{"id":3473,"date":"2016-03-27T18:41:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-27T13:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=3473"},"modified":"2016-03-27T18:41:00","modified_gmt":"2016-03-27T13:11:00","slug":"swami-nithyananda-new-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=3473","title":{"rendered":"Swami Nithyananda & Other Babas, Can You Please Leave the Science to the Scientists?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A<\/span><\/p>few centuries ago, if your profession was \u201cscientist\u201d, you\u2019d be subject to unspeakable torture. The authorities would have your name on a list that they\u2019d reserve for heretics, murderers, and <\/span>gay people<\/span><\/a>. You\u2019d be sent to a camp where a thousand <\/span>spiritual godmen<\/span><\/a> would attempt to exorcise the science devil out of your system. <\/span>\n\nThese days, however, it\u2019s generally accepted that science is a pretty decent thing. It\u2019s given us <\/span>iPhones<\/span><\/a> \u2013 which are cool to take pics of food \u2013 and toasters, to make said food. In the last thousand years or so, spiritual advisors haven\u2019t been able to match science\u2019s contribution to mankind. What are a couple of <\/span>Osho documentaries<\/span><\/a> and cool cathedrals when compared to science\u2019s BMWs and waffle-irons?<\/span>\n\nSo as the babas wisen, it\u2019s no surprise that they\u2019ve adopted both science and the internet to remain relevant. Social media, the official home of <\/span>conspiracy theorists<\/span><\/a> and the gullible, was to become their home as well. All you need today is a Skype account and a working credit card, and you\u2019re in the presence of the \u201cliving reincarnation of the super-consciousness,\u201d which is the self-proclaimed title of internet baba Swami Nithyananda, and not what four 16-year-old <\/span>stoners<\/span><\/a> decided to call their prog-rock band.<\/span>\n

Now while all this garbage masquerading as spirituality is great fodder for meme pages, it gets a little dangerous when it starts pretending to dumbsplain science.<\/blockquote>\nWith the help of cricket bat analogies, <\/span>mother cow<\/span><\/a> anecdotes, and fake quote generators, a number of psycho-babbling spiritual leaders like Swami Nithyananda have invaded our timelines. We have Deepak Chopra for the ABCD crowd, <\/span>Sadhguru<\/span><\/a> for the upper-class aunties, Swami Nithyananda for the wholly clueless, Gaur Gopal Das, the dad-joke generator, and a thousand others who haven\u2019t even managed to make it to 2,000 YouTube subscribers just yet.<\/span>\n\nIt\u2019s never been a better time to be a baba, considering that even godmen from 5,000 years ago are finding their way into our textbooks. The All India Council of Technical Education recently decided that <\/span>engineers<\/span><\/a> in this country don\u2019t have a hard enough time, and has asked them to familiarise themselves with the works of Rishi Agastya and Rishi Kanad, so more technical students are made aware of ancient Indian philosophy. <\/span>\n\nThe book also claims the first of these babas had invented an electro-voltaic cell, and that he had first carried out the electrolysis of water (this <\/span>change.org petition<\/span><\/a> by scientist Aniket Sule disagrees). Meanwhile what Rishi Agastya is known for, is turning one man into a snake, and another into an elephant with two well-timed curses. That\u2019s probably relevant when you\u2019re trying to create engineers that take normal roads and turn them into roller coasters, or officers who don\u2019t use cloud computing because \u201c<\/span>what happens when it rains, duh.<\/span><\/a>\u201d <\/span>\n\nNow unfortunately, we live in a country where thousands of people don\u2019t know the difference between fact and word soup. And because they don\u2019t know better, they clap along to \u201cfacts\u201d like, \u201cmake your mind like a monkey\u2019s kidney and you will see reality.\u201d And they end up going home thinking, \u201cScience couldn\u2019t cure my herpes, maybe this monkey kidney thing is the answer.\u201d<\/span>\n\nSwami Nithyananda<\/span><\/a> recently gained fame for proposing that he could counter Einstein\u2019s famous e=mc<\/span>2<\/span> theory with a string of scientific-sounding words posed as questions. Here\u2019s his theory: \u201cWhat is mc<\/span>2<\/span>? The difference between intensity and continuity. What is energy? What is matter? Matter is continuity, energy is intensity. What do you call matter? Anything continue. What do you call energy? Anything intense.\u201d <\/span>\n\nIf Einstein were still alive I\u2019m sure he might have checked to see if Nithyananda had suffered a stroke, but since this is India we\u2019re talking about, obviously he commands an army of followers spread out over at least six Facebook pages. The \u201cenlightened young scholar\u201d has gone on to promise that soon cows will talk to us in Sanskrit and Tamil, a theory made famous by scientist \u201cDr Doolittle\u201d. He also went on to release a video called \u201cOnness Capsule\u201d, where <\/span>he claps in different angles<\/span><\/a>, presumably as his official entry to <\/span>Nach Baliye<\/span><\/i>.<\/span>\n\nNow while all this garbage masquerading as spirituality is great fodder for <\/span>meme pages<\/span><\/a>, it gets a little dangerous when it starts pretending to dumbsplain science. So what if Sadhguru rides bikes, hangs with Gordon Ramsay, and speaks well, he also invented something called \u201cQuantum Yoga\u201d, in which instead of atoms, you are the one who does a split, or something equally vague. In this country, we\u2019re used to learning the news from WhatsApp, and getting our <\/span>sex education<\/span><\/a> from Bollywood, but can we please just leave the science to the scientists?<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s never been a better time to be a baba, considering that even godmen from five thousand years ago are finding their way into our engineering textbooks. We have Deepak Chopra for the ABCD crowd, Sadhguru for the upper-class aunties, Swami Nithyananda for the wholly clueless, and Gaur Gopal Das, the living dad-joke generator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":3474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[5930,4219,6614,6615,4609,6616,6617],"class_list":["post-3473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-babas","tag-education","tag-engineering","tag-godmen","tag-science","tag-scientist","tag-swami-nithyananda"],"yoast_head":"\nSwami Nithyananda & Other Babas, Can You Please Leave the Science to the Scientists?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There\u2019s never been a better time to be a baba, considering that even godmen from five thousand years ago are finding their way into our engineering textbooks. 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