Essay No. 1
HOW FAR DISJOINED
Religion chiefly refers to the possession of faith and belief to an idea irrespective of any reason or sense of logical justification. Thus religion may be defined to be a source of inculcation of cultures and social practices. Unconditional devotion to faith and belief to an idea generates some designated and registered patterns and ways of life, elusive ideas corresponding to world views. This is a sort of dialectical process, where some blind faith results in a discipline as to how to spend each and every day. Religion is said to connect human morals to super nature and spiritual world, because the material existence does not appear to be incumbent in analysis. It emphasizes attachment to faith and belief without caring for any room for reasons, justifications or logical understandings at the initial stage. But religious thoughts gradually reconcile to rituals and statutory behaviors and practices. The idealists place religions above nature, weighing as the ingredients of super nature. They believe that the soul leaves one body after its tenure is over and gets accommodated in another body . The idea is transformation , one of the three principles of Marxism. To the sages, the soul has appeared to be ever living. According to the idealists, the journey of man’s knowledge is aimed at knowing the soul which exists in every human being to represent Brahma, the supreme of all gods. This idea resembles with the fact that an atom represents the solar system. Nothing can remain beyond the notice of Brahma, because He is omnipresent every where. Any action of our noses, eyes, ears, and other sensory organs is got done by them as engineered by Brahma. Scientifically we see that the role of Brahma has an analogy with the existence of matter. Matter has no birth and no destruction. Only reality is that it is always in motion and is always subject to change.
On the other hand, What is Science ?
Science is a branch of knowledge or a study of topics dealing with the truths , dormant or systematically unfolded, a knowledge that corresponds to reasons, logical senses and obeys the operation of general laws and mathematical devices. Science comprises of knowledge to have been verified and experimented. In a nutshell science confines to reasons, verification and proofs. But there are some occasions that are physically existing but can not be tested hand-in-hand. Let us take the case of some atoms. We can not see or count atoms. But the theories based on such small particles are found to yield calculated results. This phenomena are known as hypotheses, which constitute a part of science. Science speaks of reality and avoids imagination or guess. Science registers something concrete or something that can be concretized. The things coming under the term science have real features and exist materially. They obey the principles of nature. The energy that evolves out of matter has also material origin and is termed as matter without mass. Energy is embedded in matter and indicates a stage of matter where it reaches through development . Matter develops to energy through changes, firstly quantitative and then qualitative. The study of all forms of matter including energy is science which is dragging man to proceed from known to unknown , heaping discoveries and inventions by way of unfolding nature and storing knowledge classified as mathematics, physics, chemistry , Biology, etc.
How religion cropped up and made advances :
Religion appears to be imaginary. But it has roots of growth. Imagination requires some object in vision. Imagination and thinking cannot evolve out of nothing. It is not somebody’s whim or hobby. Even if it is whim or hobby, there must be having some material aspect. Now let us cultivate what might there be behind the origination of religious ideas.
It is the brain that enables man to think how to overcome his immediate difficulties. The capacity of the brain is the pertinent question here. The capacity of the brain varies from animal to animal and it depends on the development of nourishment. Scientists can infer that the first brain structure appeared at least 550 million years ago, with mice, chickens, monkeys, and apes that make us to believe that more improved species tend to preserve the structures responsible for basic behaviours. A long term human study comparing the human brain to the primitive brain found that the modern human brain contains the primitive hind brain region—what most neuro-scientists call it the proto reptilian brain. The purpose of this part of the brain is to sustain fundamental homeostatic functions. This region is known to refer to the paleo-mammalian brain, which in its turn often is referred to as the limbic system. The limbic system deals with more complex functions including emotional, sexual and fighting behaviors. Of course, some animals that are not vertebrates also have brains, and their brains have passed by separate evolutionary histories
Another characteristics of the structure of brains requires to be mentioned. The nervous system is the part of an animal body that coordinates its actions to all respective organs by transmitting signals to and from different parts of the body. The nervous system detects environmental changes that impact the body. In responding to the requirements of different parts of the body , modifications had been initiated to suit the purpose. By this way the brain also had undergone changes according to every stage of major and qualitative changes of the body from species to species, as revealed by Darwin in his findings of the origin of species. It is now needless to elaborate how man was able to assume a brain superior to the brains of all other animals.
This developed brain in man had raised his capacity from the stage of being dominated by the nature to the stage of being dominant over the nature as far as practicable up till now. Where this dominance could not break through hard-nut-obstacles and could not make remedy for the troubles caused by reasons this or that, the feeling of some unseen power generated in the brain to have created those difficulties. That imagination of specific power won over his mind. The wise and advanced thinkers assessed the causes of ignorance and conferred the title of god on that power. Let us consider the hymns of such a god named Agni. According to the Veda, in the sixth mandal a good number of suktas and hymns were composed by the sage Bharadwaj. There were uttered so may qualitative verses in praise of the god Agni (Fire). He was called to be the greatest of all gods. The god Agni was expressed to be possessing a pleasant image. He was treated to be the convener of all gods. The god Agni had the resource to generate power to defeat the strongest enemy. He was imagined to sit on the higher spot prepared for jajna . The priests and disciples used to follow suit towards that `jajna’ in search of wealth and properties. The Agni god had been lauded with showers of admiring words to mean glowing , shining, handsome, always bright by being a cheese-and-butter consumer. This god could supposedly remove the sufferings of the worshipers. Agni was an eternal enemy-destroyer, food procurer, an eternal lord of people, eternal provider of food and wealth, enemy-destroyer, etc. Agni was the provider of animal resources to the worshipers. Those who worshiped him with sacred offerings, would live happily up to hundred years with his sons, grand sons etc The hymns carrying many-sided aspirations were composed in honour of god Agni. Agni had the capacity to grasp everything . to take away each and every thing in the furnace and despatch it to the respective god. This way Agni used to connect the people to other gods in respect of sending offerings to them.
Now let us consider the hymns in prayer of Indra considered to be the great warrior of the heaven. The verses were composed to describe the bravery and skills in the embodiment of Indra’s loftiness. He was termed the killer of enemies. Indra, the god, made the cows hold milk, and had made the way for the cows to flourish. Indra provided nutrition, energy, food and wealth. The god Indra carried on battle by riding horses,, yielded power for the worshipers. Indra was prayed for making the worshipers rich in huge properties. Indra was prayed that he should award the worshiper ……….a son who would own immense wealth and crops. The disciple liked to worship the god Indra, with the hymns, who happened to be vastly learned, truthful, devoted to honesty, to be strong , enemy – killer and who could fulfill his desire.
If we proceed to analyze the hymns composed to pray to gods of specific mission, we shall come to conclude that the ideas of god emerged out of the contradiction between man and nature, out of the interaction of the man’s brain upon the ingredients of nature, raising the question of safety and security, welfare, wealth and property, livelihood, etc. In the hymns for the prayer to gods Agni and Indra, we witness that cows and other useful animals, wine-like sort of drinks, happiness, battles with enemies, procurement of sound health, all these necessaries connected with life constituted the background of hopes and aspirations , social relations, relation between the seen and the unseen, between man and the imaginary gods. The hail-storms devastated the structure of the environment, the earthquake claimed lives, rains flooded away habitations and created a situation where the mankind remained spell-bound. All these seemed to come from the sky, namely, heaven, which is beyond the reach of man. Something must be done to save society , lives and properties, finally the mankind. The sages vested with the task of supernatural thinking came out with the prescription that the gods of the connected incidents lived in heaven. The tasks of the people would be to satisfy these gods in the manner they could discover. This way the hymns were composed to utter as prayers. The patterns of holding `jajnas’ were prescribed. The system stated to be continued years after years. I myself had seen during my childhood that when cholera broke out in the village , the villagers started chorus singing in groups across the village and entering into each and every house, in the name of `Rama’ and `Krishna’. `Gouranga and Chaitanya’ etc. The people believed whole-heartedly that the epidemic could be countered that way. That was the way how the religion came into being. It is super natural, because it can neither be proved nor be concretized, though the word super nature is unreal and untrue.
The word super nature is attached to idealism to highlight the spirit of the things under study to treat that it is godly and beyond human’s reach. But, to speak the truth, it is not so. Agni is worshiped , and at the same time Agni is real. The air, the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky and the nature are worshiped, because all these are physically observable and cast impact on human society and make interaction with man’s brain. There are stars much and much bigger than our sun. Incessant cases of bombardments, physically mutual clashes and explosions have once taken place in almost each of them and are still taking place across the universe in places where the environment so deserved.. But the news are not broad cast there from, because no brain does exist there to take their account. The God or Brahma, as the supreme of all, takes a place in man’s mind, because there are occasions where incidents take place thereat in reality, though solution or answer can not be derived. So, very safely, we prescribe that it happens to have been done by Brahma. This belief is also not permanent. Once rains were believed to have been dropping from heaven. Number of hymns are there in the Veda in this respect. Now the causes and back ground of rainfall have become known. As a result, the heaven’s divinity has been proportionately on the wane.
The Vedas contain the oldest set of lessons in the world among all the philosophical or religious readable books there in. It is earlier than the Homer philosophy also. Of course, Indus civilization is still earlier than the Vedas even. But this does not leave for us any realizable documents, what so ever. It is regarded sacred. It should not then be regarded as super nature. Now let us cite the verse of RigVeda, 10/22/14, 10/149/1, 8/12/28 and such many other verses which speak to us about astronomy, about facts of science that have cropped up in observation and examination of incidents in nature by the sages. The first one as quoted here says, “ The earth is devoid of hands and legs, yet it moves ahead. All the objects over the earth also move with it. It moves around the sun.’’ The second one says,“ The sun has tied the Earth and other planets through attraction and moves them around itself as if a trainer moves newly trained horses around itself holding their reins.’’ The third one says,“ O Indra! by putting forth your mighty rays, which possess the qualities of gravitation and attraction-illumination—keep up the entire universe in order through the power of your attraction.’’ There are number of hymns in the Rig Veda like 1/6/5, Rig Veda 8/12/30, Yajur Veda 33/43, Rig Veda 1/35/9, 1/164/13, Atharva Veda 4/11/1, and many other verses which amazingly picturesque the elevation of religious ideas to scientific ideas. Thus it provides us lessons that starting from material world and traversing through gods and the bliss of faiths and beliefs, we proceed to and enter into the domain of science with the ingredients of bodies and truths like stars , planets, gravitation, attraction, mathematics, physics, chemistry and Biology , philosophy, etc and give us the feelings of the universe, infinite in size. The ideas in the realm of abstract feature lead us to the reality of infinitely expanded concrete world of matter. So science has thus become the destination of religion. Abstract and concrete substances are opposite to each other. But one proceeds towards the other and seem to reach it. If infinity is the goal of the two in the long run, the last peak remain unreached. The benefits of attempt to reach each other are the discoveries and inventions in enumerable occasions, including the unfolding of nature to the continued extent. This type of truth holds good in respect of values enshrined in the Bhagvad Gita, in the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, also in all other religious books.
Man is limited, but the mental power is immensely large, now limited, but open to continue. His knowledge is ever increasing. Sitting on the earth man is observing the unending universe. In his scale of imagination, up till now 40000 millions of stars and planets have appeared as a reality. That means, the contradiction between the finites and the infinites has enabled man to afford the discovery of enumerable stars and planets, properties of matter, fire and electricity, gravitation, laws of changes, laws of motion, invention of radios, televisions, evolution of animals, transport networks and all such wonderful achievements to make life enjoyable and fruitful. The idealism undertakes journey to Brahma or God externally in one side and to the `self’ or soul internally on the other side, both being fictitious, but providing an inspiration to move from known to unknown. Religion is an intermediary result of journey, evenly rising all over the world, but not all over the universe, as because the human brain , a very meaningful structure of matter, is wanting beyond the periphery of the Earth. Religion in its journey towards the infinity ( Super nature) has continued to advance through opposition, yielding moral teachings and rituals accepted by the people during the appropriate periods according to the merit of applicability. But the material advances, evolved time to time, have abandoned some of its practices and the religion has tried to suit to human’s practical purposes. So the march of religion has taken twofold courses—- one being life-centric and the other being philosophy-centric. This will go and proceed onwards where its material aspects will flourish to provide room for science and the philosophical aspects will gradually divert by the pulls of human brain and wither away. The ultimate result will remain ever-growing with the race of religion to seek material base and science aiming at energy inculcation.
How science evolved and made advances :
1) Some lessons from Vedas:
Science is a knowledge that relates to reason , reality, proof and conforms to the study of nature. Science is the outcome of activities of the brain upon the nature. It is now established that the matter `life’ did not exist all the past days. Rather, it had evolved in the course of material changes in nature about 3800 million years BCE in our beloved planet the Earth. Though there are enumerable stars and planets in nature , endless in area, life is known uptil now to have been existing in the Earth only. It being correct, the material substances existing in the other heavenly bodies are unable to foster the phenomenon of life, because there is none to bear the capacity of thinking, as life does not exist there at other than the Earth. In the earth also, life did not appear with the inception of this planet. The Earth was formed at about 4.60 billion years ago. But life appeared at about 3.80 billion years ago. That means, the Earth required 80 crores of years to come down from the hot boiling gaseous stage to the liquid-cum-solid structure , almost similar to the present structure and to attain the condition of undergoing chemical reactions in the advent of the situation congenial to the appearance of life. I need not narrate at this stage how the situation improved to the stage of forming and holding life after developing up to the present day stage to provide the atmosphere enabling man to flourish. If we consider the formation of the improved category of the brain that man is having to day, we may better understand the evolution of the nervous system from the lower animals like earthworm, insects, grass hoppers, amphibians, reptiles, etc, where the brain was in the undeveloped stage of formation. But these animals were having the sensation how and when to escape danger, flee away in fear, to select the right food to consume and exhibit such other symptoms to show that they had brains and nervous systems up to the possible stature. Now it is also needless to explain that man being the highly improved variety of animal in comparison to the invertebrates and also all other classes of vertebrates possesses the most possibly improved variety of the brains. Incessant struggle for existence took all through the past days since inception of the nervous system in the lower animal to drive ahead for the eligible variety to come up, as per the theory laid down by Darwin’s theory of evolution. The most curious it strikes when we perceive the unicellular animal amoeba extends pseudopodia to catch a food particle, though nothing of the sort of brain or nervous system did develop in it to observe a food material coming in its contact. This gives us a lesson to understand what is called a material process. The simple feature of science is what we see and understand about. Every animal takes food. It is the most preliminary form of technology. When it rains, we understand something. It is science. Monkey is four footed. After repeated trials a variety of monkey(ape) could make two legs free which became hands for man. The phenomenon is evolution and imparts the knowledge of science. So science comprises of the knowledge of properties of matter. When we come across energy, It is nothing but the development of matter. When a piece of iron lying in open air forms rust on it, it also happens through material process. Here we see how the material courses of changes obey the three principles of Marxism. The body of the ape weighs downwards and its legs push the body upwards to comply with the principle of `struggle and unity of two opposites’. After a series of generations the legs get converted to hands. This is transformation. As lots of generations multiplied, it corresponds to negation of negation. In every round of complete natural changes these principles get applied.
Are we not amazed to witness that in the first mandal of the Rig Veda the Aryan saints could perceive the rotation of the Earth and the movement of the Earth round the sun ? Our wonder grows out of the lesson that the western countries could come in contact with such a knowledge only in the 16th century from Copernicus of Poland and Galileo of Italy. It is a great misery that a knowledge fostered in the Veda remained out of the focus for about 3000 years. The world’s growth of knowledge got hindered owing to suppression of the Vedic lessons. One thing has now been clear that material process generated knowledge in the Vedic period. Not only it was the fact that religion grew that time, but it also happened to be the fact that the scientific knowledge tried to shoot up amidst the streams of Vedic verses which began to abundantly turn to material offensive during the period of the Vedas. The soil became the master to boost material offspring and could penetrate into the religious periphery. This was the force of matter which dominated over the canopy of the deemed super nature. This goes to hold high the reality that religion and science are not only opposed to each other, but also it reveals that the religion unveils to represent a sort of exposure of matter, thereby maintaining the unity with the the science. Will the leading persons in the religious sector and the stalwarts in the scientific sector come forward to admit that science and religion hold good the principle of `unity and struggle of two opposites’ ? The religion, being abstract, echoes super nature and pulls matter, concrete in shape, to develop into forces and waves to imbibe abstract feature. On the other hand , science ,concrete in shape, shrinks religion to land from the abstract feature to embrace material destination to depend on jajna and offerings bringing the gods down to the soil to remain satisfied with hand-in-hand receipts. It is a vice versa exercise where nature and super nature are trying to get overlapped. If nature is infinite, which fact is a real one, the claim of super nature to be above nature is reduced to have a rethinking. The role to be played by infinities from two different angles on the same individual `man’ will yield identical result. The apparent conflict will ultimately cease to exist in an endless destination. The benefit of the struggle will be the splendid discoveries and inventions with the system remaining open to unreachable end. All these ideas and realities get justified according to the three principles of Marxism.
2) Science perceived by the brain :
The capturing of knowledge, the capacity of understanding, the capacity of differentiating facts from myths, and possessing the qualities like this, all register the activities of the brain and the nervous system that human being has developed to have reached a high rank.. The activities of the brain in relation to the nature and environment all around, have made human being able to analyze situation, investigate the inside view of a substance, discover its properties, and thus have developed in him the art of reasoning, the capacity to learn, to build confidence in respect of an unknown substance placed before him for examination. Let us take questions of day to day household affairs. It is hard to break a piece of stone, but it easy to tear a leaf. When it rains, we get drenched. In summer it is hot and in winter it is cool. An animal is afraid of a man with a stick in hand. People living together make merriment in a joyous mode. When a man in the society dies, all others mourn. This is the background of formation of a knowledge that we term to-day as science. Science is the knowledge of some events or some occasions which have actually taken place. It may be the reason of joy or of sorrow or anxiety. Hence we infer that science confines to reason, proofs, logic, justifications. It does not incline to meaningless results.
Thus it signifies that the rise of science has a material background. The nature is the source of growth of science. It is not an imagination alone , but it is a reality. For a matter of science, their must be some incident or some occasion. Then the results imprint some idea and wrest some marks of intelligence. Thus science must have some cause and makes some effect. The wet cloth is spread in sun rays and after sometime it dries up. The incident teaches man the quality of sun rays. The firewood burns and man gets heat. It teaches man how to get warm in winter. All these experiences accumulate in our stock of knowledge. Firstly we see and observe and thus learn. It is pure science. After words we apply our acquired knowledge to discover a new device. It is an invention. Then the enhanced knowledge is termed as applied science. In this manner the mathematical formulas are deduced one after another. In order to scale the rise of temperature , the thermometer has been discovered. That goes to infer that the advancement of science has given rise to technological sciences and has added to the increasing comfort to man’s ways of life. What an amazing picture the scientific disciplines have assumed up to this day! Let us synthesize the growth of science in brief.
Growth of science is spread manifold. The growth of pure science has abundantly poured materials to the advancement of applied sciences, which in its turn has given a boost to technological sciences. The technological sciences have necessitated the deep-rooted growth in electronics, micro-level waves of electrical power, motion of matter trying to be as delicate as to approach the stage of light, pushing masses to reach the status of energy. The gene technology has been moving to reach up to the stage of altering the structure of plants, animals , by admixing the genes of different kinds in a body in a bid to upgrade the species. The super structures generated over the advancement of civilization have resulted in high thoughts, high philosophical ideas, energy escalations, operating a journey seemingly from concrete to abstract. The telephonic connections required land for the ropes to lie. But now the mobile connections have abandoned ropes. The use of land surface has gone high up to evolve methods to scale space under the capture of satellites . The life on the Earth is getting concentrated to push the discovery of land in other stars and planets. The days are not perhaps far to get life transferred and established in the modified atmosphere of other heavenly bodies. Of course , the patterns of lives will be subjected to take recourse to evolution. The life’s journey will necessarily evolve new direction and possibly new dimension. At that stage, the patterns of religion will also have to take recourse to a different direction.
3) Rise of Buddhism and Jainism ;
Let us consider the many-sided development of science by now. We have discussed how science did explore during the Vedic era. Astronomical expansion of knowledge in those days strike us with wonder. The sun, the stars and the planets made entry into the cultivation of knowledge. Some examples have been cited in other essays. The source of generation of scientific knowledge was the environment in which the brain worked. The sun shone. The storms caused devastation. The moon showed its periodical appearance. The climate changed with seasons. When it rained, it seemed to drop from the sky. The clouds seemed to float across the sky in line with the flow of the air. All these observations could not but make impact on the thinking minds of the sages. These types of observations, having been carried on years together, generations after generations, enabled man to gain deeper evaluations of the courses of nature and its different aspects of changes which gradually gave rise to discoveries of fire, eating of cooked meat instead of raw one, usage of weapons, capture of animals to rear instead of hunting, erection of houses and abandonment of migratory life, and so on. In the run up of these discoveries, the creation of fire as per need and preservation of fire were two great techniques that man could catch hold of. After the lapses of the Vedic era, when a lot of knowledge could come in stock, the Hindu population got involved in caste based distinctions as the vices of growth. The caste-based culture was a set back in the Hindu society in the land concerned. The sufferings of the downtrodden was marked by an urge of salvation from inhuman tortures. In such a situation the growth of civilization got halted and a way to salvation was paved by the emergence of Lord Buddha and Mahavir Jain. The Hindu culture yielded quantitative growth in science and also in religion, which gave vent to a qualitative changes in societal environment by the appearance of Jain and Buddha, particularly Buddha, with a completely new slogan ` there is no God’. Jain also raised an extraordinary slogan of love to all helpless creatures.
The rise of these two great men in the arena of ideological philosophy had made the spread of Vedic civilization leg behind. Here the Marxian theory is very much pertinent. The Vedic civilization admittedly reaching the high peak, made a diversion towards a serious trend of casteism and finally made a qualitative change by the rise of Buddha and Jain. The spread of Buddhism was so far and wide that the whole of south and eastern Asia came under the capture of Buddhism. It was during those days that the philosophical growth having saturation in the land of Aryans got an orientation from Indian subcontinent to Greece, where the great mathematician Pythagoras, Archimedes, Socrates, Aristotle, and many others flourished. But in India the religious battle between Buddhists and Hindus did not terminate absolutely. Again the Hinduism rose during the Gupta era by way of avtarbad. Science made a magnificent growth with Aryabhatta, Baraha Mihir, Nagarjuna and many others who shone greatly in India during 6th to 8th century. During this period India flourished in mathematics, astronomy, medical sciences, chemistry etc. The Arab rulers took the advantage of the Gupta era’s development. From Arab rulers, Indian science migrated to the West. In the meantime India was conquered by the foreign invaders and then captured by the British. The development of science in India naturally retarded. The development of science in the world got a new momentum during 16th to the 18th century with the appearance of Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and some other prominent personalities in the field of science who brought science, including technology, to a great height. The religion with the doctrines of faith and beliefs legged behind all over the world. But India, where science had made a beginning and could not maintain pace, was pushed down by the foreign invaders , including the British. As a result, the religious dogmatism seems now to make headway in India, though India is recognized as an atomic power. It is India where both religion and Science had the original root, but both the disciplines had faced great bolts owing to historical perspectives. It appears to be peculiar that India accelerates in both science and religion to exhibit the growth both ways with Marxian theory echoing that the forces of revolution and counter revolution goes parallel. But in the countries which did not suffer much in the development of science for being independent almost all the time have not been crippled with the shadows of blind faiths. Here in India religion had stretched branches in regional styles, depending on the environmental factors
4) Swami Vivekananda’s teachings :
In my essay ` Upanishad philosophy ‘ I have shown how in the Isha Upanishad the journey of the philosophy has been characterized by the infinite approach which is ordinarily found in mathematics. In Kena Upanishad also the ultimate stand point is supported by scientific explanation about infinity. In all other Upanishads also the spirit is endorsed by the essence of science (hope to illustrate in my later essays). According to the explanation put forward by Swami Vivekananda I find that the Vedic verses have found foot in the truth revealed by science. In his lectures on the topic Religion-Science he told “…. Religion has emerged from amongst man. It has not emerged from anything outside. I believe, religious thinking emerges from human nature. That is why religion has remained so much inseparably connected with the body and mind of man that until he rejects his body and mind— until he abandons his thoughts and life, he will not be able to leave his religion. His religion will continue to exist till he continues to retain his power of thinking….’’ He has further maintained that some one considers it meaningless to converse different aspects of religion. Swamiji opines that it is not wise to think so. He agrees that there is a tune of unity among diversified discussions. He maintains, where there is discordance, there lies the possibity of oneness. Only he can hear that tune of unity, who has patience to hear so. What does Swamiji teach us to say that we cannot leave our religion until we leave our body and mind? He refers to an undeniably environmental attachment to our physical existence. Our manner of thinking , subjects of thinking, our mental make up and every thing like this emerge out of the physical circumstances. What ever situation prevails at a particular point of time and place is the pursuit of the long drawn changes occurred and continue to occur. The impact of these occurrences is unavoidable and undeniable. Of course , man has a role in motivating the environment in his favour and that is admissibly included in the over all circumstances under observation. Swamiji must have considered that aspect too. Here what he refers to comes in line with the dialectical process of analysis.
Swami Vivekananda explains oneness to illustrate the knowledge of science. According to him, the male and the female are two entities. But when we recognize the two as mankind, then it becomes scientific knowledge. Thus from varieties we come to one main point of identification. This is well clarified by Swami Vivekananda. He mentions that the chemists try to bring the substances of different kinds to the root variety of their origin. If any time it will be possible for him to reach that root ingredient from which all metals had grown in course of time, then the wisdom in chemistry will become complete. This is oneness which, according to him, we all are trying to acquire. According to Swamiji, the development of the spiritual life will come to final stage. There will be no scope to development. The knowledge of science is ever growing. It is running to reach the end. If we consider the series .9, .99, .999, .9999, .99999………, the fraction will always remain short of 1(one). The aim is to reach one, but it can never be achieved. Religiously proceeding towards God is an unending journey. Scientifically to reach a point (.) without length, breadth and thickness, is impossible. It is also not possible to reach the last point of the nature, because no such a point does exist. Hence obedience to a religious ideology, faith or belief whatever it may be, provides for us a journey of enthusiasm, a journey of immense experiences that will be the reward for the devotee. For the scientists to continue a journey to reach the starting point of an atom or to the ending point of the universe , immense knowledge will come to our stock, but both the ends will remain unachieved. The unending path to proceed religiously is fostered by ideas. On the other hand, the unending path of natural discoveries and inventions, which constitute ingredient of science, is fostered by realities. The ideas, though abstract, are the activities of the brain. So it is not other than material entity. The scientific knowledge so gathered is also the product of the activities of the brain. The former one refers to super nature, the later one referring to nature. The nature is the reality and super nature is the idea in imagination. The two terms constitute the bone of contention. Future will say what to do with the dispute and up to which length.
Swami Vivekananda did not worry at the discovery of invention in the sphere of science. He has expressed that the scientific discoveries are not accepted by the idealists in an easy way. The idealists generally get frustrated when a new discovery or invention is made. They get worried that this discovery will tend to dilute the conservative ideas pursued by the idealists. This was due to this fear that they tried to prevent the activities of explosion of knowledge of science. But Swamiji views it in a positive manner. He is to weigh the discoveries and see that those discoveries have relevance with the idealistic philosophy . The ancient idealists considered the meaning of nature in twofold manner—one, reality; the other , unexposed. The word unexposed has produced atom and molecule, mind and intelligence, energy, etc. The ancient preachers have explained the unexposed stage in three forces in equilibrium like entity, pollen dust and darkness. These three existences can be equalized with three consequences, namely , thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis, as the serial of motion, comprising of two opposites in unity and struggle bringing about a new offspring. He explains that the two energizing processes denoted by the power of attraction and repulsion give the matter a state of equilibrium. If one of the processes becomes the stronger than the other, the balance gets disturbed and a course of changes starts. All of these phenomena described above obey the principles of science enshrined in Marxism. It has to be looked back by both the types of theoreticians to stop stereo-typed antagonism and try to reconcile to an affirmatively creative results with a positive analysis of dialectical processes. When Swami Vivekananda tried to simplify the doctrine of spiritualism, correctly keeping it far off from the usual practices, but giving it a due place of quality, the Marxist philosophy also has put the changes in the ambit of practical utility, keeping the finality open to endlessness. The truth can not be two. It has been correctly established by the two genius philosophers, namely Karl Marx and Vivekananda .
In the aforesaid discussion, while elaborating the journey of religion from the basis of material world, we have seen how religion has twofold journey, one confining to the objective `know thyself`, that is, keep diving into the task to discover the existence of the material world including soul; the other is to confine to the study of the endless material universe, to the discovery of nature’s unearthed mysteries. It is simply a motion of matter contributing to the conversion of mass to energy, ultimately aiming at a stage to complete conversion of mass to evolve energy to the extreme, though it is a stage never attainable. The motion has no end. As for the journey of science, which is the knowledge of various aspects of nature, it keeps contributing to the discovery and unveiling of the nature’s internal virtues remaining so long unearthed in the heart of the universe, as large a space as possible, and also it keeps diving into the inside arena of small particles of an atom, namely a type of quarks, where from the mass with energy originates. The two diverge motions are endless. In religion the goal is oriented towards an imaginary destination of super nature, though it deals with the better enjoyment of natural ingredients by man’s power of assimilation. If there were no brain, there will exist nothing to know about science or religion. If no life exists what will cause to think of man’s future or afterlife phenomena? The solution of these questions is that life will exist in nature without confinement to earth alone, in accordance with the development of the brain in times to come. It is expected, man will continue to upgrade himself, with the endless process of evolution as per law of nature.
5) What is religion according to Karl Marx ?
According to Karl Marx, `Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real sufferings. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of a soulless condition. It is the opium of the people’. In the quotation mentioned,, Karl Marx meant to say that religion is a symbolic hope in uncertainty and despair, it serves as an unreal support to a collapsing existence. It is a meaningless hope or strength that bears no fruit. When the fall is eminent, when one’s failure or destruction is unavoidable, religion stands as consolation with a remark that it has been for your good in future or for your past misdeed. As opium generates rapid strength in an ailing body at the cost of the physique, so also religion offers advice or sense of agreement with the occurrence, in a belief that some thing is done by the unseen god for your lesson or for your good. It teaches to surrender, but not to make challenge, because what is lotted cannot be blotted. Thus religion is utterly discarded by Karl Marx. However it transpires that the growth of religion has some cause behind. It is the result of contradiction of a man’s mental position and the way to remedy. Here the lesson of Swami Vivekananda regarding the emergence of religion from amongst man holds good as per Karl Marx’s views expressed here in above. The difference is that Swamiji finds strength in religion as the force to success, while Marx views it to yield only false courage. On the other hand, the three principles propagated by Karl Marx, namely, unity and struggle of two opposites, changes and transformation, and negation of negation, briefly known as dialectical materialism, has made matter open to continuous development by way of changes, quantitative and qualitative, subsequently. Religion, according to the idealists, drags a man to a final end in a hell or in the paradise, where according to Karl Marx, there is no final end to the journey which always keeps frontal to further growth. The former appears to be regressive, the latter one is progressive.
Are idealism and materialism explicitly disjoined ? :
The phenomenon `idea’ is generated from the brain. The brain has evolved out of matter. It is activity of the brain that has placed Brahma in super nature. But the gods or their supreme Brahma are said to be existing in super nature who in their turn look after the material world to receive offerings attributed in their favour, that means, it entails a journey from abstract to concrete state of affairs. Contrary to it, atoms being material substance accumulate together to constitute the universe, infinitesimally large material entity exhibits journey from concrete to abstract state of affairs. It has an interesting analogy to the following proposition as enshrined in German ideology like this :
“ In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here it is a matter of ascending from earth to heaven…………. Morality, religion, metaphysics, and all the rest of ideology as well as the forms consciousness consciousness corresponding to these, thus no longer retain in the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter,along with their actual world, also their thinking and the product of their thinking.It is not consciousness that detrmines life, but life determines consciousness. ” In the quoted piece, the word religion is found included. Hence religion has an intrinsic relation with matter.
The contradiction between man and deemed super nature, a destination evolved out of helplessness of man in order to wind up the infinite vision confronted by man , has yielded gods to stand for his queries. Whatever man performs in this land of living are all worldly in kind and hence perishable. The negation of the worldly things excites in man an opposite sense of unending entity as a usual result of reaction to negation. The contradiction between `negation’ and `ever-living’ has resulted in a creation of so many undying gods , who are invisible, unreachable and imaginative provider of solutions to the problems that man faces in his run up. The Brahma, supreme of all gods, never extinct, remain unlimited in size, absent nowhere, omnipresent everywhere, ever happy, indicates to be an entity, and that is what in science exists to be infinitesimally big or small. As it is beyond the reach, it is treated to be reachable after death, if a man dies pious by doing all good in this land of living. During our course of living in the Earth, it is desired by the idealists that we must try to offer the best of our consumable goods to the gods and also to Brahma selflessly as the test of our wholehearted devotion. The offerings are poured to the fire of `jajna’ , through which we seem to be connected to gods. This you will have to believe without any argument. So it is admittedly observed that the God or gods with infinitesimal power gets satisfied with inanimate substances received as offer. If we fail to keep promise ,He gets annoyed and puts us in misery. That means, He behaves like worldly creatures. So, the gods at infinite position supposedly treat like material entity. Thus matter is the ultimate goal of all. Life emerges from matter and becomes extinct in matter. Am I wrong to say that ever existing Matter has a similarity with the ever-living Brahma? I well remember my conversation with the Sanskrit pundit of Bishalgarh H.S. school in Tripura on the topic of man’s landing on the surface of moon. The pundit’s name was Shanti Sakha Bhattacharya for whom I had great regard. I happened to ask, “Pundit sir, will you still regard the moon as a god when man landed there physically?’’ The pundit sir instantly replied, “ it is not that divine god moon where the scientist landed on”. Every one present made a laughter. I still looked upon him with great honour and showed respect to his belief, because it was all personal about him. If a man still believes that Brahma is other than matter, I accept his answer with honour, because it is all his own belief and he is not supposed to accept my belief or argument. Even then, I am happy to make a penetration into his idea. Shri Ranganathananda ji, in his lecture series, has said in connection with relationship of Science and Religion “ It is being realized more and more by both that there are elements in science that religion can adopt in order to fortify itself, and elements in religion that can deepen and strengthen science”.
Coming to the context of the growth of science, it is observed that when idealism has risen in the eastern world, science has made a magnificent growth in the western world. With the invention of steam engine , an era of machinery sciences evolved , particularly in the west. Astronomy , transport by engine, telegraphy, radio mechanism, photography, electrical machineries — all these machine-based science first have featured. The phenomena of Copernicus’s helo-centrism, Galileo’s work n astronomy, Newton’s laws of motion, two industrial revolutions, works of Eddington, Jeans, Einstein, Max plank, Shrodinger, Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, and other scientists have pulled science from the age of machine to philosophical science. While the idealistic philosophy in the East, mainly in India emerged as a kind of response to the environment and gave birth to gods of different aspects, which era was followed by the Greek philosophy with some positive approach to the material aspects . This religion , as ashrined in the Vedas, started from material causes of livelihood and roamed about the abstract circles to satisfy curiosity. The gods were served offerings on the model of the Earthly patterns. The philosophy was of unbounded spirit, but the practice was material. On the other hand , in the western hemisphere, science flourished from the base of the Earth, but gradually, with the technique of house erection, use of ploughs, making of carriers, and such small scientific tools , unearthed the nature and proceeded to the level of energies without mass, precursor to the level of Vedanta. In this way a course of universally philosophical phenomena has cropped up. In whatever way we proceed to analyze, the resultant moot point is arrived at about `matter’ in which the investigation moves inwardly in an attempt to get at the smallest particle basically indivisible and outwardly to reach at the largest entity in nature. It will be the last outcome that the motion, both inward and outward, will proceed infinitesimally with no end. Dr. Frit Jof Capra of Berkeley, came to conclude like this, “ On this journey to the world the infinitely small, the most important step, from a philosophical point of view, was the first one : the step into the world of atoms. Probing inside the atom and investigating its structure, science transcended the limits of our sensory imagination. From this point on, it could no longer rely with absolute certainty on logic and commonsense. ….”
Einstein’s theory of relativity has given a jerk on the existing discoveries and necessitated a review of the discoveries. As regards the law of conservation of mass, the phenomena of conversion of mass seems to enter in the theme of conservation of mass and energy. Here again I find Karl Marx very correct in including the word energy as a changed state of matter. But it is a very sad state of affairs that theory of Karl Marx is not very often considered a matter of discussion in the sphere of philosophy. What did he mean to say in the realm of quantitative to qualitative changes in the long run. He has made the philosophical idea ever growing step after step, bringing forth new developments , in an unavoidable process not to end any where or to end in an infinite future. This gives the real place for the Brahma, an alias to nature to remain a source of inspiration to lead us go ahead. The growth of knowledge and the reality in the life experience are proceeding to maintain the societal bondage. The uncertainty should be given up. Variations in the animal kingdom, variations in mankind depending on geographical and environmental entities are the realities we assume.
We should base our journey of life on the real ground for achieving what we need and what we can produce for ourselves. The hurdles will be our guide to overcome stalemates. Man and nature are the main contradicting entities. Unveiling of nature will enrich multiplicity of varieties of man in qualities. Discoveries will pour in the unending trend, making man to be armed with more delicate knowledge to acquire increasingly richer weapon of wisdom to unveil nature more and more with no end in front. What is required in the race of mankind is not the fight between religion and science , but the fight against enemy of mankind , be it the struggle against the ruling class, as seen now, or be it the enemy of the other kind in the changed state of the society. Our aim should be to eliminate barriers and differences between man and man with diversified qualities to launch the most needed united move against nature in which the unearthed virtues are infinite and continually open to man to unveil.