WHAT IS HINDUISM?
constructs as fundamentally more real than the perceptible
objects and tangible, sensuous or emotional
phenomenon they are used to ‘explain’. Thus whilst no
one sees ‘light waves’ or the energetic ‘quanta’ (photons)
of which even the visible spectrum of electro-magnetic
energy is supposedly made up, such invisible and
immaterial realities are regarded as fundamentally more
real than the actual experiences of light and colour they
are used to explain. Far from being based on the innate
evidence of the senses, science has long since sought to
deny their reality unless ‘proven’ by some experiment to
do with intangible, non-sensuous realities.
We are reaching the reductio ad absurdum of the
equation of true knowledge with ‘science’ as is currently
understood – the idea that such simple experienced
phenomenon as the wetness of rain needs to be
‘objectively’ proven or explained in order for people to
accept the evidence of their senses and their subjective
reality. In a word, modern science is based on a dogmatic
identification of scientific truth and reality with
objectivity – despite the fact that there simply are no
‘objects’ independent of a subjective awareness and
experience of them – an understanding long present in
Hindu religious thought.
The doctrine and dogma of truth as objectivity
means that today’s purely quantitative sciences can give
no account at all of such fundamental subjective realities