How the laws of nature work and what role Krishna plays in them
[Bhagavatam class at ISKCON, Montreal, Canada]
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Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.
Hare Krishna Grateful to be here in the lotus feet of the Lordships and the blessings of all the senior devotees. I'll try to speak something today on the topic of how cause-effect works in this world and how the Lord intervenes. I'll speak this in three broad points First is and explain How the cause-effect connection is not as simple as we may think Second is that how does Krishna intervene in this cause-effect connection and last is how we while practicing bhakti at our level can expect Krishna's intervention So here The context is quite dramatic, but the explanation is very philosophical The context is that Prahlad is being Pounced upon by vicious scary demons and With their weapons, they're about to kill him and it is if a murderous mob bounces on some people and at that time We would expect action.
What does this person do? Does he run away? What happens? But it is said that he's protected and so that in that dramatic context of Prahlad being attacked He is protected and how he is protected that explanation is given in this verse and the explanation itself requires some some Elaboration the explanation requires an explanation you could say In general in the scriptures there is a narrative and within the narrative There are there are lessons there are philosophical points drawn from the narrative But often those philosophical explanations are addressed with Context to the current audience at that time. So certain ideas might be easily understood by the people at that time Say for example, if we say Krishna's Krishna's lips are as beautiful as bimba fruit Now today we don't even know what is bimba fruit So the Context so there is a universal principle that the explanations is given using certain contexts Those contexts need to be understood carefully so the first point relates with how which I'm going to discuss relates with how cause-effect works in this world, so the example given here is that All the weapons of the demons could not hurt Prahlad who Was absorbed in the Lord in certain characters to the Lord are described over here, but a brahmanya akhilatmanee Anirudheshe So they talk about the characters a little later, but he none of the weapons hurt him just as The good activities of a person without good karma do not bear any fruit Now it's interesting that The example let's try to understand. What is the example even over here? see we all Talk about a cause-effect correlation and that's how we function at a very basic level Now if somebody's child comes back home with very poor grades Then the parents will ask what happened.
Did you study well for the exam? If a child comes back with a black eye on their face on the eye, what happened? No, I just got a black eye. What do you mean? You just got a black eye. Did you fight with someone you got an infection what happened? So we implicitly understand there is a cause-effect connection in the world Nobody functions.
We cannot function without a cause-effect connection Being the implicit basis of our functioning however, the cause-effect is not always Straightforward, although we say that the principle of karma is that to every action there is a reaction but It is not a one-to-one correspondence always It is not necessary that I will do action A and I'll get result B. Now, why is it not like that? because There are multiple factors involved. We could call those factors as four D's four D's is Duty plus desire. So duty plus destiny plus duration Leads to the desired result So we do our duty we do whatever is our karma then after that destiny has to be favorable and when the destiny is favorable then The required time duration has to pass The duty plus destiny plus duration leads to the desired result.
You could call this as karma in Sanskrit as karma plus daiva plus kala Needs to follow the desired result So that Start with some simple example Say if somebody wants to plow a land and get some harvest they may plow the land at their duty but The rains have to come that is destiny And then after that there will be the Pass passage of time till the harvesting season comes and only after that they will get the harvest so quite often when we act We Overlook these two factors the destiny and the duration. We think my action duty and result So sometimes we try to we are having some conflict resolution and we're trying to persuade someone to do something and we speak and speak and speak and the person just doesn't understand and One day we talk and certainly that person gets persuaded Or we talk the same point to two people one person sees it immediately the other person doesn't see it doesn't get the point Why does it happen like that? If our persuasive skills are so good that we could persuade one person, why are you not able to persuade the other person? Sometimes we ourselves share Krishna consciousness now we might if we are going and distributing books We might speak exactly the same sentence to two people Same sentence same presentation same book will be same setting also, but one person takes it another person does it So now in this case we can say that oh each person has their own mindset and some people understand some people don't understand that's true, but the point is that our action and the result are not immediately correlated and Here we could attribute it to that person's particular mindset But there are many situations where we might not be able to attribute it directly to any particular person intervening Say we decide to drive from one place to another and we plan I'll reach there in 30 minutes and Once one day we reach in 30 minutes, but the next day there's a traffic jam. There's heavy traffic It may take us three hours to reach the same place Many times in India when we travel from say Delhi to Mumbai the flight takes one and a half hours But from Mumbai to go to the temple takes three hours four hours That if the traffic is bad So what happens is that our Actions and the results from them are not intrinsically correlated at an immediate level Every action will produce a result But that result mean may not come immediately When that result will come Depends on other factors and those factors involve our own past karma So for every actions result to come it's not just present karma, it's present karma plus past karma produces the result and This is what often causes great mystery and frustration for many people even in the material field People say I am working as hard as that person.
I am as talented as that person, but they are getting all the lucky breaks And I just get the breaks. I Why is it happening like this? So it's because it's not just this life's our immediate karma So we might do a particular activity, but may not get the result if the past karma is also not favorable now of course It is not that The past karma's role is always equally prominent That is where life becomes Unpredictable that's in some cases we could say that the present karma Might have a hundred percent or ninety nine percent role and past karma might have one percent role In some cases the present karma might have one percent role and the past karma might have a ninety nine percent role say if somebody on a cold winter night eats ten ice creams And after eating those ice creams what happens Next morning they say I scream They have terrible pain They have a sore throat now Somebody else might also eat ten ice creams and nothing may happen to them if they are particularly healthy Nothing might happen to it, but this person might be in terrible pain When they're in terrible pain Should we say oh, yeah, why are you in pain like this because of past karma? Well, yeah, it's past karma, but it's past night's karma. It's not some remote karma So on the other hand some people they Even if they do something right They may then eat something a lot of ice creams, but still their health might just stay steady nothing happens to them So if the past karma is favorable Even our negative actions may not produce some results negative results on the other hand if the past karma is unfavorable then even our positive Activities may not produce positive results and a small negative action may produce a lot of negative result some people have an intrinsically very healthy body so they might Some people have a sickly body If somebody has a sickly body see a slight Inappropriate diet, maybe they eat one item which they should not eat or a little bit of that item some people have say allergy to some particular substances and Then just inhale that substance or eat that substance and then They might just you know Throw up or they might become very sick a lot of reaction can happen to them on the other hand Some people who are very having a very healthy body of What happens they treat that they treat their tongue like a conveyor belt Just keep eating anything and everything and still they remain healthy and slim and nothing happens to them Some people you see literally a little bit more and their body balloons out So why is this that our immediate actions they do affect? But they may not affect immediately so the point being made over here is that the immediate cause is not the complete cause and the immediate cause will not have an effect if The other factors are not favorable So now in the case of somebody being attacked by weapons It seems obvious if somebody is running towards somebody else with a knife or a spear and piercing them They will be wounded they'll be killed But the Bhagavatam is giving us this philosophical view This is not directly karma because it's bhakti and I'll talk about the difference in a few minutes But the point the Bhagavatam is making is the immediate cause was present The demons were charging towards Prahlad with their weapons But because the remote cause was not favorable Therefore there was no effect Although the demons attack, but the attack had no effect So in the sense the Bhagavatam is Describing something miraculous in an analytical way in a you could say a non-miraculous way if Somebody comes if 10 people and 50 people come and attack a small child.
What can that child do a child would be defenseless But here the child is protected and this we could say is miraculous. How could a child survive like that? so so the cause I talked about the cause of a correlation in the world and How it works that the immediate cause is not the sufficient cause Sometimes if the immediate cause and the remote cause are not together then the immediate cause may be there, but still the result might not come So then what is the mechanism? So how does Krishna play a role in the cause-effect mechanism in the world? So in this case what is exactly happened is that Something Special is going on We could say that the demons are coming to kill Prahlad and Prahlad is unaffected so Tattasya kutividhir ihan jisestas Tavad vibhotanubhritam tadupikshitanaam Prahlad Maharaj himself later on in the ninth chapter by offering prayers to Narasimhadev Explains this point Mahabalesya neha sharanam That my dear Lord Even a child cannot be protected by the natural protector say the father or the mother a boat cannot protect a drowning person and Her medicine cannot heal a sick person if you do not allow it Tattasya kutividhir ihan jisestas That means there is a problem, and there is an obvious solution to the problem But the obvious solution to the problem will not work if Tavad vibhotanubhritam tadupikshitanaam if you do not want that solution to work so Prahlad Maharaj is having this vision, and he's of course they're talking in not the context of how he was protected But he's talking in the context of how Hiranyakashipu despite all his wealth was not protected his wealth and power and his boons was not protected So there is an obvious or immediate measure that we take and we are required to take it at a practical level But the immediate cause is not the complete cause and In the case of the Lord's intervention How does he intervene So some people say that in the past people were very naive. They were Pre-scientific unscientific they believed all these fairy tales They didn't have a sense of logic, but we are logical However, it's not as simple as that If we see Let's consider one of the most dramatic Incidents of some miraculous intervention of Krishna of the Lord in the world that is the Govardhan Leela Govardhan Leela so now Krishna lifts up a whole hill on just a little finger This Is Sometimes some skeptical people say if you say we have to lift something even I have to lift this book You have to lift it on my little finger or one finger.
I'll have to place it right properly at the center so you know in physics that the concept of the center of gravity and if only the finger is placed steadily at the center of gravity and the finger is strong enough, then the Book will be heavy so a skeptic might have Asked even if Krishna had the strength to lift up Govardhan How did he find the center of gravity of Govardhan to put his finger over there? Now Krishna does not have to find the center of gravity Because he is the source of gravity He is the source of gravity The rule maya-adhyakshena prakriti suyate sa charvacharam So the laws of nature work under his supervision Now, what does this mean? But is it that the Brajwasis were naive and they just believe the story of people at that time and Bhagavatam was told they believed the story No, there is a questioning attitude that is there in the Bhagavatam itself The 25th chapter that if you see the Govardhan Leela is described in the 10th canto In four chapters 24 25 26 and 27 the 24 chapter describes Krishna dissuading the Brajwasis from doing the Govardhan Puja Doing the Indra Puja and doing Govardhan Puja instead 25th chapter describes the results Indra gets angry and he showers down rain, hail winds Thunderbolts and lightning everything and tries to cause flooding of the nearby river also Yamuna, but through it all Krishna protects the Brajwasis while lifting the Govardhan. The 26th chapter is called by Prabhupada's wonderful Krishna And in that chapter the Brajwasis go and ask Nanda Maharaj that next chapter is Indra's prayer. So in that 26 27 chapter section The Brajwasis ask, Krishna is a small boy.
How could he lift such a big mountain? The point is the Brajwasis are not, although they had themselves seen it happen Still they are asking for an explanation They're not as naively believing it. And what is the expression that Nanda Maharaj gives? When Krishna was born Gargamuni had come and Gargamuni had told me that this son, that your son is Just like Narayana Is just like Narayana Now Gargamuni did not want, as a Brahmana, he did not want to speak untruth But he also couldn't speak the truth So he couldn't tell Nanda Maharaj that actually this is not your son. This is the son of Vasudeva So what he did is in a previous life.
He was the son of Vasudeva The previous life means in this you could say that Krishna had two distinct lives the way he lived in Mathura and the way he lived in Vrindavan were quite different So he just uses a different Twist to the meaning of previous life, and then he says he doesn't say your son is Narayana. Your son is as powerful as Narayana So of course that is also true because he's the source of Narayana but the point here is that Krishna doesn't necessarily That when Nanda Maharaj speaks this, that he's as good as Narayana, that's why he has such power And when the Vrajavasis hear this, oh, he's as powerful as Narayana, then they accept that expression. Then it makes sense So the point here is that they are not just naively believing anything and everything But when they are given an explanation, they are open to explanations of a higher order Yes, there are laws of nature and normally a heavy object cannot be lifted or to speak of lifting a hill but Heavier than the objects, heaviest objects in this world are higher powers in the supreme being and Somebody is as powerful as the supreme being, surely they can lift.
So the modern science, what it does is it claims causal completeness. Causal completeness means that cause effect can be completely explained in terms of the material world itself That okay, this cause this effect, this cause this effect. Now at one level it is true and They say that the laws of nature can explain everything.
There's a prominent scientist There's a brilliant scientist known as Stephen Hawking. He wrote a book called the grand design and in that book He claims, now what is this idea of a grand design? Now he's an atheist. Now what is the grand design? He says this design is so grand because it does not require a designer Require a designer.
The grandness of this design is that it doesn't require a designer He says no, that's that that's the grandness. Now in this book what he argues is now he's a brilliant scientist but he is also a pathetic philosopher and Often scientists, they overstep the jurisdiction and they start making philosophical claims. So in his book he one of the one of the most absurd statements is That if the laws of nature exist because the laws of nature existed the universe created itself Because of the because the laws in in this case laws of nature.
It doesn't talk about law of karma He's talking about laws of physics like gravity and others because the law because of the laws of nature the universe created itself Now again, you could find many many faults with this But the point here most important thing is the laws of nature Don't do anything the laws of nature simply describe How actions correlate with consequences? How much is a 5 a how much is 500 plus 700 1,200 thank you. Do you have one thousand two hundred dollars in your pocket? No Just because you know 500 plus 700 is 1,200 that does not want to put $1,200 in your pocket So if you had $500 in your pocket and somebody give you $700 Then the laws of mathematics can tell you how many dollars will be there in your pocket The laws of mathematics don't produce any money If the laws of mathematics produce money all mathematicians would be millionaires So the laws of mathematics require the Pre-existence of certain certain objects on which certain transformations takes place and Then what will be the result of those transformations that is described by the laws of mathematics? Similarly the laws of physics They don't cause anything to happen After something exists and something causes it to change What will be the result of that change? That will be described laws of physics So that means that To first there are three things which remain unexplained and that's how God plays a role in the picture first of all Where did the things? Which on which the laws are going to act where did those things come from second is How did the action the cause take place and third is? Where did the cause-effect correlation come from? I'll explain this in a different way say if now currently in India the Cricket craze is becoming very high to suppose. There is a World Cup final match India and Pakistan very arch rivals are playing and then the last ball somebody needs to hit it across the fence and The batsman is batting and the ball comes and the ball goes over the fence for a six and then the Everybody celebrates and the match-winning batsman is asked.
How did you hit the six? On this last ball he said by Newton's laws of motion Newton's laws of motion already always there But Newton's laws of motion didn't don't explain why the bad the ball the batsman the baller existed Newton's laws of motion don't explain why the batsman chose that particular shot instead of some other shot Newton's laws of motion can only explain that if this cause of this magnitude is there this effect will come about So the point I'm making is God is the overseer of the system So miracles are not against science Miracles are above science We accept the validity of science, but we also accept that there is something more beyond that So when somebody is being charged with weapons to hit them to kill them Normally a sharp spear will go into someone's body and just pierce them kill them But and that's you could say this common sense. You don't even know need laws of physics for that But the point is what we observe It is there is a causal connection, but it's not always causally complete Because the Lord oversees the system and if the Lord wants He can supersede the system. He can suspend the system and that is omnipotence So we don't deny the laws of nature, but we don't we deny absoluteness to the laws of nature So they are there, but there is something more beyond the cause-effect connection That was the second point that how does God intervene? In the in the causal connection in the world God sets up the system of causal connection God actually creates the things on which the cause-effect connection will act and Then God can intervene and suspend the cause-effect connection if it is required that brings us to the last point that is Okay, how can we expect Krishna's intervention in our lives? We are trying to practice bhakti and Do we the essential principle in the bhagavatam is not so much the miracles The miracles are no more dramatic.
For example Prahlad is being charged He is being attacked and he is unaffected So I mean this is a miracle. Yes, it is a miracle But the essential miracle is not that Prabhu Prahlad was protected The essential miracle is that Prahlad was absorbed in the Lord Now even if he had even if the weapons had killed him the that It we could say this tragic, but if he had been absorbed in the Lord, that is the success In every action sometimes the scriptures describe that even those who are devoted may sometimes suffer He sometimes perish The Ramayana describes how Jatayu Fought valiantly against Ravan, but he was killed The Mahabharata describes how Abhimanyu fought valiantly against the Kauravas, but he was killed Of course the Mahabharata also describes how the Ramayana describes how Hanuman single-handedly went into Lanka and Penetrated Lanka and came out victorious Devastating single-handedly Demonic hordes of Ravan And also describes how Arjuna penetrated single-handedly into the Kaurava ranks and wreaked havoc Killing Jayadratha. So the scriptures do talk about the devoted being victorious But the scriptures are not shy of talking about how the devoted sometimes meet with failure So, why do the scriptures talk about this? Because the nature of the world is that sooner or later everybody will experience failure and Even those who are devoted sometimes they may experience setbacks We look at Srila Prabhupada's life.
We see he was so phenomenally successful in sharing Krishna consciousness across the world But if we look at his previous life, there are so many times when so many things that he did didn't work out In fact almost everything that he did It seemed it backfired. It didn't work out at least not backfired. So And if you look at the overall narrative of the Bhagavatam itself It's suppose somebody hears some maybe some adventure movie or something like that In watch is watching some adventure movie and say it say that in the beginning Somebody's pronounced you are going to die in 70s And in that there's a whole curse and the whole movie will be about how this person tries to escape that curse But suppose somebody's pronounced you're going to die in seven days and then that by the end of seven days that person dies So what is the movie over there? What is the miracle over there? So Prahlad is cursed to die in seven days and after seven days he dies So what happened means what is the story? What is the what is the point of it all? The point is that in those seven days Prahlad became absorbed in hearing about Krishna.
Sorry, sorry Sorry Parikshit Maharaj became absorbed in hearing about Krishna so the the essential miracle is absorption Now sometimes with our absorption there might also be a miraculous reciprocation from Krishna With the miracle being visible to the world's eyes That means in the something very extraordinary might happen so Prabhupada's devotion is not just seen by the fact that He opened hundred-day temples or wrote 70 books or traveled across the world 14 times on victorious outreach tours Attracting millions and millions to Krishna that is definitely glorious But Prabhupada's miraculous devotion is also seen in the fact that Despite having met with repeated Setbacks in his attempt to try to share Krishna Bhakti still he was courageous enough to step on Jaladota And he stepped on Jaladota that one step of a 69 year old boy Going to a different country where he has never been before Where he doesn't know anyone over there You could that one simple step of climbing onto the ship you could say is one of the most courageous acts in human history There's nothing you might say there's nothing courageous just stepping into a ship without fighting against enemies But Prabhupada was taking on a whole materialistic culture so Prabhupada's absorption in Krishna Prabhupada's dedication to serve Krishna that itself is miraculous and of course Krishna's reciprocation came that's that's also miraculous, but if we restrict our understanding of Krishna's intervention to only Krishna's miraculous reciprocation Then if that reciprocation doesn't come we'll start thinking. What is Krishna doing? I am doing so much. What is why is Krishna not reciprocating? If say we are trying to share Krishna Bhakti we go out and distribute books we give classes We do our part and sometimes people may just take up Immediately and sometimes people may not take up at all So when if we think only a lot of people take books that's Krishna's miracle.
Yes, it's Krishna's mercy, it's Krishna's miracle But even if nobody takes books, but if we stay absorbed This is satisfied that I did my part. I did my best then our Capacity to stay absorbed in Krishna that is also Krishna's mercy. In fact at the end of our lives How many people are there? It matters if the orders are giving us blessings, but more important is how much are we remembering Krishna? At the end of our life our achievements are not going to matter Ultimately our achievements are Krishna reciprocating in this world to To Reward us for our service and that's good if we get that but what is going to matter there is how much we are remembering Krishna so the the essential miracle of devotion that is demonstrated by Prahlad is absorption and If he's absorbed he's already successful Whether the weapons penetrated into his body or the weapons didn't penetrate into his body So so we also can strive although we are far away from such absorption But we can strive for that absorption In whatever service we are doing It's ultimately if we can engage ourselves in Krishna's service that itself is our success If you can spend this life engage in Krishna's service Irrespective of whatever reciprocation we get if you are satisfied in the service of Krishna, if you are satisfied in our absorption in Krishna Then we are already successful Because that will prepare us for absorption at the time of death and that will take us to life's ultimate success That's why Prahlad Maharaj said to embody Smaranam Absorption in devotion through remembrance and we can take that inspiration from him and also try to become similarly absorbed By that absorption sometimes we'll get success sometimes we'll get failure if we get success We won't become elated and proud if we get failure We won't become dejected and depressed through both will move forward steadily now praharishet priyam prapya No dvijet prapya cha priyam sthira buddhira samodho Brahmavit brahmanisthitaha in 520 in the Bhagavad-gita Krishna says that be equipoised and happens in distress and keep persevering on the spiritual path and By that you attain the supreme perfection So I'll summarize I spoke today on the topic of how Cause-effect works in this world and how Krishna intervenes in the world's cause-effect connection So first point I took is that here the miraculous incident Prahlad is being pierced by weapons, but nothing is happening to him so for this miraculous Action a philosophical explanation is given that just as a person may do karma, but not get any result Good karma, but no result.
Why is that? Because although every action produces a result. It's not necessarily a one-to-one or immediate correlation. That is duty plus plus Yes, duty plus destiny plus duration leads to Desired result.
Yeah, so we often think just my duty and my result is not that simple So I discussed several examples Of how we might do our part and not get a result if the karma is not favorable in that if the destiny is not Favorable, so it's unpredictable combination of present karma and past karma that combines to produce the result that we get Then I talked about how Krishna intervenes in the cause-effect connection in the world So scientists try to claim causal completeness Everything that happens can be explained in terms of Material laws of nature and this is not true Because the laws of nature do not cause anything the laws of mathematics can explain how much money I have in my pocket Somebody gives me some more money, but the laws of mathematics alone don't produce money so the Even if the laws of nature are there Still even if all that we don't we still need an explanation of why something exists Why that thing moves so that the laws of nature can predict what are going to happen in them and Why those laws of nature exist also requires explanation so Krishna Oversees the system and Krishna can intervene in the system when he wants So it's not that when miracles happen people are people are naive and believe anything and everything No, even the Brajavasis are logical and are asking questions How could Krishna have to cover them? But they are open to explanations which the modern mind is closed to So miracles are not illogical. They are not a keen science. They are above our science And then the last point I took is that how can we expect Krishna's miraculous intervention? It is not that when some immediate cause comes and there is no immediate effect We expect that some danger is there and no we are safe amidst the danger Krishna can reciprocate miraculously But Krishna's miracle most enduring miracle is that he gives us absorption in him Absorption is the ultimate protection The reciprocation in terms of phenomenal success is actually a Prabhupada God in the last 10 years of his life.
That's wonderful But Prabhupada's success was also that even with repeated failure He still stayed absorbed in Krishna. The scriptures describe miraculous success like say of Arjuna, Hanuman But they also describe Tragic failures as of Abhimanyu and Jayatayu Then the important point is they were all absorbed in the Lord And if we cultivate absorption according to our capacity in our service Then irrespective of whether we get success or failure in the world We will stay steady and we will attain the ultimate success of absorption in the Lord at the time of death to be united with him Thank you very much Well, there's a It's faith that really determines Help us understand Sustains us through all external circumstances We keep faith, we trust in Krishna so I'd like to hear you explain the relationship between the knowledge come from realized soul and Krishna in regards to deepening our faith or our trust in Krishna There's so much explanation how Krishna is in control So how is that connected to faith? Okay, so In western theology, faith is like a blank You just have faith No explanations are needed But that's not the way to make faith That's true, yes Yeah, so how do knowledge and faith relate with each other in the bhakti path In fact, I'm going from here to New Zealand And I'm having a two-part seminar on this topic itself So So I'll mention three quick points In Faith is definitely required And in fact The Bhagavad Gita says Shraddhava Nabhate Gyanam That it is in 4.39 He says that It is the faithful who gain knowledge Now what does this mean? If we see in the sequence Which you mentioned So there are two words which can be correlated with faith One is Shraddha and the other is Nishtha Now Prabhupada Translates Shraddha At many places almost like Favourable curiosity Or in I think in 1, 2, 12 in the Bhagavatam Gyanavairagyuktaya Pashyantyatmanam Bhaktyashutgrahitaya In that verse, Prabhupada translates Shraddha as The seriously inquisitive siege So initial faith Is just that maybe Something exists beyond all this I'm looking at this world, I'm seeing this world But maybe there is something more to life So just that openness, that curiosity And not just a passive curiosity A serious curiosity I want to know if there is something more And that is actually We can correlate this Shraddha With Athato Brahma Jijnasa So often Faith is seen Especially in western theology And again we don't want to reduce western theology Because Christianity is also very complicated And Christianity also had Many philosophical Brilliant exponents also But still It is often quoted as If you have faith, then no more questions You just accept But if you see the Vedic conception Faith means an openness An inquisitiveness About spiritual reality So Shraddha and Brahma Jijnasa Are almost similar It's not that I'm Accepting whatever scripture Describes out there But I'm just accepting The possibility that something might be there Beyond what we see in this world And with that inquisitiveness If I want to know How do I know? It is only if I believe That something exists Something may exist I'm open to the possibility Then I'll explore it So There was a famous atheist Who said theology Is just a waste of government money Because it's all dedicated To the study of a subject that doesn't exist Now this is just arrogance How can anyone Know for sure that god doesn't exist Nobody can know that So the first point is When in our tradition we talk about faith It's more of Curiosity and inquisitiveness Is there something more And then Then after Then by that we gain some knowledge This book describes this, this book describes this This book describes this Then after that So first level of faith is Inquisitiveness Second level of faith is Practice the process To see whether what is Described is true And this brings us to the difference between Reasonable faith And blind faith So The faith described in scripture is reasonable Because it is Reasonable faith has two characteristics It's sensible and verifiable It's like when we go to a doctor And say I have stomach pain And the doctor says We have to cut off your leg He says, what? That doesn't make sense The doctor says, oh you've got acidity Take these pills for the next three days You'll be better And it makes sense So when we see in the Bhagavad Gita Or the Bhagavatam What is being spoken Is sensible Although Krishna is God who is speaking Nowhere in the Bhagavad Gita does Krishna say To Arjuna, I am God Therefore accept what I am saying Krishna gives reasoned arguments One of my friends Told me that he is planning to write A book on the ten commandments Of the Bhagavad Gita So I told him, please don't write a book like that Because the whole Bhagavad Gita's mood Is not of commandments It's a mood of choices and consequences If you do this, this will happen Now, deliberate and decide what you want to do So the point here is The Bhagavad Gita outlines a process And follow this process And there is a reason So it's sensible It's like a doctor says You have stomach pain because of acidity So the Bhagavad Gita answers questions In a reasonable way You cannot necessarily say People may argue that it's not conclusive We cannot have conclusive knowledge about anything That way, we are finite beings But it's reasonable At least it's worth exploring The second aspect of The first aspect of reasonable is Before doing something it makes sense And second aspect of reasonable faith is It's verifiable That means what is predicted happens So now What happens This whole progression Is also very You could say Again, reasonable That first thing that will happen is Anartha Nivratti That the unwanted desires In our heart will start decreasing Now we may say I have been practicing bhakti and still anarthas are there in my heart Yes, they are there But if we compare To maybe 5 years ago, 10 years ago 20 years ago, 30 years ago 40 years ago, definitely They are lesser So the verifiability Is not necessarily at our level In terms of we will be able to see God But the verifiability is that The unwanted desires Will go down And that itself is a very Powerful transformation So if somebody has an acute disease Then the result might not be Of the treatment May not be that their disease gets Completely cured But at least some symptoms subside Some pain goes At least this is working So in that sense there is verifiability And almost anybody who practices bhakti yoga Chants Hare Krishna, tries to remember Krishna They see a subsiding In their worldly desires So that is verifiable Sensible and verifiable That is the second understanding of faith And so with Shraddha we go to Bhajanakriya and we experience Anartha Nivritti And then the faith that gradually Develops is Nishtha Nishtha is not just Faith, if you want to separate It in English, we could call it as Conviction So it is realized faith Vishwanath Chakravartha Thakur in the Madhuri Kadambini Gives a difference between the two He says Shraddha is like a banana tree Banana tree Any elephant can come Or any person can come and shake it But Nishtha is like a banyan tree A banyan tree It is almost impossible to shake it So why is it impossible to shake? Because not necessarily One has seen Krishna That is Rochi, Bhava, Asakti, Prema is further ahead But because One has experienced the results At least I have experienced Subsiding of my anarthas So it is like Suppose we take treatment for some doctor And the doctor Say And the doctor's treatment works for us And after that somebody comes and says This doctor is a quack, this doctor is bogus And you can say The doctor is bogus But the treatment is successful So that means the doctor is not exactly Malified Or bogus So that conviction Is what we will gradually get As we practice bhakti So because there is a There is a reasonable explanation And there is a tangible process And there is a predicted trajectory For transformation Therefore it is reasonable faith And how does knowledge and faith correlate? Knowledge basically Provides us like a pathway Along which we will be moving And to the extent we have knowledge To that extent we can see The process working Now some people we might just have Vishwanath Jagadguru says Swabhavaki Shraddha Swabhavaki means natural faith So that basically means It comes from piety from a previous life But for some people it is a Ballen Uthpadita Shraddha That means some forceful Preaching done by someone Creates some faith But either way if the person starts Practicing bhajana kriya Starts practicing bhakti Transformation will start happening So for us Faith in that sense Is more a matter of Intelligent choice It's not We don't consider that Faith and reason Or faith and knowledge are opposed Rather it is Symbiotic With some faith we acquire knowledge With knowledge we follow a process By which the faith deepens With that faith Again that knowledge we get further clarity And in that way both move forward together And they culminate in love for Krishna Very nice expression Action to form knowledge Strengthens one's knowledge Yeah You act upon what you heard And that knowledge Becomes yours It becomes eternal Yes Yes Thank you very much Shri Prabhupada ki Gaur Bhakta Vrindaki Gaur Premanande.