SCIENCE, SANATAN DHARMA AND THE THREE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS, JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM -- WHERE THEY MEET AND WHERE THEY CONFLICT

SCIENCE, SANATAN DHARMA AND THE THREE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS, JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM -- WHERE THEY MEET AND WHERE THEY CONFLICT

The tallest tree and the shortest shrub both look insignificantly equal when viewed from a great height. God (the Atman who is the witness of phenomena) in a like manner views our actions with dispassionate grace, forgiving our follies and foibles by the million and granting us glory by absorption unto Himself/Itself. There is neither reward nor retribution for deed done but there is the recoil of karma as our Rishis read it right unlike their Abrahamic counterparts who in their rustic simplicity could merely attribute it to the divine dispensation of an omnipotent arbiter of all things human. But they were wrong as they took a personal position on the matter -- their God being a personal entity -- which is essentially impersonal.

The universe is distributed along energetic lines, each point in space-time, be it in the physical realm, in the psychological or in the spiritual realm, being endowed with field potentialities which are inescapable so long one operates within this comprehensive cosmos of Matter and the Spirit. As such action breeds its unavoidable and inviolable reaction which is the basis of the Theory of Karma.

As fire, when touched, burns, illumines surroundings and warms at a distance, so does karma bring forth its variegated fruits inevitably into bearing. It is an impersonal mechanism at work, a complex ordering of events following the causal-probabilistic laws known and unknown to man, a data processing and sending of feedback that involves unimaginable intricacy of calculations, a resolution of psychological forces that that is not only reactive but contains within its results the seeds of furtherance of evolution and its eventual return unto the divine source of things.

This karma works its way out through countless lives through the transmigratory cycle of birth, death, intermediate phase between two earthly incarnations, and rebirth, a single lifespan proving insufficient for resolving out past credits and debits unto final settlement of all dues.

The Indian dharma traditions generally hold the Theory of Karma to be the explanation for life's anomalies and for providing the rationale of phenomena in general and in particular that of human behaviour and consequence.

Karma, as it is generally called in shortened terms, is the action-reaction duality in energetic terms. There is no intervention of the Divine here and grace that absolves one of one's karmic consequences is simply a transference of such effects from one bodily focus to another bodily focus. The Guru or the spiritual preceptor can take upon himself the disciple's sins and bear their effects. Here the Law of Conservation of Energy -- in its karmic terminology -- is not being violated. Rather, the energy transference implies the connection between personalities and the underlying solidarity of the whole of existence. Complex theory, profound and intricate, but one that conforms to modern science. Thus, the Sanatan Dharma (Hinduism) is not at loggerheads with science and reason as the three Abrahamic religions are but is in harmony with it, the latter proceeding to discover more and more of the laws that govern the cosmos and life and formulating them in mathematical language, laws that were intuitively realised in the depths of contemplation by Vedic seers ages ago. The ancient there is meeting the modern, spirituality embracing science, realisation befriending reason and the past fusing with the present in enlightened terms.

Now compare this synthesis with Abrahamic apologetics where Greek, Roman and later European philosophy have been historically liberally used to uphold foundational, irrational theological principles while conflicting with other ideas of such lofty philosophies, and opposing, repressing and persecuting the progress of rational scientific thinking. Do so and you will come to clear conclusions about the past, the present and the future of such religions.

The Abrahamic religions believe in all sorts of irrational prophetic propositions which require brainwashing to proliferate and the sword to sustain. The Sanatan Dharma and science are self-sustaining for they are founded in truth, truth transcendental and truth empirical. Both are demonstrable, the former in the purified mind and the latter in the laboratory and in mathematical formulae.

Written by Sugata Bose