Spirituality and Science

Man’s scientific and spiritual achievements are the conscious inspiration-light and aspiration-might of the Divine’s urge toward two goals: the realization of the body’s countless necessities and infinite capacities, and the manifestation of the soul’s transcendental vision of the Beyond here on earth, in the heart and immediacy of today.

Science is that precious thing on earth which is pushed forward by a glowing imagination and pulled forward by its own growing experience. Spirituality is that precious thing on earth which is carried within by fulfilling aspiration and later brought to the fore, where it can become consciously one with God the Field of Experience, God the Experience and God the Experiencer.

Within our living memory, we have seen science advancing very fast, while human happiness has been receding at an alarming rate. Today’s world is seeing a flickering candle flame of spirituality, but tomorrow’s world will be flooded with the light of spirituality, destined and decreed.

Science right now deals mostly with the material world. What is the material world, after all? It is the world that does not believe in the possibility and inevitability of a divine life. Spirituality right now deals mostly with the inner world. What is the inner world? The inner world is the world that says that the possibility of a divine life on earth is undoubtedly unreal today, but tomorrow it will be possible, the day after it will be practicable and just the day after that it will be inevitable.

Science has the capacity to show mankind the full development of the mental life. Spirituality has the capacity to show mankind the possibility and inevitability of the life beyond the mind, the supramental life. The outer progress and world-discovery swiftly follow the fruitful imagination in the world of science. The inner progress and self-discovery gladly follow the soulful aspiration in the life of the world within, the world of spirituality.

Science and modern life are simply indispensable to each other. The modern life is the eye; science is the power of vision. Spirituality, and the future life of mankind will be indispensable to each other. The future life of mankind will be the fully awakened consciousness, and spirituality will be its guiding and fulfilling soul. Science itself has become an art, and this art must now stand alongside all other arts. No art can ever have its fullest expression in the modern world without the aid of science. Spirituality is the supreme art of our nature-transformation. God the Supreme Artist uses spirituality to divinely reveal to the world man’s embodied divine Reality and transcendental Truth.

To fulfil his practical needs, man bitterly cries to science. To fulfill his personal inner needs, man helplessly cries to spirituality. The somber despair of ruthless destruction and the matchless ecstasy of the outer, human fulfillment have a common friend: science. The most hopeful certainly of a new and pure creation and the life-energizing, life-nourishing, life-transforming and life-fulfilling delight of the inner and divine fulfillment have a common friend: spirituality. Science and spirituality must be united. They need each other. Without the one, the other is incomplete, almost meaningless. Together they are not only supremely complete but also divinely meaningful.

 – Sri Chinmoy, Eastern Light For The Western Mind