. Charles H. Townes Nobel Laureate in Physics

Science and Faith

Anyone who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over t he entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with. -Max Planck

The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is in the sensation of the mystical. It is a shower of all true science That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power which is revealed in the comprehensible universe forms my idea of God. -Albert Einstein

I believe that more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheismIf you think strongly enough, you will be forced by science to believe in God. -Lord Kelvin

Science and God: Inferential Evidence

I saw in it [the atom] the key to the deepest secrets of nature, and it revealed to me the greatness of creation and Creator.

Max Born

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful BeingThis Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord, God. -Isaac Newton

Inspiration
Indication of a Divine Guide

Inspiration
At the moment when I put my foot on the step (of the bus) the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry. -Henri Poincare

INSPIRATION Finally two days ago, I succeeded like a sudden flash of lightening, the riddle happened to be solved. I myself cannot say what was the conducting thread which connected what I previously knew with what made my success possible. -Karl Gauss

it seems to me that creativity in its finest form contains something that we cannot explain by the normal algorithmic process of discovery. It contains a non-algorithmic process, a non-algorithmic operation.
Prof. E. C. G. Sudarshan Particle Physicist, University of Texas, Austin, USA

Free Will and Science Many scientists will say, I cant believe in religion, I cant be religious. On the other hand, if you ask them, Do you think you have some free will, almost every scientist instinctively thinks so. He has free will. He can choose some things. He can decide to go this way or that way. There is, in fact, no room for free will in present scientific laws and yet almost every scientist essentially assumes he has it.
Charles H. Townes Nobel Laureate in Physics

Matter from Life?

You place matter before life and decide that matter has existed for all eternity. How do you know that the incessant progress of science will not compel scientists to consider that life has existed during eternity and not matter? You pass from matter to life because your intelligence of today cannot conceive things otherwise. How do you know that in ten thousand years one will not consider it more likely that matter has emerged from life? - Louis Pasteur.

Bhagavad Gita on Life

The symptoms of life occur on the basis of a spiritual, living entity. An infinity of living entities exist, and they are known as citkana or literally small conscious atoms. When the cit-kana acquires a body, then the changes of birth, growth, maintenance, reproduction and death are manifested in matter.

Life In the Center

I began as a physicist drawing parallels between physics and the Eastern tradition. I now believe that physics cannot be placed in the center of the world view. The most appropriate center is the theory of living systems. You put life in the center, and you study life in its multiple manifestations, and you make statements about what life is, what mind is, and what consciousness is in this context. Physics would be defined as the science of nonliving systems.

-Fritjof D. Capra,
Physicist and system theorist

Conception of Absolute Truth given by Vedic Saints

Bhagavan Feature (Personal)

Paramatma Feature (Localized aspect)

Brahma Jyoti (Impersonal aspect)

Vedanta Sutra: First aphorism

athato brahma Jijnasa

Now, therefore one must inquire into the nature of Brahman, the Absolute Truth or God.

Science and God

When advancement of knowledge is applied in the service of the Lord, the whole process becomes absolute Therefore, all the great sages and devotees of the Lord have recommended that the subject matter of art, science, philosophy, physics, chemistry, psychology and all other branches of knowledge should be wholly and solely applied in the service of the LordScientific knowledge engaged in the service of the Lord and all similar activities are all factually hari-kirtana, or glorification of the Lord. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe a spirit vastly superior to that of man. Albert Einstein

The Universe has been brought for us by a supremely good and orderly Creator. -Nicholas Copernicus

The wisdom of God manifested in the works of creation. -Robert Boyle