Some Thoughts on Meher Baba & Science by Robert Smith, Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, 2008
hat wondrous times we live in. The genome has been cracked, the secrets of life are spilling out of test tubes here and there. A Q-Tip from the inside of your mouth will reveal your genetic ancestry, single molecules can be moved to create pictorial images, and scenes from the Samadhi can be web-streamed from across the world to your very own living room. Machines in the hospital can peer into your body, revealing illnesses; stellar images are transmitted from orbital telescopes, and people can communicate on a cellular phone half a world away.
Meher Baba said, “The New Humanity, which emerges from the travail of present struggle and suffering, will not ignore science or its practical attainments. It is a mistake to look upon science as anti-spiritual. Science is a help or hindrance to spirituality according to the use to which it is put. Just as true art expresses spirituality, so science, when properly handled, can be the expression and fulfillment of the spirit. Scientific truths concerning the physical body and its life in the gross world can become a medium for the soul to know itself; but to serve this purpose they must be properly fitted into the
larger spiritual understanding. This includes a steady perception of true and lasting values. In the absence of such spiritual understanding, scientific truths and attainments are liable to be used for mutual destruction and for a life which will tend to strengthen the chains which bind the spirit. All-sided progress of humanity can be assured only if science and religion proceed hand in hand.�1 What is the peril of mind-centered research, or research conducted in the absence of spiritual understanding of true and lasting values? Without grounding in a firm values and ethics