Harvey's discovery that blood circulates is a landmark in the history of medical knowledge. Harvey explains that the idea occurred to him because he considered the human body as a micro-unit of the universe. He saw the planets in the universe were in motion. Therefore, he assumed that the blood in the body too should be in motion. Sri Aurobindo says that during the Vedic period man lived in harmony with Nature. To him, the Spirit and Nature were one. Buddhism preached the renunciation of life and conquered the whole of India and later a greater part of Asia. India gave up Buddhism but its basic tenet of renunciation was from that time accepted by almost all schools of Indian yoga. Sri Aurobindo further says that Man must regain that unity, but at the level of Supermind. Harvey's view of life was a view of the whole. It led him to one significant discovery. We have now lost it.
Schumacher, a British economist, published a book in the 80's pronouncing the idea of ‘Economics as if people mattered.' Economics, considered on its own as economics for economics' sake will lead one astray, away from the truth. The centre of economics is Money for the monetarists. It is man who created money. Money is there to serve man. Man should be the centre of economics, not money. Science is a mental tool Man has created so that it may serve him. Science is not the centre of life; nor can it ever become one. Man is the centre of life. It is a psychological superstition that Man becomes a slave of money or science which are his own creations. Science pursued for its own sake has led to several wonderful technologies. They have generated pollution, assuring that our future generations have no place to live in. The UN took initiative to have an International Commission to study pollution. As a result, now we realise that science is a part and society is a whole.
To pursue the part for its own sake is not the highest wisdom we have inherited either from Aristotle or from the Vedic seers. Harvey lived in the 17th century. He was a physician to James I and Charles I. Though he lived three hundred years ago, his sense of science was a sense of the whole. It is not only money and science that must serve man. Yoga seeks moksha, release of the Spirit. Sri Aurobindo calls it the last act of selfishness of the soul. Yoga is for the Man, or better still, for the Spirit. That Spirit should flower in life. So, He said ‘All life is yoga'. His Integral yoga says the Spirit should evolve in Life and make earth heaven. It is an approach which considers Man as a whole, an integrated whole, a whole of which the Divine is the centre.