A companion volume to 'The Destiny of the Body,' this explores man as a species, his past beginnings, present achievements & failures, his evolutionary future.
SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY VIS-A-VIS SRI AUROBINDO'S VISION OF DIVINE MANHOOD
"Yet was their wisdom circled with a nought:
Truths they could find and hold but not the one Truth:
The Highest was to them unknowable.
By knowing too much they missed the Whole to be known:
The fathomless heart of the world was left unguessed
And the Transcendent kept its secrecy."
(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri,p.271)
Prometheus and Ganymede
The human spirit has ever oscillated between two extreme and opposite ideals. Goethe has well characterised them as, on one side, the ideal symbolised by Prometheus, a passion for 'Vernunft und Wissenschaft des Menschen allerhöchste Kraft' ('the Reason and Knowledge of man the highest force'), and, on the other, a mystic elan towards the Beyond, the Unknown, 'Alles Vergäng-liche ist nur ein Gleichnis' ('every passing thing is nothing but a symbol'), the ideal of Ganymede. In fact, because of the very bio-psychical character of man, existence is ordinarily experienced in such a way that its apparently essential conditions appear as polar opposites, e.g., Spirit-Matter, Reality-Appearance, Faith-Reason, Freedom-Determination, etc. And the two ideals relative to 'Spirit-Matter-polarity' (Archie J. Bahm), that have most captivated man's imagination are the 'Extreme One-pole-ism' (one pole of the polarity, Spirit, exists; the other, Matter, does not exist) and the 'Extreme other-pole-ism' (the other pole, Matter, alone exists; the one, Spirit, does not exist). "In Europe and in India, respectively, the negation of the materialist and the refusal of the ascetic have sought to assert themselves as the sole truth and to dominate the conception of Life. In India, if the result has been a great heaping up of the treasures of the Spirit, - or of some of
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them, - it has also been a great bankruptcy of Life; in Europe, the fullness of riches and the triumphant mastery of this world's powers and possessions have progressed towards an equal bankruptcy in the things of the Spirit. Nor has the intellect, which sought the solution of all problems in the one term of Matter, found satisfaction in the answer that it has received."1 The modern man, "satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis of the externalities of Nature" and afflicted with a sense of taedium vitae, is preparing once again to seek his salvation "not in the kingdom of Caesar which lies outside him, but in the kingdom of God which lies within man." (Anatol von Spakovsky.)
"Therefore the time grows ripe and the tendency of the world moves towards a new and comprehensive affirmation in thought and in inner and outer experience and to its corollary, a new and rich self-fulfilment in an integral human existence for the individual and for the race",2 wherein the eternal aspiration of man upward to the Divine will be related to the "descending movement of the Divine leaning downward to embrace eternally Its manifestation"; and what else, if not Matter, is the mould and condition of this manifestation?
New Manifestation
And, in reality, this manifestation is ever progressive, of which the key-note is the evolution of consciousness with all that it implies; and if evolution is a fact, man cannot be its last term, nor can his noetic faculty, Mind, be the supreme instrument of knowledge. For man as he is at present "is too imperfect an expression of the spirit, mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being."3 And the Mother declared that this evolutionary movement has very recently taken a saltus; a new principle, a higher element has been brought down into this arena of terrestrial manifestation, one result of which would be that "all the old formulas would be changed immediately and the whole possibility according to the old unfolding would be, one cannot say increased,
1.Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 9.
2.Ibid., p. 9.
3.Ibid., p. 847.
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but supplemented by an almost infinite number of new possibilities, and that in such a manner that all the old logic would become illogical in the presence of the new logic."4
Crisis of Modern Physics
Now what would be the reaction of modern science to this epoch-making revelation? We are considering science, for in the recent period of materialist denial, out of which we are just emerging, materialism based itself almost exclusively on the authority of science; and that too to such an extent as to create the illusion that a truly scientific attitude is synonymous with the materialistic conception of Reality.
In the present chapter we propose to show that modern science finds itself imprisoned in a blind alley without any issue of escape and that it is only in the Yoga-Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo that science can discover its true self and true mission. It seems certain that in a not too distant future science is bound to turn to the world-vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and take a new birth in the light of their teachings. This essay is an attempt at providing the argumentative background to this conviction.
Physiognomy of Science
Science may be defined as a nomothetico-experimental procedure that studies "the regularities observed in normal human sense-perceptions, thereby excluding sub-normal and supra-normal experiences as well as judgments of value that imply non-sensual premisses."5 The goal envisaged is a total exploration of matter (the 'reality' of matter being implicitly granted), its morphogenesis, structure and energy-transformations. Objectively speaking, the natural sciences are the study of natural phenomena with a view to seek for general a-temporal laws governing this universe for all time.
Now, every phenomenon contains three elements: epistemo-logical,
4.The Mother's Talk, "The Supramental Manifestation and World-Change", Mother India, Dec. 56.
5.J. G. Bennet, The Dimensional Framework of the Natural Sciences.
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ontological and normative, of which function, being and regularity are the three respective characteristic features. All that is ordinarily knowable in phenomena is function: all discursive knowledge of which science is only a specialised form, is thus nothing more than functional correspondence. It does not and cannot tell us anything about being.
Modern science has come to realise that it can never seize the essence of things. It replaces the study of the ontological content of a phenomenon by a functional explanation; but we propose to show,en passant, that even this functional knowledge as revealed by science is intrinsically relative and incomplete.
Physics and Metaphysics
It is well-known that the intellectual knowledge of Nature has developed from a mainly philosophical physics (e.g., Democritus, Aristotle) to a mainly scientific physics (Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Dalton, etc.). The science as developed after the Renaissance, - and which is incidentally one of the greatest achievements of the 17th century, - is a completely a-philosophic discipline, the philosophical convictions of the researching scientist not entering his science as a constitutive part.
But modern physics is a-philosophic not because it is an experimental procedure unlike metaphysics that speculates. Far from it. In reality, modern physics has become highly speculative. Paradoxically enough, the more a science becomes experimental, the more it has to turn speculative; and the reason of it is not far to seek. For, a scientific experiment is seized in its content only in the cadre of a well-constructed theory; now theorem and speculai come to the same thing. In fact, the highly developed theoretical character of modern physics brings it into close resemblance to the speculative character of philosophy. If physics is not to degenerate into encyclopedic compilation, it should have enough room for theoretical concepts as well as experiments. Now the assumption of the 'closed' character of systems that are studied in physics, entails the creation of an ever-increasing number of concepts which, although initially inspired by reality, are nonetheless highly abstract. Someone has styled modern science as a Socratic dialogue with Nature, wherein it is the scientist who 'does the talking'
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and who has to remain content with an occasional cryptic 'yes' or 'no' elicited from the addressee. On the basis of these monosyllabic responses, it is again the scientist who has to build up, step by step, a colossal theoretical structure with concepts and nomenclatures which are his 'free creations' with no guarantee of their correspondence to physical existence an sich ('in itself). This point is important to bear in mind, if one has to understand the metaphysical predicament of modern science. We shall deal with this point in the section entitled "Reality Evanescent".
But although modern physics is a highly speculative discipline, -and here it is in company with philosophy, - there exists a fundamental difference between the two. In philosophy one is concerned with the ontological significance, the value of the 'being' of the object studied; the scientist, on the other hand, labours to encompass the totality of phenomena in a relational and functional matrix and in this task he is never guided by his explicit philosophical bias but by the immanent principles of natural science itself.
Science and Scientist-cum-Philosopher
But it is interesting to note that this a-philosophic positive character of modern science has not prevented the man of science from indulging, outside his laboratory, in the pastime of philosophy. It is true that as soon as he enters the portals of science, he has perforce to leave behind his cloak of philosophical bias, - for otherwise the very exigency of scientific discipline will make of him a total failure as a scientist, - but outside the domain of scientific research, he yields, explicitly or implicitly, to an amateurish joy of philosophizing. Did not Ernst Mach note long ago that every philosopher has his own private science and every scientist his private philosophy?
And this has created much confusion in the mind of the layman. For the scientist's pronouncements as a scientist are not always clearly marked off from those he makes as a philosopher; and, as a result, the reverence and truth-validity usually accorded to the scientific verities are unwittingly transferred en bloc to his philosophic assertions. For the tremendous positive achievements of
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science as such endow with an inviolable halo even the a-scientific convictions of the man of science. It is thus that the public mind has been conditioned to accept unquestionably that science verily demands an attitude of atheism, agnosticism and materialist denial. But this is nothing but a sheer erroneous transposition. For, as has been pointed out by the great philosopher-mathematician Henri Poincaré, science can never speak in the Imperative, it talks always in the Indicative Mood.
Havoc of the Residues
But there is more to complicate matters. Apart from the philosophic assertions of scientists themselves, professional philosophers too are apt to catch hold of the ephemeral shifting concepts of science and make a fetish of their supposed reality; they then proceed to rear up their own philosophies on the supposedly sound foundations of scientific revelation. But, alas, to the working scientist, these concepts have got no other reality than that of a temporary working mathematical tool; and with the further advancement of theory, he discards these old concepts leaving them to adorn the shelf of petrified mummies, and proceeds to create a set of new concepts in their stead. (Remember in this connection the case-histories of phlogiston in chemistry and ether in physics.) Thus flows on the river of science, but these rejected residues acquire a new reality in the brains of the professional philosophers, - for there is an inevitable time-lag in this process of percolation, - who claim that such and such of their assertions are derived in the light of and supported by the latest (!) scientific discoveries. It is in this perverted way that the so-called modern age has come to lull itself into the conviction that Matter is the basic and unique Reality, and that the Divine, the freedom of the Spirit, the immortality of the Soul are all myths of an unscientific temperament and Honni soit qui trop y pense! Ivo Höllhuber has aptly termed this attitude espièglerie scientifique.
But these denials and speculations, it has to be clearly borne in mind, are not the presuppositions of science as such, but only the 'bubbles of a moment' tickling the grey matter of some myope-souls; and the day is not far off when these will perish and pass away, "expunged, annihilated, blotted out". For "...that cannot
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be the final Veda because it does not correspond with the Veda within which all mental knowledge is labouring to bring out; from the moment that this lack of correspondence is felt, a solution, however skillful it may be and however logically complete, has been judged by the eternal Witness in man and is doomed; it cannot be the last word of Knowledge."6
In the present essay we propose to follow the evolutionary growth of science as such and try to show that physics, that most developed branch of natural science, has already outgrown the phase of materialistic bias and is at present ready enough to welcome and receive the illumination offered by the Integral World-Vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
Scientist's Quest for a Philosophy
We have already referred to the phenomenon of a scientist philosophizing outside his laboratory. But what is at the source of this constant philosophic quest in him?
Natural Science is after all an autonomous but limited way of viewing problems. It has a level of abstraction all its own; and as in all cases of abstraction, it too is both complete and incomplete at the same time. "Complete, at least in principle, in so far as the special way of consideration on that level of abstraction does not need any addition for the sake of the problems which arise on that particular level; it is incomplete in so far as even the most elaborate and complete knowledge on that level cannot exhaust all that can be asked about the res."7
Pricked by this realisation that all problems which can be asked about Nature cannot possibly be solved by natural science itself, the scientist tries to complete his knowledge by an appropriate philosophization. In the adolescent period of science he was naturally, albeit mistakenly, puffed up with his immediate achievements in the purely scientific field and believed that he himself would be able to build up a philosophy of his own, based on the mechanistic, deterministic attitude of the 19th century, -which would surely and certainly explain away the whole of
6.Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 688.
7.A. G. M. Van Melsen, Presuppositions of Science and the Philosophy of Nature.
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reality. And he was helped in this conviction by the fact that with the "methodological exclusion of practically all the purely metaphysical problems of medieval and even ancient philosophies of nature and by a total abandonment of an uncritical search for absoluta," he could get "countless basic insights into the structure of the physical universe." (J. Morgan) In his case, unlike in the case of so many metaphysicians, abstractio does not mean sepa-ratio, and as a result, although in science one does not even discuss the philosophical questions as to what material reality is or how this reality can be known, "the presuppositions of science incorporated in its general methods effect in the scientist, without his being aware of it, the correct attitude towards material reality and the way it can be known."8 The immediate successes accruing from this attitude led the scientist to consider his science to be offering a total knowledge of reality. But he extrapolated too much and his exhilarative self-assurance dissipated with the advent of the 20th century. For, as we shall see later on, the advancing tide of scientific knowledge rising in the first half of this century has completely dissolved the scientists' faith in his capability of comprehending even this material reality - where he was supposed to be 'the monarch of all I survey' - let alone the total reality of this universe. Reality has slipped past his hold when he thought of almost catching it and a great bewilderment has set in in the field of modern physics in the very period of its stupendous practical success.
Modern Science and Modern Philosophies
In a mood of utter frustration, modern science turns towards modern philosophy for succour and illumination. For, the general belief has been that if science aims at knowledge, it is philosophy which gives us wisdom. But, alas, disappointment meets him here. For, as the reactions of great physicists like Louis de Broglie indicate, the scientists do not find in the speculations of contemporary philosophers an adequate and faithful image of their science. It is to be emphasised that the problem of the scientist is not that he is dubious about the reality of the positive harvest which he has collected from an elaborate investigation and exploration
8. Van Melsen, op. cit.
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of nature. He is sanguine as ever about his positive achievements; but, in recent times, he has become equally, if not more, convinced about the limited nature of scientific knowledge. And this is at the root of his quest for an integral philosophy which will not annul or deny his positive knowledge but rather complete it by embracing it in a total outlook. But the contemporary philosophies reveal an intrinsic inadequacy in this regard. And this inadequacy in western philosophy is traceable to several instances of misplaced emphasis on the subjective element - "prolongation of the transition which in the West begins with Descartes, becomes crucial in Locke, rises to climax in Kant and Fichte, and is continued in various ways by subsequent thinkers."9
This subjective emphasis is obvious in pragmatism and in its recent version, operationalism, which carries the general principle into physics. In phenomenology, the problems of the external world are put in brackets in order to discover the secrets of the universe in the workings of the mind. "Existentialism, too, is notably self-centred, whether in the work of the socially isolated and disappointed Kierkegaard or the socially indifferent and cynical Sartre. As another example of a lurking subjectivism, we may take logical empiricism.... It is a methodology put forward to supplement a metaphysics. In its anxiety to avoid 'reification' it has withdrawn into a 'ratification' which is even more detached and sterile. The contemporary scene seems to show that philosophy dissipates its energies when it begins to isolate mind from world. Once the process begins, no one knows where to stop - Locke is followed by Berkeley, Berkeley by Hume, Hume by Kant and even Kant by Fichte."10
Reality and the Integral Knowledge
Thus we see that modern science is in a fix; it has lost its self-assurance and it has no reverence for the contemporary western philosophies. It seeks a harmonising light and gropes for a solid synthetic vision from which it can look back on itself with an eye of proper reappraisal.
Here comes in Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy of Integral Reality
9.George P. Conger, Nature as Reality.
10.Ibid.
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with its integral world-vision. And the day does not seem to be far off when the scientists-cum-philosophers will acclaim this as the light which they were so long asking for. In fact, paradoxically enough, it is modern science - and not modern philosophy obsessed by its existentialism, analysis and humanism of which the other name is 'philosophical anthropology' - that is more ready to receive the message of the Integral Yoga as given by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. And has not the Mother herself declared that perhaps it is the attitude and outlook in the scientific field rather than in any other that will first get transformed?
Let us now examine how science, through stages of dramatic evolution, has reached this state of inner preparedness to receive the Light of the New Manifestation.
Explanation in Science
We speak of science and we speak of logic; but, as has been justly pointed out by Prof. Robert Lenoble, the purely verbal stability of these two words and the consequent prestige which they acquire in the minds of the uninformed create a great prejudice in favour of the personage (!) called Science; and the modern man is led to believe that "one is either in science or outside it, just as one is either in Paradise or in Hell."11 Thus the term "unscientific" has almost come to acquire an abusive connotation
.
But a study of the history of science dispels altogether the unjustified charm which the expression 'scientific explanation' exerts on so many minds. For this history shows unmistakably that men engaged in the exploration of nature have themselves differed greatly in their objectives, when they have all declared that they were seeking for an explanation of the phenomenal world. In fact the discipline which has culminated in modern physics has passed through five successive stages of growth:
(a)explanation as contemplation of order;
(b)explanation as machine-construction;
(c)explanation as a mechanistic picture;
(d)explanation equated to mathematical formulation;
11. R. Lenoble, Types d'Explication et Types Logiques au Cours de l'Histoire des Sciences.
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(e) explanation as prognosis.
Aristotle created his logic of classes to contemplate an order in this 'buzzing, booming' world: for him explanation was equated to this contemplation of order. But, first with Leonardo da Vinci, and afterwards with Galilei, Mercenne, Roberval and others, explanation took another sense. It was the age of 'bricoleurs et contre-maîtres' to whom explanation meant the power of machine-construction. The logic of classes did not suffice any more, one sought for a process of manufacture. In all seriousness, Mercelle declared that we would know what a gnat is, only when we would be able to construct a 'machine-animal' which would fly like the insect. And did not Hobbes consider the State as a machina machinarum, and Leibnitz his 'God' the 'Engineer of the World'?
Then came Descartes with his revolutionary conception that explanation means neither contemplation, nor the power of machine-construction, but setting up mathematical formulae. To him bricoler was worth nothing, deduction was everything. He, too, was an 'engineer' but one who was bred in the temple of pure mathematics, to wit, geometry; and according to his prescription, no one was entitled to enter the Kingdom of God, who did not possess the knowledge of this divine science, geometry!
Next we arrive at the most fruitful epoch of modern science, the 19th century, of which the representative spirit was Laplace. It was the hey-day of 'determinism', 'principle of strict causality' and the 'mechanistic view-point'. According to this view all phenomena in the universe could be reduced to the motion of particles and bodies under the influence of forces; and the ideal description of phenomena was considered to be one which, starting from the complete data with respect to the state of the system in question at a given instant, determined that system's behaviour at all later moments. This programme of determinism based itself on the principle of strict causality applied to all physical phenomena and since in physics we deal in particular with those aspects which can be expressed in terms of numbers, this causal correlation took the form of mathematical equations. Thus mathematics was supposed to arm the scientist with the magic wand which would completely and absolutely reveal the secret reality of the physical universe. But 19th century science soon met its crisis and had to take note of the limits which nature imposes on it.
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Physics, Mathematics and Reality
Whatever be the angle of vision in the metaphysical predilection of an observer, an indubitable fact immediately arises out of even a cursory view of nature: it is the permanence of an over-riding recurring rhythm in the sensate world of becoming and movement. In the absence of this rhythm, nature would have been totally incomprehensible, our memory useless, all science impossible and the activity of man blind and aleatory. Human thought has persistently attempted through various disciplines to catch this rhythm and imprison it in the framework of a precise formulation. And mathematics has come handy to the physicist in this task, so much so that in the early days of his science he almost came to believe that mathematics would unravel inexorably all the mysteries of this universe; nay, he even thought that the objective reality was nothing but an image of mathematical reality and therefore physics could be ultimately reduced to mathematics so that a strict process of deduction could predict all the truths of this manifested existence. But this glory of mathematics was short-lived and the physicist had to assign to it roles of increasingly diminishing importance in the drama of the unfolding of the secrets of reality. Let us examine, in a brief outline, these successive phases of the supposed interdependence of physics and mathematics.
Physics Axiomatized
The tremendous success attending mathematical formulation in the field of physics in the last two centuries led the scientist to believe that it is mathematical verities, first deduced in the mathematical physicst's brain, that took shape as physical realities later on in the experimental scientist's laboratory. This claim may seem to be too preposterous, but in the hey-day of mathematical prolificacy of the last century it was really advanced as a promise that the day is not far off when the whole of physics would be axiomatised, thus getting transformed into a branch of purely deductive science, and when all the truths of this universe could be seen in the crystal of a piece of paper helped by the pencil of the mathematician. It was the age of undiluted univocal causal determinism when there existed one and unique personage of the name
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of mathematics, absolutely rational in essence and functioning and imperiously self-imposed on the world of 'empiry'. But the crisis soon approached from two different directions and mathematics was brought down from its Olympian pedestal to one step lower in the echelon. What was the nature of this crisis?
Double-Pronged Attack
The crisis came from outside as well as from inside. With the edification of the structure of classical mathematics one was persuaded to think that mathematics could univocally penetrate the deepest truth of interrelations of natural phenomena; and this conviction was one of the factors which created the illusion of the total dependence of the world of 'empiry' on the deductive verities of mathematics. But with the advancement of experimental physics, the scientist soon became aware of the disconcerting fact that the minute and deeper structure of physical phenomena totally transcended the cadre of classical univocal mathematics. An imperative necessity arose of erecting new structures of 'probability mathematics' which were increasingly more delicate in their methods and more general in application. In fact, the physicist quickly gave up the old language of mathematics for his scientific world, and the change from the Newtonian language to the language of quantum physics occurred because "certain things could not be said about physical events in the former which could be said in the latter, and many things that could be said in the Newtonian language turned out to be unverifiable at the subatomic level."12 Thus it was revealed that although mathematics in one form or another remained an indispensable instrument for the systematisation and explanation of natural phenomena, there was no such thing as Mathematics with a capital M which could be inexorably and uniquely equated to the phenomenal reality: mathematical explanation was "no longer considered to be causal, but relational and repetitive; it was not constitutive but only contributive."13 Thus the world of 'empiry' reasserted its primacy and mathematics was dislodged from its position of Dieu arbitre!
12.L. O. Kattsoff, Ontology and the Choice of Languages.
13.Thomas Greenwood, "Valeur Explicative des Mathématiques" (Actes du XIe Congrés International de Philosophic, Vol. XIV, p. 149).
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And once this scruple for observing correspondence with the 'real' was eliminated, pure mathematicians became prolific in their imagination and created one after another altogether new and diverse structures all logically self-consistent but unrelated to the empirical truths. Absolved of its self-appointed task of becoming monitor of this phenomenal universe, freed from the shackles of 'empiry', mathematics became a pure hypothetico-deductive discipline. And, as we shall see later on, logic was to follow it soon, to such an extent that R. Carnap went so far as to reject all characterization of logic as the art de penser or ars cogitandi. Any suggestion that the logician is concerned with 'correct or rational thinking' he condemns as 'psychologism'.14 "Logic", in his view, "is as pure a science as higher geometry. The logician must be left free to indulge his imagination unfettered by any demands but those of consistency; references to 'rational thinking' are as irrelevant to logic as theodolite readings could be to the study of nine-dimensional hyper-space."15 Thus the two main planks on which the recent period of rationalistic materialism had based itself lost the greater part of their substance. But more bewilderment was to follow to the utter dismay of the mathematical physicists.
Alexander B. Gibson, speaking of the metaphysician's dilemma before the problem of reality, humorously remarked: "it is enough to make a man take to geometry. Triangles do not hit back." But he was a bit indulgent towards the mathematicians. For, alas, triangles did hit them back!
I am referring to the deep crisis through which mathematical thought has been actually passing. This crisis started in the late nineties of the last century and has gradually acquired intensity during the course of this century. It is as regards the very basis of all mathematical structure. To speak adequately about this topic will take us too far. So let us content ourselves with only the remark that mathematicians have become highly critical of the supposedly absolute and rational basis of their own science; the very solidity of the foundation of all mathematical thinking has been rudely questioned and modern mathematics finds itself in a state of utter insecurity.
This double-pronged attack from outside and from inside has left mathematics bereft of all pretensions to provide the all-
14.R. Carnap, Logical Foundations of Probability.
15.Ibid.
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sufficient equation to the phenomenal reality. But if mathematics could not dictate its terms to the world of 'empiry', could it not at least, in one form or another, be sufficient to reveal the total secret of nature? Admitting the inevitable parallelism between phenomena and mathematical explanation, it was hoped that mathematics would at least provide the key to the integral solution of the total reality of this universe. But that too was not to be. Let us see why.
Mathematics and the Total Phenomenal Reality
Mathematics transforms all substance into function and thus destroys all substantial relations. In fact mathematical explanation hinges on the relation of equality (or inequality) which is at bottom identity of quantities attached to different numbers and figures. These quantities may be either constants or independent variables or functions. Thus they are abstracted from reality through a process of double abstraction. Mathematics isolates the quantitative even in quality, for the mathematician is indifferent to quality as such. (Juan Zaragüeta.)
Thus, to him, acoustics are reduced to the mechanics of wave-propagation; light is equated to an all-too-limited portion of the total phenomena of electromagnetic undulations, where an electrical vector along with a magnetic vector are supposed to be in periodic fluctuations thus producing an intensity vector, the energy-current of Poynting; heat is, for him, nothing else but a mechanico-kinetostatic phenomenon. What a flat colourless world he lives in!
But one thing is certain: quality can never be equated to quantity, the heterogeneous diversity of the manifested world will never be imprisoned in the homogeneous quantitative framework offered by mathematics. Mathematics will never be able to explain how arrangement of design, quantity and number can be a base for the manifestation of quality and property. As Juan Zaragüeta has aptly remarked that even after analysing the acoustics of a whole orchestra, mathematics will never come to show that it is verily the note la 3 (A of the 3rd octave) that corresponds to 435 vibrations per second."
16. Juan Zaragüeta, "L'explication dans les sciences de la nature" (Acts du XIe Congrès International de Philosophic Vol. VI).
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Reality Evanescent
Science started as a seeking to know the internal and intimate structure of the reality of things. But it has long since passed the stage in which reality could be confined in the bounds of our sense-perceptions. Positivism, at least as it was expounded by Moritz Schlick, denies all reality to anything other than our sense-data and all that can be directly derived from them. But to the physicist this world of sensory perception is nothing but the superficial level of reality. He accords far greater reality to what has been termed by J. Clay as the "plane of physical reality" and which clearly transcends the reach of our senses. To understand this point, let us go back a little and examine the problem of visualizing the concepts employed in physics.
The experimental data concerning the state of a physical system doubtless have a visual character or, more exactly, are expressible in terms of sense-reactions. This is not only true of the subjective, but also of the so-called objective observations making use of the blackening of photographic plates, the position of mercury columns, pointers of measuring instruments, etc. Moreover, the predictions, made on the basis of such observations, with respect to the future of the system in question, must ultimately be translated into the language of sense-data. But what of the intermediate steps? Should they too be capable of visualization in terms of sense-data? In the light of the achievements of Galileo, Kepler and Newton, it looked, indeed, in the first stages of physics, as if such a requirement could be imposed on the theory. It was the period of 'mechanistic picture' of the universe where all phenomena were to
So we see that mathematics is lowered another step down: it is neither the unique reality nor the all-sufficient master-key to explain away the mysteries of the phenomenal world. But, after all, does not mathematical physics reveal to us the existence of so many heretofore unknown real entities, such as gravitational force, electrons and a host more? In other words, has not mathematics revealed, albeit partially, the nature of the deeper structure of material phenomena which transcend our immediate sense-perceptions? And does it not lead us to expect that gradually it will come to unfold with unequivocal precision the inmost mystery of reality? Here again the reply is an emphatic 'No'.
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be reduced to the motion of particles and bodies under the influence of forces. Little by little, however, the concept of force had to give up its primary position and make room for the 'energy concept' due to Meyer, Joule and Helmholtz. "With the concept of energy was introduced a quantity which is connected only indirectly with sense experience, which cannot be visualized and which nevertheless, on account of the fundamental property of remaining unaltered during changes in a 'closed' system, has a great degree of reality; so great, indeed, that criminal law speaks of the theft of energy and imposes severe punishments on it". (R. Kronig.)
A further important step in liberating physical reasoning from the corset of mechanistic considerations was taken by Faraday and Maxwell when introducing the 'field concept' into the treatment of electrodynamic phenomena. Gradually more and more concepts were introduced, which completely escaped the grasp of immediate palpability and thus a world of "constructs" (Margenau) was built up. And so long as classical physics moved on its one-rail track - we mean, so long as a single accepted theory dominated the field - this world of "constructs" was believed to be of a deeper order of reality than the world of sense-data. In fact, physicists were convinced that they had thus taken cognizance of some real res which although transcending our sense-perceptions, pre-exists all the while. Thus they became hopeful of uncovering more and more the deeper levels of reality of this physical world. But the disillusion was soon to come.
Shifting Sands
The first disillusion came when it was discovered that those 'entities' which were accorded a solid reality for decades together failed totally to explain the information revealed by the advancing tide of experimental technique. What was adequate for a blurred vision of the dawn became useless in the shine of the morning. (Remember in this connection the case history of phlogiston.)
The Spectre of Janus
Again, the same set of phenomena cuuld be explained in terms of
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different theories starting from different sets of concepts and each positing the existence of a different substratum of reality. Thus the theory of electricity based on the methods of Faraday and Maxwell considers electricity to be an incompressible fluid filling matter continuously; on the other hand, the electronic theory explains electrical phenomena as consequences of the movement of perfectly discrete elementary quanta otherwise called electrons. But both these theories deduce the same set of general laws, to wit the Law of Coulomb. Another example: light explained by Fresnel as real vibrations occurring in an all-filling medium called ether, and by Maxwell as an electric force, in accompaniment with a magnetic force, acting in what can only by analogy be called oscillations.
Mad Hatter's Tea Party
Sometimes the same entity exhibited altogether different aspects which were incompatible amongst themselves so far as our sense-relations are concerned. The most striking example was afforded by light which in some phenomena exhibited an undulatory aspect while in some other it had to be considered in a corpuscular form. So it was like the Mad Hatter's tea-party where tea was served on such and such days and coffee on the rest of the days of the week! (Eddington.) For the real nature of light is hidden from us. We only know its two complementary aspects: wave-property and particle-property. And it is the same thing with electron. (Louis de Broglie, Matière & Lumière.) But what is this strange creature, 'wavicle', due to? It is the product of a general crisis in modern physics which we shall discuss in the next section.
The Riddle of the 'Mikros'
So long as the physicists were dealing with the macrophysical domain, they could verify their hypotheses on the solid ground of experimentation; so their ideas and suppositions could be more or less controlled. But as the horizons of scientific information receded farther and farther, they had to grasp the realities of the micro-realm; but in its very nature this domain was trans-empiric and ultra-sensible. As a result, nothing could be directly tested there and the physicist had to send out some long-range antenna in
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order to collect and then codify information pertaining to this invisible impalpable world. These antenna were nothing but different forms of analogies among which may be mentioned: (a) Metaphor (e.g., planetary model of the Bohr atom); (b) Metonymy (e.g., the presence of electrons inferred from measurements effected in a Geiger Counter or from the traces they leave in the Wilson Cloud Chamber).
But in their very nature, analogies cannot offer guaranteed truth; and as the front of scientific research recedes farther and farther from the base-line of sense-perception, the physicist finds himself plumped headlong into what has been called by J. Zara-gueta, terrain hypothétique. Here, no assertion could be guaranteed, nothing could be held up as definitely true, all was conjecture and reasoned guess. Here, Schrödinger's enigmatic psi-function and Heisenberg's frequency matrix go jogging along to the tune of tra-la-la! What represents the true state of affairs - Wave Mechanics or Quantum Mechanics? Or, perhaps, neither of them? For, are they not after all "verbal stenography" of something unknown and, perhaps, for ever unknowable? What an impasse modern physics has arrived at! The self-contradictory univocité of classical mechanics is thrown away only to be replaced by the empty symbolism of modern epistemologists!
And all this talk of Schrödinger's psi-function travelling in n-dimensional Hilbertian phase space, or of 4-dimensional space at each point determinate in terms of quadri-dimensional metric tensor, etc. - is it physics, or meta-physics? geometry, or meta-geometry? (Has not Prof. J. Clay styled modern physics as meta-physiology?17
In fact, all these modern theories are pure metaphysical speculations; their concepts lack visibility, palpability and any possibility of demonstration. And this is not all. When one tries to describe these newly revealed phenomena in a trivalent or polyvalent logic - as has been attempted by Reichenbach - one is moving straight towards meta-mathematics and meta-logic!
Reality 'An Sich' v. Reality 'Fieri'
So reality is eluding the grasp and probe of science. Someone has
17. J. Clay, "La Métephysique et L'Expérience" (Acts du XIe Congrès International de Philosophie, Vol. IV).
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said that the strength of science lies in its naivety. It started on its journey with complete self-assurance without burdening itself with metaphysical problems about reality. To it it seemed that everything in this universe could be explained in terms of matter, and is not matter something tangible and immediate?
In a sense it was good that in the beginning of its career science did not concern itself with the problem of reality; for, indeed, if the scientist had become too self-conscious, he might have lost all his power, "like the famous centipede who, after too profound an analysis of his own method of locomotion, found that he could no longer walk!"18 (Gilbert N. Lewis.)
But science could not avert for good the day of reckoning. It has at last come face to face with the sphinx of reality, apparently without any chance of solving its riddle. The self-assurance is broken, its pretension to uncover the body of reality is humbled; and as a result agnosticism grows. And note the irony of the situation. At the very moment when science had reached the pinnacle of its practical usefulness, the scientist is altogether disconcerted by questions of fundamental import, questions which shake the very foundations of all scientific knowledge. (It goes without saying that we are here concerned with science as a means to get knowledge of the reality, and not with its practical results nor with the approximative generalisations it has arrived at, which are no doubt valid in their limited domain.) Unexpected and innumerable difficulties have cropped up to challenge the truth of all existing scientific theories; doubts have arisen as regards the intrinsic rationality of mathematical thinking; successive crises in the field of atomic and sub-atomic physics have slowly but surely corroded and finally broken asunder the age-old convictions about self-existent objectivity; rationality and determinism can no longer be held up as inviolable principles governing this physical universe. The scientist has been obliged to throw overboard from his language certain of his intuitive postulates and unchallengeable ideas - such as mechanical determinism, the object independent of the observer's experimentation, etc. - so much so that he has lately taken an attitude of extreme diffidence towards all that appeared to him till now as something self-evident and beyond all refutation. And the difficulty is that he cannot afford to change a few concepts without at the same time disturbing a host of others. Thus he is no
18. Gilbert N. Lewis, The Anatomy of Science, p. 1.
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longer dead-sure about what reality really is!19
In desperation some have altogether denied the existence of any reality an sich ("in itself). To them the res, the realitas is not something stable or complete, but rather fieri, dynamic and subject to continuous change. So there can be no conformity with something that is not yet complete. It has now become increasingly apparent that in science we only know certain properties of the res, but the realitas underlying phenomena escapes us for ever. In fact, the supposed reality, which the human mind through the discipline of science has posited behind the physical phenomena, is considered not at all a fixed entity having a constant significance; it is taken not as persistent being but as perpetual becoming, a varied flux. (J. H. Tummers, La Physique Théorique N'Explique Pas.) But this incapability of science to seize the reality behind cannot be an argument for declaring that there is no stable reality as "das Ding an sich" ("the thing in itself") or that "reality changes when new discoveries are made. (Margenau.) The present idea is no solution to the problem of reality, nor can it satisfy the inner instinct of the scientist himself; for, behind all scientific research, is there not the presupposition that there is some stable mystery inherent in the physical universe, something as yet unknown but that can be progressively known? For, above all, science has always been considered primarily in its noetic aspect; practical utility comes afterwards as a secondary by-product. It is this very ambition to be a perfect bringer of knowledge that now seems to have been demolished for good.
Vanitas Vanitatum Knocked Out
And what has become of the mathematical laws formulated in physics? They, too, are no longer considered to hold out an all-vision revealing the true nature of reality, nor are they deemed inviolable in their nature. "A physical theory is not an explanation." (Duhem.) "A mathematical law cannot reveal the true nature of things; it would be utterly preposterous and foolish to put forward such a claim for it." (Henri Poincaré.) "Putting into equation is no more than an abbreviative form given to language
19. P. Destouches-Février, Qu'Appelle-t-on Explication en Science? and Bernard Van Hagens, La Valeur Noétique des Sciences de la Nature.
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and logical thought. It cannot offer us anything intrinsic about the external world of reality; it cannot say anything at all about it except in so far as it links itself to reality in docile submission. It is especially about mathematics that one can declare: naturae non imperaturs nisi parendo 'one cannot impose one's rule on Nature except by obeying it.' "20
Thus the phenomehist ambition of science has been bid goodbye. The realist interpretation of scientific knowledge (due, among others, to Bavink and Plank) according to which science is explanatory can no longer hold the day; the theories of science are essentially descriptive. (Bridgeman and the Vienna School.) Science cannot explain reality, it can only describe phenomena and that too in an all-too-limited way; description and not explanation is the only role of science. The modern scientist has come to realise that a fundamental intrinsic imperfection is involved in the very structure of scientific knowledge incapacitating it from comprehending the total reality. For "Our science is no more than a simulacrum of pure intellection. The mode of all rational human knowledge is not in aliquo as in the case of a pure spirit, it is ex aliquo in a discursive way.... Human reason can seize only a succession of ordinal forms which it can very well classify and systematise, but without ever being able to exhaust all of them, for, in its very nature, it is finite and moves in time. And that is why no mathematico-physical theory will ever be able to take into account the totality of phenomena or utter the last word on the nature of the world.... Also, all discursive thought proceeds through substitution of equivalents; but there is no absolute equivalence in the domain of reality. Thus it lacks the total singular vision of the Real. Mathematico-physical knowledge shares this intrinsic weakness with all other forms of discursive thought."21
The Unknown and the Unknowable
So modern science has come to realise that it cannot, in the very nature of things, offer any essential knowledge about the reality. Although it started with the ambition to dig
20.Charles Nordmann, Einstein et L'Univers.
21.Thomas Greenwood, Valeur Explicative des Mathématiques.
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"...into Matter's hard concealing soil,
To unearth the processes of all things done,"22
it discovers now that a more or less probable predictability - and that too in a highly restricted field - is all that it can possibly offer. Thus explanation in science is no longer 'revelatory' but only 'prognostic'. "Scientific truth is a prediction, or rather a predication.... Above the subject, beyond the immediate object, modern Science bases itself on pro-ject.23
But can the scientific spirit remain contented with this none too dignified role of
"A bullock yoked in the cart of proven fact"
whose only function is to drag
"...huge knowledge-bales through Matter's dust To reach utility's immense bazaar"?
In fact, science began its journey with a quest to know, to penetrate the unknown and "comprehend and interpret the hidden reality. Primarily, it is a seeking for knowledge rather than an utilitarian spirit, that motivates the march of science. But what do we find at the journey's end? Science has not been able to offer a mathesis universalis even for the inanimate material world, let alone the whole of this universe. To it this immense actuality and this stupendous becoming is indescribable as a whole. But this whole is ever impinging on the man of science as on all other sentient beings, and he cannot brush it aside as something incoherent and devoid of all rationale. For this whole is certainly not a chaos.
"The cosmos is no accident in Time"
and
"There is a meaning in each play of chance".
To speak mathematically, this universal Becoming is not a 'scalar', it is a multidimensional 'vector'. "World-existence is the ecstatic dance of Shiva which multiplies the body of the God numberlessly to the view: it leaves that white existence precisely where and what
22.The quotations in poetry are all from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri.
23.G. Bachelard, Le Nouvel Esprit Scientifique.
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it was, ever is and ever will be."24 But science has foundered in both the fields: it neither knows the Being, nor can unfold the secret of the Becoming. So the crucial question is: What next?
Modern science is at a cross-road. To it reality appears to be ever unknowable. Should it then give up the pursuit, essential knowledge being to it unknowable? Or, should it not take a leap into the light, undergo a metamorphosis and proceed on a path of new adventure? Here comes in Sri Aurobindo with his supreme assurance that "The Unknown is not the Unknowable; it need not remain the unknown for us, unless we choose ignorance or persist in our first limitations. For to all things that are not unknowable, all things in the universe, there correspond in that universe faculties which can take cognizance of them, and in man, the microcosm, these faculties are always existent and at a certain stage capable of development.... Fundamentally, all possible knowledge is knowledge within the power of humanity."25
March of Evolution
But it should be emphasised at once that "our way of knowing must be appropriate to that which is to be known; otherwise we achieve only a distant speculation, a figure of knowledge and not veritable knowledge.... An ignorant half-knowledge cannot follow the motions of an All-Knowledge."26 After all, science too has chalked out a special method suited to the task of exploring the physical reality and the potency of this method in its own chosen field has been demonstrated in full. But this very method becomes inapt and valueless when applied to other fields of reality. And there is nothing irrational or amazing in this failure. For "there are different orders of the reality and the conceptions, measures, standards suitable to one need not be applicable to another order.... Our finite knowledge, conceptions, standards may be valid within their limits, but they are incomplete and relative."27 Thus, to comprehend the total reality, an integral .faculty of knowledge is called for; and certainly Mind is too imperfect an
24.Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 78.
25.Ibid., p. 13.
26.Ibid., p. 323.
27.Ibid., p. 328.
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instrument to play this role. "Mind is not sufficient to explain existence in the universe.... For Mind is that which does not know, which tries to know and which never knows except as in a glass darkly.... Knowledge waits seated beyond mind and intellectual reasoning, throned in the luminous vast of illimitable self-vision."28
So we see that if we seek an integral knowledge of the reality, the only logical course for us is to discard this smoke-covered lamp of our present faculty of knowledge and awake into a higher region of consciousness where a supra-intellectual seeing will replace "a seeking Mind". But is it 'practical polities', after all? As an ideal it may be alluring, but has it not been posited that at their best, ideals are fictions; they are abstract, purely conceptual absolutes, which can only be approached 'asymptotically'; in other words, they are unattainable in finite time; and at its worst, what is an ideal if not "a malady of the mind" and "a bright delirium of speech and thought"? So is it not an 'idle gleam' to hunt after this super-mind, for how can there be anything greater than mind and reason?
But this sense of impossibility arises only because it is being tacitly assumed that man with his mind-consciousness is something of the nature of a limit, definitive and eternally stabilised, which can never be transcended. But this idea of the limit and of the impossible grows a little shadowy as soon as we study the evolutionary history of this terrestrial manifestation. In fact, evolution of consciousness much more than a form-evolution, is the key-note of this terrestrial Becoming. "There is a graduated necessary succession in the evolution, first the evolution of Matter, next the evolution of Life in Matter, then the evolution of Mind in living Matter, and in this last stage an animal evolution followed by a human evolution."29 In reality, a spiritual unfolding on earth is the hidden truth of our birth into Matter, and "if it is fundamentally an evolution of consciousness that has been taking place in Nature, then man as he is cannot be the last term of that evolution: he is too imperfect an expression of the spirit, mind itself a too limited form and instrumentation; mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed
28.The Life Divine, pp. 118-121.
29.Ibid., p. 836.
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and supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind is capable of opening to what exceeds it, then there is no reason why man himself should not arrive at supermind and supermanhood or at least lend his mentality, life and body to an evolution of that greater term of the Spirit manifesting in Nature."30
Integral Yoga
But how can man open his mind to what exceeds it and is trying to manifest here in earth-nature? If evolution is a fact, does not past history testify to its extremely slow progression? Thus, if the integral knowledge can only come by an evolution of our being and our nature, that would seem to signify an imperceptibly slow process in time such as has accompanied the other evolutionary transformations, and this would postpone this new birth into Light to some indeterminate distant future.
But here again Sri Aurobindo comes in to assure us that this need not be so. For "it must be observed that the appearance of human mind and body on the earth marks a crucial step, a decisive change in the course and process of the evolution; it is not merely a continuation of the old lines. Up till this advent of a developed thinking mind in Matter evolution had been effected, not by the self-aware aspiration, intention, will or seeking of the living being, but subconsciously or subliminally by the automatic operation of Nature."31 But with the emergence of man "the evolution has now become conscious and its method and steps need not be altogether of the same character as when it was subconscious in its process. The integral knowledge, since it must result from a change of consciousness, can be gained by a process in which our will and endeavour have a part, in which they can discover and apply their own steps and method: its growth in us can proceed by a conscious self-transformation. "32
We should note that Sri Aurobindo is no speculative philosopher. He is not satisfied merely with painting in rainbow colours an aureate picture of the ideal. He is the supreme scientist of life
30.The Life Divine, p. 847.
31.Ibid., p. 843.
32.Ibid., pp. 655-56..
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who proceeds to realise the ideal in himself and then to build up an integral method for others to follow. And what is the efficacy of this preconised method called the Integral Yoga? Well, let us listen to him (the scientist might get an abundance of conviction from this significant utterance):
"I must remind you that I have been an intellectual myself and no stranger to doubts - both the Mother and myself have had one side of the mind as positive and as insistent on practical results and more so than any Russell can be. We could never have been contented with the shining ideas and phrases which a Rolland or another takes for gold coin of Truth. We know well what is the difference between a subjective experience and a dynamic outward-going and realising Force. So although we have faith, (and who ever did anything great in the world without having faith in his mission or the Truth at work behind him?) we do not found ourselves on faith alone, but on a great ground of knowledge which we have been developing and testing all our lives. I think I can say that I have been testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane.... I know that the Supramental Descent is inevitable -I have faith in view of my experience that the time can be and should be now and not in a later age."33
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have always declared that the earth-conditions are now ready to receive the supramental Light. In fact, the present-day ills of humanity are only the birth-throes of a new Dawn. Reason has failed as a governor of life; it has miscarried as a noetic instrument. Man has become acutely aware of the limitations and insufficiency under which he is labouring. Whether consciously or unconsciously he is aspiring after a transfiguring transcendence. For he has felt in the depth of his being that
"He is a captive in his net of mind
And beats soul-wings against the walls of life."
33. On Himself, pp. 468-69.
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Thus the objective conditions favourable for the Descent are already there. But this in itself is a necessary but by no means sufficient factor. For the supramental Descent to occur there must be someone to cooperate occultly with the process and accelerate the march of evolution. What would have normally taken thousands of years should be encompassed in a couple of centuries or so, and this has precisely been the mission of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Single-mindedly they engaged themselves in this supreme task for more than half a century, they have reared up, step after step, the ladder of transcendence and silently worked for the day when the evolution will take the next leap and the new Dawn will be heralded. They have not trumpeted their mission, for in the Mother's inimitable words: "The greatest victories are the least noisy. The manifestation of a new world is not proclaimed by beat of drum."
It was in 1932 that Sri Aurobindo wrote the letter quoted above. The Mother declared in 1956 that what he and she had worked to manifest is not any more a mere possibility lying in the womb of the future but a realised fact. Her actual words are: "The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and a day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it."34
But the sceptic may raise his eye-brows and interject: "But where is the proof of this divine event! I do not see any signs of it!" Quite so; for in the logic of things he has first to awaken his inner eye before he can expect to take cognisance of this tremendous event; otherwise it would not be supermind but something which could be very well seized by mind. In fact, as Sri Aurobindo has indicated:
"God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep...
And belief shall be not till the work is done."
But this does not mean that the supramental Descent will have no effect on this visible field of manifestation and will remain for ever aloof on the high peaks of mystic halo. Far from it; for it is no static knowledge that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have sought.
34. The Mother's Message on April 24, 1956.
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Above all, they have tried to make the supermind overtly operative in earth-nature, because they have seen in their vision that it is the supermind which alone possesses a world-transfiguring Light able to bring the evolutionary march to its cherished goal. Has not Sri Aurobindo declared that "power of self is the sign of the divinity of self, - a powerless spirit is no spirit."35 "If Knowledge brings not power to change the world", then "truth and knowledge are an idle gleam." Incidentally, here again a truly scientific spirit finds its utter fulfilment in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga-Philosophy, for to a man of science too, knowledge divorced from power is not something very much covetable.
Thus we see that as days pass by, the Supramental Manifestation will make its presence increasingly more manifest even to the outward eye; in fact, this descent has ushered in an age of miracles - miracles, we repeat, to a mind
"That sees the empiric fact as settled law",
forgetting that laws are nothing but "habits of the world" which can very well be changed, if the Spirit's self-vision and self-determination so will it. Let us listen to the Mother herself about the impact of this Supramental Descent on world-conditions:
"Creation is the result not only of combinations on the surface but also of combinations in the depths of this surface.... Each time a new element is introduced into the sum-total of possible combinations, it is as it were a tearing of its limits; the introduction of something that effaces the past limits, brings in new possibilities into play, multiplies indefinitely the old possibilities.... It is evident that the modern scientific perception is much nearer to something that corresponds to the universal Reality than the perceptions, say, of the Stone Age;... but even this will be completely transcended, surpassed and probably upset by the intrusion of something which was not in the universe and has not been studied so far. This change, this sudden mutation in the universal elements will very certainly bring a kind of chaos in our perceptions, but out of it a new knowledge will arise. That, in a most general way, will be the result of the New Manifestation."36
35. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 1024.
36. Mother India, December 5, 1956.
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Adventure Beckons Science
Now, what should science do in this "God's stupendous hour"? All the three pillars - mathematics, logic and causality - on which it tried to base its materialistic creed have lost their inviolable character. The man of science has been forced by the advancing tide of knowledge to change and reconstruct these again and again in order to bring them in conformity with the new face of reality revealed. Science which started with the assumption that Matter is the sole reality has come to realise its inherent impotency before the problem of reality and thus, as Sri Aurobindo has put it, "the rock on which materialism was built and which in the 19th century seemed unshakable has now been shattered. Materialism has now become a philosophical speculation just like any other theory; it cannot claim to found itself on a sort of infallible Biblical authority, based on the facts and conclusions of Science. This change can be felt by one like myself who grew up in the hey-day of absolute rule of scientific materialism in the 19th century. The way which had been almost entirely barred, except by rebellion, now lies wide open to spiritual truths, spiritual ideas, spiritual experiences. That is the real revolution.... It is this change which I expected and prophesied in my poems in the first Ahana volume, 'A Vision of Science' and 'In the Moonlight'."37
Such is the gain derived from the negative side of the situation: the insufficiency of science in its present form. But a positive adventure's call is beckoning science to transcend its present limitations and get transformed into a meta-science. "If science is to turn her face towards the Divine, it must be a new science not yet developed which deals directly with the forces of the life-world and of Mind and so arrives at what is beyond Mind; but present-day science cannot do that."38
And this hope for a meta-science is not at all without basis. For the spirit of transcendence is active in the heart of science itself. "When we have proved Matter and realised its secret capacities, the very knowledge which has found its convenience in that temporary limitation, must cry to us, like the Vedic Restrainers, 'Forth now and push forward also in other fields'.
"If modern Materialism were simply an unintelligent acquiescence
37.Letters on Yoga, pp. 206-207.
38.Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Second Series, p. 571.
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in the material life, the advance might be indefinitely delayed. But since its very soul is the search for knowledge, it will be unable to cry a halt; as it reaches the barriers of sense-knowledge and of the reasoning from sense-knowledge, its very rush will carry it beyond and the rapidity and sureness with which it has embraced the visible universe is only an earnest of the energy and success which we may hope to see repeated in the conquest of what lies beyond, once the stride is taken that crosses the barrier. We see already that advance in its obscure beginnings."39
But is not the very methodology of science antithetical to the Yogic way of acquiring spiritual knowledge? Let us discuss this issue in the next chapter.
39. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 13.
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