The Monk’s Podcast 61 with Yogesvara Prabhu – Is spirituality anti-science?

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna Yogeshwar Prabhu. Thank you for joining once again on the Monks Podcast. Hare Krishna Prabhu.
It’s a pleasure to have you. And I thought today we could discuss on the topic of science and spirituality. I believe you are writing a book on Sadapud Prabhu’s contributions in that direction.
Can you tell me about your project and how you were inspired to do it? And then we can take it forward from there. Yes, certainly. Initially, I thought it might be a biography of Sariputta, who was a devotee I knew.
He was someone I knew. We shared space together in Philadelphia at one time when the Bhaktivedanta Institute and Back to God were both in their offices in a house, maybe 10-minute walk from the Philadelphia temple, and we would walk back and forth from the offices to the temple together. So I got to speak with him then.
And I was privileged to help him publish his first book, Mechanistic and Unmechanistic Science. So we had a relationship. At first I thought, well, after the biography of Srila Prabhupada, Swami in a Strange Land, the next thing I should write would be what is most dear to Prabhupada.
And that was science and the Bhaktivedanta Institute. So I thought maybe Sariputta’s life would be a good narrative vehicle for that story. But after quite a bit of research and interviews, it struck me that what was more important was not the details of where he grew up and where he went to school and so on, but the conclusion of his service, of his research, which was to describe the correlation between the Vedic perspective, in particular Bhagavatam, and current thoughts in areas of cosmology and astrophysics and subatomic physics and so on.
So that led me to the understanding that really that’s the the embodiment of that research was what was being done in Mayapur, in the temple of the Vedic planetarium. So the focus of the book shifted from a biography of Sariputta to a book about Mayapur. So the title of the book currently is The Rise of Mayapur, Gateway to Eternity.
So the science is there embedded in the story of Mayapur. Okay. So if I understand right, science, were you a part of the Bhaktivanth Institute itself? Were you from a scientific background beforehand, specifically? No, my brother is a physicist, but I don’t have any formal training myself, and that’s only what I’ve learned from reading popular books and from interviews and discussions and whatever research or delving into the subject as a layman.
Yeah, and you know, in a sense you would have an advantage here because ultimately whatever model we depict, we need to explain it in a layperson’s language. And I find that as far as molding people’s opinion is concerned, scientists don’t have as much influence as popular popularizers of science. Yeah, you’re quite right.
Yeah, there’s an author named Bill Bryson, B-R-Y-S-O-N. Yes, I read him. He has no formal training in science, but he’s a marvelous writer.
And so his books on scientific subjects are very, very well received. My brother also, Brian Green, his great gift is an ability to take highly complex ideas and present them in ways that are accessible to uninitiated readers. His books have all been bestsellers, The Elegant Universe and the latest one is called Until the End of Time.
He’s a brilliant thinker and a wonderful writer, and it’s for that reason that he can make an idea that otherwise would be very sophisticated and incomprehensible and understandable to a layman. Yeah. So just out of curiosity, have you discussed Bhakti philosophy with your brother or what is his response? We have the most wonderful conversations.
I learned from him. He’s kind enough to say that he learns from me. Oh, okay.
Bhaktivinoda Thakur gave an example. He said this was with regard to religion, whether you’re coming from the eastern side of the mountain or the western side of the mountain. When you get to the peak of the mountain, it’s the same peak for everybody.
Science is a path of exploration. It’s a path of knowledge. We would call it Gyan in Sanskrit.
There are many paths. Just as in Bhagavad Gita, there are a dozen different kinds of yoga that are described. Different strokes for different folks.
Different people have different aptitudes. Science is a an approach to knowledge for those who have that particular intellectual and empiric aptitude. Interesting.
So, you know, over the last few years I have read a little bit more about atheists or whom I would earlier dismiss as reductionistic scientists. But even among scientists, I realize we cannot put them, even if they don’t accept the existence of God or soul, still we cannot paint them all in one brush. Some of them may even see the material universe in a way that is quite close to spirituality.
They may appreciate how we are insignificant in the universe and that might cultivate a sense of humility or a sense of wonder. So, yeah, so in a sense if we consider spirituality not as a set of conclusions, but a set of dispositions, then even science can foster those dispositions which are conducive to spiritual growth. Very much so.
There are times when I’ll read some of the discoveries and arguments or explanations by scientists and I’ll say, this is helping me to appreciate so much more deeply the magnificence of Shri Krishna’s creation. And we have a debt of gratitude to people who can reveal the elegance of the universe, the mysteries of the universe, because they help us to understand just how miraculous is this cosmic environment that we find ourselves in. Einstein once said, the greatest emotion that any human being can feel is the sense of mystery that and someone who cannot look at this beautiful creation and feel that sense of mystery and awe and wonder is as good as dead.
And he said in this sense, I’m a deeply religious person. Einstein was not religious in the theistic sense of religious, but he was religious in the sense that he believed that there was a sense and meaning to creation and that the purpose of science is to reveal that sense and meaning. He was probably the last of the great classic physicists in that sense, that he believed there was purpose and order and symmetry to the cosmos around us.
After that, with the arrival of quantum physics and more recent theories such as string theory and so on, there was almost, you might say, a sense of perhaps despair or lack of belief in that meaning anymore. So the more recent fields which have discovered the unpredictable fluctuating realm of subatomic particles behaving in irrational ways have introduced a certain sense of distrust that there may be any actual meaning to things because despite our most rational logical thinking on subatomic scales, matter behaves in ways that are completely against our expectations. Particles can appear in two places simultaneously and have an influence over one another across vast distances without any means of transmitting information.
That completely breaks the idea that the ultimate limit is the speed of light. Because if one particle is having influence on another particle simultaneously across great distances, then that information is traveling faster than light. So there are things that sometimes matter behaves like a wave.
Sometimes matter behaves like a particle. So on those scales, those subatomic scales, the sense of purpose, the sense of direction, the sense of meaning seems to dissipate. It seems to lose its substance.
And therefore since Einstein, there’s been this notion that the universe does not have a purpose, that everything is just matter behaving for some reason that we really don’t understand. And so that is risky because it can introduce a certain sense of despair that if there’s no meaning in the universe, then perhaps there’s no meaning in my life either. Yeah.
I remember reading Steven Weinberg. He said that the more the universe becomes comprehensible, the more it seems pointless. That’s exactly what you said.
There also seems to be another trend. While quantum physics seems to show chaos in the world of matter, it also gives some space for consciousness to be introduced into the worldview. And in that sense, it’s, we could say it’s not entirely nihilistic.
There are some areas where science is becoming less mechanistic as compared to earlier, or at least non-mechanistic factors are more readily or easily introducible in science now. Isn’t it? Yes. You know, scientists are people too.
And like people everywhere, they operate from a certain set of emotional, psychic, experiential motives as much as they do from intellectual and academic motives. So that the same information presented to different scientists will elicit a wide range of different reactions and interpretations. If, for instance, and I don’t mean to get too pop psychology here, but if a scientist has had a bad experience early in life with authority, discipline, with poor parenting, there may be a predisposition to doubting authority, to mistrusting authority.
On the other hand, we see that someone like Einstein who had a relatively happy childhood and grew up being encouraged by his parents was very curious. His sense of curiosity was always being encouraged. So the way we interpret information is very often a highly personal exercise.
You’re correct though when you say that more recently there seems to be an opening to certain other interpretations of the realm of physics and science and cosmology and so on. Because we’re coming up against the limits of our empiric observation. We can no longer hope that some new generation of electronic microscopes will be able to peer down farther into the heart of matter.
We’ve reached our limits in terms of what we can observe in the microscopic world. In order for our eyes to perceive something, there needs to be enough light reflected off the object that we’re trying to observe that we can perceive it. By shining light, which also has mass and particulate identity onto an object like an electron, we influence that electron.
We change its position, we change its orbit, we change its direction so that we cannot at any one time pinpoint something on those subatomic scales to absolute perfection. This has introduced what’s called in science the observer-based reality. Yeah.
Meaning that depending on who is observing and how they are observing, the nature of reality itself becomes malleable and fluctuates. So we’re at a place where science is almost becoming polarized in some regards, that we have to begin to ask what are the anterior or prior dimensions that have brought about this mysterious world that we cannot perceive, that all we can do is theorize. You know, there’s experimental physics, and then you have theoretical physics.
Brother Brian, for example, is a theoretical physicist. And it’s wonderful to talk with theoretical physicists. There’s always competition, you know.
The theoretical physicists will say, well, you know, without our ideas, the experimental physicists would have nothing to do. And the experimental physicists say, well, without our laboratory proofs, the theoretical physicists have no evidence that anything they think is accurate and true. So there’s always this kind of tension between them.
But if I may, Prabhu, I’d like to get to the heart of the issue, I think, for your viewers, and that is that there’s a mistaken idea among some devotees that Srila Prabhupada was anti-science, that he was against science. And nothing could be farther from the truth. I knew Srila Prabhupada.
I traveled with him. I spoke with him about these things. I had a chance, the rare privilege of discussing with him issues that those who have come afterwards and who have never had a chance to meet him or know him can only surmise from what they read or hear in certain classes or lectures.
And the fact is that when you read something or when you hear one lecture, you don’t get a well-balanced universal picture of Srila Prabhupada’s position on something. Somebody will take one morning walk on Venice Beach in 1973, where Srila Prabhupada may have said, we kick on their faces. And they’ll generalize from that one moment or those two or three examples of Prabhupada being strident to say, oh, you see, he was against science.
The fact is when you are on a morning walk with Srila Prabhupada, depending on who was there, the disciples around him established a certain cadence, a certain energy, a certain give and take to the conversation. And Srila Prabhupada would enter into that dynamic, that particular kind of tone to the conversation. It didn’t mean that he was creating an absolute universal position on things.
It was his engagement with the conversation at that time. I remember instances when we’d be sitting in his room in Paris and he would say, life comes from matter. Now discuss.
Now, it doesn’t mean he was claiming that life comes from matter. It means that he was prompting us to exercise our understanding and to engage in a discussion about it. He wanted to test, have you understood properly? What our theology is saying? Yeah, so it’s unfortunate, you know, some people have generalized in that way.
Yes, this is such an important point. I mean, it is when I was introduced to Krishna Consciousness at one level, I was attracted by the scientific presentation and I read the Origins magazine that was much more easily available than other books by Sadaput Prabhu. But later on I read Mechanistic Science and these were such deep and sophisticated presentations of we could say how there are domains of reality that science doesn’t reach and we could explore them through spirituality.
But then there are books which like life comes from life, which actually made me very uncomfortable. And the whole it was almost a very polarized kind of presentation over there. And then I used to think that this is Prabhupada’s position and then the devotees are simply softening things up.
But then over the years as I have noticed this that if I look at Prabhupada’s tone in Easy Journey to Other Planets, it is very very different from his tone in Life Comes from Life. So we would like to submit to our scientific brothers, scientific friends and there is not one word of criticism of science in Easy Journey to Other Planets. So this is a strike.
So what you said just now that Prabhupada was responding to the mood at the particular time and if the devotees around him were in a more confrontational mood, then he would also respond in a confrontational mood, but that wasn’t necessarily the way he was always. No. It was barely the way he was ever.
You know maybe some of us were fanatics, but Prabhupada was never a fanatic. Prabhupada was a very reasonable person and he was very open to suggestion as well. You know if there was he would very often ask.
He would say, you know, what do you think? I remember one time in Geneva he was given an invitation to speak at the World Health Organization. World Health Organization promotes family planning and contraception and other ways of reducing poverty by reducing the size of a population and so on. So I remember Prabhupada calling out to me, Jogeshwar came to his room and he said, I have a concern.
He said, I have a concern that if we go to this engagement at the World Health Organization, which by the way was it an agency of the United Nations, prestigious organization, he said my concern is that they will take a picture of me and they will say this Swami endorses our program of contraception and birth control. What do you think? I knew perfectly well that Srila Prabhupada was capable of answering such things himself, but he wanted us to think. He wanted us to exercise our intelligence to come to a reasonable perspective on things.
So it was an opportunity for to engage me in service really is what he was doing. So I said, well, you know, this is a prestigious organization and that would be a rather cheap publicity stunt on their part. I don’t think they would do that.
It would ultimately be detrimental to them and they don’t need that. They don’t need to do that. There’s no reason for them to do that.
I don’t think you need to be concerned about. And he said then let’s go. And we went.
So, you know, he was a reasonable person. Yeah, he was against those particular scientists who would misuse science to promote their own atheistic ideas, but he was not against science per se. Prabhu, listen, every acharya in our history has been an innovator.
Every acharya in our history has brought some new innovation to our tradition, you know, it’s what Rupa Goswami called yukta-vairagya. Appropriate renunciation. You engage everything.
Everything belongs to Krishna. Everything is Krishna’s energy. You engage it properly.
You don’t reject it. That’s mayavada. This is maya.
We do reject it. Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, just to give you one small example, were the first people in history to build a flush toilet in Vrindavan. In their home in Vrindavan, they put a flush.
People are amazed. They’d never seen a flush toilet before. There was no objection.
Oh, this has never been done before, so we’re not going to do it. Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati wore watches. That was considered ostentatious for a sannyasi to wear a mechanical watch.
I have a picture of Srila Prabhupada wearing two watches, one American time, one India time. This was early on in London in 1969. He had two watches he was wearing.
Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati during the late 20s, early 30s, would mount what he called the theistic exhibitions. This was a square mile of tents, a whole entire square mile of tents, hundreds of exhibits that would display the advances in science, in medicine, in agriculture, in education, in sports, in film. He had a tent that would show films, right, in order to catch the attention of people.
And then he would, the hosts there would direct them toward other tents where there would be exhibits of Vaisnava history, artifacts from the past and so on, original scriptures and so on. Srila Prabhupada appreciated communications technology, right. He once said that if my mission could be broadcast on television, it would be a big success.
So when he visited for the first time ISKCON Press in Boston, he walked into the loft where the press was located and on the filthy floor he bowed down and gave his prostrated obeisances to a machine. you know it it’s naive to think that he was against science. Absolutely naive.
And I think it’s strange that those few people who would propagate the idea that Prabhupada was against science used the internet to do so. Yes, that’s true. This is amazing.
I knew Prabhupada appreciated the printing press, but and Bhaktisanta Chakra had put that on their official flag, the Brihat Mudanga, but Prabhupada bowing down, I didn’t know about that. So now with respect to technology, there is no doubt that Prabhupada was quite resourceful with respect to using it. But now with respect to science itself, if we consider different domains, there are seemingly anti-science statements of Prabhupada with respect to the moon issue, then with respect to evolution and with respect to the planetarium concept itself and the cosmological understanding.
So now are there, now we could discuss these issues one by one if you would like because this idea that Prabhupada was not anti-science it is something which which I also instinctively agree with but there are his positions that are in the public domain and they are available in his books which seem to give that impression and we need to actually deal with that impression. So I’ll just quickly, if you don’t mind, I’ll go over one of these positions and then you could like to add something. So with respect to the moon, it seems there is a trend in our movement to highlight the most confrontational statements of Prabhupada.
So when I was introduced, I was told that we never went to the moon and this is your test of faith. Do you still have faith in science or do you accept Prabhupada’s authority? Now it was years later that I came across Prabhupada made many different statements. Yes, Prabhupada did at some time say that he didn’t go to the moon.
We didn’t go to the moon. Other times he said that we went some we went we might have gone to some other planet or we went there, but we didn’t access the moon and and depending on the kind of rhetoric we are presented like right in the Bhagavad Gita introduction Prabhupada says we have labored a lot to go to the moon but we have not labored enough to raise our consciousness. So it seems that Prabhupada was not transiently against it.
So there are so so currently I whenever devotees ask me this question, I tell Prabhupada had these three different statements and we can’t reduce Prabhupada to one position. So Prabhupada’s main point was that don’t get so excited with technological advancement as to think that you don’t need spiritual advancement. That was so any thoughts on this issue Prabhu? Yes, I think you’ve said the right thing.
He was concerned that we that his students particularly in those days late 1960s when there were these extraordinary achievements, you know going to the moon was no small thing, you know. I think he was very concerned that people would become so enamored of such an accomplishment that therefore they would say we don’t need God. We have technology.
First of all, we have to distinguish between science and technology. Technology is the practical application of some discoveries of science. Science is the pursuit of knowledge.
So we we need to make that distinction. He was not concerned about science. I think he was concerned with our preoccupation with technology that if science is able to create so many wonderful miraculous technological wonders whether it’s spaceships or the different kinds of machinery that therefore we would think we don’t need God.
He was concerned about that and therefore he was promoting simple living and high thinking, you know, don’t become overly dependent on technology. But you’re quite right that there were times when he would leave the door open because the description of the moon that we have in the Puranas and so on is of a place that’s quite different from what we perceive through our technological tools of observation. The moon that we see at night, the place that is gone to by material vehicles, spaceships and orbiting satellites and so on, that place does not look like the moon that is described in the Sanskrit texts.
So there’s a distinction that needs to be made. There’s the Puranic universe and there’s the Siddhantic universe. The Siddhantic universe is the universe that more closely approximates what you can see at night as the moon, the different planets in the orbits that we can calculate with our tools of observation and material analysis.
That’s the Siddhantic universe is the universe on which astrology is predicated and so on. The Puranic universe is a universe that is perceived through realization. It’s perceived through purification.
It’s perceived through an ability to go within ourselves and become so free from all material desire that there are dimensions of the reality around us that are revealed. Not because we’ve captured them with technological machines, but because we have prepared ourselves through dint of our selfless service to God that these things are revealed. The way Brahma by dint of his sincere meditation perceived the spiritual universe, that was nothing that he did with the telescope.
He did that because he sincerely went within himself for thousands of celestial years and gave of himself Tappa, Tappa, Tappa. He heard this clue when he was climbing back up the lotus stem, Tappa, Tappa. Give something of yourself if you wish to understand who you are and what is this lotus where you came from.
So we wish to perceive that deeper reality and therefore we are undergoing the Tappa, Tapasya, purification through the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra, through the living of a devotional life, cultivating of devotional qualities. Then we become qualified to receive transcendental knowledge. And if you read the discussions, for example, in the letters books that Srila Prabhupada had with a reporter shortly after the moon landing, a reporter said, so did we go to the moon or we did not, according to your opinion? Srila Prabhupada said, if you want to go to some place, you should be able to stay there.
So he was not exactly saying we never went to the moon. What he’s saying is the proof that you have made something a real accomplishment is that you can go and stay there. You cannot, you can touch it and come back.
What kind of an accomplishment is that? That’s true. So, you know, just to clarify, so this is, we could say this is something like our saying that Vrindavan or Mayapur, they are geographical places on the earth and we could physically go there. But we are not really accessing Vrindavan or Mayapur by going there.
So we need purification, just as we need purification to access the real Vrindavan, similarly, we need a certain level of karmic qualification at least to access the real moon. Yeah. So, so this is, this means we can give, we can give credit to science where it is due and we can give science, give credit to technological achievements where they are made.
At the same time, they needn’t be seen as threats to the spiritual truths or the scriptural truths that we cherish. Is that? Yes, we might even go so far as to say that the more you perceive science as a threat, the more you are revealing the insecurity of your own spiritual position. Something is a threat to you, only if you are uncertain about your own position on that thing.
So sometimes, you know, this, this was characteristic of devotees in, of devotees in the early stages of their spiritual life, shall we say, that in order to feel secure in their own spiritual convictions, they have to prove someone else’s convictions wrong. Yeah. We’re right, you’re wrong.
Well, that’s a kanishta adhikari position. That, that, that’s a naive position. The, the more nuanced, mature position is, what you have done is wonderful.
These things that you have accomplished, they’re extraordinary. Let’s discuss the points of tangency between our different worldviews. Now, now you are engaging, you are embracing, you are bringing people inside the circle of Krishna conscious culture, so that they have an opportunity to make spiritual advancement.
Do you think someone’s going to make spiritual advancement if you put them down, if you decry their life work, if you negate the value of everything they’ve strived so sincerely to accomplish? What kind of a cold-hearted attitude is that? That’s not a Vaishnav attitude. Yes, that’s amazing. And so, so now when Prabhupada’s statements, so Prabhupada did make at times provocative statements.
So with respect to the moon landing, but you have addressed them quite well. Now with respect to evolution, again over the years, I’ve been told, I saw that evolution as intrinsically, initially, I thought it intrinsically incompatible with the atheistic vision of the universe. But then it’s over the last maybe five, six years as I’ve interacted with devotee scholars, that many devotees have pointed out to me that it was, that Prabhupada always presented evolution as atheistic.
That, that nobody ever presented to Prabhupada the idea of theistic evolution. So, Prabhupada’s critique of evolution, and that seems to be quite strong critique, like you said, kick on their face and things like that. So was that also you see more as a critique of the atheistic implications of evolution rather than evolution itself? Yeah, you’re raising a very important point here.
Srila Prabhupada responded to the information that we, his students, presented to him. Unfortunately, we, his students, were not always astute, were not always level-headed or informed about the subject we were presenting for his evaluation. We presented things in such a way that we already had made up our minds what his response would be.
So the information was presented in such a way that it would trigger the response that we wanted from him, namely kick on their face or whatever it might have been. When things were presented, yes. Sorry, so was there, you’re saying, was there anti-evolution ethos among the hippies in the counterculture already? By any chance? Or it was just anti-establishment? So anti-evolution was a part of the anti-establishment itself.
I question whether there was ever much thought at all in that hippie or countercultural world to scientific issues. That generation was responding to more of the, what we used to call the military-industrial complex. You know, we were more concerned about the war in Vietnam and things going against nature.
We were in favor of a more natural life, is the way we called it. No, this was more after people had become devotees, and again, they were very young. We were very young and impressionable and somewhat insecure in our devotional life.
So we took this very strident position, and so we would present something to Srila Prabhupada in such a way that we would say, so foolish, aren’t they, Srila Prabhupada? You know, that kind of a presentation. It wasn’t an objective spelling out of, well, here are the issues. Here’s the information.
Because when that was done, Srila Prabhupada would answer, yes, they’ve understood correctly. I’ll give you an example from my own time with him. I was at the Woodstock Festival in August of 1969, and just before going to Woodstock, I read a book by a paleontologist named Desmond Morris, M-O-R-R-I-S, called The Naked Ape.
The Naked Ape was a best-selling book in the late 60s, and that said basically humans are nothing but animals. That we shave our armpits, but then we put on fragrance and of, you know, deodorant, and basically all that we’re doing is in a more sophisticated way, creating the scents that the body exudes in order to attract the opposite sex. Or we shake hands.
This is something that we see the apes doing, that they’ll stick out their hand in order to show, I don’t have a rock. I’m not a threat to you. So this book was basically saying that humans are just a more sophisticated version of an animal.
So I went to Srila Prabhupada, and I told him about this book, and my expectation was he would say this scientist has no understanding that human life is the opportunity to know God, and so he has thoroughly misunderstood, and he’s wrong. And instead, after I described what the book was saying, Prabhupada’s eyes got big. He said, yes, he has understood perfectly.
You should use this book in your preaching work. How do you mean, Srila Prabhupada? He said, we are animals. Human beings without any understanding of Krishna, they’re just sophisticated animals, just like this gentleman has said.
So depending on how the information is presented, he didn’t say kick on his face. He said, use the book in your preaching. So everything was a question of how it was presented to him, and very often, because we were insecure, and we wanted him to reinforce, yes, we have the right way, everybody else is wrong, we’d be lopsided in our presentation to him.
I remember another time, a Godbrother, who I will not mention by name, was putting down other religions, and he’s saying, you know, just like the Christian Church doesn’t believe that animals have souls, and they’re all wrong. Prabhupada looked at him and said, not wrong, incomplete. That’s a very important distinction.
He wasn’t putting down something because it didn’t have our perspective, he was saying, they have a perspective, it’s incomplete. So, I think it’s critically important that people understand the ecumenism of Srila Prabhupada’s position. Prabhupada sought to encourage everyone, and that included Mayavadis, that included atheists, that included agnostics, that included physicalist scientists, that Prabhupada’s compassion was not limited just to people who thought the way he did.
That’s silly. That’s insulting to Srila Prabhupada, that Srila Prabhupada put down anybody. I never heard Srila Prabhupada put down one soul, ever.
Sometimes he would be strong with someone, you know, if you take this position, and you’re not willing to discuss with us, then I cannot help you. He would say something like that. Or sometimes you take even stronger language, you know, fools and rascals, but he wasn’t putting them down.
He was saying they have an imperfect understanding. That’s a very different thing from what we have a tendency to do, which is to polarize the world into right and wrong. We’re right, and everybody else is wrong.
Yeah. That is not our siddhanta, that is not our culture, that is not our ethos, and it certainly was not Srila Prabhupada’s character or nature. That’s a big mistake.
That’s amazing. You know, continuing this point of how Prabhupada responded, that when I read Prabhupada’s unabridged conversation on evolution in the Veda base, actually Prabhupada is not dismissing evidence. If some evidence is presented, we had this kind of bird which has these characteristics, and Prabhupada explains, okay, it may have been like this, it may have been like that.
So Prabhupada is not dismissing the evidence. So what you’re saying is very strikingly true that Prabhupada was responding to the way we presented things to him. So now, thank you for bringing that point up.
Now, we could discuss two distinct things. So if we don’t have to have this conflict model in the approach of science and scripture, specifically scripture, the Puranic tradition, the Bhagavatam, now there could be two distinct things that there are certain descriptions in our scripture which seem to contradict what science is. So we could have this with respect to history, and we could have this with respect to cosmology.
And we could have take another tack and see there are some things in scripture which could add to or expand science perspective of things. Now the two could be related, but the two are somewhat distinct. So the first is more like a defensive that this scientific understanding and this scriptural understanding, they contradict each other.
So how do we deal with that? And probably, if we consider the areas of conflict, one is consciousness, that does consciousness come from matter, does consciousness come from spirit? Then second is with respect to evolution. And the third is with respect to the universe. There could be many more.
Now, in my understanding, with respect to consciousness, relatively speaking, we are on stronger footing. Science is opening to the human’s challenge of how consciousness cannot be so easily materially explained. If we try to challenge evolution, then it is, there are scientists doing that.
But that is not as sound footing as saying, talking about consciousness as irreducible. And when we come to the Puranic universe, now some devotees present this universe as a challenge or a critique to the scientific vision of the universe. And if we do that, I think we would be on the most on the weakest footing.
Because it’s very difficult to empirically or even rationally, in language that scientists can accept, talk about the Puranic universe as a, as an explanatory alternative or a placement for the scientific vision of the universe. So how, what are your thoughts about these areas where science seems to conflict with scripture? Yes. It is the magnificence of Krishna’s creation, that it is able to accommodate multiple realities simultaneously.
Our vision may be limited to four dimensions, you know, three spatial dimensions in time. The reality is that creation is multidimensional. So many more dimensions than we can perceive.
I’ll give you one example. And this is from my brother, Brian. If you imagine an ant walking along a line, the ant is in a two dimensional world that can only go forward and backward.
That’s all there is. If you come up closer, and you see that it’s not a line, but it’s a length of garden hose, then you are beginning to understand that the ant has more than these two dimensions, and there are more possibilities for what the ant can do. The ant can go around the garden hose one direction, the ant can go around the hose the other direction.
If you drill a hole in that hose, the ant can go inside and there are more directions. So there are multidimensions, but our senses are so blunt, we cannot perceive them. All we see is the two dimensional external form of what the ants world looks like.
In the same way, there are many more dimensions to reality that are kind of curled or wrapped up. And our senses are too blunt, we don’t see them all. The universe of God’s creation is like that.
It has so many more dimensions than our blunt senses are capable of perceiving. The behavior, if you will, the comportment of Vaishnavas in the world by Srila Prabhupada’s example, is one where we respect each individual according to his or her ability to perceive the dimensions of reality. Not everyone will be able to perceive the same depth of reality as someone who’s had training in Krishna consciousness.
So for that person, the universe is what you can calculate. That ability to calculate something is very reassuring, because it leads to experiments that can be repeated, and you can get the same result when you repeat those experiences, and that’s very reassuring. But the world around me, after all, it’s a cold world out there.
It’s a cruel world out there. So much of our lives is uncertain. People want some certainty.
They want some security in their life. Yes, some predictability, and they’re entitled to that. So it’s understandable if sometimes that side of their emotional meat for a predictable universe overshadows their imagination, their curiosity, their willingness to consider things that are invisible to them, because that’s threatening.
People are afraid of the things they don’t understand. So when it comes to, let’s take your example of evolution, for example, in Bhagavatam’s second canto, there’s a description of the unfolding of the species of life that follows an evolutionary model very much like what Darwin described. From an external perspective, there’s not very much difference between the Darwinian evolutionary emergence of species over time and what’s described in Bhagavatam.
From an external position, there’s a compatibility between those perspectives. The difference, of course, and this is the critical difference, is that Darwin, because he had no training in Krishna consciousness, theorized that it is one species that is emerging from another species, rather than consciousness that is evolving over different body casings to accommodate that evolution of consciousness that he was unable to understand. So we recognize that different communities of people have different perceptions of reality, and for all intents and purposes, that other than Vedic perception of reality is quite useful.
I don’t know about you, but Prabhu, when I go to a dentist, I’m not looking for enlightenment, I’m looking for him to fill my cavity. That’s it. That’s science of dentistry.
It is very useful when I have a tooth problem. Should I reject it because it does not take into account the hidden dimensions of reality and the higher purpose? No, I have a toothache. We have to be a little practical.
Prabhupada was a pharmacologist. He was a pharmacist. He prescribed medicines to people.
Do you think that he had no appreciation for what medicine can do? A tooth fell out. The BBT devotees took him to Japan, where Dainapan was printing his books, and as a courtesy to him, they brought him to the dentist, and the dentist made a tooth for him. Did he say, I reject this because it’s atheistic? He was a very practical person.
Very, very practical person. Now, at the same time, you were correct to point to consciousness. Consciousness is the real, that’s the dividing line, is that we acknowledge consciousness as a non-material phenomenon, and physicalist science has not yet come to that point.
Hmm. You know, this is a lot of valuable points. First is that if people have a need for predictability in their world, and they pursue the world that way, we need to give them that space.
And in fact, we can also use that knowledge when it is required for us. So, the challenge comes up when Sadaputra Prabhupada I think uses this phrase in one of his articles, he talks about non-scientific extrapolations of scientific observations. So, some knowledge is valid in a particular domain, but then if it is universalized, that is where the problem may come up.
Right. If I go to a dentist and the dentist says, you see, you don’t need God, you just need me, I can fill your cavity. Well, that’s a misuse of dentistry.
That’s a simple but very illustrative example of this point. Yeah. I am the dentist God.
I am a dentist God, yeah. So, now, coming to the point of, now there is, Prabhupada also used the word evolution, and he used it in terms of, as you said, the evolution of consciousness across species. That is definitely entirely compatible with our philosophy.
At the same time, there is an account of history that comes up with the evolutionary worldview. And that seems to be significantly different from the account of history that comes in the Puranic worldview. And that also applies to cosmology also, to some extent.
But in one sense, if we talk about, say, physical or not just physicalness, physical or subtle structures, it’s relatively easier to say that, okay, we could have multiple dimensions of reality. And we could have say perceptions like a computer, it can have multiple levels of access for different people. And we access certain files in the computer, somebody else has access different files.
So that is, so with respect to the universe, it’s relatively easier. But in history, things happen in a particular way. So the evolutionary account of how species came about, one species led to another, and the Puranic account of, in fact, Puranic account can also be called as devolution.
So the two do seem to be, can we just call them as different levels of perception? Because we’re looking at events unfolding, and there could be different interpretation of the events. But here, we’re not talking about different interpretation of the events, the event themselves are radically different. How would they be compatible? Well, you’re raising a very important point.
And it’s a discussion that’s ongoing at the Temple of the Vedic Planetarium, with regard to the exhibits in the Planetarium building. And I agree with the majority of the executive committee members for the exhibits, that it’s not our business to prove that science is right. We’re creating a science museum to the Vedic perspective.
And we’re looking to present what is in Bhagavatam. So in that sense, I have no, there’s no, I have no problem with the approach that’s being taken to the exhibits there. Sometimes I think it gets a little too stridently anti-science, and I have a problem with that.
But our responsibility is to present the Vedic perspective, the Puranic view of history. I believe that Srila Prabhupada created the Bhaktivedanta Institute, because he wanted his scientist disciples, and remember, he was very proud of his scientist disciples. He didn’t say, reject your education in science.
He was very, very encouraging. The Bhaktivedanta Institute was the one project that he sanctioned for receiving funding, not as loans to be repaid, but just as funds for maintenance. It was the one project that he would support without saying, you have to repay the money.
That’s how serious he was about wanting to see Krishna consciousness established by the Bhaktivedanta Institute as scientifically respectable. Not necessarily compatible with what science says, but as scientifically respectable, that there is a scientifically valid base. Meaning that if someone with an open mind applies their intelligence to understanding the Puranic explanation of the cosmological history, that they will find something reasonable there to consider.
That it’s not just religious mythology of wild creatures, and boars, and elephant-headed gods, and the way people will dismiss Hinduism as some mythological religion. See, that’s what Prabhupada was looking to avoid, was people thinking that Krishna consciousness was Hinduism, that it was religious mythology. Bhaktivinoda Thakur had a very brilliant way of approaching this in his Krishna Samhita, where he presented the Bhagavatam in a way that would be acceptable by intellectual readers.
What he described basically was that the reality of the scriptures can be understood according to a person’s adhikara, according to their spiritual qualification. So that if someone had good material training, educated intellectual rational thinking, but perhaps atheist or no interest in religion, their understanding of the Bhagavatam would be as metaphorical. And he presented things in a metaphorical way, that Putana is a metaphor for a wayward guru who is not presenting things properly, and that the Aghasura, demon, is the ugly material reality that is going to devour the sincere souls.
So it’s the embodiment of the Asura of Agha. So this was Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s brilliant contribution, that he recognized some people, their only approach to Bhagavatam cosmology would be as metaphorical. But he accommodated that.
He didn’t put them down. He didn’t say these people are useless, they’re stupid, they’re going to hell for their atheistic ideas. He gave them access.
Prabhu, is this not our mission? What we’re talking about here speaks to a much larger issue, Chaitanya Chowdhury. It speaks to our relationship with the world, not just our relationship with science. But it speaks to the position of Vaishnavas in the larger world altogether.
That we are here as servants. We are here not to criticize and to put down. Sometimes a strong position is needed if someone is doing harm.
If people are being hurt, you have to interfere. You have to stop that. If wrong is being done, as Vaishnavas we are compelled by our faith to intercede and to stop that wrong.
But there is a way to do that. It’s from a place of love. It’s from a place in our heart that says, this person, because they are so misled, they’re so unaware of their own spiritual divinity, they’re doing harm.
So they must be stopped. It’s the same, but it’s from a place of love. This is such a, so many points you made.
Amazing. But I’ll just try to recap and then you can elaborate on that. So often we take the metaphorical understanding as, as a compromise, as something which is undesirable.
But what you are saying is that the metaphorical understanding is, could be an expression of compassion. So for those who, so we could say that there’s a literal understanding, there’s a metaphorical understanding and we could say, maybe transcendental understanding. So for some people, the literal understanding will be utterly unacceptable.
And the transcendental understanding will be inaccessible. Presently, based on the level of consciousness. So the only thing that would be except that that could make sense to them would be the metaphorical understanding and Bhaktivinoda Thakur has provided in that way.
So it’s a, rather than a compromise, it’s actually compassion to provide them some way to engage with, engage with this wisdom, rather than simply dismiss it or feel threatened by it. Now we are coming in our discussion to the heart of Srila Prabhupada’s mission, to the heart of Krishna consciousness, to the heart of our entire Guruvarga, is that we, paradukkaduki, our only discomfort is seeing that other people are suffering. And our job is to not alienate them, but to bring them to Krishna.
Do you think that you are doing any kind of service at all? If by being so proud of your Krishna conscious knowledge, that you put someone down because they don’t believe in God, that you put them down because they think that science is so wonderful that it will define life, and they do not understand that consciousness is not a material phenomenon, that it comes from a different realm altogether. Are you doing them any good by your stridency? Or are you demonstrating your own ignorance of true Vaishnava character? Are you demonstrating your own insensitivity and your own weakness, perhaps, that you’re not so sure of your own position? You know, look at tyrants and bullies, and you scratch the surface and what you find is someone who’s very insecure, very weak, very uncertain of their own worth and strength. Yeah.
Yes, it’s amazing. So, compassion would be accompanied with a willingness for engagement, whereas insecurity would lead to aggression. So, now, taking this point forward, I would like to go back to what you said the difference between, even if something is not compatible with science, it can be respectable in the eyes of science, or at least respectable in the eyes of scientifically educated people.
So, maybe, can you just briefly explain what is going to be depicted in the planetarium and why you felt it is trident or how it could be made more acceptable? Like you said, you don’t want people to consider it to be religious mythology, but how can we go about doing that? To give you the best example, we have to go a little bit back in history, because life consciousness has been a puzzle for a very, very long time. You go back, let’s say, 500 years or so to the French philosopher, René Descartes, who read that the only truth that he knew for certain was that he existed. I know I exist, you know, Descartes said, you know.
So, ergo sum is how, je pense, donc je suis, is how he said it in French. So, essentially, there has to be a thinking entity in order for there to be a thought. Yes.
Then, about maybe 100 years or so later, the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz argued that if we could enlarge a brain and inspect it, we would only find parts that are pushing against each other. He said, we will find nothing that explains perception itself. So, even going back hundreds and hundreds of years, what is life, what is consciousness, has been a big puzzle.
So, today, this is called the hard problem. That’s a phrase by philosopher David Chalmers. Yeah.
It refers to how do we explain the physical brain functions can generate conscious experience. So, I see a red apple. I have a reaction.
I have an emotional reaction to that apple. I have a headache. I have a sensation within me about that headache.
I feel sad. I have an emotion. Where do these things come from? How do these things occur just through mechanical neurological interactions? They can’t account for that first person, irreducible meanness, that sense of myself, the sense that I have that can never be explained just by a mechanical scientific definition of how the machinery is operating.
So, what’s going to happen inside the planetarium building, there are five levels and you come in and there’s a first introduction to what is the Bhagavatam. You will see the sages at Namisharanya, Srila Prabhupada explaining. When these truths were enunciated previously from an oral tradition, then they were codified in written form by Vyasadeva.
Now, this has been passed down over the generations. Visitors… Sorry. I mean, the sudden shift from you’re talking about Descartes and Leibniz.
So, how did we shift from there to the description of the universe? If you could just explain the transition. Because when visitors to the planetarium go up the escalator to the first floor, but in the West, we would say the second floor. That first level of exhibits is about consciousness.
The first exhibit will be an entire wall that looks like a mirror and the guest will step forward onto a platform. It’s actually a sensory platform and look at himself or herself in the mirror wall and they will watch themselves transform from one body to another. Maybe the eyes will remain the same.
So, you understand that the consciousness is not changing, but they will see themselves become an elephant, a dog, an old person, a young person, someone of different ethnicity, long hair, short hair, young, old. They’ll see these physical transformations and the idea of the exhibit is to give an immediate visceral sense that you, the conscious entity, are different from the changeable physical vehicle that you inhabit. So, from the very beginning, this notion of consciousness is something non-material that does not arise from the interaction of particles and wave functions and forces and energies over historic time.
That it is something permanent, eternal and different from the physical body will be impressed upon visitors. So, it seems the exhibits, in one sense, may turn out to be more important than the architecture also. Because the exhibits will make the architecture intelligible.
Without the right exhibits, the architecture would just be as a depiction of a particular group’s religious myth. Throughout history, architecture has been to attract people initially with the most obvious thing they can see. Look at it.
Oh, it’s big, impressive. Let me go find out what’s going on there. But once they’ve been attracted, then the knowledge can come.
Then the knowledge will come out. That’s beautiful. So, you’re saying now, if we go to, if we introduce consciousness, then from there, we can go to the idea that there could be different levels of conscious perception and that the universe is perceived in a different way in the yogic world view or whatever the Puranic world view, you could put it that way.
Yes, that is the current plan for exhibits within the planetarium in Mayapur, is to bring people gradually from that first level of this emotional experience of not the body. Then they will see how consciousness can incarnate on different planets as well. And that opens up the notion of, well, what is the background to this arrangement? Why is there this arrangement? Then they go up to the next level and they’ll get a deeper sense of the history of thought and eventually leading up to the fourth level where there will be a representation of the Puranic universe, different from the Siddhantic universe.
Then they go to the top floor, which is the full dome projection, and they sit in the auditorium and they will have a filmic, three-dimensional experience of traveling out of the material universe and into the spiritual world. So it will be, if you will, a crash course in Krishna consciousness. And then as they leave the dome and they go down the stairs, that will be a representation of the soul’s descent from the spiritual world back down into material world through the various planetary systems.
And when we come back to the ground floor level, there will be a display of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his teachings and coming into being of the Krishna consciousness movement. It’s wonderful. So now this is with respect to the geography, if I may go back.
So how are we going to, say, reconcile the history, say, the Puranic epochs of yugas of so much time as compared to the evolutionary worldview? So are we trying to reconcile or we’re just saying that these are two different worldviews? At least, now, I don’t think the history will come in the planetarium per se, but I think we’re talking more about where science and scripture seem to differ. And Bhaktivinoda Thakur uses quite a radical approach to say that in his Chaitanya Shiksham, in his Krishna Samhita, that history can be measured differently and Bhagavatam should be studied primarily for transcendental knowledge. So would that be the approach? My hope is that there will be a dispassionate, compassionate view by the creators of the exhibits in the planetarium, that there won’t be this antipathy between the Puranic perspective and the scientific perspective.
I think that would be a mistake. I think it’s sufficient for us to present the Puranic view and then to describe, well, there are differences in understanding of this information of what we perceive, and respectfully to say that here’s one understanding of how the history of the cosmos has come into being, and here’s another perspective. Ultimately, Prabhu, I don’t believe that the objective facts of creation are all that different.
I don’t believe that somehow our perspective on the reality of the cosmos negates what, you know, orbiting satellites perceive and the background static of creation and so on. I somehow think that that’s no threat to us. What we can contribute to the scientific perspective is that the universe itself is a gift of love from God.
You see, science does not take a moral position. Science by definition is a model. It attempts to achieve a kind of neutrality when it comes to values, morality, purpose, and so on.
Well, that’s where we can make our contribution. We can add the missing elements. We can add the missing components.
Krishna consciousness is the missing dimension of science. Missing dimension of science. You mean that it will expand the understanding of science with respect to subtler aspects of the universe or give a more meaningful and love-filled vision of the universe? What do you mean by the word dimension here? Yes, Krishna consciousness can provide the tools of inner purification that will allow the curious to derive a fuller understanding of the creation around them.
Without Krishna consciousness, you will have a partial vision of the universe. There’s only so far that we can perceive. We’ll never be able to go so far out that we’ll know what happens at the end of the universe.
We can never get there. It would take too much time and the information will never come back. Nor can we know what is outside the outer limits of the universe.
That’s also forbidden to our perceptions. We cannot go deeper down inside subatomic particles than the plunk length. The plunk length is the smallest dimension that we can even imagine.
We can’t go smaller than that. Krishna says, I am what’s beneath the plunk length. I am what is past the limits of your orbiting satellites perspective.
And even more, we are able to give the foundation beneath the why of the universe. Why is there something and not nothing? Science can’t answer that question. We can provide an idea that a reasonable person can consider.
But the universe is here as a playground for errant souls to act out their fantasies so that when finally they realize I am alone, I’m frustrated, I am unhappy, I am not achieving the fulfillment that I look for. Let me now inquire what is the deeper mystery to life. We will be there for them.
That contribution to science we can make. So this is beautiful. So what you are saying is where science seems to conflict scripture that can be adjusted and presented.
And that’s not really the issue where we should be focusing on, whether it’s specifically in repeating the planetarium or in the science religion dialogue. Our contribution is to not so much challenge what science says, but to provide what science can’t say, what science doesn’t say. So like the moral dimension of the dimension of meaning and purpose of life.
Now you’ve put your finger on the essence of Srila Prabhupada’s mission. Yes. I think anyone who becomes distracted by anything other than that purpose behind his mission is missing the point.
They’re just missing the point. We are not here to defeat science. We are not here to defend the superiority of our perspective over someone else’s.
That’s not our mission. That’s not our purpose. Our purpose is to take a humble with a blade of grass between our teeth.
My dear sir, you’re such a learned scientist. You are so educated. Kindly apply your knowledge and insights into this perspective on the eternality of the self and see if there isn’t something wonderful there as well.
So this brings us to a further point that this is something which we can offer distinctive, say, from what Christianity or other religions also offer. The Christians are, in a sense, much more advanced in the science religion dialogue in the sense that they are devoted far more resources for that purpose. And they’ve written a lot more books than say what we have done.
But if we consider what is it that our tradition can bring distinctively, so there are some Christians and some religionists and generalists who see science religion as a conflict, but they are extreme. But if there is a dialogue, so what is it that we bring distinctively that could be our contribution to the truth table, which others are not so much bringing forth? Well, the number one contribution is the nature of life itself. That consciousness is an eternal phenomenon.
And not only defining life in terms of its constituent qualities, but also life as a reflection of the supreme life. If we have emotion, if we have form, if we have personality, can we possess something that God does not possess? The creation is a reflection of the creator. So by the evidence, we are able to present that if the thing that makes life worth living is people, personality, the individual irreducible self that allows for love to happen, that allows for exchange of friendships to occur.
If that is at the foundation of everything that makes life worth living, do you not think that that exists in the source of life? How can we possess something that where we come from does not possess? We have a contribution to make. Yes. So if I look at the broad science, spirituality or religion dialogue, I see that Christians focus more on trying to prove the existence of God.
Whereas if Buddhists are also quite well advanced and Buddhists focus on, they also focus on consciousness, but they don’t talk about a locus of consciousness being a non-material soul. They basically talk about various paranormal phenomena based on which they try to establish that consciousness is not reducible. So I wrote a book on reincarnation that I did a survey of study.
So Christians have put in a lot of studies on near-death experiences and outer body experiences. And their focus is that life continues after death, but they are not so much interested in past life memories because they don’t accept reincarnation and transmigration. So there is one approach in the science spirituality is to focus on proving that existence is not possible without some kind of designing intelligence to it.
The other approach is to talk that consciousness, this is the Buddhist approaches to talk about how consciousness is an irreducible aspect of the creation. And in one sense, both these approaches are significantly developed. But what you are saying is that what we, our distinctive contribution could be not just the reality of consciousness, but the aspect of personality being integral to consciousness and then the reciprocation between personalities, which is what makes life fulfilling.
So I think this could be our distinctive contribution. Well, yes, but at the same time, I think we have to be very cautious. You know, it’s one thing if internally, we have conversations about the difference between the acintya, veda, veda, tattva, understanding of life and the Buddhist perspective of life or the Christian perspective of life.
And I don’t mean to sound heretic or anything. I don’t believe our job is to convert anybody to another point of view. I don’t think our job is to make a Buddhist into a Vaishnava.
I don’t think it’s our job to make a Christian into a Vaishnava. I don’t. I just don’t.
I remember Srila Prabhupada saying, if you are going to be a Christian, be a real Christian. If you are going to be a Buddhist, understand what Buddha was teaching and be a real Buddhist. Prabhupada was not looking to convert anybody to anything.
Prabhupada came, he presented knowledge, he wanted people to not suffer in their lives. You know, I don’t think it was some promotional propaganda when he said so often that religion is a first class religion by which the followers develop love for God. I don’t think it was just painting some advertising slogan, you know, but really what he meant was Krishna is the way.
You know, I don’t think that was his purpose. I truly believe he wanted people, whatever their particular persuasion, to make progress. That’s all.
Make some progress. Not some sweeping, you know, revolutionary worldwide conversion of all men and women and children to wearing saris and dhotis and shaving their heads and wearing tilak and kunti mala. That wasn’t his mission.
Yes. I was actually, when I was talking about contributions of different traditions, I was not at all talking about how we convert them. My point was that there are a lot of young devotees in India, especially they come from IITs and other top universities and they would like to use their scientific training and scientific interest in engaging in some dialogue with, in engaging in the science-spirituality dialogue.
That’s fine. No problem. What I’m saying is before you even attempt to do that, bow down to the deities on the altar and beg from the bottom of your heart for the humility the pridelessness, the love that will allow you to engage in that dialogue in a way that will actually touch people’s hearts.
If all that you do is present knowledge, well, you know, personality is better than non-personality, that’s not going to convince anybody of anything. If you can do that with a heart full of love for this person, that they will remember forever, which is why you don’t have to be a big scholar to be a devotee. You don’t, you don’t have to have an IIT degree to be a devotee.
The greatest erudite scholar of his generation chose for his guru a person who was illiterate, who could not even write his name. Gokesh Das Babaji had no university education, but Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati said, I will kill myself if you do not accept me as your disciple. You don’t, IIT is wonderful.
If you want to be a scholar, you want to be a scientist, you wish to convince other people about the superiority of a personalist understanding of creation, and God is the supreme personality, wonderful, go do that. But work on your character first. Don’t work on higher degrees.
Work on your character. Work on your sense of humility. Work on loving other people as eternal souls and serving them with a straw between your teeth.
Then anything you say will have a thousand times greater value. That’s my point. Amazing.
Yeah, so otherwise we could just enter into this kind of discourse in a polemical way and we can make things worse. Yeah, and then you’re just part of the problem. I remember Srinak Rishi Prabhu from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies told me a story one time about how he became a devotee.
It’s in the last chapter of Swami in a Strange Land. He said that a god brother had come back to Ireland from India being with Prabhupada and said that he had met with Srila Prabhupada and said, I would like to go back to Ireland and open a temple. And Prabhupada asked him, why do you want to open a temple? He said, well, because right now the Catholics and the Protestants are fighting and if we establish a temple of Krishna consciousness, we can help there.
So Prabhupada said, so your idea is they should have three religions instead of two? And that’s when Srinak Rishi said, now I know I’m in the right place. Now I know I’m in another point of view. We’re not looking to assert the rightness or the righteousness of our point of view.
We are not looking to put down or to overcome other perspectives. That’s a big mistake. That’s not our mission.
Yes, Lord Chaitanya defeated in debate, great scholars, Mayavadi Prakashananda Saraswati and Keshava Kashmiri and so on. But ultimately, he touched their hearts. When he came before the Mayavadi sannyasis, he didn’t just walk in and start spouting philosophy.
He sat where they put their shoes, their sandals. He sat in the filthiest place. Prakashananda came and said, my dear sir, why are you sitting here? Please come and be with us.
I’m so touched by your humility. Ultimately, it’s Vaishnav character that brings someone round, not fancy philosophy. Amazing.
These are the kind of anecdotes from Prabhupada’s life that we often don’t hear about, that we want to create a third religion. Often what we hear about is Prabhupada smashing misconceptions and Prabhupada dismissing or refuting people’s fallacious arguments. Those people who are looking to smash, they are very, very few in number.
They are just very loud. That’s so true. Yeah.
In general, the extremists are few, but they are the most vocal and they seem to dominate the whole landscape then. Yeah. What can you do? So in one sense, we are not just discussing about the specific issue of science and religion, but we are also discussing our, we are re-examining our understanding of Prabhupada so that we get a broader or deeper understanding.
Thank you. Now I am happy that our time together has been productive. Yes.
This has been amazing. So Prabhu, can I just quickly summarize? And if you want to add some things we could add? You are an expert summarizer. I’ve always been amazed at how well you can take an hour or an hour and a half and bring it all down so concisely, please.
I don’t know about that, but I will try. We discussed today about the science, religion dialogue. Initially, we started with your experiences with your brother and others that science is itself a fascinating field of knowledge where people have had experiences of something higher.
Say Einstein, you said, was the last of the classical physicists, classic physicists, who saw the order in the universe as pointing to something higher. But now we are going toward quantum indeterminacy and it’s becoming very confusing and disorderly. But at the same time, consciousness is being introduced as a parameter.
We can bring in some amount of non-material aspect to science and within science. And then we talked about our presentations. And then we discussed about how you started by talking that Prabhupada was not anti-science, Prabhupada used technology and Prabhupada appreciated.
In general, Prabhupada’s mood was not to put down people, but to encourage them. And if we dismiss somebody’s entire life work, and how are we ever going to encourage them? And you gave several anecdotes of how Prabhupada bowed down before the printing press. And Prabhupada also, Prabhupada also talked with you when you mentioned about this book by Dr. Morris, The Naked Ape, and how Prabhupada said, use that book rather than just dismiss the ideas from there.
So a key point, I think, among all the key points, I would say is that Prabhupada was responding to the way things were presented to him. And often in the neophyte stage, to assure us of the correctness of our beliefs, we want to, we want to propagate that others’ beliefs are wrong, or we want to believe that others’ beliefs are wrong. And then accordingly, Prabhupada was presented various worldviews or various theories in that way, and Prabhupada responded to them.
So, but Prabhupada in general was, so you talked about being accommodating, not as an act of being compromising, but an act of being compassionate, that if somebody has arrived at a particular understanding, and so even the scientific, empirical, measurable kind of approach to the universe, that is what gives people in an uncertain world a certain level of predictability. And we can’t strip that away from them. So, our idea should be that from where they are, we raise their understanding upwards.
And then we discussed about cosmology. So basically we discussed about moon issue. Prabhupada’s thrust was, don’t think that because you have technology, you don’t need God.
The specifics of whether he went to the moon was not as important as the moon is experienceable at different levels, just like Vrindavan is experienceable at different levels, and you’re not experiencing the fullness of the moon. So, then we discussed about evolution. So, Prabhupada also, when he talked about evolution, his, the second canto, you said, is the evolution of consciousness.
The concepts are similar to the evolution of species. So, the point is not that we get into the technicalities of firstly, they’re becoming threatened by scientific theories about our scriptural teachings, but we focus on what from our scripture we can offer distinctively to the current worldview, current scientific worldview or current overall worldview. And within that, we discussed a little bit about planetarium.
And you said in the planetarium, the architecture is primarily for attracting initially, but then the exhibits and others will explain. And with respect to consciousness, that is what is our distinctive presentation. And while finding out what our traditional distinctive contribution could be, more important and specific intellectual area we enter into, it’s more important that we cultivate the disposition of humility and service attitude, then whatever we speak will be more effective.
And for us, even in the intellectual domain, it’s not polemical, but it’s compassionate that we need to be. And then we can engage with people rather than thinking that we have to convert them. But we need to elevate their understanding so that their consciousness rises.
Thank you. Any other points you’d like to add or expand to concluding? I was thinking you remind me of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Nimai Pandit, when he heard Keshava Kashmiri recite 100 verses in praise of Mother Ganges, and he was able to summarize, you know, in that 32nd verse, you made this little mistake. Oh, God.
Thank you for that summary, Prabhu. Yes, very nicely done. Very nicely done.
Thank you, Prabhu. This is very inspiring. And I think this will expand the perspectives for many devotees, because it seems to initially for devotees, it can be something which deters them from coming to Krishna consciousness, or if they come to it, sometimes they may just completely compartmentalize their scientific side and their spiritual side to avoid unnecessary tensions.
But, you know, a radically compartmentalized approach is not very sustainable, because sometimes some things will have to be, they will come in contact. So this will actually help both upcoming devotees also as well as existing devotees. So thank you very much for your time and sharing your wisdom.
Hare Krishna, Prabhu. My pleasure. Thank you.