It is wrong to say that we are giving different meanings to the numbers 5 and 3 other than normal. We are giving them the same ordinary meanings but we are putting them through a process -- the process of taking remainders after division by 7 -- which we did not conceive of earlier. Once one understands this process, or we may say, this algebra, then 5 plus 3 and 5 times 3 could give the same answer though ordinarily they don't.

Thus when a scientist hears a mystic talking about the Inner Self, he has no grounds for asserting that the mystic is talking about something that is non-existent. It is a different algebra that the mystic is talking about. He is talking about a different process to be applied to the body, the senses and the mind and this results, according to him, in a different perception of one's own self.

Here is a true story. A person who knows nothing of religious philosophy and much less of the spirituality that seers and saints talk about but who is an honest practitioner of psychiatry, comes to Sathya Sai Baba, in the hope of disproving his claims about divine origin. The latter talks about control of the senses, subduing of anger and attachment, a calming down of all activities which prod you to the materialistic rat race for money, possessions and power, so that you can sense the Divinity in you, and finally a total submission to the Divine Will through selfless service to mankind. All this talk about selflessness appears nonsensical to the materially oriented down-to-earth psychiatrist. But this turns out to be so only for the first few days. Thereafter the new 'algebra' of Baba begins to make sense because gradually the seeker starts accepting the new premise, namely, that Divinity is in every man and the latter has only to look inward to tap it.

In general, when a scientist hesitates to accept the axiom of spirituality being the essence of Man and certain mystic intuitive experience having a validity, he falls into the very superstition against which he has been warning his fellow beings for centuries. He cannot contend that because the concept of the Inner Self appears to contradict his scientific rationale, it must be invalid. This is similar to the attitude taken by sixteenth century priests towards Copernicus; just because the propositions of Copernicus contradicted their religious beliefs and practices, they were considered to be wrong!. The subject of the Inner Self is not in the field of Science; it is the field of Vedanta.

Copyright Ó V. Krishnamurthy

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February 1, 1999

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