Absolutely true. Faith in a Creative Power that drives the wheeling of the stars and the Ages building order out of disorder in intuitively ingrained in man. It drives us to exceed ourselves and is the basis of all progress. This faith in a greater Power, to say the least, is both logical as well as intuitive. Yet men deny it partly because of the strong grip of ignorance that keeps us tied to the surface experience of life and the understanding derived from the appearances. Partly it is due to arrogance of the intellect because man is presently at the apex of creation and hence he thinks himself superior to anyone else. But anyone with even the slightest common sense will surely feel a tremendous intelligence hidden behind the workings of nature.
Sri Aurobindo put it beautifully in one of his Aphorisms.
‘A man came to a scientist and wished to be instructed; his instructor showed him the revelations of the microscope and telescope, but the man laughed and said, “These are obviously hallucinations inflicted on the eye by the glass which you use as a medium; I will not believe till you show these wonders to my naked seeing.” Then the scientist proved to him by many collateral facts and experiments the reliability of his knowledge but the man laughed again and said, “What you term proofs, I term coincidences, the number of coincidences does not constitute proof; as for your experiments, they are obviously effected under abnormal conditions and constitute a sort of insanity of Nature.” When confronted with the results of mathematics, he was angry and cried out, “This is obviously imposture, gibberish and superstition; will you try to make me believe that these absurd cabalistic figures have any real force and meaning?” Then the scientist drove him out as a hopeless imbecile; for he did not recognise his own system of denials and his own method of negative reasoning. If we wish to refuse an impartial and open-minded enquiry, we can always find the most respectable polysyllables to cover our refusal or impose tests and conditions which stultify the inquiry.’
Affectionately,
Alok Da
