How can we give people initial faith so that they can practice para-vidya and experience its potency?

Answer Podcast:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. The question is that for people to experience the paravidya, they have to have some faith by which they will practice it. And, so, how do we give them that preliminary faith by which they can practice? Yes, definitely.
We are not talking about the expecting people to just practice without any knowledge. Krishna also, the same verse which I quoted, 9.2, he talks about rāja-vidyā rāja-guhiyam pavitramida-muddhamam pratakṣāvagamam sukhaṁ sukhaṁ kartumam, rāja-vidyā. That is spiritual knowledge.
So, he is the king of knowledge, he says. So, now, we have our philosophy. And, if we present the philosophy systematically, actually, it is very intellectually satisfying.
The Bhagavad Gita’s wisdom offers meaningful, coherent answers to life’s fundamental questions about our identity and destiny, about the nature of the world, about the nature of God. So, we can present the philosophy. So, philosophically, we can talk about the existence of God, we can talk about the existence of soul, we can talk about the logicality of the principle of karma, we can talk about the systematic nature of the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita.
So, we can present the philosophical side of the paravidya in a systematic way. That means, in the paravidya, there is the philosophical side and then there is the experiential side. So, the philosophical side has to be presented before people will take up the experiential side.
So, now, spirituality can be compared to a higher dimensional science. In science, there are two aspects, there is theory and there is experiment. So, similarly, in spirituality, there are two limbs, there is philosophy and then there is there are religious practices which give experience.
So, there is philosophy and there is experience coming from practices. So, the philosophy aspect of spirituality is like the theory aspect of science. So, when we present the philosophy that gives people the intellectual impetus to try out the experiment, to do, to practice bhakti and then check whether they get the experience or not.
So, certainly, we do want to give them philosophy, but while giving the philosophy, it is, we can focus on the universal principles. For example, the existence of God, existence of soul, as I said, logicality of the principle of karma and things like that. And even in this, is there a need to present the aparavidya? It’s not really necessary.
See, there are two different points over here, which are to be, which are to be conveyed. Does the does the spiritual wisdom from the scriptures have something useful for us in today’s times? That is the question which people ask. People are interested, you know, what’s in it for me? What can, what value can this add to my life? Now, if we talk about paravidya, aparavidya from scripture, we can say that, oh, that the earth is bhugo, that was known in scripture long ago, that the earth is saptadvip, there are seven continents, that was known long ago.
And things like that, yes, these can help people to develop faith. But, these are not the central message of scripture. So, if it is helpful for people to develop faith, then these things can be talked about.
But we don’t have to make this as the center of our message. The philosophy itself, if you present in a systematic way, if you study philosophy properly and Prabhupada has given his books and his followers give talks, they have written books, and you present the philosophy in a systematic way, in a rational, intelligible way, then that is enough to give intellectual impetus for people to try out the experience. So, the spirituality is a complete package with philosophy acting like the theoretical aspect of science and devotional practices acting like the experiment aspect of science.