ABSTRACT
This chapter, referring to the Mahabharata, tries to establish that the sustaining force for ethics is spirituality. The vast literature on logical positivism has a significant dearth of writings on ethics in so far as logical positivism deals with the realm of science. Although the ethical and aesthetic values find their limited inclusion eventually in the system, they are not contained there in the unified frame of the spiritual dimension of attitudinal virtues not to be accommodated in the science of physics. Science, he contends, is no substitute for spirituality, which is not (only) a search for the ontological state of the being but a pursuit for a value through the process of becoming. God is not a being in the Hindu system but is the value unconditional ananda, or joy, and is nothing but Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss, which are not marks of a being. The Gita says that all our actions are to be performed in the spiritual mode toward the attainment of the height of the spiritual state. Scientific pursuit must follow this route in line with the other pursuits in life without ever posing itself as a substitute for spirituality. However, the way science, quantum mechanics specifically, is relevant to spirituality is via its thrust on the unity of the universe, more so when one views things in the light of an all-pervasive consciousness. This thrust toward unity has a tendency to lead to the spiritual thrust of attaining harmony within and without, although the latter may not be reduced to the thrust toward unity to be found in science.
