Isha Upanishad - Super school - Auroville - Isha Upanishad 604

If I say this, try to conceive, can you conceive?

Remark: If the particle is moving?

Answer: Even if it moves, can it remain a particle? When it moves, it may make a wavy movement but itself but is it itself a wave, its motion can be wavy but is it itself a wave? My question was first, what is conceivable and what is not conceivable. But the fact is that I'm trying to give an example of that which is not conceivable.

 Now, modern physics says that there is the same thing, which you call particle is also the wave, this is the new discovery of modern physics. And physicists are all surprised themselves. This is a good example of inconceivability. But as you said rightly, it can be true. Therefore mere inconceivability is not the mark of unreality.

Philosophy is precisely this exercise, what is conceivable and what is not conceivable and not conceivable therefore untrue, and not conceivable and yet true. When you arrive at this distinction, you have arrived at the heart of philosophical thinking. Spiritual experience has a different method, we were trying to see scientific thinking, philosophical thinking and now we have a third level and that is of spiritual experience.

What is spiritual experience? A good definition to start with, − spiritual experience is perception but not perception like that of a stone or a pebble or moon or sun, which you can physically see. A spiritual experience is the experience of the inaudible, of the invisible that which you cannot see with your eyes that which you cannot touch and yet you can see. So, spiritual experience is perception, this is the definition which we gave and I admit; spiritual experience is a perception but perception of the invisible and the inaudible.

Question: Hearing and seeing is also the spirit?

Answer: Yes, it's true, even this chair is spiritual. When I say that this chair is spiritual, what exactly, do I mean? But it is not exactly the spiritual element in your perception is not that which is visible; it is the invisible aspect of this chair, which I say is spiritual. When I touch this chair and I touch it with reverence is because I see in it that invisible to be the object of my reverence. This chair may be the teacher, whom I revere very much sits on and when I touch that chair, I see the seat of Buddha or seat of the Divine Mother. There is something else than the physical that I see, which I call spiritual, which also I see but see not physically. So the minimum mark of spirituality is it is invisible and inaudible. Although it can be visible physically also and it can be audible also physically but its speciality and its essentiality is, it is the experience of that which is the invisible and the inaudible.

 A spiritual knowledge need not be comprehensive. In philosophy we mark the idea of comprehensiveness. Spiritual knowledge need not be comprehensive but can be comprehensive. So, now we have three distinctions scientific knowledge, philosophical knowledge and spiritual knowledge. In spiritual knowledge you try to be as comprehensive as possible but it can be continuously progressive, there are depths and depths of experience, heights after heights of experience, widenesses of experience. You can continuously grow in spiritual experience; you become more and more integral.

 It is found that when you arrive at the highest experiences, you have surprising statements, just as in physics if you go to the absolute depth of matter, you have particle-wave duality, similarly when you reach some of the spiritual experiences and descriptions of them, you find something inconceivable, just as particle-wave is inconceivable and yet a fact. Similarly in spiritual experience also you arrive at the inconceivable.