Vivekananda and science

In his book Raja Yoga, Vivekananda writes that practice of Raja Yoga can confer psychic powers such as 'reading another's thoughts', 'controlling all the forces of nature', become 'almost all-knowing', 'live without breathing', 'control the bodies of others' and levitation. He also explains traditional eastern spiritual concepts like kundalini and spiritual energy centres.

However, Vivekananda himself says in the book,

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It is not the sign of a candid and scientific mind to throw overboard anything without proper investigation. Surface scientists, unable to explain the various extraordinary mental phenomena, strive to ignore their very existence.

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He further says in the introduction of the book that one should take up the practice and verify these things for oneself, and that there should not be blind belief.

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What little I know I will tell you. So far as I can reason it out I will do so, but as to what I do not know I will simply tell you what the books say. It is wrong to believe blindly. You must exercise your own reason and judgment; you must practise, and see whether these things happen or not. Just as you would take up any other science, exactly in the same manner you should take up this science for study.

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Vivekananda (1895) rejected ether theory before Einstein (1905), stating that it cannot explain the space itself.

In his paper, read at the World Parliament of Religions (1893), Vivekananda also hinted about the final goal of Physics, what in these days, is attempted by theories like the String Theory.

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Science is nothing but the finding of unity. As soon as science would reach perfect unity, it would stop from further progress, because it would reach the goal. Thus Chemistry could not progress farther when it would discover one element out of which all other could be made. Physics would stop when it would be able to fulfill its services in discovering one energy of which all others are but manifestations ... All science is bound to come to this conclusion in the long run. Manifestation, and not creation, is the word of science today, and the Hindu is only glad that what he has been cherishing in his bosom for ages is going to be taught in more forcible language, and with further light from the latest conclusions of science.

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The great electrical engineer, Nikola Tesla, after listening to Vivekananda's speech on Sankhya Philosophy, was much interested in its cosmogony and its rational theories of the Kalpas (cycles), Prana and Akasha. His notion based on the vedanta led him to think that matter is a manifestation of energy . After attending a lecture on vedanta by Vivekananda Tesla also concluded that, modern science can look for the solution of cosmological problems in Sankhya philosophy, and he could prove that mass can be reduced to potential energy mathematically.