How compatible are science and spirituality?

People, who believe too much in the wonders of science, its various discoveries and advancement, feel that this stream can alone boost the social, economical and physical development of humankind. Under this belief, they tend to diminish the value of spirituality. But, it they evaluate and introspect closely, it will be evident that there is a close relationship between these two faculties. Some people who are biased for science and its discoveries do not want to accept the commonality between the two. The question comes, why people differentiate? The answer is that the platform of evaluation is erroneous. Without knowing the inherent meaning of the scientific discoveries, they exaggerate the various postulates of the science. Basically, science is a gathered experience of various skills, which are acquired out of experimentation, observations, research, extensive studies and exercising the analytical power of the mind.  Though all these are based on theoretical explanation of observed phenomena, science is a vast field and mostly employed to understand the natural world. The faulty evaluation between science and spirituality only gives an iota of doubt about the compatibility between these two streams. In a broader sense, science is also a part of spirituality, which discovers the inner strength of your existence. Science helps us to find out the rudimentary explanations of each and every research and when the same is prolonged for a considerable period through research papers and establishing the facts of experimentation, different types of discoveries take place to benefit human beings.

Spirituality relates to spirit, God or devotion to sacrifice for others. How it is related to the sacrifice to others?  Because each of us has the abode of God and when you serve others without any aspiration, you please God of others and induce spiritual feeling within you.  Spirituality is the search for the exact reality and purpose of your evolution. When this search is on the basis of practicalities, it is known as philosophy and philosophical edifications make you more provoked to attract to the spirit.  The feeling of religiosity will arise more and more to you, once you are prone to philosophical edifications.

Before analyzing the compatibility of these two streams, we must know the configuration of religion from where the feeling of spirituality comes in your mind. Each of the religions has three integral parts and they are rituals, mythology and philosophy.  Rituals are the parts, which are accomplished through Puja, ranting the hymns and finally, performing the Havana.  Through mythology, the particular religion expresses its sacred creeds and lifestyle of the saints, monks and sages, who belong to the believer of the particular religion although all the religions are alike to them. And finally, the philosophy enunciates the laws, principles and ideas, the particular religion elucidates. If you observe the whole thing in the right perspective, the mythology and the ritual supplement the philosophical aspect of the religion. After understanding these things, you can easily find out the compatibility between science and spirituality.

Science is nothing but a method, and philosophy is also like the same. Science uses various rationalities to explain the observed phenomena. Science generalizes the observations and then through extensive studies and research makes the same as an established fact and data. After observing the apple, falling from the tree, Newton analyzed the reason thereof, and finally concluded that gravitational force always pulls the objects downward, if the same is not resisted otherwise. This leads to his invention of Law of Gravity. Science continues to make gadgets and other utilities for the benefits of human beings based on various inventions and different laws. 

                                                                   

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In the same way, deep thoughts of religion awakens your spirituality and you accept various laws and norms of the religions to follow the different rituals and mythology.  People are becoming so much devoted to the rituals and mythological ideas that sometimes without the same; they feel that their existence is purposeless and meaningless.

Science is basically used to gather knowledge and accumulate the same to improve the quality of life and its systems. Spirituality is extensively used to show people the right path and how to lead a life in a correct way. Here lies a subtle difference.  Science is always confined to the observations and studies of external circumstances, whereas spirituality analyzes the internal conditions of an individual. Through the assessment of internal phenomenon, spirituality improves the living condition of human beings.  Spirituality teaches that even we are constrained by lack, sufferings, poverty, distress and pain; we can follow an upright and honest path. Science always tries to improve the human’s basic needs and their requirement and through this, the overall condition of the world gets changed. In this way, science has performed a commendable job.  Still, human beings are not contented as they were earlier. 

Science guides us to the path of knowledge and compels us to become more inquisitive and there is no end.  Science is like the more you try to observe and invent, if possible, the more you will be attracted to invent further. This stream is a boundary less horizon.  However, spirituality has a fixed purpose and goal, and there is an end to this type of knowledge.  It is the realization of rudimentary knowledge of reality, to understand the role of the Creator and His creation, introspect our existence and how to comprehend this basic knowledge to  the benefits other mankind. Those who have obtained this  knowledge, they don’t seek more. Then they practice, sharpen their skills and get Moksha and become saints and sages leaving their interest in the worldlings There is nothing more for them to seek. They have their gratifications. Another significant thing about science is that it cannot guarantee you a perpetual happiness.  Even you have performed very well on this stream and have invented many discoveries, still, you cannot claim to be the happiest person in the world. But spirituality suggests that if you grasp its inner meaning and if you are an honest person, you will be happy continually.

So, science and spirituality have some common identities and also differences.  One must understand that spirituality does not oppose science. In fact, science and all the studies encompassing this stream enlighten us to the path of understanding philosophy and logic very well. Once you understand the philosophy and philosophical aspects of all the matters whether trivial or very important, you will be inclined to the spirituality. Further, if you are a spiritual person, you have to have a feeling for science and you cannot be blind of its contribution to the growth of human beings.  Similarly, if your temperament is completely scientifically based and you are an ardent supporter of science; you cannot ignore the veracity of  the spirituality.  

The beauty of fear,that fear itself is false

To lead a life more practical and  realistic; we must come out from fear psychology.  Many times, for no good a reason, we are afraid that we may lose our assets, bank deposits, our families, our reputations and various other things to whom we cling very passionately. This fear sometimes may be baseless, but still, we are perturbed and lead our lives wrapped in anxieties.These anxieties make us less confident to take our decisions in the right direction, which is one of the belligerent reasons for failures in life  and finally we get entrapped in chaos. Have you ever thought the reality of this fear?  You will find that you are in turmoil of absurdities and accordingly you are conditioned both physically and psychologically to think negatively. And, ultimately your thoughts are in swirl and twirl curve make you panicky to focus on the irrelevant rather than relevant issues and finally, you embrace the fearful path. Your conditioning is formed out of your past knowledge, which is being imparted to you initially by your parents, close family members and then society’s influence. This imparted knowledge is based on various ideas, sanctity of the same is sometimes dubious. Through various debates, may be supported by logical conclusions, you are forced to accept the sanctity of those ideas. You then continue with the reality of those ideas despite their absurdities. As and when you face a situation based on these circumstances, you land in a  fearful syndrome. For example, the idea of getting slipped from a water logged staircase could lead you in a painful situation, which is evolved in your mind first psychologically and you take cautious steps.  Despite it, you fall down and you get hurt  and caused you physical pain.  Now the above issue of psychological pain, which you hold makes you more alert and perhaps, you are ensnared in fear and ultimately fall down. If you are able to free yourself from the fear itself, as stated above, life will not be perilous at all.

Fear is always known as  some type of odd entities. It is an accumulation of many physical and psychological aspects. Our knowledge, if gathered correctly and methodically, then we can avoid fear and pain. For example,the medical knowledge provides us enough assurances and beliefs, which can save us from psychological pain. But you are not at all interested to throw your beliefs, whether they are authentic or ruffled one.

The fear is developed in your life when you crave for something.  Supposed, you want to be a rank holder in a competitive examination and you study sincerely without any distraction of external objects.  But many times, your conditioning of the mind, provoke you to think whether you will be able to hold a rank or not.  This craving makes you to wear many masks at different times, depending on your confidence level to achieve the ultimate goal. When you wear a mask of satisfaction, you are not afraid. The opposite of this means when you wear a mask of doubtful result or negative one, you are in a vulnerable situation and submerged in the failure of fear. From this point onwards, you are under the influence of fear and  many conflicts, contradictory situations and opinions arise in your mental system.  No doubt, you want to avoid this syndrome.  Sometimes, you like to be alone to ensure that you get rid of fear.  It never happens.  If you run away from the situation of conflicts to avoid fear, it will chase you. You have to understand the conflicts, take the same in your stride and if required, reconditioning your conscience, which needs to be done to make the life more strong. 

                                                                        

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You need to throw the mask, which you mentally wear causing your dissatisfaction. If you cannot get rid of the situation immediately, try to be calm and wait for the situation becomes diluted. Fear is such a thing that it will suppress your all enthusiasms. Under its influence, your cowardice will increase and put you in a cloistered mental frame. You will feel lonely and this loneliness, of course, is your own creation. This loneliness will further create emptiness. When you continue to feel this stage in your life, there will be an endless conflict. No sooner you recognize this fact of loneliness, which basically happens when you grapple with fear, you can free yourself from this enemy of fear.  Why people fear?  If you ascertain the fact, this fear is related to an idea and this idea is the response of  a memory already stored in your mental system as thought.  This thought is the result of your experience.  You can think of your past, present and future converted to your loneliness, busyness, emptiness and fullness.  With all your memories related to the sequential pattern of life’s paradoxes and its painful incidence and pleasure will force you to form many different ideas.  These ideas, when expressed in words either make you jubilant or afraid.  Further, once the words are expressed, there is no sign of the same and then relationship between the experiencer and the experienced gets different.  We always crave to be successful.  In this pursuit, we become afraid whether our success is sure or we  will be besmeared with utter failures.

This craving only induces the intensity of fear and instead of our focus on the subject, we hover in fear.  Now, if you do not fear, that does not mean you are courageous or fear disappears.  You must find out the reason of fear and then analyze the same. In the process of this understanding, you will observe that people become fearful because fear is a subjective issue. It depends on your memories, ideas, unpleasant thoughts and extraordinary zeal for achieving your target.  Your complete dependence on the above things causes fear.  Further, this dependence is basically because of your ignorance of the lack of your self-knowledge and your fight with the circumstances you face in your life.  These circumstances are either of your own creation or others thrust upon you. The others are able to convert various unfavorable circumstances when you are deprived of your elementary skills and rudimentary truth behind the creation of the circumstances by others.

Fear causes a disharmony between the mind and the heart and ultimately preventing communication and understanding. You have to increase your power of self awareness by meticulous planning and learning about human behavior and social interaction. In this way, you can comprehend the cause of fear, whether the same is genuine or artificial.  Fear is derived in two ways; either it is acquired or it is inborn. Mostly, the acquired one is related to the past.  If it is inborn, then the same is to be eliminated by the proper tutelage of parents, teachers and family members. By increasing the confidence level from the childhood stage itself, this inborn bad behavior is to be discarded.  When it is an acquired one, one has to forego the feeling of the unpleasant incidence of the past.  The best way is you must submerge yourself in the present sphere of life so much that the past is not able to shroud you at all.

The beauty of fear, that fear itself is  false, then why to fear?  Just challenge and conquer it.

The role of an ideal teacher is like God

Your progress in life depends on many things comprising your education, skills, knowledge, personality and ability to mingle with others. In your progress, apart from your parents, if any person contributes, he is your that teacher who inspires you to be more enlightened  and teaches you with scintillating attention how to grow almost from a scratch or initial level to a level aspired by you.  In our society, the role of a teacher is unparalleled. Apart from imparting knowledge, an ideal  teacher is responsible for your life, growth, ascertainment of right career and  accomplishment of the same. He ensures your physical, mental and very importantly, religious growth. Most of the identified teachers with whom you come in contact in schools and in your adolescence days take interest and they show their proclivity for your educational growth and how you score good marks in your various examinations. But an ideal teacher acts your guide as your moral and spiritual guru cum life coach. This very reason prompts many people to keep in touch with their ideal teachers, take their blessings, guidance and good wishes for advancement throughout their life. Almost all the religions like Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism and others describe an importance of a lifelong teacher, whose teachings you can get and refer in your day to day dealings for various issues.  In all these religions, it is indicated that the relationship between a teacher and a student is like a crystallization of one’s transformation. This transformation ultimately guides you how to lead a perfect and an ideal life.

Further, you have to regularly take the tutelage of your lifelong teacher. An academic teacher is responsible for your academic brilliance; once the studies are over, his role will mostly cease. Then, people will make contact with these teachers occasionally or maybe contact is completely into oblivion. But the ideal teacher is the one who cares to monitor your growth and what you need for the improvement even after you become expert in any field. Many celebrities and established performers in entertainment and other academic fields are continually  taking their guidance and preachings almost regularly. Though it is difficult to identify a teacher from whom you can get the advices always, it is advisable to search for an ideal teacher or guru. At the age of past forty five or fifty, when worldly affairs become little pale and people are almost stabilized in their lives, they search for religious gurus for spiritual advancement. The ideal teacher what has been narrated here is more or less like a religious guru, but he is to be with you from the beginning of your life  and remain throughout as a friend, teacher, philosopher, and religious guide. You have to awaken your inner self under the guidance of your this teacher. The more powerful the teacher is, the more powerful his wisdom and knowledge, the greater will be your enlightenment or realization of your purity of your mind, body and soul.  It will take you beyond the boundary of your self consciousness.

If you can choose a teacher like this and if he can impart his expert guidance  on the path of  knowledge and  wisdom, no doubt, you will be an established performer in your field.  This is the basic difference between a teacher of this stature and an academic teacher.  Many reputed and famous personalities become brilliant because of their hard work, consistent efforts and also the guidance of their ideal teachers continually.  The five different types of actions and steps  will supplement your efforts to make you a distinct and identified person over and above of  getting the companionship of an ideal teacher.

                                                                        

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Firstly, to identify and then selects a real teacher, who can impel you to the ladder of your life’s correct path of growth. Even if you fall down, he will motivate and ensure your growth.

Secondly, the selected teacher will make all types of initiations to see that you are qualified in your subject of interest. He will show you the road map embracing which you will achieve most of the accolades stipulated by him for you. Thirdly, this teacher will  take you as his friend cum disciple. The same type of role obviously cannot be undertaken by your school teachers. This ideal teacher will establish one to one contact with you all the time. He will provide you skillful strategies, share personal information, which will help you to transcend your physical and mental impediments and he will also chart a course of spiritual practice from an initial age.

Fourthly, this teacher will  examine your character, motives, and purity of your thoughts, your affiliations and behavioral pattern.  Wherever there is a requirement of correction, he will do so.

Finally, after giving enough teachings related to every field, for example, academic counseling, philosophical, social, moral and spiritual, he will scrutinize your progress and if need be, he will influence you to follow the correct measures. Finally, he will make you to lead life without his help to see how you perform.  Once you are able to perform without much of his guidance, he will prepare for your transformation to a complete spiritual level mostly at the fag end of your life.  By this time, you will be also able to obtain his most of the teachings, ingrained the same in your personality and then pass on the same to others for their enlightenment and awaken. In this way, you can extend your teacher’s blessings to others to accrue the  benefits because it is not so easy to identify an ideal teacher and get his teachings all the time.

An ideal teacher’s role is very crucial to anybody’s successful life. His contributions and edifications will  be like a ready reckoner and when you conceptualize his advices, it will act as your Margdarshan as if, you are mentally connected to God. 

Brag for everything,but not for spirituality

We have a habit to brag our personal credentials in terms of experience, resume,  presentation and performance. Supposed, you are due to appear for an interview and you prepare your resume so polished that by going through, one will be simply thinking you as a brilliant candidate and suitable for their requirement.  But you are not selected. Why?  Because, you have not only indicated your good things in the resume, but you have also mentioned various personal details exaggeratedly, of course, leaving the basic parameters.  In the same way, we exaggerate our expertise to a sky rocket level, when we do some business presentation to grab a precious and prestigious order. We don’t leave anything to impress upon would-be customers. When employers or any probable customers peruse either the resume or the presentation, they feel that the particular person or the company is the best available one, whom they must employ or give the order. No doubt, it happens, but in most of the cases, the opposite happens.  In all our mundane and worldly affairs, we can present our  details or achievements in a silver paper wrapped boxes or in a costly and aesthetic files to woo the other persons or group of people, but when it comes to the matter of spirituality, you cannot hide anything from the spiritual power existing in all of us. Only thing, we fail to recognize the same. In the case of the divinity, one can neither take the shelter of bragging nor can change an atheist to a God lover. Because, you can increase anything of any value, but you cannot increase the grace of God.  Even you try to do so; you will be utterly failed, because the spiritual progress is always proportional to your sincere efforts and devotion. You can delude and create an illusion to human beings and their mind, but you cannot play hide and seek with God and spirituality.  It is extremely impossible to exaggerate any spiritual growth, because  it is not visible, it is felt and realized. It is not of any kind of tangible gain. You cannot resemble the same as your application for a loan, generally, people submit to the bank. You may highlight all your good credits and credentials and secure the loan. After sometimes, you become defaulter for reasons beyond your control, but in the case of spiritual feeling, you cannot put even scribble a single word unless your mind is consciously seeking for God’s grace.  You can improve spirituality by taking an honest look at your regular activities, ponder about the same, introspect whether those activities performed by you are right or wrong and then think the areas, where you need improvement.  The improvement is needed in three different ways. First, by doing self study, second, by following the advices of parents, guardians, teachers and third, by mixing with like minded people to observe their day to day activities and then introspecting deeply what you have learned. Instead of doing this, if you only search the shortcuts for your successes, manage to achieve the same, become complacent and start bragging, then you cannot ever change. Your this outlook will not yield any meaningful result. As against, if you put efforts to change by following the above three procedures, you will reach a stage, where you will find that your shortcomings are almost negligible. Once reaching the above stage; you find that you still need improvement, then read the various autobiographies of great luminaries, you read the writings and preachings of various saints, you hear the devotional songs, religious messages and hymns.  In this method, you can learn a lot, which can filter your mind, which will make you more attached to the spiritual atmosphere. You can apply this philosophy to overcome your shortcomings. You then assess your improvement. You will find there is a significant change.

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If you regularly go through the writings  of various saints, you will be able to identify the various reasons of your failures. These readings will guide you to take the correct path to lead your life.  When your shortcomings will derail you, this preaching will provide you a power to examine the said reasons of your failures. By taking the advices of these books and preachings, you can make your subsequent periods of your life more  meaningful and successful.

If you have any disliking for a particular food because of health hazard and if you continue to eat the same food, you will invite your health problem. In that case, is it advisable to consume the said food?  You must avoid this food.  Similarly, if your any action or behavior or particular responsibility creates your mind distracted from your spiritual growth, would it be feasible for you to engage in the said acts or actions? You must avoid such type of behavior.

You have to analyze various facts which are responsible for your less growth spiritually. You must take the corrective actions, so that you can increase your hunch for your spiritual growth. The beauty of spirituality is that it emanates from the divinity and it glows your consciousness and provides you purity.  Divinity is the law of compassion and grace of God. When you really put your honest efforts to eliminate your wrong doings, shortcomings, old imperfect habits and behaviors to embrace upon the spiritual growth, your sincerity is noticed. The divine blessings will be showered on you with enough compassion and grace. By your efforts and divine grace, you will achieve spiritual growth and you will be able to connect with the Creator.  You will notice a rapid spiritual progress in your life.

Finally, you can brag and manage any situation in your favor, but if you are not a spiritual at all and you claim to be so, you are not going to be showered with His blessings when you need the same desperately.