Yoga Guru Swami Ramdev was invited by Assocham to speak on Science and Spirituality?Building the Bridges on March 27 along with Sir Harry Kroto who had won Nobel Prize along with two others in finding the third form of carbon molecule, C60, also called the buckyball. The way, media?especially the television channels?pitched him against Sir Kroto, it appeared as if there would be a ?Big Fight?? between the proponent of Yoga and one of the leading spiritual leader on the one side and the scientist par excellence, on the other.
But in the end, the Swami and the Nobel laureate were more in agreement than disagreement. Both the greats were great believers in the Nature and some of the marvels that it has created. Sir Kroto gave an example of how the haemoglobin was an excellent natural molecule which takes oxygen through the blood to each and every part of the body and distributes exactly the way it is required. Baba Ramdev said that it was Maharishi Patanjali who had taken this knowledge of Yoga from the Indian Vedas and suggested that each minute part of every cell in the body can be looked after through Pranayam which runs an abundant flow of oxygen in the human body. The two ?bests?? in their inimitable presentations before the industry leaders and hordes of media did not really lock horns and none of them emerged a winner or loser. It was the audience that gained from them in a packed hall in the national capital. The event witnessed some of the ?best thoughts?? on science and some of the ?compelling?? Yoga discourse in a three-hour session. In a way, the organisers did seem successful in ?bridging the gap?? in science and spirituality. ?Humanism is the greatest invention of mankind??, said Sir Kroto. The Swami could not agree with him more. ?There is a drug mafia hellbent upon selling drugs which are not needed. Barring life-saving drugs, the mafia controls the rest of the pharmaceutical market??, said Swami Ramdev. If you thought the scientists did not have any spirituality in them; you would have been proved wrong by Sir Kroto. ?Atheist (Sir Kroto considers him to be one) are as spiritual as others but some people have hijacked the spirituality??, the renowned scientist said. He is as concerned about keeping the Mother Earth planet clean and free from pollution as Swami Ramdev. ?Fossil fuels are taking us to the edge of a crisis arising out of global warming??, Sir Kroto said adding that he was worried about the future of his children and grand children. It was not only Sir Kroto that the Indian Guru found himself to be in agreement. Professor Heseltine of the US-based Heseltine Foundation for Medical Sciences observed that a human being came from ?nothing?? and would go back to ?nothing??. All these renowned scientists who converged here for the Fourth Assocham Global Knowledge Millennium sounded so close to the Hindu thinking and mythology. It is a different matter that they subtly blamed some religious leaders for ?hijacking the spirituality??. But then, no one can really hijack the sprituality, it is there if you think so and believe in it!
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