Material for this post has been lifted almost word for word from 'Continental Philosophy' by Simon Critchley.
The relation between knowledge and wisdom or between scientific enquiry and humanistic enquiry and the consequent 'meaning of life' is not reducible to empirical investigation. The gap between knowledge and wisdom is not an exploratory gap that can be filled by producing a better more comprehensive theory but is a FELT GAP.
The scientific conception of the world does not close the gap between knowledge and wisdom but rather is felt more acutely. Even when the basic exegencies of life are comprehensively met, as in the developed western world - when every man has been provided with enough food, even more food than they can eat; when you shower them with every earthly blessing Man concocts new neuroses and new pathologies and new sciences are created to deal with them (psychiatry & psychoanalysis). The question of meaning of life returns with frightening vengeance.
Attempts to fill this 'meaning gap' can be undertaken by the unjustified means of 'returning to traditional religion' or through invention of a new religion or by the 57 varieties of ways of doing it which are available in the supermarket of esotericism that could include astrology, yoga, sitting under a pyramid holding crystals or whatever. These constitute varieties of obscurantism and causes man to become a lunatic. Contrariwise, an infatuation with science and its methods leads to an equally dangerous scientism which reduces man to a beast. In John Stuart Mill's words the one doctrine is accused of making men beasts, the other lunatics.
This is precisely the point where some of the predelictions of ancient western philosophy is admirable, in the sense that there was an attempted integration of knowledge and wisdom. It was widely believed that a knowledge of how things were the way they were, would lead to wisdom in the conduct of one's life.
The assumption that ties knowledge and wisdom together is the idea that the cosmos as such expresses a human purpose, and therefore a knowledge of nature would be part and parcel of what it means to be human. (Teleological view of the universe). Here each natural thing can be explained in terms of its final cause (Aristotle) - that goal for which a thing is the way it is. This view provided a felicitous unity of theory and practice, of knowledge and wisdom, of causal explanation and existential understanding or meaning.
With tremendous advances in science, this unity has been split apart. To quote Rene Descartes 'the customary search for final causes is utterly useless in physics'. The universe expresses no human purpose. It is simply governed by physical laws which are indifferent to human striving. The universe is vast, cold, inhuman and mechanical. Blaise Pascal writing in the late 1650s said 'the eternal silence of infinite spaces fills me with dread'. That is, knowledge of the infinite, open universe of Copernicus and Galileo, without meaning or final purpose, inspires sheer anxiety when one turns to the question of wisdom.
This is one expression of the historical and spiritual experience that is known as 'Enlightenment' : we are left with an experiential gap between the realms of knowledge and wisdom, truth and meaning, theory and practice, causal explanation and existential understanding. The scientific revolution in its undeniable truth, produced a disenchantment of nature.
It is in such a stage of things that the leela's of Shirdi Sai Baba comes to assume great value. Mankind had almost concluded that "Nature is no longer the visible expression of some 'world soul'." To highlight what Simon Critchley says "Nature is sheer, impersonal objective 'stuff', which is law governed, causally explicable, but completely cut adrift from human intentions". The question is: can nature or indeed human selves become re-enchanted in such a way that reduces or even eliminates the meaning gap and produces some plausible conception of a good life?
By the miracles that are happening in the name of Sai Baba, attention is being drawn to what sort of life he led while he was living and what sort of life he would prescribe for others. These curious incidents also draw one's attention to read the Sai Sat Charita to find out what style of living could enable him to develop these Siddhis (powers?). The occurrence of such miracles infuse a fresh meaning to a world depleted of all meaning by an essentially empirical and rationalistic world.
To elaborate the above point further, a majority of modern scientific minded humans are almost convinced, or have profound doubts about the possible existence of the Divine. Such people have begun to question the sanctity of human values. When the existence of the Divine was more or less assured among humans, certain ethical values seemed to be affirmed by it. With the gradual erosion of faith there has been a concomitant devaluation of values. With the loss of values, human life has been stripped of much meaning. The vast scales of industrialisation and modernisation accompanied by the urbanisation of human population and dense concentration in large cities together with the nature of work that is largely mechanical has led to a devastating dehumanisation of man. Science and technology has caused a strong feeling of alienation and estrangement. To me at least, and perhaps to many others like me, the occurrence of such occult phenomena seems to infuse more meaning to the universe around me.
Shirdi Sai Baba essentially led a life of utter simplicty. He inhabited a mosque but encouraged religious motifs that were, in many instances, those of Hinduism. His conduct was eclectic. He always had 'Allah Malik' on his lips and should anyone approach him loaded with problems, he would bless them with the words "Allah bhala karega" (God will bestow well-being). He tried to unify and in some ways integrate the Hindu and Islamic experiences. While a few miracles were recorded during his lifetime, he was by no means a miracle-monger while living. Though people had noticed certain siddhi powers at various instances, he never seems to have made a show of it. He always begged for food with a begging bowl and lived a simple, frugal lifestyle. Even as he seems to have passed to the beyond, he seems to favour a simple frugal lifestyle judging by the fact that he materialised a begging bowl which he says is 'Kapaala' and presented it to Shanthamma at this year's (2011) annual austerities saying '... this begging bowl was with Shiva earlier and it later came to my possession which I am handing over to you'. Perhaps he was implying that there is dignity to be seen in frugality and abstinence. "There is kingship in poverty" as he frequently used to explain while he was living.
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