Bhakti As A Science

The scientists argue that the propositions of bhakti are not amenable to scientific treatment. But they are mistaken. Bhakti is as much a science as physics, chemistry or any other science. It is based on observation and experiment, and its results are capable of verification. But bhakti is a transcendental science, and its experiments are of a different nature. They are also more difficult than the experiments of ordinary science, for while in ordinary science experiments are made on outside objects, in bhakti the object of experiment is one's own self. It is not easy to do with self what we ordinarily do with other objects in scientific experiments.

In a scientific experiment the object of study is taken in its pure and original form and in isolation from all other things. Since nature does not always present things in a pure and unmixed form, the object under study has first to be isolated from other things. After this is done, certain changes are made in it, and the results are carefully watched. Under different conditions the thing is found to behave in different ways. In this manner, the laws governing its behavior are discovered. The body of knowledge comprising those laws is called a science.

The science of bhakti deals with the self in relation to Bhagavan or Krsna. The self also does not exist in its pure form. It is qualified by its association with the body and the sense objects. Its vision is blurred by egoism, greed, lust, anger, jealousy and hatred. The first condition of a scientific experiment in bhakti, therefore, is the purification of the self. This is not easy to attain. One can easily manipulate the objects outside the self. One can explode a hydrogen bomb or send an object to the moon. But when it comes to doing something that may change the age-old association of the soul with the things that are extraneous to it, that is a different matter.

It is human nature to find reasons to ridicule that which is difficult to attain. This partly explains the attitude of the scientist toward bhakti. But there are many persons who have performed the experiments in bhakti in spite of this apparent difficulty. The science of bhakti is the result of generalizations made by them which are described in such works as Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, Ujjvala-nilamani, Bhakti-sandarblia, Priti-sandarblia and many others. The detailed, precise and systematic treatment in these works of the laws of bhakti, the stages of bhakti, the kinds of bhakti and the conditions of the various experiments in bhakti will easily convince anyone who goes through them that bhakti is, by all standards, a science.