As devotee-students do we have to lead two lives?

Anwser Podcast

Thank you very much. You know, as devotee students, do we have to live two separate lives? See, one as a devotee and another as a science student or a scientist. And sometimes the two run contradictory.
It’s not that we live two lives, it is like we have two roles, say, and these different roles are something which are required for everyone at different times. Say, for example, a person, say a person is a doctor, and a doctor has to treat people. Now, when a doctor is treating, the doctor may be a man, and a doctor is treating a woman.
Now, at that time, the doctor may have a girlfriend, doctor may have a wife. That woman, his own wife, he will have to treat her in one way. But then when he is a doctor, he is treating a patient.
He has to be professional over there. Because he is doing a different role over there. So, just as according to our role, we have to adjust our vision.
A doctor cannot treat a patient, even if she is an attractive female. You cannot treat her as a potential for courting. It’s a different relationship.
So, in any field we go, this is just one example I am giving, that we have to adapt our vision appropriately. So, another example I could give is that, say, a judge. Normally, judges are patients.
Judges are people who are doing something wrong. Tomorrow, if a judge’s own son has done something wrong, and he has to judge him. Now, he will have to decide, am I going to look at him as a son, or am I going to look at him as a suspect? Now, in most situations, the government will tell, you know, you have a conflict of interest, you cannot be a judge.
He will ask some other judge to come. That judge will recuse himself. But suppose he has to judge over this, because of some circumstances, then the judge will have to decide which vision, which role, I have to adopt for what particular purpose.
So, like that, we all play different roles in our life. So, it’s not that there are two different lives, it’s two different roles in our life. So, we see that, even in our tradition, at times, it has to be done.
There is Rupa and Sanatan Goswami. When they were living in Bengal, at that time, they were ministers in the assembly of Manawabu Sensha. So, they were internally devotees at heart, but because the ruler was a Muslim, and that Muslim ruler had threatened, he wanted, he was basically, he was more of a fighter than an administrator.
So, he wanted to go and fight and plunder and earn wealth, but he needed somebody to administer his kingdom. So, when he came to know that this Rupa and Sanatan, they were very good administrators, he told them that, I want you as my ministers. And they didn’t want to work with him.
He said that, you have to work for me, and not only you have to work for me, you have to convert to Islam. Otherwise, if you are still in that, I cannot entrust this post to you. I want a Muslim as my minister.
And when they refused, he found their weak point. He said that, if you don’t agree, I will destroy all the Vaishnav temples over there. And just to protect the temples, they had to do that.
So, externally, they were dressed as Muslims, but internally, they were still devotees. So, externally, they had to do that role. They had to do that role of acting as Muslims and acting as ministers.
But internally, they were devotees. So, there are times in history when everybody has to do multiple roles. So, it’s not two necessarily different lives.
There is no… It’s not hypocritical or wrong. It’s just that we have a purpose, and for that purpose, whatever is required, we do it. So, as students, it is that you are going and learning science, and that requires a particular way of looking at the world.
We adopt that. But that is provisional. That is provisional, isn’t it? Science basically looks for… You will note that, I think, later in this book, that science looks for material explanations for material phenomena.
So, science does not consider non-material factors. I gave the example that if you have a fishing net which you cast in a lake, and if the fishing net has a hole of 1 inch by 1 inch, then any aquatic that is smaller than 1 inch by 1 inch will slip away from it. Even if the fisherman or fisherwoman, they cast the net for 100 years, they won’t catch the fish because the net is so small.
The fish are too small to fit in the net. So, like that, science casts a net to get knowledge about the world, metaphorically speaking, and in that net, science basically looks for material phenomena and material explanations for those phenomena. Now, are there non-material phenomena in the world? Are there non-material explanations for phenomena? They may be, they may not be.
That is not the jurisdiction of science. Science may study that in future, but presently science doesn’t focus on that. So, science looks at the world in a particular way, and while looking at that way, it finds certain things, it doesn’t find certain things.
So, we have to very clearly understand, I think this is a major philosophical point, but science does not tell us about reality. Science gives us a model of reality. A model of reality is just like there is America, and there is a map of America.
There is definitely some correlation between the map of America and America, but the map of America is not America. It’s a model of America. It’s a model to simulate, to depict the geographical features, topographical features of America.
So, like that, science offers us a map of reality which depicts the material features of reality, but there can be much in the reality which is not depicted in this map. So, we will feel it contradictory only when we think that this map is giving me everything. I’ll conclude with one example.
Say, suppose now I am, say, you are traveling here, from here to Jacksonville to meet a friend. You’re traveling for the first time. You don’t know, so you have a Google map on your phone, and then it says, okay, turn left, you’ll come to a bridge.
Go across that bridge. Then you’ll come over a river, go across it. Every single direction it gives, it is right.
You follow it, and you move towards the destination. And the more we keep following it, and the more we move closer to the destination, our confidence in that map increases. Now, suppose, somebody like this goes to their destination, and they come to their friend’s house.
They knock. Their friend opens the door. Welcome.
They look at the map. My map doesn’t show you, so you don’t exist. So, if somebody says that, that would be ridiculous.
So, the map gives us a picture of reality. Map does not give the totality of reality. So, science offers us like a map for the world.
It’s a map, and it’s a very useful map. While traveling, a map is important. But, just because something is not present in the map, does not mean that it is not present in reality.
So, in the map of science, we may not find the soul. In the map of science, we may not find God. In the map of science, we may not see the direct action of soul or God.
But, that does not mean that these don’t exist in reality. So, we are using the map for a particular purpose, and as long as we understand that science is offering us a model of reality, not reality itself, then there should not be any major conflict between the scientific way of looking and the scriptural way of looking. Okay.