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A Gandhian Approach to Technological Wonders For the 21st Century |
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- By T. S. Ananthu Many grandiose visions have been developed to depict how we humans will shape our destiny in the new century that is fast approaching. Almost without expectation, these visions are based on scenarios involving highly sophisticated technological breakthroughs with unbelievable vast potentials - colonies in space, robot-operated plants, computers that match human intelligence, power plants based on nuclear fusion, etc. etc. This kind of fantasizing on our part is but natural, for it is based on an extrapolation (along an exponential curve) of the kind of scientific and technological advances that we have already achieved in the last two to three hundred years. But could it be that this curve will now encounter a break, a discontinuity? Could it be that technologies which are based on a posture in which man attempts to confront and conquer nature will have to give way to technologies in which man humbles himself before nature, co-operates with it and gives it the status of a life-giving, life-preserving mother? In other words, will we be forced to heed the warning that Mahatma Gandhi (and a few others, too) had sounded decades ago? If so, how will we go about the task of reshaping our technological scenario along lines that Gandhi would have approved? Would such a step amount to 'going backwards', or to abandoning the scientific outlook? The objective of this booklet is to explore these questions. History is full of curves that display ascending tendencies with seemingly nothing to stop the ascent, only to be suddenly and unexpectedly halted and reversed. Who could have imagined at the beginning of the century that much before its end, most people would almost forget the notion of a 'British Empire', that had spread its influence and tentacles all over the globe? It may now sound hilarious, but even in 1900, many transportation planners in the US were worried at the decline in the population of well-bred horses! In addition, the unexpectedness with which one ascending curve collapses is often matched by the surprise and the swiftness with which a particular new trend starts on its ascent. Air travel is now taken for granted by all, but as late as 1907, Lord Haldane, Britain's secretary for war, declared "The airplane will never fly", and later when it did, the chief of Britain customs instructed its officials to ignore any travelers who arrived in the country by air, since to do otherwise "would only bring the department into ridicule". When the British Prime Minister was shown the first ever dynamo by Michael Faraday, and saw the tiny bulb it helped to light, he couldn’t help remarking, 'Very interesting, Mr. Faraday, but what use is it?', to which the great inventor had the courage and foresight to reply, 'What use, Sir, is a new-born baby?'
The identification of which particular
curve is about to collapse and when, and which one is ready to acquire
the characteristics of a 'new-born baby', is a very tricky business.
Only the very foolish and the very wise can make categorical predictions
in this regard. Therefore, to state with any certainty that the curve of
technological advancements based on materialistic science will not
continue on its exponential path is outside the scope of our powers. But
what we can do is note that there are several responsible studies
pointing out the sever difficulties that place impediments in the
continued ascent of this curve - the club of Rome's 'limits to growth'
and UNEP's 'greenhouse effect' being well-known examples. Essentially
these difficulties can be summarized into two major categories :-
The recent spurt of interest in Gandhi and
his ideas is partly a result of his studies such as 'The limits to
growth' and stems from a realization that he had the prophetic sense to
warn us of many of the dangers mankind faces as a direct consequence of
modern civilization. As early as 1910, he wrote in his ' Indian
Opinion', a piece under the title 'Paris Havoc' :- Of course, the people of Paris will not realize the futility of rebuilding the palatial structures. It will never occur to them that even these new buildings of theirs will come down again. Engineers in their conceit, will have more grandiose plans now and pour out money like water, forgetting and making others forget the deluge, such is the obsession of present day civilization. Gandhi minced no words condemning present day civilization and termed 'Hind-Swaraj' (a small book that contains quintessence of his ideas) 'a severe indictment of modern civilization'. However, to term Gandhi's approach a 'limits to growth' one, carries with it the danger of a gross misunderstanding. True, he was against the kind of materialistic acquisition that has become the norm of life these days. Equally true, he himself practiced simplicity and austerity to such an extent that we can visualize him only as one clad in a loin cloth, living in a hut and leading a frugal life. But he chose this life-style because he was the representative of people whose poor could not afford no more, and not because he expected everyone to convert to this style of living. He was, above all, a practical man, and knew that greed for the material cannot be eliminated in this world, which is predominantly material in character. Therefore, while he had himself chosen a very austere way of life, he was well aware that only a handful of people can do so. His message to the broad masses of humanity did not include a call for austerity of the kind he practiced. Gandhi did not subscribe to a purely 'limits to growth' philosophy because of his wonderful insight into human psychology on account of which he knew that if a human being finds a dead end, a 'cul de sac', in his journey through life, he will end up, frustrated and unhappy. We see examples of this kind of behavior around us every day. Any worker, no matter what his grade or position, loses all incentive to put in a good day's work if there is no prospect of an increment; even a Deputy Managing Director or Additional Secretary or Major General gets frustrated in no time if the chances of promotion to the post of M.D. or Secretary or a full-fledged General seems blocked; a business magnate owning a chain of successful enterprises is always hell-bent on adding new ones to his empire. Thus, whether we like it or not, we need avenues of growth, which is why despite the Club of Rome's dire warnings no country has chosen to curtail, much less halt, the growth spiral. When distinguished Gandhi from other advocates of growth was his realization that growth along material lines-more goods and luxuries enhanced GNP, higher per capita income - is only one of many avenues of growth available to human beings. Some examples of other forms of growth are: growth in family ties, growth of intellect for intellect's sake (e.g., mathematics for the sake of fun, rather than merely to get a job), growth of mental concentration, growth in ability to appreciate art and culture, and spiritual growth. Gandhi did not decry material growth, but was convinced that by itself it cannot lead to happiness. He also knew, from personal experience, that the joy one gets from these other forms of growth (especially spiritual growth) far exceeds that form material acquisition. Therefore, he recommended that each one of us discover for himself or herself the joy and delight of these other forms of growth. In fact, he warned us against any forcible attempt to substitute it with something sweeter and dearer, as for example in this advice to Richard Gregg :- As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you, or when it seems to interfere with that which is more greatly desired. Gandhi's quarrel with modern civilization was on account of its refusal to recognize, much less encourage, those higher forms of growth which will enable us to move away from the present 'rat race', and towards real happiness. What is more, he was convinced that exclusive stress on the material is not detrimental to our happiness, it is detrimental to our material growth as well. On the face of it, this may seem like an absurd contradiction: how can our pursuit of the material adversely affect our material well-being? As an understanding of this paradoxical truth is essential to an understanding of Gandhi's prescription for the ills of humanity, let us look into this question in some detail by taking three examples of growth in non-material directions: - (i) concentration, or the ability to still the mind ("dhyan", as our ancients called it), (ii) intellectual growth purely for its own sake and (iii) the development of universal love. And anyone who has taught in school or college knows, a major problem many students often face is one of concentration. But in modern education, no help is provided to one faced with this problem. It is assumed that the ability to direct one's attention at will or to keep it focussed on a particular subject is something with which we are born, and nothing can be done to enhance it. This was not so in our ancient system of education, the one termed 'A Beautiful Tree' by Gandhi, in which improved "dhyan" was regarded as a vital aspect of human development and growth. The purpose behind "dhyan" had nothing to do with material well-being. Yet, better concentration does help us on the material plane too. Not only does a student who has better concentration score over others, in later life this becomes a vital factor in our accomplishments. An analysis of the abilities of all those who have ascended to the top in any field - in science, in art, in management, in social service, in military affairs, in politics, in poetry, in music - will easily reveal that one essential ingredient of such successful personalities is superior concentration. Gandhi too has developed a superb ability at "dhyan", which is what enabled him to combine supreme activity with supreme relaxation. Gandhi also took care to ensure that his concentration abilities were not directed by any worldly desires, for he wanted that the fountainhead of energy that it gave rise to be used purely for selfless purposes. These important but neglected facts regarding the functioning of the human mind have recently been partially re-discovered by the well-known psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow departed from the usual pattern of psychological investigations by making healthy, happy and successful people his subjects, not those with mental problems as other psychologists had chosen to. He said, "When you select out for careful study very fine and healthy people, strong people, creative people, saintly people, sagacious people- in fact, exactly the kind of people I picked out-then you get a different view of mankind. You are asking how tall can people grow, what can a human become". Based on his extensive studies, Maslow established one factor as playing a critical role in the psychological maike-up of those who reached great planning the term, Maslow said "self-actualization". Experiencing fully, vividly, selflessly, with full concentration and total absorption". The link between "dhyan" and the trait that Maslow termed self-actualization is self-evident. Thus, we see that development of a non-material faculty within us-that of dhyan, or the ability to control the mind-automatically leads to all-round progress, including at the material level. It is this 'hierarchy' of facilitates within us, with the higher inclusive of the lowe4r, that Gandhi wanted us to recognize. This hidden hierarchy in the nature of the various avenues of growth open to us is also evident if we look at the intellectual development that has taken place in the last two to three hundred years. Despite modern civilization's lip service to the importance of thinking, intellectual eercises purely for their own sake, rather than for the sake of material benefit, are not being encouraged, which is what led an exasperated Einstein to remark, "it is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry". Even so, a few have managed to devote their lives to intellect for intellect's sake, as for example those who have stuck to theoretical mathematics, often called 'abstract' mathematics to contrast it with 'applied' mathematics, which is considered useful and practical, and hence encouraged. But if we look at the history of science and technology, isn't it these 'abstract' efforts which have come in most handy decades later to those pi9oneering the most revolutionary breakthroughts-e.g. the hamiltonian operator to those discovering quantum mechanics, and Riemann equations to those involved in relativity? Thus, development of the intellect purely for the sake of the intellect does, nevertheless, result in great material progress. Now let us come to that avenue of human development which was Gandhi's favorite: that of universal love. This is an ideal that has great appeal to many of us, and yet practically none of us gets around to actually practicing it. Modern life is too much of a rat race, to allow for the practice of this ideal. We are caught in the competitive compulsions of the day, and merely 'earning a living' drains so much of our time and energy that there is none left to even get to know the neighbor, much less love him. The march of science and technology is so rapid that any digression from participation is in this race is seen as the certain road to obsolescence and hence to ruin. But Gandhi made a statement in this regard-a categorical assertion, in fact-which carries a very extraordinary message for us. He said:- Modern science is replete with illustrations of the seemingly impossible having become possible within living memory. But the victories of physical science would be nothing against the victory of the Science of Life, which is summed up in Love which is the Law of our being. In other words, Gandhi predicted that the 'miracles' we have been able to perform in the name of science and technology would pale into insignificance if only we could master another kind of science which is much higher in the heirarchy of potentials latent in the human mind. He referred to this as the 'Science of life which is summed up in Love which is the Law of our being', implying that
Therefore, Gandhi promised us 'miracles' if we attended to the development of universal love, the path to which he termed 'reducing oneself to a cipher', i.e. the cultivation of utter humility, a state of total egolessness. He insisted that the message of all true man of religion was simply this : that if we took to this task earnestly, all our material problems will be automatically taken care of in a far better way than if we attempt to subdue nature and lord over it. Therefore, Gandhi ended an address to professional economists in 1916 thus : Let us seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and the irrevocable promise is that everything will be added unto us. These are real economics. May you and I treasure them and enforce them in our daily life. What Gandhi terme real economics – that if we attend to the development of universal love, of reducing ourselves to a cipher, all else including the material will be ‘added unto us’ – may seem ridiculous to many of us, especially the professional economists amongst us. But the one economist who tried it out was all praise for it, and became famous on its strength. E.F. Schumacher was his name, and he took to the ‘vipassana’ system of meditation very earnestly. His goal was the attainment of ‘sunyata’ (zero-ness), though, as he made very clear, this goal did not make him a Buddhist but a better, practising Catholic. It also led him to the insights and the creativity by dint of which he was able to forecast the oil crisis a decade before it took place, and also to father the concept of appropriate teacnology. He used the following words to describe his transformation from an illustrious and briliant disciple of John Maynard Keynes to the Gandhian striving towards ‘reducing oneself toa zero’ :- All my life has been a journey of discovery of teh generosity of nature. I started out thinking that we had to do everything ourselves and, of course, we couldn’t. But then I discovered that everything will be done for us, provided only that we realize our ‘nothingness’ and thereupon start to search for a way fitting-in with the great processes of Nature, and making the best of them, for our purposes. Schumacher was referring to an eternal truth which all sages and saints have emphasized : that the Power or Law that governs the universe ( call it Nature, call it God, call it Faith, call it what you will) is ever keen on helping us, on providing for us, if only we will cease insisting on going according to our calculations and our minds. In other words, if we do not try to manipulate nature, to ‘extract the maximum’ from it, it will beastow on us a bounty which will make our ‘maximum’ seem peanuts. This has been demonstrated in a rather dramatic way these days by those experimenting in what has come to be known as ‘natural farming’ or ‘rishi kheti’ pioneered by Masanobu Fukuoka in Japan and Patap Agarwal in India. In sharp contrast to modern agricultural techniques which have concentrated on squeezing the most out of land by using chemical poisons and heavy machinery, natural farming or rishi kheti not only abjures all pesticides, chemicals and fertilizers, but even minimizes- sometimes totally eliminates- tilling and weeding. Instead, the farmer ‘tunes in’ with the earth, treating it as ‘Gaia’ or ‘Mathra-bhoomi’, a live being which acts as our Mother, feeding and sustaining and caring for us. Having undergone such a mental transformation, the farmer has only one task before him: not to ruin the soil, but to keep it healthy and happy. He does whatever is needed for this purpose, then leaves Mother Earth free to develop an ecological balance that automatically creates conditions ideal for the crops. The production figures so obtained have been very encouraging. The Friends Rural Centre at Rasulia, now in its ninth year of such an experiment under the guidance of Partap Agarwal, reports an average rice output of 12 quintals per acre, with the best fields yielding 18-20 quintals. After a study of the 3.5 acre plot of Krishna Kumar, who is a part of this experiment at Rasulia but operates his plot independently, the eminent Gandhian agricultural specialist Banwari Lal Chowdhry reports a profit figure of Rs.17,382 for the period February 1985 to March 1986. In the Bijnor District of U.P., the farmer Shoor Vir Singh who has tried out this technique on a small portion of his farm reports similar encouraging results. The most comprehensive information on this revolutionary approach to farming, including a comparision with modern agricultural techniques, as well as colour photographs of the land at different stages of the experiment in Japan and Europe, are contained in a new bok titled ‘The Natural Way of Farming: the theory and practice of Green philosophy’, by Masanobu Fukuoka. Fukuuoka, who was trained in microbiology as a plant pathologist, has devoted almost 50 years of his life to pioneering this new approach to our relationship with land. It all started when, at the age of 25, he underwent a deeply spiritual experience-an experience of ‘mu’ or ‘nothingness’ or ‘Sunyata’ – which led him to his wonderful insights. Thus, this very interesting development in the field of agriculture corroborates Gandhi’s assertion that progress can occur even in science and technology if we attend to the development of Love. The essence of the Gandhian approach to technological progress, therefore, lies in treating Nature as our friend and benefactor, and in ‘tuning in’ with her so that we can discover the ways in which she is attempting to help us. This approach is diametrically opposite to what we have been pracrtising so far in the name of technology. We have treated Nature as an adversary to be subdued and conquered. We have assumed that, using our intellect, we can design the world afresh. Thus, in California, square-shaped tomatoes are being produced using genetic engineering so that transportation costs may be minimized; in Australia, final touches are being given to a process in which sheep can 'sheer themselves' when fed a particular chemical, so that the shedding of fleece comes under the direct control of humans rather than nature; in Japan, undersea pastures tended by robots, and parks on the bottom of the sea, are part of an undersea complex being constructed along the coast of Kyushu. Even our solution to the problems created by disappearing non-renewable resources and environmental degradation as a result of our technological adventures are often in the form of even bigger technological adventures, as for example conveyed by this news item that appeared in the Times of India on June 16, 1980 :- Work on the first space city, 125,000 miles up above the earth, will begin by 1983 and will be ready for settlement after two decades. Dr. Rashmi Mayur, a futurologist, who is connected with the project prepared by the space institute of Princeton University in the U.S.A. said at a recent Press conference here that 10,000 people will be housed in the space city to be designed to provide the needs of a civilised society on ground. The $ 60 billion project will use building material mined from the moon. The new city will extensively use the non-polluting solar energy. The space city programme includes provision of solar satellites for continuous supply of energy not only to the space city but also for its transmission to earth via laser technology. The space city will have its own gardens and orchards. The city will spin at 2 r.p.m. around the axle, thus creating artificial gravity on the inner surface which will be earth normal. Each person will get 15,000 gallons of water and all waste will be recycled, Mr. Mayur said. The Gandhian approach to technology would be in sharp contrast to the above examples. Yes, we need to recycle waste, but dosen't nature already provide the best method of doing so? Yes, we need plenty of water for each person, but isn't water the most beautiful gift nature has given us? Certainly, gardens and orchards are very welcome, but can we ever duplicate the beauty of those found on earth by an artificial settlement colony on a spaceship? Definitely, we need non-polluting sources of energy, but isn't it grandiose projects of such kinds that are responsible for generating pollution? Is it wise to spend $ 60 billion to settle 10,000 people in an environment that we regard as ideal when a different way of thinking would reveal that nature is keen on creating ideal conditions for the entire human population here on earth itself? It is this 'different way of thinking' that forms the core of the Gandhian approach to technology. We have to give up the habit, cultivated over the past two to three hundred years, of putting our intellect on the highest pedestal. This has resulted in a mis-placed confidence in our ability to convert the world into a paradise with the help of technological miracles and social engineering. Instead, we have to recognize how insignificant and powerless we are compared to our Maker. This is no easy task, for it means substituting our pride with humility, a process that requires the highest degree of courage, perseverance, effort and inner strength. But once this new attitude begins to make home in our hearts, we will start noticing that miracles are already present all around us. Nature is so full of them, it is just that in our excessive pre-occupation with our intellect and its abilities we have not been paying attention to them. How many of us, for example, realize that the digestive system of our body, which we make use of daily, is a technological miracle of the highest order-it grinds without a grinder, cooks without fire and liquifies without a churner ! If only we condition ourselves to look for such miracles in nature, our whole approach towards technology would be entirely different. We would then be 'swimmimg along the tide' of nature, making it do our work, instead of thrashing at and struggling with the waves as we do now. As an example of how the Gandhian approach to technology would be different from the present one, let us take the systems we have designed for providing ourselves hot water in winter months and cold water in summer months. We have invented electrically-operated rod heaters or geysers for use in winter, and refrigerators or water coolers in summer. These are costly to install and difficult to maintain. They are also dependent on an uninterrupted supply of electricity and water. Both water and electricity supplies have become very erratic these days in countries like India, with the result that even if we have the money to buy and maintain geysers and refrigerators, they often fail to function when most needed. Further, the water supply system to support these gadgets play havoc with the environment, for it means that rivers like Jamuna have to be halted with the help of a 'barrage' at the entrance of the city like Delhi, and what flows beyond the city is not the river but the sum total of effluents from various homes and factories. Wastage of precious water because of pipe leakage's and running taps is another problem. All in all, it seems fairly obvious that our effort to provide cold and warm water to ourselves in winter and summer respectively is not meeting with the desired success. Is there a different way we could have gone about this task, a way that would have been 'in tune' with nature? For this, we have to first ask ourselves the question 'Has nature, acting as our mother and sensing our needs, by any chance already provided what we desire?' A little searching will reveal that this is indeed so, for Mother Earth always stores water within herself, and this water is kept warm in winter gushing out of the tube-wells in any of our farms, especially in North India where winter and summer conditions are more severe than in the south. Therefore, if only we re-locate ourselves in such a way that we all have direct access to Mother Earth and her stored water, something that is not possible in our over-congested cities, we can design a simple system for getting hot and cold water in winter and summer months respectively, a system that would be reliable as well as inexpensive, for nature would be performing the task for us. Another example of where nature's processes can be made use of is our toilet system. The flushes we are currently installing are very expensive and yet very inefficient. Most homes in India cannot afford it, and those that can nevertheless find it a useless encumberance if the water supply is not continuous. Without good water supply and an efficient drainage system, it is actually a great health hazard. Also, it is a source of terrible pollution to the very river that acts as water supply to cities downstream. Is there no alternative way of disposing of our excreta, a way that is in tune with nature's own processes? In this regard, nature has been doubly considerate of our needs. Not only has she provided for the automatic and quick disposition of all excreta, she has also provided for their conversion into very useful fertilizers. One of the fundamental principals governing nature's ecological balance is that the excreta of one life-form becomes the food supply of other life-forms and this process - part of teh natural 'biodegradation' taking place all round us - is not only automatic and efficient, it also leads to enrichment of the earth's soil and therefore its fertility. Ignoring this, we have chosen to instal our own costly and inefficient waste disposal systems, and on top of that have further eroded the ecological balance by operating oil-based industries for producing artificial fertilizers. It is the foolishness behind such arrogant measures that Gandhi was trying to point a finger at. This is not to suggest that Gandhian technologies would have no use for man-made contraptions or interventions. But the nature of such contraptions and interventions would be of a very different kind than at present. A good example to illustrate this point is electricity. Without human intervention, there does not seem to be any method of tapping electric potentials for human use. But need we make our electric systems so highly centralized and therefore prone to disruption as we have done? Extremely vast electrical potentials exist in every single piece of matter, however tiny, and electromagnetic fields are present even where matter isn't. Should we not be directing our research efforts towards evolving a highly decentralized, user-controlled technology for tapping a form of energy that is so widely scattered? Instead, we have chosen to develop such highly centralized generation, distribution and control systems that a village in the Himalayas with a waterfall next to it has to apply to a string of bureaucrats and politicians in Lucknow for sanction of transmission poles and lines for hundreds of miles before it can have a facility that could instead have been made available so easily from the waterfall itself. Of course, all de-centralized technological systems which make use of nature's built-in processes demand a settlement pattern different from the heavily urbanized one that forms our preference now. That is why Gandhi focussed his attack on modern civilization itself. He dreamt of an alternative where man can establish institutions on a human scale, enabling us to live in harmony both with nature and with fellow-beings. This amounts to a complete reversal of our current ways of thinking, where bigger has been equated with better. Such a reversal involves a cultural revolution in the true sense of the word. Are we ready for the adjustments and the sacrifices that such a revolution would entail? Perhaps not, but disasters such as those at Bhopal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and the Rhine are indications that soon the price for continuing on our present course may prove so high that we may be forced to accept the need for adjustments and sacrifices. Already, many eminent thinkers, including leading scientists such as David Bohm, Karl Pribram and Rupert Sheldrake, are beginning to advocate changes in science and technology along Gandhian lines. It seems likely that in the years to come the forces in favour of such a change will gather momentum. One factor which impedes our conversion to this new way of thinking and living is the fear that by doing so, we are somehow 'going backwards', reversing the progress of science. This is evident in some of the negative reactions which have greeted the experiments concerning rishi kheti. 'How can we adopt such an anti-scientific, primitive way of farming?' Many ask. In a sense, there is some force behind this argument, for if rishi kheti is tables and fruits, it means we have to question the value of all the elaborate research being carried out in our agricultural institutes. But are our present beliefs and attitudes in science so sacrosanct that to protect we should dismiss an idea that doesn't fit in with them? Should we treat existing theories in science as the only valid ones? Don't the best of traditions in science demand that we ever ready to drop an existing theory and embrace a new one if experimental results so demand? Whether technologies such as rishi kheti are to be considered 'backward' or 'forward' in terms of science really depends on our definition of science. If we tie science inextricably to certain concepts and equations which prevail today, then we have no choice but to call them unscientific. But if we take a broader and deeper meaning of science, they can become the harbingers of a great advancement in science itself, leading us to a wholistic and ecological view of the universe. In fact, many leading scientists is to reveal the universe as an ecological whole, and therefore technologies which put us in confrontation with nature are not in tune with this goal. The following quote of Hanna explaining this position was a favourite of the well-known psychologist Carl Rogers:- Man uses that which he perceives to be unlike himself, but he searches for a common understanding and common harmony with that which he perceives to be like himself. The former perception leads to manipulation and authentic technology; the latter perception leads to understanding and authentic science. We are accustomed to using 'science and technology' as a single phrase, and hence take it for granted that they represent two aspects of the same thing : science stands for the theory part and technology for the application part. But Hanna has pointed out a very important though neglected difference between the two. Because of the adversary relationship that we have adopted with respect to nature, technology as it stands today essentially involves manipulation, i.e., a cunning attempt to control the forces around us. We often assume that science also stands for the same. But Hanna points out that this is not the case, that genuine science involves the opposite. It stands for that principal which unifies all, and hence true science represents a striving to obliterate the distinction between 'me' and the 'other', an attempt to tune in with the Infinite that embraces one and all. Obliterating the distinction between 'me' and the 'other' by reaching out to the Infinite - in other words, learning to see the world as a single, undivided whole - has generally been viewed as the task of the mystic, the poet or the artist. Most practicing scientists feel uncomfortable with such philosophical notions, and prefer to stick to the 'real' world of the laboratory or the 'definite' world of mathematics. When someone like Fritjof Capra points out that relativity and quantum theories imply an acceptance of the mystic's world-view, the reaction often is, "I am too busy doing science to think about such matters." Yet, it is beneficial to remind ourselves that the giants among scientists have never run away from its philosophical implications. In fact, they have always extolied the virtues of tuning in with the Infinite, and insisted that this acts as the real basis not only for true religion and true art but also for true science. The following words bear eloquent testimony to this :- "The cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest mainspring of scientific research"..... [During that vision, in a clarified and unified view of the universe, I saw the pattern and integration of all the things.] "And that is when peace came, and that is when conviction came, and with these things came an almighty calm that nothing could ever shake again....." Albert Einstein The Greeks bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language - the word 'enthusiasm' - entheos - a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it. The ideals of art, of science, are lighted by reflection from the infinite." Louis Pasteur "Perhaps in the coming generation of younger psychologists, hopefully unencumbered by university prohibitions and resistances, there may be a few who will dare to investigate the possibility that there is a lawful reality which is not open to our five senses; a reality in which present, past and future are intermingled, in which space is not a barrier and time has disappeared; a reality which can be percieved and known only when we are passively receptive, rather than actively bent on knowing. It is one of the most exciting challenges posed to psychology." Carl Rogers, in his Presidential Address to the American Psychological Association in 1972 "You have, therefore, this fact : that all things are in the universe, and the universe is in all things - we in that, that in us; and, therefore, all things concur in a prefect unity...Everything we see of differences in bodies, in relation to formations, complexions, figures, colours, and other properties or common qualities, is nothing else than a diversity of appearance of the same substance : a transitory, mobile, corruptible appearance of an immobile, stable and eternal being." Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), one of The founders of modern science "I consider science an integrating part of our endeavor to answer the one great philosophical question that embraces all others, the one that Plotinus expressed by his brief: who are we? And more than that : I consider this not only one of the tasks, but the task, of science, the only one that really counts." Erwin Schroedinger "As it is with light and electricity, so it may be with life; the phenomena may be individuals carrying on separate exiatances in space and time, while in the deeper reality beyond space and time we may all be members of one body." James Jeans "Where the world ceases to be the stage for personal hopes and desires, where we, as free human beings, behold it in wonder, to question and to contemplate, there we enter the realm of art and science. If we trace out what we behold and experience through the language of logic, we are doing science; if we show it in forms whose inter-relationships are not accessible to our conscious thought but are intuitively recognized as meaningful, we are doing art." Albert Einstein In the preceding quotes, these well-known scientists demolish the water-tight compartments into which we generally categorize the scientific, the artistic and the mystical. Instead, they point out the transcendental nature of the common inspiration responsible for all creative activity. In addition, Einstein is very specific about the pre-condition that has to be fulfilled before this source of inspiration can be tapped in its supreme form : "where the world ceases to be the stage for personal hopes and desires." It is this particular mental state that Gandhi strived hard to cultivate. In his 'Hind Swaraj', he equated it to 'swa-raj', or the path to self-rule through self-control, just as Einstein has termed it the route to becoming 'free human beings.' This mental state was the fountainhead from which Gandhi derived all his ideas, all his willpower and all his energy. He was convinced that if human beings could learn to tap this hidden source within, we would have discovered the road to a new civilization and along with it the key to a new variety of technologies. These new technologies would be in tune with nature, would enhance human creativity rather than just productivity, would uphold the highest principles of science, would help restore the ecological balance in our environment, and would be a slave to man rather than enslave man. Source: Gandhi Today, Vol 3, 2007 |
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