Convergence or Divergence?

Abstract

In a world torn by contention and strife at every level, from the spiritual and intellectual to the physical, those in quest of the creation of peace and harmony have often turned to the task of seeking accord between spirituality and science. The contemporary landscape is in fact filled by such efforts many of which, although based on the best of intentions, only contribute to further chaos in the present-day world. Many such attempts substitute sentimental wishing for reality and ambiguous definitions and positions for the clarity and rigor which alone can disperse the fog of ignorance that blurs the vision of present-day humanity traveling on a road that becomes even more perilous thanks to a large extent to the lack of critical discernment in the relation between a knowledge derived from the senses and its consequences and the wisdom which descends from revelation, intellection or illumination. The “harmony” between science and spirituality, characteristic of much of the so-called New Age mentality in the West and also numerous westernized Orientals who speak without a clear definition of the concepts involved and modes of knowledge and consciousness at play within the boundaries of what is to be harmonized and unified, is itself one of the sources of discord and cacophony in a world in which intellectual discernment, so long a hallmark of all metaphysical traditions especially those of India, is too easily sacrificed for ambiguous and disruptive accords which cannot but lead to discord as long as one mistakes the rope for a snake. The subject of the relation between religion and science, and for those embarrassed by the use of the term religion, then between spirituality and science, remains for other reasons of paramount importance in a world in which on the one hand a science of nature based upon