By Team Ayurved Sutra
Posted on
TWO PATHS OF YOGA
The word ‘science’ is derived from Latin verb root ‘scire’, to know. So, all knowledge is ‘science’ and God the Omniscient, from the same verb root, can be translated into modern English as God the All-scientist!!
Up to 1840, what we now call science was a part of philosophy, known as Natural Philosophy. The scientists like Isaac Newton were philosophers seeking answers to the mysteries of the universe. No wonder Newton wrote a 300,000-word commentary on the Bible’s Book of Revelation. Einstein spent his entire life searching for the answers to the question “How does God run the universe?”
Yoga’s twin, Veda, may be translated as science. It is from the verb root ‘vid’, to know. In fact, in many European languages words derived from the cognates of ‘vid’ are used for science, so, the German Wissenschaft and the Dutch Wetenschap, so also ‘wisdom’ and ‘wise’.
In the traditions of India we often speak of the twins Yoga and Veda. Veda, the science, is the intuitive knowledge derived through the buddhi – whether in meditation or empirically in Nyaya-Vaisheshika- Ayurveda type of experimental procedures. In the traditions of India, the intuitive and the empirical are inseparable because one must enter the state of meditation to receive the intuitions that will then be experimentally tested and proved. Thus, without yoga, there is no Veda, no science.
