Science was dejected.  There seemed to be no point in everything he had ever understood. There was always something more to know, something more to explore. He was beginning to feel redundant. Now God couldn’t allow that !!!

God:  What is this new need to be attested my dear?  Why this overwhelming sense of failure? And that too when actually things are going right…

Science: Father, the goal of all life is to lead men to you. That is possible only through devotion, love, dedication, forgiveness – all of which are emotions!! I deal with the intellect and how ever much I am able to excite man and help him understand how the universe operates, I can never prompt the emotion of bhakti. I can never teach people to be loving. I can never ‘prove’ to them your benevolent presence. What am I even doing here?

God gently gathered Science into His arms. He held him lovingly, smoothening the frown on his brow. Science slowly dissolved into the Father’s Hug. The burden of feeling redundant was slowly but surely replaced with a sense of peace. Science let go of his million thoughts and dissolved into the Lord’s presence.

God: (in a whisper) Yes my dear, ultimately feeling my presence is an emotion. Union is possible only through bhakti. But you are very very crucial to the process of arriving to that point from where such a feeling is even possible.

Science: (slowly releasing himself from the Lord’s clasp) I don’t see how Father. When being dissolved in You is the foundation of Bliss, why at all try to find out the mechanisms and structures of matter?

God:  Because without employing that intellect, you will never choose to be on the path to find me!

Science remained silent. Was there any reality to that statement or was the Lord just trying to make him feel better?

God: (with a smile) See what I meant? You need your intellect to help you navigate down the right path. Else even that feeling remains an illusion.

Science was beginning to understand…

God: Let me be more explicit. My dear, you are a representative of the intellect in man. We know that his very presence is based on his physical existence – the body. Without taking care of his body, he doesn’t stand a chance to exist. His body is the only address he has in this life time. So he has to pay attention to keeping it fit and healthy. Second, he has a mental personality that helps him record and remember his actions. Thirdly he has an intellectual personality that helps him discriminate between right and wrong actions. He then has an emotional personality that records his feelings as positive or negative – pleasure or pain. And finally he has me – a spiritual connect that he is most often unaware of.

Science: I am understanding a bit Father… First he needs to be born with a physical body to even experience life. Then he needs to be taught to survive on the physical plane long enough by using his mental personality. He then needs intelligence to help learn discrimination between right action and wrong action…

God: …and that is where people miss out! Discrimination is the faculty of using one’s intelligence to make a choice. But this choice is not universal for all nor the same every time.  It is not about ‘knowing’ what is right and wrong from a rule book. It is about discovering what is right every time you encounter a situation. For that, the faculty of intelligence has to be cultivated. Let me show you… See those two women down on earth…

Two ladies were meeting up after a long gap of 25 years. Thanks to Facebook, they had got in touch with each other and realised they both lived in the same town. After a gap of 25 years, they were excited to meet each other and relive their growing years. Amidst a lot of laughter and smiles, they had lunch at a popular restaurant almost feeling like teenagers once again. After a couple of hours of joy, it was time to come back to the present. One of them asked her friend…

Woman 1: So how many kids do you have?

Woman 2: Oh I have a daughter! She just got married a few months ago. What a lovely child she is!!! And she is such an angel that her husband literally worships the ground she walks on!! He takes such good care of her. Doesn’t let her do anything. He provides for her every wish as if it were a command. He loves her so much that he holds her in such great esteem. It is so beautiful seeing the way he supports her… She is so lucky!

Woman 1: Oh that is beautiful… She is indeed blessed to have such a man…

Woman 2: So how about you? How many children do you have?

Woman 1: Oh I have a son and he too has been married a few months now. But I am so disappointed with the girl! She doesn’t do anything!!! My son is so enamoured by her, he literally treats her like a queen. Her every wish is like a command. He is so totally besotted that he literally worships her… It is disgusting… I wonder when he will wake up to reality!

Science smiled. He understood His Father’s point.

God:  My dear child. Everything that happens is an event. Someone marries someone, someone wins something, someone loses something, someone gets a new toy, someone dies… everything is a mere event. But how you process it is what makes it an experience. Now that experience gets recorded in your memory and automatically every time you have a similar event, you will react the same way. Emotions by themselves are incapable of being dropped. Because impurity has a way of clinging. You cannot drop the negative without bringing in the positive. But to bring in the positive, you need to employ your intelligence! You need to first know what is positive and what is negative.

Science: Hmmm… One has to be emotionally intelligent… But man seems to have left me or rather the intellect out of the equation Father! People think devotion is all that is needed to reach you. They think blind faith will compensate for lack of discrimination.

God:  I know my child. But that is not because spirituality was presented that way! It is because man has failed to understand. Take the ancient science of yoga – the masterpiece that till today is revered as the science of spirituality. Patanjali, the proponent of yoga so clearly states that you cannot drop the mind when it is impure. Imagine you are a painter. Unless your painting is completed, you will continue to be haunted by it. You cannot sleep, nor enjoy till you know it has been finished. Same is the case with all men. Businessmen can never ‘drop their mind’ till they feel successful. You cannot drop an impure mind because it has a way of clinging!

Science:  But how does one even begin the process of purifying the mind? Hoe does one know what is right and what is wrong when there is no universal right or wrong?

God: (with a gentle smile) it is one of the most fundamental and easy processes. One can begin to purify their mind when one starts thinking!

Science:  What? But isn’t that something every one already does? It doesn’t seem to have helped one bit!

God: No my dear. People have thoughts; they don’t think! Having thoughts is not the same as thinking. Sixty thousand thoughts pass a man’s mind a day. But most of them are borrowed. They did not originate in him. Every passerby has infringed into his mind to leave behind a trail of thoughts. There is no connectivity, no common thread. And vagrant thoughts are like a crowd that drain you of energy. No wonder humanity has a chronic disease of lack of energy. Thoughts drain you of energy when they did not arise out of your ‘thinking’. Thinking is a process – an act by which a man of positive reasoning will discard all thoughts that are not his own, all that have been borrowed. When you stop letting the vagrant thoughts of others from entering your conscious mind, you begin to start ‘thinking’ – the creative process by which you discriminate.

Science: So thinking is a capacity achieved by discipline!

God: Exactly ! Thinking means to retain your consciousness, to remain alert and aware. Only then can you use your faculty of thinking every time you encounter the same situation. It is no longer a pre-programmed answer drawn from your memory. it is born afresh from your thinking.

Science: Then my job is not to record and present all the discoveries but to inspire them to wonder for new understanding!

God: Yes my dear. Once the process of thinking instigates the intellect to discriminate each time between the right action and wrong action, ‘borrowed’ thoughts and ideals cease.  Purity of thoughts is possible only when you are the one thinking. Purity of thoughts lead to purity of feelings. So first the negative is replaced with the positive. And then the pure thoughts and feelings can easily be dropped to dissolve in me. Without the intellect to help purify, one cannot drop his mind.

Science: So when a man says I cannot drop my mind, I cannot stop my thoughts, I don’t want to surrender my intelligence, he is merely stating my thoughts and feelings have not been purified yet by my intellect to give rise to the faculty of conscious thinking.

God: Yes! Now such a man cannot drop his mind, for the impure mind is too heavy to drop.

Science: Thank you Father! I now understand. The intelligence I represent must be so perfect, must be so pure that only when one can embrace it at will, they can also drop it at will.

Written by Gita Krishna Raj  |  Published in infinithoughts in December 2013

When Science met God… |  Segment Three: The making of me…  |  Chapter Five: The purpose of intelligence