3 considerations in reconciling Science and Scripture

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Some questions we will discuss in this class. So how can we do this course? Now first, we will be spending a lot of time on the two main topics of Scripture, pagan scripture and pagan science. I will start this talk with a PowerPoint presentation about the reconciling, reconciling is harmonizing or signing the agreement between reconciling science and scripture.

So where they agree, where they disagree and how to look at disagreements. We will try to look at it. And then, this talk will go on for the next minute and then you may have a few questions today and many of the questions that you have raised, I will answer them one by one tomorrow and we will also answer the questions that you may have.

If you have any further questions, I will answer them also as we move forward. So, I am starting. So in general, scriptural knowledge can be classed into three broad categories.

Can you see this? Baby, you are able to see from here? You are able to see from behind also? Is it big enough? Baby, can you raise it up? Can you see from behind? Oh! Simple. So basically, scriptural knowledge can be divided into these three broad categories. What are the categories? Scriptural knowledge that agrees with science.

This is the scriptural knowledge that disagrees with science. And scriptural knowledge that transcends science. So now, why are we looking at the relationship between the two? Of scriptural knowledge and scientific knowledge? Because, we live in the age of science and we are surrounded by a scientific culture, the scientific technology and scientific knowledge just has its validity and utility in terms of our individuality.

So at the same time, we are also trying to understand scripture and to some extent we have also realized some of the benefits of scriptural knowledge. So naturally, if scriptural knowledge has its validity and utility, scientific knowledge has its validity and utility, then how do they do interface? So the interface can happen in any of these three ways. And we will see where there is agreement, where there is disagreement, and where there is transcendence.

So now, agreement would mean, for example, say, there are facts in the Vedic scriptures, in the God-making tradition, in the Vedic scriptures, that the Srimad-Sutra, which is 5th A.D. and long before 5th A.D., it is called Valbhayan Sutra. So now that is something which scientifically also known, that is only in the Vedic scriptures. All the Vedic scriptures talk about, you are not the boy, you are the soul.

And there is significant scientific evidence about the existence of a spiritual essence within all of us, a source of consciousness. We know in our spiritual existence, we discover ourselves. In the whole session, we talk about the experience, love-joy experiences.

So these are things which, you know, scripture and science agree with each other. And there are some aspects that scripture and science don't agree with each other. Now, whether because they don't agree with each other, there are many fields.

For example, one prominent field could be the field of cosmology. So, in the field of cosmology, you may find that the scriptures give certain descriptions of certain cosmological structures, which seem to be different from what we see through modern cosmology. This is an example of a two-contradicting field.

And we will see how this needs to be understood. There are three ways in which this can be understood, why there needs to be a contradiction. And third is that the scriptures give certain knowledge which transcends material science.

Transcend means to go beyond. So, for example, the scriptures say that beyond the material world there is the spiritual world. And in that spiritual world there are three magnitude of planets.

And on top of all the magnitude of planets is Goloka Vrindavan, in which Krishna is the supreme personality of Godhead. And he gives Jewish flags of collection, wears a peacock feather, plays the flute, and is surrounded by cows. So, a bliss is something which modern science can neither prove nor dispute.

Because modern science cannot tell us anything about the spiritual world. It's just beyond dispute. So, there is a… which transcends those.

So, now, as far as these are in agreement, we don't have any issues. It's not really balanced for us. But the questions can come for the remaining two.

Now, among these three bodies of knowledge, the scripture knowledge that agrees and disagrees and that transcends, which is the most important for us? That which transcends. What is this? Because, ultimately, we understand that we are in practice, we want to change ourselves, we want to redirect our hearts, we want to bring things, return things. And we want to be spiritual ones, bring out our aligned inner qualities, become better people.

So, all this is actually our primary interest. So, scriptures do give us material knowledge also, knowledge about the material world around us. But that is not the primary message of the scriptures.

The stringent gift that the scriptures offer us is their transcendental knowledge, which addresses issues that are beyond the scope of science. Now, some people may say, actually, there are no such things as transcendent science, because science can give us knowledge about everything. And if there is something that we can't know through science, then this knowledge doesn't exist.

That means, only that which is scientific is real. And anything that cannot be scientifically known is not real. So, we are right now among the three circles, the fourth circle, the third circle, that is transcendent.

So, is there something which is beyond the world of science? So, there are eminent scientists themselves who have recognized this, that the reach of scientific knowledge is limited. So, this is a quote from Nobel laureate, physicist Harvey Schrödinger. And he is saying, I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient.

So, first he tells, what is positive about the scientific picture? It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order. That means, it gives a lot of factual information. For example, say, how far is, what is the distance between India and America? What is the weight of a particular object? What are the dimensions of a particular object? So, it gives us a lot of factual information.

And secondly, it puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order. That means, we experience the interaction of objects in this world. So, I put an object here, and it will fall down.

So, now it will fall down here, it will fall down somewhere else. On the earth, everywhere it will fall down. So, we can get confused, it is predictable.

Because of gravity, it is going to happen here, it is going to happen there also. These are two things that a scientist gives. But, what does he not give? He is ghastly silent about all that is hungry.

All that is hungry is everything. That is the brain. That is really near to our heart.

That really matters to us. And what are these things? He gives an example. It cannot tell us about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight.

Now, what does this mean? When he says that science cannot tell us anything about red and blue, bitter and sweet. You know, when if we use some Photoshop or some image design software to make an image. So, at that point, we can say, this color has 75% red, 21% blue, 4% yellow or whatever.

I have that combination. Now, that color combination or that particular color is experienced by us. The science doesn't tell us anything about subjectivism, about the experience.

It doesn't tell us anything about bitter and sweet. We can have gulab jamuns made. And if I put it in a machine, a chemical analysis machine, then the chemical analysis machine can tell me what is the chemical composition of that gulab jamun.

How much of it is the sensitivity, how much is the sugar composition. Why? It cannot tell me whether the taste is good or not. Or most dramatically, physical pain and physical delight.

Now, all medical science is meant to free people from pain and disease. Now, with all the best technology medical science cannot measure pain. With the best technology, we do not have something called a painometer.

If somebody's hand gets fractured, with x-ray, CT scans, we can tell how much is the extent of the fracture. The two bones have got displaced. How much is the displacement? But how much is the pain? It cannot be measured.

Now, pain is such a fundamental reality about life. Now, notice this very carefully. Till now, Schrodinger has not talked anything about spiritual things.

He's talking about things which we experience at the material level, in the material world. Even drinking are not really explained. So, the whole of medical science is devoted to removing something which medical science or that matter, any science cannot measure.

It is pain. Now, beyond that, it says, it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly. That is, that if a particular image is beautiful or not, the science of the shock cannot tell us that.

You have to have a policy to tell us that, good or bad. Science is basically a wall. Science cannot tell us whether the embryo in the womb should be killed or should be not killed.

Science doesn't tell us about it. It is a cell. This is how this one is just grown.

This is the dimensions of its head. This is its heartbeat. But should we kill it or not? It doesn't tell us anything about it.

It is. And then ultimately, about God and humanity, science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains. But the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.

Now, what does he mean by this? He is a scientist. He says that I don't get the answers of science in these fields I feel. So what are those fields? One area, I will give you three examples, but especially this is related with the subjective aspect of our human experience.

Subjective aspect means we experience pleasure and pain. So, now, what exactly causes pleasure and pain? If I eat a Gulab Jamun, the tongue is dead matter, the Gulab Jamun is dead matter, the sensations that go through the nerves from the tongue to the brain, the complete solid sensations, nerves, they are dead matter, the neuronal cells with their dendrites and synapses, they are all dead matter. So, where exactly does the experience of the sweetness of the Gulab Jamun take us? So, some scientists try to reduce all emotions and all experiences down to the neuronal firing and the biochemical compositions of the brain cells.

However, this approach is very beneficial and superficial because it doesn't really describe an experience, it just describes some compositions. So, to give you a simple example, if there is a brain surgeon, a very expert brain surgeon, then he comes back home and he finds that his wife is upset with him. If he wants to find out what's made his wife upset, will he say, I don't know but he can.

He will say, you will have lost your brain. He will talk, sleep, then scientists observe where they can observe the person's freedom how deep they sleep and where the person is dreaming. Now, how do they know where the person is dreaming? Actually, this is called REM.

There is rapid eye movement. You can have sensors around various parts of the brain and the face and then they can find out there are various ways. During dream states, certain parts of the brain are activated.

So, they can map very clearly by looking at the eyes and by looking at the brain which parts of the brain are activated and based on that they can infer that the person is dreaming. But, no matter how precisely we map the brain signals, because there are scientists if they want to know what the person is dreaming, can they know by observing the brain signals? If you wake up the person in the night, what will he dream about? It means the idea of saying that we can reduce all our emotions and all our experience just to neuronal firing and biochemical compositions in the brain is very superstitious. These are part, not only part of the memory.

Say, when the soul is on your head itself, you can have a control on it. And whenever you want happiness, press one button, happiness. It can happen.

You want excitement, press another button. Excitement will come. Whatever emotions you want, press a button the emotions will come.

Now, does this really work? Yes. So, now, for example, antidepressant pills and medications that people widely use. Now, it's not that at a physical level or at a neuronal level, when we are depressed, certain chemicals are synthesized in the brain and those chemicals are injected in the brain, then it will lead to certain relief from the depression.

But that is just like, in general, if a person is in a very gloomy mood, he will smile, smile, smile, he will feel a little better. That's natural. But, externally smiling is not the same as externally stimulating others.

So, similarly, externally stimulating certain cells in the brain or causing certain chemicals to be secreted, that is not the same as actually experiencing happiness. So, this may work a little, this externally smiling may cheer a person's mood a little bit. Similarly, some antidepressants may cheer a person a little bit.

But there's a link to that. Because, what we are doing is, not going from the cause to the effect, but going from the effect to the cause. Happiness will be cause and smile will be effect.

If I go from the effect to the cause, I put a smile on myself to become happy, that's not going to work for a very long time. So, similarly, the idea that our brain cells and their states and their compositions are the source of all our emotions, gets this analysis of this thought process, gets the causal sequence wrong, we mistake the effect to be the cause. So, serious scientists have seen through this point, and they have recognized it, that the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take these things.

Now, why is it that the answers to science are not taken so seriously? Why am I saying this? Because science has a particular method, and that method limits what it observes and what it does not observe. Traditionally, in western intellectuals, I will not talk much about Vedic science here, because the science that we have come to in the world today is modern science, and it comes from the western intellectuals. So, I will focus on western intellectual history, because that's what we already come here with, and that's what often causes some doubts in us.

So, in western intellectual history, there was a general belief that certain metals or certain objects are more precious than other objects. So, for example, gold is more precious than iron. Now, if you look at it from a purely atomic or molecular point of view, there's no reason why you would consider gold to be more precious than iron.

They just have a certain number of electrons and protons in them. How would that make any difference? But the idea was that gold is more precious. And the idea in western thought was that gold is, because it's more precious than iron, so it was widely thought that if you dropped a golden ball and an iron ball from a height, because gold is more precious, gold will fall first.

So, it was a simplistic idea, but it was a basic idea. That means, the idea was that the difference between the value of gold and the value of iron, that is based on a subjective difference. It's not objective, gold is shiny, gold is precious.

It's not something within the chemical biology, chemical morphology of it. So, Galileo did this, Galileo is supposed to have done experiments. Whether he actually did it or not, it's attributed to him.

Such things are called apocryphal. Apocryphal means that he made up all the So, what he did was, he took two objects, two spheres of the same mass and he one gold one iron and he dropped them from the top to top and he observed that both of them fell at the same time. Isn't it? Now, what was the first common sense? But at that time it was shocking thing.

So, then from that time onwards, scientists divided the world into two properties. They call it primary properties and secondary properties. Primary properties are those which are objective, those which are measurable and secondary properties are those which are subjective, those which are not measurable.

So, for example, the preciousness of gold, is this objective property or subjective property? Subjective. So, therefore, it has got nothing to do with science. If science is to advance, we should focus on objective properties.

So, length, breadth, weight, density, mass, velocity, all these are objective, measurable properties. And science from that time onwards started focusing primarily and eventually exclusively on these properties. And that led to tremendous advancement of knowledge in a particular way.

But if we look at the world, what we look at is not, you know, if you look at, if you find a person good looking, you can find a person tall or short or, when we look at a person's face, we find the face good looking. No, it's not that we are looking at the, we are going to measure the length, width of the face. This is subjective.

So even in the material world, what we hold dear as a family is the subjective experience. So science, in the course of its advancement, chose to focus on the objective side of the reality. Even in objective, the measurement of the side of the reality.

So, what was the result of this? The subjective side was filtered out, it was neglected, it was relegated to the background. So to understand this, let's consider an example of a map. When a cartographer makes a map, at that time the cartographer chooses to focus on certain features.

Now, within maps also you can have characters, you can have political maps, you can have political maps, you can have road transportation maps, and you can see that they will focus on different features in the cartographer's images. But, within the whole principle of map itself, if I want to say, draw a map of some kind of then, I choose to focus on the dimensions that are relevant to the map. Suppose if I go from here to that other part, and I have a map and the map is straight.

If you go this way, you will come to a river. If you go beyond that other river, you will come to an expressway. Then you will come to a bridge.

Now, as I keep following the map, my faith in the map increases more and more and more. Now, I am going from here to that other part to meet a friend. But, as I keep moving forward, forward, forward, my faith in the map increases because I believe that my understanding is correct.

Eventually, when I come to my friend's house, and I am not comfortable, and my friend comes and says, welcome. I look at my map. My map doesn't show you.

Therefore, you don't know what in the map. But, actually, this is what has happened in history of science. Science is essentially like a map.

So, it's a map. And a map, when it starts up, it focuses on certain features. So, So I gave the example of the experiment of Galileo to point out that science chose to focus on physical features.

Not just physical objects, but measurable features. And as it focused on measurable features, people's faith, now with science, with the advent of science, things work. Let's say based on the discovery of the power of steam by genius science, the steam engine came up.

It worked. Based on using the principles of mechanics and gravity and aerodynamics and the right rather than the left, it worked. So it's just like I go, I travel by a map and I find the landmark at the end.

So it worked. But what happened was that there was an unbalanced extrapolation. There was an overconfidence about the power of science, just like an overconfidence about the truth value of a map.

When I see a person, I don't see the person in the map, therefore I say the person doesn't exist. So all the subjective aspects of human life started being neglected by science. And eventually there come scientists who practically change those things.

Actually there is no expertise in it. There come scientists who say we don't have any such thing as freedom. So we don't have any such thing as conscious experience.

So it's very peculiar that there is a scientist who says there is no freedom and there is no conscious experience. And that scientist uses free will and uses consciousness to write papers which say there is no free will in the world. And interestingly there are atheists who say actually all of us are just biologically programmed.

And they say that some people have got the programming to be religious and some people have got the programming to be atheistic. And this is the way the brain works. So actually there is no such thing as God.

But then they write books about how we are all programmed biologically. And based on this understanding that we are biologically programmed, they think that actually they try to prove that religion and God is just an illusion. And they prove it purely.

But then if belief in God is just a biological programming, how can they even give it up? So are we supposed to believe in programming to renounce our belief in Buddhism? It's a contradiction in terms. If you don't understand it, don't bother about it. But the point which I am making over here is simple.

That science, when, as we are saying over here, we are inclined to take the answers very seriously. Why? Because science, the math, focuses on certain issues. I will explain this further.

So you see this math, and if you consider this to be the figure on the right of the totality of reality, that this whole complete thing is the reality, whereas science focuses within that on a small aspect of reality. That is a gross material reality. And with a measurable quantifiable reality.

Beyond that, let's not talk about spiritual things over here. There's surely something beyond science and the material world also. As I mentioned, there's no play on each other.

And mind and emotion is something which is beyond the world of science. So now where do science, how do science and scripture diverge? Because there are different platforms of it. There's gross matter.

Then science primarily focuses on gross matter. But beyond gross matter, there's subtle matter. And beyond subtle matter is spirit.

And all of these together comprise totality of reality. So what is happening is, science focuses on one aspect of reality. In the Bhagavad Gita, in the 18th chapter, Lord Krishna talks about knowledge in the three worlds and describes knowledge in the four universes.

So he says, to think of something as everything. To think of one thing to be everything. That is the characteristic of the world.

Then to think of one thing to be everything. One becomes attached to that one thing itself. Without thinking of what is causality of everything.

Now in this, we see the upward like a gear. Unpunctured. It is a fragment of knowledge.

So, now it's significant that Krishna says this is also knowledge. But if it is knowledge, it is more ridiculous. So much of modern science is knowledge.

It is systematic knowledge. It is sophisticated knowledge. But it is also limited knowledge.

Now, to say that the knowledge of science, knowledge that science offers is limited, is not to criticize science. It is just to point out an objective fact. In fact, saying that scientific knowledge is limited, is not a tribute of science.

Actually, it is a tribute, it is a glorification of the human spirit. The human spirit, in a sense, has led to… Again, by human spirit, I don't refer to soul. I'm just referring to the human quest for knowledge.

The human quest for knowledge has led to the fruits of science. It has led to the science of philosophy. It has led to the fruits of spirituality.

I'm saying that I see philosophy, art and science as the fruits of the same tree of humanity. So, what he says is that when we create human knowledge, scientific knowledge, we don't expand our humanity. We shrink our humanity.

Because human experience is related to scientific experience. I'll explain this further. So, now, let's look at how scientific knowledge advances.

So, you see, there are groups of scientific knowledge. There are certain groups that are beyond scientific knowledge. So, when scientific knowledge advances, it doesn't advance phenomenally.

But how does it advance? In one way or another. So, the things that are beyond knowledge, they stay beyond knowledge. Why is that? Because science advances in the material world, not in the spiritual world.

And because of that, because of the humanizational advancement of the knowledge, the end result is that what was beyond scientific knowledge stays beyond scientific knowledge. Now, the knowledge is further also porous. Porous means there are holes in it.

So, it's based on assumptions and assumptions. And it leads to kingdoms. You can understand.

Why is that? Because science, as I said, even material reality does not explain those things. I mentioned earlier that quantum physics and relativity are having severe differences. And they are violently contradictory.

And nobody is behaving the way we do in science. And the more both are advancing, the more they are diverging. So, at the start of the 20th century, 70 million scientists at Kelvin, they said, now the scientific picture is almost complete.

And for future generations of scientists, the main work will be just filling in the details. So, he said that science of the future is going to be terribly unexciting. We have a lot of exciting facts.

We have found everything that is to be found. And there are books written on this. For example, a famous book about the history of science from certainty to uncertainty.

The history of science in the 20th century. He explains how at the start of the 20th century, scientists felt that everything is clear. There are only two small dark clouds on the horizon.

One was they couldn't understand bifurcation. And the second was that they couldn't figure out the explanation of gravity. Where does gravity come from? But those two, those two very small patches of darkness, like you see this darkness over here, they turned out to be gigantic storms on the horizon.

So, understanding the life-form radiation led to the development of quantum mechanics. And trying to understand gravity led to the development of relativity. And this shows the foundation of science.

So, today, at the end of the 20th century, now we want to get to the 20th century, and so, as far as science is concerned, it's from certainty to uncertainty. It's the truth that we know clearly about what the world actually is like. So, again, this is not to say that science isn't good.

As a map, it's phenomenally poor. But the map is not the trajectory. The map is not the reality.

Similarly, science, when we map it on the reality, it does not give us a complete description of reality. That's why it needs to have incomplete understanding, and it's imperfect. So, now this is important.

It's silent about existence, purpose, and time. What does this mean? Where did I come from? Why do I exist? How should I act? These are fundamental questions of our life. Is this right? Is this wrong? Science cannot handle that.

Because the whole concept of rightness and wrongness is subjective. It is not objective. Subjective not in the sense that it is not real, but subjective in the sense that it's not quantified.

It's not quantified. So, science cannot handle this. Why I exist? What is right and what is wrong? What I should do and what I should not do? That's why, in science, there is much can be presented, and that's why there is a lot of scope, not just in putting a new city, for spiritual knowledge.

That's why faith, and why it can coexist, complement, and reinforce. Let's see how this happens. So now, till now I have been discussing, is there something beyond the word of science? Yes, there is.

Now I have discussed about, what about the things which are there in the world of science, but they disagree with this. So what I'll do is, I'll continue this tomorrow. Till now, based on what we have discussed today, I haven't had any questions.

And this is a tough topic to have at the end of the day. It's quite conceptual and abstract. But this is a foundational topic.

And I summarized it over. I started by talking about anti-colonial spiritual knowledge. We have spiritual knowledge that disagrees with science, that disagrees with science, and translates science.

So we focus on translating science. The first thing is, is there something beyond science? As we discussed, a lot of science focuses on the measurable aspects of the material reality. And that's why its picture of the world is limited.

Like a man's depiction of the territory is limited. As there is this labyrinth of emotions, there's no way to measure. There's no way that a brain can tell us what the content of the experience is, why a person is upset, how a gulab jamun tastes, or whether a particular picture looks beautiful.

The whole subjective aspect is something which science cannot tell us. And that's why there is a much bigger gap in the world between science and metaphysics. What to speak of in this picture? Any questions? Yes, please.

When a person dies, can a doctor speak for himself and bring him back to life? So how can we explain this? When a person dies, at that time, by some methods, doctors can bring a person back to life. So how does it happen spiritually? How can we explain spiritually? Actually, at a scientific level, the definition of death is quite mild. Quite mild means it's a complete mess.

Traditionally, if a person was alive and dead, they would just put some small, thin cotton swab at the neck, at the nose, and see if the person was breathing or not. Then subsequently, they found that even if the person was not breathing, because the heart had stopped beating, the lungs had stopped pumping, the lungs had stopped also beating, then still people used CPR. And cardiologists, they couldn't bring the person back to life.

So then even if the breathing had stopped, they could still take the person and bring him back. Now, they found that if we do that, so that means the heart is not beating, the breathing is not there, but still, the person is still alive. Then they found that, we could define death by brain death.

So if you define death by brain death, then they found that within the brain there are various parts. So, do you define brain death as a part of the brain instead or entirely of the brain? Now, what do you mean by death? If this stops functioning, and there is no sign that it will start functioning again, the comatose state, the transition from the comatose state to the coma state, to the death state, is something which unvalidated scientists consider as not to be a dependent death process. So, what happens is, the soul is attached to the body, and at the moment of death, the soul will be You talk about death as a particular moment, and when it happens, normally in movies, you see a person is talking, and then he closes his eyes and falls.

Now, that is one way in which a person can die. But that is not always the same way that a person will die. actually speaking, when the soul leaves the body, that is the moment when death happens.

But, because the soul is attached to the body, the soul does not very eagerly leave the body. And as long as the soul has hoped that the body can become functional again, that I can still use the body, the soul will not want to leave the body. And that is why it happens frequently that the mechanical scientific means, if they can be used to preserve the body for a longer time, then the soul will not leave the body.

So now, we can make some very big business with attachments and persistence. The person which was attached to the body is dead. Scientists can keep the body alive something like alive for a long time.

So this should go for the last now. Should we keep the person alive like this? How long should we keep the person alive? So actually, there are two extremes in this. One is that a person will deliberately do some injunction something like that to kill a person.

That's intermission. That's wrong. But if the body is not able to sustain itself for a long period of time, then there is no point in artificially trying to keep the body alive for days and weeks and months also.

In that case, why do you want to spend so much money? The soul will not be guilty. The soul will get another body. So, in general, we allow injunctions to kill these souls.

So, to specifically answer your question, because the soul is attached to the body, anything that gives the soul the hope that it can stay on in the body, that the soul uses to hang on. And that's how by the artificial method, sometimes the body appears to be dead by some symptoms. By other symptoms, by other methods, those symptoms can be alleviated and the person can be brought back to life.

But what has happened is not that because of those physical symptoms being restored, because of heart rate being restored, life has come. No, the soul is still there. That is also life.

And what we have done by the physical mechanisms that we have made the heart function again. So, to simulate is that the body is the medium for life to manifest. And the body is dysfunctional, life doesn't manifest.

Body is functional, life manifests. But, the body is not the the bodily functionality is not the cause of life. It's the root cause.

Is the answer to your question? Sir, in modern times, I understand it's important to change cause and effect based on how to put the question. Is our lifestyle designed or is it dependent on the soul's desire? Firstly, the soul's desire can change certain things, as I mentioned earlier. That person may commit suicide, that person can die, can destroy the body, and we do have freedom, and we can change a few things.

Now, when we say a person's life is designed, what does that actually mean? We have a, because we come from a scientific background, I mean, science focuses on quantifying properties. That's why we, on this topic, we have to think of everything in quantifiable terms. So, what do you mean by quantified? Well, if a life is designed, yes, life is designed, but does that mean that it is designed in terms of number of years? No, not exactly.

It is designed in terms of number of friends. And that's why the yogis, and everybody, they try to slow down their breath. And by slowing down their breath, they hope that they can live longer.

So, that's how, actually, if the soul is attached, the soul's attachment alone doesn't determine how long the person will live. Why? The soul's attachment plays a role in it, as I said, that the soul can come inside. That means there's a particular number of friends associated with the soul, and this can change things.

So, it's not that our life span is time, but we should not think of destiny in terms of a rigid quantity of time. Is this clear? Another question is… Oh, yes. Yes.

Question from audience Inaudible The progress of the process, there is a spate of lessons. See, there is a spate of lessons here, but from the… it generally depends on the the tools. There are some difficult parameters.

Now for example, if a bone is broken and if by the accident there is a hairline fracture then ok there is some amount of pain. But if there is a muscle fracture or a ligament fracture or a bone fracture then we understand the pain will be much more. So that's one aspect.

So by looking at the physical parameters of a particular bone or a particular disease one can assess how much pain the person might be in. And the second is we ask the person but it's that you cannot have it's like you have a you put some, make a blood sample and decide the blood hormone is this much the WB problem is this much, the RAB problem is this much so you can't have a measure for pain based on putting some injections or putting some drugs in the body. So the pain assessment came like that that's also based on subjectivity and inferences from objective facts.

It's not something that can be quantified directly. Is this point clear? Any other questions? Yeah. Question from audience.

Yesterday you said that our universe our God is perceived as a form of energy never expanding. Can we ask the question of how that energy is formed? One question at a time. So there's a scientific theory about beyond the backbone there's antimatter antimatter is matter to matter then there exists, there is matter to matter.

So before one studies the concept I will go into the history of science with respect to origin of the universe. So historically there have been two broad theories of the universe. One is the steady state theory and the other is the changing universe theory.

So at least traditionally I prefer the steady state theory because the universe was always the way it is now. There is no need for God. But then on the other hand the universe was changing the universe was expanding if the universe was expanding then it is requiring a beginning and a beginning means it will require a beginner.

So am I audible behind? Yeah. So so 80s prefer the steady state theory but as science progressed there are multiple evidences which seem to clearly indicate that the universe is expanding and the galaxies seem to be moving further away there's a cosmic background radiation which seem to indicate that there was a original explosion of which this is in code. So multiple evidences led to the idea that the steady state universe theory is not correct.

Therefore the conclusion was the universe is expanding. Now if the universe is expanding then it has a beginning. So it has a beginning and then the Big Bang theory this theory was called the Big Bang theory.

So when the Big Bang theory came up there were many scientists who said that this theory is practically the proof for the existence of God. Because the universe has a beginning and a beginning. Then at that time they issued a strategy they said actually speaking the universe began but it just began from some singularity.

And after that there was an explosion and from that explosion everything around us came about. Subsequently this left two questions unanswered. First is where did that original chunk of matter, what they call singularity that come from? Where did that originate from? That is something which modern science has never been able to answer.

So now the second problem was that from a random explosion would we get a comprehensive systematic materialistic design for the universe that we have? That was thought possible earlier but more scientific studies have been done. There are so many things that are required. But all these things could not have come by chance.

So even expecting the Big Bang cosmology still the universe coming out in the way it is right now is so precise that it just is not possible by chance. I'll give you two examples for this. This is not exactly the design argument that we are talking about in that device but it's slightly different.

Even if we assume that the Big Bang theory is correct but still after that from the Big Bang for the universe to come out in the way it is right now there are so many precise factors involved that are called the fine tuning of the universe. So for example when the universe started out exploding initially from a Big Bang so what happened? There are two forces one was the explosive force which is pulling the matter apart and the other was the contracting force which is because of the gravity of the matter. Now these two forces have to be in fine balance.

If the expanding force is too much then the matter will just spread out so rapidly that you can just have uniformly distributed dust cloud. There will be no accumulation in the matter there is no combination of atoms, neutrons, neutrons and ultimately elements are galaxies. So on the other hand if the expanding force is not strong enough then the universe will implode and it will collapse into itself.

So scientists have set up an example for this it's a person sitting at the bottom of a pipe and from there he throws the ball out and if the ball is thrown too forcefully it will come out of the well and fall off and go all over the place. If you do not throw adequate force then it will fall back into the well. Imagine somebody throws the ball out and it just comes out and rests on the spill.

Neither falling inside nor falling out. That will require a very precise power that we should know. So just as coordinate careful balance is required between the expanding and contracting forces.

So anyway there are many many factors which demonstrate the universe as we have it cannot have come by chance. So there is no other alternative that was left to us. The universe has come by chance and that chance was unapproved.

But then this was a conclusion that it did not come by chance. And therefore they came up with the idea of multiple universes. Many many universes.

And they said okay you know if one person will throw a ball out it will fall exactly on the spill. But if there are millions of people throwing the ball out one ball will fall this is also the case. So now this is how primarily the idea of parallel universes came up.

So now the parallel universes the idea is in that it's a very conveniently extendable algorithm. That means the probability of say the universe coming about the way it is right now it is 1 in 10 billion billion billion billion billion times. Then what's the problem? There can be 10 billion billion billion billion times universes.

If one of them came about so said other scientists this is the idea of parallel universes. It's not science. It's not science.

Because none of these parallel universes can ever be empirically verified. They are just permanently maximal to each other. So other scientists have said the creative thinkers of the modern times are not the artists and the fiction writers.

The creative thinkers of the modern times are the physicists. And John Wheeler was a famous physicist. Quite respected physicist.

So one time one of the students asked him there are so many cosmological theories. How do I keep track of all of them? How do I understand all of them? He said, he told the student if you miss a bus a girl or a cosmological theory, don't worry. A new one is soon coming.

So he used to tell me there is so much speculation and it's actually not even it is not even substance based speculation. It's just sort of imaginative thinking. So now scientists come up with so many creative cosmologies that actually even scientists don't take those seriously.

They are so speculative. Now with respect to the specific point of beyond an atom antimatter they come colliding and they lead to annihilation. So what scientists have observed is that at a subatomic level, sometimes suddenly within the pyramid, within their observations, something seems to quiver to existence.

Some subatomic element, subatomic particle seems to quiver to existence and it stays for some maybe microsecond and then disappears. It's matter, it's mass is extremely small, it's vibration is extremely small and from where it is coming into existence staying for a blip and disappearing, they don't know. So the theory that is given to explain this is that matter is an accelerator and this plus one minus one is going to zero and from zero you can have plus one minus one coming out.

So like that there is matter coming out and there is antimatter coming out sometimes. So this now, I mentioned that with respect to the origin, scientists had two problems. One was that how did the universe as it is come about from the Big Bang? And the second was where did the original material from which the Big Bang came about come from? So the answer to this question is that originally there was just vacuums and from that vacuum matter and antimatter came about.

Now the problem with this idea is that all that we have observed is infinite material coming out from infinite buildings and that also we don't know where it is coming from. But somehow, what has happened is from that vacuum so we have observed infinite amount of matter coming out from infinite buildings over the time but now just from those very very tenuous observations sometimes you can extrapolate that there was a vacuum and from that vacuum our universe has come about and like that some other anti-universe has come out which is made up of antimatter. And all the other particles just stayed for microseconds or nanoseconds our universe has somehow stayed for millions of years and our universe has expanded over millions of billions of billions of mass.

So actually this is just super extrapolation. Tiny tiny observation for microseconds and extrapolating from that. So my point is that these theories are extremely extremely speculative and now it's not that they are not starting from facts they are starting from facts but after sometime they leave the facts so far behind that what we have to search where are the facts in it.

So I'll explain this and I'll conclude with this. It's not clear. It's ok.

We'll discuss this tomorrow. I'll just give an example of this non-scientific extrapolation of scientific data. So physics is based on non-scientific extrapolation of scientific data.

I don't need to do that. So if you look at the universe, we have observed the universe for how long? With our high-tech probes we have observed it for maybe a few hundred years. And how much of the universe have we observed? We can't really observe carefully the universe everywhere.

You know that light takes certain amount of time to travel so the light from the sun takes around 8 minutes to come here for the modern science. So generally when we look at the universe, especially when we look at the distant stars so we are not looking at the stars as they are. We are looking at as they were at the time when they emitted those lights.

Now some stars some stars we see they are several light years away. Some of them are several thousand light years away. Now when we look at the stars, they are nearly eternalized.

So now those stars may have already exploded and they have got destroyed but we see them right now. So what we see is so limited. What we see is so limited and based on that the extrapolation of the origins is very speculative.

It's very speculative. That's why cosmology we want to go in more details this is one of the scientists which I have not talked about in my book. There is a book called New Evolution in which he gives a chapter called Universe Designed for Life.

So whatever I have spoken this is much more detailed than that. And there are other books also which I can talk about which I can refer to those who are more interested in the subject. Primarily the cosmological theories they are extremely speculative and because of that they are treated with a pinch of salt even by scientists.

This doesn't mean that they are necessarily wrong. The stars fracture also but from that they extrapolate in quite outrageous ways. So regarding that part of what is the origin of the energy I answered that question earlier about how if God is the cause of all causes, then he can have a cause.

So I explained logically that the cause of all causes cannot have a cause. And the author of the book is not present in the book. So we can't extrapolate back from the characters in the book because the author of the book is in a different field of existence.

Primarily God is outside the time domain. So his energy is determined. He determines energy.

So he exists outside the time domain. Are there any more questions? We'll continue tomorrow. We have also noted down your questions.

I'll take those questions tomorrow and we'll continue this presentation also. Thank you very much. Thank you.