In Search of Light: Through the Lens of Vedas and Science

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From time of cognitive revolution, man was curious to understand the creation and its relationship to him. His primary goal was to be happy. He wanted to know and experience how the creation - its true light - can direct, teach, contribute and hold him to reach that goal. This untiring search for the true light, resulted in the blossoming of the thoughts enshrined in the Vedas. Vedas rested mostly on intuitive ideas, power-reinforced by faith. Over the centuries, the search also took an alternative route based on analytical and experimental discoveries, generally covered under "Science" Both are in search of the common ideals yet their approaches have been sometimes parallel and divergent on a few other occasions. The truth and basics being same, both contributed to each other knowingly or unknowingly. The search still continues.

There are students devoted to either of the schools-Science and Vedas- and they can see commonalities in thought, method and principles. This book aims to strengthen their belief both in intuitive logic and analytics. based on observation. It further explores such I commonalities with an open mind, however accepting the intermediary divergences as is.

The approach taken in this book is to keep the granules of the elements as a mixture (ie., cach maintaining its identity) and not as a alloy (losing their original properties to form a new idea itself) leaving scope for newer developments.

S.Venkatramanan, born in 1948, an Engineer by Profession, residing in Mumbai, is an early alumnus of BITS Pilani & IIT Kharagpur India, a technocrat and a lifelong student & practitioner of Hinduism. He has been a Consultant on MSME development for over three decades and had worked with agencies and enterprises across India and overseas.

He has authored two books earlier. The first titled "Designing the Predesigned" enunciated the principles, practices, the concepts and the terms of Hinduism to youngsters.

The second book titled "My Commitment to a Green World-Sandhya Vandanam" gave a fresh and practical look on this popular daily practice on how to understand the true significance of this. It also enunciated how to practice them to develop a mind set to work in sync with Nature. The real understanding of this practice will help youngsters to adopt the concepts of "green world" in their day-to-day activities.

This third book "In Search of Light" compares the Vedic thoughts on "Creation" with that of modern science. What is attempted here is a medley of the spiritual contents, primarily as expounded in Vedas, consisting of a pure intellectual exploration, a collection of meanings of the texts along with one's own original version on bare facts - all combined without any strain of preconceived ideas. It is presented in a near scientific perspective and style so that the youngsters may feel comfortable to read, develop and take on the principles thereafter for further deeper studies.

The primordial question "Who am I? has given rise to many branches of thought. Spirituality, Science and Religion are three such pursuits. From simple observational laws to unfathomable phenomena, one can explain every occurrence in the existential world through one of these branches. In most cases the depth of understanding the physical and metaphysical existence of things on earth requires one to embrace all three paths to a point of justifiable rationality. Yet, for some, one is more logi- cal, understandable, and convenient to use as an aid than the other. This is where the thread made up of the three begins to unravel.

Science (with a root word meaning "knowing") is ob- servational, experimental, and deductive in nature It is in the physical and psychological world. It delves into the most tangible interactions on the face of the earth, and to a substantial extent in the Universe. We observe, experiment, record and further theorize, to a point where all this knowledge can be harnessed as technol- ogy and make us live an amazingly comfortable life. While the point of science is to live a comfortable life, it is also to understand the world around us, and most importantly the world within.

A simple search on the word "Spirituality" provides us with a definition "the quality of being concerned with the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physi cal things". Amongst various meanings of spirituality one that really sticks is the definition that feeling of oneness with one's surroundings. Feeling of oneness with the surroundings starts with observations and deductions. This is like what we say about science. In the pursuit of being one with the universe (so to speak) one must be able to understand interactions and be in the know of how stuff works. Yet spirituality primarily focuses on doing this through meditations and yoga, rather than looking at harnessing it into technology. Where science ends its search to what is a deductive theory, spirituality theorises on aspects which have no direct observations, and based on what one may call an 'intuition'. Science aids intuition, and spirituality develops it. Questions that cannot be answered by both spirituality and science need to be based on faith.

Then comes the "Religion". A word which is basically derived from the root that means to live under a monastic vow. Religion has become synonymous to belief, faith, and worship all of which may be part of it but are not the end of it. Religion seeks to rationalize what is inexplicable through deduction and normalize all the spiritual pursuits into an orderly manner for those who need a guided hand into a spiritual life. Religion also seeks to bring orderliness to the extent of questioning everything around one. The concept of God itself is to answer those questions that one cannot directly explain. While rationality ceases to exist in this realm, faith and belief bind all this together and that is what religion inculcates.

If we trace back to the beginning of the human origin, possibly there would have been a time when the early communities or individuals would have been yearning to find ways to satisfy their immediate needs - the first being food indeed a compelling need. Initially they were "hunter gatherers" - gathered their food from plants and trees, then they started hunting animals as a secondary source, thereby they automatically became the foragers over centuries. At that time, the entire com- munity was engaged in this hunting and gathering exer- cise practically every day. The success in gathering and hunting varied every day, and they could not predict the success they would end up during any day. Nights were not helpful at all for this exercise. With the expectation and the desire for the result got hardened, they started the day trip after a sincere wish collectively exchanged between them to achieve success in hunting. Thus, came the collective "wishes" being conveyed - mutually and then to an unknown mystery, especially every time they started the hunting exercise. May be this was the origin of collective "exchanging of wishes" and that over a period of time became what we call in modern parlour as "prayers". But these wishes were addressed to an unknown identity, the concept of a supreme energy or God being not in their mind.

The vagaries of Nature would have stunned those generations! A safe cover against the wraths of the Nature would have been their mental wish.3 The chang- ing day and night, seasons, thunder, lightning- all would have been a great mystery. These issues would have compelled them to gaze at the Nature, the sun, the moon, and the farther stars in the sky. The compelled rest at night gave them adequate time to study the moon and stars, their pattern of movements. The pure Nature and the air loaded with ozone in the early hours of the morning would have been a stimulant for intuitive think- ing! The cognitive revolution that occurred in human his- tory at around 60,000 years ago accelerated their longings to somehow, make their life safe and better. Their yearning would have been so sincere and focussed - that they could perhaps get a mental glimpse of the origin and the details of the Nature around them.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages