Science is based upon sensuous observation of the world. This is what is called empirical science which assumes that knowledge is derived from the experience of senses.
The Vedic concept of Maya usually is referred to as the world of illusions, they often translate it as “the world is not real”. But the real meaning is that the world which is observed by the senses is phenomenal. Since phenomena refer to the appearance of some underlying noumenal reality (meaning: an object as it is in itself independent of the mind, as opposed to phenomenon), the difference between what is real and its appearance. This is something most scientists do not realise, Maya refers to phenomenal reality of the senses, and is illusory in the sense that the underlying reality that gives rise to appearance is not known by the senses, and yet those appearances are naively identified with that underlying reality. Therefore, while modern empirical science studies appearances, the study of underlying reality cannot utilize the process of empirical science. Rather philosophical science, the study of concepts is needed for comprehending underlying unobserved reality. Appearances, which are observed, logically imply that there must be something appearing. It is thus logical deduction that has prominence in studying the sphere of reality. It is the failure to make this distinction between appearance and reality that has caused so many of the problems that arise between science and religion. Today’s modern science does not make the distinction between phenomena and noumena. This is philosophical naivety, while empirical science develops things such as computers, air planes and atom bombs. Thus the fact that science works cannot be due to its rational grasp of reality. For instance, in some religions they make offerings during a solar eclipse so the sun returns. Every time they do it, it works, in the same way science works, but it cannot solve the problems of philosophy simply by ignoring them.
Of course you may wish to argue that appearances and what is appearing are not entirely different. But that is not always true. In films actors are being killed, but they are only playing a role, a rope may appear to be a snake, but in reality it is a rope, a rose may appear to be red, but in itself the rose is only reflecting the long wavelengths of the white light spectrum into your eyes, what colour, if any, is the rose itself? Does an insect or animal see the rose as red? In any absolute sense, do we or can we really know the colour of a rose? Do we really see? What we pick up is frequencies, vibrations like sound, but the same counts for smell as well. We might recognize the frequency/vibration of the molecule, we say we taste this or that, but here too we pick up on the vibration of the molecules. Touch too is frequency/vibration, in other words we feel our way in the world, all our senses are feelers, we feel our way in the world. Our heart is the centre of feeling and is connected to the storage of all such feeling we do through the senses, the mind.
Like attracts alike, that which is stored has and does use the senses to seek to its liking, that what it considers it knows does not need thinking as it by itself does the recognizing, others trigger thoughts/feelings.
Life comes from life, matter comes from life. A tree grows up into a huge mass towering into the sky only because it contains a life principle within it. The amount of matter that is produced by living entities in this world is staggering. You should not be mistaken and think that life merely collects matter that is already lying around outside itself, and simply organizes it. One of the major characteristics of a living organism is that it creates not only its form but also its matter that is integrally tied up with its form. This is what is observed in nature. Take away life, and the whole process would stop.
We should note that science as here defined deals with the positive or appearing energy. Just as lightening appears in the sky, it is a visible or positive phenomenon. But the darkened sky is invisible, or the negative. Still, the sky provides the support or space for the lightening to appear. Sometimes science is therefore associated with the philosophical viewpoint called positivism. In this sense, if the appearance is considered the positive, then the underlying noumenal ground of appearance is the negative. This noumenal bases for all phenomenal is the breath we have talked about in the articles.
The ancients clearly understood the difference between Maya, phenomenal appearance, and noumenal reality, a difference most scientist know nothing about.
For the last two centuries in the history of modern science questions like, what are the roots of human life? How much of personality is genetic? What are the limits of learning by the brain? How and where did life arise here on earth? Can the laws of physics be united? What is the biological basis of consciousness? These questions were not considered very seriously. Scientists thought that these questions were merely metaphysical, religious or simply unanswerable and therefore not important for their inclusion within their research. However, contemporary science is being forced to confront these important questions in the scientific curriculum. The search of science is like a circle and automatically leads back to these eternal questions they always placed under the title “metaphysics”.
Let’s look at consciousness. What does science really know about it? It transcends not only physics and chemistry but also the mechanistic principles of living beings. But there are many different ideas among both scientists and scholars. Some suggest they include more philosophical and thoughtful dimensions in their inquiry. What they should do, if they also seek a unifying theory, is not to exclude these fields. Consciousness has its source in the centre of everything but has its limits like that of the smallest particle whereas within it there is energy and its outer appearance “matter” and its field around it is its limit. All is consciousness.
Aristotle had argued about the importance of a final cause. Today in science they are only concerned with the material cause and the formal cause but neglect the more important questions which arise from the necessity of a final cause.
Let’s have a look at “thought”. Something so essential has been neglected by science. They say, all scientific theories have their origin in thought. There is no science without thinking. Yet, at the same time, they cannot say where that thought is located within the object of our study, even after so many advances in physics, chemistry and biological sciences. They don’t even have a department or discipline to study the principle of thinking which is studying these objects.
The senses pick up vibrations from the world around us and stores them. They are connected to the emotional and mental bodies, and they are stored conditionally, meaning that it has built its believe system and judges all that is picked up by the senses, even words and their meaning. What is scary for one might not be for another due to the individual judgement based on its personal believe system.
Some things that are picked up by the senses might happen on an unconscious level and can trigger thoughts and feelings you might not be consciously aware off and wonder why you feel in a certain way. Not knowing the cause, it could be a smell you picked up but were not aware of, it might be a sound or even something seen. The sub-conscious picks up thousands of signals a second while your normal awareness is only aware of a few of them. The heart plays a large role in it, as it is the centre of feeling. You need to realise that all sense receptors are “feelers” in this world and as they collect they build up a conditioned understanding, yes even seeing is feeling and not seeing at all.
“Spirituality begins when the subject becomes the object of his own study.”
30-04-2010
Moshiya van den Broek