Indian philosophy concerns itself with para vidya and apara vidya, the knowledge of the ‘higher Self’ and the knowledge of the ‘external material world’, respectively. It is one of the fundamental tenets of Indian knowledge systems that these two are not antagonistic to each other and are manifestations of a single unity in the form of Brahman. In such a stance, there is an intense spiritualization of every single aspect of apara vidya (all the ‘secular activities’) dealing with the material world.
As Indian intellectuals like Sri Aurobindo or Ananda Coomaraswamy argue, the separation of the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’ profoundly fails to make sense in our culture. Science and most other secular activities can also be a route to the divine. Most of the secular activities finally seek the unity that binds the para and the apara. In contrast, science, as popularised in western culture, seeks unity only in the apara, or material realm.
Hence, the issue of science clashing with spirituality never makes its presence felt in Indian traditions or Sanatana Dharma. Every secular activity, including science, is intensely ‘spiritualized’ and can be a way to moksha, the ultimate ideal of our culture. The divine goddess could inspire the highest poetry and mathematics of Kalidasa and Ramanujan, respectively. The clash between the ‘word of God’ and ‘the word of science’, typically seen in Abrahamic cultures of the west, never existed in India. Even asking a scientist why he or she goes to a temple exposes ignorance on the part of the questioner about the nature of Indian culture. The answers also fail to convince because they do not make sense in the Abrahamic frameworks. Science has to be in opposition to spirituality, and the idea that they are two aspects of the same unity seems to escape our collective thinking. Nothing is a better name for the landing point than Shiv Shakti, because that represents the philosophy of the entire culture for thousands of years.
RANDOM MUSINGS 