Vidyas vis-à-vis Sciences-Revisited

As Vedic astrology is not interested in staking any claim to being a ‘Science’, its true men of learning, the Hindu astrologers, will never be displeased, if rationalists do not look up to their astrology with their ‘scientific’ admiration. Vedic and Hindu astrology, far from being a ‘Science’, is quite satisfied to be only a Vedic Vidya [Jyotir Vidya -system of spiritual-learning]. A Vidya can never be a Science, nor can a Science be a Vidya, since the two are entirely different ‘species of knowledge’; one being avowedly ‘Divinity-centered’ [Vidya], while the other being avowedly blind to ‘Divinity’ and the spiritual world [Science].

If we were to probe into the whole question of the identity of these ‘rationalists’, we shall find to our consternation that they are by and large the English-educated Hindus, who have suffered a ‘cultural-conversion’ to a Western intellectual approach to life. This is all the more tragic, if we take into account the fact that even ‘rationalists’ of Europe or America have been more understanding of the spiritual value and ethos of Sanatana Dharma and the Vedas, than Hindu rationalists have been on their very home ground. Through such a ‘cultural-conversion’, the rationalists have turned into die-hard adherents of a Western world-view- although they are quite unconscious of the exact nature of the ‘cultural-conversion’, which they have suffered.