Art, Science and Spirit

The fundamental difference between art and science is that one is movement towards finer sentiments, and the other is a rational expression, with each and every stage having cause and effect.

What is art? You do so many things. If you do these things in a fine way, in a subtle style, then within that style, they come within the scope of art, as in the art of saying, writing and languages. When you are doing something along a rational line or on the basis of logic, and at the same time, you are drawing attention to cause and effect, it is science.

In this world, everything comes within the scope of causality. Nothing in this world is non-casual. What we can detect by seeing has got some causal factor. You see sugar. What is the cause of sugar?

The cause of sugar is sugar cane or sugar beet. Sugar is the effect. Then, where sugar cane or sugar beet is the effect, the seed is the cause. So, in all spheres of life, there is a cause. What is science? Science means that which is based on rationality and pays proper attention to cause and effect.

Spiritual practice comes within the scope of science. The first scientist who invented forms, there is intellect, but no intuition. In the cause of human beings, there is both intellect and intuition.

Once Parvati asked Shiva how one is to know that devotion is the only way, and how when one feels that devotion is the only way, one can devote one's all possibilities, potentiality, and stamina in developing devotion. When one devotes everything to Parama Purusa, those devoted propensities of the human mind make a man a devotee, and his faculties are then known as devotion.

Shiva says that this self-realization, when the subjective portion of the mind is metamorphosed into consciousness, other knowledge is of no avail.

A shadow has two portions - the umbra and the penumbra. Shiva says that neither the umbra nor penumbra is gyan. All objective knowledge, where knowing means subjectivisation of objectivity, is actually not knowledge.

There lies the umbra and penumbra of shadows. By seeing the umbra and penumbra, you cannot have a proper idea of the actual thing. There is a lichee tree and there is a guava tree. By seeing the shadows, you can't understand which is which. You have to see the original tree. This was the reply given by Shiva.

The question asked by Parvati was, "Oh Lord, there are so many people who says, this is a holy place that is an unholy place". They go on moving throughout the world in search of so many tirthas, places of pilgrimage. What should be the correct approach?"

Behind that final form of the expressed world, there lies covered the supreme consciousness, the Atma. So atma is the best tirtha. Rather Atma is the only tirtha.

All are spiritual aspirants. Your movement is not from subtle to crude, but from crude to subtle. You must not neglect this crude world, because your existence is being nourished by this crude world. That is why you should pay your proper respect to the crude world also. That is why we believe in subjective approach through objective adjustment.