The Upanishads, the gyan-khand of the Vedas and other post-Vedas Hindu philosophical treatises which are the pinnacle of Hindu philosophy, teach us that we are not the body; we are Atma - a very minute part of Paramatma - which resides along with Paramatma in the body as its abode or clothes. Atma always wants to merge with Paramatma . Hence the ultimate and the only goal of our life is and should be complete merger of Atma with Paramatma and to get Moksh - liberation from the painful process of birth and death cycle .
They also emphasise that Atma cannot merge with Paramatma without His wish and blessing, and the essential pre-condition to get His blessing is total surrender to and absolute unwavering faith in Him - no question, no inquiry, no discussion, no debate. It comes with the realisation of the truth of Parabrahma Parmatma , and the realisation comes only with His blessing. It cannot be achieved by any amount of knowledge or meditation or renunciation or even with the help of Brahma Gyani Gurus.They may be helpful as means to reach Paramatma only if one has unquestioned faith in and total devotion to Him , and He is pleased to bestow with His blessing
Thus since the Vedic period we have been taught not to criticise or question the teaching of our Rishis about the Ultimate Truth or try to conduct scientific inquiry to know It . Thus, I am afraid, it blunted our curiosity and the capacity of reasoning and scientific inquiry. It promoted the habit of blind faith and acceptance of the teaching of our Rishis , or for that matter ancestors and elders , as final, ultimate and absolute ,without any questioning . All this inhibited our scientific temperament .
2. The Upanishads also teach us that this world is not real ; everything around us is illusion , and not worthy to be sought for. Thus they make us disinterested in the worldly affairs and render all our efforts to gather knowledge about the structure and behaviour of the natural and physical world through scientific investigation meaningless.
3.They further teach us that actions bind us with their results, and we get trapped in the quagmire of vicious birth and death cycle.Thus our Rishis including Adi Shankaracharya taught us complete abandonment of actions and to adopt Sanyas ( renunciation ).If all actions are abandoned , will the world not cease to exist ? Will it not be against the will of the Parameshwar and will we thus not be committing the sin of trying to interfere in the Parameshwar's desire ? Such teachings of the Upanishads also suppressed the development of scientific temperament.This was however improved upon by the Shrimat Bhagwat Geeta by teaching the path of Nishkam Karmayog i.e. Energetic Path of Desireless Actions ( instead of abandoning all actions , performance of actions of all worldly affairs as pure duties for the good of others without the desire or hope for any fruits and feeling of being the doer and with the idea of dedicating the actions to the Parameshwar ) . But this was a very difficult proposition and was not conducive for the development of scientific temperament.
But it is a great irony that despite umpteen number of sadhus and sanyasis giving religious discourses day in and day out on these teachings, we almost top the list in the world of crimes and corruption to fulfill the unending worldly greed , enmity , thirst for violence,etc. Then, it may be argued, how that the teachings failed to have a desired effect on bad people , but they impacted on good people in inhibiting their scientific temperament ? The answer to this paradox perhaps lies in the fact that the good people are receptive and teachings of ancestors do have impact on them , but the bad people have scantiest regard for the teachings for their elders as they are mainly driven by their powerful criminal mentality.That is the reason that we have innumerable sadhu sand sants , but a very few number of scientists.The need of the hour is to develope a scietific temperament in our children if we want to make our personal, social and national life excellent.
