Science and Spirituality: Does the Universe exist?

This is that time of the year when science and spirituality are celebrated hand in hand in our country. In February, India celebrated the National Science Day, and in March, it celebrated the Maha Shivratri.

India observes the 28^th of February every year as National Science Day in honour of the famous Indian physicist Sir C V Raman. It was on this day in 1928 that the phenomenon known as “the Raman Effect” was discovered by Sir C V Raman. The Raman effect is not only leveraged effectively in Raman spectroscopy commonly used in chemistry, but also explains various visual phenomena including why the sea is blue. It postulates changes in the wavelength of light when a light beam is deflected by molecules, and that a fraction of the incident light emerges in directions other than that of the incident beam. The water molecules in the sea scatter white sunlight into wavelengths that fall in the blue regime of the visible spectrum, and therefore the sea appears blue. The theme of the National Science Day observed on 28^th February 2019 was “Science for the People and the People for Science”, and rightfully so as science is the greatest tool devised by mankind to interpret the universe and to understand its behavior.

But does science offer all that is there to know about the universe? Or, is there something beyond science that is needed to fathom the universe in its entirety? A good question to ponder over at a time of the year when the Maha Shivratri is observed across the country (it was observed on 4^th of March this year). The Maha Shivratri is one of the most significant spiritual events in India and is believed to induce a natural upsurge of energy in human beings owing to the unique position of the planet earth in the cosmos that night. Maha Shivaratri is also about Yoga or union with the Universal Consciousness. In my view, Science and Spirituality are not orthogonal, instead, Spirituality encompasses Science and transcends beyond its ambit to explain what Science falls short of explaining.

Science is empirical and mathematical and expresses itself through laws and postulates. For example, science affirms that when a Sodium atom meets a Chlorine atom, they join hands to form a molecule of Sodium Chloride (common salt). It goes a step beyond to explain why that happens by postulating that Sodium has surplus of an electron that it can donate to Chlorine that has a deficit of an electron, and therefore the ionic bonding between Sodium and Chlorine is ideal for the resultant compound to attain chemical equilibrium. But if you take a step further and ask why this equilibrium must be attained at all, you almost hit a brick wall. Scientists who cite Laws of energy conservation shall not be able to answer why energy is conserved at all. That is when Spirituality starts to take over. It appears as if one atom has an inherent intelligence or consciousness that it must donate an electron to another atom that has the intelligence or consciousness that it must receive one. Isn’t this intelligence or consciousness all pervasive? It is the same consciousness that induces two Hydrogen atoms to pair with an Oxygen atom to form a Water molecule. It is the same consciousness that guides a seed to germinate into a sapling and grow into a tree. It is the same consciousness that induces male & female germ cells to unite to form an embryo, and eventually guides the embryo to spontaneously grow limbs, heart, lungs, kidneys, liver and bones in a predictable way to grow into a full-fledged human baby. It is as if nature is conscious. This is essentially the Universal Conciseness.

Science expresses itself through a framework of space and time. It falls flat beyond the matrix spun by space and time. What existed before the Big Bang? Or, what existed when space did not exist? Or, what happened when time did not exist? (the question itself is weird as the conjunction “when” hits the wall of oxymoron). Why does the universe have to be at all in the first place? These are questions Science is unable to answer. Fortunately, our Mind transcends beyond the limits of space and time, and it is our Mind that helps us venture into dimensions that Science cannot reach. Spirituality pivots around the Mind as the Mind is the manifestation of the Universal Consciousness. Yoga helps us to discover how our Mind (our Consciousness) is an inseparable part of the Universal Consciousness. When our Mind relates to the Universal Consciousness, we are in a state of peace and tranquility by just being, completely agnostic of space and time.

Humans have been equipped with five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. We experience and describe the universe in terms of these five senses. When we experience a beach, we witness the blue sea, hear the roars of its waves, smell the freshness of its breeze, feel the texture of the sand, and probably taste the saltiness in the moisture. Now imagine, if humans only had four senses (say the sensory element of sight was missing), what would be our perception of the beach? We would still experience the beach with the rest of the four senses and we wouldn’t even have known that we are missing out on something called sight of the beach as we wouldn’t have conceived what sight is after all! On the extreme, imagine if we had no sensory organs at all (like a Plant), what would the Universe come across to us as? On the other extreme, imagine if we had more than five senses, how would we accommodate a sixth, a seventh or an eight aspect of the universe? Since we don’t even know what an additional sensory element could be, we cannot even imagine an additional dimension of the universe, but our Mind can fathom that such a possibility exists, just as it can fathom the possibility of the Universe being a sensory illusion, a mere fabrication of our Sensory elements.

The universe that we know of through our Senses is understood materially through Science. However, in the Spiritual realm which is not limited by our senses, nor bounded by the framework of space or time, the Universe may not even exist, or if at all it does, it could be quite unlike what we perceive it as.