Science or Upanishads: Who Explains Existence Best?

Questioner: Who can best answer the basic questions related to human existence or reasons for survival, our life, our emotions, and our death? Can science with its metanarratives answer these questions, or will the Upanishads answer them?

Acharya Prashant: Science does not even look into these questions. Science is considered, rather science is concerned only with the objective world. Science does not look into the subject. You are the subject. The ego is the subject. Who exists? The ego exists. All existence is for the ego because all existence is only for the one who experiences its own existence.

The body does not experience its own existence. So, the real existing one is the ego.

Take an example. When you are in a coma or have a less severe condition, even when you are just unconscious, the body is still functional. But do you exist? Will you say you exist? Well, others will say that you exist. Because right now, the others are in a healthy state of consciousness. So even your existence can be verified at that stage only by others. But if you are asked “Do you exist?”, would you say yes? Forget about responding to others, to yourself, do you say that you exist, or do you feel that you exist?

No, you don’t. The body is still intact. The organs are still functional. But you do not really exist.

So existence has to do with consciousness. And consciousness has to do with the one at the center of all consciousness which is the ‘I-sense’. The ‘I-ego’. Science does not look into that.

Therefore it’s futile to expect science to answer questions relating to human existence, the purpose of existence, why we are, why we are restless; these things science won’t go into.

The Upanishads- yes, definitely. If you go to the Upanishads, then the ego is all that they talk about. Even though the knowledge contained in Upanishads is called Brahm Vidyā yet essentially what the Upanishads explore is the nature of the self, right? That’s what you must figure out if you want to lead a healthy and liberated life.

Obviously, science is wonderful if you want to know about the material world. If you want to know your surroundings, then science is indispensable and if you are interested in knowing yourself then it’s the Upanishads that you must go to.

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