Can Science and Spirituality Answer the Same Questions?

Heisenberg, Bohr, and Schrodinger all engaged with Vedanta while formulating quantum mechanics.

Bhṛgu asks his father Varuṇi to teach him Brahman. Varuṇi hands him an investigation instead, and sends him back four times. Twenty-five centuries later, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and Bohr reach the same wall from the opposite direction.

The Son Who Kept Coming Back

Somewhere between 600 and 300 BCE, in a forest ashram in northern India, a young man named Bhṛgu walks up to his father and asks him the biggest question a student of the Vedas can ask. 'Sir, teach me Brahman.'

His father's name is Varuṇi. Varuṇi does not give him a definition. Varuṇi gives him a research method. 'That from which these beings are born, by which when born they live, into which they enter at death. Seek to know that. That is Brahman.' The Sanskrit is tad vijijñāsasva. The verb is the desiderative form of jñā, the wish to know, the burning curiosity that does not rest with secondhand information. Varuṇi has not answered his son. He has reframed the question into an investigation.

Bhṛgu goes off to do tapas (concentrated inner work) and comes back with an answer. 'Food is Brahman. From food these beings are born, by food they live, into food they go at the end.' Varuṇi does not tell him he is wrong. Varuṇi says: seek more.

Bhṛgu does more tapas. He comes back. Prāṇa, breath, is Brahman. Varuṇi: seek more. Bhṛgu returns. Manas, mind, is Brahman. Varuṇi: seek more. Bhṛgu returns. Vijñāna, discriminating knowledge, is Brahman. Varuṇi: seek more. Finally Bhṛgu comes back with ānanda, bliss, the deepest layer, and the Taittirīya Upaniṣad marks the inquiry as complete.

This is a strange story if you are expecting a religious text. It is not strange at all if you are expecting a description of how rigorous science actually works. A student asks a question. The teacher refuses to answer and sends the student to investigate. The student returns with a partial answer. The teacher accepts it as partial and sends the student back for more. The process iterates until the student reaches a layer the inquiry cannot penetrate further. That is a research program.