The Scientific Way to Live

The scientific way to live is to go within yourself and ask yourself whether you are doing right or wrong, and be absolutely sincere with yourself. If you are sincere with yourself, you are unlikely ever to go wrong; and even if you do, you will be able to quickly correct yourself.
~Paramahansa Yogananda

Yogananda called this method of living scientific. It is called scientific because we can test the results in the laboratory of our lives. When we have a sincere, consistent meditation practice, we can see what is happening in our lives and "test out" our intuition. We can "test out" our actions. Our primary discernment is whether the action we are contemplating is non-harming to ourselves and to others. That is the primary concern.  If the action we are contemplating seems like the right thing to do, it probably is. But the wonderful thing is that our meditation practice has trained us to observe ourselves, to step back and discern. When we do that, we can easily correct our course of action.  If it is not quite the right action for us, we can easily move back onto the right path. That is the scientific way of living.