Satsang With Swami Chinmayananda-Science And Scriptures (Contd)

It becomes now evident that the disinterestedness of our modern men with regard to religion is not because of the futility or hollowness of the science of religion as such, but because of their incapacity to understand the great text-books of religion in the world. When I say the 'modem man', I do not mean merely the Indian or the Hindu. This difficulty of accommodating the old ideas, in the new brains is felt by the faithful of all the established religions all over the globe today.

Q : Could we, children of the present, make a thorough study of the ancient ideas and come to discover in them a parallel to the knowledge we have acquired through enquiry and objective experimentation?

A : In the past, men had a larger share of the heart in them than the head and consequently, there was more faith than rational thinking.

Wherever there is an intellect developed more than the heart, there, critical acumen and severity of judgement become predominant. The ancient generation seemed to have had a more developed heart than the head. To them, any truth is absolute and fully acceptable just because the ancient Rishis said so. The days of the prophets are no more with us. Today even if a prophet or God himself were to walk in for a cup of tea and tell us all about the truth directly, we shall not accept him or his words unless he produces for us experimental data and logical reasoning. That is the spirit of the age we live in. Man has grown out of his heart and has come to live as an intellect. Thus today, if the youth of the world refuses to accept religion when it is based merely upon the heart it is not a thing to be condemned, but rather a great fact at which the world is to be congratulated and the age to be applauded.

The present generation can accept the truth-principle only when it is shown the logic or the science of it. A child of the day is trained in his education to develop his intellect. He has grown a foreigner to the language of the heart. He can understand and appreciate only the logic and reasoning of the intellect. Thus by merely saying that there is a great creative power or a divine goal, our generation is not going to accept it silently. Therefore, it is time that we sat round together to discover whether the unanimous declarations of the great seers of the world, and their conclusions upon the great power behind the creation process, had any logic or science behind them.