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Vol. XIX, No. 1
93
"neti-neti” indescribable and hence not the object of reason. Fritjof Capra remarks:— the fact that humanity has not become wiser over the past two thousand years, inspite of a prodigious increase in rational knowlege is ample cvidence of the impossibility of communication of absolute knowledge by world (Ibid, p. 37). In fact, absolute knowledge or intuitive knowledge is an experience which comes in non-ordinary state of our consciousness.
Rational and intuitive knowledge, though distinguished from each other, occur both in the field of science and eastern mysticism. Capra holds, "Although Physicists are mainly concerned with rational knowledge and mystics with intuitive knowledge both types of knowledge occur in both fields" (Ibid P. 37). "Rational knowledge and rational activities certainly constitute the major part of scientific research, but are not all there is to it. The rational part of the research would, infact be useless if it were not complemented by the intuition that gives scientists new insights and makes them creative." (Ibid P. 39) However, the scientists do not stop with getting intuitive insights but they formulate them in consistant mathematical framework and suppliment it by an interpretation in plain language. For the scientists can not satisfy themselves with the ambiguous experience. They aim at clear definition and unambiguous connections and logic and mathematics help them in this connection.
Just as science needs intuition for its creative inventior.s, similarly the spirituality also needs rational knowledge specially for the communications of the experiences. Capra opines, "If there is an intuitive element in science, there is also a rational element in Eastern mysticism. The degree to which reason and logic are emphasized, however varies enormously from one school to the other."
The foundation of spirituality is experience in its broader sense where as the core of science is observation and experiment. By experience or direct experience, we mean to see the reality directly and it is not possible to
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