THE WRITTEN WORD
What is Yoga
Paragraph references are specific to this digital edition.
What is Yoga
Yoga, Religion and Morality
While stressing the imperative need of Yogic education and of a radical change in the aims, methods and structure of education in the light of Yoga, it is necessary to point out that by Yoga — which is only one of the systems of Yoga – and that Yoga does not mean either religion or morality.
Yoga is not a body of beliefs, dogmas or revelations which are to be believed in without verification. Yoga is an advancing Science, with its spirit of research, with its methods of experimentation and methods of verification and advance of knowledge.
The knowledge that Yoga delivers at a certain stage is surpassable by a further research and experimentation; the spirit that Yoga demands is that of an absolute impartiality and a complete freedom from all prejudgments and preconceptions; its zeal is the zeal for the Truth and Truth alone; its criterion of Truth is verifiability in abiding experience, and even, finally, a physical change and transformation.
In all the above respects, Yoga is quite distinct from Morality and Religion.
Morality is a part of the ordinary life. The ordinary life consists of seeking satisfaction and the development of the body, life and mind without any reference to their original source or self. Morality is that part of the ordinary life which seeks to regulate and guide the various physical, vital, mental or rational thought or by some intuitive insight obtained at the level of the highest practical or pure Reason. But the standards of conduct erected by moral consciousness, even the so-called universal principles of the categorical imperative, cannot be determined with certainty, and these in the present application by a bewildered and imperfect humanity come easily to be conflicting principles. Justice often demands what love abhors, and in fact man’s absolute justice easily turns out to be in practice a sovereign injustice. Morality is always in a state of disequilibrium.
Religion is an endeavour of man to turn away from the earth towards the Divine; but this seeking is still of the mind or of the lower ignorant consciousness, as yet without knowledge and led by the dogmatic tenets and rules of sect or creed which claims to have found the way out of the bounds of the earth-consciousness into some beatific Beyond. The religious life may be a first approach to yoga, but it is not indispensable. Religion is very often only a revolving about in a round of rites, ceremonies and practices or set ideas and forms without any issue.
Sometimes, the absoluteness of the moral values is sought to be derived from some religious sanction. Thus religions have attempted to erect a system and declare God’s law through the mouth of the Avatar or Prophet. Such systems have proved more dynamic and powerful than the dry ethical idea. But quite often these systems conflict with what reason supports or they are so ingrained in certain religious dogmas that they cannot have any appeal to those who do not accept those dogmas, and, besides, there is too a conflict among the dogmas. Or, else, they are so rigidly framed that they prove unworkable and are, therefore, rejected by Nature.
Or, sometimes, they are turned into a system of compromises and become obsolete in the march of Time.
The truth is that neither morality nor religion represents the highest status of man’s consciousness. They may prepare, but they are only stations on an evolutionary journey. Both of them are a seeking. Morality is a seeking for a guiding principle of conduct; but this seeking is mental, and, when it goes beyond that, it no more remains morality. Religion is a seeking for the Divine, but the method of seeking is one of dogma, ritual, and ceremony, and an involvement in a fabric of moral, social and cultural institutions all determined and permeated wholly or partly by the dogmatic tenets and rules of the sect or creed. It is an ignorant and a mental way of seeking. When it goes beyond, and liberates itself from dogma, ritual and ceremony and rules, it ceases to be religion in the strict sense of the word. Beyond morality, beyond religion, is the path of Yoga.
Yoga proceeds directly by a change of consciousness, a change from the ordinary consciousness, ignorant and separated from its true self and from God, to a greater consciousness in which one finds one’s true being and comes first into a direct and living contact by experience and then into a union with the Divine. For the yogin, this change of consciousness is the one thing he seeks and nothing else matters, no belief, no dogma, no rituals, no ceremonies.
Both morality and religion in their deepest core touch Yoga or spirituality, and both may prepare the change of consciousness; but the element of Yoga does not constitute the differentia by which we can define morality or religion. Yoga not only aims at the total change of consciousness, but even its method is that of a gradual and increasing change of consciousness by an entry into a domain higher than the body-life-mind complex. In other words, Yoga is an exploration of consciousness through consciousness.
In the yogic consciousness and in the knowledge and the effectivity that it delivers, there is the fulfilment of the highest element that morality and religion in their deepest core seek for but fail to realise. Yoga replaces the moral law by a progressive law of self-perfection spontaneously expressing itself through the individual nature. No more in this operation is the imposition of a rule or an imperative on the individual nature; the spiritual law that Yoga presents respects the individual nature, modifies it and perfects it, and in this sense it is unique for each individual and can be known and made operative only by a change of consciousness and by an entry into the real self. In its progressive movement, it may, if necessary, permit a short or a long period of governance by a moral law, but always as a provisional device and ever looking for going beyond into a plane of a spontaneous expression of the Right and the Good. To the yogic consciousness, moral virtue is not valuable in itself, but as an expression of a complex of certain qualities which are for the time being necessary and useful for a given individual in an upward journey. Again, for the yogic consciousness, what is commonly called a vice has, too, behind it, a complex of certain qualities which have some utility in the economy of Nature, and can therefore be converted by placing them in their right place, into a complement to what lies in the consciousness behind the commonly called virtues.
Yoga is not confined merely to the aspect of conduct; the conduct dealt with by morality is only a minor aspect of the totality of works, inner no less than outer. Yogic consciousness includes all these works and strives by the method of a progressive change of consciousness for the perfect expression of all the aspects of the works and in this striving it realises also the unity of works with the highest knowledge and deepest Love.
Religion too is an attempt to include all aspects of works and to arrive at some sort of unity of works with knowledge and love; but once again, its method is mechanical, mental, moral and dogmatic and, instead of arriving at a comprehension of all the values, it ends only in a system of compromises. The progressive law of yogic development may permit, if necessary, a short or a long period of governance of the individual or of the race by religion, but only as a provisional device: what it always makes for is a passage beyond into the plane of a comprehensive consciousness where the distinctive religious methods disappear or cease to have any fundamental or useful meaning. To the yogic consciousness, religion is not valuable as a form, but only in so far as it may aid the too ignorant consciousness of man to turn towards something that is deeper and higher and, even there, it stresses the necessity for every man to have his own distinctive religion. And again, for the yogic consciousness, what is commonly called agnosticism, scepticism, atheism, positivism or free thinking, has behind it a concern and a demand for a direct knowledge, which, if rightly understood, recognised, respected and fulfilled, would become a powerful complement to what lies in consciousness behind the commonly accepted religious qualities of faith and unquestioning acceptance of dogmatic teachings and injunctions. But as we speak today of the need of yogic education, it is felt that this is because the time of religionism is now overpassed, and what is now demanded is a direct development of yogic consciousness without any resort to any compromises that result from yielding to the methods of religion.
Yoga looks always behind the form to the essence and to the living consciousness; and in doing so, it brings to the surface that which lies behind, and its action is therefore of a new creation. Yoga transcends the forms and methods of morality and religion and creates and recreates its own living and progressively perfecting forms. As Sri Aurobindo wrote in one of his letters: “Yoga takes the stand that it is only by a change of consciousness that the true basis of life can be discovered; from within outward is indeed the rule. But within does not mean some quarter inch behind the surface. One must go deep and find the soul, the self, the Divine Reality within us and only then can life become a true expression of what we can be instead of a blind and always repeated confused blur of the inadequate and imperfect thing we were. The choice is between remaining in the old jumble and groping about in the hope of stumbling on some discovery or standing back and seeking the Light within till we discover and can build the Godhead within and without us.”
Yogic methods are distinctive and must not be confused with either morality or religion. A mere learning about Yoga is not Yoga, and even the most catholic book cannot be a substitute for the direct yogic practice of an inner change of consciousness by which one can perceive and realise the inner and higher Self and transform the workings of the outer instruments of Nature. Nor can Yoga be practiced in a casual way or only as a part-time preoccupation. Yoga, to be properly practiced, must be taken as a sovereign and central occupation and must govern and permeate every aspect of life and every pursuit of knowledge and activity.
An education that aims at leading the students to the great portals of the infinitude of Knowledge, Action and Love, and of self-perfection which result from a disciplined yogic effort must be as radical and uncompromising as Yoga itself.
It is recognised that to realise such a radical education is extremely difficult; but it is equally necessary to recognise that if we are serious about the solution of our educational problems, there is no other way.
Spirituality, Science and Technology
One of the central issue of today is that of the uses and misuses of Science and Technology, of Science and Values, of Science and Spirituality, — in brief, the issue of what Sri Aurobindo has called the denial of the materialist and the refusal of the ascetic.
Fortunately, it can be said that humanity has over passed the stage of naïve materialism, which was based on the vicious circular argument that physical senses are the only means of knowledge, since this very statement cannot be established by means of physical senses. No more are we like the uninstructed stranger who on witnessing the operation of the steam engine insists that it is the piston that produces the steam and has no patience to inquire that the reality might be that it is the steam that propels the piston. A new climate of patient and undogmatic inquiry is now being created where scientists are beginning to study the phenomenon of consciousness with fresh eyes that might detect that it is not the brain that generates consciousness but that it is the other way round. The latest trends are knocking the doors of the primacy of consciousness.
A major difficulty involved in a possible dialogue between science and spirituality lies in the insistence laid by the long established habit of physical sciences on the application of their methods on all sciences, even when the subject matter is not physical in character. But it should be evident that the demand for physical proof of supra-physical fact is irrational and illogical. For the method of knowledge should be appropriate to the object of knowledge. We have to note that the occult, psychic and spiritual sciences have developed various kinds of evidence of the existence of other planes of being and communication with them. They include objectivisation of the outer sense, subtle-contact, mind-contact, life-contact, and contacts through the subliminal in special states of consciousness exceeding our ordinary range. We should note that in any field of experience, error is possible; error is not the prerogative of the inner subjective or occult part of us. Even when the physical and objective methods are employed, there is room for error. A mere liability to error cannot be a reason for shutting out a large and important domain of experience. As in the physical sciences, so in the supra-physical sciences, it is a reason for scrutinising it and finding out in its true standards and its characteristics appropriate and valid means of verification. It is also important to observe that the very basis of our objective experience is our subjective being; hence, it is not probable that only the physical objectifications are true and the rest unreliable. The supra-physical consciousness, when rightly interrogated is a witness to truth and its testimony is confirmed again and again even in the physical and objective field; that testimony cannot, then, be disregarded when it calls our attention to things within us, or to things that belong to planes or worlds of a supra-physical experience.
As Sri Aurobindo points out, “Consciousness is the great underlying fact, the universal witness for whom the world is a field, the senses instruments. To that witness the worlds and their objects appeal for their reality and for the one world or the many, for the physical equally with the supra-physical, we have no other evidence that they exist.”
The question is whether there is or there can be a science of supra-physical data, the scientific character of which is as great as that of sciences of the physical data. Often we seem to be hesitant to answer this question, and often our claim for spirituality and its validity is sought to be authenticated on the basis of a few examples of intuition, inspiration, or random but radical experiences of the soul and the spirit. It does not occur to us that Indian culture has developed over millennia a multi-sided science through the pursuits of those faculties, which lie above the ranges of physical sciences and rational intelligence. This science is what Swami Vivekananda called science par excellence; this is the Science of Yoga, developed and matured by Rishis and yogins of the Veda and the Upanishads and still further perfected in unbroken chain throughout the history of India right up to our own times.
This Yoga has been looked upon as practical psychology and yogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of man as has the scientific handling of the natural force of electricity or steam to the normal operations of electricity or steam. And they, too, are formed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result. In yoga, again, the object is an assured method of personal discovery or living repetition and possession of past discovery and a working out of all the things found.
Spirituality is not a matter merely of sporadic or of occasional experiences but a matter of vast and authentic possession of knowledge of all that lies beyond limitations of the human mind as also positions of effective power of realisation and action. It is on the basis of this science that we can bridge the gulf that seems to exist between sciences and spirituality. It is on the basis of the yogic knowledge that we can confidently hope to seek enlargement of physical sciences, and also to develop the required power of transformation of human limitations, human passions, human ignorance, and all the facilities which are found in the human nature.
Again, if philosophy has to play its legitimate role, it has to deal with the field of spiritual experiences and spiritual realities on the basis that is integral. For the varieties of spiritual experiences can easily pose the baffling problem of conflict amongst them. Fortunately, in the spiritual experiences recorded in the Veda and the Upanishads, we have already the statements of supramental and integral experience. Sri Aurobindo has shown, in our own times, the profundity of the ancient synthesis of the Vedic Yoga and the Upanishadic Yoga, on the basis of which his own Integral Yoga is founded, even though it has built new methodologies for purposes of a new objective in order that the supramental knowledge can be harnessed for purposes of the highest collective welfare and for the mutation of the human species which would result in the development of a new humanity or super humanity.
Yoga, Science, Religion and Philosophy
We may begin with a preliminary elucidation of the three terms, science, religion and philosophy. Science may be defined as a quest of knowledge, which lays a special emphasis on detailed processes in order to arrive at utmost precision, and the distinguishing methods of this quest are those of impartial observation, experimentation by working on falsifiable hypothesis, verification in the light of crucial instances and establishment of conclusions which are repeatable and which are also modifiable in the light of advancing quest.
Religion may also be looked upon as quest of knowledge, but the object is to relate the human beings with something that lies beyond the realms of Matter, Life and Mind, and the distinguishing features of the methods are those of practice of beliefs, dogmas, rituals, ceremonies, prescribed acts and pursuits of social, ethical, and other institutional norms.
Philosophy is also a quest of knowledge, but it concentrates on the ultimate or intrinsic processes and substances so as to arrive at the most general and universal features of the universe as a whole and even of that that may transcend into what may be conceived as the original source of the Universe and Man. The distinguishing features of the methods of philosophy are those of: (i) impartial and critical questioning of beliefs (religious or otherwise), conclusions (scientific or otherwise), and speculations among all of the fundamentals of enquiry; and (ii) application of logical vigour in relating all fundamental processes of the world and underlying assumptions of thought and knowledge in an attempt to arrive at the most indubitable universal and essential conclusions, which may, even though not be verifiable, may yet be found to be rationally incorrigible.
Philosophy is often described as “No Man’s Land”, since it falls outside the domain of science and religion — the two domains to which the entire humanity is related in one way or the other. Philosophy is something like science and something like religion, but it belongs to neither. It is like science a critical inquiry, an impartial inquiry, and an inquiry that follows the vigour of logic. It is unlike science, because its attempt is to scale the highest heights of the study of the ultimate substance. Its main concern is with essence, not so much with processes or demands of processes in their minute precision. Unlike science, philosophy is satisfied with mere intellectual incorrigibility, even when verification in experience is provided for in regard to its conclusions. As a result, philosophy can freely examine critically the contentions and conclusions of science and there could develop also an elaborate philosophy of science. Philosophical inquiry can even anticipate scientific discoveries; it can even provide guidelines or chalk out possible lines of inquiry for science. The conclusions of philosophy need not necessarily coincide with the conclusions of science; and yet the future developments of science may eventually come to substantiate the conclusions of philosophy. In the intermediate stages, therefore, there could be conflicts between philosophy and science, but since both are critical in their approach, these conflicts do not take serious proportions as has happened in regard to conflicts between science and religion. In recent times, however, science has influenced the entire domain of knowledge to such an extent that certain tendencies of scientific thought have come to refuse the validity and justification of philosophy, or else, it has tended to provide only a subordinate role to philosophy and allowed it to exist only as a handmaid of science. But whatever be the temporary phases or relationship between science and philosophy, the best way to establish a harmonious relationship between the two would be to allow philosophy its own unique position, its own special methods, and respect its conclusions and even utilise them as helpful guidelines for pursuits of science. At the same time, philosophy should admit that although its own methods or Pure Reason may arrive at rationally incorrigible conclusions, it should accept with humility the truth behind the assertion that what is intellectually incorrigible need not be scientifically or even ultimately conclusive, particularly when its conclusions collide with higher levels of experience which lie beyond the level of Reason.
In India, there has been a tradition that philosophical conclusions, however convincing they be intellectually, must also be shown to be confirmed by the deliverance of spiritual experiences. Therefore, except for the materialistic school of Charvaka, all systems of Indian philosophy provide for a special room where philosophical conclusions are shown to be supported by spiritual experience either as they are obtained directly or as they are obtained through the records of Shruti. On account of this reason, as also on account of the fact that philosophy did not attempt to prescribe to science its own conclusions and respected the experiential and experimental character of science and its conclusions, there was hardly any conflict between science and philosophy. In the West, the conflict between science and philosophy has, in recent times, come into some kind of sharpness, and philosophy has also come to be increasingly discredited. This is mainly because certain tendencies in pure philosophy came to be a battleground of conflicting philosophical positions, each claiming some kind of incorrigibility and yet not admitting that the quarrel could probably be settled by verification in experience. It may also be added that there have arisen trends in philosophy in recent times which are themselves anti-rational or anti-philosophical and which plead for the supremacy of science or for the supremacy of deeper claims of experience in existentialism or in the philosophy of Will as against Reason as illustrated in trends of pragmatism or in trends of the revolutionary trends for Action.
Philosophy, science and theology have some kind of relationship, which needs to be brought out. Theology is normally connected with a specific religion and it attempts to defend the basic doctrines of that religion in terms of rationality. Theology consists of speculations on all matters, which constitute the subject matter of philosophy. But its tendency is, even though critical, ultimately supportive of the doctrines of a particular religion. Theology tend to support and defend dogma and develops a theory of Reason and Revelation and advocates supremacy of Revelation, even though that revelation has assumed the form of unquestionable dogma. Philosophy, on the other hand, appeals to human reason, and even when it develops a theory of Reason and Revelation, and even of the superiority of revelation, it refuses the authority of dogma, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. If it accepts the superiority of Revelation to Reason, it accepts it only on the basis of repeatable experience, which would verify the contents of revelation.
Science aims at and provides definite knowledge; dogma which claims to be unquestionable and yet which claims definite knowledge belongs to theology. Philosophy is a field of all the questions of deepest interest to speculative mind, which science cannot answer, or which science as yet within its present limits has not been able to answer. These questions relate to ontology and cosmology; but philosophy also raises the questions that relate to axiology and discusses the questions of purpose, goal and normative standards that should govern the quest of the summum bonum. Even the questions such as that of the distinction between knowledge and wisdom, for which no answer can be found in the laboratory, are dealt with by philosophy.
Science and philosophy have tended to oppose religion and theology, and this conflict arises from the sharpness with which theology or religion is defined as necessarily tied up with dogmatic belief. Historically, it is true that, in the West, science and religion have clashed with each other, and this clash rests on the claim that science is rational, empirical and progressive, while religion is supra-rational or anti-rational, dogmatic and conservative. It is also a fact that science and scientists came to be persecuted in the West, particularly at the commencement of Renaissance, by the Church. Even now, that conflict has not ceased, though scientists are no more persecuted by the authorities who uphold any dogmatic belief.
Evidently, science and religion must remain in perpetual conflict, if religion continues to uphold unquestionable dogma as the source of the knowledge of the truth and science continues to uphold that rationality and empiricism are the only sources of the knowledge of truth. This conflict is further complicated by the fact that although science provides definitive knowledge and science tells us what we can know, the disconcerting fact is that what we can know is little and what we cannot know by science relates to many things of great importance. The modern trends in knowledge have confirmed that axiological questions which science can never attempt to investigate or answer are indispensable if the right direction of human journey is to be determined and guided on the ground of definitive and ascertainable knowledge. If science cannot answer these questions, humanity must turn irresistibly to that which claims to answer these questions or to discover new means of knowledge by which these questions can be answered.
Sometimes, a compromise is effected. It is contented that in matters of the empirical world, rationality and science must be resorted to, but in respect of axiological questions, religion must be resorted to, even though religion may be anti-rational or supra-rational or dogmatic. But this compromise has been found to be unsatisfactory because compromise seems to be opposed to the inexorable demands of the quest of knowledge. It has been contended that it is not good either to forget the questions that ontology and axiology ask, or to persuade ourselves with the religionists that we have found indubitable answers to them. In the same line of argument, it is, therefore, advocated that the best thing is to teach people how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralysed. But even this counsel does not eventually succeed. There is, therefore, a legitimate pressure to re-examine the interrelationship between science, philosophy and religion and to consider whether all of them can be refashioned in such a way that the conflict among them can be resolved.
Fortunately, there are new trends in all these new fields, which need to be welcomed. The world “religion” has come to be redefined in some quarters. A distinction is being made between religion and religionism, where the latter connotes dogmatic assertion of a particular religion or religious creed and the former connotes the quintessential nature of religion that is common among all religions which emphasises living contact or experience of the individual in his or her encounter with the totality of the universe or that which lies beyond the universe. Swami Vivekananda, for example, constantly spoke of religion as experiential in character and contended that religion is a matter of experience, a matter of knowledge and a matter of verifiable and repeatable knowledge. He even expounded at length, systems of Yoga and declared that Yoga is veritably a science par excellence — a science relating to those domains, which modern science leaves out of its purview. Dr. Rabindranath Tagore also spoke of Religion of Man, which also seeks to underline the experiential aspect of religion. Religion of humanism is another aspect, which has developed in recent times, which wants to install man and his holistic search of knowledge and fulfilment as the central concern. Sri Aurobindo has spoken of spiritual religion of humanity as the hope of the future, a religion that is non-dogmatic, that is entirely removed from religionism and devoted to the Yogic pursuit of knowledge and action in their integrality.
There is also a powerful trend in recent times to bring about a resolution in the conflict among religions because this conflict hurts even those who want to follow religion but are placed in a sceptical mood when different religions give conflicting answers to the deepest questions regarding the meaning and value of life. Here, again, attempts are made to develop attitudes of equal respect to all religions or to discover common elements of all religions that present to humanity a path of axiological development, which might be free from the disabling conflicts among religions. As idealists many have tended to adopt this trend; but exclusivism of religious beliefs is so strong that it is doubtful whether and on what lines religions can come together. And even if they come together, the question will be whether this unity or synthesis or harmony of religions will be reconcilable with science. The question is also gaining importance as to whether philosophy will be able to play any important role, and, if so, whether while playing this role, philosophical standpoints of today will need to undergo a major change.
It seems fortunate that in the present web of emerging trends in science, philosophy and religion, Yoga has emerged; for Yoga has specific characteristics which bring it closest to science, philosophy and religion and has yet the potentiality of going beyond all of them so as to provide to humanity a new mode of knowledge whereby world-knowledge, soul-knowledge and God-knowledge can all be integrated.
The methods of Yoga can be pursued without recourse to any dogma, and they require the same rigour as science insists, namely, observation, experimentation, and verification by repeatable experience. Yoga can be looked upon as the experiential basis for philosophical speculations and conclusions, and if rightly used, Yoga can be a bridge between philosophy and science.
But how far these tasks can be accomplished will depend upon one central issue. Modern science has so far tended to concentrate on the knowledge of Matter or on life and mind as embodied in Matter. It has also tended to develop those methods, which have proved successful in studies where empirical observation and measurement are feasible. It is evident that the domains with which philosophy, religion and Yoga deal with centrally transcend Matter or the boundaries of embodied life and mind; the question is whether science would consent to extend its inquiry into these new domains, and if so, with what methods. The present scientific methods insist on empirical verification, measurement and objectivity; the question is whether science would consent to develop new methods where the domains of inquiry themselves are supra physical, which escape the boundaries of empiricism, measurability and physical objectivism. Indeed, it seems rational to admit that to insist on physical proofs of what is claimed to be supra-physical is illegitimate. But are there, it may be asked, appropriate methods of investigating the supra-physical which can give guarantee against subjective bias, subjective interference and lapse into incorrigible erroneous beliefs? Yoga claims that it has developed methods, which can deal with the supra-physical as rigorously and as objectively as modern science deals with physical phenomena. Yoga claims that its methods can deal both with the physical and supra-physical, and, if needed and encouraged it could develop an integral science of both the physical and supra-physical and their inter-relationship.
This is where we stand today in regard to the issues that are confronting the contemporary scientists, philosophers and advocates of religions and Yoga. In the spirit of inquiry, all the emerging trends need to be taken into account, and one could repeat the fundamental spirit of science which is to explore knowledge and to reject all the dogmas, even though some dogmas might have come to be built in the minds of scientists in regard to science itself.
Yoga Science and Man
There is today an ascendancy of Science and Technology and there is a general tendency to judge and evaluate any claim of knowledge by the application of standards and criteria of the Modern Science and by its technological utilities.
There is a general, although unfounded, feeling that Yoga will not be able to stand the scientific scrutiny, and there is thus even a tendency to posit some kind of polarity between Science and Yoga.
It is true that Science has proved its claim as a potent means of knowledge and power. But at the same time, it has come to raise certain important problems for the solution of which it needs to look beyond its present assumptions and preoccupations. And, it would seem that in this forward search, it might cross the barriers that divide Science and Yoga.
There was a time when only the physical was regarded as real, and the systematic study of Matter was alone regarded as Science. With the development of Biology, however, a slight modification emerged in the scientific world, for Biology no longer deals with Matter, but with Life. A greater change in the situation has arisen with the emergence of Psychology as a Science. For Psychology has made it evident that however we may try to explain the psychological phenomena in terms of the physical, there are certain essential functionings of the Mind, such as those of 'understanding', which escape entirely the framework of physical interpretation. The Gestalt school of psychology, the psychoanalysis, the Hormic Psychology, the Personalistic Psychology, and many other trends in modern research have brought to the fore some crucial data by strict scientific methods which have made Psychology an essentially a Science of the supraphysical.
In fact, even in material sciences themselves, there is now the admission of data which are so subtle that their physical verification in themselves is impossible. All this has led to the liberation of the modern mind from the rigid hold of the identification of the real with the physical and of the insistence of physical verification as the final criterion of scientific method.
But if physical verification is impossible in regard to some crucial data, still verification of some kind must be employed in the scientific methodology. The question is: what kind of verification will it be, Modern Science is still in search of an adequate answer to this problem.
There is at present, both in Philosophy and in Science, a tendency towards an extreme empiricism. An attempt is being made to declare the Law of Causation and the Law of Uniformity of Nature, which have been so far the unquestioned foundations of scientific induction, as mere -fictions' of Pure Reason, and thus to replace them by some other 'guidelines' which may be empirically justifiable. This attempt has so far not succeeded, and it has still not been possible to find ‘empirical’ justification for induction.
This failure has created a climate of uncertainty in all scientific research, and there is undoubtedly a state of disequilibrium which can find no resting-place either in empiricism or in rationalism.
The question is: Is there such a resting-place? Can there be 'empirical' proof of the 'fictions' of Pure Reason? Or else, can the 'empirical' guidelines be empirically justified?
It is becoming more and more evident that there is probably no answer to this question, or else the answer lies beyond its present limited boundaries.
There is a further problem arising out of the fact that although Science is a potent means of knowledge in the domain of Facts, it is incapable of dealing with the realm of values. And in recent times, this problem of Science versus values has come to occupy an important place in the context of the uses of Science in the interests of the modern warfare. Also, the general confusion and breakdown in the system of values that were so long upheld by religion and ethics has added to the acuteness of the problem.
Once again, Science has found no means to deal with this problem, except by resorting to non-scientific approaches.
In respect of all the problems, Yoga claims to have solutions.
Yoga, as distinguished from Religion, has always been a Science of the supraphysical, with its own proper methods or observation, experiment and verification. It has already developed a system of criteria and a system of general truths which are proper to the supraphysical.
It claims to have an access to the supraphysical, its phenomena, laws and principles; and with all this it proposes to give the needed help to Science to cross over to the field of the subtle and the Invisible, and thus ensure a rapid progress of the search into the Unknown.
Yoga also claims to provide 'empirical' proofs of the 'fictions' of the Pure Reason, and to show that the Laws of the Uniformity of Nature and of Causality are no more constructions but are real of the Nature and its phenomena. Yoga, however, enlarges the meaning of the ‘empirical’ and embraces within its field not merely the physical, but all that is ‘experimental’.
On this basis, then, Yoga promises to furnish the sure basis to the scientific inductive process.
In Yoga, it is claimed, there is no polarity between Facts and Values. The very object of the yogic search is to discover the Object that is at the same time the Supreme Value. Yoga is thus at once positive and axiological. To know a fact yogically is also to know its value.
Yoga then promises to bridge the gulf between Facts and Values.
It is important to note that in the Indian tradition, there has never been any sharp conflict between Yoga and Science, and all Sciences have accepted the Yogic methods of Knowledge, even when they employed the ordinary empirical methods widely.
It has been recognised in the Indian tradition that there are certain yogic states of consciousness in which knowledge reveals itself intuitively, that its veracity can be tested by the intrinsic methods of yoga itself, even though it can be tested also by the ordinary empirical methods.
Such has been the basis of the Indian system of Astronomy, Astrology, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. It would be a great service to the advancement of Knowledge if this basic relationship between Science and Yoga is reestablished.
With this done, vast frontiers of Knowledge seem to open their gates.
But what about the world-negating tendency of Yoga?
Undoubtedly, if there is to be a true reconciliation of Science and Yoga, there has to be a correction of this world-negating tendency of Yoga.
At the same time, it would be stressed that world-negation is not one single tendency of Yoga, and Yoga should not be judged merely by one of its tendencies, however, powerful it may be.
It is true that behind this world-negation there lies a great truth and an overwhelming spiritual experience verified again and again by many whose search and discipline and realisation cannot be in doubt. And yet there are other spiritual tendencies and experiences equally verified in the same way which claim to go beyond that world-negating experience.
The conflict of spiritual experiences is an important problem for Yoga to resolve, and this must constitute a fresh field of yogic research. As a result of this research, we may arrive at a conclusion which might, as in the Bhagavadgita, affirm the reality of the world and the value of works in the world even much more positively than what can be warranted or inspired by Modern Science or the general impulses towards activism.
But in some such results, the conflict between Yoga and Science would disappear totally, and there would result a complete fusion of Science and Yoga.
Already a great research has been made in this direction, and the results of this research need to be brought forward before the seeking consciousness of the humanity.
If Yoga is not a negation of life, if there is no opposition between the aims of Yoga and Science, if thus, there is an inherent unity of Yoga and Science, we can hopefully look forward to a unified service of Yoga and Science to the highest needs of mankind on the earth.
Whatever may be the academic climate resulting from the problems of the reconciliation of Sciences and Values, Science has always cherished the value of Man and it has been one of the potent forces working for the unity of mankind. Humanism and Internationalism have growth with the growth of science, and in numerous ways, Science and scientists all over the world have endeavoured indefatigably for the application of scientific knowledge towards the alleviation of suffering, eradication of ignorance, and elimination of poverty and want. And with its prospective thrust, it has begun to dream of the physical conquest of death, to express an insatiable thirst for knowledge, to work out something like a terrestrial omnipotence for humanity.
Not merely satisfied with the unraveling of the mysteries of the physical universe, the Modern Science is turning decisively to the unveiling of the mystery of Man the Unknown. And a significant conception which has emerged is that of an all embracing Evolutionary process, in terms of which, it is hoped, Man will one day be truly understood and helped.
This idea of evolution is being universally accepted, and everywhere its impact is felt. In the realm of Philosophy, this idea has become a source of fruitful speculations regarding the destiny of Man, and these in turn have raised the question if evolution is merely a development of physical forms or if there is some occult operation of consciousness causing the outer physical developments and mutations.
It is being increasingly realised that the problems that Man confronts are the result of the consciousness in which he dwells. And it is undeniable that the problems that Man faces today are so complex, so critical, so global as they have never been in his history. Has this situation not to do centrally with the consciousness of Man? And, if we are keen to resolve this situation, is it not necessary to study deeply man's consciousness, its relation to his problems and to find a solution to these problems in terms of a radical change of his consciousness? And in that case, shall we not find yoga, which is not only a science of Consciousness, but also a technology of the change of consciousness to be indispensable in the further progression of Man.
That consciousness of Man is greatly influenced by the ‘unconscious’ has largely come to be accepted all over the world. And modern medicine has accorded a place to psychiatry in the treatment of certain diseases. The concept of mental health and its relation to various elements of consciousness has also come to be accepted. But if, as Yoga affirms, there are not only the subconscious and the conscious, but even the subliminal and the superconscious and if the laws of these in relation to cure and health are studied, there could occur a revolutionary change not only in the practice of psychiatry or of mental health, but even in our approach to medicine itself. It may have a result even on the knowledge of our body, its functioning, its possibilities and its future.