“Marvelous indeed is the Lord’s universe.  Within it He is working all His wonders of creation.  Do not be a walking “dead man” in this world; observe, analyze, and appreciate what God and his agent, man Have wrought here.  How intricate is the universal mechanism!  Reflect on the way we are made, and in what orderly fashion the whole machinery of creation runs according to cosmic law.” (pp.251, Man’s Eternal Quest)

RELATIVITY AND SPIRITUALITY

 By Dr. Stephen Brena

One of the aims of Self-Realization Fellowship is: "To unite science and religion through the realization of the unity of their underlying principles." This short summary of some contemporary scientific trends and theories is intended to show how the empirical evidence of Relativity in physics, psychology and social science is converging toward a possible meeting point with the fundamental principles of Spirituality. The topics presented in this brief essay are complex and still controversial in an ongoing debate between basic materialistic scientists and those other scientists who are edging toward ancient spiritual principles when trying to understand the deep meaning of their own empirical data. Those who wish to know more about the topics touched upon in this essay may want to read two highly informative books: "The Hidden Face of God" by Gerald L.Schroeder and "The Quantum Self" by Danah Zohar.

For most of the Dark and Middle Ages human beings have been ruled by the principle  of Authority: secular authority of Emperors, Kings and Dictators, absolute moral and religious authority of the Church, intellectual authority of the philosophers, particularly Aristotle, at least in Europe. Racial, gender and class discrimination was rigidly enforced by the dominant Authority, with very little individual freedom of expression. Any challenge to the principle of Authority was likely to be punished by imprisonment or death. For instance, it is well known that when Galileo in the seventeen century dared to challenge the Aristotelian cosmology, which placed the earth at the center of the Universe, was harshly threatened by the catholic Inquisition and forced to give up publicly the challenge to the Catholic Church, which supported the Aristotelian cosmology on false theological grounds.

Little was changed by the scientific revolution of the seventeen, eighteen and nineteen centuries. From the physics of Isaac Newton a new view of the material world emerged, a world made of separate objects, like so many billiard balls attracted or repulsed by fixed, pre-determined forces. While the new empirical science some what weakened the authority of the Church, it put in its place rigid social rules of "proper" behavior, like the forces of Newtonian physics, predetermined with little opportunity for individual self-expression. Minorities discrimination remained socially if no longer church reinforced. Probably, Victorian british society is the best known exemple of such "mechanistic" culture.

By the beginning of the twenty century, with the advent of a new physics, everything changed. The birth date of Relativity may be traced to the year 1905 when Einstein first published his famous theory of the equivalence of energy and matter. Soon after, in the following decades, Quantum physics was empirically developed. No longer is the material world viewed as a collection of separate objects, but as a "whole" of Quantum waves that are at the same time particles of matter. The Quantum wave "collapses" into a particle when "observed" during a laboratory experiment. From Quantum physics a complete new way of thinking emerged. To put it in the most simple terms, the Universe .. and us in it .. is an immense "Field," an ocean of energy, from which waves emerge with the potential to collapse into particles of matter; particle do not exist in separation of the Field, but are in "non local" relationship with everything else in the Field. In other words, the behavior of a particle influences all other Quantum events outside any space-time dimension. Slowly this Quantum holism is transitioning into a new cultural paradigm, a "globalism" which views people and nations no longer as separate entities, in perpetual existential conflict with each other, but as a "whole," tied together by common and complex relationships. Paradoxically, this transition is evolving out of an extreme moral relativism, born out of new psychological theories in the early decades of the twenty century.

It is not likely that Sigmud Freud knew much about the new physics nor about the Bhagavad Gita, but it is remarkable how much his new psychology shows similarities with both. The Bhagavad Gita first came to Europe in a German translation early in the nineteen century and by the beginning of the twenty century it was widely known and appreciated in Europe and in the United States. Quite strangely, the psychology of Freud seems to resonate with the echo of the Gita battle of Kurukshetra, the symbolic existential conflict between the forces of good and evil. Freud saw the human ego perpetually pressured by two opposing forces: the forces of the subconscious, what he called the "Id," and those of the "Superego." The "Id" expresses the powerful human desires for material gratifications, with particular emphasis .. in the Freudian psychology .. to the sexual impulses. The "Superego" expresses the age old principles of authority, with its moral absolutism, social prejudices and other imperatives. By using a "quantum" language, one could say that the Ego "collapses" the conflicting waves of the "Id" and the "Superego" into behaviors which are relative to the resolution of this existential struggle at different stages of personal maturation and experience.

During the decades following Freud, in the forties, fifties, sixties, up to the end of the twenty century, philosophers and psychologists have argued that the demands of the "Superego" are too authoritative and impose an intolerable pressure upon the ego, resulting in a variety of neurotic and psychotic syndromes. These post-Freudian thinkers proposed to culturally remove the authority of the "Superego" by removing all traditional moral restrictions to human behaviors: "if something makes me feeling good, it must be good" became the pasword of the new culture, of the "flower childen" of the late sixties and of the present day "fans" of the "religion" of sensual hedonism, so powerfully "preached" by the media and the Holliwood elites out of obvious commercial interests.

By the early eighties, as the cultural damages caused by unrestricted hedonism became more and more openly displayed on the TV screens, by the statistics of rising criminality, and in the clinics of mental health everywhere, many scientists started proposing new models of thinking. They are known by different names such as "General System Theory," or "Science of Complexity"; they postulate that empirical phenomena can be best understood and described by concepts and language borrowed from any one and all contemporary academic domains, an intellectual holism which may be a reflection of the conception of Quantum holism.

Along these new ways of thinking, the ego is no longer conceptualized as a "prisoner" of the Superego, but as a free agent, which defines and evolves itself by its own choices of behavior and its relationships. If these are "good", the human personality evolves harmoniously and well integrated, if they poor, personality problems may follow. In other words, the concept and the practice of hedonism is shifting from its deterministic cultural roots into personal choices which may reflect personal values. As postulated by Quantum physics, the role of the "observer," i.e. the human personality, is essential in determining choices of behavior, just as the particular set up of a physical experiment is essential in determining the outcome of the experiment itself.

To many SRF students who are familiar with the revelations of Truth in the teaching of Paramahansa Yogananda, particularly the Commentary of the Bhagavad Gita and of the New Testaments, the preceding brief summary of current physical and social theories of Relativity may highlight their validity and their weak points.

First of all, it has been well known in Vedic India that the very fabric of the Universe is relativity itself, the dualistic "Maya." The Newtonian physics with its separation of matter into "solid objects," whose movements are regulated by fixed, mechanical forces, is Maya itself, while the new physics strips "Maya" of its "tricks" by empirically demonstrating the puzzling duality wave-particle. Furthermore, the conception of a universal "Field" of energy as a kind of matrix (an "ocean") from which all vibrating waves of energy emerge, is as close as an empirical science can go to conceptualize rationally the intuition of the primordial "AUM" in the advanced yogis.

Secondly, morality itself has a relativistic nature. On one side the principles of morality are based on the laws of Righteousness .. the eternal Dharma .., which are above all cultural and historical changes. On the other side, the practice of morality is relative to changing circumstances and conditions in the life of individuals, societies and nations. For example, the commandment of Non-killing is morally and legally valid to day as it was in the time of Moses, but killing an enemy soldier in a just war of defense against an aggressor is a moral and civic duty.

Thirdly, the idea that the ego can be "liberated" by removing all traditional moral restrictions is very much wrong. In a moral vacuum the ego is just made a slave of its own unlimited desires, which can never be appeased as the readers of the Bhagavad Gita well know.

On the other side, the idea that human personality can be shaped by its own choices and relationship is a step into the right direction, but still has a great deal of weakness. Most of human choices are not truly free, but are conditioned by habits; a great spiritual law, mentioned in Chapter XVIII of the Gita, states: "The stronger is the power of habits, the weaker the power of free will is." In a cultural moral vacuum, choices of behaviors and relationship are more likely to follow the easy path of habitual hedonism rather than reflect firmly held personal values. When so many pleasures are offered so easily and in such abundance, who is that person strong enough to choose moderation and self-control and by what means can he or she do so, even if he/she chooses the right way?

Contemporary social scientists believe that the answer to this question is found in a learning process over time by which a person would be likely to disregard activities which have resulted in unpleasant consequences in favor of other actions more likely to meet his or her own best interests and true needs. Behavior psychologists believe that cognitive behavior training is a useful method to help a person to get in touch with his or her deep needs and legitimate desires and so to behave accordingly.

Disciples of Paramahansa Yogananda know of a much more effective and faster method to "learn how to behave" (to quote the immortal words of Swami Sri Yukteswar), namely Kriya Yoga. Using intuition as an instrument of knowledge in the inner laboratory of personal experience, through Kriya meditation, the meditator realizes what the physicists try to understand empirically through their sophisticated technology: the wholeness of all creation as infinite variations of energy frequencies .. vibrations .. from the primordial, mighty vibration of AUM. As the yogi perceives the AUM vibrating in each atom of the body, expanding everywhere, he/she realizes that the human body itself is also an inseparable element of the Whole, a unique wave in the cosmic ocean of AUM. As the meditator feels vibrating energy flowing from the periphery of the body into the spine awakening the sleeping "chakras" therein, it can be said, by using a Freudian language, that the forces of the "Id," lodged in the lower three spinal centers as subconscious material desires, are neutralized. When energy is consciously uplifted to the upper spinal centers, the ego metamorphoses itself into soul awareness, perceived as peace, love, joy. With further ascension of energy and consciousness to the brain centers, the tyrannical "Superego" of Freud becomes the inner perception of Superconsciousness, the gentle mentor of all goodness and beauty. Finally, when the spiritual eye of wisdom is opened, the advanced yogi intuits what physicists at the cutting edge of science, are beginning to suspect from their empirical observations, namely the presence in all vibratory phenomena of an Intelligence, a nonmaterial Principle which seems to guide teleologically (toward a common end) the complexity of cosmic evolution. When the successful yogi comes out of meditation, he/she finds that same Intelligence effortlessly guiding choices of behavior in loving service to all.

In the language of Behavior Psychology, it can be understood that Kriya Yoga is a complete system of behavior training, where precious rewards of physical and mental health, of expanding inner wellness and intuitions are gained at each of the eight yogic steps toward Self-Realization.

Lastly, it can be said that in Self-Realization the Kriya Yogi stands firmly and wisely with the feet in the world of Relativity and the consciousness in the domain of Spirituality, the abode of Reality.