Suppose a person goes deep into an unending dark tunnel. The deeper they go into the tunnel, the further they go from the light. Similar is the result of cultivating knowledge in the mode of ignorance. It is the state where we get caught in one fragment of reality while forgetting the rest of reality (Bhagavad-gita 18.22).

To understand, consider a surgeon who operates a patient’s heart carefully but neglects the rest of the body and ends up cutting the lungs. Result? Operation successful, patient dead.

Similarly, today’s predominant ideology of materialism reduces science to scientism. Whereas science seeks material explanations for material phenomena, scientism presumes, unscientifically, that matter is all that exists. But matter doesn’t seek to study science or understand reality; we seek to. Evidently, that seeker is something more than matter. That trans-material self is the source of the consciousness that enables us to seek any knowledge, including scientific knowledge.

By the materialist ideology, whatever else we may know, we know not the knower that knows. The deeper we go into the dark tunnel of materialism, the further we go from the great bright sky outside. Tragically, we celebrate our descent into darkness as the progressive march of knowledge, while labelling the open sky as the fantasy of regressive ignoramuses.

Nonetheless, Gita wisdom stimulates our longing for light with an intellectually stimulating depiction of that vast sky: Reality comprises matter, spirit and the unlimited source of both. In our pursuit of knowledge, matter is meant to be instrumental, not terminal. The orderliness of matter that is revealed through science is a pointer to a transcendental organizer.

This holistic vision of matter shows us the way from the tunnel to the light. Walking the Gita’s way, we gradually realize our spirituality and relish enduring harmony with our source.


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