Science – “Two ” Short to Rope the Universe

The Damodara lila is a historic pastime in which mother Yashoda tried to tie Kr­ishna with a rope. The rope turned out to be two fingers short. So she tied more rope, but, no matter how many ropes she tied to­gether, the combined rope remained two fingers short.

This pastime signifies that no matter how much we try, we will always fall short in our attempts to understand God with our intelligence which, the Vedic literatures state, is a product of God’s superintelli­gence. Centuries of cosmological research has increased scientific information, but not scientific understanding, because of “two” un­expected problems:

I. The more scientists know, the more they realize how little they know : Science “conquered” space – and realized how little it knew about space. To the uninformed, space missions proved human greatness. To the well­informed, they showed human smallness. Space research reveals that there are more celestial bodies in the universe than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of earth, and our earth is just one of these cosmic grains.

II. The more scientists know, the more they realize what they previ­ously “knew” was wrong : Newton’ laws were considered bedrock truths of physics till they were found inapplicable in the micro­scopic and the macroscopic realms. Quantum physics was devel­oped to explain the atomic world, and relativistic physics for the cosmic. But then both of them turned out to be violently contra­dictory. As both have to coexist at the origin of the universe – when both the microscopic and the macroscopic realms were one, science had to devise a Theory of Everything (ToE) to unify these irreconcilable pillars. Let’s review the history of the ToE:

1. Initial vain roar: Physicist Leon Lederman, former President of the American Physical Society stated, “We hope to explain

the entire universe in a single, simple formula that you can wear on your T­shirt.”

2. Subsequent exasperated grunt: Astrophysicist Steven Wein­berg, a Noble Laureate in Physics admitted, “As we make progress understanding the expanding universe, the problem itself expands, so that the solution always seems to recede from us.”

3. Final concealed whimper: Theoretical physicist John Wheeler of Princeton University quipped, “Never run after a bus or woman or cosmological theory, because there’ll always be an­other one in a few minutes.”

 Going back to the pastime, the rope Mother Yashoda was trying to tie around Krishna was short. But the rope of ToE that science has been trying to tie around the universe is not only short, but also bro­ken, as Stephen Hawking confessed, “The theories (in physics) we have so far are both inconsistent and incomplete.”

Mother Yashoda did eventually succeed in tying Krishna— but only when Krishna, by His own grace, let Himself be bound. Simi­larly, science can understand the universe, especially our place and purpose within it—but only when it harmonizes with superintelli­gence by researching and applying the verifiable spiritual science delineated in the Bhagavad­gita, thus paving the way for spiritual revelation.

That’s not as unscientific as it may sound. A scientist no lesser than the founder of quantum physics, Noble Laureate Max Planck stated, “For religion, God is at the beginning; for science, God is at the end.” Science has started reaching that end by its discovery of the “fine tuning” of the universe – micro­precise adjustment of the values and inter­relationships of at least 80 parameters essential for life. Obviously fine­tuning needs a fine tuner.

Lest scientists hesitate or falter in embarking on the spiritual leap within science that is called for by the verdict of their own evidence, renowned physicist Michael Faraday’s reminder can urge them on, “We ought to value the privilege of knowing God’s truth far beyond anything we can have in this world.”