Has technology made life better? How should we use technology in devotional service?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, is that a discussion today? Is technology a blessing or a curse? So, certainly one thing is undeniable that technology has changed the shape of culture, society and living. And it is changing it more and more rapidly as India is becoming modernised, westernised.
So, let us, to understand the effects of technology, trace out a historical analysis. This is what I’ll be discussing. Technology, there are visible blessings for few, invisible curses for all.
There’s a point which is mentioned by some of you. Then technology is a painkiller, spirituality is the medicine. Then technology is man’s attempt to become God.
It is painkiller without medicine that makes it a killer. And then make the best use of bad markets. I’ll discuss these five points.
Let’s look at the historical development of technology to understand the forces that have shaped the mindset that led to develop technological development. So, we know this history. So, I won’t go into the details.
Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Planck, they all brought about the scientific developments that laid the foundation for the technological wizardry that we see in society today. So, these all played a role to see nature as a machine. Right from the time of Galileo onwards to the time of Newton, Einstein, all of these, basically the idea was nature is like a machine.
So, if I understand how a machine works, then I can change it according to the way I want it to work. So, this is the history of science. Now, let us look at, this is you have relativity coming up.
So, now let’s look at technology. So, we have James Wright inventing this game engine. This is all a part of scientific legend.
Now, many of these researchers were very intelligent, creative, dedicated people who tried very hard and then they came up with technology. So, Edison discovered the bulb and then we had the Wright brothers and went the aeroplane. So, to some extent, technology is a testimony to the human spirit, the human spirit to try to make things better.
So, in general, all of us as human beings, we have intelligence, which is ultimately God given and we use it in some way and we do not have to deny or downplay the fact that many of these scientists and technologists, they work hard. They work hard to study and try to understand how nature works and how to utilise it and on many occasions, on most occasions, we could say the objective was human good. They wanted to benefit humanity.
So, these were the leading inventors in the last century. The century things went even faster as technological applications spread. We have television, entertainment, aerospace, high-speed travel, computers and then we have internet in the global village.
So, we have cell phones and telecommunications. So, these are what are the practical ways in technology has shaped our society today. There can be a few more also, but these are the broad contours.
Now, while we see all these developments, what has been the net consequence? See, the idea in Krishna consciousness is not to minimise the effort of scientists or technologists. It is to recognise whether that has contributed to cumulative human good. So, let us look at that.
Has this actually led to human progress? Has this led to progress? So, I’ll just give you a few statistics over here. So, actually, because of the presence of technology in society, certainly society appears to be progressed. We have cars, we have planes, we have cell phones and laptops, but let’s look at it from a holistic perspective.
So, some of you mentioned these points. If we are not talking here, we are going step by step. We are not saying here that technology has caused all these problems.
What we are saying is, humanity existed in 15, 16, 17, 18th century and before that in a particular condition and then as scientific discoveries were developed and consequently technological applications were developed, the driving motive force for all these was to improve the lot of humanity. So, what we are investigating right now is, has the lot of humanity actually improved? Now, if it has improved or if it has not improved, we are not trying to find out the cause over here. It’s not that we are blaming technology for whatever is wrong.
We’re just trying to historically analyse what is the condition of humanity as compared to the past. So, we all know, probably we have been to our grandparents’ villages, something like that. Even today in the villages, people often leave their house doors of the homes open and still they are fearless.
But now, in our modern society, we have locks, buzzer alarms, security systems and still people are fearful. So, from the point of view of comfort and security, people are not really better off. In the past, we had the main occupation of farming.
Certainly, farming involved hard work as compared to say working in companies today, from the physical point of view. But in the past, people would work for around eight hours during the ploughing and the harvesting seasons and they would have the remaining time free for other pursuits, which were mostly because the culture was God conscious. They would be spiritual pursuits.
Now, if we see, people have to work harder and harder, 10 hours, 12 hours. After the pre-industrial civilisation, we had the industrial civilisation and now we have more of an information-based civilisation. So, actually the amount of time and it’s not just a few months a year, it is throughout the year.
So, if we look at it unvarnished, varnish is like a finishing colour that we give, that thing looks good. But if we remove the varnishes, it does appear that actually humanity’s condition may not have improved as it seems. So, certainly working in an office, in an air-conditioned room is more physically comfortable.
But actually, is it physically beneficial? People have to go to gyms and people have to do further exercises and take so many things. The physical activity that an agrarian civilisation required was often conducive for health, whereas the physical comfort and inactivity that is engendered by modern civilisation, which is technocentric, often is not very conducive for health. So, then people have to do additional activities to restore their health.
So, now let’s compare further. In the past, again, people could just sleep peacefully in the past after a hard day’s work. Now, we have our fast cars, we have our skyscrapers, we have smooth roads, but there are millions of people who can’t sleep without a sleeping pill.
So, sleeping is a basic human necessity, not just a human necessity, the necessity for all living beings. So, if people are unable to get even such a basic necessity fulfilled, in among all the 8.4 million species, only humans need a sleeping pill. Dogs, cats, ants, birds, nobody needs a sleeping pill.
And sleeping pills are a modern invention. There’s nothing like that in the past. So, something seems to be wrong.
Although our technology may have provided us broader, more comfortable beds, but actually hasn’t been able to provide us sleep. We need a further pill for that. So, actually speaking, if you compare from the employment economical point of view, farms offered broad employment possibilities.
Almost everyone would be constructively employed. And the overall environment of a farm was hygienic. Now, we have mechanised factories, we have software firms.
And often, there is a fear of unemployment retrenchment. And actually speaking, you know, one economic upheaval in one part of the country can have a domino effect. All of you know dominoes? They’re all arranged in a row, they fall down.
So, a subprime crisis in America can trigger a global worldwide recession, which affects the lives of millions of people. So, there is, from the point of view of employment, it’s far greater insecurity today. And there is, as I discussed earlier, the lifestyle is sedentary, and often it is high stress.
The technology has provided us AC, so that people will not sweat because of heat. But the modern culture’s lifestyle is so stressful, that even in AC, people sweat, not because of heat, but because of stress. So, the point is something is wrong here.
Now, we could go on with this. I’ll just make a few points over here. So, these are just a comparison.
Now, if we look at overall the violence, death due to wars in the 20th century, are seven times that due to the wars in the previous 19th centuries combined together. This is a World War II statement. And all over the world, rates of violent crimes are simply spiralling.
So, actually speaking, the violence is definitely increasing. It’s increasing much, much more. Then if you look at mental health, more people today suffer from stress, hypertension, depression, addictions.
Then the most tragic of all these problems is suicide. So, according to WHO, one million people commit suicide every year. That means this is more number of deaths in wars and homicides together, more number of people who kill others, the number of people who kill themselves.
So, it’s a tragic social health problem. And the scale of suicide is historically unprecedented. As far as we have documented human history, whether we take the modern historical perspective or the Vedic historical perspective, this kind of magnitude of suicide was never there till now in human history.
So, surely, all the diligent efforts of the scientists and technologists to make humanity better have not worked out. You know, one of the technological pioneers of the 19th century, he wrote a letter saying that in 100 years, it was a famous letter, which was like the manifesto of science and technology said, in 100 years, the biggest problem with humanity will be what to do with all the spare time that we have. Because he said, once we have technology doing all the hard work that we have to do, then all of us will become free.
And then we won’t have problem of hunger, we won’t have problem of thirst, we won’t have problem of disease, because all these problems will be solved. Our only problem will be all the time that technology has given us, how will we utilise it? Now, this seems to be absurdly utopian, because most people, the biggest crisis, people don’t have time. So, certainly, and of course, the other parts also there being no diseases and all that has not worked out.
So, the vision that inspired technological progress has not materialised. So, we could look at this, we know that there are marriages that end in divorces, it’s happening more and more and more. Earlier, we had these joint families, where many members could live together.
Then we had nuclear families, where there are husband, wife and children who love together. And then now, there is a nucleus split. And there are electrons and protons and neutrons all orbiting around in the vastness of the concrete jungles.
So, one out of every three marriages ends in divorce. And nowadays, many marriages are almost like business contracts. For example, before marriage, the spouses decide, if we divorce after five years, how much of my property you will get and how much of it will stay with me.
After seven years, what will happen? So, it’s become extremely commercialised. And actually, the result of this is on children. When the families are broken, the greatest victims of that are children.
So, juveniles, teenagers, delinquencies, criminalities rampant amongst children from broken families. So, the overall human condition from the societal point of view has not evolved. Ecology, this was the idyllic picture, which you might even see today in some nature movies.
But we know that that is not the reality in society. WHO said that on average, people’s lifespan in cities will be cut down by 10 full years because of the polluted air that they are breathing. It’s quite a large thing, 10 years.
And then the World Health Institute says that environment super disasters are no longer a doomsday prophecy. They are an imminent reality, super disasters. Now, climate change, as most of you know, one of the aspects of climate change is global warming.
So, as the temperature of the planet increases, the polar ice caps will melt and the oceans will rise up. So, at what rate this will happen and how much it will happen, there might be debate in the scientific community. But overall, the point that human action has adversely affected the ecology and that is going to backfire on us is more or less undeniable.
So, overall, we have really not improved ourselves. In the morning, I talked about Adhyatmik, Adhibhautik, Adhidaivik. So, the statistics which I discussed, they include all three categories.
From the Adhyatmik point of view, from the mental health point of view, certainly situations are worse, from the security, from the peacefulness, from the ability to sleep positively and peacefully. So, conditions are not really improved. From the Adhibhautik point of view, there is violence, there is family ruptures.
From the Adhidaivik point of view, also, we see that the environmental conditions have not really improved. So, and of course, technology has had its dark side. So, we have had weapons of mass destruction coming up, which caused huge amounts of destruction.
And it is one of the incidents from 1920 to 1940, was the time when there was technological euphoria in the West. You know the word euphoria, when something is very successful and people go high up. But it was tragically ironic that the greatest insight of science by the greatest scientist led to the greatest destruction of the last century.
What was that? Einstein’s discovery of the equivalence of matter and energy. The interconvertibility of matter into energy, that led to the scripture, led to the development of the atom bomb. And when that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was the greatest man-made disaster.
Now, there has been Chernobyl, there has been the Bhopal gas strike, there are many others also. But now, some of you mentioned on the Fukushima, that these disasters, but they are natural disasters, which led to problems. These are intentional man-made disasters.
So, again, we’re not saying here that everybody who’s involved in science and technology was an evil person. Einstein himself later said that the greatest regret of my life is that I sent a letter to the American president saying that we should make nuclear weapons. He was apprehensive that Hitler might make nuclear weapons before and did not want Nazi ideology to spread.
But later on, that fear seemed to be unfounded. So, when after the bomb fell on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and there was huge devastation, even now the environment there is still hazardous. So, Einstein went there with American relief contingents.
And when he saw the extent of the devastation, he was himself heartbroken. He broke down into tears. So, he said, till the moment of my death, I will regret that day when I sent that letter, which led to this kind of destruction.
So, the point we are making here is, it’s not that as devotees, we have to paint everybody’s non-devotee as a bad person. But we also should not get carried away by appearances. So, from the apparent point of view, surely if we come from a village to a city, city appears to be much more comfortable, glamorous, high-tech, progressive.
But you have to look beyond the appearances to see the deeper picture. And the deeper picture is certainly not brighter. So, this is the pollution that happens.
But generally speaking, I’m just looking at this comparison of city and town. So, I’ll just give a, there is a small documentary prepared by a prominent environmentalist. So, do we have audio facility for this? So, generally speaking, as I said, if we come from villages to cities, the cities appear so much comfortable and clean and natural.
So, this is a prominent environmentalist and he is saying that actually behind the charm and the glamour of New York, what lies, what is the environmental cost? How do we get the audio? What is it? Okay, fine, you can get the call, then I’ll speak on, we’ll come back to this later. So, now there are so many species that have actually become extinct and there is so much loss of biodiversity that has happened. So, the question is what went wrong? So, surely something has gone wrong and it has had quite serious consequences.
So, what was it that actually went wrong? So, technology is blessings come coupled with many curses. For every blessing that comes, there are curses that come with it. So, let’s look at what these curses are.
Okay, fine, the standard of living, if you look at the physical perspective, we have communication and locomotion, comforts in terms of housing, but then these are three major problems that we have today. No fresh air, no clean water, no cheap nutritious food. So, now among these three, look at that upper three which are very visible, you can move faster by trains and planes and you can communicate through mobiles and emails and you can have luxurious houses.
Now, these are useful, they are valuable, but these are not absolutely essential from the fundamental human perspective. Even without these, humanity can go on living. But can we live without fresh air? Can we live without water? Can we live without food? No, we can’t.
And especially not just in cities, in cities surely it is happening that these are not so comfortably available, but even in villages and rural areas because the pollution from the cities boils over, spreads over to other places. So, technology is providing luxuries, but it is taking away necessities. This is not an intentional malevolent plan by somebody, it is not that somebody desired to do evil and it happened, but it is what is the end result.
So, technology is providing luxuries, but in the process of providing luxuries, it is taking away necessities. And if we compare these two, these luxuries are provided to a few people, but the necessities are taken away from practically everyone, from everyone. When there are these industrial effluents which pollute the river waters, the river waters get polluted, the products of those industries will be used by certain wealthy people, well-to-do people, but when the river waters get polluted, then that affects practically all people.
So, ultimately they have to get water from the rivers. So, the effect on water, now according to WHO and United Nations, by 2150 or something later, water will become such a scarce commodity. There is a prediction that there will be wars which would have to be fought in water unless we can come up with some other sources.
Right now, the present concern is oil, but water will also become a serious problem. Now, if we look at food, the fruits come in nature free, but today in our socio-economic structure, fruits are among the most expensive foods. Although fruits are nutritious, actually it is quite difficult to afford for most people to eat fruits.
So, something is surely wrong in a socio-economic system that what nature provides is free, our socio-economic culture makes it expensive and prohibitively expensive. So, we have had blessings at the physical level, but the blessings come with curses and the major challenges or the major deception happens because the blessings are visible, whereas the curses are often not so directly visible. They are not so directly visible.
If a posh car is moving on a very smooth road in a building with skyscrapers, the car and the roads and the skyscrapers catch the eye. The trail of smoke the car is leaving behind, that does not catch the eye. Is it? So, in general, from the visibility point of view, there is a deception that happens.
We tend to feel technology is so excellent, it is providing so many blessings that we do not realise that there are attendant curses associated with it. What is happening? Okay, fine. Similarly, if we look at the psychological level, so we have entertainment and we have the psychiatry and all the therapies that they have developed through that, that have provided entertainment.
People can have so much fun in this field through entertainment, but the fact is, despite all the entertainment, if you look at the psychological level, people are really not happy with boredom, addiction, suicides, anxiety, alienation, dissatisfaction. So, the television can provide entertainment, but television does not provide peace of mind. And we may need entertainment, we may feel that we need entertainment, but actually what we need is peace of mind far more.
In fact, when people become so, sometimes, one of the consequences of technology is that it addicts us. We are not talking here about substance addictions, say to drugs or alcohol, but even technological gadgets we can addict people. So, in India, the power grid is collapsing and the power going off is quite common.
In America, it is not so common. There have been few instances in history when in America, the power grids collapsed. And when they collapsed, there was one time in America, there was a nine-hour power loss a few years ago.
And actually, those nine-hour power loss was the time in recorded history when maximum people committed suicide. Why? Actually, what happened is, the people, they are internally so disturbed that they need some distraction externally. And when there is no external distraction available, okay, there is no one to call by phone, there is nothing to watch on television, there is no way to surf on net.
What do I do? The mind starts beating up a person. As they are saying in English that most people speak because they feel that speech is more tolerable than silence. They feel that speech is more tolerable than silence.
When you are silent, the mind is screaming. So, similarly, there is this whole, there are cases of people who are on the net, surfing and playing video games. There are at least several hundred cases which are documented till now, that people just go on playing video games for 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hours, and there itself they are eating something and there are people who, there itself they get so excited and addicted that sometimes they get heart attacks over there, sometimes they get strokes over there.
And while playing a video game itself, people die. Now, these are of course, now these are of course, extreme cases. These are of course, extreme cases, but the extremes drive home the dangers to us.
So, the more common principle is that technology has an addictive effect and the addiction often is not healthy. So, overall, apart from people who are technologically addicted, now we could see, we could say in one way that the advancement of television. So, now we have 100, 200 channels available.
So, there is so much entertainment available because of that. So, that we can say is the advancement of technology, that is fine. But the very fact that people need so much entertainment, that indicates that they in their personal lives are actually bored, isn’t it? Because people are internally empty, because people are internally bored, that’s why they need these things.
And in many places where people live simply in villages, actually they have more fulfilling, satisfying relationships and they have an overall more satisfying lifestyle. So, there is a whole movement which says that how television is actually harmful to us. They have done some surveys, it’s called a turn off TV movement.
So, what they say is that statistics have shown that within 10 years of the introduction of television in a third world country, the crime rate in that country has increased almost by 5 to 10%. Now, what is the correlation? And we’re not saying that TV makes people criminals, but what is depicted on TV surely has a certain effect. Now, this is not to say that TV is itself bad.
The point is, we could always say that TV is being used for a wrong purpose. We will come to that point. But here they’re saying that every blessing, technology, does a blessing, it also has a harm that comes in.
So, from the economical point of view, we have industrialisation, international trade, computerisation, global village. But then, as I said, there’s unemployment, there is inflation, congestion, instability, as well as insecurity because of so much competition. So, certainly technology has improved certain things, but then there are other things which are adversely affected by that.
So, for example, farmers in a particular country, they produce crops and they locally sell it. But then when there is this agribusiness, so in some other country, the farming is done at a mass rate, which is done cheaper, and then that is exported to another country and the farmers in that country go out of business because they cannot compete with the mass produced grains which are produced at another level. So, what happens is, it has a destabilising effect on the social fabric.
So, I could go on with this list. We will move forward now. Before that, this is ready.
Let’s show this. Did I not show the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment? Okay, maybe that part I will show sometime later. New York, with its great material wealth and architectural wonders, the most impressive creation of scientific, technological, and economic progress.
But I ask myself, was this real life? Just a few miles from New York City, Staten Island is Fresh Kills landfill, the world’s largest garbage dump spread over five square miles. Most of New York’s domestic waste ends up here, some 22,000 tonnes a day. The Stetch’s landfill, vast amounts of rotting food and plastic waste, aluminium cans, TVs, refrigerators, just as we dispose of all this, so do we also consign our used cars to the scrapping.
The United States alone has 7 million cars in consumption, but nothing is built to last. This is the material wealth by which our industrial society measures success. What we don’t see is a great natural wealth, brutally sacrificed to produce it.
Ten years ago, the global 2000 report commissioned by Ford. So, basically, we see the visible prosperity of the city, but all the technology that is used, it has to, when it becomes wasted, it has to go somewhere. So, for example, nowadays, so many handsets of mobiles come, and they always keep changing.
Some new feature comes in, some new handsets. So, if you just leave the whole hard set and take a new handset, what happens to the old handset? It has to go somewhere. So, 22,000 tonnes of junk is produced by one city every day.
Can you imagine 22,000 tonnes? That’s just one city. And like that, there is, so this particular, you know, in our house, we have a small garbage dump. This is five square miles of just garbage.
Five square miles of garbage dump. So, we have New York as one of the world’s biggest city. And next to that is one of the world’s biggest, not one of, that is the world’s biggest garbage dump.
So, what happens is that everything that is produced by technology ultimately has to be disposed of. And much of what is produced by technology is not biodegradable, is not biodegradable. And that is why it takes a serious toll on the environment.
So, especially hazardous is a problem of nuclear waste. And the nuclear power can be used for peaceful purpose, which is fine, it can be used. But still, the nuclear power produces waste, what do you do with the waste? So, there are many technological wastes that actually just cannot be disposed of.
If we burn them, they will pollute the environment, the air. If we bury them, they will poison the groundwater. If we throw them into the ocean, they will kill the fish.
And then people want to eat fish, they will have nothing to eat. So, the American government made a multi-million dollar project that we will take this extremely hazardous waste, which is non-disposable, we will put it in a satellite, place the satellite on top of a rocket and throw it into outer space. Let’s throw it into outer space.
This is a serious project. They are saying that all the problem that is there on planet earth, we will just solve it by dumping into space. We are not satisfied by polluting earth, we will pollute the space also.
So, now they don’t know there is a space, you send the waste up, it will come down again. So, the point is that we have such serious unintentional consequences of the technology that is something which is never thought about. So, till now, we have not discussed about the harmful effects of technology from a spiritual perspective.
Just talking from the material perspective that there are. So, ecological, this is what I discussed just now. So, we have definitely advantages, but there is deforestation, there is loss of biodiversity, non-biodegradable chemical products, global warming.
Now, currently one out of every six rivers does not reach its destination in the world. It just dries up. It just dries up.
This has happened to rivers in America, this has happened even to Ganga. At one time, the Ganga caught fire. You wonder how a river can catch fire.
But what happened was the river was coated with so much effluents that somebody was smoking a cigarette, he threw the cigarette into the river and the river caught fire. And it happened in America and it happened in India also. And even the fire brigade, they had never thought a river can catch fire.
How will you extinguish it? And just practically miles and miles of bio… of inflammable effluents that were there in the upper part of the river just went on and on and on. So, it’s so polluted. The point is that we have seriously affected the environment in a way that might well be irreversibly harmful.
So, surely we have medicines, we have vaccines, we have allopathy. But overall, the health care is extremely expensive. The lifestyle is overall unhealthy.
So, now, we can look at technological progress in two ways. One way of looking at it is that, say now in remote villages, we may have a big hospital. So, one of my devotees, Ek Vendit, was telling that in his village, now the local MP came and he said, now India has progressed so much that we have a 64-bed hospital in a small village.
This devotee was telling that his grandfather told him that when he was, he was a small child or in his times, basically when he was young, there was one doctor who was common for eight villages. And actually, instead of people going to the doctor, the doctor would go on cycle from village to village. Does anyone have a disease? Does anyone need medicines? So, it’s not that people were not sick, but the sicknesses that were there, there were traditional herbal natural cures available for dealing with.
Sickness was always there. But two things have happened. One is that because of the glamorisation of technology, those traditional herbal cures have been sidelined and people become more and more dependent on allopathic medicines.
And secondly, because of the overall effect of pollution, more and more people are becoming sick. So, on one side, surely the efforts of the doctors and the patient and the medical staff in offering medical service even in the remote villages is laudable. But the very fact that such facilities are needed in the villages, when they were early and unnecessary, especially in terms of presence of diseases that were not there earlier, requires some serious thought.
So, we also have many incurable diseases, which even if scientists find out some cures in future, still further diseases keep coming up. So, the technology covers, it doesn’t cure or something, it covers. It makes an appearance that things are quite comfortable, but they are not.
So, having said all this, does this imply that we reject technology? Not necessary. From a spiritual perspective, if you look at it, technology cannot stop birth, old age, disease and death. It cannot free a person from the samsara chakra.
So, now from the spiritual perspective, technology is like a painkiller. Spirituality is the real cure. So, now our topic was technology of blessing or a curse.
The assumption in that topic is that technology is value neutral and I can use it as a blessing or I can use it as a curse. But technology is not exactly value neutral. Value neutral means, does it affect our values? Just the presence of technology, it also affects the mentality.
It affects the mentality. What does this mean? That when technology provides more and more facilities to people, in general, people have a tendency to, they can use the facilities for good, they can use the facilities for bad. But the overall environment created by technology encourages, prompts people to use technology for harmful purposes.
Not through technology, through the internet. Now, there has been what is called the democratisation of knowledge. Now, whatever information we want, we can search on it and we can get the knowledge.
So, there are a lot of projects where knowledge is being made freely available on the internet and that is good. Much research can be done in a positive way through Google and Wikipedia and other search engines and search facilities like that. But still, if you look at it objectively, how many people use the internet for constructive research to increase their knowledge and how many people use it for, as was mentioned, say, pornography and things like that, the percentage is not really equal.
So, more people will tend to misuse it. So, like the example one of you gave was that, if you compare technology to a knife, actually, it’s not just a knife that a surgeon can use for healing or a thief can use for killing. Along with the knife, when technology comes along, it brings a mentality.
The conditioned soul has the desire to control and technology infatuates that controlling mentality, the controlling mentality and the enjoyment and it adds fuel to the fire. See, lust is always there, whether it is ancient society, mediaeval society or modern society. But what technology, but if in the past, the person was lusty, what could that person do? Maybe he could go to the local village prostitute or something like that.
But now today, if a person becomes lusty, all the garbage from all over the world is available just by clicking a few buttons. So, so much more agitation and aggravation happens. See, the Prabhupada writes that advancement of material civilisation means prolonging the material existence of the living entity.
When we advance material civilisation, what do we do? We prolong the material existence of the living entity because people’s lusty desires get so much in point. So, now again, nowadays, sexual crimes, rapes and violence and like that are so much widespread. And yet, although there is so much, even the women are in agitation, there is so much violence against us, so much crime against us.
But what people don’t understand is that actually there is a relationship between sexual images and sexual abuses. When people are bombarded with sexual images, it is not just that men become lusty, but it is women also, when there are female images which are partially dressed or undressed women that are glamorised, those sort of images become the models for women also. And actually they become the source of attraction for men also.
So, now Bollywood and the whole movie industry will say, actually what we are depicting, it is not that this causes what happens in society. This is just for entertainment. They will deny any connection between the exclusive sexuality that is depicted in the movies and the media and the violence that happens in society.
Now, if it were true that there is no connection between what is depicted in the media and what happens to the behaviour of the people, then the whole concept of TV commercials and video commercials would be useless. Do you think the advertising industry spends millions of dollars to make 10-second commercials if those commercials are not going to affect people’s behaviour? Obviously, they are going to affect, isn’t it? So, the companies know that the commercials do shape people’s behaviour. So, if a 10-second commercial, actually most commercials are not even 10 seconds, some of them are shorter also, or maybe 10 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever, these commercials that are there, they can make people purchase products so much that companies are ready to spend millions of dollars to produce commercials.
Then when there are movies which are based on sexuality and huge levels of wealth which will promote greed, are they not going to affect people’s values? They are going to. So, there are two different issues now. One is, what is technology used for? And second is, what is the effect of technology by default, independent of what it is used for? So, certainly technology is today being used for materialistic purposes far more than spiritual or educational purposes, even on the material point of view.
Although it can be used for educational purposes, and it should be used for those purposes, but it is being used much more for the harmful purposes. And further, by default, because the conditioned soul has lust, has greed, has anger, so when there is a propensity available, then the person becomes lusty, the person becomes greedy, becomes angry, and uses technology to fuel that further. So, by default, that person, so it’s like, this technology is not just like a knife.
It’s like, if there is a madman, and we give him a knife, now that person kills somebody. Say, I didn’t tell him to kill, but you should have been knowing what a madman would do with a knife. So, that is what unfortunately happens.
So, now, one of you mentioned the point that actually in Vedic culture also there was technology. Yes, you mentioned Mayadana made a high-tech palace. So, we’ll look at this.
There are three kinds of knowledge. There is Paravidya, Aparavidya, and Avidya. So, Paravidya is transcendental knowledge.
So, what is given in the Bhagavad Gita, Ashwamedha Bhagavan talks about? Atma, Brahma, and Paravidya is the spiritual sky. Then there is Aparavidya is material knowledge, which is in harmony with spiritual knowledge. So, this is material, and it is beneficial, like some of you talk about Ayurveda.
It is material technology. It is beneficial, but it is still material. At the same time, it is in harmony with spiritual principles.
Called Ayurveda, the principle is that when we take medicine, we should remember Vishnu, and know that it is Vishnu who is the curer, not just the medicine that is being taken. So, Vastu Shastra also is based on theistic principles, in the Vedic mathematics. Whereas modern technology is based on certain ideas.
These are reductionism, scientism, naturalism. I won’t go into the technicalities of this. Basically, there is a difference between science and scientism.
Science is a method of acquiring knowledge about the world around us. Scientism is the ideology that only the knowledge revealed through science is valuable, and everything else is invalid. So, when science claims monopoly on human knowledge, then it becomes scientism.
And when science claims monopoly on human knowledge, it becomes scientism. And technology indirectly promotes a scientistic worldview, scientism. It promotes.
People, when they get technology, what they think is, we are so much advancing, we don’t need any of the other things in life. We just, through technology, we will attain nirvana. We will attain happiness.
We will attain everything through technology. That is the idea of people. So, now, how do we go about synthesising things? So, actually speaking, it’s not that the principle here in Aparavidya, certainly as human beings, when we are living in the world, we may want to make things better.
So, if I am sick, I need medicines. If it’s hot, I may need some kind of fan, maybe a hand fan or a wall fan or an AC. So, the principle that while we are living in the world, we want to improve the living condition is not wrong.
But if that becomes the only focus and purpose of life, then it becomes dangerous. So, the example, spirituality is like a medicine, curative medicine, and technology is like the painkiller. So, if a person has got a terrible disease, then the person, while taking the medicine to cure the disease, may need some painkillers already in the situation.
So, like that, in the material world, there is misery, and the misery should impel us to go back to the spiritual world. But while going back to the spiritual world, it takes a lifetime of journey. During that, there will be miseries, there will be problems, and those problems will need to be dealt with at a material level also.
And for that, technology is useful. It can be useful. In the Vedic times also, there was technology also.
But if the technology distracts us from the ultimate purpose of life, and makes us think, okay, I don’t need any ultimate purpose, I’ll just be happy over here itself, then the painkiller becomes a killer. The painkiller makes us think that I don’t need any curative medicine, the painkiller will make me happy. Then there is no need, then that backfires, that backfires.
So, we see this happening. If you look at, say, I talk about entertainment, we’ll see that the entertainment that society is pandering to is becoming more and more, more and more passionate, more and more, you can say, violent. Why? It’s like when a person takes a painkiller without taking a medicine.
Initially, he gets a relief, but internally, the disease is becoming worse. So, afterwards, you need a stronger painkiller dose, and a still stronger painkiller dose, a still stronger painkiller dose. So, like that, if we look at the movies, say, 50 years ago, you know, maybe there was some action, some fighting would be there.
But now, if the movies have to have some, have some impact, some fun, there’s a big building, boom, blow it up. And then people say, mazaar. So, similarly, if you say that, the cricket, maybe 20-30 years ago, there was the five-day test cricket.
So, you know, people would have to watch for five days, and then there are, the batsmen were playing as gradually scoring runs. And ultimately, cricket is a painkiller. When people are bored, people want entertainment.
But then what happens is, when the emptiness becomes more, you want higher doses of painkillers. So, from the Packers series, times onwards, what happens, you have the one-day cricket coming up. So, one-day cricket is like a higher dosage painkiller.
But then when the inner boredom becomes further, you increase the dosage further. So, you have T20 cricket, which is still bigger, slam, bang, run, dash. That is what the cricket is.
So, basically, Indian society has two main painkillers. One is Bollywood and second is cricket. And the two got married and produced a child named IPL.
So, in IPL, basically, you have cricket, we have cricket personalities, we have movie personalities, and then there are multicoloured dresses, and then there is all this along with the cricket action. Because when the painkiller dosage is required more and more, okay, you have sixes and fours, but even sixes and fours are not enough to titillate people. So, you have cheerleaders who are dancing.
So, essentially, if you look at society, what is happening is that the painkiller is being required more and more and more dosage. Why is it required? Because the inner emptiness is becoming more and more. So, but over a period of time, the painkiller will not be enough.
It will not be enough. We need something much, much more. We need a cure.
So, that is why as devotees, the first thing is we have to be very clear that technology cannot make us happy. Technology can relieve us from some misery, but there is some other process to become happy. So, if technology makes us feel that spirituality is unnecessary, and that is what is the mentality of many people.
You know, you’re chanting Hare Krishna, that’s old-fashioned. Now, it’s become modern, man. It’s become modern.
You know, you should surf on the net and talk on the mobile and go about and have friends on Facebook. What is the use of all this? So, if that, that is the first illusion that we have to counter with respect to technology. But technology cannot make us happy.
But one of the curses of technology that we did not, most of the participants did not discuss is technology creates the promise that it will make people happy. And that’s how it makes spirituality, makes people feel that spirituality is unnecessary. It’s a painkiller, which makes many people feel that the medicine is not required.
So, that we have to be clear about. Now, while taking the medicine, how do we go ahead? Like some of you mentioned that for preaching, initially Prabhupada first went by ship, then he travelled all around by planes. Now, we are also using laptops.
Yes. Now, could there be preaching without technology as the Goswamis were preaching without technology? So, now, is it that without technology, no preaching was possible? Actually, maybe without, if there were no technology, there might have been no necessity for preaching. Because people had a spiritual culture.
People had, and it is not just in India, even in America. Actually speaking, when there was the discussion about whether slavery should be removed or not, then there was, there used to be long debates. So, Abraham Lincoln and Judge Douglas, they were from the Republican Liberal Party, and they would have debates, whether slavery should be there or not there.
So, they would have three, three hour discussions. So, there was one meeting, famous meeting. So, Douglas spoke for around two hours.
And after that, it was Lincoln’s turn to speak. Lincoln said, I’ll have to speak for two hours. And then after that, we will have, we had debate for three minutes and one minute now.
So, he said, then after that, we will have a discussion for one hour each after that. So, he said, now it was afternoon, now all of you can go home, take dinner and then come back and we’ll continue the discussion. So, actually, people came back.
So, the point which I’m making over here is that people had the capacity to heal. So, now today, if you tell people, you know, it is a two hour talk now, you go back and come, we’ll have a four hour talk more. Most people will, Most people, if they go, they will not come back.
Who has the capacity to hear for so long? So, of course, this is, this is a part of the politicalization, secularisation of American culture. But overall, there was the culture of hearing, whether it was India or the West, there was the culture of hearing and the capacity for hearing. Today, for more than one, one and a half hour, it becomes very difficult for people to sit and hear, because they’re so stimulated, we need some sensations which come through technology.
So, maybe preaching would not have been required. But what about the current society, where there is technology? So, Srila Prabhupada gave us basically two models of preaching. One is the self-sufficient village community.
Srila Prabhupada said that we would like to demonstrate that even without technology, people can live. And there are several places within ISKCON, where the devotees are creating models like that. But without using any technology, we live in the villages.
And these will be the models, if in the future, say oil runs out, and the global economy collapses, it may or may not happen in our lifetimes. But unless some other source of energy is found, that problem is going to come up, and it is going to seriously affect the civilisation. So, the world will be looking for alternative models of living, which are not so technological.
So, Srila Prabhupada gave that model. And he said that devotees should work to make that into a living reality. And there are many devotees who are, for example, there’s one devotee in Brazil.
So, you know, that Brazilian forest is like a hotspot, ecological hotspot, because the rainforest has been so much cut up. So, he said that I’ll go and make a farm community over there. He’s a very well-educated devotee.
And he went there, his name was Rupa Goswami, and he went, he got the local people over there, and they started living a natural lifestyle. And then the, it because of other eco-friendly projects, they were not accompanied by a committed lifestyle change. So, what happens is most of the preservation areas, okay, you go and plant a tree, water the tree, and let somebody take care of that.
That’s the idea. It’s very simplistic and superficial. But here, what was done in Brazil, it’s called Nav Gokul, that, you know, that was the Brazilian government came and supported it, and they want to emulate it elsewhere.
There are many projects like that, which have been done, where a devotee is demonstrating eco-friendly, self-sufficient, non-technologically dependent living. So, that is one model, which Srila Prabhupada wanted. But along with that, Srila Prabhupada also recognised that we will, most people in the near future will not be able to live without culture.
So, within the cities, there we create a devotional subculture. See that today’s mainstream culture is materialistic. So, one way is that we demonstrate an alternative culture itself.
Today’s mainstream culture is materialistic and technocentric, centred on technology. So, in the self-sufficient farm communities, we demonstrate an alternative culture entirely. Now, many of you, when you came for Utkarsh to Mayapur, you got a little bit of a glimpse of that.
You saw the Gurukul, you saw the temple communities. It’s not entirely technologically free over there, but it’s relatively simple. So, that is one approximate model of that.
But along with that, Srila Prabhupada said that within the cities, so one is we provide alternative culture, and within the devotees cities, we provide an alternative subculture. It’s not entirely alternative culture, but a subculture within the materialistic culture. So, what is the subculture? The subculture will not involve rejection of technology, but it will involve rejection of the materialism that is also a technology.
We utilise the technology for spiritual purposes. So, most of you are engineers. So, you are using technology, and you are going to use technology in your future careers.
So, what we can do is, we don’t have to reject technology, but we can utilise the technology for spiritual purposes. But before we can utilise technology for spiritual purposes, we have to free ourselves from the glamour that is associated with technology. Because if we are too enamoured by technology, then rather than be using technology, technology will use us.
In the sense, what do you mean by technology will use us? You will get infatuated by technology and will get carried away. So, therefore, philosophical education helps us to understand that technology cannot make us happy. But while living in the world, technology can be a necessary pain killer.
Technology can serve a necessary functional tool in the modern society. So, for that purpose, we can use technology. And that is what we will be, most of us will be doing within the devotional subculture that is there in the city.
So, the city temples will not be free from technology, the voices, and most, when many of you become householders, the houses will not be free from technology, there will be technology. But we have to make sure that we use the technology, not that the technology uses us. And that will be possible only when we are free from the illusion that technology can make us happy.
So, we know that Srila Prabhupada, this is the basic principle of Yukta Vairagya. Yukta Vairagya is that Vairagya is renunciation or detachment. Yukta is connection.
So, Rupa Goswami talks about this. So, he says that while being detached ourselves, Nirbandha, we do not become bound, but Krishna Sambunda, we use it for Krishna connection. So, if we use technology that way, we can be free.
We can actually, without becoming entangled, use the technology for our devotional purposes. So, yes, we can hear lectures on audio, we can maybe see videos of Yatras and other things like that. But as Varun pointed out very nicely, this is not a substitute for life association.
When that is not available, and why is it not available? Because often our technocentric economy makes us go far away from devotional association, because we get jobs in certain places. In such situations, this is at least better than nothing. But technology cannot be a substitute for a real devotional culture.
And to conclude, Srila Prabhupada will give the example of a thief. So, from the absolute natural point of view, like modern technology is avidya. So, even when we use cars, the cars are going to cause pollution.
So, we may try to minimise the using of cars, but it is not practical to live without cars. It is not practical today to live without much of technology, if we want to do effective outreach. Srila Prabhupada will give the example, if a thief has robbed a bank.
This is a transcendent example in the tradition. And the thief is going on a road in a car, the road speed limit is 60 kilometres per hour. But the thief is going at 100 kilometres per hour.
And the police chase him. So, what should the police do? Should the police see the 60 kilometre limit? Should we follow the 60 kilometre limit? Police need to go 120 kilometres so that the thief can be caught. So, like that, today, so if we did not have any of this materialistic technology, especially the godless technology that is there today, if we could return to spiritual, if we could return to the harmonious technology, that would be the best.
But when it is not practical, then what do we do? Today, materialism, hedonism, sexuality, greed, all these are being aggressively propagated through technology. That is like people’s spiritual wealth is being stolen away. So, then devotees actually should use the same technology.
Devotees are like policemen. So, when the views are going at 100 kilometres per hour, the devotees should go at 120 kilometres per hour. That means, actually devotees should use the technology even better to share Krishna’s spiritual message so that people’s spiritual wealth that is being stolen away by materialistic propaganda, that is recovered and restored.
So, Srila Prabhupada envisioned a global East-West synthesis where he said we could use Indian technology, Indian spirituality and Western technology. And both of them, he said Indian technology is like the Indian spirituality, India is like the lame man and the West is like the blind man. West has a lot of technology, but spiritually blind.
And India has a lot of spiritual vision that is like, but still, India is materially impoverished, materially crippled because of many years of foreign domination. So, if India and the West come together, Indian spirituality and Western technology, if both of them are used together, it’s like the blind man and the lame man coming together. So, unfortunately, that is not happening in India today.
What happened is, on August 15, 1947, India independently became dependent on the West. What does that mean? We got political independence, but we independently chose to be culturally dependent. Culturally, India adapted practically all the cultural values of the West.
So, Gandhi was asked that, will India develop the way Britain has developed? So, Gandhi replied, for one Britain to develop, it took the resources of a full planet. Britain actually developed by colonising practically the whole planet. So, if India has to develop like Britain, we will need several planets for that.
So, it’s not possible for India to develop that way. It’s not a sustainable way of development. Still, India adopted that.
That was the misfortune. Vishal Prabhupada had the vision that actually, India should be leading the world by spiritual wisdom. But unfortunately, India has become infatuated by technology.
Infatuated by technology. So, Prabhupada would say that, here, that is a person who is like a beggar. So, sitting on jewels, but begging for glass.
Vishal Prabhupada said India has spiritual wisdom, but instead of looking at the jewels of spiritual wisdom, India is attracted by the technological gadgetry of the West. So, if the blind man and the lame man are to come together, the analogy looks very nice. But two things are required for that.
First is, the blind man has to recognise that he is blind. So, the West has to recognise that there is something wrong with us. And to some extent, there is a lot of spiritual searching that is happening in the West.
Because they are realising that the amounts of social degradation that is there is enormous. So, West is realising that. But along with that, the lame man has to stop worrying about his lameness and recognise that I have got eyes.
So, Indians should not get too worried that we are technologically primitive, we are financially not so well-to-do, but we have spiritual wealth. So, when Indians recognise their spiritual wealth and couple with the technology, then we can actually bring in an era of proper development. And individually, we can negotiate life’s journey and we can help the world return back to its spiritual course.
So, I will summarise, then we can have a few questions. I started by talking about how it is not that science and technology was developed with evil intentions. It was basically developed by people who thought that they will make the world better.
But we discussed how socially, economically, ecologically, psychologically, the world has not become a better place. So, what went wrong? And we discussed about how every blessing of technology comes with associated blessings. And the blessings are visible, the curses are invisible.
The blessings are for a few people, the curses often are for everyone. Then we discussed about how within the technology, the net effect is not just at the physical level in terms of the harm that it brings. The effect is also that it infatuates us with the hope of happiness and with the illusion that I do not need anything spirituality, because technology itself will make me happy.
So, technology is like a painkiller which makes us feel that there is no need for the medicine. And that is the real danger of technology. When we live in a materialistic society which is affected by technology, we cannot in one swing remove technology and remove all the harmful effects.
But at the very least, we can avoid the illusion that technology will make us happy. And then I discussed about how the painkiller may be useful. And the painkiller was also used in Vedic culture, but the painkiller was used as an aid for the treatment.
Ayurveda was used to increase people’s devotion to Vishnu. But modern technology is based on a worldview of scientism, which rather than aiding spirituality, which often leads to the minimisation and rejection of spirituality. So, that is what has to be avoided.
Then by the solution part we discussed how there are these two solutions. One is the alternative culture of techno-pre-civilisation, self-sufficient farm communities. And there is a devotional subculture where technology is used for devotional purposes.
And then we concluded by discussing about how the East-West synthesis can come about, how devotees need to use technology better than materialistic people to restore people’s spiritual wealth. And when the two come together in modern Indian spirituality and Western technology, then we can individually and globally help to restore a proper balance between materialism and spirituality in society. Are there any questions? Yes.
Mike, Mike, do you have a minute? I have a question, sir. Maybe we talk about technology, but if we see some basic sciences, for example, personally I am a student of physics. So, when in our class, like, we teach subjects like theory of relativity, general relativity, quantum mechanics, these subjects.
So, we read these subjects. So, this science is very busy. So, we read quantum mechanics, and we see that how, with the help of these equations, we can do so many things.
And if you go in a very different plane, out of the world, then clearly you are, clearly you have received the science. And you feel that, like, you understand that, that all these things are happening. But there are so many wonderful things happening also.
There are so many, with the utility of equations, there are so many things. We are actually entering into the reality of life. Just by simple equations, we find out so many things.
Correct. It’s a good question. So, when we study science, we find that, so, recently when the God particle was discovered, so, I wrote an article and made a PPT about it.
I won’t go into the full thing. But I addressed this point over there, understanding the collisions, emissions and omissions, as the title says, in the God particle we trust. So, the question was that, certainly science seems to have discovered mathematical laws, how do so many things work in a, in a quite a remarkable way.
So, how do we see this? Yeah, okay. So, now, here the main point, the laws of science work. A is equal to mc square, f is equal to g of 1, m2 upon r square.
So, the real question is, what makes the laws of science work? It is not the scientists. You know, why is matter or nature mathematically describable at all? You know, science through its laws is discovering the workings of nature, but who or what is behind the workings? So, this is a famous, Neil Turok was asked by George Bernard, he says, what is it that makes the electron continue to follow the laws? Now, why does the electron move in a particular orbit at a particular speed? Science has discovered laws and science by using those laws has been able to give us an understanding of nature, but Turok had no clear answer, nor are the scientists in the world today. So, basically, what, why do laws of science work? Is it logic? You know, okay, you can say 2 plus 2 has to be 4, that is a logical necessity.
But f is equal to g m1 m2 upon r square is not a logical necessity. You know, it could very well be f is equal to g m1 m2 upon r cube. It could have been like that.
There is no logical reason why it could not have been like that. So, the laws of nature, science has discovered laws of nature, they are not laws of logic, nor are they like laws of logic. So, they are not logical necessities.
Then is it, are they because of chance? Why does the electron go in its orbit? Why does nature orbit matter? Well, when there is a well-defined repeatable process, we can use of chance only when you have certain probability over there. We do not even know what is the probability of f is equal to g m1 m2 upon r square because we do not know any alternative sets. We do not have a toss to make to determine the probability.
So, chance is an inadequate explanation. So, basically, God, is it God the answer? The explainability of the universe requires an explanation. This is an important point.
The explainability of the universe requires an explanation. That means that the very fact that the universe is explainable in terms of scientific laws that can be described in the language of mathematics. This requires an explanation.
If everything exploded from a big bang, then matter could have been organised in any way. Why is matter organised in a way that follows either the laws of relativity or the laws of quantum physics? And the very explainability of the universe requires an explanation. Historically, it is what scientists have tried to do it.
Originally, the theist pointed out that the design in the universe requires a designer. So, the theist tried to get around this by saying, oh, no, no, no, the design comes by laws. The design comes by laws.
We generally use these two in common. Design requires designer, law requires lawmaker. But actually, if we assume the second, the first becomes unnecessary.
That means if we say that the design comes by law, for example, if I put a certain amount of clay in a box and I move a wheel around it, if I can make a law by which the rate at which the clay is put in, water is put in and the wheel is moved, output is a pot, a clay pot. Then the law determines the design. And then I remove the need for a designer.
So, that is how in mainstream science, the design argument got sort of sidelined. They said the design comes by law. But then the bigger question remains, where does the law come from? Where does the law come from? So, science works because nature follows laws.
And we can surely give credit to scientists where credit is due. Where is credit due? Credit is due for the fact that scientists have been able to, by their study, discover the laws of nature. That is fine.
Certainly, those scientists who did that, they were hardworking scientists. And they used their intellectual creativity to try to come up with the laws of, to try to find out what are the laws of nature. But the problem is many scientists, sometimes people feel there is a conflict between science and religion.
Actually, the conflict is not between science and religion. It is between materialism and spirituality. And it is science and spirituality or religion.
So, it is not a conflict between the two. The conflict is between materialism and spirituality. And science is basically a tool for acquiring knowledge.
But this tool has been monopolised and misappropriated by materialism. That means, science as a tool today is used to propagate materialistic ideas. But science in and of itself, like technology, is not materialistic in itself.
Science is basically a tool for acquiring knowledge. So, naturally, human beings are intelligent and they have used their intelligence to acquire knowledge. But what is the inference, what is the conclusion that comes from that? If science is studied objectively, that can deepen people’s faith.
So, here, again, morning, I quote Krishna’s Ramayana, he says, an equation for me has no meaning unless it represents a thought of God. So, yes, quantum physics is required, discovers certain equations, we are starting with Schrodinger’s equation, say. But what makes the quantum particles obey Schrodinger’s equation? It’s not Schrodinger, obviously.
So, what is that? So, actually, an equation reveals the order that God has made within nature. So, we as devotees, some devotees may take an extreme position that all science and technology is useless. Now, to some extent, if somebody is actually, we say, practising the alchemy to some culture, everyone doesn’t want to use science and technology, then that position might be okay.
But we need to recognise that there are very intrusive human beings who have studied nature and they have come up with certain laws. But subsequently, if you study from Einstein, Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Copernicus, all of them were believers. But down the line, science got misappropriated by materialism.
And science was used to propagate materialism. And science was equated with materialism. That’s why, as I said earlier, many times, if somebody, if say, you are wearing dhoti kurta and doing kirtans in the trains, and then most people, if you tell them that you are from IIT, NRIT, they will get a culture shock.
Oh, really? Boys from IIT and NRIT, they wear dhoti kurta and chant Hare Krishna? How? Now, why should people get a culture shock like that? Because in today’s society, science has been equated with materialism. I mean, if you are scientific, you are a materialist. That’s what most people think.
But there is nothing in science that directly leads to materialism. It’s rather, materialists have used science to propagate their own ideology. So, what should be done is, devotees should become, at least those devotees are interested, Vishal Prabhupada wanted that devotees should become good scientists and they should redirect science in a spiritual way.
So, science is a tool for human knowledge and as a tool, it can be utilised. So, you don’t have to take the extreme position of rejecting it. But we shouldn’t let science get misappropriated and monopolised by materialism.
That is the real issue. Good question. So, in the past, there was technology, but say Arjuna would just chant the mantra and the weapon would come.
So, but he did not really deeply understand how that technology was made. But now, we understand it because we are trying to go deeper into it. So, isn’t that a better position? Well, there are two different aspects to it again.
See, in modern, as I said, modern technology and modern science has been equated with materialism to a large extent. So, when we study matter deeply and try to understand how it works, we are basically using our intellect in that direction. We are going deep into it.
In the past, Arjuna was not the only exponent of technology. There is the whole branch of knowledge called Sankhya and Vaisheshika. Sankhya is the elemental theory of matter, Vaisheshika is the molecular theory of matter.
And if you study these, they are very advanced. The analysis of matter that is given in these, that is quite serious, it is quite deep. And we have some remnants of that knowledge in terms of the technology.
For example, we have the non-rusting iron pillar that is there near the elephant, that big pillar. It is made of iron, but it does not rust. So, scientists have found that there is one particular alloy that is used over there, which prevents iron from rusting.
So, now we know the alloy, but we really cannot mix the two together to make iron like that. So, in the past, it was not that they just chanted some mantras and that non-rusting pillar came. They also made that particular alloys.
So, Vedic mathematics had some sutras, some formulas. It was not that they were just chanting mantras without understanding anything. There were the sutras, which we could call like equations or rules of thumb.
So, they were there also. So, there was a deep understanding at that time also. So, again, the modern way of looking at matter is reductionist.
Reductionistic means we do not look at, we look at matter very deeply, but we do not see the connection of matter with higher things. What does that mean? Say now, for example, I wrote an article when the Maharashtra government tried to do artificial rains in Maharashtra. What did they say that? We will do cloud seeding.
So, a politician and scientist, they went in a helicopter amidst the clouds. They sent some hygroscopic chemicals into the clouds. And they said that will cause the clouds to precipitate and rains will come.
That was the mechanism that they used. That is called cloud seeding technique. So, of course, not much rains came by that.
And secondly, even when the clouds do rains, you cannot control where the rains will come. If the rains come on a river, then what is the use? So, basically, it was the whole technology was abandoned in America, but in India, it was adopted in great fanfare. But what research has found out, I know a professor in IIT Mumbai, he has done research that in the Rig Veda, there is description of fire sacrifices that lead to rains.
Krishna says, yajna produces rains. Now, today’s scientific rationale will say that this is just pre-scientific mythology. But what they found is, if we use the precise kind of wood, the precise kind of fire, the precise kind of ghee that is described in the Vedic sacrifices, then that fire produces a kind of smoke that contains hygroscopic chemicals.
Then what hygroscopic chemicals go into the sky, and they mix with the clouds, and they cause cloud precipitation, and then rains happen. So, there was a technology over there also. So, now that means, did all the priests who did the rituals know that? No, not necessarily.
But surely someone knew it, that is how the rituals were designed. So, even if we say the rituals come from Krishna, ultimately, this is told, there is knowledge that is available over there. So, but the difference is, what they understood is, it is not just the hygroscopic chemicals going up over there and causing the clouds to see.
Actually, when the Brahmins are doing the rituals, they are not just thinking that, oh, this smoke will produce hygroscopic chemicals. They are focussing that this yajna is to satisfy Lord Vishnu and Indradeva. So, now, Indradeva, when there is a devata who looks after rains, he will also work through some material mechanism.
Whenever devatas also work, their behaviour, their actions will have some material components by which it works. So, what we see in modern society is just the material mechanism without the supervising agencies. So, yes, there might be a middle mechanism, say that hygroscopic chemicals cause clouds to precipitate and rains to come.
But that’s only one factor. As I said, we can’t control all the factors, you know, which way the clouds will go, where the rains will come. You know, in American states, when they were trying this in a big way, they would do cloud seeding in one state and the clouds would get seeded, but then the winds would come and the clouds will go to another state.
And when the rains come there, they say, oh, we spend the money, but they got the rains. And then what they did was, at the other state, when the clouds, sometimes you can observe the clouds and you can know when this cloud is going to rain. So, what they would try to do is, when a cloud is over one state, they would try to use helicopters and other means to accelerate the movement of the cloud to another state, so that the rains will come over.
So, literally, they are having cloud property disputes. This cloud belongs to me. This cloud belongs to me.
Well, actually, big illusion belongs to me. That’s all I can say. So, now the point is, we human beings cannot control all the associated factors, you know, which way the wind will come, where the rains will form and how much point the rains will fall, but all this is controlled by higher governing agencies.
So, when the yajnas are performed, there is a material technology that is quite sophisticated that is involved. But along with that, or that is subordinated to the higher understanding that there are governing agencies. So, if we satisfy the governing agencies, they will control the material mechanisms by which the results will come.
So, we need to have a balanced knowledge. We need to understand the material mechanism and we also need to understand the higher principle that there are governing agencies who control these mechanisms better than us. But in modern times, we go deep in, but we study only the material mechanisms.
And when we study the material mechanisms, actually, the more we study, the more we study, actually, it becomes more and more complex. You know, in Stephen Hawking’s that book, Brief History of Time, he said, in the future, we will be able to understand the mind of God. That is how he concluded the Brief History of Time.
So, they had the idea that we will bring about a theory of everything which you can write on your T-shirt. And the whole universe will be explained. But around 1990, Stephen Weinberg, he said, the more we study the universe, the more it seems to be complex.
So that although we have made great work, we are still further away from the solution. So, then in 2004, Stephen Hawking said, I am happy to announce that humanity’s quest for knowledge will never end. Now, when this is reported, the London Times saw through it, it says even Stephen Hawking admits defeat.
So, the point is, if you just try to study matter diagnosed from its subtler and spiritual aspects, matter is endlessly complex. So, the theory of everything is a scientific dream, which is more and more difficult to realise now. Quantum physics and relativity are so radically different.
Unifying it seems an impossibility. So, the God particle discovery was touted as a big thing. But actually God particle is just one particle, one subatomic particle within one model, the standard model, which is a part of one theory, that is quantum theory, which is actually part of one branch, physics, which is one branch of knowledge, that is science, which is one aspect of human knowledge acquiring capacity, which human beings are only one being within the vastness of creation.
And creation is just one part of everything that God has made. So, we are very far away from understanding everything, no matter how much advancement we make. So, the point is, certainly modern science studies a lot.
And that is appreciated, but that study is divorced from the totality of creation. So, you know, specialisation means to know more and more about less and less. And super specialisation means to know everything about nothing.
So, literally, the God particle is so small and billions of dollars are spent to understand it. We are not deriving the point that there was research made and it was understood. But the point is that such a fragmented understanding, when we study matter divorced from its holistic position within nature, that will not lead to holistic knowledge.
And that is the problem. So, shall we continue later? So, how many of you have further questions? We cannot take them today. Maybe tomorrow we will take one, two, three.
So, please note down the questions and we will discuss them in tomorrow’s class. We will finish a little earlier and we will finish a little later.