Reading time: 5 minutes
Growing up in a very spiritual family, I used to see everyone around me reading scriptures on a daily basis. I am a student of engineering; so once I have studied, let’s say III year subjects, studying them over and over again will be quite foolish now, isn’t it? But this foolishness happened all around, actually daily. This is where I think science and pure logic fail humanity. There is a secret here, a secret that is beyond science and intellect to grasp. The Secret of the unknown, the secret of infinity, the secret of there is something more.
Science will come to us and dissect the flower completely and will tell us all its anatomy. It will claim that it knows everything about the flower now, which is fairly true. But on the other hand, a child will simply be curious about the flower the whole day, a poet will be able to compare it to its beloved, a husband will smile giving it to the wife, and a devotee will pour her entire devotion while offering it to the lord. The study of anatomy will go only deeper in one direction, today it is able to go to the subatomic particles or even to quarks, and maybe tomorrow it is able to go a few layers deeper. All it does it, pushes the question one step back and then looks for the answer. The heart looks at the flower and gets lost in the mesmerizing beauty of it. And I can not stop myself from saying “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder”; Science dissects beauty without really knowing the beholder.
In Sanskrit, there is a specific word for reading the scripture. It is called “doing the Path”. So you don’t read the scripture, you do their path. What it means, every time you read a story of Krishna or Christ, there appears to be a new meaning, new angle, a new depth. It’s like new every time you read it. In the world of science, it is the polar opposite, for example, a Pythagorean theorem results in the same every time. If you don’t believe me, try it doing it over the long weekend, it will not change. The answer will be the same on Friday and Monday, or anything other day.
Intellect has its place, its importance. I am able to write this article and you are reading it somewhere on the internet because of intellect. But think of it this way, there are three mountains, one you can know, one you can partially know, and the third is beyond. Another way to look at it is anything of this material world, science is there for rescue – all the humans, the things of the humans all this is the first mountain. The second mountain is something that is partially beyond the material world – here comes all the great saints, prophets, and avatars, who came among us but also have touched the surface of the truth, an intellectual mind struggles with it. Intellect can grasp some of it and the rest it disregards. It is this deeper mystery that fleets in the beauty of flowers, in the meaning of scriptures, in the bells of the Church, in the smile of a baby, in the ayats of the Quran, or dips in the holy water. The third mountain is completely beyond, one needs to break the time, and space continuum understood by intellect to experience the third mountain. One needs to become the mountain to experience it.
Learn, respect, and assimilate Science, intellect, and logical thinking. But, my friends, I tell you this, fall in love with the beauty of this world, for all the intellect of this earth, the Chat GPTs, and the AI will fall short of this experience. All the Vedas, Upanishads, and all the scientific literature feel meaningless in front of Krishna playing flute by the Ganges or holding the hand of Christ or when the mother stays up for the baby the whole night. This is being human. Let the heart live with the intellect.