Volume VII, Issue 4
Author: Beloo Mehra
In 1939, Sri Aurobindo wrote a beautiful sonnet, titled ‘A Dream of Surreal Science‘.
One dreamed and saw a gland write Hamlet, drink
At the Mermaid, capture immortality;
A committee of hormones on the Aegean’s brink
Composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.
A thyroid, meditating almost nude
Under the Bo-tree, saw the eternal Light
And, rising from its mighty solitude,
Spoke of the Wheel and eightfold Path all right.
A brain by a disordered stomach driven
Thundered through Europe, conquered, ruled and fell,
From St Helena went, perhaps, to Heaven.
Thus wagged on the surreal world, until
A scientist played with atoms and blew out
The universe before God had time to shout.
The poem, undoubtedly, is a wonderful illustration of Sri Aurobindo’s great sense of humour as well as his vast knowledge of human physiology such as the role of hormones as chemical messengers which regulate physiology and behaviour. For instance, thyroid hormones influence brain function throughout life.
But what makes this sonnet even more significant are its last two lines. It was written in 1939. Six years later, the United States of America dropped two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August 1945, respectively. War or the threat of war was changed for ever. The game of geopolitics and international relations has never been the same ever since. A prophetic poem indeed!
On 28 August, 1945, the Mother responded to a disciple’s question about the use of atomic bomb. She said:
The atomic bomb is in itself the most wonderful achievement and the sign of a growing power of man over the material Nature. But what is to be regretted is that this material progress and mastery is not the result of and keeping on with a spiritual progress and mastery which alone has the power to contradict and counteract the terrible danger coming from these discoveries. We cannot and must not stop progress but we must achieve it in an equilibrium between the inside and the outside.
WATCH
The essence of the Truth that Sri Aurobindo’s satirical poem reveals found a different expression in The Life Divine where he writes:
We see that a seed develops into a tree, we follow the line of the process of production and we utilise it; but we do not discover how a tree can grow out of a seed, how the life and form of the tree come to be implied in the substance or energy of the seed or, if that be rather the fact, how the seed can develop into a tree. We know that genes and chromosomes are the cause of hereditary transmissions, not only of physical but of psychological variations; but we do not discover how psychological characteristics can be contained and transmitted in this inconscient material vehicle.
We do not see or know, but it is expounded to us as a cogent account of Nature-process, that a play of electrons, of atoms and their resultant molecules, of cells, glands, chemical secretions and physiological processes manages by their activity on the nerves and brain of a Shakespeare or a Plato to produce or could be perhaps the dynamic occasion for the production of a Hamlet or a Symposium or a Republic; but we fail to discover or appreciate how such material movements could have composed or necessitated the composition of these highest points of thought and literature: the divergence here of the determinants and the determination becomes so wide that we are no longer able to follow the process, much less understand or utilise.
These formulae of Science may be pragmatically correct and infallible, they may govern the practical how of Nature’s processes, but they do not disclose the intrinsic how or why; rather they have the air of the formulae of a cosmic Magician, precise, irresistible, automatically successful each in its field, but their rationale is fundamentally unintelligible.
In Sri Aurobindo’s integral vision we find perfect answers to all questions that Science leaves unanswered. We also find a perfect harmony between the inner and outer progress, “the equilibrium between the inside and the outside” that the Mother speaks of, the material and the spiritual.
To explore this, in October 2025, we started serialising a long but important essay by Jugal Kishore Mukherji. The article titled Science and Spirituality: An Unnecessary Antimony and a Harmonious Reconciliation was first published in the special issue of Mother India (1968, Vol. XX, No. 10-11) which commemorated the 25th anniversary of Sri Aurobindo International Center of Education (SAICE). The issue featured several important articles by SAICE teachers.
In part 1 of the essay, the author pointed out that it is not so much spirituality and Yoga as the accredited credal religions that historically clashed with the spirit and findings of Science. He also briefly discussed the difference between spirituality and religion. In part 2 we read Mukherji’s description of an integral, all-embracing dynamic spiritual vision of Sri Aurobindo which does not make a formidable division between Spirit and Matter.
In part 3, the author emphasised that an integral spirituality harmonises all knowledge and all experience in the truth of a supreme and all-reconciling oneness. It ordains man to cross beyond death through avidyā and enjoy Immortality by the Knowledge, avidyayā mṛtyuṁ tīrtvā vidyayā’mṛtamaśnute.
To its vision, Matter too is Brahman, annam brahma, and so it does not seek to annul or deny the positive knowledge which Science has gathered from an elaborate investigation and exploration of the processes of life and nature. It only completes it by pointing out that the true foundation is above while the branchings are downward, so that to know the essential truth of things as distinguished from their phenomenal appearances, one has to probe upward and inward instead of remaining content with only surface scrutiny.
Current Issue
In this issue, we bring the series to a close by presenting the rest of the essay in three parts. In part 4, Mukherji enumerates the most important attributes of the scientific method using which scientists often level certain charges against spirituality. The author suggests that if Science has to accept Spirituality as a partner in progress, these objections must be examined and rejected only after due consideration. He does this with the help of insights from Sri Aurobindo, one of the greatest mystics and yogis.
The author continues to examine objections raised by Science against Spirituality with the help of insights from Sri Aurobindo in the next part. He discusses that there need not be any essential contradiction between the results gathered by Science and those obtained by Spirituality in their respective fields. In the concluding part, Mukherji remarks that a sincere and unbiased pursuit of any branch of human knowledge, if not hampered with erroneous preconceptions and ill-founded prejudices, cannot but lead the seeker to the door-step of the integral approach to Reality as propounded by Sri Aurobindo.
We hope our readers will enjoy going through these offerings in this issue. As always, we offer this work at the lotus feet of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.
In gratitude,
Beloo Mehra (for Renaissance Editorial Team)
~ Video by Suhas Mehra
