What is the ‘Mystery of the Sublime’?

What is the Mystery of the Sublime?

‘The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.’ Albert Einstein.

This insight into the mystery of life, has also given rise to religion. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty— this knowledge, this feeling, is at the centre of true religiousness.

Einstein considered three stages:

With primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions – because of a poor understanding of causal connections, there is fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death.

Social impulses are another source of the crystallization of religion. The desire for guidance, love, and support leads to the social or moral conception of God.

The next stage involves those who feel the futility of human desires and aims, and the sublimity and marvellous order which is revealed in both in nature and in the world of thought. To such people, individual existence is seen as a sort of prison and there is a need to experience the universe as a single significant whole. Einstein describes this as Cosmic Religious Feeling.

How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, as it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? It is said to be the function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.

Therefore, ‘cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research’.

Discuss!!

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