science and spiritual speech
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The process of civilization has been a continuous movement of physical discovery and experience repeated over and over in the society and gradually formulated and distilled as mental knowledge. It is a movement from below upwards, from the physical to the mental, a movement of unconscious or subconscious learning maturing into conscious knowledge.
The development of science has followed the same course. Modern science broke down the confining limitations of superstition and religion by an intense observation and experimentation with material phenomena leading to concepts and theories which appeared to directly contradict those propagated by the religions of the day. The development of technology, the improvement in instruments for observation and measurement, made the scientific revolution possible. Physical observation, experimentation and technical innovation have been primary tools of modern science.
The process of scientific discovery is one of seeing new relationships between known facts. In all great discoveries a change of perspective or perception occurs revealing order and relationship in place of isolated phenomena. This act of perception or intuition is a raising of the consciousness of the scientist to a plane in which relationship becomes evident. It is a reverse movement from idea to fact, mental consciousness to material fact. But unlike the movement from below upwards, it cannot be mechanized and it has not been codified by the scientist.
The primary instruments which have supported the development of science limit its growth and power of discovery. Having based itself on physical observation and verification as a corrective for the exaggerations, speculations, excesses and wishful thinking of religion, science isolated and eliminated all that was not immediately verifiable or measurable through physical instrumentation. As a result, science has been able to uncover the mechanisms governing many material phenomena, but it has not succeeded in discovering the underlying reality and the process of creation which governs all phenomena in nature.
The Vedic rishis worked in the opposite direction from above downwards, raising and expanding their powers of consciousness and then directed that consciousness to illuminate the reality of nature. They discovered the underlying reality from which all phenomena are created. Sri Aurobindo says this discovery is of greater practical significance to the world that the discoveries of Copernicus and Newton. In The Life Divine, he has described in logical and rational terms that reality and the complete process of creation by which it manifests in the universe as mind, life and matter and evolves from matter higher forms of life and higher levels of consciousness.
Spiritual vision reveals that the fundamental reality and the process of creation are the same in all fields and planes of existence. Only the forms and expressions of manifestation vary. The laws of physical and social evolution are the same. Mastery of the process in any field of life implies the knowledge and power for accomplishment in that field.
We have sought to apply the knowledge of this process to many fields. At the level of the individual, this mastery is the knowledge and power of the Complete Act, which is the capacity to make any act generate the desired results.
If application of the process can generate material results in one field, it can be done in any field. The Mother once said that if a physician with consummate knowledge of physiology were open to this approach, a major breakthrough could be achieved in curing diseases that plague mankind. Given the right person, an experiment can be made that will generate practical results in at least one or two areas of medicine.