Ask a Hare Krsna – Episode 06

Audio Podcast

So, what he is thinking, we’ll articulate in this, in the next verses. Thank you. the expert to give such knowledgeable answers.
Today, we have one of the renowned speaker who is famous as spiritual scientist to answer our viewers’ question. Please welcome His Grace Chaitanya Charan Prabhu. Chaitanya Charan Prabhu is a monk and spiritual author.
He has done his electronic and telecommunication engineering from the Garman College of Engineering, Pune, India. Chaitanya Charan Prabhu is a disciple of His Holiness Radhanath Swami Maharaj, who is a senior disciple of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. He is practicing Krishna Consciousness for the last 25 years.
He is a member of ISKCON’s leading intellectual body, the Shastrik Advisory Council and is the associate editor of ISKCON’s global magazine, Back to Godhead. He is the author of the world’s only Gita daily feature, wherein he writes daily a 300-word inspirational reflection on a verse from the Bhagavad Gita. Till now, he had written over 1700 Gita meditations that are posted on gitadevi.com and are read through daily feeds by thousands from all over the world.
He also answers questions by speakers on his website, thespiritualscientist.com, where over 3500 audio answers and several hundred articles are available. Till now, he has written over 1700 Gita meditations and he is the author of 16 books and many more on its way. He travels all over the world from Australia to America, giving talks on spiritual subjects in temples, universities and companies.
We are happy to have him in our show. Let’s begin the show with the first question. So, the question is, is there any proof for the existence of God? The word proof has multiple meanings and if we consider proof in terms of mathematical proof, as in mathematics we prove this plus this is this or whatever.
That way, we don’t have proof for even your existence or my existence. If we consider proof in mathematical terms, then most of the things that we understand intuitively that exist, that we ourselves exist, even those cannot be proven. Now, there is in court cases, for example, proof.
The proof is not mathematical. The proof is inferential. So, if there are multiple concurring lines of evidence that point to a particular conclusion, then that is considered to be a good enough evidence for say the culpability of a particular person.
So, I’ll talk about primarily four broad lines of thought which point to the existence of a super intelligent being. First is what is often called as the cosmological argument. Cosmological argument for the existence of God is that everything has to come from something.
If I have a 100-story building, the 100th story rests on the 99th story. The 99th rests on the 98th. And like this, the building has to end somewhere.
There has to be a ground on which the building is built. So, we see everything in the world has a cause and everything in the world is temporary. Nothing in this world lasts forever.
Even according to science, the universe is not eternal. So, a chain of temporary things will need to rest in something which is non-temporary. Otherwise, it will just not be possible.
It’s like a building which has no ground. It’ll just collapse. So, everything has to have a cause.
And the cause of all causes by definition can’t have a cause. So, God is by definition the cause of all causes. So, by this pure chain of logic, we can understand that God is not a possibility of existence.
God is the precondition for existence. If the ground did not exist, the building can’t exist. So, if God, who is the cause of all causes, did not exist, then nothing would exist at all.
Now, each of these arguments can go elaborately. I’ll keep it brief over here. And if any of you want further elaboration on this, you can ask further questions and I can elaborate on each of these arguments separately.
So, this is a cosmological argument. Then, there is also the moral argument. Moral argument means that all of us, we are driven for survival.
So, Darwin had the theory of survival of the fittest. And we see that we are, we human beings especially, are driven not just by the survival instinct. Now, often the noblest, the most inspiring acts that we do, they are not driven by the imperative for survival.
When, say, the twin towers was crashing, was collapsing, the firefighters went inside and tried to rescue people. Now, they knew that if the tower collapsed, they would die. But they risked their lives.
This is actually not survival of the fittest. It is sacrifice by the fittest. So, this is actually, if we were simply biological creatures, why would we do something which would risk our survival? And we don’t think of such a thing as wrong.
We think of such a thing as inspiring. So, somebody’s child is drowning and somebody risks their life to leap into the water body and rescue that child. We consider it noble.
So, we have within us an innate sense of something which is right and something which is wrong. And that is independent of the drive for survival. So, we risk our lives.
Not everyone does it. But there is a sense within us that there is something which is noble and which is not driven by the survival instinct. So, where did the sense of right and wrong independent of the survival instinct come from? That points to a supreme source of morality.
A supreme being who has given us the sense of right and wrong. And without a non-material source, at the material level, the survival instinct would not make us do anything noble. It will only make us do that which is simply for our survival.
The third argument is what we could call as the coherence argument. The coherence argument means, there are two parts in it. First is that we see that things in this world are very intricate, very delicate, very artistic.
Right from the way the cells function in our body to the way the atmosphere is balanced so that water from the ocean bodies comes to us as rains, there is amazing level of balance within the universe. Scientists call this as an anthropic principle that life would not have been possible if there are hundreds or more than 100 factors like this which science has already found which indicate, which have to be in a particular way for life to be possible. So, for example, if the earth had not been tilted at 23 and a half degrees, then the cycling of seasons would not have occurred.
And if that had not occurred, the earth would have been either too cold or too hot for life to be possible. So, the point is that each of these factors, each of these over 100 factors which researchers have reviewed, there could have been any value. The earth could have been tilted at 43 and a half degrees.
It could have been tilted at 3 and a half degrees. Why 23 and a half degrees? This level of precision cannot be explained by chance. Suppose a gambling match is going on and in that gambling match, somebody tosses dice and it is their life that is at stake.
If it falls six, they live. If it falls anything else, they die. And they toss it once, twice, thrice.
Each time it comes six. It comes not once, twice, thrice, but more than 100 times each time it comes six. They will say, this dice, it’s not working normally.
There’s something done by which it is falling six. So, like that for all these factors to work in a way that they are exactly conducive for what is necessary for our survival, that indicates that these are not happening by chance, but there is some plan involved in this. And the second aspect is, atheism and materialism can’t explain the explainability of science, the explainability of nature as it is discovered by science.
That means, that if everything has come just by unguided natural processes, then our brain is the result of one unguided process. The world out there is a result of another unguided process. So, why is it that nature out there has an order which we can perceive and appreciate with our brain? If our brain is just a lump of matter come together and nature out there is a lump of matter come together in another way.
So, why is it that when a particle of matter falls down, it follows a law and a law of mathematical precision? F is equal to gm1m2 upon r square. So, science offers explanations for the behavior of nature, but the very explainability of nature requires an explanation. So, science, in this sense, the more science progresses, the more science comes up with explanations, the more that will mean that there’s a greater requirement of the explainability for explanation.
So, the explainability of nature requires an explanation and as India’s famous mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, he said that, for me an equation has no meaning unless it represents a thought of God. So, in this way, the cosmological, the moral, the coherence in which we could say the anthropic reasoning, the anthropic principle and the correlation between the human intelligence and the natural order, all these point strongly as evidences towards the existence of God. Thank you.
Hello, so this is Raj from Institute of Chemical Technology and I had this question which has been bothering me for quite some time. They say that Bhagavad Gita has answers for everything. So, I have a question that how is Bhagavad Gita relevant in this today time where things have become like too, too, too, too, too, too stressed out and too, too dicey? How is the Bhagavad Gita relevant today when things have become very dicey and stressed out? Yes, the purpose of Bhagavad Gita is to offer as a guide for living.
Just as the sun and the moon, they will always provide light whether we live in ancient times or medieval times or modern times or postmodern times. We may have artificial systems of lighting but even these systems ultimately depend on the natural sources of light —the sun and the moon. So, similarly, they all depend for inner illumination, for the illumination of wisdom on timeless sources of wisdom and the Bhagavad Gita offers us knowledge about ourselves.
In today’s world, there is a lot of knowledge about external things but there is a shocking lack of knowledge about our inner world and that is why we, as you said, life has become so stressed out. The main reason for stress is not just that there are so many things to do but rather there are so many thoughts going wild in our mind because of which we are not able to focus on anything constructive. So, science and technology may help us to make things better in the outer world but the Bhagavad Gita can provide us guidance which will help us to make things better in our inner world.
Martin Luther King said that we have guided missiles and misguided men. So, what the Bhagavad Gita offers us is the inner guidance by which we can tap our full potential. The Bhagavad Gita’s essential teaching is, it illumines who we are and what we are meant to do.
So, Arjuna was also actually in a very stressful situation. He had to fight a war against his own relatives, a war which he just did not have the heart to fight and at that time his question was, who am I? These are my loved ones. I am their loved one.
How can I fight against them? What should I do? So, Arjuna asked Krishna the question, please tell me what am I meant to do? What is dharma? Dharma refers in the Bhagavad Gita not just to religion. Dharma refers to the course of action that brings us in harmony with nature. So, that action, there is a natural order to everything.
Sugar is by nature sweet. Snow is cold. So, everything has its nature and to the extent everything is in natural situation, to that extent things are orderly.
So, what is our nature? How can we harmonize with the orderliness of nature? That is the question the Bhagavad Gita asks and this question is of enduring relevance. So, the Bhagavad Gita’s question is not about something 5000 years old. The Bhagavad Gita’s question is about a timeless issue.
The timeless issue is, what are we meant to do in our life? What is dharma? And that is a question which all of us face sooner or later, especially in today’s world when there are hundreds of things to do, unless we have a system of prioritizing things and not just a system of prioritizing based on practicality. You know, I have to do this first, the second, the third. But we have a system of prioritization based on principles, based on truly understanding that both in the immediate and the ultimate analysis, what is it that is most important.
Based on that understanding, when we make decisions, then we will be able to bring out our best and the Bhagavad Gita helps us to recognize the short-sighted impulses, the negative passions, the self-defeating urges that are there inside us and helps us to overcome them. So, it helps us to bring out the best within us and it helps us to resist and reject the impulses within us which often make us act in negative ways. In this way, in today’s world where we are stressed out with multiple things to do, the Bhagavad Gita is an indispensable guide for enabling us to put first things first.
Hare Krishna Babaji, this is Vikas Mishra from Mumbai. Many a times I have seen many people talking about reincarnation, but they believe that it is only in the Hindu religion. I just wanted to know, is incarnation a Hindu belief? So, thank you Vikas for your question about is reincarnation a Hindu belief? No.
Reincarnation is talked about, yes, in the Vedic texts of ancient India, in the Bhagavad Gita, but it is also talked about in Buddhist texts and it is also hinted at in the texts of the Abrahamic religions. But rather than thinking of it as a belief, whether it is a belief of this religion or that religion, let us look at it from the perspective of logic and evidence. From the perspective of logic, we come to know from science that our bodies keep changing.
Every cell in the body changes and in less than a decade, all the cells in the body change so much that there is no cell in our body which is the same. So, who is it that is the same? If the whole body is changed, then who is it that is same? Now, we know that I am the same although the body has changed. So, that unchanging self that the Bhagavad Gita says is the Atma and the unchanging self who says the same amidst the change of the body, that is itself a phenomena of reincarnation.
So, Karna means body, incarnation means to come in the body, reincarnation means to come again in the body. So, we could say that even in this life, since we are changing bodies, so reincarnation is something which we all have experienced. Sometimes, if we meet some old friends or if we meet a friend who did not know us in childhood and we show that friend our childhood photo, maybe when we were 5, 6 or 4 years old and especially if it is a school photo, they may not even be able to recognize us because we may be quite different from what we were.
So, or when we meet a relative after 10, 12 years, they say, you have become so big. Now, what does this mean? You have become so big. So, you are still the same but you also become big.
That means there is something which is unchanging within us, something which is changing within us. The fact that we change bodies, which is a sense of reincarnation, is something which we all experience in this life. Now, what reincarnation states is that the same thing happens at the end of this life also when we go to another body.
Now, there is significant body of scientific evidence which points towards this. There are many researchers especially led by the late Dr. Jan Stevenson who pioneered the scientific examination of cases of reincarnation and he found four levels of evidence for this. First is that he found children especially who had memories of another life.
So, a small child would say, I was big then, I am small now. This is normal opposite order. I was small then, I am big now.
That’s how we see in a normal course of life. And the child would say, I was big then and the child would give details. You know, I was so and so person at so and so place and researchers would go and investigate and they would find that actually there was a person who lived and died the way this child told.
So, first evidence is accurate recollections of a past life. And many of these cases, in fact, most of the cases that Stevenson investigated were long before the internet came up. And the children had no way of knowing, especially 3, 4, 5, 6 years old children, they had no way of knowing who lived somewhere else in some other village, some other city, sometimes some other country also.
So, the children got this knowledge and got this accurately. And the knowledge was not even available to their parents. Even parents did not know that deceased person.
So, this is one level of evidence. The second is, not only were there recollections, but there were also recognitions. That means, when these children were taken back to the life of the previous personality, previous personality is the term that Stevenson coined for referring to who this person, who the child claimed to be in the previous life.
So, when they went there, the children actually identified. So, there was a boy Titu Sharma, who was a 5 year old boy, he started saying that he was living in Lucknow and he said, I am actually from Kanpur and I own electrical shop, Verma Electricals. And I was married to a woman named Uma and I was shot in the head.
And when he was taken to that city, actually they found there was a Verma Electricals studio which was run by a widow named Uma. And when this small boy went to her, he ran up to her and he started behaving with her as if she were his wife. She was shocked when this small boy came and started speaking like this.
But eventually, when he went there, he told, he not only recognized her, he recognized his father, his mother, other relatives over there in his house. So, there are many cases where these recognitions also happen. And not only recognitions, and third level of evidence is also behaviors.
Behaviors means that there are children who have likes and dislikes, phobias and phobias from their previous life which carry over to this life. So, for example, if a child has been drowned, if the previous personality had died because of drowning, then in this life, the child will be having hydrophobia, very fearful of water. Or that person had been shot in the dark, then he would be very fearful of darkness.
So, in this way, and not only negative behavior, there are also positive behaviors. So, for example, there was a boy in Madhya Pradesh who was born in a lower caste family and he believed that he was an incarnation of a person born in a higher caste family. And as soon as he started speaking, he refused to take the food from his house.
And for seven years, his father had to get a Brahmin to cook food for him and he said, I will take food only by Brahmins. Now, why would the parents do a hoax like this? That they themselves would be embarrassed that their son is not eating food in their own house. So, this is the kind of behavior the children exhibit wherein they act not in conformity with the way they are expected to in this life, but in some other entirely different way.
And the fourth and the strongest evidence is birth marks and birth defects. So, for example, this boy Titu, he had been Suresh Varma in his previous life and Suresh Varma had been shot at close range when he had just come back from his office to his home. And so, the bullet had gone inside from the right temple and come out of the left temple.
And this is the case of Titu, double birth marks. This was actually shown on BBC in a program called 40 Minutes. And in that, they showed Titu being shaved.
And when he was shaved, he also had two congenital birth marks, swellings on his head. And because it had been a criminal case of murder, the post-mortem reports had been done. And when they were investigated, they found that the location of the entry point and the exit point of the bullet, they exactly matched with the birth marks on the body of Titu.
And not only that, normally the exit part is usually bigger because the bullet comes in from one point and goes on, makes a bigger hole on the other side. So, the birth mark on the other side on Titu’s head was bigger. And now, there was a Naseeb Botswana, there was a man named Naseeb in Turkey who had died because somebody else had attacked him by a knife.
And when he was born in the next life, he actually, as a child, had not one or two but seven birth marks at exactly the same location as what had been there in the fatal wounds of Naseeb in the previous life. Now, Stevenson actually did a mapping of the body into 128 coordinates. And he found that within those 128 coordinates, there was a precise correlation between the fatal wound of the previous body and a precise birth mark of this body.
Additionally, he found that birth marks and birth defects have various causes. The known causes among them are primarily two. One is that they are genetic.
It comes from the genes of the mother or the father. And the second is, during pregnancy, if the mother eats something or undergoes some disease because of which the child gets marked. Now, Stevenson found that the kind of birth marks that these people had, there was nothing genetic which could have caused those birth marks.
None of their parents, grandparents, cousins, uncles had those kind of birth marks. And lastly, the women had been very careful during pregnancy and they had not eaten anything. In many of these cases, the women were religious or especially they would become more religious when they would be carrying a child in the hope that they would get a good progeny.
So, they had not exposed themselves in any way to any food or any habit which could have scarred the child. So, there is no genetic cause or biological cause for the birth marks and birth defects. So, the soul who has gone, who has died in the previous life, that impact is carried on in the consciousness, in the mind.
And that impact, that registers as a deformity in the body in the next life. So, in this way, by observing that we ourselves remain unchanging despite the change in our body in this life, we can see reincarnation happening in this life itself. And then that reincarnation happens from one life to next life.
There are four lines of evidences. One is accurate recollections of facts which the children could not have known by any normal means. Second is precise recognitions of people whom the children had not known.
Third is behaviours which were radically different, even contradict to their normal patterns of behaviour but which were similar to the behaviour of the previous personality. And last is birth marks and birth defects which correlated precisely with the fatal wounds of the previous life and which had no cause based on this life. So, all these point to reincarnation as a fact of life, not a sectarian belief.
Thank you. Hare Krishna. Or you can even mail us at askhktv at the read gmail dot com.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.