Has science reached its final limits? This is the subject of debate in prominent scientific circles. The atomic void has been probed and its laws understood; the last codes of the cryptic script of life are on the way to being cracked. The human brain is being intensively scanned and mapped to discover the seat of thoughts and emotions and their complex networking. Only the field of application remains. No doubt, there is still much work left to be done to support the belief that man is but a little gene, a plasm worth nothing that starts from the dust and ends in the dust…
“A strange unreal gospel science brings, —
Being animals to act as angels might;
Mortals we must put forth immortal might
And flutter in the void celestial wings.”1
If this is so and if man is nothing but chemistry then perhaps we have reached the limits of our exploration.
Or worse still, all our findings are suspect! For it would mean that a group of complex chemicals are searching for their constituents. But chemicals do not search. And if a group of complex chemicals develop an entirely new quality and property then we must look for its source elsewhere. We must look beyond chemistry and biology towards ‘That’, of which chemistry and biology are mere by-products and instrumental processes.
And in ‘That’, we shall also find the opening of a new horizon in science…
Built upon the blocks of matter, conventional science may have reached its limits. That is where a new science begins. The science of the finite gives way to the science of the infinite. Beyond, there are uncharted oceans of energies and forces, of beings without bodies and consciousness without form.
We must fathom this now. Having plunged into the dark void of matter, we must cast our gaze deeper into that bodiless force out of which matter was born.
But how shall we do this? Our senses cannot reach it and thought comes back baffled. The instruments themselves built out of material substance do not register its impacts. Yet we can probe it, not by external but through internal means. Man is made in such way that he carries in himself a little of everything. And by tuning into that little he can discover a whole corresponding world of forces, energies, substances and beings. We must develop that intuitive insight. Through that, we can know.
A much vaster horizon will open before us and deeper laws and processes will reveal themselves to our unsealed sight.
Reference:
1. Sri Aurobindo. Collected Poems, Vol.5. Pondicherry; Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1971, pp.59
