The following are some of the excerpts from “Spiritual Lab,” an architectural thesis by my brother Jaymin Tanna, made for his final year.
Alain de Botton, in his book says, “Religion is above all a symbol of what exceeds us and an education in the advantages of recognizing our paltriness.”
If there is anything that is unquestionably common between believers and non-believers, it is awe at the expanse of the world and
respect for the uncertainty of nature.
If we were to believe Spinoza and Buddha, human grief is because of lack of knowledge.
The more we acquire knowledge, the more we are satisfied with life.
Science is for atheists what Religion is for theists: Both of them try to solve human problems by making them unimaginably insignificant.
It is said that our economic losses and failed relationships have no effect on the universe, and our very existence is of very little importance. At first, it might sound humiliating and offensive, but it can give way to a new level of human knowledge and liberation.
It is with great conviction when scientists claim Science to be their Religion. It is what provides them with everything a religion would
provide to a theist.
Perspective is the first of them. Optimism and knowledge are the
outcomes of this perspective.
Religion:
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Vishwaroopa is the form taken by Krishna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra when Arjuna asks him to reveal his true form. In this form, Krishna is a magnificent being with countless legs and countless arms and countless heads, breathing fire, containing within himself all the things that exist — all the worlds, all the animate beings and inanimate objects. It is an awe-inspiring sight. Containing everything that Arjuna imagined and also everything that was beyond Arjuna’s imagination.
Arjuna could not keep his balance seeing His colossal form, His blazing faces and awful teeth in all directions. Arjuna was bewildered.
All the sons of Dhritrashtra, along with their allied kings, and Bhishma, Drona, Karna – and his own army’s chief soldiers also – were rushing into His fearful mouths.
And some he sees trapped with heads smashed between His teeth. As the many waves of the rivers flowed into the ocean, so did all these great warriors enter blazing into His mouths. Arjuna sees all people rushing full speed into Hus mouths, as moths dash to destruction in a blazing fire. Covering all the universe with His effulgence, He manifests with terrible, scorching rays.
Unable to bear the scale of the sight and gripped with fear, Arjuna requests Krishna to return to his four-armed Vishnu form, which he can bear to see.
Science:
Image credits: https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot
As the spacecraft (Voyager 1) was departing our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, it turned around for one last look at its home planet.
Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixels in size.
The following excerpt from Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot was inspired by the above image:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
I’ve also written a story based on this very theme. If you want, you can read it here.
