From such passages, one can find remarkable similarities between Vivekanandas thoughts and those of modern philosopher-cosmologists such as John Wheeler and Martin Rees, especially the concept of the big crunch and the idea of a multiverse. One cannot overemphasise that Vivekananda expressed these thoughts in 1895, 10 years before the much-celebrated set of papers of Albert Einstein was published, heralding a new age in Physics.

VIVEKANANDA AND TESLA

A tangible link between such ideas and the real world of science was the engineer-inventor Nikola Tesla. Years before Vivekanandas visit to the US, the Hungarian-born Tesla had already made several path-breaking discoveries. For instance, arc lighting (1886), alternating current power generation, motors, and transmission systems (1888), and the Tesla coil transformer (1891). In January and February 1896, he most likely attended Vivekanandas lectures in Hard-man Hall or Madison Square Garden, New York, as Vivekananda later mentioned in an address at Kumbakonam:

I have myself been told by some of the best scientific minds of the day how wonder-fully rational the conclusions of Vedanta are. I know one of them personally, who scarcely has time to eat his meal or go out of his laboratory, but who yet would stand by the hour to attend my lectures on the Vedanta; for, as he expresses it, they are so scientific, they so exactly harmonise with the aspirations of the age and with the conclusions to which modern science is coming at the present time.

Tesla was practically living in his Houston Street Laboratory in New York at that time, and fits Vivekanandas description of the scientist mentioned above. They did meet at the Corbins house (a mansion on Fifth Avenue, New York City) for dinner on February 5, 1896, and Vivekananda almost certainly ex-plained Snkhy cosmology to Tesla and asked him questions, for we know of the letter from Tesla to Vivekananda dated February 8, 1896:

As it would be difficult to answer your questions by letter and as I wish to have the pleasure of meeting you again I would suggest a visit to my laboratory 45 East Houston Street any day next week you find convenient.

They agreed to meet, as Vivekananda wrote in a letter to E.T. Sturdy dated 13 February 1896, recollecting the manner of their earlier encounter, following a performance of Isiel by the famous French artiste, Madame Sarah Bernhardt:

Madame spying me in the audience wanted to have an interview with me. A swell family of my acquaintance arranged the affair. There were besides Madame, M. Morrel, the celebrated singer, also the great electrician Tesla. Madame is a very scholarly lady and has studied up the metaphysics a good deal. M. Morrel was being interested, but Mr Tesla was charmed to hear about the Vedantic Prna and ksha and the Kalpas, which according to him are the only theories modern science can entertain.

In the same letter, Vivekananda proceeds to sketch his ambitious plan to ensure that Vedantic cosmology will be placed on the surest of foundations:

Now both ksha and Prna again are produced from the cosmic Mahat, the Universal Mind, the Brahm or Ishvara. Mr Tesla thinks he can demonstrate mathematically that force and matter are reducible to potential energy. I am to go and see him next week, to get this new mathematical demonstration. I am work-ing a good deal now upon the cosmology and eschatology of Vedanta. I clearly see their perfect unison with modern science, and the elucidation of the one will be followed by that of the other. I intend to write a book later on in the form of questions and answers. The first chapter will be on cosmology, showing the harmony between Vedantic theories and modern science.

This is followed by an extraordinary diagrammatic representation (reproduced on the previous page).

Vivekananda wanted to work all this out carefully, explaining each step of the process of manifestation, from the highest levels of Brahman or the Absolute, to the lowest regions of matter.

Unfortunately, there is no record of this meeting between Vivekananda and Tesla; possibly it never took place. Nor did Vivekananda go on to write his book reconciling Advaita Vedanta with modern science. Vivekanandas disappointment at the failure of this marriage between Vedantic cosmology and modern science (modern in the 1890s) is clear in his lecture in Lahore:

There is the unity of force, Prna; there is the unity of matter, called ksha. Is there any unity to be found among them again? Can they be melted into one? Our modern science is mute here; it has not yet found its way out.

Einsteins landmark papers were published in 1905, three years after the death of Vivekananda. For the first time the interchangeability of matter and energy was considered possible. It is interest-ing to note that even as late as the 1930s, Tesla did not quite agree. When he was finally convinced of the famous Einstein equation E = mc2, he wrote a letter that remained unpublished in his lifetime, and was first brought to public knowledge by his biographer John J. ONeill:

Long ago he (man) recognised that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or a tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the ksha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life-giving Prna or creative force, calling into existence, in never-ending cycles, all things and phenomena. The primary substance, thrown into infinitesimal whirls of prodigious velocity, be-comes gross matter; the force subsiding, the motion ceases and matter disappears, reverting to the primary substance.

It is amazing that 40 years after his meeting the Swami, Tesla remembered the Sanskrit terms ksha and Prna, which Vivekananda had used so extensively in his expositions of the unity between science and spirituality.

UNFINISHED TASK

Modern Physics is busy grappling with the issues of expansion of this universe (the cosmological constant), the funda-mental particles that arose right after the Big Bang explosion, the Unified Field Theory, and so on. But the question alluded to indirectly by Vivekananda, namely, what gives rise to ksha and Prna, is even today considered meta-physics rather than physics. Moreover, the moment of quantum mysticism has also passed. Appropriated by New Age faddists, attempts to connect physics with Eastern philosophy have come to be regarded by most practicing scientists as pseudoscience or quackery. Despite brave attempts by the likes of Amit Goswami (The Self-aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World. New York: Putnams Sons, 1993), the desire to offer a Vedantic picture of the universe that also satisfies the truth-conditions and methodological demands of contemporary physics may be said to have largely failed.

Nevertheless, what we notice are interesting parallels in the manner in which the two sides conceptualise or imagine reality.

These parallels or resemblances are mostly metaphorical; they create the effect of narrative likeness. However, the two languages, that of science and spirituality, are distinct, with no possibility of overlap, at least at present.

The language of science, no matter how closely it may seem similar to that of spirituality, is actually mathematics, with precise sounding equations and fixity of meaning. The proof is through experimental verification; the theory must fit the data. The language of spirituality, on the other hand, is poetic, reveling in figurative language, open to a hundred different interpretations. It is impossible, therefore, to collapse the one into the other.

Vivekananda, in that sense, could not have anticipated the unity that the physicists were after in their pursuit of the theory of everything. But his speculations and assertions sound similar to the latters ideas and conceptualisations. That is the difficulty with those who make scientific claims on behalf of spirituality. Such claims are not sustain-able precisely because they fail the truth standards and demarcation protocols of science. At best, spiritual constructions of the universe sound similar to those of some scientists at times, but such similarities cannot be considered sufficient proof that spirituality is somehow scientific.

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Vedanta & Modern Physics: Why The Marriage Of Spirituality And Science Is Difficult - Swarajya