Science and Human Nature

Science and Human Nature

Prof: Muhammad Abdur Rahman Khan

Science both theoretical and practical, mathematical, physical or chemical has been confined mostly to the investigation of laws relating to inanimate matter, and its energy of motion or of chemical combination. Until quite recently little systematic attention was paid to the science of living matter, especially the science of human nature.

It is true that from time immemorial man realized the importance of medicine or the science of healing; but it dealt mostly with empirical methods of curing or preventing diseases. With the development of physiology, scientists learnt to depict man as a complicated community of cells, humours and nutrient fluids. Man as a complete being endowed with a material body, physical attributes, power of thinking, mental and spiritual activities, moral, aesthetic and social qualities, intuition and inspiration, is still a highly complicated and unsolved problem—almost a mystery.

The physical sciences are no doubt very important. They have engaged the attention of many of the greatest scientists of the world—men of genius, who have probed the universe and discovered the laws of matter and motion in the abstract. They are able to predict the movements of the heavenly bodies, know their dimensions and constitution, measure their masses and temperatures. Astronomers and physicists have estimated the entire amount of matter in the universe, counting to a fair degrees of accuracy the total number of atoms and molecules of which the material world is composed. Quite recently they learnt the secret of stellar radiation, and from what is happening in the interior of the stars have got control over atomic energy—a source of immense mechanical power, or menace to the entire human race.

But as regards the science of human nature it must be admitted that very little positive knowledge has as yet been obtained, partly because very few master-minds, have interested themselves in this subject and partly because adequate means of investigation have not been provided for, or planned or even contemplated. It is true that modern civilization is beginning to realize this defect and is making some attempts to remedy it; but unless this is done on an adequate scale and systematic basis, the degeneracy of man that has set in under the evil influence of what is dubbed as “industrial civilization” will continue to increase with accelerated speed and lead to disastrous results for the entire human race.

Hygiene, new methods of pathological treatment, more powerful drugs, more skilful surgery, have on the whole lengthened the average span of human life—not to speak of increase of weight, size and stature; but with all this apparent progress, nervous disorders, insanity and intellectual and moral deterioration (especially in the most advanced urban areas) have become dangerously more frequent. It is stated by an expert medical investigator attached to the stall of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research, New York, on the authority of C.W. Bears (judging by figures for 1938) that one out of every 22 men in the State of New York has either been to a lunatic asylum or is still there. In the whole of the United States, the hospitals care for almost eight times more feeble-minded or lunatics than consumptives. Each year about 68 thousand new cases are admitted to insane asylums and similar institutions.

At this rate about one million children and young men who are now studying in schools and colleges may have to enter such asylums at one time or another —certainly a most gloomy picture to contemplate.

Worry, anxiety and uncertainty of settled life are no doubt the real causes of this state of affairs-an indirect result presumably of industrial civilization, that manufactures more things than are necessary and tries to sell them with profit to people who do not really require them—an era of mechanical life devoid of hope, faith or vision.

Absorbed in the study of material sciences, man does not even know what wonderful hidden powers he possesses and can employ them with profit to the world in general. Though physiology has progressed fairly rapidly, psychology is still a. loose collection of isolated facts, awaiting integration. Irrefutable evidence is provided of clairvoyance and telepathy, of efficacy of prayer in curing dangerous diseases. We read of mysterious powers possessed by saintly persons living a life of asceticism and moral purity. A systematic study of these phenomena is sure to extend the boundaries of our knowledge concerning the nature of man and contribute to human peace and happiness.

A few facts concerning man’s mysterious powers may be mentioned in this connection. Sir J.J. Thomson has written in his ‘Recollections and Reflections that while he was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, after exhausting standard physical methods of exploration to locate sub-terranean water for the use of his garden, he agreed to the suggestion of his ardeners and sent for a water diviner. The man followed his usual method of walking in a state of mental abstraction with a small twig in his hand. When the spot at which he stopped was dug out sufficiently deep, water came up in good quantity to the agreeable surprise of all observers except perhaps the gardener and the diviner, and, it seems, also to the annoyance of some exponents of “orthodox” science.

The Society for Psychical Research was founded in London in 1882 under the presidency of Henry Sidgwick, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. In 1919 the International Institute of Metaphysics was established in Paris with the approval of the French Government and under the auspices of the great physiologist, Charles Richet, the discoverer of Anaphylaxis, and of Joseph Teissier, Professor of Medicine at the University of Lyons. The Institute published the Revue Metaphysique. Charles Richet called clairvoyance the sixth sense of man.

It is well known that thought can generate organic lesions and no nourishment is required even for prolonged thinking. Most of the great mystics have voluntarily endured physiological and mental sufferings, at least during an appreciable part of their life. Contemplation may be accompanied by nervous phenomena similar to those of hysteria and clairvoyance. We have all read accounts of ecstasies, thought transmissions, visions of events occurring at a great distance, and even of levitation (i.e., rising of body above ground without any physical support); we read also of the efficacy of prayer, which is well described by a medical authority as “a mystical elevation, an absorption of consciousness in the contemplation of a principle both permeating and transcending the world.”

Authoritative literature on the so-called miraculous cures through prayer is increasing rapidly. Any physician, it is stated, can observe the effect of prayer on the patients brought of Lourdes at the healing spring in the Massavieille Grotto, (in the Pyrenees), and examine the records kept in its Medical Bureau. Several cases have been reported at the Medical Society of Bordeaux by professors of the Medical School of the University. The Commission on Medicine and Religion of the New York Academy of Medicine presided over by Dr. F. Peterson has sent to Lourdes one of its members to study this important subject. Patients are reported to have been cured almost instantaneously of various afflictions, such as peritoneal tuberculosis, ulcerous diseases of the skin, cancer, etc.

Often the patient feels an acute pain, then a sudden sensation of being cured-in a few seconds, a few minutes or at the most a few hours. Wounds are cicatrized (i.e., healed with scars) and pathological symptoms vanish. Sometimes functional disorders disappear before anatomical lesions are repaired. “The rate of healing of the anatomical defects is remarkably more rapid than in case of regular methods of treatment, but the process follows the same sequences. The only condition to give rise to such phenomena is stated to be disinterested and fervent prayer. There is no need for the patient himself to pray or even have religious faith.

Several well-known writers have described the performance of levitation. E.B. Havell at one time Principal, College of Arts, Calcutta, in his “Benares the Sacred City” published in 1905 describes one he saw in 1887 while presiding over the celebration of the Queen Victoria Jubilee at a remote village in Karnool. A Yogi, as a special favour, had consented to exhibit his power in public to honour the occasion. He placed himself behind a curtain and when it was drawn the Yogi was seen as if in a state of trance apparently poised in the air, several feet above the ground, cross-legged and absolutely motionless. He remained in this posture for some 15 minutes, when the curtain was again drawn in front of him. It is a pity it did not occur to anybody to examine him medically during his state of trance and immediately after his recovery.

Sir Monier Williams in his “Indian Wisdom” refers to a case recorded in the Asiatic Journal for March 1829, in which a Brahmin Created some excitement in Madras and exhibited himself before the Governor apparently poised in the air for 40 minutes. Havell adds that neither did this Brahmin, nor the Yogi who honoured the Queen Victoria Jubilee dispense with the curtain, which to ordinary intelligence gives the unfortunate aspect of conjuring to the performance.

The famous Morocaan globe-trotter, Ibn Battutah (1305-77) in his“Tuhfat-ul-Nuzzar (English version by H.A.R. Gibb) describes in much greater detail a similar performance at the court of Sultan Mohammad bin Tughlaq at Delhi. It is more sensational. The Yogi was seen to rise from the ground before the spectators and came down to the ground also before their eyes, after receiving gentle tapings from a wooden shoe sent up after him by an associate in the same mysterious manner (after beating it several times violently on the ground). In this performance there is no mention of any curtain being drawn to screen the performer from the spectators.

Cures of hundreds of collapse cases from snake bites by means of prayer or incantations are reported from various places even nowadays, with appropriate attestation by responsible persons. It would be too dogmatic to consider without systematic scientific investigation such cures as hallucinations or regard all the serpents whose bites have been cured as non-poisonous or devoid of poison through previous bites. No doubt such investigations require much patient scrutiny but they are worth the trouble taken or the expenses incurred. I can personally testify to a case of instantaneous recovery from pain resulting from scorpion sting. I myself was the victim once on a time and disdainfully refused at first to submit to a ‘mantaram’ cure, knowing full well that the wonder worker was a young man of practically no education though courteous and obliging. Curiosity, however, induced me to agree to the incantation scheme; but I stubbornly made up my mind not to be cured. All the same the instant the formula was uttered the pain that had spread over parts of the body far away from the spot where the sting had actually occurred vanished though the uneasy sensation persisted at the actual spot for some appreciable time. From such an experience one would obviously conclude that the incantation somehow strengthens the nervous system to successfully resist the spreading of the pain due to poison. This is a subject clearly of systematic physiological and pathological research and may lead to interesting results.

We would do well to encourage scientists of established reputation to examine all such cases thoroughly and scientifically and try to understand their technique Prayer and mystic trance are believed to produce changes in the cerebral cortex or the glands of internal secretion of the person engaged in prayer or mystic meditation. Thought is known to be transmitted from one person to another through untraceable channels. It is certainly worth one’s while to try and find out what these channels are. The old idea that certain ‘spirits’ good or bad are responsible for this transmission or, in fact, for all weird and inexplicable phenomena, can no longer be entertained. Some scientific explanation must be found out.

An infinitesimal quantity of matter, from an appropriate part of the human body, might possibly be conceived as undergoing conversion through mystic contemplation into atomic energy and supplying the power required in ‘levitation’ or ultra-mechanical locomotion. Systematic research is bound to explain them or reject and disprove them.