Three myths in the design of education re: education in Spirituality

Myth 1: Science and Religion are opposed to each other. They cannot coexist for the same personality.
Myth 2: It is the exclusive privilege of Science and Technology to do good to the Society and take care of their well-being. Religious education is a superficial luxury that can be dispensed with.
Myth 3: Religion and Spirituality are only two different names for the same game that adults play when they have nothing else to do. Religion is the cause of several wars and killings and so Spirituality has no place in the civilized world of Science and Technology.

All the three myths were very much in existence in the 18th and 19th centuries. To be fashionable was equated with belief in these myths. And native India fell headlong into it. In fact it needed the intervention of no less a genius than Swami Vivekananda to take cudgels against these myths in his whirlwind tours of the western world. But in his own homeland the system refused to be convinced, though individuals did rise up to the clarion call of the Swamiji. Science and Spirituality are two different branches of knowledge, each true in its own world. No attempt need be made to compare them. It is difficult to compare a Don Bradman with M.S. Subbulakshmi or vice versa. An ultimate arbitration regarding the veracity of Science and Spirituality in relation to each other or to synthesize them in some yet unknown way is a futile task. Both are true because both reflect two different aspects of human life and personality. It is the same thing with different religions. It is like two kids comparing their mothers for an exchange! It does not matter whether Science and Spirituality appear to contradict each other. We need both. The same person has to be a father at one time, a husband at another time, a son in another context, and a subordinate under a boss in a totally different circumstance -- these are not contradictions but different presentations of the same personality. So also Science and Spirituality are different presentations of the same ultimate truth.

It is the common Hindu masses who have carried the torch of the religion of Hinduism from time immemorial. Yet they may not be able to either understand fully or communicate the principles of spirituality because they may never have had even a passing acquaintance with the Vedas or the Upanishads or the lessons of Spirituality imbedded in them. But any knowledgeable observer from within or without will recognize that their beliefs and attitudes are traceable to one or other of the great schools of Hindu philosophy which include even the atheistic ones.

It is as if there were a multidimensional perspective in which the nature of totality may be viewed but individuals are each one-dimensional and each sees only what is projected in his (one) dimension. He would never understand where the visual impression, as it is reflected in his one-dimensional experience, comes from. When Hindu philosophers tell him that it is such and such a spiritual context that brings about what he experiences, he thinks they are bringing in spirituality unnecessarily. Actually what is happening is that he lives in the one-dimensional projection of the totality that is not revealed to him in his physical or scientific experience.

If he is sufficiently intelligent he can mentally rise from the limitation of his 'one dimension' -- in fact his physical limitation of four-dimensional space-time -- and comprehend the universe in its totality of infinite dimensions. He may then come round to the point of view that a higher state of consciousness is not that of the physicist who sees the microscopic universe as composed of myriads of quarks and strings but it is the consciousness of the mystic who sees the macro and the micro together in a holistic all-embracing Spiritual Infinitude!

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February 20, 1999