GYAN AUR VIGYAN
Unbridled scientific progress is leading to suffering and destruction and needs to be tempered with spirituality.
- Nirankari Baba Hardev Singh Ji
Brahmgyan or Divine-Knowledge is divine enlightenment – a state in which a person is fully aware of the presence of the Almighty. It is a state in which one’s consciousness merges seamlessly with the super-consciousness or God.
An inquisitive mind’s desultory musings over the correlation between science and spirituality or Divine-Knowledge may not yield much in common. But an enlightened being is aware of the symbiotic effect of the ‘brahm-gyan’ on vigyan (science) and vice-versa. For an enlightened being, science is not inherently averse to spirituality and spirituality, too, could be a beacon for scientific progress.
His Holiness Satguru Baba Hardev Singh Ji Maharaj has often quoted the famous words that ‘today we have guided missiles but misguided men’. The world is continuously progressing but the moral state of man and the role of spirituality in his life has been proportionally retrogressing. Spirituality is vanishing from the lives of the men and science is becoming the bane of mankind. It is because science has been used to invent weapons of mass destruction that is not just totally against spirituality but also violates and endangers the peaceful human existence.
Just like a chariot runs on two wheels, the human life too has two aspects – the material comforts and the spiritual food for the soul. The body needs food, water, et cetera and other material comforts and it is religiously provided for. But it is the soul that suffers from the undernourishment or malnourishment. Science plays its role whereas spiritualism is relegated into oblivion.
What has our obsession with the scientific progress done for the world? The recent gifts to mankind have been the deaths of innocent persons in Iraq. The havoc caused in Hiroshima and Nagasaki due to the atomic bombs is still fresh in the minds of the people of the world. Even after 58 years of that fateful incident, the land has not become fertile and babies are born with some grotesque feature or the other. Cries full of pain and sufferings of gory tales have repeated the need for spirituality in our ignorant lives. Saints, sages and seers have never advocated against the scientific advancement. However, as His Holiness Satguru Baba Ji says:
We are not ready to believe that the billions of dollars which are spent on developing lethal weapons and waging wars cannot be put to use for the welfare of the mankind.
Someone has rightly said that ‘wars are first fought in the minds of men and then on the ground’. Therefore, if the mind becomes the dwelling of God, science cannot ever be used wastefully. In fact, in most of the countries, the allocation of funds for the defence is considerably more than the developmental activities like the education, community health, et cetera. Spirituality, today, plays a second fiddle to science. The desired and ideal scenario would be where spirituality takes the driver’s seat and leads the scientific progress to mitigate the sufferings, pangs and the miseries of the humanity. And it is the need of the hour because in some ways science is like our mind: it has the potential to become the servant and benefactor of the mankind or take the form of a Frankenstein. Today, science is being used by vested interests to attain their personal goals. And it is of utmost importance that science be used to foster friendly activities rather than encouraging hostility and terror-ridden atmosphere.
If spirituality is accepted by the world as a guiding force, it would serve as a beacon on a dark stormy night which saves many ships from the wrath of the sea. The ships that sail precariously through the violent waves are led astray. But the sailors who keep their eyes on the lighthouse sail through the roughest of the waves. Spirituality is the lighthouse that beckons people to be guided by it and not led astray and lost in darkness of the illusory material world.
The Divine-Knowledge is the matrix through which ideal human beings are engineered. Arjuna, the friend of Lord Krishna was blessed with the Divine-Knowledge only after he was dyingly curious to know God, the Formless One. He surrendered himself completely to Lord Krishna and beseeched the Divine-Knowledge. And he was not denied the “Divine-Knowledge.” He was readily blessed even while standing in the war-field. Such is the magnanimity of the True Master.
The gist of all this is that one has to shed one’s pride and then implore for the “Divine-Knowledge” from the True Master. If we just scatter the seeds on the surface of a ploughed, furrowed and manured piece of land, it does not guarantee that the seeds will blossom. The seeds may just get blown away by wind or picked and eaten by the birds. The seeds have to be buried inside the ploughed land. Similarly, for the tree of spirituality to grow and flower in our lives we ought to bury thine existence in the earth of obscurity, for a seed which is not buried fully, does not bringeth forth in fullness.
In another aspect, the knowledge of God (Brahm-gyan) is also quite logical. When Gyan is bestowed on us, we are made to understand how the nine elements - sun, moon, stars, air, Jeeva (being), Aakash (called ether), earth, water, fire – are different from God. If we worship the elements, it implies that we are not worshipping the Almighty. So, probing faculties of mind push us to worship God and none else. The reasoning and logical aspect of science is, therefore, a check on the purity of spiritual experience we must go through.
The science or logical thinking is as much important in spirituality as spirituality is in keeping the scientific progress to work for the welfare of the mankind. Preference for spiritual health over unbridled scientific progress will result in the amelioration of the suffering of the mankind.
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