​Science and spirituality are harmonizable

​Youth meeting at Radha Vrindavanachandra temple, Pune

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
participation both in the talk as well as the question answers. It’s not very clear. Is it visible behind for all of you? Legible or not legible? Is this clearer? Okay, fine.
So, I’m happy to be here among all of you and we will discuss today on the topic of science and scripture, especially trying to understand how these two important bodies of knowledge can reconcile in our understanding and our practise in life. So, firstly, if we look at the whole body of scriptural knowledge, we consider it to be a circle. This is not exactly drawn to a scheme, but within the scriptural knowledge, there is some knowledge which agrees with science.
There is some knowledge which disagrees with science and there is a whole body which transcends science. So, that which transcends science is, for example, if we say that there is a spiritual world that Krishna exists as God or the absolute truth is a bluish black cowboy boy. Now, this is beyond scientific proof or disproof.
This is an entirely different body of knowledge. So, the point is that when we study scripture, there are certain aspects which agree, certain aspects which disagree. But we primarily study scripture to get to this knowledge which is transcendent.
That is knowledge which science does not provide for us and we will discuss in due course why science doesn’t provide for that knowledge. But if we position science and scripture as competitors to each other, science is giving me knowledge, scripture is giving me knowledge and I have to make a choice between the two, then we devalue scripture because scripture is offering us a different kind of knowledge. If we consider a multiple story building, there is a light which illumines the upper story, there is a light which illumines the lower story.
Now, I can bring the upper story light to see what is there on the lower story, but that will not show me things very clearly because the light is up there. And similarly, if I am on the ground floor and I try to tilt the bulb up and try to see what is there on the first floor, it is not really going to show me much. So, there are no doubts overlap, but primarily scripture talks about things which science does not talk about and that is what we primarily study scripture for.
So, first I will talk about in this talk about this big circle which is going to be our focus, big sector, that is transient science. So, is there some knowledge that transients science? That is the first question. Some people say that science can provide us all knowledge and we do not need to look for any knowledge to anywhere other than science.
So, we will look at this big sector first and then we will look at the other sector where there is contradiction and see how to reconcile that contradiction. So, this class will be a little philosophical, but it is philosophy not so much of religion or it is philosophy of science. So, we will discuss about how science acquires knowledge and how reliable which of those methods are.
So, broadly speaking, science acquires knowledge in there is deductive reasoning, there is inductive reasoning and there is abductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is what is standard, it is foundational in science. So, especially with respect to mathematics.
So, for example, a 3 plus 5 that is 8, the square root of 4 is 2. These are deductive principles. Deductive means the answer has to come like that, it is a matter of definition. So, deductive reasoning is considered to be the most reliable.
And even in science, the way a theory progresses is if something can have a mathematical formulation, then that is considered to be most reliable. If it is just a hypothesis made in words, but it does not have mathematical formulation, it is not considered very reliable. We will consider a little bit later how science works and what role science plays.
But right now, understand these three broad methods that there is deductive reasoning which is considered the most reliable. But most of what science operates on is not with deductive reasoning. Most of what science operates is through inductive reasoning.
Inductive reasoning or induction means that science say observes something. So, for example, Newton observed the fruit falling. Now, most people if they have seen a fruit falling, they just would have picked it up and eaten it and gone their way.
But he observed and thought why did this fruit fall? When he saw this fruit falling, then he thought maybe there is a force which attracts and that force causes it to fall. And then he may try with okay not this, not just apple, there is some other fruit fall, there is a stone fall, there is a metal fall. And like that by doing many experiments and by getting consistent results of those experiments, one comes to a position where one can make a reasonable inference.
So, now it could be suppose that I hold this up and it may happen this may not fall down. It will fall down, that is our past experience, but there is no guarantee that it will fall down. If tomorrow we come in the vicinity of some other, if some asteroid comes close to the earth and its gravity field interferes with our gravity field and its gravity could become stronger.
So, I may hold this and I may just let it go and it will not fall down. So, the point is in induction, we cannot have absolute certainty, but it is a reasonable inference. So, we have done experiments n times, where n is a significantly large number.
And then we assume n plus 1, n plus 2, n plus 3 up to n plus n, the same results will be repeated. That is inductive reasoning. And if we compare between deductive and inductive, which will be more reliable? Deductive.
Deductive, because deductive is definitional. We do not have to do an experiment to find out 3 plus 5 is how much. No, it has to be 8 by definition.
So, now most of science when it encounters reality, when it encounters nature in the world of observations, we rely on inductive reasoning. So, the equations themselves need mathematical like f is equal to gm1m2 upon r square, this is mathematical. But whether this will work in future or not, that is a matter of induction.
And those of you know a little bit about the history of physics, Newtonian physics or classical physics as it was called, it was the mainstream scientific paradigm till the start of the 20th century. And then as science went deeper into the atomic realm, and as science went higher into the cosmic realm, in both places they found that Newton’s laws were no longer working. And then the atomic realm, the scientists developed quantum physics, and the cosmic realm, they developed relativity physics.
So, now, while Newtonian physics was considered to be a special case, which applies for more or less for anthropic objects, objects which are observable with our scale of observations. So, the point here is inductive may seem to work for a long, long time, several centuries it may work. But afterwards, we may come to know, oh, this does not work.
This works in this domain, but not in this domain. So, now, inductive also is fairly reliable. But the third method which science uses, especially for questions of origin, that is called as abductive reasoning.
Abductive reasoning means, another word is called in IBE, inference to best explanation. So, for example, now, if scientists want to find out how did the earth begin? Or how did the universe begin? Now, in our textbooks, we were told that everything began from a big bang. Or now, the point is, how did scientists come to know about this? They may infer, okay, there is a cosmic background radiation everywhere, because of which we can infer that as a bang.
But nobody can replicate that. So, in induction, we can observe, we can replicate, we can do experiments. But when it comes to abductive reasoning, it is more like a who done it mystery novel.
Somebody goes to somebody’s house, and they find that the owner is dead. He has been stabbed in the belly. And now, the police cannot tell the criminal, oh, please come and stab him again, and we will have photograph camera to shoot, and we will have the evidence where we will catch him.
Because a murder is not a repeatable experiment. So, how do researchers find out who did the murder? They infer, okay, this house, you know, the last time the owner, he was seen talking with a friend at 4 o’clock, and his body was detected at 10 o’clock. So, in between the 6 hours, what happened? They may have security cameras at the door, and they say, okay, who came inside? Okay, one 80-year-old girl came inside.
No, she is not strong enough to have stabbed him. One 60-year-old clean maid came. She is also not strong enough.
Then, okay, one friend of his, he came at around 8 o’clock. He went inside. And now, they say, okay, we eliminate all possibilities.
This friend is the person who must have murdered him. Now, this is actually inference by elimination. So, it is, it is, there is no conclusive evidence, there is only circumstantial evidence that if nobody else went in, then this is what must have happened.
So, now, this inference to best explanation depends a lot on the available knowledge. So, for example, here the assumption or the assumption underlying this is that the only way to enter into the house is through a particular door. But what if the investigators do not know that under the bed of the victim, there is a trapdoor.
And somebody came into the trapdoor, and while this person was sleeping, stabbed him and went away by the trapdoor. So, once they come to know there is a trapdoor, then a whole new set of explanations emerge. So, in inference to best explanations, what happens is we can only envision, we cannot replicate anything.
And when science has to deal with events of the distant past, it cannot use reduction, it cannot use induction, it has to use abduction. And now, it is easy to understand that abductive reasoning does not have the same level of authority as this deductive reasoning, or for that matter, inductive reasoning. So, here, why are we talking about this, because we will see that in our day to day world, technology works, and often it works in dazzlingly impressive ways.
Now, with internet, I can just press a few buttons, and I can talk with anybody anywhere in the world, I can summon any information from anywhere. Now, I can chat, I can video chat. And most of the time, the technology works brilliantly.
So, we may think, okay, if I start believing the scriptural stuff that everything came from God and things like that, then am I really rejecting science? And science works. How can I reject science? That is why I said not all science is born equal. That means, if we say consider Newton’s law of gravity, and if we consider, say, the theory of evolution.
Now, both may be scientific postulates, but both are not at all at the same level of authenticity. Because Newtonian law of physics, we can replicate it right now. The thousands of experiments can be done.
But with respect to evolution, very little of it can be replicated. Now, we cannot really have a species in front of a demonstrate a monkey changing into a human being. And it is not just a matter of they may say, oh, the monkey will change into a human being over many, many generations.
Fine, but even if it were like that, the point is, it is not just simply an inference, because the inference means we do a certain level of experiments. And then we say, okay, this is what has happened so many times. Therefore, this is what is likely to happen.
This is the principle underlying. But with respect to anything within the distant past, and when we go to origins, it is the very, very distant past. It is all based on abduction.
So, that is why scientific, all scientific theories are not of equal credibility. And instead of envisioning science as like one body of knowledge, against which we have to fight, we should not think like that. I have to give up science and I will choose scripture.
Science is not one body of knowledge. Science has many subjects within it, and different subjects knowledge is inferred by different methods. And not all scientific knowledge is of the same level of credibility.
So, we often may develop a lot of faith in the power of science because of the dazzling way technology works. But the working of technology is based on knowledge acquired through inductive reasoning. It is not acquired through abductive reasoning.
Abductive reasoning, knowledge acquired through abductive reasoning is always much more speculative in the domain of science. As John Wheeler is a prominent physicist, astrophysicist especially. So, he has a typical materialistic joke.
Once a student asked him, Sir, when we come to this field of cosmology, there are so many cosmological theories. So, how do I keep track of it? So, Wheeler just joked and said, do not worry if you miss a bus, a girl or a cosmological theory. In a few minutes, another one is coming.
So, cosmological theories, because they are results of abduction, they are often very speculative. And that is why, we are not only talking about cosmological theories, anything which goes to distant origins, there science cannot do experiments. Science cannot do repeated, estimable, demonstrable experiments.
And it is a different body of knowledge within science itself. So, let us move forward. Now, this is with respect to, this is a methodological limitation that that which has happened in the past cannot be subjected to a repeated experiment.
Now, let us look further at another methodological issue within science. So, science operates by the method called, by a method called methodological naturalism. Naturalism means what? That it is nature, nature means science is related to material nature.
Nature is the cause of everything. So, everything can be explained in terms of natural causes. That is the idea within science.
So, for example, somebody falls sick. Now, why do they fall sick? There must be some germ which causes sickness. In the past, people may have believed that there are evil spirits which cause people to fall sick or whatever.
Science is, we will not get into this stuff. We will say every natural phenomenon should have a natural cause. And we will find out natural causes, which is fine enough as an operational principle.
But if there are some phenomena which are not natural, in the sense that which cannot be explained only in material terms, then science neglects that. So, for example, to give another point of this, so suppose a person goes for fishing, and then they cast a fishing net. And the fishing net has holes, which are say of 3 inch by 3 inch.
Now, even if that person sits with the fishing net in the water body for 100 years, still, they will not catch any fish that is smaller than 3 inch by 3 inch. This is not a question of diligence, the very method that is used makes that fish smaller than that impossible to catch. So, the fishing net has a particular strength, but it has a particular limitation.
The strength is that it will catch any aquatics which are bigger than that, but limitation is it will not catch anything smaller than that. So, science similarly, casts a fishing net, metaphorically speaking, to try to understand what is happening in the world around us. And while casting a fishing net, by definition, it does not look for anything non-material.
Since we will look only for material explanations for material phenomena. Now, by this, we will find material explanations whenever such explanations are available. But by definition itself, anything non-material, anything spiritual is left out.
Anything spiritual is left out. So, to give a couple of examples to illustrate how this works out. Suppose, there is a very sophisticated brain surgeon and this brain surgeon is very competent in reading the various probes and finding out what is wrong with people’s brain.
And then he comes home and he finds his wife is upset with him. Then will he tell her, come and do a brain scan to find out what is wrong with you. She will say, you go and scan where you lost your brain.
So, our emotions, our feelings, these cannot be found in any brain scan. Now, researchers can find out which part of the brain is activated. But they cannot find out what emotion a person has.
To give another example for this. Now, researchers know that when a person is dreaming, if a person is asleep, if you put proper probes in a person’s head through the REM, the rapid eye movement, as well as through the waves that are coming from the brain, researchers can infer whether a person is dreaming or not. But if the researchers want to know what that person is dreaming, the only way is, you cannot just increase the intensity of the probe and find out.
You have to wake up the person and ask, what were you dreaming? There is a subjective irreducible reality to our first person experience. And this reality is not perceivable by any means, no matter how technologically sophisticated they are. So, consciousness is a subtle reality, which modern science cannot perceive.
Science can perceive behaviour and response. Science can perceive, okay, when a person is happy, this part of the brain is activated. When a person is unhappy, this part of the brain is activated.
When a person is depressed, okay, this particular chemical is less. But these are correlations. These are not causes.
The correlation means, when I am happy, I smile. When I am happy, I smile. But suppose somebody says, actually, whenever I have seen you are happy, you smile.
That means, if you smile, you are happy. So, therefore, what we will do, we have found the secret to happiness. What is that? We are just to manufacture a machine, which will twist your face into a smile.
Now, this gets the causality wrong. The smile is the result of happiness. Smile is not the cause of happiness.
Although to a small extent, if I am just glum and morose, come on, cheer up, smile. That, having a positive attitude and smiling can make a slight difference. But suppose, if this seat, which I was sitting on, this seat is filled with thoughts, and I am extremely uncomfortable.
And someone comes in, come on, smile, man. You know, that is not going to make me happy. So, there are real events, which stimulate real emotions.
And yes, people who are habitually depressed, they can be told to cheer up. But that itself is not happiness. A smile is not happiness.
The smile is the result of happiness. So, what applies to the physical pattern of smiling, that also applies to the neurochemical pattern, which is there in the brain. So, there are antidepressant drugs.
People feel depressed, okay, take this drug, you feel better. People may feel better. But there is only a slight range over which they work.
It is not that you can take a drug and for lifelong, we can just avoid depression. No, there is a saturation point which is reached. And after people try to take more dosage or a new drug, a new drug, and gradually the body becomes resistant to that.
So, a little variation can be done by changing the chemical content, just as a little variation mood can be done by telling a positive smile. But just as the happiness is a smile is a result of happiness. Similarly, whatever chemical secretion is associated with happiness, that is the result of the feeling of happiness.
That is not the cause of happiness. So, now science, if it looks at the brain can only find a particular chemical composition. And that chemical composition is not happiness.
That chemical composition is the result of happiness. So, given a couple of other examples is we have sophisticated ways of knowing. We can use an X-ray to know about the internal structure of a person’s body.
But the X-ray will not tell us about the personality of the person, is not it? Or if I have black and white TV, no matter how sophisticated I make the TV, if it is black and white, I cannot see colour images with it by its very definition. So, like that, modern materialistic science, as long as it operates using this methodology of naturalism, it cannot say anything about non-material things. So, technically speaking, science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God.
We will talk about inferring certain things later. But as a methodological principle, this the existence of God and things related with God and things related with higher aspects of life such as emotions, they are in this whole sector of that which transcends science. Broadly speaking, science cannot tell us about these three things origin, value and purpose.
Origin means as I discussed where everything came from. Value means what is right and what is wrong. These are things which we cannot know through science itself.
So, for example, if now doctors know that this person is life support, and if you remove the life support system, this person will die. Now, whether the life support system should be removed or not, that is not something that science can tell us. Science can tell if you keep the life support system, this person may live for 6 months or 1 year or 3 months or whatever, that prediction they can make.
But that is whether to remove the life support or keep the life support, that is an ethical decision. It is not a scientific decision. The implementation is scientific, but the decision is ethical.
And here, we understand that because science as a matter of method focusses only on material parameters, material parameters, it cannot know about subtler things like values. So, there is moral, there is immoral, and there is amoral. Moral means that is according to morality, immoral is that is against morality.
And amoral is that which has no moral element to it. It does not, this does not do moral decisions. Suppose we are going for some very urgent work, and we have an important job interview.
And we need some information. And if our friend says, I will not give you that information. He says, come on, man.
I have helped you so many times, you are my friend, you must give me the information. It is not right for you to withhold it. No, we will say this is not right, this is not normal, you should give me this information.
But suppose at that time, the computer crashes. Hey, computer, you should not do like this, give me the information. No, the computer is just a machine, its functions are amoral.
There is no morality, there is no immorality. So, science, the scientists can be moral, scientists can be immoral. Many scientists are moral, but their morality is not a result of their science.
It is, they have derived a system of morality from elsewhere. Einstein was one of the greatest scientists, the greatest scientist we could say in the last century. And he himself was profoundly conflicted by the amorality of science.
Most of you know that he was a Jew and he had to flee from the persecution of the Nazis. And he found refuge in America. So, he says that if we consider people to be simply, basically science would have us believe we are simply machines, we are machines programmed by our genes.
He says if I accept that, then the Nazis killed millions of Jews, they killed 12 million people approximately, 6 million Jews and 6 million others. All those people whom they killed, that is simply because they were driven to do that way. Now, that was their own psychophysical, their own neurochemical programming.
That is what made them do that. And I cannot hold them responsible. That is how they were driven to act by their hormones, by their chemicals and they acted.
So, but as a human being, so I found this, I find this idea disturbing. They were responsible, they could have chosen to act that way, they could have chosen to act another way. So, we all intuitively understand that we have free will.
And by our free will, we can choose to act in a responsible way or irresponsible ways. So, he says like this, this understanding that Nazis could have acted rightly or wrongly, this is something which is extra scientific. It is not scientific.
From science point of view, everybody simply is designed to act in particular ways. They are wired to act in particular ways. So, the ethical, so that is why Einstein said that we can talk about the ethical foundations of science.
We cannot talk about the scientific foundation of ethics. The two are different things. Ethical foundations of science.
Is science being ethical or unethical? We can talk about this. But the scientific foundation of ethics. Now, what makes this right? What makes that wrong? Who is going to decide that? If we see, if we were to reduce ourselves simply to the idea that we are the products of Darwinian evolution, then we have the whole idea of survival of the fittest.
Survival of the fittest means that the fitter prey on the unfit. But if we look at throughout human history, all over the world, the noblest incidents are when people sacrifice for someone else. Now, when the twin towers were collapsing, the firefighters went inside, risked their lives and rescued people.
Now, here, and this is considered heroic. But if we were to reduce our behaviour only to genetic functioning, then we are all meant to be driven by survival of the fittest. And risking your life for someone else, that is a gene bound wrong.
That is a gene bound wrong. But what we have is, not only do we consider this right, we consider it ennobling, we consider it inspiring. So, what inspires us is not survival of the fittest, but sacrifice of the fittest.
Sacrifice of the fittest for the unfit. So, human behaviour itself cannot be reduced now simply to genetic programming. Our genes do determine some aspects of our personality and our behaviour.
But we always have free will. So, value, what is right and what is wrong, this is something which science does not tell us. That is, we learn from some other source.
And ultimately, value is related to purpose. Purpose is, what am I living for? What is the ultimate purpose of life? Again, this is something which materialistic science has no answer for. Because we just are, as they say, stardust come alive.
So, we came alive, we somehow alive some people and we will die and everything is over. So, this is again, the whole idea that life has no purpose, ultimately. This completely contradicts our normal way of functioning.
So, there is a Nobel laureate scientist, some atheists may say that life has no purpose. But my speech has a purpose to tell you life has no purpose. Isn’t it? See, everything that we do is purpose driven.
I won a Nobel Prize, my life had a purpose, but life has no purpose. To say that life has no purpose, it is completely contradictory to our entire way of functioning. And so, what purpose of life is, that is something which science cannot tell us.
So, there is a whole body of knowledge, which is beyond science. Now, all that I am talking about, this is not meant to criticise science. This is meant to counter some extra scientific claims that are made by science.
So, every branch of knowledge has its valid scope. I said, I have a very good doctor. Now, whenever I am sick, I go to this physician, this physician gives me treatment, I feel much better.
Then tomorrow, if my physician start telling me, you don’t invest in the stock shares, you should invest in the stock shares. So, okay, what is your expertise? I respect you in your area, but it is not that you are automatically expert in every field. The President of America is not the king of the whole world.
And this is not a disrespect to the President of America. It is simply a statement. This is simply a statement of fact.
So, like that science has a jurisdiction, but there are many times extra scientific claims made. And this is actually an ideology, it is called scientism. Scientism means the idea that science can tell us everything about everything.
But this is itself not scientifically provable. Now, moving forward, let us look at a couple of things and then we will look at some specific contradictions that are there. So, going back to origins, what happens is, if you look at the atheistic theory ultimately, what does it boil down to? Nothing existed because of nothing, nothing exploded because of nothing and gave rise to everything.
So, how did everything come from? There is a famous atheist who wrote a book called How Everything Came From Nothing. Now, the title is very bombastic, but if you read the whole book, the book is not an explanation of how everything came from nothing. The book is basically an elaborate redefinition of nothing so that nothing is a lot of things.
That means how everything came from nothing, that is what he tries to explain, but the nothing from which everything is supposed to have come, that nothing is a complex quantum mechanical vacuum which takes pages of the most abstract triple integral calculus to describe. So, when we come to origin, it is just not possible for science to answer any questions. And then these are the scientists claim that this explains how the universe came about or whatever.
These are extra scientific claims, these are not scientific claims which they are making and they have to be contextualised properly. And this brings us to another point. God is not the explanation for the unexplainable.
He is the explanation for explainability. What I mean by this is some people think that actually whenever science cannot explain something, for that you say God is the cause of this. And as science will explain more and more and more things, then God will have no role to play.
Earlier you did not know how this explains, so God did this. Earlier people thought why are the stars moving in the sky, why are the planets moving in the sky, God is making them move. But now we know it is gravity which is making it move.
So, their idea is that God is the explanation for the unexplainable. But this is not the Vedic understanding. What the Vedic understanding, Bhagavad Gita says 9.10, maya adhyakshena prakriti suyatesa characharam hetunanayena kaunteya jagad bhi parivartute.
What this means is Krishna is saying material nature works under his supervision and by its rule, by its law, under its control, everything, creation and destruction happens. This means material nature has its own laws that the Bhagavad Gita also acknowledges it. And God is not an explanatory alternative to the laws of nature.
God is the explanatory foundation. What I mean by foundation now is that if let us go back to the previous point that if there is no God then you have an atheistic worldview that there was just something that somehow existed and then that somehow exploded and somehow from that everything has come about. So, now if everything has come about from that, so there is an external world around me and there is my brain.
So, the external world is also a product of a random explosion. My brain is also a product of random explosion ultimately. But now why should, so first of all why should the external world be orderly? Why should if an apple is thrown down, apple is dropped, it should fall down and fall down at a particular speed according to a particular principle.
So, why should external world be orderly and why should the orderliness of the external world correlate with my way of thinking? When I say f is equal to gm1m2 upon r square, what Newton proposed, what is mathematics? This is a whole big philosophical question. Are numbers real? Are the numbers actually, we know 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 as numbers. But are numbers as conceptions in the human brain? Why does mathematics, why does mathematics which is a concept which is thought in our human brain, why does that correlate with the functioning of the world outside? Nature does not cut an equal to sign, isn’t it? How is f is equal to gm1m2 upon r square, this is a whole mathematical conception thought up in my head.
So, if my brain is a product of random chance, it is just subatomic particles going around wild and wild and outside is a subatomic particles going around wild and wild, why should these two correlate in a mathematical formulation? They correlate because both the outer world and inner world are the product of a higher intelligence. So, the very explainability of nature requires an explanation. The very explainability of nature, why does nature obey laws? Why should nature not be random entirely? Now, if nature were not explainable, no science would be possible.
So, the very explainability of nature, which is the foundation for science, the explainability of nature requires an explanation and that explanation is God. If this is too complicated, do not worry about it. Simple point here is that I have talked about how science cannot itself talk about does not deal with the spiritual, but it can talk about influence towards the spiritual.
And this is what we are talking about. So, moving forward, I will take one more point and then we will move from science towards scripture. Let us see, this is a long talk here.
As I said, Albert Einstein, you are right in speaking of the moral foundations of what you cannot go around and speak of the scientific foundations of morality. Every attempt to reduce ethics to scientific formulae must fail. So, now, continuing this point of, is there something beyond science? If we consider reality, there is subtle reality and there is gross reality.
So, what you see the dark, the yellow part, that is gross reality, that is what science studies. And subtle reality is something which is left aside. So, if you consider the operating platform, there is gross matter, then there is, that is what is studied by science.
Then there is subtle matter, that is not studied by science. And then there is spirit. Spirit is also not studied by science.
So, if you consider scripture as giving us spiritual knowledge, scripture is like a metaseque, which contains gross knowledge, but gross, subtle and spiritual, everything together. So, all of these are brought together. So, now, somebody may get a question, what about when science progresses further? Will the progress of knowledge reveal us something more? So, let us look at how knowledge progresses in science.
It is progressing, see it is flat, it has become a big circle. But if you see this progress, it is in a particular direction. That means, if science progresses in more and more understanding of matter and material things, but does not extend beyond matter, subtle matter or to spirit, it is expansion of knowledge in a particular dimension.
And within that, this is based on assumptions and axioms. And these assumptions make it impossible for science to arrive at conclusive knowledge about everything. So, there is, it leads to incomplete understanding.
This is a whole big field, I will not go into that now. But suffice it to say that science is aligned about these three things, origin, purpose and value. And that is why faith and enquiry can coexist, complement and reinforce each other.
So, faith means what we study from scripture, enquiry is what we do in science, roughly put it like that. The two can correlate with each other. Now, I will move on from here to, so, remember the old first diagram about that which agrees with science, that which contradicts science and that is transient science.
So, this whole knowledge about origin, where I come from, what am I meant to live for, how am I going to choose right and wrong, all this scripture tells us. And this is in the zone where it transients science. Now, let us look at some things where it seems like things are contradicting science.
So, how do we find out, how to understand when there is a contradiction? So, I will talk about Vedic cosmology, which is what is talked about in the 5th Bhagavatam. And some people say that, okay, did man actually go to the moon? Some devotees, some wise Prabhupada statements, which apparently say that man did not go to the moon. What exactly is going on? Now, for this, we have to start with fundamentals.
Our perception depends on our scale of observation. Say, if I have say white chalk powder, and if I have some black cone powder. Now, both of them, they appear, one is white, one is black.
If I mix both of them together fully, then I will have a grey powder. Now, if I look at the same grey powder under a microscope, I will not see any grey powder. I will see white granules, I will see black granules.
Now, what is it actually? Is it white granules and black granules or is it grey powder? Yes, it depends on the scale of observation. So, the same thing can appear differently at different scales of observation. And Bhagavatam, when it describes cosmology, it describes cosmology from a different scale of observation.
Its focus is not giving us observation from a human perspective. So, in the Vedic cosmology itself, there are two broad bodies of knowledge. In the Indian knowledge systems, there is what is called as the Bhagavatam cosmology or the Puranic cosmology.
And there is the Jyotishya cosmology. So, the Puranic offers cosmology as seen from a different scale of observation. Jyotishya cosmology offers us cosmology, which is largely similar to the way we understand it.
This is given in a set of books called Siddhantas, Surya Siddhanta and other Siddhantas in the books. And now, if you see, some figures are given. Surya Siddhanta.
So, how much does it say in the distance between the earth and the sun? Do you have a mic somewhere? Yeah. Can someone read this? How much is the distance? Someone like read? Surya Siddhanta, 253,000 miles. Modern measurement, 252,710 miles.
Yeah, just a minute. So, this is with respect, thank you for that. So, if you see, the earth’s orbit is not exactly circular, to some extent somewhat elliptical.
So, little variation is fine. But this is remarkably accurate, for something that came at least several centuries ago, if not millennia ago. So, this indicated this knowledge is not just somebody’s fanciful imagination.
There is some grounding in fact also with it. Yeah, you can read the next piece. Surya Siddhanta, 7,849 miles, compared to the modern measurement of 7,926.7 miles.
Yeah. So, you know, it is time to describe. So, the earth’s diameter described means, it is indicated that it is understood that the earth is spherical.
Otherwise, you cannot have a diameter for something which is a flat object or something like that. So, again, these are information, these are information that are available in the Jyotish Shastras. So, they give us information from a particular scale of observation.
And the Bhagavatam gives us information from another scale of observation. And the purpose of the Bhagavatam is not to give us exhaustive knowledge about cosmology. The purpose of Bhagavatam is to guide our thoughts towards God, towards Krishna.
If you know the context of the Bhagavatam, it is spoken to Parikshit Maharaj when he was about to depart from this world. And the whole purpose is to help him to fix the mind on Krishna. The Bhagavatam describes cosmology from that perspective.
Okay, this place people are doing like this, this place people are, here also people are worshipping Krishna, here also people are worshipping Vishnu, here also people are doing this. So, in this way, all over the universe how there is pervasion, there is the prevalence of dharma and bhakti, that is what the Bhagavatam talks about. So, with this, now, let us look at some contradictions that might come up.
So, as I said, by deductive reasoning, we know 3 plus 3 is 6. If 3 plus 3 is somebody says it is not 6, if a teacher is given an exam, and he is asked to know what is 6 plus 3, did you get 6? No. Now, the teacher cannot know unless they look at the question paper, answer paper, what exactly is wrong and how they got the wrong answer. But if they have got the answer as not 6, that means the answer is wrong.
Exactly specifically, however, it is that they will have to check it out. So, like that, the scriptures tell us that Chandranoka is a higher planetary system. And the higher planetary system is made of subtler elements, it is not conceivable by our gross senses, and Chandranoka is not accessible to us humans.
So, now, this is something which we have to understand carefully. See, if you work on an important computer in a company, or sometimes some companies have one mainframe computer, basically, there will be 100 people working on the same system, essentially, and they want to keep all the data sync together. Now, different people may have different levels of access.
So, a person can only do data entry, they cannot do any deletion of any other files. Somebody else can look at maybe C drive, and they can look at D drive also. But if there is some B drive, they cannot look at that.
And somebody is the owner, they have complete access to the whole computer, whatever they want, they can check it. So, just as there can be in a computer system, different levels of access, similarly, within the universe, different people have different levels of existence have given different levels of access. So, we human beings have access to a certain level of reality.
Reality is perceivable by our senses. So, in three-dimensional space, we can perceive things. So, Chandranoka is not perceivable to us, but a projection of Chandranoka, that is what we call as moon, that is perceivable to us.
So, the moon is what we need to see in order to do astrological calculations to determine what is a good murta and what is a bad murta. So, that access we have been given. So, we can look at what we see is just like if a person does not have access to particular files in the computer, say person does not have access to C drive, they can work only on D drive.
Now, if the person goes and looks at the computer composition, they will see that, okay, this C drive contains some data, I cannot perceive only the C drive, but I can see this is occupied this much disc space. So, that is simply a figure, if it is a diagram description, okay, C drive has taken this much space, I can see that, but I cannot see the content. So, here what I have is not access to the internal content, but access to the awareness that C drive has occupied this much space.
Or let us take a simple example, if you consider a map, a map is correlated with reality in some way. Now, if a person wants to go say from Pune to Mumbai, then the map gives a fair idea, okay, you have to go from here, you have to go and say in the western direction, but you have to go in the northwestern direction, this way, this way. But just moving the finger from Pune on the map to Mumbai on the map, that does not take one to Mumbai.
You see, what does it get the experience of Mumbai simply by moving by the finger on the map. The map is correlated with the reality of geographical reality of where Mumbai and Pune are, but the map is not the territory. Similarly, what we have access with our eyes is not Chandraloka, but a projection of Chandraloka that is moon.
So, moon is the Chandraloka is a higher, it is a subtler entity to which we do not have access, but what we have access to is its gross projection. So, in that gross projection, subtler reality such as the residence of Chandraloka or Chandradeva, all these cannot be seen by us. What can we see? Simply is the physical territory or the topography that is there.
So, when Srila Prabhupada says man did not go to the moon, what he means is that man did not go to Chandraloka. Now, as far as the moon is concerned, Prabhupada may have drawn three different statements. He says they may not have gone out of the earth itself, they may have gone out of the earth, but to some other place somewhere else, or some other place in the cosmos, or they may have gone to the moon as a physical location, but they have not accessed the moon.
They say somebody might drop on Sahara Desert in India, and they look around and they see there is not a single human being here, and they go back and say the earth is uninhabited. Then they came to earth, but they did not access the earth. Something similar, the point is Chandraloka as a higher planetary system cannot be accessed by humans.
But geographically, travelling in a spacecraft from here to there might be possible. That is not the major issue over here. So, the point of Vedic cosmography is to give us a vision of the cosmos, which shows how everyone everywhere is ultimately devoted to the Supreme.
And therefore, we should also devote ourselves to the Supreme. And the cosmographic picture, so I talked about the Surya Siddhanta, that Surya Siddhanta gives sensible knowledge. And even R. A. Bhatta and other prominent mathematicians, they were also aware that okay, the Jyotishya cosmology is different from the Puranic cosmology.
And they used Jyotishya cosmology for making calculations, for doing predictions, and they did not use the Puranic cosmology. So, they themselves, so their awareness of these two different forms of cosmology, and even our traditional Gaudiya commentator, traditional Vaishnava commentators, they also use the Puranic cosmology when explaining the Puranas. But for doing astrological calculations, they use Jyotishya cosmology.
So, again, the point is they did not envision these two as contradictory. Is this right? No, this is one body of knowledge, this is another body of knowledge. And the two pursue things at different scales of observation.
So, when science and scripture appear to be contradictory, most of the times we will find that it is not a contradiction, in essence, as it is a difference in the scale of observation. And what appears to be contradictory will be understood not as contradictory, but as observation from different scales of perception. So, our primary purpose when we study scripture is to focus on the scriptural method, scriptural knowledge for self-transformation.
The more we study scripture and learn about these methods for self-transformation, the more we find our inner territory being cleansed, being purified, we become better human beings, we become better individuals. So, science can improve our external world, science can improve things. Martin Luther King said that we live in an age of guided missiles and misguided men.
He said guided missiles and misguided men. He says our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We need a balance of both.
And that balance comes through scriptural study. So, science is able to guide missiles, but when people are to be guided, that is what scripture offers us. So, spirituality helps, science makes things better, spirituality makes people better.
People can be transformed, people can be made better through spiritual practises. And so, we do not have to aggravate the contradictions between the two. We have to get proper understanding by which whatever contradictions are there, they can be properly addressed.
And thus, we can benefit from both these worlds of knowledge. See, we are neither scientists nor are we spiritualists. We are human beings.
And you as human beings, we want to tap whatever sources of knowledge are available for us to bring out our best, to do the best contribution that we can, to be the best that we can be. So, science offers us many insights and facilities through technology and we can use them. And scripture offers a lot of value to wisdom and we can use that.
And rather than just worrying too much about contradiction, we focus on how both can be reconciled when we have a common purpose in our life. When we have a one universal purpose in our life, then both these can be harmonised, not just reconciled. So, I will summarise, then we can have question and answer.
I started by talking about that this whole circle of spiritual, of scriptural knowledge, is there some which agrees, some which disagrees and some and a large which, which transcends. My class was basically in two parts, how to understand, is there something that transcends and how to make sense when there is contradiction. So, with respect to transcending, I discussed how science has its method.
What are the three forms of reasoning? Inductive, deductive, deductive. Inductive, deductive, abductive. So, all these three are equally reliable? No.
No, deductive is the most reliable, then most of operational science functions with inductive. And inductive also works fairly well. But when science goes to origins, it cannot do repeated experiments.
So, that is why its theories are much more speculative. And abductive reasoning is like a whodunit mystery, solving, figuring it out. It is not repeatable experiments, it is basically inference to a best explanation.
And that is why it is not as reliable. So, we should not think that when scripture gives a different narrative about origin of life or origin of universe, then it is not that we are contradicting science and we are rejecting science entirely. No, some aspects of science are valid and working.
Some aspects of science are much, much lesser credible, when it comes to all this. And then we discussed about methodological naturalism, that this is a fishing net cannot catch any fish that is smaller than its smallest holes. Similarly, science looks for natural explanations for natural phenomena.
And that is why you cannot find anything which is non-natural, non-material, anything that is spiritual, it cannot find that. A lot is because spiritual is a separate material. We discussed about how emotions cannot be understood by doing brain scans.
And consciousness cannot be pursued using brain scans. And then we discussed about how, what exactly with respect, because science sticks only to matter and material things, I mean, interaction and forces. So, what all it cannot explain with respect to our practical working, origin, value and purpose.
So, originally we discussed how God is not the explanation for the unexplainable, rather he is the explanation for explainability. Why should things out there follow laws of mathematical precision? And why should those laws be comprehensible to us with our intelligence? If both were simply products of primal explosion, the orderliness in nature and the coherence is correlation between outer order and inner order, that is because it all comes from a transcendental order maintainer. Then with respect to value, we discussed Einstein and how he explains that there can be ethical foundations of science, but we cannot have scientific foundations of ethics.
And we all understand that we are not just governed by genes or anything like that, we have choices. But that, where does our free will and where do our choices come from, that is something which science alone cannot explain. And then with respect to purpose, what is the ultimate purpose of life? To say that life has no purpose is self-contradictory.
Because to say that life has no purpose, that is itself making a statement with a purpose. So, what that purpose is we learn from science. So, origin, value and purpose, there are things which we cannot learn about from science and that is for this we have scriptural knowledge.
And then we discussed about the, like two-story building if we see, we cannot use the light of the second story to see clearly what is on the first floor. And so, the methodology of science cannot illumine spiritual truths. And scriptural truths, when they are used to illumine day-to-day realities, quite often, they may not make sense because scripture will be talking from a different scale of observation.
So, we discussed the same powder, it may appear as having grey to our eyes, but it may have black and white particles seen under a microscope. So, similarly, the cosmos when seen from the earth s perspective is very different from what is seen from a higher divine perspective. And this two-level perception of cosmos is there in the Vedic tradition itself.
Jyotisha Shastra described the cosmos as we have seen it often giving mathematical figures of remarkable precision with respect to the earth s sun distance or the earth s diameter and also giving something which is our completely different perception. So, we discussed how this applies to the moon mission. Chandraloka is a higher planetary system made of subtle elements which cannot be accessed by human technology.
But Chandraloka has a projection within three-dimensional space that is the moon as we see it. And that may be having access by the cosmos. And lastly, we discussed how science can help us gain better control of the outer world, but it is spirituality which helps us to gain better control of our inner world.
So, science can make things better, spirituality makes people better. And we are neither scientists nor spiritualists, we are human beings. And whatever mode of knowledge, whatever helps us become better, we use that and move forward in our life journey.
So, thank you very much. Are there any questions? We have a lot of questions already here. Okay.
Question, are scientists hiding the real truths about the inventions they make? If so, why? See, scientists should neither be demonised nor should they be eulogised. Scientists are also human beings like all of us. They have a particular profession and they pursue that profession.
And just like that in the other profession, there can be the effects of commercialisation, there can be ego, there can be envy. All these human foibles, human flaws come in the field of science also. But it is not that they are more in science and less in other fields, they are just there everywhere.
So, with respect to hiding the truth behind inventions, yes, there can be scandals in specific fields. And sometimes some scientists may conceal certain things. So, for example, in the 1920s, 1930s, for almost three decades, the harmful effects of smoking, they were, lot of studies were published, but they were suppressed.
So, why? Because the smoking industry, they wanted to have more and more customers. But eventually, as the evidence became stronger and stronger, then it was published eventually. So, we should not demonise scientists.
Are they hiding the secret behind the inventions? Not necessarily. Some scientists may be hiding certain things. But overall, science is also a human profession.
So, whatever human weaknesses and human faults are there in any other field, they will be there in the field of science also. And whatever human strengths are there, humans also have virtues, scientists also have virtues. And sometimes some scandal is there, some scientists hide it, some other scientists expose it.
And that is how the human knowledge progresses in any field. And that is how we learn. Was there any specific, whoever asked this question, do you have something specific in mind when you said, are scientists hiding the real truths? Okay.
If science has its limits in explaining the cosmos, then how can we say that scriptures have the authority to explain the cosmos? Yeah, this is an elaborate subject, which I will talk a little bit about scripture. But suffice it to say two points over here. That is, if we look at life around us, whatever are our basic needs, they are provided for nature.
We need oxygen to breathe, and there is oxygen out there. We need water, water is out there. We have thirst, we need water, we have thirst.
And there is something out there to satisfy the thirst. We have hunger, there is something out there to satisfy the hunger. So, our basic needs are provided for in the world.
Now, for living in this world, knowledge is also important. So, if we consider that if our basic needs are provided for, knowledge as a need will also be provided for. Because suppose somebody sends on our birthday a gift, a very complex device, and very nicely packed, very expensively packed, the device itself is expensive, it is very carefully packed once in a while also.
And then they send it, and it is such a device we have never seen before, we do not know what to do with it. Then we look around in the pack, there must be a manual somewhere. Why would somebody give a gift without any explanation of what it is meant to do? So, then similarly, if we look at life, our own body is a masterpiece of design.
And whatever is required for the maintenance of the body, the basic needs are provided. So, what is the knowledge? What is the purpose of all this? That knowledge surely will be provided. So, by inference, we can say our knowledge is also a need and it will be provided for somewhere.
That provision is in scripture. Now, this is a principle for understanding how scripture will contain some valid knowledge. But with respect to specifics, how do I know? That okay, somebody said this is the device and this is the manual.
Now, how do I really know for sure, even if somebody said this is a manual for MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, when somebody can just put a cover layer, it is a manual for MacBook Air, I do not really know. How do I know is I test it. I open it and says okay, this is the key for this function.
If you do this, this computer gets shut down. If you do this, then you can access this thing. So, and then as I start reading it, it starts, the computer, I start making more sense of the computer.
And then I can function better in that computer. As I keep doing that more and more, I can start making sense of this looks like a manual. So, something similar with respect to scripture, if you study the Bhagavad Gita, we will start seeing that by studying the Gita, we can make more and more sense of life.
And by living the Gita, we can live better, we can become calmer, we can become more productive in our lives, our lives become more purposeful and fulfilling. So, that is how we can understand that scripture is a manual meant to guide us. And once we accept the principle that there is God as the source of the cosmos and God as the source of the universe, God as the source of the universe and God as the source of the universe, we can infer from there that the knowledge is given in scripture, which comes from God, that will be authoritative.
It is not that we can have a third person, someone else certifying it. This is reliable knowledge, therefore, we accept it. Yeah, there is a universe and there is God.
Now, there are many people, there are many in the past who have become purified by this knowledge. And there are people who have tested it and they have learned it. We do not have to just accept their authority, we can test it out for ourselves.
So, there is this question about the moon landing, which I have dealt with already. Shastras talk about Chandra Loka, what we see is the moon as a planet, which is a three dimensional object. So, the three dimensional object, people may have gone through that.
That is not an issue of debate. Okay. Okay.
Is scripture supported, supposed to be more accurate than science since the measurements vary, measurements between say the earth, sun, distance of as given by science and as given by scripture vary? Are we saying that the measurements made by scientists are wrong? Even in directive knowledge, science is much more advanced than the knowledge provided in scripture. Example, the value of pi is given with more precision. Yeah.
Here, the point to recognise is that every body of knowledge has a particular purpose. So, for example, if we go to a doctor and he asks, I am having some fever, what is my temperature? Doctor may use a thermometer and say, okay, your temperature is 100.0. Now, actually speaking, if we had a device with far better precision, we could say, your temperature is actually 100.2100000634789. Now, that precision is not required for that purpose. Any knowledge, if we lose the sense of the purpose, then we can make a fetish of precision.
We can make a fetish of precision. That means, we can just go into every single thing into so much detail, which will not be required at that particular context for that particular purpose. So, in any device that we use, there is a range which that purpose is going to fulfil and which is enough for that purpose.
So, scripture is not giving us a micro-precise knowledge of everything. So, for example, it is not that when Parijit Mahesh Uday Goswami is discussing, it is not that they are discussing about what is the exact value of pi. That is not their purpose also.
Sometimes, certain sages may discuss about mathematics, at that time they may give us particular knowledge. But we have to understand that precision is not just a virtue which exists independent of the context. Precision depends on context.
What level of precision is required for what purpose will vary according to time and circumstance. And scripture is focussing on giving us ultimate spiritual knowledge. And while giving spiritual knowledge, it gives us certain figures also.
So, yes, if the mother, you consider a mother and consider a physician. A physician may do a battery of tests on the child. And the physician may know the urine composition, the stool composition, the blood composition, the platelet count, this and that.
The mother may not know any of this. But who knows the child? It is the mother who knows the child. Now, the mother, what she needs to know is, is my child healthy or not healthy? You cannot ask the mother, if you do not know the platelet count of your child, you do not love your child.
Now, if that platelet count is a critical thing for the child’s health, the mother may have to monitor that. But keeping round the clock, the platelet count track is not the job description of a mother. So, every knowledge comes with a particular context and purpose.
And we do not have to obsess over precision without considering the purpose. So, they say that Rahu covers the sun, covers, heats up the sun and this is the cause of the eclipse. How do we perceive this? The Bhagavad Gita describes not that Rahu consumes the sun, but that it covers the sun.
Now, here we have to understand that there can be explanations which are parallel and they are complementary, not necessarily contradictory. So, I would not go into again technicalities, but just simply speaking, if you look at Jyotish Shastra, they do give orbits and they give positions because Jyotish Shastra also if you know, it makes predictions. If you take a panchang, from your local priest, he can tell you, okay, the next solar eclipse is going to come at this time, the next lunar eclipse is going to come at this time.
And they also predict with a fair level of accuracy. So, eclipses have been predicted not just since modern science came up, but not just in the Indian tradition, there is other places also, because there was a significance of, there was an understanding of the significance of celestial phenomena like this. They were predicted.
So, the first point is using the Jyotish Shastra model also, eclipses were predicted. And they were predicted with a fair degree of accuracy. Because eclipses are times which are considered to be somewhat inauspicious.
So, at that time, people are supposed to do more pure activities and avoid impure activities. And people were told in advance, okay, this is the time an eclipse will come. So, if the model was simply just, the idea is just mythological, how can you have some demon coming and consuming the sun.
So, there is a simplistic caricature of the traditional understanding, but it was just simply a mythology. How could some mythological imagination predict something with reasonable precision? The prediction was because there are orbits described. And if you look at Jyotish Shastra, it is described that Rahu and Ketu, they are also celestial objects.
Just as we have sun, moon, these are celestial objects. So, Rahu and Ketu are also celestial objects. But they are celestial objects of a different nature.
It is like you say today, in science, when we talk about black holes. Now, black holes, you cannot actually perceive their existence directly. Because whatever light goes into the black hole, it is a Sakadi.
So, if there is a black hole over here, we cannot directly have a picture of the black hole. Although we may be shown pictures in our books, but those are not a reflection of what is actually seen. They are just diagrammatic depictions of what is inferred based on observations.
What happens is if there is a black hole somewhere, and the light that is going in the towards the black hole that is consumed, but the light that is going nearby, its path twists. And in the path twists, so the path twists like this, then they understand that this is path, these two are twisting, and there is a black hole over here. So, just a black hole at least inferable in that way.
But science also talks about dark matter, which is by definition itself not perceived. This is dark matter. The only way they infer it exists is because that is required to balance the gravity force of the universe.
So, they infer that it must exist. So, similarly, Rahu and Ketu are posited as planets made of subtle matter, which is not perceivable to us. Now, Rahu and Ketu, they are planets and they have presiding Gitis.
So, there is a being called Rahu, who is demoniac. And he is the presiding Giti of the place called Rahu. It is like Suryadev is the in charge of Surya.
So, like that Rahu is a person who is in charge of Rahu, the planet, celestial object. And this celestial object has a trajectory, a path, has an orbit. And its orbit is such that whenever the Sun, Moon and Earth are in one line, at that time Rahu also comes over there.
So, using the prediction of Rahu s position, eclipses can be predicted or using as the modern science does, using the linearity of the Earth, Moon and Sun, eclipses can be predicted. These two are different models. And they are not contradictory, they are complementary.
One focusses on simply the physical objects and how the physical objects have physical effects. And the usage of Rahu and Ketu as explanations for the cause of eclipses, that focusses on another factor. Okay, the Earth, Sun and Moon come in a line.
Why do they come in a line? You may say their orbits are like that and their orbits bring them that line. But why are things arranged in such a way that they come in a line like that? That is because there are higher factors governed. So, that is because there are higher beings governing the whole cosmos and that higher governance is conveyed by the point of Rahu and Ketu coming in.
So, both these explanations of the Sun, Moon and Earth linearity, as well as Rahu and Ketu coming in, they are complementary, they are not contradictory. If the Moon is the projection of Chandra Loka, then there must be projection of everything including stars, Sun, Earth. Are we on the real Earth or are we on projected Earth? Okay.
Firstly, when we talk about projection, let us understand what we mean by this. See, projection means something which is not within our scale of perception, but we get a picture of that. So, for example, if say a cricket tournament is going on somewhere, say Sharjah cricket tournament is going on, we are not there.
But on TV, we get some aspect of a project. So, wherever the focus is on the TV, that is what we see on the tournament. Other things are there, but we cannot see them.
So, projection can have various meanings. So, we are not physically there to see everything in Sharjah, but we can see something which is projected through the camera. So, like that, the projection here basically means that things exist at multiple levels and at the level at which we can perceive.
So, for example, there is a directory which has 100 files, there are 13 which are accessible at a particular level to general users, there are 25 which are accessible to a higher level user, and the remaining are accessible to a highest level user. So, here projection would mean for this user out of the 100, only 30 is accessible. That 30 would be the projection that is perceivable to the perception of the user.
So, yes, Surya Dev also is on Surya Loka. Now, if you consider what at our scale of perception, the sun appears like a ball of fire. And it is because of the fusion of nuclear fusion or whatever, that because of that, the sun is having its energy.
At our level of explanation, that is perfectly fine. But that is not the complete explanation. Now, as far as the earth is concerned, the earth is meant primarily for human inhabitation.
So, because the earth is meant for human inhabitation, so earth is accessible to us. So, we are on the real earth. But of course, because the earth is often personified also as Bhoomi Devi.
Bhoomi Devi is the presiding deity of the earth, but because she is not perceivable to us because she, you know, the Bhoomi Devi also often goes to devatas and interacts with devatas and they all go and pray to Vishnu. So, Bhoomi Devi is not just a earth. She is the predominant deity of the earth, but she is not a earth link.
No, she is a higher deity. So, she may not be perceivable to us, but the earth itself as we are learning, that is something just perceivable to us. Till what time are we to go on? What time to stop? Any idea? Any plans? Okay.
If Chandra Loka is in higher dimension, why are we able to see gross matter? Yeah, because we have gross senses. So, within the gross senses, we will be able to perceive what is perceivable to us. So, with our eyes, if somebody has got some operation done, you know, we will just see a scar of the operation with our eyes.
But if we have x-ray, then we will be able to see more. Okay. The scar is there, but there is something more, that is much more that is there inside.
So, according to our scale of perception, we can perceive certain things. Okay. If in the beginning all souls are pure, on what basis are they given different bodies? How do they get the bodies for the first time? See, the scriptures describe that the material existence of soul is Anadi.
Prakriti and Purusha both are Anadi. And Vishwanath Chakravarti Thakur and Vande Vidya Bhoshan, both of them are prominent Acharyas in Arya Sampradaya. And they explain that the contact of Prakriti and Purusha, Prakriti is matter, Purusha is consciousness or soul, with their contact is also Anadi.
So, that which is beginningless is by definition, its beginning cannot be traced. Beginningless does not necessarily mean that it never had a beginning. Beginningless simply means that its beginning cannot be traced.
So, that is why what happened at the beginning is something which is not comprehensible to us. We talk about humility in various domains of knowledge. Humility with respect to the time domain.
Humility means to accept, humility in the intellectual realm, it means to accept that there are certain things which we do not know, and there are certain things which we cannot know. So, getting into the beginnings of things, that is something which we will not be able to perceive, because the time scales are so huge and the starting point is untraceable. That is why the scriptures do not get into this.
Acharyas explain that our bondage is Anadi, is beginningless and that is where they leave it at. And as far as the point of the universe or the soul getting different bodies at different times, what we need to focus on is more of the solution than the analysis of in the form of post-mortem. When a person has got malaria, he has to ask, please take this treatment, you will get cured.
I want to find which mosquito bit me. And I want to ask that mosquito, why bit me? Why not someone else? Well, how will you find a mosquito? It is just a waste of time. So, that is why when we go into the question of origins, it is often a discussion which has no conclusive understanding.
And in any field of knowledge that we go, there are things which are considered unknowable. For example, if we consider quantum physics today, quantum physics is a branch of knowledge, which has in many ways revolutionised technology. The kind of processing that we can do through quantum physics is remarkable.
But when we try to correlate quantum physics, the model of the universe that it gives, with our day-to-day experience. Now, according to quantum physics, actually all that exists is simply waves. And when there is an observer, the waves coagulate into substance, the waves function or collapse, and then we have something which is observed.
So, Neil Bohr was a prominent propagator of the quantum theory. And he and Einstein were great friends at one time, but then they really, Einstein could not digest the idea of quantum physics. He said that, I would like to believe that the moon continues to exist, even if I am not looking at it.
So, the moon is up there in the sky, I can see it. If I do not see it, it is there. But actually, according to quantum physics, there is no such thing as a moon.
It is only when I look at it, there is a waveform that is there and that waveform collapses into the object called moon. So, the moon exists, according to quantum physics, according to quantum physics as interpreted in a particular way, that is prominent at the time of Einstein, that the moon exists only when there is an observer to see the moon, otherwise there is no moon. So, everything is simply waves, that is the idea.
But we, in our day-to-day reality, I can touch, this is a solid object, I can make a sound, this is solid, one solid touching another solid. Paul Dirac was a physicist and he was asked this question by one of his students. He said that, how do I make sense of this quantum physics? How can we reconcile the idea of everything as waves with solid objects I see over here? So, his guide answered him, stop thinking, start calculating.
He says, just you cannot think, it is, it is not, as quantum physics, the model of physics it uses is just not conceivable, just start calculating, do the calculations and it works. So, the point is, in every branch of knowledge, we will come to certain things, certain limits which are not crossable. And obsessing over those answers which are, those questions which are not answerable, that simply wastes our energy and distracts our focus.
So, the questions about origins are usually like that. That is why there is no need to go too much into a postmodern among these questions. Please explain the phenomena of UFOs.
The scriptures say anything about UFOs. Yeah. So, UFOs are Unidentified Flying Objects.
These are something which is often talked about in science fiction. And it is also many UFO sightings are reported at different times. And most of them are considered non-credible.
But some have stood the test of significant amount of investigation. Now, firstly, it is to be clearly understood that the human mind has a very fanciful imagination. And many people use the idea of UFOs to garner attention for themselves.
And such people have often spoiled the whole field of UFO studies. But having said that, there are several reliable observations also. So, now, as far as UFOs are concerned, it is that because they are so uncertain where they come from, how they move, where they go, often there is a whole area of mystery surrounding it.
And so, as many of these reports get covered up, whether by security agencies or whoever, because it creates a whole pole of uncertainty over people. From the living perspective, we understand this universe is filled with living beings at different levels. And different living beings can come at different times to the earth.
So, what we call as Unidentified Flying Objects, what we call as, they are basically people from other lokas who might just come here. So, there is a devotee scientist, Dr. Richard L. Thomson, he had his PhD from Cornell University. Sadaput Prabhu has written a book called Alien Identities.
And in that book Alien Identities, he explains the correlation between many of the descriptions of UFO sightings. Now, UFO sightings are also of different levels. Some of them come in the tabloid media, the newspapers, some newspapers are known for cheap sensationalist headlines.
So, we are not talking about that kind of stuff. There are some, there are a significant number of UFO sightings that are described in scientific journals. Sadaput Prabhu, he took that kind of sightings.
And then he showed, say, for example, in the 10th century Bhagavatam, there is a description of Shalya and how he attacked Dwarka. And he had got, by the blessings of Lord Shiva, a celestial flying object, like a, it was like a spacecraft. And that spacecraft could appear, disappear, move rapidly.
And with that, he was attacking on Dwarka. So, he, Richard L. Thomson has correlated the descriptions of the spacecraft in the alien sightings, in the UFOs, UFO descriptions, in published UFO descriptions, in published scientific journals and the Bhagavatam. So, there are remarkable correlations between the two.
So, as long as we think that life exists only on the earth, then UFOs are something which are, which are to be just dismissed as not explainable. But when we understand that, there is life on other planets, and those beings on other planets often have technology which is equivalently, if not better than what we have, then they can visit the earth and sometimes when they visit the earth, they may come in certain device, certain spacecraft, certain devices, which may sometimes be visible to us. So, the, there is no need to get unduly excited about UFOs.
It is not that UFO sighting is life’s ultimate achievement. There are some people who get overly excited about that, there are others who become overly dismissive about that. So, both these extremes can be avoided.
And basically, what we understand is, there are some sightings which are made and especially those which are reported in extreme journals or in respectable scientific journals, they can be seen as a fair evidence of such sightings and there is correlation of them. So, we understand that there are beings from other planets who are coming and that is how UFO sightings take place. Thank you very much.