From Chemical Sciences to Spiritual Sciences- My Story

I was a bit too logical and scientific in my childhood days. Since science could not prove God existed, I did not believe in God. Chemistry was my favorite subject and chemical equations my favorite pastime.

One fine day, I decided to set up a chemistry lab in my house. Thanks to my parents for permitting me to do it and thanks to my grandfather who readily offered me a small godown in the house for the purpose. The chemicals came from a variety of sources. Potassium permanganate came from the chemist, hydrogen peroxide from my mother’s cosmetics, few old test tubes and beakers came from the school lab (with permission of course), common salt  & H2O from the kitchen and my lab was ready for experimenting.

Soon many of my friends and class-fellows were impressed and few more labs appeared in my home town. A few months later, a brother of a class fellow was injured due to mishandling of a nitrate chemical and the labs starting closing down one by one due to parental pressures and fears. We were in the age group of 13-15 and were considered too young to play with chemicals.

If on one hand, Chemistry was my favorite, then on the other hand, Physics was my worst score subject. As Physics was a must if one wanted to study Chemistry, I decided to opt for commerce as entrepreneurship was my second love. (It is a different thing that my business plans and castles in the air used to come up frequently and were soon dashed to the ground due to ground realities of life.)

The chemical lab was shut down in 1989 and my serious spiritual pursuits began in 2009 (though the foundations for spiritual pursuits were laid in 1995 when I first visited  Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry city, India) Between my pursuits of chemical matter and spiritual matters there was a long phase of adventures, experiments, failures, frustrations, learning and what not.

In early 2009 I had started meditating regularly but I did not find any significant change in myself. It was only in January 2010 when I started meditating one hour every day along with massive change in attitude towards life; I started receiving tremendous benefit from meditation. I once jokingly wrote on Facebook, “Wine, Wine everywhere and I felt light-headed. Divine, divine everywhere and I felt light-headed, light-hearted and light-souled.”

A friend of mine rightly says about meditation, “The proof of pudding is in the eating” When one starts getting significant benefits from meditation, one will become as addicted to it as one gets to narcotics. One can find that perfect peace which one did not get when one bought that luxury car, one gets a seemingly illogical and unexplainable joy. I wrote a short poem on this experience.

I was also discovering misconceived notions about spirituality among masses and the attitude that spirituality is based on unscientific faith and unseen God or supreme consciousness. So I decided to set up another kind of a laboratory this time, a spiritual lab, to prove the benefits of meditation and other spiritual tools. I conducted a small workshop on “Spiritual tools for Material success” to dispel the notion that spirituality has no connection with daily life and material world. I have started a research project on benefits of meditation to establish through hypothesis and experiment that meditation can improve our creativity, decision-making, intuition and general well being. In fact I have started believing that meditation can solve all human problems (individual and social) by raising our levels of consciousness.

I thank Supreme Consciousness for taking me beyond chemical  sciences to spiritual sciences, something which is much more powerful in raising human levels of consciousness, to realize the highest of human potential and to counter the products of chemical labs like nuclear bombs (by educating people) which have put a question mark on our very existence.

May the souls of those who have died in the Mumbai serial blasts yesterday rest in peace.! May the injured and family members get the strength to overcome the trauma! May the consciousness levels of those who are creating terror go up.

____________________________________

Dr Amit Nagpal is a Personal Branding Consultant and specializes in Personal Branding with a holistic touch. He is based in New Delhi, India. His philosophy is, “Take charge of your life and your brand.” 
(I express my deep gratitude to my mentor Sensei Ikeda & Bharat Soka Gakkai, for the mentorship and inspiration.)