Soul and Science
A logical man in the age of science sees no role for soul in his life. He finds himself living physically and his fellows dead bodily. Philosophical discourses by clergy and nonscientists have little relevance for a materialist mind like him. A best seller like ‘Chicken Soup for the Surviving Soul’ (1), however, does surprise him occasionally because it shows that most of us feel or believe in an apparatus of consciousness behind our life and that we are not merely a living mass of matter.
Beliefs and concepts about soul and its transmigration are rooted deep in human antiquity. Andamanese have lived as a marooned people without any human contact for the last 45000 years (2). In their tradition, a man becomes spirit after death; and, they have elaborate rituals for their dead. Our beliefs and ideas about spirits and souls date back even to a farther past. No wonder, we have preserved human perceptions and convictions behind an invisible soul for ages before reaching ‘The End of Science’ (3).
Science has done immense good to man by imparting him logic and thinking to move away from fictions of blind faith. But it has also done some harm in convincing a layman, through faith in its oversimplified theories, that the conscious self of man is none other than his physical body. Any one may verify through an effortless experiment that his physical self is not the whole of conscious self. Such a belief is a blind faith, promoted unintelligently by the agents of science.
For the experiment, arrange a 35mm SLR camera with 400mm lens and Polaroid filters. Photograph sun during mid-day, afternoon and sunset. Also, remember the size of sun as seen during mid-day and at sunset through the viewfinder of camera. It is almost three times larger at horizon, as we are accustomed to see since childhood. Now develop the film to discover that the image is of same size in three positions (Fig. 1.1). Sun is not larger at horizon as we see through the viewfinder.
Fig. 1.1 : Sun in midday, afternoon and setting positions. Photograph from top of a building using 200mm Leitz zoom with 2x converter (Vadodara, April, 1993). Image of sun at noon (left), 3 PM (middle) and in setting position (right) has same size in the negative (3± 0.01mm).
In a textbook, mechanism of our vision is explained thus: human eye works like a camera. Eye lens forms an inverted image of an object on retina, as a lens of camera. Nerve cells pick up signals from retina and carry it to brain. Brain reads these impulses, corrects the inversion of image and the object is registered in vision (Fig. 1.2).
The SLR lens, eye lens and the brain are all physical entities. If the vision and mind of man were generated only by physical elements like eye and brain, then the size of sun of our vision must have remained constant in all positions like the image of camera.
The experiment proves that consciousness behind our mind and vision is not an exclusive product of physical body. Had consciousness been of physical origin alone, there was no chance of seeing a larger sun at horizon; and, if we see it, our consciousness has, for certain, another invisible apparatus of consciousness controlling human mind and vision. This apparatus of consciousness is invisible and of nonphysical character. It is soul. Since all of us see a larger sun at horizon, every one has a soul!
Fig. 1.2 : Mechanism of vision as explained in optics.
Role of soul in our vision is explainable by the thoughtographs of Indian solar eclipse of 1995, snapped by Vikram Bhandari. Thoughtographs are mental images captured by a camera. Young Vikram, son of Prof. Dr. N. Bhandari of Physical Research Laboratories, Ahmedabad, snapped a series of photographs of solar eclipse in Rajasthan on October 24, ’95. Some of these photographs contain paired thoughtographs of eclipse (Fig. 1.3). One of these images of sun is fuzzy and bright. The other is sharp, dull and red. It is eclipsed partially by moon. The size of the red solar image is almost three times larger than the optical image.
Fig. 1.3 : Thoughtographs of Indian Solar Eclipse on 24.10.1995. A: A pair of thoughtographs after commencement of eclipse showing optical halo of sun (a), fuzzy replica of optical sun (b) and a red psychic sun impinged by moon on lower side (c); inset is a picture of totally eclipsed sun at 0953 IST (d). Size of images: b = dx2.17 & c=d x 3.17. B: A pair of thoughtographs 11 min. after eclipse maxim showing inverted fuzzy image b’ and normally oriented red imagec’. Image b’ is a composite of optical solar image a’ and red image c’. Visual sun is either a or c not b.
Our vision mechanism is not as simple as science explains it. Up in the sky, we see a bright thoughtograph of sun (b) above its optical image, a little bigger than size of sun. To the right and below the optical sun, there are other dull red thoughtographs of sun covered mostly by moon (c, c’). We see that red thoughtographs are almost three times bigger than optical image like our daily observation about sun at horizon. Both the thoughtograpic images (b and c) are generated by our consciousness apparatus or soul.
Fig 1. 4 : Mechanism of vision corrected for the role of soul. Optical image is routed to Antahkaran through brain for a projection of the inverted retinal image of the object into space. Soul generates another image corresponding to its real orientation. In the two-component information, psychic image provides orientation while the optical image renders color and brightness. Mind integrates the two components in vision.
In one of the thoughtographs (Fig. 1.3B), white and red images are seen together – almost juxtaposed and inverted in orientation corresponding to the image on retina. The final perception of the orientation of object, however, is with reference to the original disposition of the object, as indicated by the red image (c’ in Fig. 1.3B). Brightness and colors of an object correspond, seemingly, to the fuzzy image (b’). Accordingly, we don’t see by brain and eye couple alone. We see by mind after incorporating the contribution of antahkaran or main psychic organ (Fig. 1.4). Our ‘mind’ is constituted by two components thus -- a nonphysical soul joined by physical eyes and brain.
Our concept of vision has to be corrected after new inputs from thoughtographs, which necessarily imply a key role of soul in our life.
One may like to pose a question at this point. Why are thoughtographs not so common as other phenomena in nature? A plain reply to the question is “These are not so uncommon either”. We generally don’t look into our photographs with an idea to search something new; and, when an irregularity is noticed, it is ignored. Prof. Bhandari, a hardboiled physicist, told me about photographs of eclipse two years after the eclipse when we were discussing thoughtographs in the ‘Science of Consciousness’ (2).
Science has its own methods of ignoring new information beyond its established paradigm. Today, Soul and Consciousness are the subjects beyond the scope of science. On November 7, ’97, I sent an article to the ‘nature’ -A REPEAT PHOTOGRAPHY OF CONSCIOUSNESS SPHEROIDS AT KEDARNATH, INDIA. It was received back by me with a card dated 8.2.’98 reading, “ The Editor thanks you of the communication but regrets that he is unable to publish it….”. Nothing can be printed in the journal that could affect its established reputation in science.
Anyway, some staunch scientists are no better than clergy of religion in asserting their authority. They are too hardboiled to accept any thing new and would ignore it till the voice of researchers becomes loud and shrill. “Until the early years of nineteenth century, for example, scientists refused to accept that meteorites existed; consequently any body who claimed to have seen or found one was dismissed as liar. But as soon as meteorites gained acceptance, earlier witnesses could be rehabilitated” (5, p.14). Meteorites are hard rocks and a source of metals since prehistoric times. Yet, more than 250 years lapsed between the first leading scientist Galileo (1564-1642) and investigations on meteorites under the banner of science. This may prove true even for soul and consciousness.