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SECTION TWO
SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND YOGA
The Gulf between the Methods of Physical
Science and Yoga
WHEN the scientist says that "scientifically speaking, God is a hypothesis which is no longer necessary" he is talking arrant nonsense—for the existence
of God is not and cannot be and never was a scientific
hypothesis or problem at all, it is and always has
been a spiritual or a metaphysical problem. You
cannot speak scientifically about it at all either pro
or con. The metaphysician or the spiritual seeker
has a right to point out that it is nonsense; but if you
lay down the law to the scientist in the field of
science you run the risk of having the same objection
turned against you.
As to the unity of all knowledge, that is a thing
in posse, not yet in esse. The mechanical method of
knowledge leads to certain results, the higher method leads to certain others,
and they at many points fundamentally disagree. How is the difference to be
bridged? For each seems valid in its own field; it is a
problem to be solved, but you cannot solve it in the
way you propose, least of all in the field of physics.
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In psychology one can say that the mechanical or
physiological approach takes hold of the thing by the blind end and is the least fruitful of all—for psychology is not primarily a thing of mechanism
and
measure, it opens to a vast field beyond the physical
instrumentalities of the body-consciousness. In
biology one can get a glimpse of something beyond
mechanism, because there is from the beginning a
stir of consciousness progressing and organising itself
more and more for self-expression. But in physics
you are in the very domain of the mechanical law where process is everything and
the driving consciousness has chosen to conceal itself with the greatest
thoroughness—so that, "scientifically speaking", it does not exist
there. One can discover it there by
occultism and Yoga, but the methods of occult
science and of Yoga are not measurable or followable
by the means of physical science—so the gulf remains
in existence. It may be bridged one day, but the
physicist is not likely to be the bridge-builder, so it
is no use asking him to try what is beyond his
province.
5-12-1934
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Mind and Consciousness in Metaphysics and
Psychology
METAPHYSICS deals with the ultimate cause of things
and all that lies behind the world of phenomena. As regards mind and
consciousness, it asks what they are, how they came into existence, what is
their relation to Matter, Life, etc. Psychology deals with mind and
consciousness and tries to find out not so much their ultimate nature and
relations as their actual workings and the rule and law of these workings.
9-10-1933
Science and Philosophy—Humanity’s Readiness for
Modern Scientific Discoveries*
THE article reads as if it had been written by a
professor rather than a philosopher. What you
* This is in reply to the points raised by a disciple in the following letter to Sri Aurobindo:
"On p. 511 of The Listener of March 28 there are a couple of
surprising assumptions—first, that metaphysics is one among the
experimental sciences and has a darkened séance room for its laboratory —and secondly, that survival need not be distinguished from
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speak of is, I suppose, a survival of the nineteenth
century scientific contempt for metaphysics; all
thinking must be based on scientific facts and the
generalisations of science, often so faulty and ephemeral, must be made the basis for any sound metaphysical thinking. That is to make philosophy the
immortality. In the interests of clearness, most philosophical thinkers
have made this distinction; it is odd that it should be ignored
when such a polemic is being launched against them. … Of course,
if one has a turn for practical experimenting in science, it is no doubt admirable to employ it in psychical investigation—but (unless it is assumed that all cultured human beings, or all
philosophers at least, should possess and cultivate this gift) why
are the majority of philosophers to be blamed for finding the results
up-to-date obscure and meagre and for following their bent in’
confining themselves to metaphysical studies proper?"
(Regarding a dream about a long-distance-telephone conversation with an acquaintance) "In actual life I think a telephone can
be far less satisfactory than an exchange of letters. Is there not
something very symbolic about the emergence of telephony and
cinematography just at an epoch when human behaviour and relationship is breaking down? Owing to falsehood and callousness and
self-centred indifference to others, each person is to every other
more and more a meaningless shadow and a deceptive voice. In
The Manchester Guardian’s musical critic’s remarks on an Elgar
Memorial Concert there are some good points about ‘the reaction
working against nobility and tenderness in art’. I fail to see any
further need for human beings either as creators or enjoyers of such ‘art’ as can still fall within the canons of fashion; perhaps,
however, in an Asuric civilisation, men are anyhow superfluous
and only ‘incarnated Asuras’ are required?"
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handmaid of science, metaphysics the camp-follower
of physics and to deny her her sovereign rights in
her own city. It ignores the fact that the philosopher
has his own domain and his own instruments; he
may use scientific discoveries as material just as
he may use any other facts of existence, but whatever generalisations science offers he must judge
by his own standards—whether they, are valid for
transference to the metaphysical plane and, if so,
how far. Still in the heyday of physical science
before it discovered its own limitations and the
shakiness of its scheme of things floating precariously in a huge infinity or
boundless Finite of the Unknown, there was perhaps some excuse for such
an attitude. But spiritualism glorified under the
name of psychical research? That is not a science; it is a mass of obscure and ambiguous documents
from which you can draw only a few meagre and
doubtful generalisations. Moreover, so far as it
belongs to the occult, it touches only the inferior
regions of the occult—what we would call the lowest vital worlds—where there is
as much falsehood and fake and confused error as upon the earth
and even more. What is a philosopher to do with
all that obscure and troubled matter? I do not
catch the point of many of his remarks. Why should
a prediction of a future event alter our conception
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—at least any philosophic conception—of Time?
It can alter one’s ideas of the relation of events to
each other or of the working out of forces or of the possibilities of
consciousness, but Time remains
the same as before.
The dream is, of course, the rendering of an
attempt at communication on the subtle plane. As
for the telephone and cinema, there is something
of what you say, but it seems to me that these and
other modern things could have taken on a different character if they had been accepted and used in
a different spirit. Mankind was not ready for these discoveries, in the spiritual sense, nor even, if the
present confusions are a sign, intellectually ready.
The aesthetic downfall is perhaps due to other causes, a disappointed idealism
in its recoil generating its opposite, a dry and cynical intellectualism
which refuses, to be duped by the ideal, the romantic
or the emotional or anything that is higher than
the reason walking by the light of the senses. The
Asuras of the past were after all often rather big
beings; the trouble about the present ones is that
they are not really Asuras, but beings of the lower
vital world, violent, brutal and ignoble, but above
all narrow-minded, ignorant and obscure. But this kind of cynical narrow
intellectualism that is rampant now, does not last—it prepares its own end by increasing dryness—men begin to feel the need of
new springs of life.
24-4-1934
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Materialistic Science and Mysticism
I AM afraid I have lost all interest in these
speculations; things are getting too serious for me to waste time on these
inconclusive intellectualities. I do not
at all mind your driving your point triumphantly
home and replacing a dogmatism from materialistic
science on its throne of half a century ago from which
it could victoriously ban all thought surpassing its
own narrow bounds as mere wordy metaphysics and
mysticism and moonshine. Obviously, if material
energies alone can exist in the material world, there can be no possibility of a
life divine on the earth. A
mere metaphysical "sleight of mind", as one might call it, could not justify it against the objections of
scientific negation and concrete common sense. I
had thought that even many scientific minds on the
Continent had come to admit that science could no
longer claim to decide what was the real reality of
things, that it had no means of deciding it and could
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only discover and describe the how and process of
the operations of material Force in the physical front
of things. That left the field open to higher thought and speculation, spiritual
experience and even to
mysticism, occultism and all those greater things which almost everyone
had come to disbelieve as impossible nonsense. That was the condition of
things when I was in England. If that is to return or if Russia and her
dialectical materialism are to
lead the world, well, fate must be obeyed and life divine must remain content to wait perhaps for another millennium. But I do not like the idea of one of
our periodicals being the arena for a wrestle of that
kind. That is all. I am writing under the impression
of your earlier article on this subject, as I have not gone carefully through
the later ones; I dare say
these later ones may be entirely convincing and I
would find after reading them that my own position
was wrong and that only an obstinate mystic could
still believe in such a conquest of Matter by the
Spirit as I had dared to think possible. But I am
just such an obstinate mystic; so, if I allowed your
exposition of the matter to be published in one of
our own periodicals, I would be under the obligation
of returning to the subject in which I have lost interest and therefore the inclination to write, so as to
re-establish my position and would have to combat
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the claim of
materialistic Science to pronounce anything on these matters on which it
has no means of enquiry nor any possibility of arriving at a valid decision.
Perhaps I would have practically to rewrite The Life Divine as an answer
to the victorious "negation of the materialist"! This is the only explanation
which I can give, apart from sheer want of time to tackle the subject, for my
long and disappointing silence.
May 1949
Creative Power in Material Energy
IF there were no creative power in the material
energy, there would be no material universe. Matter
is not unconscious or without dynamism—only it is
an involved force and consciousness that work in it. It is what the psychologists call the inconscient
from which all comes—but it is not really
inconscient.
23-1-1935
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The Scientific and the Metaphysical Theory of
Relativity
THE Isha Upanishad passage is of course a much
larger statement of the nature of universal existence
than the Einstein theory which is confined to the
physical universe. You can deduce too a much
larger law of relativity from the statement in the
verse. What it means from this point of view—for it
contains much more in it—is that the absolute
Reality exists, but it is immovable and always the
same, the universal movement is a motion of consciousness in this Reality of
which only the Transcendent itself can seize the truth, which is self-evident
to It, while the apprehension of it by the Gods (the
mind, senses, etc.) must necessarily be imperfect
and relative, since they can try to follow but none
can really overtake (apprehend or seize) that Truth,
each being limited by its own view-point,* lesser
instrumentality or capacity of consciousness, etc.
This is the familiar attitude of the Indian or at least
the Vedantic mind which held that our knowledge,
perception and experience of things in the world and
of the world itself must be vyavahārika, relative, practical or pragmatic only,—so declared Shankara,—
* The Gods besides are in and subject to Space and Time,
part of the motion in Space and Time, not superior to it.
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It is in fact an illusory knowledge, the real Truth of
things lying beyond our mental and sensory consciousness. Einstein’s relativity is a scientific, not a
metaphysical statement. The form and field of it
are different—but, I suppose, if one goes back from
it and beyond it to its essential significance, the real
reason for its being so, one can connect it with the
Vedantic conclusion. But to justify that to the intellect, you would have to go through a whole process
to show how the connection comes—it does not self-evidently follow.
As for Jeans, many would say that his conclusions are not at all legitimate. Einstein’s law is a scientific
generalisation based upon certain relations proper to
the domain of physics and, if valid, valid there in the limits of that domain,
or, if you like, in the general domain of scientific observation and measurement of physical processes and motions, but how
can you transform that at once into a metaphysical
generalisation? It is a jump over a considerable
gulf—or a forceful transformation of one thing into
another, of a limited physical result into an unlimited
all-embracing formula. I don’t quite know what
Einstein’s law really amounts to—but does it amount
to more than this that our scientific measurements
of time and other things are, in the conditions under
which they have to be made, relative because subject
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to the unavoidable drawback of these conditions?
What metaphysically follows from that—if any thing at all does follow—it is for the metaphysicians, not
the scientists to determine. The Vedantic position was that the Mind itself (as
well as the senses) is a limited power making its own representation,
constructions, formations and imposing them on the Reality. That is a much bigger and more
intricate affair shooting down into the very roots of our existence. I think
myself there are many positions taken
by modern Science which tend to be helpful to that view—though in the nature of things they cannot
be sufficient to prove it.
I state the objections only; I myself see certain
fundamental truths underlying all the domains and
the one Reality everywhere. But there is also a great
difference in the instruments used and the ways of
research followed by the seekers in these different
ways (the physical, the occult and the spiritual)
and for the intellect at least the bridge between them has still to be built. One can point out analogies,
but it can be maintained very well that Science
cannot be used for yielding or buttressing results of spiritual knowledge. The
other side can be maintained also and it is best that both should be stated—
so this is not meant to discourage your thesis.
8-2-1934
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The Yogic View and the Current Opinions about
Supernatural Phenomena
IF I write about these questions from the yogic
point of view, even though on a logical basis, there is bound to be much that is
in conflict with the current opinions, e.g., about miracles, the limits of judgment by sense-data etc. I have avoided as much
as possible writing about these subjects because I
would have to propound things that cannot be
understood except by reference to other data than
those of the physical senses or of reason founded on
these alone. I might have to speak of laws and forces
not recognised by reason or physical science. In my
public writings and my writings to sadhakas I have
not dealt with these because they go out of the range
of ordinary knowledge and the understanding
founded on it. These things are known to some, but
they do not usually speak about them, while the
public view of much of those as are known is either credulous or incredulous,
but in both cases
without experience or knowledge.
December 1935
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