Yoga and Science
The word ‘science’ is derived from Latin verb root ‘scire’, to know. So, all knowledge is ‘science’ and God the Omniscient, from the same verb root, can be translated into modern English as God the All-scientist!!
Up to 1840, what we now call science was a part of philosophy, known as Natural Philosophy. The scientists like Isaac Newton were philosophers seeking answers to the mysteries of the universe. No wonder Newton wrote a 300000-word commentary on the Bible’s Book of Revelation. Einstein spent his entire life searching for the answers to the question “How does God run the universe”.
Yoga’s twin, Veda, may be translated as science. It is from the verb root ‘vid’, to know. In fact, in many European languages words derived from the cognates of ‘vid’ are used for science, so, the German Wissenschaft and the Dutch Wetenschap, so also ‘wisdom’ and ‘wise’.
In the traditions of India we often speak of the twins Yoga and Veda. Veda, the science, is the intuitive knowledge derived through the buddhi — whether in meditation or empirically in Nyaya-Vaisheshika-Ayurveda type of experimental procedures. In the traditions of India, the intuitive and the empirical are inseparable because one must enter the state of meditation to receive the intuitions that will then be experimentally tested and proved. Thus, without yoga, there is no Veda, no science.
As the yogi passes through all the different layers, from grossest to subtlest, of the constituents of personality s/he unearths the secret of each element of nature at the cosmic level. By seeing the workings of muladhara-chakra s/he learns the secrets of gravity. [The word ‘gravity’ is derived from ‘gurutva’ as it is referred to in 6th century BC Vaisheshika texts. Where did Newton get it from? – I wonder.]. The yoga-sutra (YS.3.26) says : One obtains the knowledge of cosmology by concentrating on the sun. The sun here is an internal concentration, the cosmic counterpart of which are the external suns. It is thus that the Vedic rishis (?c.3000 BC) sang of a heliocentric solar system and numerous texts composed by the rishis speak in wonderment about ‘uncountable trillion universes’ (ananta-koTi-brahmaaNDa).
It is on this basis that, I, a disciple in yoga, have lectured on SCIENCE IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SPIRITUAL POEM EVER COMPOSED.
That Vedic poetic beauty of science, with all its rhymes and rhythms and cadences can be enjoyed only by a yogi. Yoga grants the ultimate, the Transcendental Joy, Ānanda. Along the way the yogi and the yogi alone enjoys the poetic secrets of the cosmos through his internal scientific revelations.