Daily Meditation: Friday, June 18, 2010

Scientific research - must take a spiritual orientation

06/18/2010

Weapons, which encourage people's aggressive instinct... and comforts, which encourage their natural laziness... Can scientists and engineers feel any pleasure or pride in having given human beings so many means of destroying themselves more effectively? For, even before they have succeeded in wiping each other out with weapons, they are already gradually losing their physical resistance and their psychic faculties, on account of all that equipment that saves them from having to make any effort. In spite of apparent progress, there is actually evidence of a weakening of willpower and spiritual faculties. And so an increasing number of thinkers, even scientists, are having doubts about whether all this technical progress contributes to the welfare of humanity. This does not mean progress should be halted. No, it is nature itself that spurs human beings on to do research. But the research should be taken in a different direction. We should never stop seeking, never stop delving deeper into nature's mysteries, but in another direction, upwards, towards spirit.