Vedas Returned to unlock the Secrets of life

We live in the age of science. The frontiers of our knowledge are receding everyday. The method of science is empirical: it uses experiment to verify or to refute. Science has dispelled miracles from the physical world and it has shown that physical laws are universal. Technology had made astonishing advances and a lot that was the stuff of religious imagination has been brought under the ambit of science. 

Just as there can be only one outer science, so there can be only one inner science of the spirit. One can only speak of levels of knowledge and understanding. The dichotomy of believers and non-believers, where the believers are rewarded in paradise and the non-believers suffer eternal damnation in hell, is naive. Also, since the physical universe itself is a manifestation of the divine, the notion of guilt related to our bodily existence is meaningless.

Modern science, having mastered the outer reality, has reached the frontier of brain and mind. We comprehend the universe by our minds, but what is the nature of the mind? Are our descriptions of the physical world ultimately no more than a convoluted way of describing aspects of the mind –the instrument with which we see the outer world? Why don't the computing circuits of the computer develop self-awareness as happens in the circuitry of the brain? Why do we have freewill when science assumes that all systems are bound in a chain of cause-effect relationships? Academic science has no answers to these questions and it appears that it never will. On the other hand, Vedic science focuses on precisely these conundrums. And it does so by gracefully reconciling outer science to inner truth. By seeing the physical universe to be a manifestation of the transcendent spirit, Hindus find meditation on any aspect of this reality to be helpful in the acquisition of knowledge. But Hindus also declare that the notion that the universe consists of just the material reality to be false.

Here Hindus are in the company of those scientists who believe that to understand reality one needs recognize consciousness as a principle that complements matter. We cannot study the outer in one pass; we must look at different portions of it and proceed in stages. Likewise, we cannot know the spirit in one pass; we must look at different manifestations of it and meditate on each to deepen understanding. 

There can be no regimentation in this practice. Hinduism, by its very nature, is a dharma of many paths. Thomas Jefferson would have approved. He once said, "Compulsion in religion is distinguished peculiarly from compulsion in every other thing. I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.'' Not a straitjacket of narrow dogma, Hinduism enjoins us to worship any manifestation of the divine to which one is attuned.

Yoga is the practical vehicle of Hinduism and certain forms of it, such as Hatha Yoga, have become extremely popular all over the world. This has prepared people to understand the deeper, more spiritual, aspects of Yoga, which lead through Vedanta and the Vedasto the whole Hindu tradition.

Hindu ideas were central to the development of transcendentalism in America in the early decades of the 19th century. That movement played a significant role in the self-definition of America. 

Hindu ideas have also permeated to the popular consciousness in the West – albeit without an awareness of the source – through the works of leading writers and poets. In many ways Americans and other Westerners are already much more Hindu than they care to acknowledge. Consider the modern fascination with spirituality, self-knowledge, environment, multiculturalism; this ground was prepared over the last two hundred years by Hindu ideas. 

What is it? Science

Where is it? In the primary school, children are seeking simple answers to their questions, which usually begin with: ‘What is it?’ First of all, science is not a lot of things it was once thought to be; not a series of object lessons about a piece of granite, an old wasp’s nest, an acorn, or a tulip. It is not hit and miss like that, not learning the names of the parts of a grass- hopper or a flower; not learning to identify 20 trees, 20 insects, 20 flowers or 20 anything else.

What is science, then? It is a study of the problems that are found wherever children live. More formally stated, it is a study of the natural environment—not merely pieces of chemistry and physics and biology and astronomy and geology. Its content is connected with those subjects but it is a study of problems that pop into curious children’s minds as they live and grow from one day to the next, such as: What makes the wind blow? What’s in a cloud? What’s a stone made of? What does a bell do when it rings? How can a seed grow into a tree ? What makes a rainbow? Anyone who has ever worked with primary school girls and boys knows that most of them are full of questions like this and like to know the answers to them. Well, finding the answers to such questions— that is science.

And it need not be too technical. The full explanation is not what the l0-year-old needs. He could not understand that. It is a foundation in simple terms of the how, the when, the where, and the what of the things that happen around him every day. That is his science. He doesn't need the technical terms, the formulas and the detailed explanations. Those will come later, but when he is 10 he chiefly needs to get satisfaction out of his tendency to be curious. He needs to have his curiosity broadened, his interests nurtured and his enthusiasms encouraged. That is the kind of science which fits him and with which he is able to deal.

It is generally true that a well-informed person is an interesting one, and some information regarding the environment is one of the pieces of equipment that go to make up an informed individual. That does not mean that you expect to pump your pupils full of facts that they can merely use to fill up blank spaces in conversation. It means that you want to help them to come to learn generalizations or meanings which they can use in interpreting problems in their environment.

One aim in science, then, is to teach generalizations that can be used by pupils in interpreting the problems they come across in their daily living. The more nearly we can come to studying the problems that really make a difference in the lives of girls and boys the closer we are to having a science program.

You don’t want your girls and boys to grow up to be sloppy thinkers. The method by which science generalizations were originally discovered is the kind of thinking we hope they can be trained to achieve. We may call it a scientific way of getting the right answer. There is nothing brand-new about this idea. Probably you have been doing it for years in arithmetic and other subjects: defining the problem, suggesting several hypotheses, gathering evidence, drawing conclusions, checking conclusions. That does not mean that every time a problem comes up you get out these steps and make pupils climb them.