It was early in the morning once, about 5 am. It was December in Chicago and I looked outside my bedroom window on the snow-lined road. A snow-thrower machine had already come by and removed the snow collected by night. I saw in the semi-darkness, two big orange lights flashing as a rectangular big vehicle came to a halt. My mind raced fast—could it be a UFO? I was preparing to witness an extra-terrestrial conversation between an alien and a human coming out of their respective vehicles at that dark hour. My hopes dashed as I saw a boy with a school bag strapped to his shoulders walk into the vehicle, and as it took off, I discovered that it was the first trip of a school bus!
I was reminded of this scene when a friend invited me to take a look at the website of the Council of Science, Organisation for Research in Delta Physics—www.or-dp.org—headed by three youngsters, Kiran Sreedhar R, Athul Vasan and Vishnu A S, to help budding scientists. It was on science and spoke of alien sightings and time travel, among other topics. What has this got to do with a spiritual perspective of life?
Though the borders of science are closely merging into spirituality when it comes to subjects such as quantum physics, which tells us that each time someone observes this universe, the whole pattern changes. That is what Vedanta says Maya or illusion does to us. It never allows us to know her secrets completely. Each time you observe, the pattern has changed.
When the line is so much blurred, it still is unbelievable to know that people can dismiss off many things as other realms of experience, other worlds. Was this world created by any scientist? Did a scientist create soil? He can hardly assess the infinite potential hidden in just the five elements that constitute this world—earth, water, fire, air and space. After so many years of research, we are still grappling with trying to understand something called the mind and thoughts. Research documents on these subjects are in a crore tonnes and still counting!
Just as none of us living has created this world—to leave the world, even to design a tiny leaf of a tree, is not possible! The universe is so beautifully creating trees, plants, animals, men and all forms of species by the millions every morning along with the sunrise. What it creates, it destroys by itself in one day or many years. So much of science is happening naturally that our research can only be a thanksgiving. Just like the tree or the animal was created not by us, how sure can we be that there cannot be other worlds that are of a subtler material which is not visible to our range of sense perceptions? When there are a billion crore universes existing simultaneous to ours, how sure can we be about our little findings on this tiny little planet that cannot even be noticed in the vastness of things? This leaves man with just gratitude and sheer humility, to be thankful that they have an opportunity to be present and watch this magnificent scheme that unfolds before his eyes every morning!
—Swahilya Shambhavi (www.swahilya.blogspot.com)