​God did it – is this scripture’s only explanation for all material phenomena?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, if someone argues that the scripture does not offer any physical explanation for physical evolution, it only offers spiritual or the psychological explanation. So, for example, how did brains come? God did it, you say like that. Then that does not really lead to the advancement of knowledge.
So, now that is an oversimplification to the point of misrepresentation of scriptural teaching. Because if we see at the basic level, there is Ayurveda and Ayurveda doesn’t say that, you know, why did you get a disease? Because God did it. Why did you get it? God did it.
It accepts the existence of God, Vishnu and Manvantari are accepted, but then there are mechanisms. Why do you get this disease? Because the Kapha has become more or the Vata has become more. It is all material mechanisms.
And then what is the means for treating it? There are material mechanisms as well. So, there is analysis of material nature in material terms also given in the Indian wisdom tradition. But how much of it is accessible today and how much of it is relevant today, that may be debatable.
So, in the start of the Tattva Sandarbha, Jiva Goswami, he says that most of the Vedas are lost today. So, they are not available today. And then he is talking about today means 500 years ago.
So, even at that time they were not available, what to speak of now. So, much of the material knowledge that is there, that was there in the past, that is not available now. So, now material knowledge is basically functional knowledge.
So, today, if that material knowledge is not available, we may try to recover that material knowledge if it is available in some oral traditions, for example, the knowledge about how agriculture is to be done or whatever, that kind of knowledge. Or we may use contemporary forms of knowledge. So, for example, if Ayurveda does not work, we can use allopathy.
And Prabhupada himself preferred Ayurveda, but there are a few occasions when he did use allopathy also. In London, once he was very sick, he did a small allopathic surgery, he did. So, it is not that he made it an issue, he did not make it a faith issue.
You should have faith only in Ayurveda, not have faith in allopathy. Now, allopathy comes from modern science. We need to understand that when we study matter or study the material world, what we get is models of reality.
So, Ayurveda offers one model of reality of the body and allopathy offers another model of the body. Now, if we ask within the allopathic model, what is the heat in the body? What is Yatraagni? They do not have any conception of that because that is not in that model. So, sometimes some devotees, someone has asked a question, if you say Vedas contain all knowledge about everything, what do Vedas say about black holes? I explained that when we say Vedas contain knowledge about everything, we have to understand what it means.
No book or no set of books can describe everything about everything. When they say everything, it means everything meant for a purpose, everything meant for living in a meaningful way in this world and everything meant for attaining life’s ultimate goal. That is what the Vedas give us.
So, within a particular vision of the cosmos that modern science talks about, there is black hole as a concept. Scripture talks about universe in a different way. When you talk about universe in a different way, in that concept of universe, black hole as a concept does not come up only.
So, basically, when we talk about Ayurveda or allopathy, both of them are models. Now, the word model is a little abstract. To make it a little simpler, I can use the word map.
When we talk about a map of reality, I consider the country of India, the political map. In the political map, I may have say, this is Maharashtra, this is Karnataka, this is Andhra, this is Madhya Pradesh, whatever, or this is this district, this is this district, all those borders will be described. Now, while describing those borders, this is a political map.
Now, if I take a topographical map of India, here there is a mountain, here there is a plateau, here there is a river. Now, a very different description will be given. And then if I look in the political map, where are the India hills, or where is this particular thing, the topographical features may not be described in the political map.
Why? Because each map has a particular purpose. And both maps are describing the territory, but with different foci, different focuses. So, that is why these two maps, some features may overlap, some features may not be present, may not overlap.
And some features may just not be there in the map at all. So, like that, modern science, now, just like we can have different maps of the same territory, within modern science itself, there are different maps. For example, quantum physics offers one map of reality and relativity offers another map of reality.
And in some ways, the two are violently contradictory. Now, according to quantum physics, there are no such thing as particles, solid objects existing. All that exists is simply waves.
And only when there is an observer who looks at things, the waves collapse into a physical object. Now, Einstein is considered to be the greatest scientist of the last century. And Einstein was a proponent of relativity and he did not like quantum physics at all, he was quite strongly critical of quantum physics.
So, he said, I would like to believe that the moon continues to exist, even if I am not looking at it. According to quantum physics, if there is no observer looking at the moon, the moon does not exist. And this seems to be completely illogical.
But some calculations, many calculations done based on quantum physics work, many calculations done based on relativity physics work. These two are models of reality, models of within physics, and both of them work at different levels. And nobody knows how to reconcile.
So, what happens is, what do scientists do? They just are functionalists. Functionalist means they use whichever model works. And that is why what science offers us is maps or models of reality.
Science does not tell us about reality directly. So, just as scientists even for dealing with contradictions within their own field, what they do is, they are functionalists, they use whichever branch of knowledge works. Similarly, when we are teaching scripture or living according to scripture, at that time, while functioning in the virtual world, we need to be functionalists.
So, whichever model works, we accept it. That is why, see, if we portray scripture as a competitor of science, science says this and scripture says this. When we portray scripture as a competitor of science, we devalue scripture.
Scripture is not here to tell us how to design a car by which you can go from GV to Mumbai, or how to develop a plane by which you can go from here to America or whatever. Scripture is here to tell us how to raise our consciousness to go to Krishna. Scripture may contain material knowledge also.
But material knowledge is not the primary purpose of scripture. Now, Parikshit Maharaj did not go to Shukadeva Goswami to learn material knowledge. He went to Shukadeva Goswami to learn how to remember Krishna at the time of death, just to attain Krishna.
So, scripture has a purpose and that is to provide us knowledge for elevating our consciousness. So, when we present, when we position scripture as a competitor of science, first of all, we devalue scripture because scripture is offering us something much higher. And secondly, we put ourselves in a weak position, because the material knowledge that is given in scripture, that is often that we cannot replicate much of it, not only not replicate it, we cannot even explain much of it in today’s knowledge terms.
That is why we have to be very careful about how we present scripture. We should not present scripture as a competitor to science, by that we are devaluing scripture. Science offers a particular kind of knowledge, scripture offers us another kind of knowledge.
Now, some of the material knowledge in scripture also we may use today, but that is functional purposes. It is not that those who do not use the material knowledge in scripture, they cannot use the spiritual knowledge and they cannot become devotees. Today, we talk about Varanasi, or traditional living, or eco-friendly, that is important.
But it is not that to practice bhakti, one has to live only in Varanasi. You know, one may live in cities, one may use modern technology, and one can still practice bhakti. So, this is, so for us, Varanashram, or the traditional way of living, that is functional.
And urban, in cities we also live, that is also functional. So, just as that is practical, whatever works, we use that and move forwards. So, three points to answer to that question, that the broad scriptural tradition of knowledge does not, for material things, just give the explanation, God did it.
There are material explanations also given, as in Ayurveda, and many other branches of knowledge were there, but they are not available now. Secondly, if somebody says that whatever material knowledge is given in scripture is false, we say that it is actually a different map of reality. And that map of reality may not be intelligible in today’s terms.
And it is not necessary that two maps of reality have to agree, or have to be reconciled. That there can be valid maps of reality, which are not reconcilable, is evident even in science itself. Quantum physics and relativity, both are valid in the sense that equations and mechanisms made based on them work, but they are not reconcilable.
So, there can be, there can be non-reconcilable maps of reality, both of which may be valid. So, the material knowledge given in scripture is also a map of reality, which is valid from a different frame of reference that we may not be able to understand. And for functional purposes, whichever map of reality works, we use that.
And that is why we are not against science when it is used for functional purposes while operating in this way. And to avoid giving that impression, we should make sure that we do not position scripture as a competitor of science. Science gives us knowledge of how we can functionally live in this world.
Scripture gives us knowledge of why we should live in this world. What is the purpose of living in this world? Thank you very much.