Reconciling science and scripture 2- QA

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Hare Krishna. Yes. So we will begin with the questions, Prabhuji.
Yeah. So the first question for today is from the students of IIT BHU. If everything was created as we see it today, then why in UK reorts splicing occurs that denotes RNA dominance and favours gradual evolution of multicellular organisms from single cellular species? Okay.
So first I will give a non-technical answer to a basic question that is underlying what you are saying and then we can go into the technical details of this. There are there is a lot of assumptions over here. Firstly, if everything was created as it is existing now, I think that itself is a presumption that needs to be questioned because why is that? So was everything created as it is? Certainly not.
A time is a factor which causes changes. And in fact, time itself is in the Vedic tradition a manifestation of God. Kalosmi Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita.
Time I am. And so the universe is created in such a way that it is the universe is complete in itself complete means whatever is required for its sustenance is provided within the universe. So so they one of the features of the universe is that it constantly keeps changing the very nature.
There are two realities NASA with the that there is one reality which never changes and another reality which never stays constant. So the material world is a reality that is constantly changing. So therefore, if we look at the scriptures themselves, if you look at the civilisation described in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavatam and the Ramayana, there are significant differences.
So although there are similarities if you consider the role of women Sita’s role versus Draupadi’s role. Draupadi is a much more assertive personality. Sita is a much more, she is also strong, devoted but she is a laid back personality.
The interaction between demons and humans is much more in the Ramayana. The main war is between humans and demons. In the Mahabharata, it is between humans and humans and there are demons on both sides.
So the universe is in a constant state of flux. So that is an ingrained feature within the universe and not only the universe keep changing, personalities keep changing, the kind of people who live, they keep changing. So the Bhagavatam talks, the Vedic scriptures talk about demoniac species roaming the earth.
We don’t see the demoniac species physically present on the earth right now. So times change and the bodies that we have, they are basically like clothes. So now as the cosmic seasons change, different clothes are suitable and available at different times.
And accordingly, certain species may become more prominent, some species may become less prominent. So change is very much there within nature. And change is, in fact, if you consider one of the skills that Krishna learned among the 64 skills was inter-plant breeding or plant breeding where he brings together different species for the purpose of improving them.
So in that sense, change is a constant feature of the universe and change is itself indicative of the self-sufficiency of the universe. Just like we have artificial, we have say, speech recognition softwares now. Now there can be a speech recognition software with a fixed vocabulary.
So there are certain words it recognises, certain words it doesn’t recognise. So I used to use a speech recognition software. So whenever I would say the soul is Sat Chit Anand.
It’s not a speech recognition software. It was a text-to-speech software. So for example, if I have written an article, the soul is Sat Chit Anand.
So it will read it out. It can read English. It can’t read Sat Chit Anand.
So it was reading it as, the soul is Saturday Chit Anand. S-A-T, it was translating as Saturday. Reading it out as Saturday.
Then as the software evolved further, then it gave me the facility to put in some words within it. And then it could read as Sat Chit Anand. I gave it the pronunciation, started reading it that way.
So the point I’m making is that if a software has certain capacity to do some things, that itself requires intelligence. If a software has the capacity to learn, not just at the beginning it learns, but throughout it keeps learning, then that requires even greater intelligence. In fact, some of my friends, many of my friends work in Silicon Valley now.
And when they design these softwares, which are continuously learning, they are artificial learning softwares, they are continuously learning. And to make them require hundreds of times more intelligence. Then, softwares will just have a static learning programme.
They have like a fixed vocabulary or a fixed learning capacity. They learn things right at the beginning and they do those things. So they can speak certain words or they can recognise certain words when spoken by us.
But if a software can learn as it goes on, so if a software used in India by Indian speech recognition software, it’s repeatedly used in India by Indians, it starts recognising the Indian accent. If it is used in Australia, it may be English itself, but it starts recognising Australian accent. So the point is the learning capacity of a software as it goes along, that indicates greater intelligence among the programmers.
Similarly, if nature exhibits certain learning capacities, so whichever be the specific mechanism by which it happens, so as we talk about survival of the fittest, which was a principle talk by Darwin, but it is not that principle itself is indicating the resilience of nature and that is just an observation which is an important observation, but it indicates not just the intelligence of Darwin in observing it, it indicates the intelligence that has been infused in nature. So if physics reveals the glory of the divine intelligence in making certain immutable laws of nature, say for example, laws of physics, laws of thermodynamics, they’re immutable. Then biology reveals the intelligence of the designing intelligence in terms of making mechanisms that keep learning that go along the way.
So that nature learns is something which is pointing to the intelligence of the divine as manifested through the nature. So I would say that that when it is said things were as they are, that question, that presumption itself is questionable. What is as it is? That there are true truths.
There is matter and there is spirit. Matter keeps changing constantly. It will change in form, it will change in if you look at modern history also, just 500 years ago, 100 years ago, things keep changing.
Now in human history, things change relatively faster. In biological history, things may change slower. Now, the problem is when it is claimed that these changes disprove the existence of God or these changes are used to reject the existence of God.
Well, that is a very superficial interpretation of these changes, which is ungrounded in fact. When we see nature has a self-learning capacity that actually if we compare nature with a software programme, it requires greater intelligence. So that is the broad answer to this question without getting into the technicalities.
If nature exhibits certain learning capacities, now the specific propositions of evolution, that is something which is best left to the scientists to research, to theorise and to evaluate. But the basic principle, if nature exhibits learning capacity, that indicates that could very well indicate the intelligence of the designing intelligence who has infused nature with that capacity to learn. Does that answer your question? Yes, Prabhu.
Very broadly you could explain that. Thank you. The next question is from students from Gitalai, Bangalore.
Prabhuji, my question is, can a person time travel by being very close to the event horizon near black hole or even enter into a spiritual realm or better say some higher planetary system or parallel universe by entering into it? If we someday, hopefully we can construct some machine or do that in new future, because in Srimad Bhagavatam we can get direct evidence about time dilation in Brahma Vimohan Leela, where we see Brahma after stealing calves and cowherd boys went away for a moment to test Supreme Lord while one year had passed on earth and when he returned on the same time scale only a moment had passed for him that is around 4 hours as per calculation. So time being a very important factor is all relative. Isn’t it possible to construct a wormhole or enter into that distant future or surpass the entire length universe? Okay.
These are big questions. Let’s see. Could we travel through time at specific locations say through wormholes or near black holes? We do see some kind of relativity of time within the Bhagavatam also.
Let’s say Brahma Vimohan Leela. Okay. So I’d like to divide this question into three broad parts.
First is the concept of time. Second is the concept of relativity of time or time travel as it’s explained in the Bhagavatam. The third is we’ll look at what science says and how it applies in today’s world with respect to our prospects.
So first of all you know time is something that we constantly think about and we also rarely think about. What I mean by that is we are very conscious of time. I don’t want to waste my time.
I have this much time and I have to get this much work done. So there are a few things we are as conscious of practically as time because it matters enormously to us. Still philosophically there are few things that we are as we think of as rarely as time because what exactly is time? Philosophically speaking all that we know is time as it is measured through our time measuring devices.
Can we even conceive of time independent of its measurement? So we say that time is moving from it is 2.55 now and 10 minutes it is 3.05. So that’s what we measure time in terms of its quantification but independent of its quantification, what is time? If all the clocks in the world were destroyed still time would exist but what would it be? So philosophically the concept of time is one of the most elusive. So Einstein integrated time into one of the dimensions within science like that’s why he had the continuum called space-time but even Einstein recognised that time as a dimension is substantially different from other dimensions. Why? Because within time within all other dimensions we can travel backward but we cannot travel backward as far as we know, as far as our experience is within time and philosophically there is a standard paradox with respect to time travel say if we go back into time if person X goes back into time at a time when the grandfather was not yet married and they killed their grandfather then there is no grandfather to get married and there is no father then would you exist? So if we go back and change time so time travel conceptually into the past is riddled with logical improbabilities logical perplexities at least so my point is that time itself is a very complex concept.
Now having recognised this point that all that we in our day to day day to day actions and awareness what we think about is the measurement or quantification of time not time itself then let’s look at the Bhagavatam now the Bhagavatam talks about relativity of time in terms of how time flows differently at different places now what is the purpose of this variability of the passage of time there are many things in general time is the force that brings about change in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna identifies one of those changes when he says that time I am the destroyer of the world so time does all three things time leads to creation time leads to maintenance and time leads to destruction also. The time is basically the agent that brings about change in things. So in that sense time is a defining characteristic of material existence itself so if we consider broadly this perspective now what does change do change often if things are unpleasant in our life we hope that change will make things more pleasant or if things are unpleasant then we feel oh change should not happen say if a boy and a girl in a relationship and the girl is very attractive then it said that when a man and a woman get married the man hopes that the woman will never change and the woman hopes that the man will soon change and both are disappointed that means that the man hopes that the woman she will always be as good looking as she is now and that doesn’t stay that way and whatever personality quirks the woman thinks the man has he hopes I’ll fix it but she finds she can’t fix it it’s much more difficult than what it is thought but the point is that when we have something enjoyable and the passage of time often takes away that which is enjoyable so when the Bhagavatam talks about the relativity in the flow of time the idea is the heavens the higher worlds are places where greater enjoyment is available and those who have done greater pious credits they go and stay over there so the slower passage of time over there provides greater facility for them to enjoy in various ways of course they don’t enjoy in completely licentious or sinful ways they enjoy in ways that are according to whatever heavenly facilities are there so the point is there is a philosophical understanding of time and there is a philosophical reasoning behind the variability in the flow of time or rate of flow of time so slower passage of time means that we can save for each moment more and more we can enjoy the good things of life more and more and of course those who are in higher plans they don’t want to enjoy sensually but they want to enjoy more elevated pleasures in Tapaloka people enjoy doing austerities that also gives them a sense of self mastery and spiritual connectedness and they enjoy that so either way the flow of time is associated with the underlying purpose of universe with its multi level existence so in the Bhagavatam the idea of the flow of time is say that Brahmaji went up for just a few moments and on the earth you see many years had passed when he came back so there are there is a significant amount of variability that serves a particular purpose so the now having understood this philosophy the Bhagavata is there a time travel per se in the Bhagavatam well there is travel between domains of time or domains of the universe where time travels at different places time travels at different places in different places it travels at a different pace and there is travel between time domains so is it time travel well it is not exactly time travel in the way it is talked about in science fiction today you could say yes people go from time zone A to time zone so somebody may be now here and they may come back after 1000 years because they went somewhere else and they came back and 1000 years passed over there it’s more like a cosmic travel between various levels of the cosmos that inadvertently leads to time travel so the relativity of time is something which is talked about in scripture now if you consider time travel itself as science talks about it today so we need to understand that science and scripture they offer different models of the universe and different models means that they have different frames of analysing things like yesterday I talked about Virat Kohli hits a sixer to win a match so now we could talk about it in terms of the expert skill of the batsman we could talk about it in terms of you know how sturdy was the bat and with what force the bat was moved with what angle the ball came what was the point of contact between the bat and the ball we could talk about in the laws of motion so modern science talks about more of the mechanical aspects of the universe now both are valid now if somebody now maybe the bat manufacturers or the batsman or others may decide that maybe a heavier bat might help of course it has a flip side to it to move that bat requires more energy in some place a heavier bat would mean better things so we could tweak certain mechanical things to have a better effect and there could be personal skills that could be improved so both are possible and the two could be separate domains that interact at particular times at particular places the important thing here is that it’s not so easy to decide which frame of reference one is going to use and one starts using a particular frame of reference that we will analyse everything that way so we need to see that science is one domain of analysis and scripture is offering another domain of reality to analyse from another different perspective so there is no need to try to take concepts from scripture and apply them in science if we want to do that we will do that very very carefully very very carefully like yesterday i gave the example of scales of perception how do we reconcile is that powder black grey powder or is it white and black granules scales of perception because of which we are observing different realities so similarly the scientific conceptions of the universe they are based more on say a mechanical perception of reality and to give some examples of this point yesterday i also mentioned about how relativity and quantum physics perceive the physical world very differently so now can we take concepts from quantum physics and apply them to relativity physics well its very difficult if you are using relativity as an approach to deal with certain aspects of reality that is what we need to do and if we are going to use physics we have to use physics relativity will use relativity so we have to be careful about what we are doing and why we are doing it so whether time travel in terms of technology to do that whether that is possible and whether philosophically time travel is possible they are two different questions so philosophically we understand that that time is the energy of the lord and time is made in such a way that time moves irrevocably forward if we lose even one moment we can’t get it back no amount of technological advancement is going to change that so even if we develop the biggest of technologies we can’t go back say before 9-11 and prevent the downfall of the trident towers we can’t go back and prevent to 1937 or 33 or whatever and prevent the event that led to the holocaust and the second world war certain things have happened so in general going back to the past philosophically is riddled with a lot of problems now technology what kind of technology we will be able to develop and what all we will be able to do with that that is something which is for the researchers to develop and so much of what is called as time travel in fiction that is although it is scientific term, technologies seem to be used for that but it is fiction so now when scientists talk about particular areas of the universe in your wormholes or wherever there is a particular way in which we might be able to travel from one universe to another well these are very technical scientific constructs and how exactly they will be translated into any kind of working technology that is very much open to question much of advanced physics particle physics it is so abstract that to connect it with our day to day reality itself is very difficult so I would say that from a spiritual perspective there are certain domains which are you remember I talked about the three circles spiritual knowledge is about transcending a material existence and so there are certain domains which are specialists which are the specialities of particular branches of knowledge so depending on how that knowledge that particular branch of knowledge advances what it will be able to do that is up to that branch of knowledge it is not that spirituality what spirituality offers is a guiding vision of what to use which knowledge for but how exactly that knowledge develops that will be up to the researchers and pioneers of that field and last point I would like to make here is that in general we need to recognise that everybody needs to recognise what is every branch of knowledge needs to recognise its area of competence there is material knowledge and there is spiritual knowledge so material knowledge provides functionality in the world spiritual knowledge gives us a sense of purpose in the world and the two have their own domains and both domains both branches of knowledge need to respect each other’s domains if you consider the Bhagavad Gita itself after the Bhagavad Gita was spoken Arjuna fought the Kurukshetra war and won the war now what was the basis of Arjuna’s victory was it the knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita or was it the knowledge of archery that he had learned throughout his life well it is both it is not that his Bhagavad Gita knowledge replaced or substituted for his archery knowledge not only the archery knowledge substituted replaced his Bhagavad Gita knowledge so his knowledge of archery taught him how to fight and his knowledge of Bhagavad Gita told him why to fight not just why to fight but why to live what is the purpose of living so broadly if you understand there are different domains of knowledge even if we develop some mechanisms for time travel what are we going to do with that what is the purpose of life that knowledge is what spirituality provides answers to the why question why am I learning what is the purpose for which I should use whatever knowledge and resources I have the hows science can provide different technologies can come up and they can do different things so we don’t have to necessarily turn towards spirituality to find answers to scientific questions and we don’t have to turn towards science to find answers to spiritual questions you need to recognise there are different domains how to shoot a Brahmastra or how to break the Chakravyuh Arjuna does not refer to the Bhagavad Gita for that answer Bhagavad Gita he turns to for what is Dharma what is the purpose of living what is the right thing for me to do in my life so if you understand that different domains of knowledge have their respective areas of speciality and at one level spirituality is one domain of knowledge at another level we could say spirituality is the knowledge that underlines and guides all domains of knowledge so whether it is medicine whether it is high energy physics whether it is microbiology whether it is biotechnology whatever it is if we see that spirituality can give us a bigger vision of what to use that knowledge for then we can we can better understand what questions will be answered through scientific development and what questions will be answered through spiritual advancement does it answer your question yes so in the same context actually the question is that is as you were mentioning that in the past it is difficult to go because if we change that that becomes difficult so the understanding is we can go if there is a concept of time travel which you told also is like little vague and not clearly understandable now so the question that has come up from the Gita Life Bangalore students is is it time travel if anyways theoretically also is possible is it possible to go in future only that is their question yeah that would be the general understanding because we cannot change the events that have happened so going into the back would be would be extremely difficult ok yes the next question is from Lucknow the question is how demons look like in Vedic times and why don’t we see them now in Kali Yuga ok what do demons look like I don’t think they have any specific forms there are if you look at the Mahabharata or the Ramayana itself demons are much more prominent in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata well we had we have Ravan who has who could manifest ten heads who could also function with one head we have Mahakaya and Atikaya who seem to have huge bodies as is Kumbhakarna and then we have other demons who have who seem to have more normal forms normal in terms of human reference so is it that Ravana is Ravana is not considered normally at all an ugly looking person sometimes we have the idea of demons as having some kind of horns coming out of their heads or some kind of fangs coming out of their mouths but that’s more of a stereotype or a caricature some demons may be like that but some may not be Maricha who we see in the Mahabharata as a person who is who is basically a sage and he appears like a sage and behaves like a sage and his form is like any other sage at that time so was it that his form changed irreversibly before he was a demon he had a different form and he got this form that’s what he took constantly well demons have shape changing abilities but the shape that they change into they are temporary usually for a particular purpose then they usually change back to their usual forms soon so so I would say that it’s not that demons have one particular kind of biological form so some demons may be permanently in certain species they may have forms like of some ferocious animals sometimes they assume this form sometimes they may have those forms permanently so I don’t see demons as having a particular form necessary as far as the description of scripture goes now why aren’t they visible presently yes Kalyuga is an age where there is already a lot of contamination because of the increase in impurities so now the universe itself is multilevel and the changes Kalyuga comes primarily on the earth at other places in the universe time moves differently so primarily Kalyuga comes on earth and because the earth is very contaminated during Kalyuga usually two things happen first is at a gross level there is a kind of quarantining of the earth from the rest of the universe so that the effects of Kalyuga don’t spread elsewhere just like currently the pandemic much international travel has been suspended many countries have closed their borders so like that the earth’s borders are more or less sealed so the interplanetary or inter universal travel that is with respect to the earth it’s cut down substantially and secondly the demons when they come in they may often come in subtler forms in the Mahabharata itself we don’t see so many demons because in physical form there are few like Alambush and Ghatotkach and few others but they are not as prominent as in the Ramayana because what has happened is Mahabharata is just at the start of Kalyuga toward the end of the previous age and by this time itself the demons have started penetrating in subtler ways that means Duryodhana himself was like a progeny of the Daityas and Danavas who had come to the earth through earthly wombs there are many demoniac people so we have had brutal tyrants dictators, autocrats who have killed thousands and even millions of people so they are not much different from demons of the past so the demons may come in subtler forms but overall because of the toxic effects of Kali there is a quarantining and that’s why we don’t experience so much the other domains of reality in Kalyuga any other questions? yes Proji this question is from RBC Bangalore students from RBC Bangalore Proji, advancement in biology today had allowed us to sequence the DNA of any species sequencing has led to discoveries and the similarities we share with other species for example by sequencing the genome it has it is being proven that chimpanzees have 48 chromosomes while humans have 46 and the second and third chromosome of the chimpanzee when fused together forms another second human chromosome and is identical to it similarly we share genetic traits with birds too example both birds and humans produced a yolk sac the yolk sac provides the medium for the bird in the end and in the mother’s womb also a yolk sac is produced but it disappears in the early stages by sequencing the genome they have found the similar genes in birds and humans which produce yolk sac link of this video is given for reference using these evidences biologists are promoting the theory of spontaneous evolution that diverse species emerged from a common ancestor by changes in our genomes I wish to clear the fact that I do not reject the origin of universe and the life on earth as given by scriptures, I actually feel that the proof mentioned above actually supports scriptures, my question is whether these similarities in genomes date back to the common father of all earth that is Maharshi Kashyapa as given in the scriptures who gave birth to several species with 13 wives, is the common ancestor referred in biology as in fact Maharshi Kashyapa himself okay good question so 2-3 points firstly again the genome sequencing that we have done that shows remarkable similarities between humans and chimpanzees and you talked also about yolk I will not go into specifics right now we could discuss about that some other time there are 2-3 different things see evolution itself the world can be understood at 3 different levels evolution is at one level simply modification in species which is observed so we have observed various things we can interbreed and make we can make apples very big we can make we can change, we can have dogs which are like small poodles which are dobermans so now basically through the interbreeding of species that things can be changed this is through manually we can do it through manual breeding and similarly within nature species change so evolution at one level can refer to observed change in nature there is no disputing that that is just evidence it is there, now the question is what explains this so evolution can refer to the first observed changes in nature second is evolution can refer to the mechanisms that bring about this change so that is so natural selection is considered the most prominent mechanism but now scientists have come up with other mechanisms they talk about genetic mutation they also talk about sexual selection is also coming up as another mechanism which brings about changes so now that’s the second level understanding of evolution that is the mechanism that brings about the changes that are observed in the universe so we will come back to the validity of this little later the third level of understanding of evolution is as a all explaining ideology where evolution is used by atheists to reject the existence of god to reject the existence of any higher realities beyond the material so this third level evolution, so evolution as observation evolution as mechanism and evolution as ideology you can answer these three levels keep these three levels in mind the real issue for spiritualists is when evolution is used as ideology that everything that exists in nature and everything that has come about it all can be explained through evolution well no matter how many technicalities the theory of evolution comes up with, origin of life and origin of consciousness remain extremely difficult to understand a prominent physicist says that all that we know about consciousness is that it seems to be more associated with the brain than with the toe what is consciousness, where does it come from this is one of the biggest problems in the current scientific study and so that is definitely not been explained so our primary issue is when evolution is used by as an ideology to reject the existence of god to make science seem antithistic so this is definitely we cannot agree with evolution as ideology and when evolution is treated as ideology it is actually not science it is, as ideology means it is a philosophical claim masquerading as science so evolution itself is a mechanism so in that, now evolution to the extent it is vindicated by scientific research, to that extent if it is a mechanism, it will be a mechanism like gravity so now gravity itself does not disprove god gravity is a mechanism by which things, physical objects interact with each other evolution could be a mechanism by which biological objects interact with their environment and adapt accordingly now how true the specific theories about evolution are that is something which is open to discussion so there has to be a serious scientific investigation of particular theories and the mainstream scientists more or less accept the theory of evolution when they accept the theory of evolution what do they do usually they have observed observed changes based on those observed changes they conclude that certain mechanisms are the best expressions for those observed changes so there is a small but significant body of scientists who feel that for all the changes that have been observed in nature the proposed mechanisms are not adequate so that is an ongoing debate in the scientific community and we don’t need to get into the specifics of those debates so we have do we accept evolution as an observed change obviously, do we accept evolution as an ideology, certainly not do we accept evolution as a mechanism maybe I said that study of nature is done in the Bhagavatam primarily for reminding us of the Lord who is beyond nature study of nature primarily to understand the technicalities of all its mechanisms that is not the purpose of spiritual texts so that is not the purpose so what specific mechanisms are there is done, say for example Newton’s law of gravity principle of gravity is talked about in the tradition of Indian physics long before gravity was talked about by Newton but that is the material knowledge that was developed in parallel with the spiritual knowledge that was given in the scriptures so there is no need to put the two in competition and now specifically could the common ancestor be one of the progenitors well generally when we are taking two domains of knowledge and trying to establish correlations between them, there has to be a lot of serious research to be done so what you are saying could be a possibility but I wouldn’t make a direct claim about it, it’s like if I have two maps if I have the physical map of India and I have the political map of India both of them are depicting India but they are two different perspectives, on the political map all the state boundaries will be there on the physical map, it will be okay this is a plateau, this is a hill this is a plain this is a mountain range, this is a river that will be more prominent so now can the two be correlated to maps? yes they can be but one has to do it carefully one has to understand both the maps carefully, understand what get some understanding of the territory of the reality that is both the maps are pointing toward and then bring about a correlation between the two similarly there are devotee scientists who are doing serious study of evolution of evolution and other current scientific domains of knowledge and they are also doing serious study of scripture and then some kind of correlation between these two maps can be brought about now as far as specifically the the genomes between different species being similar that again does not in any way that can lend itself to multiple metaphysical interpretations so that is observation, generally whenever we have observation what explains that observation that something, what is the explanation that we use for that observation that is open to question so imagine if there were a if there were over if there were some organising principle underlying underlying the world who shaped various species then is it necessary for that underlying that organising intelligence to design entirely different models for every species if we have a sculptor who is going to make different sculptures or if we have a potter who makes wheels or somebody who makes busts, they might make one model and they may vary the model and that would be a more efficient way of doing it similarly, if we have one basic one basic genome model and there are variations within that for different species, so the very fact that the similarity at the genome level in terms of different species in terms of genetic content that doesn’t in any way prove that there is no organising principle underlying what is happening so yes now specifically what is that organising principle, how it organises and how those realities relate with what are the descriptions in scripture that’s something which requires serious investigation does it answer the question yes Projit Projit the next question is from the students of IIT Kharagpur, Prabhu you mentioned both that both scientific and Vedic version of universe are valid in their domain, I didn’t understand how can they be simultaneously valid as one described universe coming from a singularity and the other from Mahavishnu’s body I mentioned this how exactly are quantum physics and relativity both true well physics doesn’t know, it’s one of the biggest and most perplexing unanswered questions in physics so am I saying that specific scientific theories are true that’s not my point my point is that when we approach reality from different views, we will see things differently so whether the Big Bang theory itself is true or not, the Big Bang theory has itself been developed and expanded into various other there are Big Bang and Big Crunch and there are many other theories that have come up so rather than getting into the specifics of the theories, the point is that science has a way of looking at the world and a scientific way of looking at the world has its value and validity and there is a scriptural way of looking at the world and that has its value and validity so now specifics of how exactly which world views which detail correlates with which world view, another world view which detail, that is something which we will have to carefully discuss, carefully analyse so if the universe comes from a singularity now what exactly is the nature of that singularity, could that singularity be the unmanifest Pradhan maybe maybe not we don’t know that it’s not that the two ideas are irreconcilably different that is one is a mechanical view of the universe, the other is a more personal view of the universe so from a personal perspective the universe comes from the body of Mahavishnu from his bodily pores and it expands so for someone who doesn’t have spiritual vision, imagine if we existed in some kind of trans-universal space at the start of the universe or whenever the universe started coming into existence would we be able to literally see Mahavishnu’s body and pores coming out of that body some things coming out of the pores and then expanding, what would we see and we don’t know that even like I mentioned earlier, even now if you go to the if say this beings celestial beings such as the devatas, they come to the earth we will not be able to see them now, so say for example in the Bhagavatam there is a description that from certain certain progenitors, wives or daughters various species came out now what does that mean we can’t have a very naive naive understanding means if at that time we were there would we literally see snakes and various species dropping out of the body of those particular celestial beings things are subtle things are complicated so we would be able to perceive things according to our scale of perception our level of Adhikar so science perceives realities in a particular way the spiritual text describes the reality in a different way can the two be reconciled possibly, it will require a significant amount of research but that is something which those who are interested in that field they can do it so we have to understand why am I studying science and why am I studying scripture and based on that we adopt a pragmatic approach for moving forward in our life so as I said we use science for functioning in the world for gaining resources for functioning in the world and we use spirituality for understanding what is the purpose of life what is the purpose of whatever we are ultimately doing and we function accordingly so in Ayurveda for example it is understood that Vishnu through Dhanvantari is the curative principle but that didn’t stop the Ayurvedic researchers from looking for specific mechanical explanations for specific diseases coming up with mechanical cures mechanical cures means okay if you are having this disease that means there is this kind of imbalance in your body and this is what you need to fix it that’s what you need to do fix it so if you can say it is mechanical what the Ayurveda describes your Kapha has become too much in your body eat this this this and you will feel better the Pitta has become too much eat this this and it will become better that’s how it is so the mechanical view of reality has utility the personal view of reality has utility specific theories that have come up with the mechanistic or mechanical view of reality too well the scientists evaluate those theories and let scientists find out what is the explanation for what they observe and then those who are serious spiritualists or those who are scientifically interested spiritualists who want to bring about a dialogue between the two of them let them find out exactly which theories correlate with which scriptural statements and what way okay yes Prajit so the same student who had asked one of the previous questions is asking that Prajit please guide us as how we must proceed as engineers and scientists using science as a tool to support our spirituality is it possible to lead people into spirituality using science how can we contribute to science in such a way that people realise it that people realise it does point towards the supreme creator the supreme personality of Godhead okay that’s a very good question so how can we say as scientists or engineers use our scientific studies to say raise spiritual awareness among people I’d say that three four different levels first is by our conduct itself if we behave responsibly if we behave function competently people are attracted so we need to do our activities diligently and competently as much as we can and that will attract people studies or whatever job we do that’s the first thing second thing is that through engineering whatever position we acquire in society we can use it to use the respectability that comes from that position to get people to connect with Krishna and say ordinary person talks about something spiritual and somebody is very well educated most of you are from the best engineering colleges in India so if you invite your friends your relatives to maybe read a Bhagavad Gita to read some spiritual article to attend a talk to visit come for a festival they will take that much more seriously so first is that just by your conduct you interact and attract people and they themselves will ask you know what how do you function what makes you tick second is you go beyond that you specifically invite third is that maybe you when you get enough training you might yourself be able to write or speak and share spiritual wisdom with others so that would be a that would be something very significant because if you yourself are teaching it people will be attracted rather than you just inviting people to come for talks you will become learned and you teach that and spiritualists who are very grounded in science can be a great asset to society because rather rational presentation of spirituality is one of the greatest needs in society today and beyond that now within your specific area of research how can that area of research be connected with spirituality for that you may need to contact specialists in particular fields there are several areas where spirituality can actually come in contact with current science so one of the biggest areas is consciousness studies consciousness studies can be brought it come in consciousness studies through neuroscience through cognitive through psychology and cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness and things like that can come in through artificial intelligence it can come in through that direction through the philosophy of science so I would say that I have a whole separate talk on artificial intelligence what it can do and what artificial intelligence implies but the point is that there are many areas among the various areas where science and spirituality interact consciousness is one of the most promising in terms of its potentiality consciousness was a taboo subject almost 15-20 years ago because it was just so incomprehensible but now the explosion of research in the field of consciousness and especially in terms of applied principles there is mind body medicine and spiritual care for patients or those who want end of care treatment and stuff like that that’s also very prominent so mind body interaction there is a lot of a lot that goes on in the name of scientific spirituality that is questionable scientifically and questionable spiritually also there is some amount of serious research also going on that’s also a domain where some research could be done something which is very relevant in general science and technology spirituality has a philosophical aspect and spirituality is a pragmatic aspect so the philosophical aspect of spirituality would not be something that science can ever reach because there is a different domain of reality but the pragmatic aspect for example if we chant Hare Krishna now whether Krishna is God whether God is a bluish black cowherd boy that is something which is beyond science to either prove or disprove it is beyond the domain of science but if somebody meditates regularly, chants mantras or does a particular kind of study how it affects their brain how it affects their behaviour that is something which can be studied and there have been several promising studies about the effects of of mantra meditation and other forms of meditation in reformulating the brain structures of people as well as in reforming their behaviours that is also an area of research so I would say that as you become more and more grounded in your spirituality by associating with devotees if your areas of scientific research become more crystallised then you could talk with devotees who are in who are doing scientific research and find out which area you could specifically go into or if you don’t have any clear sense of which area you want to go into research in future then you could talk with devotees and I gave some indications of some areas you could talk with many devotees who are in scientific research and then find out which will be an area of your interest so for some people science is their passion or even technology we could say is their passion and for many others it is a profession so you are interested in it but it’s not exactly like a passion for you it’s a profession in the sense that you like to do it it’s a job and you like to do it well but that’s not what constantly consumes your mind so for those whom science or technology or your particular branch of domain is a passion then you would love to go into research and for you to find out some areas where science and spirituality intersect and you do that research that would be promising for those whom it’s a profession and even by the profession also you could do some research and find some interaction but then you may not want to necessarily go into that domain but still you could work at the so if it’s primarily a profession then you may be more concerned with what profession works best for your career goals and for your financial security and stability in future and then you could function at the other three levels through your conduct through your contacts and invitations and through your personally teaching you could share spirituality so does that answer your question? Yes Prajeev Prajeev there are questions which are similar I am clubbing them up but I will read it the two questions are from students from IIT BHU and IIT Kharagpur so I will read two three questions it is having similar output hopefully so the question number one is why the devotees are not raising the question that they want to go to the moon and ask for NASA to have some travel for all of us and let us reveal to the world that they are just bluffing on the name of moon landing another question with similar lines is why we cannot go to moon planet now any scriptural reference what is the scriptural understanding of eclipse and where it is mentioned in the scriptures well those who are asking the question about the moon did we were you there for yesterday’s class I explained about the moon travel yesterday so yeah they were there Prajeev on the basis of that they have asked yeah so I don’t see that as a major issue at all our scientists bluffing landing bluff is a very strong word to use and Prabhupada’s point was primarily don’t get so excited even if we go to the moon what is so great about it Prabhupada writes in the introduction of the Bhagavad Gita that we have endeavoured a lot to raise ourselves to go to the moon but we have not endeavoured sufficiently to raise our own consciousness so if we raise our consciousness that will be much more productive than if we focus on going towards then humanity will be much happier so the point is not to challenge science or its accomplishments the point is to recognise the implications of those accomplishments so even if we succeed in going to the moon even if tomorrow we colonise the moon what are we going to do over there if we are going to moon and there also we are going to basically continue the pursuit of materialistic pleasures we are going to simply get more space for keeping, sleeping, mating defending then what is so great about it so I would say that the moon issue is is something which was if you lived I have talked with devotees who lived in the 60s who were in the youth in the 60s and at that time the moon mission had captured the imagination of humanity like few other things and it was that if humanity reaches the moon then that’s the greatest achievement and that indicates the power of technology it shows that humanity can conquer any barriers and can solve all problems through science well yes maybe not so that kind of that kind of hubris where science is the answer to all problems that is not there in humanity we do value science many of us are captivated by technology but everybody understands today almost every thoughtful person understand that science and technology and their advancement they can help humanity in many significant ways but they can’t solve the fundamental questions of the fundamental problems of living even from a spiritual not just from a spiritual perspective even from a practical perspective technology say if there are poor people and maybe we use some farming methods to produce better crops that will produce better grains and that’s good but there are so many people who are corrupt there are corrupt because they hold on to money there are so many people who are addicted they waste their money on alcoholism and all that so can we find a pill that can cure people of greed and corruption can we give an injection by which people can become free from addiction we understand that it’s not that simple so the point of Shila Prabhupada in critiquing the moon mission was to stress this point and don’t think don’t get carried away by the promises of science and technology they science and technology can help humanity in many different ways but it can’t really answer life’s ultimate questions we like make things better spirituality can make people better science can make the outer world better spirituality can make the inner world better and together both can help make the world better so we have to choose which battles we fight you know if if tomorrow we find irrefutable evidence that suppose hypothetically we find irrefutable evidence that scientists are able to go to the moon so what that doesn’t change the fact that Krishna is God that doesn’t change the scriptural descriptions about the nature and purpose of life so Prabhupada himself says that by mechanical space crafts also by mechanical means also people may be able to go to higher planets it’s rare but it’s possible when in the Mahabharata Arjuna is meditating in the Himalayas to do some austerities for gaining some special weapons for the upcoming Kurukshetra war at that time Indra sends a chariot and the chariot comes with his charioteer Maithili and then that chariot comes from the heavens and takes him to heavens so chariot is a physical structure and the physical structure goes from the earth to the heavens but the difference is that of course that came from a higher domain of reality Arjuna had performed austerities and when he went to heavens he was able to meet with the heavenly personalities he was able to interact with Indra so the point is that we need to not just obsess over specific statements but we need to also look at the context within which those statements were made so Prabhupada’s point was don’t get so excited by the promises of science and technology and think that science and technology will ever make spirituality redundant but just to recognise the value of spirituality we don’t have to dismiss science and technology so there could be scientific arrogance where we think that we will make spirituality unnecessary and there could be arrogance among spiritualists who think that science and technology is all useless well arrogance or hubris is bad in any domain in the domain of science it is bad in the domain of spirituality also it is bad so if we truly understand what our spiritual teachers are teaching not simply by looking at their words decontextualised from the context of what they are speaking but their words seen in the overall context of what they are saying then we can humbly use science and technology and we can humbly use spiritual knowledge and we can become better human beings raise our consciousness and help others raise their consciousness okay yes yes there are lots of questions anyways I’ll see how much time yes the next question is from students from SLV Pune yesterday you spoke about testometer, levometer, pionometer etc we cannot define the intensity but there are certain mathematical representations of qualities like golden ratio in painting which makes painting look beautiful to look at thereby relating quality or emotion to mathematics so does this indicate that every other quality and emotions can be represented mathematically we have just not reached to that level of mathematical advancement for example prof. Srinivasa Ramanujan who communicated with his deity and the goddess revealed to him the mathematical concepts about universal creations which were unknown at that time okay good question so is it that we have still not developed the technology to say understand the qualitative aspects of the universe yes certainly we could develop more and more technology and if we develop that that’s valuable that’s helpful so what could how well can technological advancement lead to appreciation of aesthetic qualities well let’s look at it this way if we consider say photoshop if you want to make some image using photoshop then what can photoshop do it can give us access to a huge template of colours it can also give us access to a wide variety of tools for changing the colours in many subtle and remarkably precise ways and then so basically what a painter might require lots of times put this paint or put this paint dab out there we can do it using say photoshop much faster so posters and stuff like that can be designed very well and if somebody wants to do art also digitally well you can try it and it can provide us tools at the end of it the experience of art is a conscious experience and the computer might be able to come up with certain programmes which are based on certain studies of the past but ultimately the experience of how beautiful this is that requires a conscious observer without the conscious observer can be provided tools for making things better say for example now if one of my services is writing all of us practically write and we may use some tools like Grammarly or there are so many other softwares for improving our English which is great as far as those tools go so we may not have to keep all the rules of grammar in our mind and if we are making some mistake in a grammatical sense the tool can tell us now of course we could say that if you go on the internet and search for spellcheck errors or spellcheck jokes you will find many cases of how spellcheck can make a mess of things and that kind of mess of things as spellcheck also evolves it can improve so where it can improve it is to be appreciated to the extent it has improved having said that let’s take one more thing there is in writing as well as in painting there is a craft aspect and there is an art aspect craft aspect means that there are there are mechanical there are mechanical aspects in writing say for example the grammar rules are mechanical this is a comma we put here and this is the right word over here that is not the right word over there these are mechanical aspects and the mechanical aspects can definitely be improved through technology so even in painting there is painting we might call it as art but painting has a craft aspect to it there is a craft aspect and there is an art aspect so for example if you really want to learn how to write well reading newspapers may not be very helpful why because newspapers don’t depict writing as a art it’s writing as a craft there are certain events that have happened and they are reported and we learn something from that but if you really want to learn writing as a skill which is very it’s a skill in itself then you have to read well written books that’s where you will see writing as an art so the craft aspect with respect to the grammatical rules when I am saying grammatical rules I am in no way dismissing the importance of grammar but there are certain rules which are subtler say for example don’t use long sentences or don’t repeat the same word many times don’t repeat the same word very close to the previous occurrences of that word so a grammar checker can tell this word you have used in your article in your book this many times that can be useful to analyse books you can make word clouds with words to get the keys and tags for your articles online which is all helpful but writing as an art there is something which we read for there is some writing we read for aesthetic pleasure it is so beautifully written that suppose when we are looking at a map we are not looking for aesthetic pleasure when we are looking at a map we are looking for functional value so a map also requires drawing skill but a map is primarily what it’s a work it’s a art sorry it involves drawing but it’s primarily a craft but if you are looking at a painting like Mona Lisa well we look at it itself from a different perspective so mechanical tools or artificial intelligence and other such advances in technology can provide us resources by which we could improve writing as any craft the craft aspect of any artistic skill with qualitative experiences but the qualitative experience itself is something which is which requires the input of a conscious observer so the two are significantly different domains so yes science and technology can provide us tools to improve even areas of art and to the extent they are provided that’s great at the same time we need to recognise that each domain of knowledge has its particular thrust so it’s like asking say if we develop better and better binoculars if we develop better and better telescopes now can the improvement of telescopes in the future enable a deaf person to hear well that’s a wrong question to ask a telescope is meant to enhance our power of seeing not our power of hearing so science itself focusses on the as I said the mechanical measurable aspects of reality and it can bring about some correlations between them but when those mechanical measurable aspects of reality come together there is a certain aesthetic experience that is produced and some some things which we say okay that’s useful and some wow what’s that it’s a difference so why is the difference there because there is a conscious experience and there are certain subtle things certain attributes in the observed object that produce this conscious experience so what are those what specifically produces that conscious experience well these are subtle things so yes technology can definitely help us to improve the craft aspect of things but the art aspect of things needs to be carefully it needs to be it requires conscious intelligence to do conscious intelligence to do it and it requires conscious intelligence to experience it so that’s why there is a certain things which the qualitative aspects again the mathematical the mathematical formula that bring about a certain qualitative experience they may be noted and repeated through some technologies but the conscious experience itself is a different domain of reality so let’s consider another example to illustrate this let’s say if there is some chocolate which is extremely delicious now that taste of the chocolate is experienced in the tongue now once the functionality is determined okay this is what is done this is how this chocolate was made then that functionality can be programmed and that can be repeated so we could say that hundreds and thousands and even millions of chocolates could be produced which give that similar aesthetic experience and people eat it that’s fine but that aesthetic experience requires a conscious observer to experience it conscious experiencer the machines that are doing it they don’t even know what they are doing they’re not experiencing what they are doing it’s simply doing what they are told to do so there is a significant difference between the experience of qualities and the production of things that give us the experience of those qualities so through technology we might be able to mechanise and industrialise in the sense of mass-produce the production of things that give us those experience but the experience of things themselves is something which is distinct does it answer the question yes there are three more questions so should we take one or two or three sure okay we see that the technical advancements technological advancement that has happened in last three decades is really high so why technological advancement did not happen in ancient time as of now these are students from GGD Pune okay is there some particular technology you are talking about or is it a generic question it is a generic question but seemingly AI and all that maybe yeah so why did technology not advance in the past why did it advance now well if we consider the last few centuries or in the last millennia or two yeah we do have had significant advances in technology and that’s also associated with a particular world view let me draw something over here to explain this okay okay device okay I just visualise it over here see human beings are here the world around us is here if you want you can use share screen for using whiteboard that’s what I’m thinking yeah I also have extender for this okay okay so let me see if I can yeah so let’s try this so if we consider okay this is conscious being this is material nature around us and then this is we could say the higher the higher consciousness the divine reality is the ultimate reality whatever so this is the 13th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita talks about these three realities that is nature consciousness and the supreme so now in the past whether it was the east or the west broadly the understanding was that this world you are able to see what I am doing Hare Krishna yes we are able to see that so this physical physical or material reality that is there around us so this was seen more or less as something which is temporary and changing and improving this is also going to provide only some temporary benefits so because of that changing the temporary was not considered very important what the overall world view was that the earth is temporary because it’s temporary better live here in a way that we can attain the eternal that’s why the focus was on establishing some connection between between what is this between matter and spirit the focus was between sorry between consciousness and in the infinite not so much so connection with the divine connection with the spiritual was considered far more important than control of the material so if we consider it’s not just India but any part of the world the focus was not so much on control of the physical it was more on connection with the spiritual now sometimes through connection with the spiritual also we may get some control over the material so connection with the not just spiritual the higher realities so for example when there is technology that is described in the scriptures so there were various kinds of astras so how were the astras there is a brahmastra or agni astra or whatever how were they got they were got by sorry they were got by connecting ourselves like Arjuna performed austerities to connect with the higher realities so devatas and the supreme lord and then so Arjuna connected this way and then through that he got the power to control things so he could summon storm weapons he could storm air weapons fire weapons all those things the idea was we connect upward here and once you are connected upward then through that upward connection by the grace of the devatas we get power here by the grace of devatas or the grace of the supreme lord and the technology that was described at that time in many ways it is very sophisticated and far more precise than what we have now so we have Ashwathama sending a weapon which was targeted to kill the child in the embryo child in the womb of Uttara without hurting Uttara we don’t have weapons that precise anywhere near that precise when we have some missiles that we may shoot there is so much collateral damage that happens so this was the way technology was developed in the past whenever technology was there that access the higher powers and by their grace get the power to control material nature but as Kali Yuga started progressing this connection with the higher domains started decreasing we became more like a boxed reality so we started losing connection with higher domains of reality and all that remained was we and matter so matter and consciousness that’s what remained although there was some connection with the higher realities there was definitely religion and worship but the access to mystical powers through those forms of religion and worship that became lesser and lesser and then the idea still remained ok we worship god and we may be by worshipping god some of the distress in our life can decrease and ultimately we attain the kingdom of god since what is called as the renaissance the time of renaissance in the western technology what happened was that the three major movements in western intellectual history you could say roughly correlate them 16th century was renaissance 17th century was reformation and then the scientific revolution the renaissance, the reformation scientific revolution these three they are not exactly sequential but they are broadly in that sequence with some overlapping so in renaissance what happened was they felt that we don’t just have to pass through this world we can experience this world, we can study this world we can depict this world if we consider most of the art before the 16th century there was no concept of art which simply depicted nature art was used to depict the sacred and the sacred might be depicted in nature but there was no concept of art that was independent of the sacred but from renaissance what happened, ok let’s study this world more and more then there was the reformation, the christian reformation which said we don’t want the control of religious institutions over our life even if you want to study religious texts we will study them on our own so what happened was then there was a greater these are very complex historical movements and I am giving a very bare bones analysis of their effect but the idea was we don’t want our knowledge to be controlled by certain priestly class we will study and we will learn and the scientific revolution was they started studying and learning through nature what are the mechanisms governing it and how we can use the knowledge of those mechanisms to control nature to bend it to human will so then in today’s world most technology is simply this way no acknowledgement of any higher reality there is no seeking access to that higher reality to get the power to control the lower reality so there was technology 5000 years ago or so before that as described in the Vedic texts and there are this is not just a self congratulatory description of the Vedic texts there seem to be evidences of remarkably advanced technologies there are remnants of those even today the pyramids, how they were made it’s an architectural mystery there are so many other architectural wonders that are there in different parts of the world which are so difficult to explain so they had some kind of technology at that time but they didn’t have the mechanical vision of the universe and they did not have the mechanical resources to operate to develop the kind of technology we have developed today so our vision of technology is simply we conscious beings interact with matter and try to control it in the past, in the remote past thousands of years ago nature could be controlled through appeasing the higher powers who control nature so that’s why in the recent past when we had lost access to the higher powers we didn’t see much technology now as we are focussing more and more and trying to control nature using technology, we are developing technology more and more but at the same time we are realising that it’s not so easy or so simple to control nature because what happens when we try to control nature nature gets back at us that’s why the dominant ethos now in the past 200 years we will bend nature to human will but now there is increased environmental consciousness and the recognition that we can’t simply bend nature to human will we have to live in cooperation with nature and now we are trying to develop more eco-friendly technologies so technology rather than simply seeing it technological advancement rather than seeing it simply as people in the past were primitive and now we are more intelligent and that’s why we have developed technologies that is one aspect of it but another aspect is that what is considered worth developing also depends on the underlying world view so in the past world views in the world views of the past if this world is itself seen as a temporary place and going to the next world is considered life’s primary purpose then putting too much energy into trying to improve this world was not considered a very worthwhile endeavour but with the scientific revolution more than related to the thought world of religious people only and people started thinking we have to create heaven in this world so then all the human energy and ingenuity started being used to focus on trying to develop technology and wherever attention goes energy flows so because the attention of humanity in the last 2-3 centuries has been not on attaining some world beyond this world but on improving this world naturally we have developed technologies that are intended to improve the world now how much the world has been improved or which of the technologies have led to an improvement in an unadulterated way or which of the technologies have improved things in the short term but have created trouble in the long term all these are serious issues that need to be discussed so that would be the broad answer to that question yes Prabhu second last question Prabhuji Prabhuji as there are students from Bangalore as we are aware that the resources like water etc.
got drained and used but according to scripture there are still 4 lakh years left in the living species still existing till then so will mars be the place where humans will be staying can you please explain ok that’s a good question so when we say that that so much of the human resources have been so much water has been polluted and we have so much shortage of vital resources for living but there is many more years to live so will we go into mars or some other planets and that’s how humanity will continue it’s very difficult to know exactly how things will unfold in the future what we do broadly know is that things in Kali Yuga go down but it need not be that they go down in a linear state it could be that things go down then they go down very rapidly and then we understand this level is not sustainable and then they rise again and then they again go down they rise so the descent could even be cyclic rather than simply linear so will humans go to other planets and colonise those planets well we seem to be significantly far away from that and although there is space research going on the feverish excitement surrounding space research that was there in the 60s that is not there and most people now think that even if space research is successful most people I would say the financiers of scientific research whether we will put in that much money to actually emigrate all of humanity to another planet that’s open to question it seems not very likely in the immediate future what is more likely is that human beings are made to be remarkably resilient and this applies individually as well as collectively if you look at the life story of any human being who has been significantly successful, you will find that they have faced such difficulties, such adversities you wonder what keeps them going we human beings have a remarkably resilient spirit and that spirit comes from our spirituality so what are lies to resilience means resilience means that we knock down and we rise so actually that resilience ultimately comes from our transcendence because as spiritual beings we are not meant to be knocked down, we are meant to soar to incredible heights in our loving relationship with the lord so we may not know about that spiritual side of our life and that’s why we may be resilient in other directions so the resilience of the human spirit is one of the most inspiring realities of humanity of the human story, of human history now not everybody has the same level of resilience but we are a remarkably resilient species and that is why whether we take the scientific account of history or the Vedic account of history we human beings have studied survived for thousands and thousands of years, for millennia we have survived for each one of us to be existing we can go back and so many ancestors had to survive through so many dangers so many diseases, so many invasions, so many natural calamities it’s actually if we consider the sheer amount of distresses and disasters that befall humanity it’s amazing that even anyone has the spirit to continue living sometimes some people get depressed and we may feel why is this person getting depressed actually we shouldn’t be shocked that people are getting depressed we should be surprised how so many people are not depressed because life can be so difficult life can be so so devastating so the resilience of the human spirit is a remarkable and inspiring reality and what applies to humanity individually also applies to humanity collectively so the current pandemic has crippled the global economy but still there are so many stories of inspiring human resilience that people come together, people are doing research people are trying to find out how to deal with this pandemic so we need to recognise that yes, we have developed certain technologies which have been very destructive to the environment but the resilience of the human spirit will come forth and we will find some solutions for it so maybe we will start using more eco-friendly methods of water harvesting more sustainable methods of water harvesting and raise problems like that so I will say that we need to hold back on dystopian or doomsday kind of prophecies that firstly we should not undermine the resilience of the human spirit and even if there is some kind of sudden downflow some downward chart, it will rise again and again we will move up and move forward that’s how things will move so we don’t have to, just because it’s Kali Yuga and just because things are going wrong we don’t have to be disproportionately dismissive or pessimistic yes, a healthy amount of healthy dose of reality and awareness of reality is important but there is no need to be dystopian or have doomsday kind of ideas whatever problems come humanity is creative enough to deal with those problems of course, the problems come we find some creative solutions to the problems and other problems come and then we find some creative solutions to those problems and then other problems come this goes on and on through this creative tackling of problems that come gradually humanity’s spiritual intelligence awakens and then we start thinking could there be a domain of reality where I don’t have to go on facing problems dealing with problems isn’t there something higher that I can achieve and that is when the spiritual search will begin in earnest so the human can be the story of the greatest human triumph so the human resilience can help us triumph over various problems that come at the worldly level but when the human resilience is directed towards the pursuit of transcendence then that can be the most inspiring story that can be the most inspiring stories in human history ok yes Prajit Prajit, the question is what does it mean to raise consciousness practically, this is from the students of GGT, Pune ok, what does it mean to raise consciousness it basically means that we start finding happiness and meaning in higher things not lower things say for example we get some delicious food to eat and maybe there is a delicious cake and we take the cake and eat it ourselves well, there is some pleasure in that but it is a very self-centred pleasure but ok, I take a slice of the cake and I share with others and they become happy by sharing that cake, they also feel happy and I feel happy that I was able to do something that gave them some pleasure, so this is an expanded consciousness so there can be expansion of consciousness and there can be elevation of consciousness expansion is more as horizontal horizontal means in the material domain, that means instead of thinking only of what things give me pleasure, I think also of what things give others pleasure or at least we start thinking more about how our actions affect others so that’s expansion in the horizontal domain and that’s also very important when there are many cases when people drive a car and they are hit and run they knock somebody down on the road and they just go away just to save themselves and that person who was victimised if they had been taken to a hospital first aid had been called they might have survived but then they suffer or die or they suffer permanent damage because they reached late so we are not so aware of we are not so conscious of the consequences of our actions, so expansion of our consciousness means just in the world at the material level also our actions have consequences, we recognise that elevation of consciousness means we recognise that there are higher realities also that there is material reality and there is spiritual reality, that means I understand that people are not just physical creators who need food, clothing, shelter, people are also spiritual beings who need meaning and purpose in their life, who long to love and be loved and we see them as as multidimensional beings, so elevation of consciousness means that we see people as people not as tools for our pleasure not simply physical creatures but as multidimensional beings and ultimately elevation of consciousness means we start perceiving the most elevated reality that is Krishna, so by the practise of spirituality both the expansion of consciousness and the elevation of consciousness can happen and these two can also happen by other means, generally if we interact with people who are very socially conscious or socially responsible, so if you interact with people who are say social welfare workers, their consciousness is expanded, they are not thinking only of me and my family and my immediate circle, they think of the community, they think of the country so by associating with them our consciousness will also expand we associate with one person who has like a tremendous nationalistic fervour and zeal then we will be infused by that, that’s expansion if we associate with somebody who has tremendous spiritual zeal our consciousness will become elevated the spirituality leads to both expansion and elevation of consciousness and the more our consciousness becomes expanded and elevated the more we start seeking pleasure in the things that also bring pleasure to others and pleasure that is uplifting, not degrading say when our consciousness is very shrunk I take pleasure by taking away I get pleasure by taking away the things that give pleasure to others so I eat all the food and there is nothing left for others that’s not very good, but I share food, that is good that’s better, but imagine I develop, not only can I cook well, I develop some technology I develop some agriculture by which I produce food and I can benefit so many people so many things can apply so many domains it can apply like that so we use our profession we use our talents to do something of value which benefits us and which benefits others not just say somebody has musical ability, so that ability is what they have, but depending on their consciousness somebody can use musical ability to write very sensually titillating songs and they might get some pleasure by that others might also get some pleasure by that but that pleasure neither expands their consciousness nor expand others consciousness it actually puts everybody in some sensual domain, but if somebody with the ability of singing also has elevated consciousness when they sing about Krishna they write spiritual songs then what happens they can inspire so many other people to sing about Krishna and to raise their consciousness towards Krishna so basically we can say that the level of our consciousness can be seen in the things that we seek pleasure in and the more expanded or elevated our consciousness is, the bigger are the ways in which we seek pleasure and not only the bigger the ways we seek pleasure, what happens is not only do we get pleasure, but others also get pleasure by that ok yes Praju, there are still some questions, but your time yes so maybe next week when we have a session, we will see how many questions are there on scripture, and if they don’t have that many questions on scripture, we could take we could take this also scripture is already overflowing yeah as I mentioned, any of the questions that you are asking, if you haven’t got the answers over here, you can look at the spiritualscientist.com yeah, and you may find answers over there also, yeah, those two questions which I kept at the back, they were something which we can find there only, that’s why I thought we can keep it at the last so, fine devotees, we are so happy to have association of Chaitanacharya and Prabhu again, and next week also, on Saturday 2.30pm 2.30pm yeah, 2.30pm we will be having association of Chaitanacharya and Prabhu on scriptures, so you can post your questions, already we have got many many questions, so still if you have any questions, you can post it down there and let us thank Chaitanacharya and Prabhu for your thank you Praju for so many technical concepts, I was also not knowing so many things, students are asking and you are responding I am learning in between so, thank you so much Praju for your kind association, your service thank you, these were very thoughtful questions and all of you, I can see the level of your intelligence as well as the level of your spiritual sincerity and that combination of insightful intelligence and spiritual sincerity they are two very powerful assets for you and I hope that I am of some small service to you in your life journey, thank you Hare Krishna so any students have any more questions you can post it on Prabhuji’s website which we had posted yesterday, which we will be posting on the telegram group also so Prabhuji eventually answers, keeps answering questions on his websites thank you very much, Hare Krishna Hare Krishna