IS SPIRITUALITY AN ART OR SCIENCE?

IS SPIRITUALITY AN ART OR SCIENCE?

 While I was reading the quotations on Art and Soul that appeared in sacred space column of TOI (June11, 2011) as a mark of respect to legendary artist M.F.Husain, a question arose in my mind – Is spirituality an art or science? Is it both art and science or neither?

The quotation by Rabindranath Tagore describing art as the response of man’s creative soul to the call of the Real appeared to align spirituality to art. The quotation of Claudia Lady Bird Jhonson describing art as window to man’s soul, quotation of Theodore Dreiser describing art as the stored honey of human soul and that of Hafiz describing art as one that makes divine silence in the soul break into applause speak of art as an expression of spirituality and vice versa

Swami Sivananda explains that both science and spirituality are engaged in search of truth. Their attitudes are same but fields of application vary. Science analyses, classifies and explains phenomena whereas spirituality transcends phenomena to attain immortality. Another great saint of 20^th century Acharya Vinoba Bhave explains that science investigates universal self (vishvatma) whereas spirituality explores inner self (antaratma). Science light ups the exterior whereas spirituality enlightens inner self. Both are mutually supportive and lead to expansion, unity of mankind and world at large.

The science relates to objects and is therefore objective in nature defined by rules of external world whereas adhyatma or spirituality refers to content, innermost essence of the experiencing subject and is a subjective matter. The objective world (drashya/seen) and subject (drashta/seer) appear two distinct entities but Vedanta explains that in the ultimate analysis, object and subject are not different.  The substratum behind the objective world is called universal spirit (Tat/that) and substratum behind experiencing subject (Tvam /Thou) are not different and hence thou art that (Tat Tvam Asi) is the core message of upanishada. In other words, Iswara, the lord of manifested universe and jiva, the inner ruler are same in essence.

The whole debate reminds me of a lesson learnt by me in college days that tablet coating is an art than a science. The fact is that tablet coating is profoundly scientific process based on several kinetic and dynamic principles. Yet it requires an art, a subjective judgment of the coating process to be able to execute it skillfully and successfully. This can be safely extrapolated to infer that spirituality also entails both art and science. The working of body, mind and intellect (BMI) has to be tuned in an orderly and disciplined way in any spiritual practice and hence it is profoundly scientific as clearly felt in Raja yoga practice.  At the same time spirituality refers to raising our consciousness from BMI equipment to divine consciousness, from plurality to one and non-dual principle transcending body mind intellect and is an art as clearly experienced in transcendental meditation. Spirituality is thus both art and science.

From another point of view, doctrine of negation, spirituality can be described as neither science not art but absolute consciousness and bliss that remains after subletting all manifestations in the domain of art, science or anything else  for that matter.  Chidananda rupa sivoham sivoham, the finest message of Adi Sankaracharya in Atmashatak/Nirvanashtak