God-shaped Hole: Contemporary Relevance of the Spiritual

Farrukh Khan
Nov 18, 2004

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Exuding a triumphant belief in Newtonian physics to explain everything in the universe, Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827), the famous French mathematician & philosopher, once gave a presentation of his mathematical model to Napoleon Bonaparte. With his usual boldness during such discourses, Napoleon asked M. Laplace where fitted into all this mathematics? The confident philosopher uttered what proved to be the most subtle yet emphatic contribution to the age-old debate about the existence of : "Sire, je na’ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse." ("Sire, I have no need for that hypothesis"). Behind the sophisticated articulation of this statement was a fundamental change in approach and methodology of thinking about this issue. Which brought down from the echelons of an ‘eternally given reality’ to the realm of rational hypotheses and then rejected it as redundant for a comprehensive explanation of the universe. Less than a century later, the more passionate German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) declared: “ is dead!”

These declarations could never stop people from going to church on Sundays, but aptly reflected the quintessence of the era named by historians The Age of Reason – prelude to the Industrial . The represented the emergence of a world view that would eventually displace “shared cultural belief in ” that had been the fundamental uniting characteristic of culture for nearly two thousand years.

During this period of history (beginning with the Renaissance), philosophical thought, sciences, and political ideologies were slowly unknotting from their religious moorings. The dogmatic pillars upon which the Christian worldview stood, were becoming increasingly ‘unbelievable’ in the light of discoveries being made in the natural sciences. The centre of knowledge which gave meaning to life, instead of being structured around the overarching reality of , was now being replaced by a cacophony of disparate voices drowning out the priests’ sermons.

Industrial was brought about by unprecedented production forces and a most potent scientific methodology for thinking. It culminated the agricultural age that had continued in human history for over two millennia. It was the headiness of ‘success’ experienced by human beings to tame natural forces for industrial usage, on a scale relative to their agricultural past, that prompted champions of the new world to declare the demise of – the most powerful conceptual force ever created by human beings.

As we will discuss later, organised religions had an ontological association with issues & problems pertaining to societies and economies based on agriculture. Before human society entered the capitalist phase, belief in and was the cornerstone of all civilization since the dawn of humanity. With its primary focus on a dogmatic belief in afterlife or some counter-reality, was deemed unnecessary in the industrial world. By devaluing things which needed to be done in the immediate, , among other things, was a major managerial nuisance for the captains of industry and politics.

Since industry had blown asunder the agricultural social structure, religious ideology also had to vanish with it. thus promoted an ideology of , i.e., the view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public . It advanced an ethical code which upheld personal gratification through consumption as the ultimate goal of human fulfilment. Time has proven that , in spite of its efficiencies as a political ideology, has not been a solution to the problem of human spiritual needs. It has only acted as a means to sidestep the core issue.

Far from replacing the concept of with something equally effective, the displacing forces of only created a void in its place. From a world of certainty and solace provided by – in the next world if not this one– the 19th century sciences, philosophy and political ideology plunged humanity into a crisis of and culture that has continued into the present times.

However, the reason why capitalist ideologues did not replace with an equally potent conceptual structure must not be viewed as an act of deliberate omission. Simply, they could not! As I will explain later, the process of development of civilization needed to accumulate sufficient material progress and acquire qualitatively new fund of knowledge to put forth a positive substitute of as a spiritual system. was only a makeshift arrangement to get through the transitional phase. Today we are going through a stage in the evolutionary process of human society, civilization and individual consciousness, when we can look for a new spiritual paradigm. Socialism had the potential to produce such a new form of had its protagonists not been averse to the historical association of the spiritual with as a regressive social force and a tool for the oppression of the working classes.

Initially a phenomenon, the bypassing of in everyday affairs eventually reached other parts of the world too. Prior to the 2nd World , most of the world was colonised by the imperial powers of Europe. The culture of imperialism promoted a system of , economics and politics whose local adherents were, to quote Lord Thomas Babbington McCauley, “[] in blood and colour, but [Western] in taste, opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” These were the people who became leaders of these societies in the post-colonial era. They kept paying lip service to their religions but simultaneously made sure that the practical arena of economics and politics was as ‘Godless’ as it was in the West.

When became irrelevant for all practical purposes, humanity developed into the measure of all moral . Having performed the cosmologically monumental task of slaying , human beings took upon themselves to become gods – final measures of what is good or bad. This diverted society towards a nihilistic path that eventually led to social norms whereby no objective or morality holds sway over personal satiation. In spite of being on the opposite end of the spectrum as far as belief in or is concerned, these norms have also robbed the here and now of meaning and significance – the biggest objection that capitalist ideologues hurled against . The only meaning or significance is for that which flows from the individual.

As a result, from the contemporary ideological debate, has been all but banished as an effective moot point. It is either tolerated as a relic of the past in its benign ritualistic variety or abhorred as a force of regression in its dangerous form. Thus any attempt to rescue from this obscurantist state, invokes accusations of from the religious and the liberals/seculars tend to brand one as an apologist for the fundamentalists. The very extremism of these responses betrays an unthinking attitude towards a system of thoughts and feelings that remained a defining feature of human life for most of its history after acquiring a civilised form.

As responsible students of human life and its evolution, we cannot ignore the critical role has played in giving human beings one of the earliest impetuses to know themselves and the surrounding world, which in time matured and gave rise to universal frameworks of thought and action. All religions wherever they came, insofar as their original teachings were concerned, provided a platform of rebellion against the oppressive orthodoxy of their times. It is a pity however to note that the same teachings that were meant to emancipate became yokes of human bondage when hijacked by those who seek power in the name of . In order to keep our feet on solid ground, we need to strictly differentiate between the two.

The Spiritual Animal

In this section we will discuss as a natural feature of the human organism, just as thoughts and feelings are; just as the brain, the heart, the liver or any other biological organ is.

An inexorable yearning for spiritual experience beyond the ordinary, everyday or ‘explainable’, has been a characteristic of human culture since times unknown. There is sufficient empirical evidence that people in all cultures have always practiced some form of spiritual/religious function. The proof for which are religious shrines, mythologies, priests, prayers, rituals and so forth, that have been an integral part of all societies.

Anthropologists like to interpret religious belief as a socio-cultural mutation resulting from a deep seated fear related to survival needs. They assert that human beings need an imaginary ‘Big Daddy’ to look after them in areas of experience beyond their control. And the moral codes which emerge as a result are used to manipulate people for smooth functioning of socially organised groups. Although true to some extent, this is essentially a simplistic, dismissive way of looking at a phenomenon that has had myriad effects on human life. The issue has more to it than what appears on the surface.

Going by the above explanation, nowhere should the absence of the spiritual be more pronounced than in the lives of people living in societies where the fulfilment of material needs is more or less guaranteed, i.e., the welfare states of the so-called First World. But the emergence of innumerable cults and makeshift spiritual quick fixes, alienation and disillusionment leading to rising trends towards in these societies paints a different picture. It is an indication of what Jean Paul Sartre called “a - shaped hole” in human consciousness, which, by virtue of being left conceptually unplugged, has become a repository for all kinds of nonsense in the name of .

The above is not being interpreted as a theist’s assertion that a belief in is an ingrained human characteristic. I believe that it just happens to be that the human need for spiritual existence has always been, in more cultures than not, expressed in terms of or gods. So that now when these concepts no longer enjoy the comfort of unquestioned belief, society is expressing a state of ‘spiritual unrest’. Before the present epoch ideological confrontation used to be between differences related to various concept of , i.e., monotheism versus paganism, but now the very concept of is fighting a battle of its survival.

On the other hand, neuroscientists have obtained direct observations through live brain monitoring, indicating an area in the temporal lobes of the human brain responsible for religious/spiritual experiences. This module in our brains, they believe, is what compels us to perceive and believe that there exists a transcendental/supernatural quality in the universe. Studies of chemically induced spiritual experiences also imply that there exists a part in the human brain which is not only receptive to these chemicals but also that its chemical stimulation produces spiritual experience. Thus making the spiritual experience an internal feature of human mind rather than something endowed by a supernatural entity outside.

Although an important empirical study relevant to the scope of this paper, it has so far led people to debate whether it is a proof of a divinely endowed special module in the human brain for religious perception (theist assertion) or that this module creates the experience of (atheist position). For us, this debate is of no serious significance; it is only an attempt to put old wine in new bottles. The importance of this discovery is that we should now stop treating in old ways. We can neither afford to ignore it as an evolutionary quirk nor continue to fulfil our spiritual cravings with traditional religious concepts silver lined with jargon borrowed from neuroscience. In light of these findings we need to redefine for ourselves what it means to be spiritual; what is the mental anatomy of such experiences? What is the correlation of our spiritual experiences and this region in the human brain associated with ?

The need for is a consequence of the dimensions in which the human mind works and its abnormally increased intellectual capacities (anatomically associated with the Cerebral Cortex of the human brain of which the temporal lobes are a part). Irrespective of being a conscious or unconscious process, the experience of human beings is a complex of three fundamental dimensions – personal, social and universal.

The personal is where human beings experience life as a perceiving, cognising and volitive individual entities. The individual is the unit of the creative of the evolutionary process.

The form of life which we can label as specifically human, is first and foremost a social phenomenon Being human requires the emergence of a peculiar mode of existence in terms of dependence on other specimens of our own species for production/consumption needs. This is the social dimension of our existence – an interactive process of socio-economic relations defining human as a subset of the class structure of society.

The universal dimension of experiencing life is a product (or a by-product) of our much extended capabilities to perceive and cognise the world around us as an evolving process, which encapsulates our collective existence as humankind as well as individuals.

Neglecting any of the above in favour of an ad hoc, reactive solution to more immediate problems, over a sustained period of time, only leads to the creation of more problems, dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

All spawns from an almost instinctual, unstoppable urge of human beings to experience life in terms of a harmonious interaction – synthesis – between the personal, social and universal dimensions of their experiences. The degree of complexity in terms of which this urge has been realised by human beings at different stages of their evolution, however, has always varied from individual to individual and society to society, i.e., depending on the level of their intellectual and emotional development. is nothing more than this harmonious co-existence and mutually complementing growth of intellectual capacities and emotive sensitivities. Everything else done in the name of is ‘black ’.

began in the earnest when human intellect went into a contemplative mode from its previous mode of reflective thinking. Contemplative thinking began when people became technologically advanced to the level when at least some of them had enough leisure time at their disposal to pull their emotive patterns out of the animal realm of functions. It was a significant step forward from the animal patterns out of which human life emerged.

Reflective thinking is only one or two steps above the animal patterns of existence. It is a form of sentience which is in sync with, while reflecting, the changing patterns of natural elements. These elements are what reflective mode of thinking originally emerged to tackle. At this stage of human evolution, thinking was only an advanced tool to deal with similar sort of problems that animals grapple with in their lives.

What I have labelled as the contemplative mode of thinking was also the beginning of a totally new form of consciousness. Consciousness of one’s self vis-à-vis the rest of existence including society and the universe and an awareness of self as a phenomenon in its own right.

With this consciousness human beings started seeking relevance to their context beyond their biological needs. We are the only species that deliberately searches for a relevance vis-à-vis the context of their existence. The relevance of other animals is cut out in terms of an organic meshing of their physiological characteristics and the physical ecosystems in which they exist. Human beings, on the other hand, define their ecosystems through their mental inputs (invention) and physical labour (production) and their lives are governed by a cultural code encompassing production relations, class structures, social , legal systems, political ideology and so forth. The contextual relevance referred to above surfaces in human beings as the need for self-actualization, towards which they apply their intellects and emotive energies, over and above their basic biological needs.

This need for self-actualization emerges in human life in myriad permutations & combinations of the personal, the social and the universal. But when its fundamental point of reference moves out of the personal and then crosses the boundaries of social relevance (which is the first step above the animal level of existence), to move into the universal realm of human experience, it becomes spiritual. This does not, however, mean that every next step is taken at the expense of the previous; the spiritual encompasses both personal and social dimensions of human experiences. It is a composite process of pleasure/happiness generation through impersonal stimuli, but felt at the most personal level .

Rise of Fundamentalism:

For most of human history, religions provided answers to questions related to . This link was broken, as stated earlier, with the advent of , its scientific methodology of analysis and its moral focus aimed at seeking personal welfare in individual terms only. Religious doctrines, on the other hand, covered all three of our experiential dimensions. Not only did they provide explanations pertaining to the purpose of human life but also gave moral/ethical codes for leading it at the societal level.

After negating , human beings adopted ideologies/worldviews that were limited to the pursuit of one dimension at the expense of the other two. The quest for happiness in was antithetic towards society, while socialism suppressed the individual to glorify society. One proved to be a grand failure while the other sits on a time-bomb of psychological & social problems which seem to be increasing every day. With no secular solution in sight, people all over the world are turning to religious fundamentalism as a means to clear the mess created by and socialism.

A reversion to religious doctrines is a reaction against the emotional dissatisfaction caused by the failure of post-industrial ideologies advocated to ensure human happiness during the past 200 hundred odd years. The failure of both and Marxism to significantly change the plight of people in terms of increased happiness and spiritual growth is creating a backlash effect. The socially disenfranchised and spiritually unfulfilled people all over the world are turning to religious fundamentalism.

and Marxism both primarily focussed on material progress as the means for human happiness and bypassed spiritual development as a personal matter of the individual or demonised it because of its association with which Marx considered “an opiate of the people”. An opiate which facilitated the process of human and prevented them from breaking its shackles . The resulting telescopic pursuit of material gains as the primary reason for human existence has resulted in appallingly deteriorating social and psychological conditions of external and internal alienation. Betraying their real potential in the pursuit of the here and now has alienated people from their own internal selves and deification of personal interest has led to the corrosion of social relations. Fundamentalists are using as a shield against this alienation and social decline.

The emergence of fundamentalism is the greatest social paradox to have arisen in recent human history. The contradiction is between the unthinking attitude propagated by the fundamentalists and the knowledge that we have amassed in this “age of information”. But when viewed with reference to the utter sterility shown by contemporary thinkers to come up with a comprehensive explanation for human existence in light of this knowledge, the paradox gives way to an explanation of why fundamentalism has arisen. The cooped up vision of reality expressed in terms of highly specialised disciplines of study does not measure up to what people require for their spiritual needs. This drives them to desperately clutch onto anything which has a close semblance to the spiritual way of life.

The trend to go back to in a way is a sign of regression. It is an indication of a crying need to address human incompleteness caused by spiritual gaps in the compartmentalized methodology for truth seeking which is a hallmark of today’s intellectual training. Especially when a piecemeal adherence to religious faiths—in the form of temple rituals—is no longer working as a makeshift .
The basic problem with religious thought today stems from its untenable dogmatic premises, which no longer enjoy the comfort of remaining unchallenged due to lack of necessary information. In today’s world, everyone is inundated with data from all fields of scientific discovery which tend to disprove the legitimacy of religious dogmas as the sole fountainheads of universal truths. People need to shut themselves from hard facts in order to persist with their dogmas.

The gamut of individuals and social groups involved in and esoteric movements across the globe is highly alarming. The range spreads from Islamic militants to members of Aum Shinrikyo who spread nerve gas in a Tokyo subway to born-again Christian hardliners. And then there are followers of various ‘gurus’ whose teachings have become synonymous with spiritual salvation through drug induced orgies. Western cult leaders are also not far behind in exploiting people’s urge to look for a higher meaning to their lives; some of whom have led their cliques to collective as a means of salvation while others have been convicted of financial fraud.

The width of its spread and the variety of motives behind people’s adherence to religious fundamentalism should not allow any serious analyst to dismiss it as a passing phenomenon or even as a clash between . It is a global reality which is here to stay unless its challenges are met with. Not through barrels of guns or restrictive legislation and police action but with an adequate ideological alternative.

The Emergent New Society

In her book The Battle for , Karen Armstrong, one of the most eminent scholars of and a pragmatic spiritual thinker, has given a very interesting account of the spiritual needs of the present times. In spiritual terms, she writes, the circumstances we live in today are similar in nature to the Axial Age (4-3 millennia BCE), during which most of the great spiritual traditions emerged. Be it the Socratic philosophy of Greece, the teachings of Hindu sages & Buddha, Confucianism & Taoism or the Judaic monotheism that further begot and .

The Axial Age, Armstrong stresses, was the result of thousands of years of economic, social and cultural evolution. “People … instead of simply growing enough crops to satisfy their immediate needs, became capable of producing an agricultural surplus with which they could and thereby acquire additional income. This enabled them to build the first , develop the arts, and create increasingly powerful polities: cities, city-states, and, eventually, empires.” As the process of wealth-creation moved away from isolated, pastoral simplicity and concentrated around the melting pot of the market place, visionaries among these people began to feel the need for a more complex form of than “the old paganism” of their ancestors. A system which could be a proper of their complex (complicated?!) condition and could accommodate their “wider perspective and broader horizons”.

With greater leisure time at their disposal, people of the Axial Age developed rich internal lives which required a that “did not depend entirely on external forms such as the Pagan deities”. Moreover, this type of also provided an ethical rhetoric to speak against the social injustice which was built into the agrarian socio-economic system. With a belief in the transcendental source of universal sovereignty and the ubiquitous concept of afterlife, the new also acted as a quasi-solution for the problems of the downtrodden and the suppressed.

Similarly, during the second half of the 20th century, humanity entered a new era in its history as far as its productive capacities are concerned. This was the time when we acquired certain key technologies and made important theoretical breakthroughs in fundamental sciences. These advances are now proving to be the culminating agents of the industrial era – a period marked by transition from creation of agricultural surplus by way of direct human labour to production through industrial machinery as the defining feature of economic activity.

It won’t be long before anthropologists will earmark this period as a watershed in the history of human civilisation in the context of a qualitative increase in human knowledge and the capabilities for material production. This process was triggered off by three very important scientific breakthroughs—the invention of transistors whose progeny are the innumerable microelectronic devices that have been transforming our lives with a mind boggling rapidity; the discovery of DNA that has now matured into the of Molecular Biology and its various offshoots; and the mathematical theories of computation which pioneered Computer Sciences and Information .

The most significant outcome of this knowledge, however, is the emerging discipline of Brain Sciences—a popular name for a collective effort on the part of neurobiologists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers, to look for a new framework for a more penetrative understanding of the mind. Of late, thinkers from diverse fields of scientific inquiry such as Linguistics, Quantum Physics, Evolutionary and Molecular Biology, have also joined in. As a result, the mystery in which the brain and the mind have been shrouded up to now is gradually giving way to a concrete scientific picture. Based on past experience, it is logically possible for human beings to work out a practicable methodology for adopting and applying this knowledge as a means to re-examine their identities—both as individuals and as society.

The above knowledge-fund also includes a macro-perspective of the evolution of universe as a whole. Astrophysics with its theory of Big Bang explains the origins of the universe and Particle Physics deals with the discovery and behaviour of the fundamental particles of matter/. This is leading to the emergence of a macro-framework for putting together the fragmented discoveries of to form a comprehensive worldview capable of emotively engaging the of contemporary human beings.

The above-mentioned are also acting as the economic harbingers of a new civilisation in human history. Already, the process of production is being transformed with computer-aided designing and manufacturing. Robots that can work twenty-four hours a day, whatever the conditions of work may be, are taking over the assembly lines in factories. The computer has given us the Information Highway; the World Wide Web has made access to knowledge a global feature. The of Molecular Biology is rapidly turning into biotechnology. With the foreseeable reality of large-scale genetic manipulation we are looking at the possibility of unprecedented increase in agricultural production, along with its dramatic effects on curing diseases. We are also aware that the input of human creativity, a feature of mental training and discipline, has become the most effective factor in the process of production in terms of increasing the quantity (and quality) of production and decreasing costs. The impact of the human mind on the process of production will be even greater when the Brain Sciences will become mature enough to give us the capability of consciously manipulating and eradicating the inefficiencies of the emotional and intellectual processes that form the existing human personality.

With boundless increase in human productivity, inherent in the trend initiated by high-tech mode of production, for the first time in recorded history, to eradicate material scarcity—the mother of all conventional sources of misery and unhappiness in human life—does seem to be an achievable possibility.

The only thing objectively lacking for this to happen is the high cost and limited supply of resources. The rest are only subjective hindrances emanating from our mental association with the ‘norms’ of the old order based on material scarcity. However, with the theory of Cold Fusion, when transformed into an efficient and viable , this vacant spot in the future scheme of a new socio-economic order will be neatly filled. The amount of that a fusion reaction is capable of generating from a glassful of hydrogen fuel obtainable from ordinary seawater is roughly equal to that which currently needs twenty tons of coal. But even if the dream of cold fusion is never realised, as some of its critics like to think, we should have enough in the process of scientific discovery, on evidence of what it has achieved up to now, to come up with a source of cheap to complement the production potential of the new tools.

With exponentially increasing developments in and augmented by a qualitatively better understanding of the human brain and the mind, a new page in human history is on the verge of being turned. It is in the process of changing our fundamental ideas about ourselves and our place in the universe.

Contemporary

up to now has been primarily associated with religions. Seeds of regressive dogmatism are inherent in every religio-spiritual tradition. As all of them are based on extraordinary mystical experiences of a founder-teacher, who left behind a system of consolidated practices and laws for his followers. These systems eventually regress further to become mainly ritualistic forms meant to reflect the essence of the master’s experiences, especially for those who do not come directly in contact with him.

After the of the teacher, the essence is guarded by his followers against adulteration, especially against efforts which seek to question its basic premises. In doing so, they stop the application of intellect and new discoveries to the essence of the Master’s teachings. Application of human intellect and its discoveries, on the other hand, being limited to external circumstances continue to change them. They keep evolving parallel to the stagnation of the religious doctrine. Intellectual inputs only go into increasing the complexity of the ritualistic forms that eventually become so complicated and convoluted so as to lose all practical connection with the essence and objective reality. The next round of spiritual progress takes place with the coming of a new teacher/prophet who shatters the previous dogmas but only to replace them with many of his own.

Where we stand today, the requirement is not a new teacher but a change in the spiritual paradigm including its dogmatic methodology. A worldwide fermentation of new ideas is very much in the air. What is needed is a consolidation of efforts to come up with a widely acceptable framework to develop these ideas further. Global connectivity at our disposal today in itself is an impetus enough to start such a process, not to mention widespread and deep-seated need for spiritual self-actualization, hallmarked by an unfathomable sense of . A sense of incompleteness in one’s being related to a gap between that which one experiences and that which one does. Accentuated by the fact that the world of has lagged far behind what has been achieved in the socio-economic arena. For the past century and a half, human beings have made unprecedented progress in all areas of life accept those which could lessen this gap. Absence of which is being felt in our lives at all levels.

The world today is more than ripe for a spiritual paradigm appropriate for our dramatically changed living conditions. A structure for thoughts and feelings that could provide an enlightened consolation for the sense of mentioned above. What we have at our disposal today is an accumulated platform of social, economic and intellectual revolutions that have taken place over the last three hundred odd years. If it weren’t for compartmentally isolated thinkers of today, who can’t seem to rise above their narrow disciplines, we possess all the essential ingredients to come up with a befitting response to do away with the quagmires of religious fundamentalism and perverted cults being adopted by people who feel spiritually starved.

Today’s worship could only be in terms of developing our uniquely human faculties that enable us to know the world and ourselves beyond the needs of our bodies. Contemporary has to be a synthesis of three processes. All that is worthwhile in previous religions (spiritual systems), various philosophical thought structures, along with the understanding endowed by latest discoveries in . , philosophy and should be viewed as three channels which combine to form the great river of the human quest for seeking truth.

Despite the comprehensiveness of its approach, religious explanation of reality in terms of its unexamined beliefs is unacceptable at the present level of human awareness and capabilities. We should take note of the fundamental truths discovered by religions while formulating a contemporary spiritual framework but not as sacrosanct, eternal realities.

Philosophy gives us a structure to classify thoughts and feelings combined with a methodology for impersonal reasoning whereby one’s own thought processes are trained for a simultaneous process of self-examination. The greatest merit of the philosophical method is its ability to provide substance to that which is normally considered ordinary and trivial, in addition to making balanced forays into the extra-ordinary and the mysterious. It gives concrete semantic content to unexamined phenomena which can then be turned into working hypotheses for scientific inquiries.

No “truth” (religious or otherwise) should hold a greater importance for us than the verified facts discovered by . At the same time, however, we should not refrain from making philosophical inquiries into areas of human ignorance beyond the reach of scientific methodology – primarily depending on the availability of facts that can be tested through repeatable experiments. We should be clear that, on its own, offers a methodology for truth seeking in a limited area of reality. refuses to deal with phenomena which cannot be observed through the five senses and laboratory tools essentially based on the five senses. What is more, it simply denies the existence of anything beyond the measurement capacities of the tools it subscribes to. Without realizing these methodological limitations, scientists take a dogmatic position to ignore or dismiss phenomena that are beyond the limits of data acquired through sense-perception.

needs to mate with philosophy to create a coherent spiritual structure in accordance with the present-day fund of knowledge and life experiences, which our forefathers used to create with limited knowledge and a lot of dogmas. The telescopic nature of scientific discoveries and their disjointed social concomitants would only lead us to the philistinism of acting in terms of personal success without looking for any ethical pertaining to our existence at the social and universal levels.

these days is ready for philosophy to paint a hitherto unseen picture of the universe on the largest authenticable canvas that has ever been available to the human intellect. Leading to the emergence of a conceptual framework within which all the known and unknown pieces of the universal puzzle will come together to pursue the following age-old questions:
• What does it mean to be human?
• What are our origins?
• How and from where did the universe come about?
• Where is it headed?
• What is the direction of our future evolution as one of its components?

No is beyond these four questions!

At the level of current complexity in human thought processes and the available fund of knowledge, cannot be an unknowable, eternally complete entity that demands ritualistic homage in return for rewarding or refraining from unleashing his wrath. Gone are the days when people could relate to the concept of as a universal king to whom people submitted their requests and he disposed them off in a whimsical manner. Today’s progressive mind finds such an idea of deeply repugnant. Formal facades & rituals or conformation to a code of ethics do not have a place in the lives of today’s human beings unless they regress their minds to medieval times or numb them with Jerry Springer and MTV reality shows.

Today, could only be a pursuit of the above four questions. The absence of a conceptual framework to look for answers to these questions in a changed world and in terms of the new knowledge is what created a “-shaped hole” in human consciousness. Existing society with its secularist bypassing of in everything except temple prayers, is not a model for the 21st century. We need to respond to this challenge in a manner befitting our current knowledge and abilities to know.

*__________________*

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12. Penrose, R. The Large, the Small and the Human Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997)
13. Pinker, S. How the Mind Works (New York: W.W. Norton & Company 1997)
14. Smolin, L. The Life of the Cosmos. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997)
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17. Weber, Max. Sociology of World Religions. www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuki/abukuma/weber_texts.html
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20. www.languageinindia.com/april2003/macaulay.html (For Lord Macaulay’s speech of 1835 in British Parliament for reforms in ).
21. www.infinite-.com/resources/iccf10.html (For information on Cold Fusion ).
22. www.economist.com/diversions/millennium/displayStory.c fm?Story_ID=346598 (For a cumulative graph of human productivity increasing exponentially over the past hundred years).