Integral Yoga - Articles - Science and Inner Frontiers of Knowledge (Abstract)

Science and Inner Frontiers of Knowledge

(Abstract)

Science is itself an inner frontier of knowledge, since it takes us beyond “appearance” and gives us incontrovertible proof of reality or realities that are active and produce effective physical consequences. The remarkable phenomenon of recent advances in the core science is the discovery of the non-computable, the mystery of which invites us to fathom deeper and much beyond our present frontiers. Will these interior frontiers give us “knowledge”? Will that knowledge merit the title of “science”? Or will it be beyond science?

If knowledge is not a mere string of ideas or even a system of ideas or abstractions, if knowledge consists of possession in our own consciousness of the object of knowledge through experience, repeatable experience and verifiable experience that is capable of producing consequences or experiences, equally repeatable and verifiable, ‒ if this is the heart of science, then the same claim can be justifiably made of a body of knowledge that is called Yoga. The speciality of yoga is that it opens before us inner and higher frontiers of knowledge, and it aids us in producing results that can unite the various vistas of knowledge that can be employed for the highest possible fulfilment of humanity.

Yoga is veritably an exploration of consciousness through consciousness, and it has so developed through a historical course of development that it is today a methodized effort by which inmost and highest faculties of knowledge can be developed and perfected and by which the individual can universalise itself and can also identify itself with the transcendental which can be experienced as the source, origin and constituent of what we call subjective and objective cosmos and its operations. In the realm of experience that is covered in yoga, it is claimed, all domains of experience that lie behind what we call science, philosophy, art and technology can be covered in a manner that is appropriate to their intensities and highest certainties. The basic discovery of yoga lies in the ascertainment of the object of knowledge, status of knowledge and subject of knowledge. The object of knowledge in yoga is the entire cosmos as also that which lies behind the cosmos; the status of knowledge is that inner vision and experience that brings the unity and identity of the subject and the object of knowledge. And the subject of knowledge is not merely the instrument of sense-experience nor even egoistic consciousness which unifies states of perception, thoughts and feelings, but that which widens itself into universal individuality that is capable of union with the Transcendental which is at the origin of the universe.

Yoga claims that it is a progressive process of discovery and it travels into inner and inmost and also wider and widest as also to higher and highest frontiers of knowledge and that its methods are rigorous, and although there is a great possibility of error and misjudgment, which are inherent in the processes of expansion of subjective consciousness, it has developed and it can develop vigorous tests of subjectivity and objectivity and arrive at intense certitudes.

Considering that consciousness is now being acknowledged to be an indispensable element for scientific inquiry, even in the realm of what we call matter, fresh investigations are bound to be initiated and developed in the coming decades, and yoga will, in that context will need to be revisited and developed into newer domains and applications.