Does spirituality choke our scientific enquiry?
Thank you. The question is that if you say everything is given in scripture then does that mean that there is no need for scientific enquiry? Does this kill curiosity? And is it that we become devotees then we students don't participate in say co-curricular extracurricular activities because of lack of time.
Does it basically, the question is that does spirituality kill our intellectual curb our intellectual curiosity and intellectual productivity in general? No, there is a fundamental misunderstanding about spirituality that comes when we think of science and scripture as competitors. If we conceive of science and scripture as competitors then we think that if I have to come to scripture I have to give up science. But science and scripture primarily offer us knowledge in different domains.
Science as I told in the class it offers us knowledge in the material domain. But scripture offers us knowledge primarily in the spiritual domain. Scripture also gives us material knowledge.
But the primary purpose of scripture is to give us spiritual knowledge. Krishna did not speak the Bhagavad Gita to teach Arjuna archery. Krishna spoke the Bhagavad Gita to teach Arjuna how to use his knowledge of archery.
So material knowledge and spiritual knowledge they are of two different domains. And depending on different time, place, circumstance say in the past in India people when they had diseases they may have treated themselves with Ayurveda. Now people may treat themselves with allopathy.
But it is what we treat ourselves with is not important as what we do after we are treated. So material knowledge we may acquire from different sources. The important thing is for what purpose are we living? So knowledge of purpose, knowledge of values, knowledge of knowledge of origin, the knowledge of the ultimate questions, this does not come from science.
Why? Because science doesn't deal with these issues. Science focus is primarily on understanding the world so that we can control the world. Science as it exists today in the mainstream it operates with a principle called methodological naturalism.
Naturalism means science looks for natural explanations for natural phenomena. Here natural means material. So it looks for material explanations for material phenomena.
And that's why it does not look for anything spiritual. So what is right? What is wrong? This science itself does not teach. For that we need some other source of knowledge and that is spirituality.
So science and scripture are not competitors. Scripture offers us a different knowledge about the higher dimensions of life. And between some specific things there may be some contradictions and those we need to resolve according to time, place, circumstance.
How they need to be resolved? That's a technical question which you are not going to hear. But in principle they deal with different domains of knowledge. So there is no contradiction inherently.
But now regarding the killing scientific curiosity not at all. The Vedanta Sutra says, enquire. Now that you have human life, enquire.
Science in general asks the how questions. How did this happen? How did this happen? So for example, Newton saw the fruit falling and he asked, how did this fruit fall? But spirituality goes into fundamental questions. Why does this fruit exist at all? So actually, spirituality expands our curiosity rather than suppressing our curiosity.
It takes our curiosity towards ultimate questions. Regarding devotees, students not participating in co-curricular activities or extracurricular activities, that will depend on individual devotees' natures. There will be some devotees who are into science because of interest in science and they will pursue it naturally and they will spiritualize the scientific study.
But as I said in the class, many people get into certain careers because of the glamorization of those careers. They may get into engineering or medicine primarily for functional purposes. They want a career, they want a job.
They are not so much interested in that. They may not participate in that activity too much. They may think that I can use my energy more constructively in other activities.
So there is no compulsion that if one becomes a devotee, one cannot participate in further expansion of one's intellectual horizons. It depends on one's interest. So one may choose to pursue one's interest in one's career itself or someone may pursue one's interest in some other field.
So that will vary according to person to person. There is no restriction necessary. Whatever our talents are, we understand them better when we become spiritual because we are not so much pressured by external circumstances.
And when we understand things better, then we can pursue what are our true interests more constructively. So if there is a devotee scientifically inclined, that devotee will actually do more constructive scientific study and contribution after becoming spiritual. And somebody may have some other artistic interest, some other managerial interest.
They will develop that and they will progress accordingly.