In plain words
Today's scientists say, ‘Wherever we look, we are seeing the atom.’ A small example. Thirty years ago, when Bhagavantam was Director at the Indian Institute of Science, I stayed in his house. One day an International Conference was held in that house. Wanting to bring some eminent scientists who took part in it close to Swami, Bhagavantam invited them to a meal. In science even the cleverness is very slight. As clever as scientists are, just so lacking in faith are they too. Search anywhere and see. A man of great intellect has no faith at all. He cannot trust even himself. Whenever you look, he is in the lab, at his research. We were having the meal. I said, ‘You think you are scientists. What have you come to know?’ I asked. ‘Have you recognised anything at all of the nature of the sun, the moon and the rest? The sun, the moon and the earth are one and the same substance, are they not!’ I asked. One scientist, who thought they had come to know everything, could not keep quiet and said, ‘The sun is now middle-aged.’ Another said, ‘The sun is a fine young man.’ I asked again, ‘How old?’ ‘Millions of years,’ he said. They have no sense. Put down a one and keep putting zeros after it, and it becomes millions. This is what the people of Bhārata called ‘beginningless’. How easy! To say that is an insult to them. If he says ‘Millions of years’, he is a scientist. They want a number. They go about with this kind of petty satisfaction. From time without beginning, the Vedānta of us people of Bhārata has gone on teaching every matter directly, so that it touches the heart.
Matter and energy are not two separate things; they are one
Today's scientists say ‘matter and energy’. Einstein too said ‘matter and energy’. But My view is that matter and energy are not two separate things. Matter is energy; energy is matter: the two are one. Without matter, energy is not visible to us. Without energy, matter cannot be known to us; the two together are one!