Swami Vivekananda

Swami Nirvikarananda

This is the unique characteristic of the spiritual mood and urge in which is found a confluence of the moods and urges of science, philosophy, and monotheistic religion. These disciplines deal with the universe of experience only from without and their limitations may possibly proceed from that approach. But is there another approach which may help Man to break this impasse, lead him to the heart of the Immortal and the Infinite and provide him with a key to open the doors of all the compartments of knowledge and experience which have hitherto remained locked? The universe of experience certainly must have a ‘within’. Is there an approach to this within of things?

The sages of the upanishads dared to ask this question and they did not stop until they found the answer. Modern science also is beginning to ask this question today. It has been driven to the question by the utter inadequacy of its knowledge of external nature, vast and stupendous though this knowledge be; and by the inability of it to solve the mystery of that nature. To quote the clear words of Eddington (Space, Time and Gravitation ; concluding passage) :

And yet in regard to the nature of things, this knowledge is only an empty shell - a form of symbols. It is knowledge of structural form and not knowledge of content.

Einstein described this as ‘extracting one incomprehensive from another incomprehensive’. But where shall we find the content and how? Eddington gives a hint :

All through the physical world runs that unknown content which must surely be the stuff of our consciousness.

And he develops the significance of this hint :

Here is a hint of aspects deep within the world of physics and yet unattainable by the methods of physics. And moreover, we have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from the nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories one after another to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo, it is our own.