Foreword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
Summary
I have a deep interest in the close relationship between modern science and the study of the internal dimensions of the human mind, which I consider to be spirituality. The reason is quite simple. Because we have this body, we feel pleasures and pains that relate to sensory experience. It is very urgent, very important to understand these sensory experiences. In fact these experiences are something very immediate to us and determine our moods, our feelings of happiness or sorrow. So we have to pay close attention to them to understand how they are felt, perceived, and how in turn they influence our minds. And just as we pay importance to the mind we have to pay equal importance to the physical body upon which all the sensorial experience of pain and pleasures register and in which they arise. So we have the physical body and the mind; the two are closely interconnected. Now, as I said, we experience these sensory perceptions in our body. This is what makes us sentient beings. At the same time we also have this sophisticated mind. Physical pain and pleasure is one thing, but we also create mental pains and pleasures. Some of these are purely the creations of the mind, existing only at the mental level. These sensations, the source of pain or pleasure, satisfaction or unhappiness, I think, are solely created by the mind. Between these two, that is physical and mental sensations, I think the experiences of pain and pleasure on the mental level are superior, more powerful.
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- Science, Spirituality and the Modernisation of India , pp. xiii - xxPublisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2009
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