How spirituality fosters unity in diversity and individuality in unity

[Bhagavad-gita class on 05.22 at ISKCON, Adelaide, Australia]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. So today we’ll discuss from the Bhagavad Gita, 5th chapter, 18th verse, बिद्याविनयसंपन्ने ब्रह्मने गविहस्तिनी शुनीचेवश्वपाकेच पंदितासमदर्शिनः So this is… Is it better now? So I’ll speak on this verse from 5.29 from the Bhagavad Gita. And the topic, the title is How spirituality fosters unity in diversity and diversity in unity.
In this chat section of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna is talking about when we gain spiritual knowledge, what is the result of gaining spiritual knowledge. In two verses earlier, he has said that when we gain spiritual knowledge, at that time, just as if you are stumbling around in dark, we can’t see anything, but when the sun arises, येशामादित्यवज्ञानं प्रकाशयते तक्परं Just as when the sun arises, everything becomes clear. Similarly, spiritual knowledge is like the sun that illumines not just the physical path ahead of us, but the path of our life.
And if this path of our life is illuminated, then that leads to two things. First is, along the journey of our life, we encounter different people and we encounter different events. If we consider our life, what are the noteworthy things in our life? During a day, if we look back at the day, what all happened? We look back in terms of the people that we met and the events that happened.
Of course, at one level, we could say meeting people is also an event, but I am using event in a slightly different sense, that okay, the stock price went up over here, this news happened over here, things like that. So, now Krishna says that with spiritual knowledge, we will get a healthy attitude towards both, towards people as well as towards events. And what is a healthy attitude? A healthy attitude is an attitude of equanimity, of stability.
Some people are extremely unstable. They, their mood is sometimes as, their moods are as fickle as the weather. One day they are so cheerful, just like the sky may be so bright and blue and very pleasing.
And the next day, it’s overcast and gloomy. Their moods also become gloomy. So, some people may be very emotionally very moody.
They are unstable. Some people may be very socially unstable. Socially unstable means, that if one person criticises them, just that criticism becomes so unbearable, they sink into depression, self-doubt, just can’t move forward in life.
Two, if one person praises them, that is like the success of their life. They feel yes, they feel jubilant. So this, if somebody is too unstable in terms of their emotions, then they can’t persevere in anything.
So we are by nature emotional creatures. And emotions are not meant to be denied. But when emotions dominate the way we function, and emotions alone determine how we function, then we can’t function for any higher purpose or according to any higher principles.
So Krishna says that spirituality will bring stability in our relationships and in our processing of life’s events. So this verse 5.18 is talking about that stability in our relationships. And 5.20, two verses later, we’ll talk about stability in dealing with events.
In 5.20 he will say that na praharishet priyam prapya, no dvijet prapya ca priyam, sthira buddhir asamudho, brahma vid brahman istitaha that even when good comes, one doesn’t become elated. When bad comes, one doesn’t become dejected. One is situated in spiritual self-understanding.
Such a person is undeluded. So the background, foundation for this is in the verse for today’s discussion. Krishna says such people see everyone equally and use the whole gamut of existence.
At the top of the gamut of existence, range of beings you might be there is vidya, vinaya, sampanne, brahmane. There are people who are brahmanical. And there are people who are intellectual, gentle, pious, virtuous.
Krishna is not talking about the caste system so much over here as he is talking about quality. Because he is saying not just a brahmana but a vidya, vinaya, sampanne. Vidya is knowledge.
One who has knowledge and it’s interesting Krishna is using vidya and vinaya together. So generally if somebody has knowledge, it is very easy to become proud of that knowledge. So in some ways knowledge can become the opposite of humility.
And people become too knowledgeable, then they become proud. I know so much, others don’t know anything. So one of my devotee friends, he is a PhD.
He says he interacts constantly with people who have PhD. They are so proud. He says PhD means permanent humility deficiency.
No, it’s not necessary like that. Some people can be learned, they have PhD and they can be humble also. But in general knowledge leads to arrogance.
But if along with knowledge there is humility, such a person is very attractive. You are so learned and you are so humble also. So that is Krishna is talking about such a very nice person.
Learned and humble. Vidya, vinaya, sampanne, brahmane and then he goes along the gamut. So we have human beings, then gavi hastini, that there are cows, there are elephants.
Shuni chaiva, svapa kecha, pandita sama darsinaha, sama darsinaha, person sees everyone equally. So in the human species he talks about the brahmanas, the learned and humble brahmana. Then he talks about a dog eater, svapa cha.
Now dog eater here is used as a shorthand or a metaphor to refer to people who are not very discerning in their choices. That means generally we can understand people’s nature by their actions. So the choice of the diet of people also can indicate the level of consciousness.
So he’s talking about some people may be very cultured, some people may not have the similar cultural upbringing. But whatever be the external way a person is behaving, sama darsinaha, see everyone equally. And then this equal vision extends not just to human beings, but also to non-human beings.
That is animals. And the Bhagavad Gita talks about three modes of material nature. Which are these three modes? Goodness, passion, ignorance.
Yeah, thank you. So now in goodness is the cow. In passion is the elephant.
So now Krishna is telling that even if you go over the whole range. Vidya vilasimpani brahmane gavi hastini shuni chaiva svapa ke jaya. So everyone, we have all the animals included over there.
Goodness, passion, ignorance. And Krishna says all of them are seen equally. So this equal vision is because the learned person sees that everybody is a soul.
Everybody is essentially a soul. The soul is covered by the body. The body is different, but beyond the body is the essential similarity.
Later in the 18th chapter, the 20th verse when Krishna talks about knowledge in the mode of goodness, there is a sarvabhuteshu yenaikam bhavam avyayam ivyakshate avibhaktam vibhakteshu tad jnanam vidya-satvikam. One who sees that there is a variety of living beings, but beyond their variety is their commonality. That everybody has the same imperishable spirit within them.
So everybody is essentially spiritual and similar. That is the vision which brings equal equality. So now I was in America, I was speaking on science, spirituality and wellness at Stanford University and there after that one person who later came and talked to me, he was an atheist, he said that isn’t it that actually science makes humanity humble and religion makes humanity proud.
This is a common argument between atheists. So what is their argument? That we humans think that we are someone special, that we are above all the animals. But actually we are just another animal.
So mainstream science proposes the theory of evolution and it says that our evolutionary ancestors were ape men. So we human beings are just another animal. And it is our own arrogance to think that we are someone special.
So religion makes us believe that we are someone special and makes us proud. Whereas science makes us humble. You are no one special.
You are just another animal. So actually this, some people extend this argument and say that is why we humans are so cruel towards animals. We slaughter animals, we exploit animals because we think we are superior to them and we think that they are meant for our enjoyment.
This is not the idea of religion per se. It may be the idea of some particular religions. So let’s examine this one by one, various claims within this.
Is it that by considering that human beings are just another animal, are we becoming necessarily humble by that? Actually if we consider, if human beings were just another animal, then would human beings have developed science? You know, has a chimpanzee understood the law of gravity? Even when I was invited to Cambridge University to speak on science and spirituality, we passed by the tree under which Newton is said to have seen the fruit falling. Some people say the apple fell in front of him, some people say it fell on him. Now imagine if instead of Newton, at that time a monkey had been sitting there and the apple had fallen down.
What would the monkey have done? What do you think the monkey would have done? Grabbed it, eaten it and gone away. So Newton asked the question, what made the fruit fall? This question about whether there is any order to life, whether there is any deeper meaning to life, this is a question which only human beings can ask. If human beings were simply animals, then we wouldn’t be even asking the question whether we are animals or not.
We would simply be living animal life. We would not be having any science at all. Einstein said that the arts, the religions and the sciences are fruits of the same tree of human intelligence.
The same human intelligence which tries to make sense of the world around us. When we look at the natural world and try to understand why do these things happen like this? Why do the fruits fall? Why do the stars move in their orbits? What makes them move? Then that is where we make science as a progress. Art is where we try to observe the world, observe nature and try to replicate it either through words or through painting or through music and then we experience something.
And that’s how we try to make sense of life. And religion, now today in today’s world religion and spirituality are often separated and the word religion has negative connotation, spirituality has positive connotation. Many people say that I am a SBNR.
What is SBNR? I am spiritual but not religious. So now, but actually speaking at the time of Einstein, religion and spirituality meant the same thing. Words, their meanings change over time.
So religion, he said, the religion looks for answers beyond. What is the ultimate meaning of everything? So in that sense, it’s simply a given fact of life that there is something in humans which differentiates them from animals. And that is why we humans have been able to develop science and we have developed language, we have developed literature, we have developed music.
Now birds can also sing. Birds may be able to sing better than humans. But birds don’t develop musical instruments to sing.
Birds are just given those instruments, given their vocal chords and they use them. So we humans definitely have something special. And this is not arrogance.
This is just factual recognition of reality. Now where it becomes arrogance is if we consider ourselves as having the right because of our speciality to exploit other animals. This is where say Christian theology or the world’s religions could be divided into broad categories.
There are the Abrahamic religions and there are the dharmic religions. The Abrahamic religions are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All of them accept Abraham as one of their founding prophets.
But their later prophets, the Jews accept Moses as the prime source of revelation. The Christians, after Moses predicted the future, a Messiah will come. When Jesus came, those people who accepted Jesus as the Messiah, they became Christians.
And later when Mohammed came, those people who accepted Mohammed to be the Messiah, they became Muslims. And Mohammed saw that people were coming and claiming to be Messiah, so he said that I am the seal of all prophets. There’s going to be no more prophets after me.
So anyway, these religions are more history centred. The specific events in history which are foundational to the revelation of the truth. Whereas Eastern religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, these are more dharma centred.
Buddhism uses the word dhama instead of dharma. But the idea is that dharmic religions means they look to understand what are the underlying truths of life. What are the principles of governing life? And to understand that and to harmonise with that.
So generally for the Abrahamic religions, they have some differences between them, no doubt. But still I will focus on Christianity here and contrast because Christianity is the most numerous, most popular, most widespread religion in the world. So Christianity somehow has evolved this idea that only humans have souls.
And that’s why they consider that animals are actually meant only for human enjoyment. And that, they consider the soul to be the monopoly of humans. And they again point to the same thing that animals can’t be religious.
Animal can’t ask deeper questions in life. So we alone have souls. So what the Vedic literature tells us is that the Bhagavad Gita tells us that difference between animals and humans is not in category but in degree.
Category means that humans have souls, animals don’t have souls. But degree means that all of us have souls but the soul is more evolved in its consciousness in human beings than in animals. Now how do we just, how do we reason about either theory? Do animals have souls or not? How do we reason that? So we have to go backwards and look at what exactly is the soul? Or how do we know that the soul is present at all? Although Christians often talk about the soul, often the soul is used to refer to, it’s used as a metaphorical reference to our non-material essence.
It’s something within us which is different from the body and that we call as a soul. But what exactly it is, it is not so well clearly described in the Bible. Bhagavad Gita begins by describing that the soul is a particle of consciousness, different from the body.
And the soul’s defining characteristic is consciousness. So wherever consciousness is present, there soul has to be present. And are animals conscious? Certainly, isn’t it? Animals experience pain, animals experience joy.
So animals definitely have consciousness. There is a popular ethologist, people who study animal behaviour, he has written a book called Are We Smart Enough to Understand How Smart Animals Are? So animals have intelligence in their own way. And in some ways animals may be more intelligent than us also.
Which human being can take simply straws and make it into an elaborate nest? He can’t. Even the best trained architect can’t do that. So animals have their intelligence in their own way.
So they have consciousness, they even have intelligence. What they lack is metaphysical intelligence. See there is practical intelligence and there is metaphysical intelligence.
Practical intelligence deals with basics of life. How to eat, how to sleep, how to have a shelter for sleeping, how to find a mate for reproducing, how to defend oneself when there is a danger. So this is practical intelligence.
In some ways animals have this better than humans. But existential intelligence or metaphysical intelligence, what is life meant for? That is what humans have. So animals have consciousness, humans have consciousness.
And consciousness indicates the presence of the soul. So therefore what the Bhagavad Gita says is, the soul is present in all living beings. Now earlier I started by saying that humans are special.
So what makes humans special? It is not that we have souls and animals don’t have souls, that’s why we are special. What makes humans special is that the soul’s consciousness is more developed. In the human body than in animal bodies.
Now what do we mean by the consciousness is more developed? All of us seek pleasure. Animals seek pleasure, humans seek pleasure. But the more the consciousness is developed, the more are the variegated or elevated ways in which we seek pleasure.
Now some people for them, their definition of pleasure may be that I just sit in front of a home, in my home in front of a TV and watch TV. And that’s enjoyable. Some people may think I want to travel, I want to see beautiful natural places and breathe the fresh air, I see the beautiful greenery.
That’s when I feel good. So if we see what gives pleasure if somebody is spending their whole life looking forward to playing video games and winning video games. And somebody is thinking, I want to work to help poor people.
And the person takes all that money, that extra time, money, energy they have and to care for others. Now both may get pleasure in what they are doing. But the level of pleasure is not the same.
Isn’t it? Where one is simply dissipating their life in playing video games and one is actually working to benefit others. So the level of consciousness determines where we seek pleasure. A person’s consciousness is very low, just want to seek my own pleasure, I don’t care for anyone else.
I play video games, I enjoy, that’s all. But a person whose consciousness is more evolved, they seek a higher pleasure. I want to remove the tears of someone else.
I want to bring a smile on their face and that I will get pleasure. So expanding this concept, the soul is here, the body is here. Now the soul seeks pleasure.
As long as the soul is in the material world, the soul will seek pleasure through the body. But we human beings actually want more pleasure than what the body can offer. What do I mean more pleasure than what the body can offer? That means that if we consider cows, from the beginning of their life to the end of their life, they will simply eat grass everyday.
If we human beings are told from now onwards rest of your life, the same item will be your meal morning, afternoon, evening for the rest of your life. You will say I want to die right now. That idea will be unbearable for most of us.
We have hundreds of cuisines and maybe hundreds of items within each cuisine and we want to eat food in a variety of ways. So we want to increase the pleasure. Actually because our consciousness is evolved, we intrinsically seek more pleasure than what the body can offer.
The body through eating, sleeping, mating, it can offer us some pleasure. But that is very finite pleasure and we want more pleasure. We want to expand our experience of pleasure.
So actually if we understand spirituality properly, we understand our speciality is not a matter of arrogance or pride. It is a matter of opportunity and it is a matter of responsibility. Opportunity means we have a chance to look for some higher happiness.
And to seek that higher happiness is our responsibility. And if we truly understand what spirituality means, that I am a soul and I am trapped in the body and the body is dragging me here, there and everywhere, then our spirituality brings humility. Because I understand I am a soul but I am shackled to this body.
I want to think about higher things in my life but my body keeps craving. I want this, I want that, I want that. Our heart looks for meaning but our tongue looks for pudding.
Where is the next delicious food I can get? And in this we are caught. So if we become aware of how our body is pulling us, how our senses are pulling us, then spiritual knowledge actually brings humility. So it is not that there is artificial inflation of humanity where it thinks itself as special.
That we are special is just a fact of life. If we were not special, we would not be asking also the question whether I am special or not. Or how am I special? But this speciality is not meant to make us arrogant.
It is actually meant to make us inquisitive. Okay, what makes me special? And how can I tap that specialness fully? So this idea that only human beings have souls, that is quite, that is very anthropocentric. Anthropocentric means human centred.
And so Christians have this idea that if you have faith in God, you have faith in Jesus as your saviour, you will go to heaven. And if you don’t, you will not go to heaven. So now, nowadays in the western world people are very attached to their dogs.
And there was a Christian who asked the Pope, you know, I love my dog. So will my dog go to heaven or not? So many Christians, they apparently in a poll said that if our dog is not going to heaven, we don’t want to go to heaven also. So then now the dog is not capable of religious understanding or religious belief.
The dog doesn’t have that consciousness. So the Pope apparently found a way, a theological middle ground and he said that if the master of the dog believes in Jesus, then the dog will also go to Jesus. You know, this is, we cannot become spiritual for someone else.
Everybody has to become spiritual themselves. The soul in a dog’s body will have to come to a human body through gradual spiritual evolution. When the soul comes to a human body, at that time the soul has to choose to become spiritual.
And that’s when they will grow spiritually. That dog will grow spiritually. But coming to our discussion of this verse is equal vision.
Equal vision, how does it work practically? See the whole idea of the, when America became independent, they had the American Declaration of Rights that all people have a right to life and the pursuit of, have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is considered a radical declaration of freedom. But you see the Bhagavad Gita already talks about the spirit that all living beings are inherently equal.
Essentially everybody is a soul. So equality is to be understood on the ground of spiritual reality. At the level of the material body, everyone cannot be equal.
Are all species equal? If a cat is nearby and we clap our hands, the cat may get scared and go away. If from the biological perspective a cat and a tiger belong to the same species, same broad category of beings. But if there is a tiger and we clap our hands, we will go away.
So obviously all species, they are equal, but equality of vision does not necessarily mean equality of action. I understand all living beings are equal, but I can go and hug a cat, but I cannot go and hug a tiger. So we have to acknowledge that all living beings are equal at the spiritual level.
At a spiritual level, every living being is to be respected. But at a practical level, every body is different. Not only the different species have different bodies, but even human beings, there are differences.
There are males, there are females, there are people who are intellectual, there are people who are more of a martial administrative nature, there are people who are introverts, there are people who are extroverts. So people are essentially different. So how we understand this is that the soul is similar.
At the level of the soul, everybody is equal. At the level of the body, everybody is different. So trying to make everybody equal at the level of the body, that is artificial.
That’s what communism tried to do. So everybody is equal. Now this idea was very good, but what happened was, in communism it was a revolt against the class structure.
Oh there are wealthy people, there are poor people. We want everybody to be equal. But eventually even in communist countries, there ended up two classes, the rulers and the ruled.
And the rulers were living in great wealth and pomp. And the ruled were often in poverty. So there was a social critic who talked about communism.
He said, all people are equal, but some are more equal than others. That’s how it happens. At a material level, we cannot create equality by imposing equality on everyone.
So at a material level, people are different and different people need to be differently engaged. Different people need to be dealt with differently. And when we understand this principle, then there can be spiritual equality and material diversity.
So spirituality first helps us to see unity in diversity. Unity in diversity means, I am from this country, you are from this country. I am from this race, you are from that race.
I am from this class, you are from that class. And we have a history of conflict, we fight against each other. See, all of us are souls.
Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. We all belong to the one same family, the family of the earth. So there is no need for us to see our differences as final or fundamental.
The differences that may be there, they are circumstantial. I am a soul, you are a soul. But you have a body which is born in a particular country, I have a body which is born in another country.
And Prabhupada applies this difference even to religions. He says that different religions are also ultimate religion, although religion is meant to be a search for meaning in life, for most people religion also becomes a bodily designation. That means what? One of my friends is from a Jew background, now he is a Hare Krishna devotee.
So he was talking with his family members about his Hare Krishna faith. And his uncle, he became very suspicious, are you trying to convert us? He says, I didn’t know that you belong to any religion. He says, I am a Jew.
I am an atheist, but I am an atheist Jew. Now, what do you mean by atheist Jew? First commandment of Judaism is, love thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul and all thy might. So, if somebody claims to be a Jew, they are meant to follow this commandment.
And if somebody doesn’t even believe in God, then what kind of Jew are they? So, religion can also become simply a bodily designation. Religion is meant to be a spiritual pathway for us to grow. But for many people religion can become a bodily designation.
And when religion becomes a bodily designation, then people may fight over religion. I was in Washington DC, there I spoke on, does religion cause war? So, actually this is a common idea. Religion causes war.
And if there were no religion, world would be so peaceful. Actually that experiment was tried in Soviet Russia and China. The religion was officially banned.
And the result was, in these countries without any war, the government itself ended up killing more people than what were killed in World War I, World War II and all the wars of the 20th century combined together. So, communism itself led to a huge amount of violence. So, violence is caused not by the ideology of people, whether they are religious believers or they are non-believers.
Violence is caused by the mentality of people. Mentality means, ideology is what we believe. Mentality refers to how we live.
So, we could say that people may believe different things, but how they live may be very different. The religion if you use as a category, in religion you can have people who are, in America there is a group of Christians who are called Amish. They live very simply and they don’t use much technology and there was a, in America there is a great fear of guns.
You know, people have guns and they may shoot each other. So, there was a gun shooter who came and killed Amish children. And actually these Amish people, they forgave the shooter and they went and supported his widow.
Now, religion can have that kind of people and religion can have Jihadis, who use children to kill children, who make children, indoctrinate children to become suicide bombers and they kill others. So, religion, you cannot just simply put one category and label it. Within religion, the Bhagavad Gita explains there are three modes of material nature.
Goodness, passion and ignorance. So, people in ignorance will behave ignorantly, whether they are religious or non-religious. The Bhagavatam talks about religion and goodness, religion and passion, religion and ignorance.
So, the point I am making is, religion itself can simply be a bodily designation. And if religion is simply a bodily designation, then people will behave the way their mentality is. And their religion simply becomes a label for them to behave.
I have a Muslim friend online and he told me that it is easier for me to communicate with moderates of other traditions than with extremists of my own tradition. So, moderates will be people who are more intellectual, more balanced, more in the mode of goodness. People in the mode of goodness from one religious tradition, another religious tradition will be able to connect with each other.
But people in the same tradition, somebody might be in the mode of ignorance, somebody might be in the mode of goodness. And they will just not be able to connect. So, we see that religion is also bodily designation.
At one level, we don’t differentiate. We say everybody is a soul. So, from that conflict which comes in the name of religion, in the name of nationality, in the name of race, we go to see the commonality.
And after seeing the commonality, from diversity to unity, but again from unity to diversity. What is this unity to diversity? That we understand that every individual is different. All of us, although all of us are souls, we all have different bodies.
And because we have different bodies, so we will all function differently. I’ll conclude with two points about how this understanding of diversity can help us in our daily functioning in life. Whenever we function in any relationship, every relationship has two aspects to it.
One is contribution and the other is expectation. We do something in that relationship for the other person and we expect the other person to do something for us. Now, if in any relationship, if the other person’s expectation is very high and the contribution is very low, they demand us do this, do this, do this and they don’t do anything.
Then that relationship becomes strained. If in a relationship both people are doing contribution and then having a reciprocal expectation, then that’s fine. So, when we understand that different people are of different natures, then what happens? Sometimes we may have a certain expectation from someone.
But that person may be of a different nature. And because of them being of a different nature, they may not understand our expectation. They may not understand why something is so important for us.
So, when somebody does not do something which we expect them to do, we feel they don’t care for us. They are so insensitive. However, there is a difference between being insensitive and being desensitised.
Insensitive means to not care. But desensitised means to not have the capacity to care. Say for example, if I want to talk with someone and I tap them on the shoulder.
I tap them and they don’t turn around only. They don’t even acknowledge that I am tapping. I tap a little bit more and still they don’t turn around.
I tap more and I get angry. How rude! I want to talk with you. Why can’t you turn around? But then finally they look around and then we notice that actually their arm is hanging.
They got paralysis in their arm. So, they are desensitised over there. So, insensitive means to not care.
Desensitised means to be not capable of caring. So, at a physical level, if somebody is desensitised, it is easy to understand. But this also happens at a psychological, at a subtle level.
So, some people may be musically desensitised. Say for example, if we are having a kirtan and say we are very musically sensitive, we want to have the kartal being played very nicely and the brodhanga being played very nicely, singing would be done nicely. But sometimes the kirtan is going on and somebody comes along and they pick the kartal and start playing.
And they are playing everything out of tune. And then you get angry. Why are you playing out of tune? And the worst is sometimes some people are desensitised and they are unaware they are desensitised.
So, kirtan is going on, they close their eyes and they are playing kartal and they are in bliss and people around them are in agony. So, here somebody will say, why do you play it wrong? Was I playing wrong? I was playing right. They will not even understand it.
So, all of us, we are sensitised about certain things. If we have some talent in some field, we have some interest in some field, then we want to do it well. So, some people may be very sensitive about cleanliness.
Keep everything clean. And some people, it’s almost like they just don’t have that sense of cleanliness. They come into a room and five minutes, a clean room is a mess.
See, why don’t you keep things clean? Are they unclean? I didn’t notice. So, now what happens if a person doesn’t have that sensitivity itself and we demand, why don’t you keep this clean? Then what happens, our expectation is that they should keep it clean, but because they don’t have that sensitivity, it comes off as we are nagging them. I am a writer, so I tend to be quite conscious about the words that I use.
And generally, this writing, the word sensibility is very high within me. So, if I come to any place, if there are anything printed over there, I become like a self-appointed proofreader. And I start looking at the spellings to see if any spellings are wrong.
And Indians, especially Indians in India, they treat English very functionally. That means, just as long as the other people understand, even if they make a massacre of the grammar, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I tell someone, you know, that the spelling is wrong.
Can you correct this? Everybody understands. Why don’t you understand? So, the point here I am making is that different people are different. And when somebody doesn’t care for us, if we want things to be, say, music to be played nicely, we want the house to be kept clean, we want the, there is no typos in the letter, that is something which we are sensitive to.
But when they don’t do it, we feel they are not doing it because they want to make us angry. But it’s not like that. They are desensitised.
So, when we understand that for this person, this doesn’t just register, then we won’t judge them so much based on that. Now, of course, we have to have some objective standards. If we have kirtan, we should have it nicely.
If we are printing something, we should have the things printed properly. If we are keeping some things, if some guests are coming to our house, if we want to keep our house tidy, it has to be kept. But if we understand that each person’s body is different, then we will moderate our expectations from them.
Okay, this is important for me, then the person who has that high sensibility, they needn’t have such high expectations from the other person. Okay, this is important for me, let me take care of it. Let me not demand it from the other person.
And the person who has a low sensibility or who is desensitised about this, this is important for the other person. So, let me put in some effort to do it or let me at least acknowledge I am not able to do it. So, let me defer to this person’s judgement.
Okay, this is not clean. This has to be clean. This is not proper.
Let me do it this way. So, the judgmentality comes when we see others from our perspective. This doesn’t make any sense.
You are playing it wrong. Why are you playing it wrong? But they may not even sense that it is wrong. So, when we understand that each person’s body, mind, machine is differently wired, then we won’t judge people through our standards and we’ll become more understanding of them.
Our spirituality is meant to make us more understanding, not more judgemental. This is where I’ll conclude with this point that one is with respect to some abilities or inabilities. Some people may not have musical ability.
But sometimes in religious people, we often become judgemental in religious terms. This is right and that is wrong. This is what you should do and that is what you should not do.
And when we start becoming judgemental like this, we end up alienating a lot of people. Yes, there are certain standards which have to be followed. But generally what we need to do is we need to explain the rationale for the standards first.
And then the standards can be talked about. Otherwise, we become judgemental. What does that judgemental mean in this context? Say, we may say meat eating is bad.
Yes, meat eating is bad because it involves violence against animals. It involves the degradation of human consciousness. But there may be many people who were born and brought up in a meat eating family and they never knew anything was wrong with it.
So now many people today, if we explain objectively how there is so much violence done to animals, they are often ready to revise their eating habits. Veganism is becoming quite popular in the Western world. The three modes keep moving up and down.
So in the Western world also there are four broad trends which indicate the rising of sattva guna. One is veganism, the other is yoga and the pursuit of holistic health care. Not just taking more and more medication.
The third is environmental consciousness. That people are becoming more and more conscious of how we can live in harmony with nature. And the fourth is kirtan.
Kirtan itself is becoming quite big in the Western world. People may not necessarily associate kirtan with a rigid bhakti sadhana. But they are seeking entertainment through spiritual music, not just ordinary music.
So there are broad trends that people are more receptive to spirituality. So if we judge people, that means we have, this is right, this is wrong. And if you are doing this, you are wrong.
Then we often alienate people. In America there are certain states which are called as the Bible Belt. Texas and others where there are lot of evangelical Christians and they quite aggressively proselytise.
So, and atheists are also quite articulate and aggressive in countering this evangelical imposition. So I saw on a car bumper, it’s written, Oh God, please save me from your preachers. So normally that God saves us through his preachers.
But if the preachers are judgemental, domineering, then Oh God, please save me from your preachers. So it may become like that. So we are not meant to be judgemental.
We are meant to be understanding. Understanding means where people are, okay, how can I help them to grow spiritually from where they are. Hanshila Prabhupada was in America and the devotees had a small, small temple.
It was not just an apartment which was made into a temple. It was a dual apartment. So the other side there was an old lady staying.
And those devotees, and these devotees would do loud kirtans. So the devotees would do loud kirtans and this old lady had got irritated. And she had complained to the local government authorities over there, municipal authorities, and they had imposed a lot of restrictions on the devotees.
Now devotees sometimes have a very simplistic understanding. Anybody who opposes kirtan must be a demon. So then they came to Prabhupada and told Prabhupada, Prabhupada, this old lady, she is a demon.
She is opposing our kirtan. She is stopping us in the practise of bhakti. So they had gone for a morning walk and Prabhupada came back.
Instead of going to their side of the apartment, Prabhupada went to the other side. And there he introduced himself and started talking with this old lady. And it’s a typical old people talk.
How is your health? Where are your children? What are they doing? And almost 15-20 minutes Prabhupada talked with her. And the devotees were thinking, now Prabhupada will tell. You chant Hare Krishna, you are not the body, you are the soul.
But Prabhupada did not preach anything. Just talked nicely with her and then left. And when the devotees were leaving, they had a big question mark on their face.
Prabhupada looked at her and said, sometimes old people get lonely. And when they become lonely, they become irritable. And after Prabhupada left from there, this lady came and met the devotees and said, your Guru is such a nice person.
Swami is such a nice person. And afterwards she stopped complaining about the devotees, Venkata. So Prabhupada preached to her without preaching to her.
The purpose of preaching is not such to download some information on them. It is actually to help people gain appreciation for Krishna and Krishna Bhakti and Krishna’s devotees. So sometimes just being kind and understanding to people is the way we can actually get them a step closer to Krishna.
So instead of judging people and condemning people, if you focus on understanding people and trying to see, okay, this person is coming from here. How can I at this place where they are, how can I help them take one step forward towards Krishna? If you have that attitude, then we can actually not only keep our own relationships from getting too disruptive because of our spiritual practises, but rather we can make sure that our interactions in our various relationships will help others to take steps towards Krishna. Even if not big steps, even if not fast steps, but small steady steps.
This is how we can have equality of vision and we can have individuality in action. With each person is individual and each person we deal with them appropriately. And when we do in this way, then life’s ups and downs, relationships ups and downs, they will become lesser and will march forward more steadily in life.
I’ll conclude and summarise. So I spoke about how spirituality fosters equality in diversity and then diversity in equality. Unity in diversity, diversity in unity.
So then started by talking about how this verse tells when we get knowledge, knowledge is like a spiritual knowledge like a sun which illumines the path of our life. And when it illumines, it brings us steadiness. Steadiness in responding to the people in our life and steadiness in responding to the events in our life.
And we focus primarily on people. And this verse talks about the entire gamut of human beings from brahmanas who are learned and humble to people who are not very discerning in their choices and even down to animals in all the species. Goodness, passion, ignorance.
Everybody is seen equally because we see the soul in everyone. Then I talked about how some atheists claim that religion makes humans arrogant and science makes humans humble. But arrogance is caused not by religion but by a particular conception of religion which claims that only humans have souls.
But what the Bhagavad Gita tells us is that the soul is present wherever there is consciousness. And because all living beings have consciousness, all living beings have souls. But the difference what makes human beings special is not of category but of degree.
The consciousness is more developed in human beings. And that is why we human beings look for something beyond just the bodily pleasures of eating, sleeping, mating and defending. We do science because we want to understand how things work.
So science, art and philosophy, science, art and religion, they are the result of the same tree of human intelligence. When we look for natural explanations for natural phenomena, we get science. When we try to replicate what we observe through the creative medium, that’s what we get art.
And when we look for the ultimate meaning beyond the level of matter, that’s where we get religion. So if we understand our spirituality that we are souls different from the body and then we understand how we are being dragged by the body towards various bodily pleasures, then our spirituality will actually foster humility, not arrogance. Our spirituality we will understand is both an opportunity and a responsibility.
Because of our evolved consciousness we want more pleasure than what the body can offer. And that longing for more pleasure is what is meant to take us to the spiritual level. And how does this knowledge of spirituality affect us in our day to day dealings? I said that equality of vision cannot mean equality of action.
There is individuality in action. If you try to impose equality artificially as communism tried to do, the result was still all people are equal but some are more equal than others. So when we see only people’s bodies, we see the difference and then it leads to conflict.
But if you don’t see people’s bodies at all and the difference which are there, that also leads to an artificial difference. I talked about how religion can also become a bodily designation and religion can also lead to conflicts. If we don’t see religion as a path to spiritual growth but as simply a bodily marker.
So religion does not cause violence because atheism where it has ruled, it has caused greater violence than all the world wars combined together in the last century. So what causes violence is not so much the ideology but the mentality. Not what one believes but how one lives.
And how one lives is shaped by the three modes of material nature. And people who are in the mode of ignorance, they will fight, they will be violent whether they are religious or irreligious. And people who are in goodness, they will try to understand each other whether they are atheistic or they are theistic.
And then I talked about how the spiritual knowledge can help us in our relationships. Talked about two things. One is avoiding judgmentality based on people’s particular abilities and inabilities and people’s moral behaviour.
So I talked about the difference between the desensitised and insensitive. In a relationship there is expectation and contribution. So we may have expectation based on what we are sensitised to.
The other person is desensitised and that expectation will come off as nagging and burdensome. So then we need to lower our expectation. The other person also has to increase their sensitivity to that particular thing.
And our moral standards that we have, those are not meant to demean people. We are meant to see where people are, how can I elevate them from there. If we become judgemental then we simply alienate people.
And Prabhupada, I quote from the incident where he brought that old lady closer to Krishna without even speaking one word about Krishna. So when we have the spirituality in vision and with the spiritual vision we have individual action. And we can help each other in our interactions in this world as well as on the path beyond this world.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. So are there any questions or comments? Prabhu, I don’t have a question, I have a comment.
The first time we have come to Agra, the first time I got introduced to your lecture and you have spoken about mind as a monkey which makes you work like a donkey. And that’s when I actually got to know about your websites which were Sankrit and Gita Gobi. And I want to make a confession.
Past three years I have been connected to both those websites and I do get email notifications. Many a time it can happen that I have a question in mind or a situation in life which needs some kind of guidance. And somehow either the spiritual scientist or the Gita Gobi, you would put up something which will answer that.
So it’s been such a nice experience that I don’t have words to explain it but it’s really blissful. So the work that you do is really making a difference in people’s lives. So thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you for sharing. And I feel that when we have a need, Krishna arranges for fulfilling that need.
So it may be through different instruments. I’m happy that I can be an instrument in helping you in your life journey. Thank you.
Thank you Krishna. And many of your one-liners are so powerful and so guiding and I really look forward at some point in time you write a book which is those powerful one-liners which are so encouraging. Yeah, I have brought a book like that.
It’s Gita Wisdom Through Quotes. So I have taken 365 one-liners. So they are inspirations from various Gita verses.
We have some books over here. Any other questions? I have a question for you. When you talked about Newton’s example of the apple falling and you said if a chimp was to be there, wouldn’t he have the same realisation? And this is a point that I personally feel when you talk to a lot of biologists, that’s not the point they’re making, that a chimp is able to come to that realisation.
And of all the scientific fields, I feel like biology is probably the hardest to refute because of the amount of compelling evidence for evolution. And often times I run out of, if you are to have a scientific talk with someone, I personally run out of ground really quickly if you’re talking to a biologist. Just for the mere fact, there is a lot of compelling evidence, especially nowadays.
There is actually a lot of evidence that suggests that’s probably right. So biology seems to be quite difficult to refute because there is clear and compelling evidence that evolution did happen. So when we discuss anything like this, we have to understand what is our purpose and we have to see how that purpose is to be served.
So that there are mechanisms that govern this world is something which even scripture explains and accepts it. So for example, the Bhagavatam says that Indra is the cause of rains. Indra is the god in charge of rains.
But the Bhagavatam also is aware of the fact that the sun evaporates water from the oceans, clouds are formed and then clouds give rains. The Bhagavatam uses that as a metaphor, or that as a metaphor for explaining how the king should take taxes from the wealthy people and give charity and facility to people in general. The ocean is compared to wealthy people.
And the parched land is compared to poor people. So this is a metaphor that comes repeatedly in the Bhagavatam. So the Bhagavatam does not see the material mechanism and the personal agency as contradictory.
They are complementary. How can they be complementary? If we have a billiards game going on. Now if we had a camera above the billiards board and we would see this ball went into the hole.
Now why did this ball go into the hole? Because this stick came and hit the ball from this angle with this force. Now the ball going into the hole could be explained in terms of the laws of physics. Now this is an explanation.
It’s a correct explanation. Why did the ball go into the hole? Because the stick hit it from a particular angle with a particular force. Now if we expand the vision further, the camera we make a broadened scope, then we will see there is a player.
Expert player who operated the stick. And that’s how the ball went into the hole. Because of the expertise of the player.
Now the laws of physics and the expertise of the player, these two are complementary explanations. They are not contradictory explanations. So the principle that there are material mechanisms which govern this world is like the laws of physics in this case.
The personal agency is like the player. So the two are not inherently contradictory. And even Newton did not see it as a contradiction.
He accepted that God exists. But when he was looking for what made the fruit fall, the answer to that question, he was not looking for God as an explanation. He was looking for the material mechanism.
So if we understand that science is basically looking for material explanations of material phenomena, and science sticks to that, that’s perfectly fine. Now there is an explanation beyond that of a personal agency. That is a different level of explanation.
So now going about evolution. Now could evolution be one such mechanism? It may be, it may not be. I would say that I have studied science quite a bit when I was studying engineering and thereafter also when I was practising spirituality.
But still I wouldn’t call myself a scientist in terms of a trained scientist. So if, now is there evidence for the Newton’s law of motion, Newton’s laws of gravity? Well, there is evidence. But when we look at evidence also, in philosophy of science, if you read books like Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, you will find that evidence is also theory laden.
The laws of physics are considered to be bedrock of science. But actually once you come to space time and Einsteinian relativity, then the laws of physics don’t really work that way. It’s like a limiting case within Einsteinian physics.
So the point I am making is that a theory is like a world view. Within that world view certain things make sense. But if the world view changes those things, those same evidence may not apply the same way.
So could evolution be a mechanism that happens in nature? Yeah, it could be. In fact, as far as the word evolution is concerned, sometimes it’s like a very slippery term. What do we mean by evolution? If by evolution we mean variation, that’s just a fact of life.
Species change. Even we are at a physical level, if we come from a cold city to a hot city, we become tanned. So we change the physical.
And that change can happen at various degrees. So to the extent evolution refers to a biological mechanism that describes variation in species. And to the extent there is evidence for that, that is not contradictory.
There is no need to fight with that. But when Srila Prabhupada criticises evolution or challenges evolution, he sees evolution as representing the atheistic world view. Which basically, so evolution as an observed natural phenomenon.
We see in the microscope, we can see that there are HIV virus. It keeps changing. And because it keeps changing, it’s so difficult to find a cure for it.
So if we look at the biology, we see biological organisms changing, adapting to their environment. So that is what we are referring to as evolution. That’s an observed fact.
There’s no need to quarrel with it. If you are using evolution to refer to not just an observed fact, but a biological mechanism that brings about these changes, then if there is evidence for it, again there is no need to challenge it. But evolution as it is especially touted by scientists, not by scientists, sorry by atheists, is, it’s like an all-explaining ideology which is supposed to explain the origin of life, origin of consciousness and origin of species.
Now for that, it’s an ideology. There is no scientific evidence for that. Even within evolution, there is biological evolution, there is chemical evolution.
There is whatever evidence, whether it is compelling or not, we have for whatever evidence is claimed for, that is for biological evolution. When it comes to chemical evolution, that means origin of consciousness from chemicals, there is next to zero evidence for that. Just wild theories with practically no capacity to experiment them or evaluate them.
So Prabhupada’s basic claim was life comes from life. That consciousness does not emerge from matter. So the point is not that we have to escalate conflicts.
So if there is evidence for evolution in the sense that there is observed adaptation of species or a natural mechanism which brings about variation, there is no need to quarrel with that. It’s the implication of that, it’s the ideology behind that. And that ideology is not scientific.
That ideology is something which is the ideology of a particular person. Science is simply a tool for acquiring knowledge. Science is neither theistic nor atheistic.
It is just a way of looking at the world. It’s like say, if I can’t see clearly with my eyes, and then I use the spectacles. Now is the spectacles theistic or atheistic? What do you mean? The spectacles are spectacles.
Spectacles are not theistic or atheistic. It’s the person who is theistic or atheistic. So science is just like a spectacle.
It is a particular way of looking at the world. So that way of looking at the world looks for natural explanations for natural phenomena. Whether something exists beyond nature or not, that is just outside the scope of science.
So therefore, science cannot and does not disprove God. And scripture, largely speaking, does not speak about the area which science studies. When Parikshit Maharaj in the Bhagavatam is about to die, there are seven days remaining, at that time, he is not interested in hearing about archaeology or cosmology.
He is interested in hearing about Krishna. The Bhagavatam describes the history of the species. It describes the history of the universe.
It describes the structure of the universe. All that is not to help Parikshit Maharaj to get a PhD in that field. It is simply to show him how all this is connected with Krishna.
So we don’t have to position, if we position scripture as a competitor to science, then we devalue scripture. Scripture is offering us a different category of knowledge. Science offers us a different category of knowledge.
So it’s only when science starts making, or rather atheists use science to make truth claims about their own worldview. When atheists use the prestige associated with science to prove atheism. That is when there is conflict.
So the conflict is not between science and religion. The conflict is between the materialistic worldview and the spiritual worldview. And there is nothing in science which necessarily refutes the spiritual worldview.
Because science is looking for material explanation of material phenomena. It doesn’t say anything non-material exists or not. So with respect to evolution, there are statements of Srila Prabhupada which seem to be strongly critical of evolution.
But if you look at the broader context, there is a discussion that Srila Prabhupada had with Shamsundar Prabhu on Darwin. Prabhupada discussed various philosophers with Shamsundar Prabhu and that is there in the Vedas. And there Prabhupada’s approach over there is very nuanced.
He’s given different explanations for different evidences which Shamsundar Prabhu… Why do we have humans being only up to this point? Why can’t we find human fossils before that? So Prabhupada is quite accommodating in his answers. Prabhupada in that conversation at one point says, we are not against the knowing spirit of science. Knowing spirit means, I want to know how this works, I want to know how this works.
We are not against that. We are against the atheism. So does science lead to atheism? It doesn’t have to lead to atheism if science is understood properly.
Can atheists misuse science? Yes, they often do that. So if we understand clearly the purpose of science and the purpose of spirituality, then we won’t find any major conflict between the two. The science is meant for us to live in this world.
How do we function in this world? How do we interact in this technocentric world today? Spirituality is about the purpose of life. Science will provide us a car. Spirituality tells us where to go with the car.
Science tells us how to act in life. OK, how to contact someone on phone, how to use email, how to understand how the planets work. But spirituality tells us why to do anything.
Broadly science answers the how question. Spirituality answers the why question. Does that answer your question? Not fully, Guruji.
Because my question was more in line because you said we… Power connection. Biology refutes creationism, evolutionism. Did I say that? That was sort of implied.
No, where did I imply that? I’m saying it because you said there is no conflict between the two. It’s complementary. And my question is, if it’s complementary, creationism does not align with evolution, largely.
And we are creationists, we believe in creationism, as in Krishna creates and then all life form is there. So if you say that we don’t refute it, that would be a big statement of this. That would mean we actually do believe in evolution.
So is creationism and evolution contradictory? Well, the word creationism, as I said, is a slippery term again, as is evolution. So the word creationism can refer to young earth creationists who say the earth is 6000 years old. Creationism can refer in a broad sense to the idea that the universe does not function only by unguided natural forces.
Creationism in itself does not include the mechanism by which the creator works. See, generally those people who highlight the science-religion conflict, they often take the most oversimplified caricatures. Religionists will take the oversimplified caricatures of scientific theories.
And those who are atheists, they will take the oversimplified caricatures of religion. And they will bring it into dialogue. But they will say, how can anyone believe this? But what, as I said, Indra acts as a personal agency.
But he acts at a higher level. There is a highest, like the billiards player is acting at a different level. The laws of physics are acting at a different level on the billiards board.
So the Bhagavatam describes creation. But is it describing creation on the earth? It is describing creation on another level of reality. The sixth chapter of the sixth canto, I think, one of the chapters describes the daughters of Daksha and how the various progeny came from her.
Now that, in Sanskrit there are different cases, that is in the ablative. Ablative means it simply describes that they came from her. It is not describing the mechanism by which they came from her.
The Bhagavatam’s description involves many other mechanisms different from what we normally know. So when the Bhagavatam says that a particular species came from a particular person, say from the Daksha is the progenitor and from his daughter different species came. Does it mean that literally the way human beings beget a child, that’s how lizards and reptiles and birds and animals came out of her body? Even if we had been present over there, no it’s not charging.
So even if we had been present over there at that time, would we necessarily have seen it happening that way? We don’t know. There is no indication in the Bhagavatam that its description necessarily describes how things appeared on the earth. So if creationism is taken to mean that the world does not function based on unguided natural forces, that there is some guiding principles behind whatever is happening.
So if now evolution could be a mechanism but where does the mechanism come from? What is the basis for that mechanism? And Einstein is attributed to have said that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensive. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensive. What that means is why if everything is a result of unguided natural forces, our brain is a result of unguided natural forces, nature out there is a result of unguided natural forces, then why should nature obey laws? Why should our brain be made in such a way that we understand the laws that nature obeys? Why should there be a theory of gravity at all? So actually the very presence of evolution, if at all it is a natural mechanism, the very presence of the laws of motion, the very presence of the laws of physics, the very presence of these laws raises questions which an atheistic world will find very difficult to answer.
It’s like God is not an explanatory alternative to science. God is the explanatory foundation of science. God is the explanation for the explainability of nature.
Why is nature explainable at all? It is not evolution that contradicts religion. Actually it is evolution that contradicts atheism. If I say English is meaningless, as a self-contradictory statement, because I have used English to say that English is meaningless, and I expect that this sentence is meaningful to you.
It’s clear. So English is meaningless is a self-contradictory statement. So if evolution is true, atheism can’t be true.
Why? Because evolution as a mechanism, why should it be present in nature at all? Scientists or atheists rather, they use conceptions that have no foundation in their world view. So why should there be any order in nature at all? If our brains and the world out there, if the atheistic biography of the universe that we had, then it would simply be, nothing existed because of nothing, nothing exploded because of nothing and gave rise to everything. That’s brilliantly rational, isn’t it? So it’s atheism that is contradicting evolution basically.
So whether evolution is a mechanism or not, that’s something which is for the scientists to decide. There are many scientists who support it. There are good number of scientists who challenge it also.
But creationism does not necessarily mean a literal account of the Bhagavatam’s description as necessarily happened on the earth. Bhagavatam is describing realities at a higher level. And how things happened on the earth, that will vary from that.
That is a matter of history. Prabhupada, there are many places in the Ishopanishad paraport, he says, when the earth was filled with water, at that time the living being took aquatic form. When there was land, then the living being got a body which came on the land, amphibian body.
So there are statements in Prabhupada, we don’t have to oversimplify what Prabhupada said. We don’t have to reduce Shastra to some oversimplified caricature and feel that it doesn’t agree with. Now I am not saying that everything in Shastra and everything in science are in agreement.
All that I am saying is, there are a lot of nuances in the discussion. It’s not that I have all the answers. He says, we as the intellectual leaders in our movement, we are dealing with these issues.
We are discussing these issues. But all that I am saying is the simple conflict hypothesis is something which is an oversimplified conception. It is widely prevalent in our movement, but it is not something which is a necessary position that arises either from Prabhupada’s statements or it arises from Shastra.
There can be a wide variety of understandings by which the science, spiritual science and scripture, their seeming differences can be understood. Thank you very much.