Don’t reduce all thinking to logical thinking

Hare Krishna Don't reduce all thinking to logical thinking no, no, you are not thinking you are just being logical this is how Nobel laureate physicist Neil Bohr once admonished a student Bohr was a pioneer of quantum physics a field of science that has stretched the limits of logic beyond breaking point that means quantum physics many features of it just don't make logical sense and still they work the equations work, the devices made on those based on those equations do work so when people would get perplexed by the logical incomprehensibility of the propositions of quantum physics and they tend to be dismissive about it Bohr had to defend his theory by challenging the widely held presumption that things had to be logical to be sensible that anything that was not logical was nonsense this was a presumption which he had to challenge and in this particular quote he is urging the student to extend to open his thinking to avenues beyond the logical so now when people open up their thinking like that give up their logical presumptions then they find that in its own way quantum physics has its coherence and it does work so it's significant that a field of science, pioneering field of science and science is considered to be a very logical search for knowledge of natural phenomena it is a field of science that has actually needed to go beyond logic for progressing and this indicates that our thinking capacity is greater than what logic offers us like there is a big river, there is a channel through which the water goes but the river has more water than what can go through the channel similarly our capacity for thinking is like the river and logic is like one channel for our thinking so we don't have to reduce our thinking just to logic now no doubt logical thinking it's a desirable and essential component of human thinking but what is undesirable and unessential is to reduce all human thinking to just logical thinking means yes through the channel of logic when water flows yes it flows in a constructive direction but to say that is the only constructive direction for the water to flow and further that which doesn't flow in this channel is not water only that means that is something is not being not logical when it is not thinking at all it is not sensible at all, it is not intelligible at all that is fanaticism of a secular kind and that is undesirable so we need to open ourselves for the flow of knowledge in whichever direction if it's logical and good if it's some other direction then we should be open for that also so now just as we have to free ourselves from the fetter of logic to progress in a complex field like quantum physics so do we need to free ourselves from logic if we want to understand the most complex of all fields, the absolute truth now one question that often perplexes logicians is God's relationship with the world is God transcendent or immanent? Transcendent means existing beyond the world beyond nature immanent means existing in nature so does God exist beyond nature being transcendent or does God exist in nature being immanent now the Bhagavad Gita addresses this in its ninth chapter so 9.4 points towards God's immanence so first it says that I pervade all of existence and I sustain it also all living beings exist in me and then 9.5 states almost the exact opposite so the previous verse said it says no all living beings do not reside in me and then when somebody speaks one thing and then speaks a blatantly contradictory thing after that you may think that person will be embarrassed what kind of fool I am speaking contradictory things like this but there is no note of embarrassment at all in the Bhagavad Gita when it makes this blatantly self-contradictory statement rather there is a tone of celebration that follows it just see my inconceivable glory so what this means is that actually the verse is celebrating this as the glory of the absolute truth and in one sense its logical it makes sense that the absolute truth will not necessarily be entirely understood by logic because God is supreme I am using God and absolute truth interchangeably over here although there is some small difference but so God being supreme is superior to logic also by the definition of God itself and therefore we cannot understand him by logic alone we cannot understand him entirely by logic so this inconceivability this self-contradictory paradoxical inconceivability how do we deal with it now if we follow Bohr and avoid unidimensional devotion to logic and open ourselves to other modes of thinking and then study the Bhagavad Gita open-mindedly then we will find that the Bhagavad Gita has a profound conception of the absolute truth where the absolute truth exists at multiple levels and there is a manifestation that is transcendent and there is a manifestation that is eminent now how the same being can be both transcendent and eminent that is something which is quite difficult for us to comprehend logically and here we have to admit the limitation of logic so when we approach God humbly using our logic as it's possible but also acknowledging that logic won't be able to expand and go over the infinite glories then we can actually humbly study scripture and scriptural teachers study from scripture then we will understand how God has inconceivable potencies and by that as our trans-logical spiritual perception awakens we will realize by experience in our heart how God is both transcendent and eminent he exists far away in his own abode at the same time he is there in our heart closer than what our closest loved one can ever be and when we in this way experience this inconceivable glory of God then we will be able to understand the truth the trans-logical truth of his nature and then we will see that comprehension not as a defeat of human logic but as a triumph of divine love. Thank you Hare Krishna.