​Are scientific claims of journey to other planets compatible with scripture?

Answer Podcast

So scientific science seems to send people to other planets is this reconcilable with scripture see Shri Prabhupada when he talks about the moon mission he has talked about in a wide variety of ways broadly speaking so I have a full article on this I will just describe it briefly over here so the first Prabhupada said some statement that man did not go to the moon second kind of statement he made is man went out but not to the moon went to some other planet or some other celestial body which we don’t know and third is man went to the moon but did not access the moon now what does this mean Prabhupada’s reason for saying that man cannot go to the moon was that the moon is a higher celestial object and just as a person cannot get gate crashed into America or Canada they have to have the requisite visa similarly we cannot gate crash into the higher planets so Prabhupada’s reasoning is quite different from science approach towards it the science treats the moon as a simple physical object which we can travel in three dimensional space and reach so there is actually reality which is multi-level suppose if you are working on a very high mainframe computer in your company so that when one computer may have like 20 terminals and different people will have different levels of access some people may be A, B, C, D, E drives are there some people may just have access to E drive some higher level people may have access to D and E drives some people may have access to C, D, E drives and the top people may have A, B, C, D, E all now for a person who has access only to E drive for that person A, B, C, D, E may not be seen also all that they will see in the computer is there is only E drive that’s also possible so similarly based on the kind of work that they are doing based on their level of competence or level in the organization they are given access to certain levels similarly reality is multi-level and we can access different levels of reality so without developing the right karma to go to the heavenly planets we cannot access the heavenly level of reality so even when the devatas come to the earth as is described in the Puranas at that time humans cannot see them unless the devatas give them the power to see them so even if it has happened that human beings went to a higher celestial object all that they did is like getting a physical access to Chandralukha to the moon planet it’s like somebody comes in and they want they say that I worked on that mainframe computer but they had only E level access and there was so much other things there they missed out so like that it’s possible that man may have gone to the moon but they simply went in three dimensional space from the earth to the three dimensional replica of the moon the three dimensional you could not replica projection of the moon there is much more to the computer than what is visible to the basic user similarly the moon what we see as the moon is simply a physical object visible with our eyes but Chandralukha is not just the moon that we see with our eyes Chandralukha is a celestial object is a heavenly object is a heavenly place and it can be accessed only by those people who have the karma to go to heaven those who do not have that karma they may go to the geographical area called moon but they won’t access that place so Prabhupada’s main point was not whether man went to the moon or not Prabhupada if you see right in the introduction of Bhagavad Gita itself he is quite we have endeavored a lot to go to the moon but we have not endeavored to raise our consciousness we have not endeavored enough to raise our consciousness and the Bhagavad Gita will guide us how to raise our consciousness so from Srila Prabhupada’s perspective whether man goes to the moon or not that is not a very important question so I said Prabhupada you have three different answers the important point for Srila Prabhupada was don’t get too excited by this even if we go to the moon what are we going to do on the moon we are going to we are eating, sleeping, mating differently here we will go to the moon and do eating, sleeping, mating differently there also so essentially there is nothing to get excited about that was when Prabhupada made all the statements about the moon landing that was the time when man at first time gone to the moon or claimed to have gone to the moon whatever it is and people were very excited about it but the point is what difference is it going to make ultimately so Prabhupada’s point is don’t get too excited about this this is not all that important more important than going to the moon is to raise our consciousness upwards towards the spiritual level of reality so basically we don’t have to make this a major conflict issue the important point is that even if they have gone to the moon they simply have gone to the physical projection of the moon in three dimensional space but Chandra Loka is a higher play is also a higher reality that can be accessed only by the requisite karma did I answer the question that’s great.