Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Thu 14 Jul 2005 10:18 AM PDT
036 ap. Re: Attitude towards Science
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 10:56:32 +0100 (BST)
From: alok pandey <taijasalok@yahoo.co.in>
Subject: Re: Attitude towards Science
To: scienceandspirit@sriaurobindocenter-la.com
Message - 036/149
Very succintly put, Lopa.
Yes, each epoch has its demi-god that shapes human lives and is a
necessary link in the evolutionary leap. Science followed religion and
now spirituality follows in the footsteps.
This idea (vision) is very beautifully expressed by Sri Aurobindo in
two of His poems that have a prophetic ring about them, - 'In the
Moonlight' and 'A Vision of Science'. Interested readers may like to go
through these to enjoy the original flavour.
It is also very true that Sri Aurobindo obviously saw much farther than
the theories of Einstein and others to come. Those interested may like
to read the poem, - 'Electron'. In fact there is someone here in
Pondicherry who is doing a study and writing a book on physics along
these lines which are very different even from the so called new age
physics which is still a below-top view. We shall know the reality of
matter only when we have the genuine top-down view that is at present
not available till one ascends the evolutionary ladder right up there.
Sri Aurobindo in fact gave hints about the creation of living forms in
matter by this process of precipitating life in matter but then kept
away the rest of the secret!
Yes, there is obviously a T(h)at of mathematics as you say. There are
very beautiful lines in Savitri that bring out the truth of
mathematics. It is the knowledge of the principle behind the ï¬nite
division of Inï¬nity. Here too we may get closer to the truth if instead
of the system of ten we were to discover the system of twelve! In fact
fractals, crystallography and matehmatics are good interphases of the
art and science of Nature. But there is always a leap left, the leapo
without which everything remains incomplete. It is the leap into the
unmoving Stillness, the stable Reality, the sole Truth, the Inï¬nite
without which we keep moving in a circle.
That is why in the kingdoms of the greater knowledge which is far
beyond the truths of the quantum world discovered by the little mind in
Savitri, the Master poet declares with a gentle irony:
Volume: 28-29 [SABCL] (Savitri — A Legend and a Symbol), Page: 268
'With larger lids and looks that searched the unseen.
A light of liberating knowledge shone
Across the gulfs of silence in their eyes;
They lived in the mind and knew truth from within;
A sight withdrawn in the concentrated heart
Could pierce behind the screen of Time's results
And the rigid cast and shape of visible things.
All that escaped conception's narrow noose
Vision descried and gripped; their seeing thoughts
Filled in the blanks left by the seeking sense.
High architects of possibility
And engineers of the impossible,
Mathematicians of the inï¬nitudes
And theoricians of unknowable truths,
They formulate enigma's postulates
And join the unknown to the apparent worlds.
Acolytes they wait upon the timeless Power,
The cycle of her works investigate;
Passing her fence of wordless privacy
Their mind could penetrate her occult mind
And draw the diagram of her secret thoughts;
They read the codes and ciphers she had sealed,
Copies they made of all her guarded plans,
For every turn of her mysterious course
Assigned a reason and unchanging rule.
The unseen grew visible to student eyes,
Explained was the immense Inconscient's scheme,
Audacious lines were traced upon the Void;
The Inï¬nite was reduced to square and cube.
Arranging symbol and signiï¬cance,
Tracing the curve of a transcendent Power,
They framed the cabbala of the cosmic Law,
The balancing line discovered of Life's technique
And structured her magic and her mystery.
Imposing schemes of knowledge on the Vast
They clamped to syllogisms of ï¬nite thought
The free logic of an inï¬nite Consciousness,
Grammared the hidden rhythms of Nature's dance,
Critiqued the plot of the drama of the worlds,
Made ï¬gure and number a key to all that is:
The psycho-analysis of cosmic Self
Was traced, its secrets hunted down, and read
The unknown pathology of the Unique.
Assessed was the system of the probable,
The hazard of fleeing possibilities,
To account for the Actual's unaccountable sum,
Necessity's logarithmic tables drawn,
Cast into a scheme the triple act of the One.
Unveiled, the abrupt invisible multitude
Of forces whirling from the hands of Chance
Seemed to obey some vast imperative:
Their tangled motives worked out unity.
A wisdom read their mind to themselves unknown,
Their anarchy rammed into a formula
And from their giant randomness of Force,
Following the habit of their million paths,
Distinguishing each faintest line and stroke
Of a concealed unalterable design,
Out of the chaos of the Invisible's moods
Derived the calculus of Destiny.
In its bright pride of universal lore
Mind's knowledge overtopped the Omniscient's power:
The Eternal's winging eagle puissances
Surprised in their untracked empyrean
Stooped from their gyres to obey the beck of
Thought: Each mysteried God forced to revealing form,
Assigned his settled moves in Nature's game,
Zigzagged at the gesture of a chess-player
Will Across the chequerboard of cosmic Fate.
In the wide sequence of Necessity's steps
Predicted, every act and thought of God,
Its values weighed by the accountant Mind,
Checked in his mathematised omnipotence,
Lost its divine aspect of miracle
And was a ï¬gure in a cosmic sum.
The mighty Mother's whims and lightning moods
Arisen from her all-wise unruled delight
In the freedom of her sweet and passionate breast,
Robbed of their wonder were chained to a cause and aim;
An idol of bronze replaced her mystic shape
That captures the movements of the cosmic vasts,
In the sketch precise of an ideal face
Forgotten was her eyelashes' dream-print
Carrying on their curve inï¬nity's dreams,
Lost the alluring marvel of her eyes;
The surging wave-throbs of her vast sea-heart
They bound to a theorem of ordered beats:
Her deep designs which from herself she had veiled
Bowed self-revealed in their confessional.
For the birth and death of the worlds they ï¬xed a date,
The diameter of inï¬nity was drawn,
Measured the distant arc of the unseen heights
And visualised the plumbless viewless depths,
Till all seemed known that in all time could be.
All was coerced by number, name and form;
Nothing was left untold, incalculable.
Yet was their wisdom circled with a nought:
Truths they could ï¬nd and hold but not the one Truth:
The Highest was to them unknowable.
By knowing too much they missed the whole to be known:
The fathomless heart of the world was left unguessed
And the Transcendent kept its secrecy.’
In other words there is a place for eveything, a legitimate place
for Science, whether Newtonian or Einsteinian or whatever else that
still may come. And it is ï¬ne if everything remains in its just place.
Only a scaffolding should not be confused for a permanent dwelling
place just because the construction has taken long and we have simply
lived too long at one place to let go.
alok
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