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Ayurveda
Yet the deeper knowledge not only relates to spiritual practices, but to bringing well-being to all aspects of our nature as well. In the Vedic sciences, human well-being is defined as the harmony of body, mind, prana and soul (Atman or Purusha). Ayurveda, Vedic medicine, shows us how to find health and well-being through understanding the forces of nature and consciousness both within and around us.
The main different between Ayurveda and what we could call scientific medicine is that it recognizes an underlying prana or vital energy behind all bodily activities. Modern medicine tries to explain all these processes, sometimes extending to human emotion and intelligence, according to biochemistry alone, as if there were no conscious entity or force of life behind the process. In this regard, modern medicine is often more reductionist and physically based than is modern physics!
The concept of prana posits an overall field of energy and intelligence as a totalistic and holistic power to explain the factors of life at both individual and cosmic levels. As science is now looking for an underlying consciousness behind the universe to explain the laws of physics, it must also look to an underlying cosmic life-force behind life to explain its development. An organic system must include some unique being above and beyond its particular components, processes or chemical reactions.
Vedic Astrology
If we live in a conscious universe, then the lights of the stars which illumine our world must reflect some power of consciousness as well. Jyotish or Vedic astrology is aimed at helping us understand how the lights of the stars and planets affects our own bodies and minds and the fate of our world as a whole.
Time is not simply a force of physics but a power of intelligence and a process of the manifestation of consciousness. Vedic astrology helps us understand the karmic influences coming to us from the greater universe as channeled through the sun, moon and planets of the solar system. It holds that time is not simply neutral or a mere continuum but reflects various rhythms which project forces that affect the life and karma of living beings.
That time is projecting karma through the movement of the luminaries or heavenly bodies is an idea that seems illogical to modern science. But if we recognize that the universe is pervaded by consciousness, we can recognize that light ultimately is a power of consciousness, which means that astronomy must recognize astrology.
Astronomers have often complained that astrology is illogical. Yet actions that go beyond time and space or the ordinary laws of physics are part and parcel of the new physics. With its quarks and quasars, its uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics, physics does not appear any stranger than astrology. Such subtle connections of the new physics may provide some eventual credence for astrology as well.
Conclusion
Once we recognize the place and value of both the outer and inner sciences, we can learn to use both to improve our lives on all levels. This should be our real work as a species and it can be a great adventure of discovery and transformation. This universal pursuit of knowledge can be used to set aside our political and religious differences, which are not a matter of truth or direct perception but of clashing beliefs and opinions. The ultimate unity of science and spirituality can provide a light forward to a true global age of peace and harmony. In such a world the inner technologies of Yoga will be found to be as important as the latest advances in technology, if not more so.
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