The fall of a fruit. Millions of people had seen this specific event that Newton saw. What made Newton different was that he went beyond this visible specific event to the invisible universal principle: gravity. Most scientific insights emerge from the search for the invisible universals that underlie the visible specifics.
A similar search underlies Gita wisdom. Millions have seen the specific event called death. What makes Gita students different is that they go beyond the specifics by asking the underlying universal questions: “What is death? Why does it exist? Will we end with death or will we live on beyond death?” The Bhagavad-gita (13.09) indicates that such contemplation is the springboard to authentic spiritual knowledge – our thoughts rise from visible matter to invisible spirit.
Thus, both science and Gita wisdom operate on the same intellectually sophisticated principle of going beyond the visible to the invisible. What differentiates them is the scope of the invisible: science usually assumes the invisible to be material, whereas Gita wisdom acknowledges that the invisible includes the material and the spiritual.
Due to their different scopes, science and Gita wisdom require different methods of verification and yield different end-results.
Methods of verification: Scientific postulates being connected primarily with the external world can be verified by physical experiments. The Gita’s postulates being connected primarily with the internal world can be verified by spiritual experiments, that is, inner experiences. These experiments involve practicing yoga, specifically bhakti-yoga, and observing how our consciousness transforms as predicted by Gita wisdom.
End-results: As matter is temporary, the end-result of science is temporary: technologically-improved living conditions till death destroys everything. As spirit is eternal, the end-result of Gita wisdom is eternal: devotionally-inspired attainment of the eternal spiritual world.
Bhagavad Gita Chapter 13 Text 09
“Humility; pridelessness; nonviolence; tolerance; simplicity; approaching a bona fide spiritual master; cleanliness; steadiness; self-control; renunciation of the objects of sense gratification; absence of false ego; the perception of the evil of birth, death, old age and disease; detachment; freedom from entanglement with children, wife, home and the rest; even-mindedness amid pleasant and unpleasant events; constant and unalloyed devotion to Me; aspiring to live in a solitary place; detachment from the general mass of people; accepting the importance of self-realization; and philosophical search for the Absolute Truth – all these I declare to be knowledge, and besides this whatever there may be is ignorance.”
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