THE SPIRITUAL SCIENTIST

An ezine for those who think

ISKCON Pune publi !tion "ol # No $%

SCIENCE & 'T(O) SHORT TO ROPE THE UNI"ERSE Damodara lila special
One of the important legends associated with Diwali is Damodara lila, a pastime in which mother Yashoda tried to tie Krishna with a rope. The rope turned out to be two fingers short. So she tied more rope, but, no matter how many ropes she tied together, the combined rope remained two fingers short. This pastime signifies that no matter how much we try, we will always fall short in our attempts to understand God with our intelligence. Modern science is finding the same about the uni erse too, which, the !edic literatures state, is a product of God"s superintelligence. #enturies of cosmological research has increased scientific information, but not scientific understanding, because of $two% une&pected trends' (. The *ore s ientists know+ the *ore the, re!lize how little the, know ) Science $con*uered% space ) and reali+ed how little it ,new about space. To the uninformed, space missions pro ed human greatness. To the well-informed, they showed human smallness. Space research re eals that there are more stars in the uni erse than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of earth, and our sun is .ust one of these cosmic grains. /o wonder former 0resident of the 1merican 1ssociation for the 1d ancement of Science Kenneth 2 3oulding admitted, $#osmology4 is li,ely to be ery insecure because it studies a ery large uni erse with a small and biased sample.% 5. The *ore s ientists know+ the *ore the, re!lize wh!t the, pre-iousl, 'knew) w!s wron. ) /ewton" laws were considered bedroc, truths of physics till they were found inapplicable in the microscopic and the macroscopic realms. 6uantum physics was de eloped to e&plain the atomic world, and relati istic physics for the cosmic. 3ut then both of them turned out to be iolently contradictory. 1s both ha e to coe&ist at the origin of the uni erse ) when both the microscopic and the macroscopic were one, science had the formidable challenge of de ising with a Theory of 7 erything 8To79 to unify these irreconcilable pillars of science. :ets re iew the history of the de elopment of the To7' (. Initi!l -!in ro!r' 0hysicist :eon :ederman, $we hope to e&plain the entire uni erse in a single, simple formula that you can wear on your T-shirt.% 5. Subse/uent e0!sper!te1 .runt' 1strophysicist Ste en ;einberg, $1s we ma,e progress understanding the e&panding uni erse, the problem itself e&pands, so that the solution always seems to recede from us,% <. 2in!l on e!le1 whi*per' Theoretical physicist =ohn ;heeler, $/e er run after a bus or woman or cosmological theory, because there>ll always be another one in a few minutes.% Going bac, to the pastime, the rope Mother Yashoda was trying to tie around Krishna was only two fingers short. 3ut the rope of To7 that science has been trying to tie around the uni erse is not only short, but also bro,en, as Stephen ?aw,ing confessed, @The theories 8in physics9 we ha e so far are both inconsistent and incomplete.@ Mother Yashoda did e entually succeed in tying Krishna - but only after when Krishna, by ?is own grace, let ?imself be bound. Similarly science can understand the uni erse, especially our place and purpose within it but only when it harmoni+es with superintelligence by researching and applying the erifiable spiritual science delineated in the 3haga ad-gita, thus pa ing the way for spiritual re elation. That>s not as unscientific as it may sound. 1 scientist no lesser than founder of *uantum physics /oble :aureate Ma& 0lanc, stated, $Aor religion, God is at the beginningB for science, God is at the end.% 1nd science has started reaching that end by its disco ery of $fine tuning% of the uni erse ) micro-precise ad.ustment of the alues and inter-relationships of at least CD parameters essential for life. Ob iously fine-tuning needs a fine tuner. Of course, diehard de otees of atheism ha e proposed chance and multiple uni erse theories, but these are all intrinsically unpro en and unpro able. They fit better the realm of science-fiction than science. ;hen scientists accept the erdict of their own e idence, they will remo e the obstacle in a long-o erdue spiritual leap of science. :est they hesitate or falter in this bold step, renowned physicist Micheal Aaraday>s reminder can urge them on, $;e ought to alue the pri ilege of ,nowing God>s truth far beyond anything we can ha e in this world.%