Many years ago, when I was in India at my meditation teacher, Swami Veda's, ashram, I phoned the USA to talk with my parents, and learned that my mom was in the hospital after falling and braking her hip. After getting off the phone, I told my dear friend, Bhagaban Dev, about the call, and he expressed such compassion and concern, simply by how he looked at me, that I felt completely soothed, validated and loved. All these years later, when I remember the look in his eyes, I still feel held and understood. And he hadn't say a word.

All too often there is a tendency to speak when silence would be more appropriate. I remember times when someone came to me expressing grief from a shocking loss, and I felt a compulsion to say something, while, at the same time, realizing words were insufficient for the purpose. In those situations, words felt inappropriate. It would have been better to be silent and simply hold the grieving friend in my heart.

Swami Veda Bharati holds the prestigious title of Mahamandaleshwara in the Swami order of monks. He is also the Chancellor of HIHT University, Dehradun, which was established by Master Swami Rama. He has authored approximately 18 books on Indian spirituality including a 1500 page comprehensive commentary on two of the four chapters of Patanjali's Yoga-sutras. Before taking the vows of Swamihood in 1992, Swami Veda Bharati was known as Dr. Usharbudh Arya.

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.

As the yogi passes through all the different layers, from grossest to subtlest, of the constituents of personality s/he unearths the secret of each element of nature at the cosmic level. By seeing the workings of muladhara-chakras/he learns the secrets of gravity. [The word 'gravity' is derived from 'gurutva' as it is referred to in 6th century BC Vaisheshika texts. Where did Newton get it from? - I wonder.]. The yoga-sutra (YS.3.26) says : One obtains the knowledge of cosmology by concentrating on the sun. The sun here is an internal concentration, the cosmic counterpart of which are the external suns. It is thus that the Vedic rishis (c.3000 BC) sang of a heliocentric solar system and numerous texts composed by the rishis speak in wonderment about 'uncountable trillion universes' (ananta-koTi-brahmaaNDa).

It is on this basis that, I, a disciple in yoga, have lectured on SCIENCE IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SPIRITUAL POEM EVER COMPOSED.

That Vedic poetic beauty of science, with all its rhymes and rhythms and cadences can be enjoyed only by a yogi. Yoga grants the ultimate, the Transcendental Joy, Ananda. Along the way the yogi and the yogi alone enjoys the poetic secrets of the cosmos through his internal scientific revelations.

Much more is to be said on this topic, for example how we are confirming the findings of the ancient yogis in the Meditation Research Institute Laboratory in Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama in Rishikesh to which all are invited. But here we take short cut and cease.

A Vedic rishi is a scientific poet, a poetic scientist.

Enjoy yoga.

Enjoy science; it is something to enjoy, like poetry.

To truly enjoy science, enjoy yoga.