How to see old truths with new eyes

[Talk at ISKCON, Brooklyn, New York, USA]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Honoured to be here today amongst all of you at the Lotus Feet of the Lordships.
And I will speak today on the topic of how to see old truths with new eyes. So, I will talk this in three parts. What do we mean by old truths? What do we mean by new eyes? And how do we see old truths with new eyes? So, many times when we read either some traditional books, some scriptural books, some spiritual books, one thought that comes in the modern mind is that these are of such old times.
How are they relevant today? So, it’s a natural question that suppose we read something which was, say if we read a book which is in the 11th century. Now the English itself is so different. If today somebody starts using di, dal, dai, you think, which age are you living in? So, things change.
So, now naturally things change and the question comes up. Okay, these are old things. How relevant are they for us? Now there is a difference between what is the old truth and what is the truth revealed in old times.
There are things, say for example, with respect to language. At the particular rule of a language, di and dao would be what was truth, what was the right way to speak a few hundred years ago. But now the truth in terms of how a particular thing is spoken may be different.
So, you could say that was a grammatical rule in old times. So, it was true in old times. It’s not true anymore because the rules are different.
So, that is what was true in old times. But there is another thing, you could call that the word old truth can refer to two things. Something which was true in old times and it is no longer true now.
And the old truth can also refer to something which was revealed in old times but which is true at all times. Say for example, whether it is the modern times or the ancient times or the postmodern times. We still need the sun for illumination.
We may have our tube lights but they also derive light from the sun ultimately. So, just as that the sun is a source of light is a timeless truth. We might call it old truth in the sense that people in old times also knew about it.
But that doesn’t make that truth outdated. So, old can refer to something being outdated or old can refer to something being revealed in old times. That means it makes it timeless.
Now, when the scripture gives us certain truths, at that time if we look at the kind of questions that scripture addresses. There may be many specific stories. There may be many specific characters.
And some of the ways in which they act might seem old-fashioned. But the essential questions that the scriptures are addressing, those questions are universal. If we consider the Bhagavad Gita, it is addressing the question, Arjuna is asking, what is dharma? Dharma, the way Arjuna uses it, it means, what is the right thing to do in life? How should I act in this situation? If we consider the Bhagavatam, its driving question is, For one who is about on the verge of death, what are they to do? If we look at the Upanishads, the questions are, what is the ultimate reality? The Vedanta Sutra, the question is, Now, enquire about the ultimate reality of life.
That which is the biggest reality. Brahma, that which is the largest reality. So, these are questions which are universal.
Even in the age of science, that’s what we are asking. When scientists are trying to find out, what is the theory of everything? What is the ultimate substance of reality? There is a question, which are timeless. So, when you talk about old truths, When scripture is talking about old truths, it is talking about timeless truths.
Now, of course, it’s not just timeless truth. It is a timeless truth, which is revealed at a particular time. And because it is revealed at a particular time, Naturally, there will be some things within scripture, which are contextual.
But beyond such contextual things, there are things that are eternal. So, for example, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna speaks about how the knowledge he is speaking is not new. imam vivasvate yogam proktavanam avyayam vivasvan manave praham anurikshvakave braved He says, this knowledge was given long, long ago.
He says, this is co-eternal from the beginning of creation. He says, I gave it long ago to the predominating deity of the solar planet, of the sun. Now, when Krishna says this, it means that Krishna spoke the same knowledge of Bhagavad Gita long ago to another person.
But when Krishna spoke it to the solar deity, at that time, he would not have spoken this verse. This verse is spoken to Arjuna. This is contextual.
So, there is a contextual part in scripture and there is a central or eternal part in scripture. Not part, it is the core of the scripture. So, because scripture is spoken at a particular time, it is a timeless truth spoken at a particular time.
So, when it is spoken at a particular time, it will be spoken according to the context. So, if we look only at the context, this is all old fashioned. But if we look at the context and then we look beyond the context to the essence of what is being discussed, then we will see that this truth is timeless truth.
So, what are the questions as I said? We all want to live a meaningful life. We all want to live in such a way that we can be happy and not just happy in a superficial sense. We want to be happy in a meaningful sense.
What is the difference between happy in a superficial sense and happy in a meaningful sense? How many of you like humour? Humour, humour, humour, humour, comedy? Everybody, isn’t it? So, now generally if somebody, if out of 10 people, 9 people say we like humour and the 10th person is liking humour so much that they are not speaking the truth right now. So, everybody in general likes humour. But suppose somebody told us from tomorrow onwards, you have no financial responsibility, no professional responsibility, no family responsibility.
You love humour, just sit from morning to night and watch comedy. How many of us would want to do that for the rest of our lives? Maybe for a few, maybe half an hour, an hour, maybe a couple of hours. So, we don’t want just happiness.
Comedy might make us happy. But what we want is meaningful happiness. There’s a difference between simple happiness and meaningful happiness.
Watching comedy is good as a break. It’s good as a relaxant. But what we all look for is meaningful happiness.
And that’s what everybody is ultimately searching for. How can my life become meaningful? And this is the question that scripture universally addresses. So, in that sense what scripture teaches is not old truths in the sense of old fashioned or outdated truths.
It teaches old truths in the sense that it teaches the answers to timeless questions that were given in old times. So, this was the first part of my talk. What do old times mean? Then the second part, does anyone remember what it was? I talk about three parts I’ll speak.
What are old times? The topic was seeing old truths through new eyes. The second part will be what are new eyes? What do we mean by seeing old truths through new eyes? So, what do we mean by new eyes? So, new eyes means that all of us look at things based on our culture, our upbringing, our particular frame of mind. So, two people may see the same view but they take a different view.
Two people may see the same view but they take a different view. A very common example of this is the picture which probably all of you have seen of a line diagram which from one perspective looks like an old woman, from another perspective it looks like a young woman. So, our eye now is that a young woman or it’s an old woman? From this perspective it’s like this, from this perspective it’s like this.
Then you may ask what is it actually? Well, it’s not logical, it’s psychological. So, logically it is just a set of patterns, it’s just a set of lines on paper. But psychologically depending on the view we take, we see things in a particular way.
So, new eyes means although at one level we all have our individual personality, individual attitude but still we are products of a particular culture. And in that we can say that we broadly share a particular worldview. So, what are the new eyes that we in today’s world have? Now, we could say that in today’s world we have gadgets, we have technology, we have aeroplanes.
Yes, all this is true. In fact, in today’s world we have luxuries or we have comforts which were unavailable even to royalty a few hundred years ago. Whether it be air conditioning or mobile communication or air travel.
So, we could say that new eyes are we live in an age of technology. Yes, that is true. But that is the way our outer world has changed.
We are talking about new eyes is how is our worldview changed? What is there a typical worldview that we in today’s world have? So, we could say, oh, today we are scientific, we are rational. Yes, that is true. But what does it all practically boil down to? I say, okay, rational means I don’t believe in anything superstitious.
I don’t believe in anything religious. Okay, I don’t, some people say rational means I don’t believe anything that I don’t see. Okay, let’s look at.
So, we are trying to know what are the new eyes that we have with which we can try to see things. So, some people say I don’t believe anything that I don’t see. So, seeing is believing.
Have any of you heard this saying? Seeing is believing. Yeah, thank you. So, now, a few years ago, I was invited to Cambridge University to give a talk on science and spirituality.
And while we were going there, we passed by the tree under which Newton has said to have got that inspiration. The legend is that he sat under a tree and an apple fell. Some people say it fell in front of him and some people say it fell on him.
And when that apple fell on him, what happened? Millions of people have seen apples falling. Imagine if instead of Newton, at that time a monkey had been sitting over there. If the apple had fallen down, what do you think the monkey would have done? Cry? Okay.
Grab, sorry, yeah. He would have grabbed the apple and eaten it. Now, Newton could also have done that.
But he did not do that. He asked the question, what made this apple fall? And when he asked that question, what does it imply? It’s certainly his brilliance that in response to a simple commonplace observation, apple falling, he came up with a brilliant theory of gravity. But in acknowledging his brilliance, there is some foundation to the brilliance or a presumption underlying that.
And what is that presumption? Firstly, when he saw that apple falling, he asked, what makes this apple fall? That means he is presuming over there that things don’t just happen by chance. There is some order behind it. And when he came up with the principle of gravity, what it essentially means is that to explain a visible phenomena, he came up with an invisible principle.
Nobody sees gravity. All that we see is the effects of gravity. And what Newton did, postulate an invisible principle to explain a visible observation, that is the essence of all scientific progress.
Whether it is the principle of laws of thermodynamics, or whether it is the laws of electromagnetism, or now it is the whole semiconductor effect, which has led to the electromagnetic waves, leading to our digital age. It’s all based on invisible things. So if we say seeing, if anybody argues seeing is believing, then you tell them, stop using the internet.
You don’t see the internet anywhere, isn’t it? It’s everywhere and you can’t see it. So seeing is believing. I am rational, I don’t believe in anything that I don’t see.
No, that’s not like that. That’s not the essence of rationality. The essence of rationality is that when we observe something, we try to make sense of that thing.
And to make sense of that thing, if we need to propose something else, we are open to that proposition, provided that proposition gives an explanation for our observation. So now this, we might say that the specific developments in science and technology, they are new as compared to a recent history, recent few hundred years of history. But the principle, if you consider, our eyes are rational eyes.
Rational eyes means, not that everything has to be visible, but things have to be sensible. Even if you propose something invisible, but if it gives a sensible explanation of things, it’s not just sensible, but it’s also workable, then we are ready to move on. So we could say that, some people say, oh, science operates on facts, religion operates on faith.
It’s not that simple. Science also requires faith. When somebody sees, say, when Newton saw the apple falling, at that time, he had the faith that things don’t happen in nature by chance, that there is some order behind nature.
And if you want to go even more fundamentally, science requires the faith that our eyes can give us a reasonably reliable picture of the world. To make observations, we need to trust our eyes. Otherwise, how do we make observations? So, faith is required in every walk of life.
But there’s a difference between reasonable faith and blind faith. So, what science requires, and in fact what every walk of life requires, is reasonable faith. The reasonable faith basically has two characteristics.
It’s sensible and it’s verifiable. If somebody proposes something, okay, I can see this, I can’t see this, but if you use this to explain this, then it makes sense. It’s sensible.
And if I mould my life accordingly, it works. It’s verifiable. So I may not know whether gravity is true or electromagnetism is true, but if our planes fly, if our phones work, then, yeah, maybe this is true.
So, now, science never tells us that this is a conclusive truth. Science uses a model of reality. And if that model of reality is sensible and workable, then we say, okay, believing it is reasonable.
So the eyes of modernity, if you want to say, they are the rational eyes. Rational eyes means we accept things only when it’s reasonable, when the faith is reasonable. So this was the second part.
The modern eyes with which we look at the world is what is reasonable. So now let’s bring these two together. The third part.
How do we use, how do we see old truths with new eyes, with modern eyes? So for that, basically, we need to adopt a three-point approach or a three-step approach. What is a three-step approach? This three-step approach is that whenever we understand any subject, actually it is, say, suppose somebody tells me a story. Now this story, it has to, if it has to catch our attention, it should be interesting, but it should also be relevant.
So there is, suppose I tell you at the start of this talk, today I’m going to talk about the demographic trends in the polar bears in Siberia. You want? What is the relevance, isn’t it? So I might tell very interesting stories about how this polar bear survived and how that polar bear died and what is the state of that polar bear. But you might say, how is it connected with me? So if something is very specific, unless we have specific interest in that subject, it’s not relevant for us.
But if I say, I’ll talk about the demographic trends among polar bears, and based on that, we will discuss how the climate is changing and what it means for all of us. Then, okay, is this climate change stuff for real? And how serious is it? Then it makes sense for us. So basically, if somebody uses this polar bears example, so what are we doing over here? Essentially, we are using something called a ladder of abstraction.
Ladder of abstraction means that if you consider a ladder, at the bottom of the ladder, there are very specific examples, specific facts, specific stories. At the bottom, at the top of the ladder are universal principles. Say, if I tell the story of a particular species, a particular polar bear, that’s at the bottom of the ladder.
It’s specific details. And for us to find something relevant, we have to move from the bottom of the ladder of abstraction to the top. So when you move to the top of the ladder of abstraction, the climate is changing, the temperature is going down, the polar ice caps are melting, whatever.
Is that universal? Come to something more universal. Then, when I take that something universal, and then I again come down the ladder of abstraction to say, okay, what does this mean for us in New York? What does it mean for us in India? What does it mean for us in North America? So what are we doing over here? We are going up this ladder of abstraction and coming down the ladder of abstraction. We start with specific details, move from there to universal principles, and we then apply those universal principles to our specific situations.
Now we do this unconsciously quite often. Whenever somebody tells us a particular story of, okay, we hear some story from some ancient times, or somebody tells their own anecdote. So if there’s some lesson to be learned, we go up and down this ladder unconsciously.
But if we do it conscientiously, then we can apply it in various situations where we do not instinctively seem to connect with things. We do not seem to learn things. So let us try to apply.
So when I talk about old truths and new eyes, so how to see old truths with new eyes. So what do I mean? Old, new eyes is our current context. So we are, say, if we consider this ladder of abstraction, so from the bottom of the ladder to the top of the ladder to the bottom of the ladder on the other side.
So this is, say, Bhagavad Gita is spoken 5000 years ago. So that is one side of the ladder of abstraction, the specific details of 5000 years ago. And we are living in the 21st century.
This is new eyes. So how to see old truths with new eyes? What does it mean by this? How can we, living in the 21st century, look at something which is spoken thousands of years ago, and from that bottom of the ladder move to the top of the ladder and come back on our side? So basically to do this three-step analysis, we can ask broadly three questions. And I will apply those questions to a few examples, and then we will arrive at a conclusion, after which we can have some question answers.
So these three questions are, if we read anything in scripture, what did this mean in its original context? So that means try to understand it over there, at the bottom of the ladder of abstraction. Hey, this doesn’t make sense. Why is this like this? No, things have different meanings in different contexts.
I was in London, and I gave a class, a college programme. And it was a lot of question answers, a lot of students were there. The question answers went very well.
And after that the organiser, he came to me with a broad smile on his face. He said, you killed it. I became alarmed.
What did I kill? I said, you bother sitting on some ant or something? And he says, if I killed, why are you so happy? Again, you killed it. And then I understood, that he was using killed in a non-literal sense. You killed it is a phrase, that has come from hunting.
If somebody shoots a target, you killed it. That is a brilliant shot. So anything brilliant, people use it by saying, you killed it.
Is this used in America also? It’s used here? Okay, I’d never heard it in India. So I was taken aback. So now, I said, I didn’t kill anything.
Why are you saying like this? But if I look at its original context, what does it mean in its original context? So context is so important for understanding things. So whenever we read anything in scripture, you killed it. I don’t want to kill anything.
I didn’t kill anything. Sometimes we might read something in scripture, we say, this doesn’t make sense. Why is it being said like this? But what we are doing is, we are trying to see it from our context.
So first thing we have to see is, what does it mean in its own context? What did this mean in its context? Then we get, we don’t see it from our side of the ladder of abstraction, but we try to get to that side of the ladder of abstraction. And then we move up the ladder of abstraction. What is the context-independent principle over here? So what does this mean in its original context? What is the context-independent principle over here? That will get us to the top of the ladder of abstraction.
And once we get that principle, then after that we come down the ladder of abstraction on our side. How does this principle apply in my situation? How does this principle apply in my situation? So I am climbing down the ladder of abstraction. So three questions.
What does this mean in its original context? What is the context-independent principle over here? And how does that principle apply in my context? So let’s look at some examples of how we might apply this in our understanding of scripture. So if we consider Srila Prabhupada, Srila Prabhupada started the Krishna consciousness movement here in America at the time of the counterculture in the 1960s. Of course, Krishna consciousness or spirituality, the bhakti spirituality was going on for millennia.
It is eternal. But specifically this movement he started over here. Now at that time, people’s conception of at least the people who would come to him, they were into drugs and they had that idea that drugs will take them high, will make them spiritual.
So people used to take this drug called LSD. Now LSD is a chemical, but they had re-christianed it, renamed it. Anybody who takes LSD joins the league of spiritual discovery.
LSD. That was their idea. So they were thinking we’ll take drugs and we’ll go high.
And once one such stoned hippie came to Srila Prabhupada after a class and he asked, Swamiji, you are talking about the spiritual world. What? What is the happiness of the spiritual world like? Now, Prabhupada could have quoted scripture about how He could have quoted the beauty of the spiritual world, the opulence of the spiritual world, the love in the spiritual world and the immense happiness that is there. But all that, how much of it would have been intelligible to a person who is stoned and high on drugs? So Prabhupada said, the spiritual world is like an ocean of LSD.
An ocean of LSD. Now, somebody could ask, where does scripture say that the spiritual world is like an ocean of LSD? The happiness of spiritual life is like an ocean of LSD. Well, scripture doesn’t say that.
But Prabhupada is expertly going up and down this ladder of abstraction. So, say for example, the scripture may tell us that okay, there is this earthly happiness. Thousands of times more than the earthly happiness is heavenly happiness.
Thousands of times more than heavenly happiness is the happiness of impersonal liberation. And thousands and thousands of times more than that is the happiness of the spiritual world, of love for God. Now all this, what do people know about exactly, about earthly happiness, heavenly happiness? That would not make much sense to people today.
So scripture gives some specific details, some specific comparison. What does this mean in its original context? This hierarchy of pleasures. What it means is that the spiritual pleasure is far far more than any material pleasure that is conceivable for us.
Whatever material pleasure you might conceive of, spiritual pleasure is much much more than that. So, that is the point. Spiritual pleasure is far bigger than material pleasure.
So what people at that time thought of as material pleasure, the scripture compares it with that and says this is much bigger. So now Prabhupada goes to the top of the ladder of abstraction and then he comes down. So what is for his audience, their reference of pleasure? It is LSD.
He says it is much much more than LSD. So it is an ocean of LSD. So this is Prabhupada going expertly up and down the ladder of abstraction.
Another time Sri Prabhupada says, he translates the 7th canto of Srimad Bhagavatam. Prahlad Maharaj in one of his prayers is saying how all our senses are being pulled in various directions by various temptations. And then he says that oh the ears are attracted by radio songs.
At the time of somebody might say at the time of Prahlad there were no radios. There were no radio songs. But the point over here is Prabhupada is making the essential principle intelligible to us.
So what are we distracted by? Today we might not say radio songs, we might say FM radio songs or jukebox songs or whatever. But the point is scripture has certain essential universal principles. And what is the essential message of scripture? So if we adopt this to see scripture, see old truth through new eyes, that means we need to go up and down this ladder of abstraction.
So let’s apply this to integrate the class. I talked about old truths, there are contextual and there are eternal truths. And new eyes, I talked about that as a rational world view which accepts only on reasonable, except that it is reasonable, based on reasonable faith.
So what is reasonable faith? Now at this stage, it’s just a proposition. All of us have a longing, deep longing to love and be loved. There are thousands and thousands of movies and novels which come out regularly and many of them are about romance.
And most of that romance is about happily ever after. We all want to love and be loved. And not just love and be loved, but love forever, love forever and be loved forever.
If we look at the world around us, there is nothing that lasts forever. Absolutely nothing. When here, the twin towers collapsed, horrendous shock that came because of that was not just because some structure collapsed, but for the western world at large, those towers represented prosperity, represented security, represented success.
And the jolting realisation that they could just come down within a few hours. Very disorienting, distressing, devastating. But the point is, even those twin towers are not eternal.
When I talk about the Andes mountains, the Rocky Mountains or the Himalayan Mountains, even they are not eternal. When nothing around us is eternal, then why do we have a desire for eternal life, for eternal love? Where does it come from? Where does this longing come from? Suppose, somebody lives in a remote tribe in, say, sub-Saharan Africa, where they have no internet. Is there any place like that still? Are there places with no internet? I presume it is there, isn’t it? So assume, some place with no internet, completely remote, and the people just live in their own culture over there.
And there, a small child, one day goes to his mother and says, Mom, Mom, I want a pizza. What do you think the mom would say? What’s a pizza? And even if she knew what’s a pizza, she would ask, how do you know what’s a pizza? There’s nothing in the environment which gives any pointer to a pizza. So, naturally, if there’s nothing in the environment, the question comes up, where did this desire come from? Similarly, for all of us, there is nothing in our environment that lasts forever.
Then where do we get the desire to live forever, to love forever, come from? And this is not just a superficial desire, it’s a very deep-rooted desire. It’s one of the defining characteristics of living beings, that we all want to live forever, to love forever. And it’s there in animals also.
Animals also pine away when the loved one dies. It might not be that intense, because their consciousness is not that developed. But it’s universal.
So, our longing to love and be loved, and to love forever and to be loved forever, where does this come from? If we were simply products of matter, then matter is by definition temporary. And there’s nothing eternal around us. So, the spiritual texts propose that the most reasonable explanation for our deep-rooted longing for love is that it comes from something within us.
Nothing from outside us can give us that. It is from something inside us. And what is that something inside us? That is an indestructible spark of spirit.
That is the soul. And this soul is longing for the whole. The whole is the all-attractive, infinite, supreme.
It’s God. Known by different names and different traditions. The bhakti tradition knows that infinite by the name Krishna.
And our longing for love is actually a longing for God. Of course, we have various relationships in this world, and they are important. But none of them are eternal.
Our longing for lasting love is fulfilled when we connect with God. So, this is… It could be. It makes sense.
You may not say it’s completely convincing, but it’s intelligible. We’re talking about reasonable faith. It has two characteristics.
It’s sensible. And yes, it could be I have a longing for love. Maybe there’s something within me, a soul.
And maybe there’s a God. There’s a bond between the two. So, that is what I’m longing for.
Now, how could this be workable? How could this be verified? Somebody might say, Oh, you love God and you go back to God and you’ll be happy with it. Well, who has seen that? That’s a perfectly reasonable question. But what the bhakti tradition tells us is that connecting with God in love will not only take us beyond this world, but it will also improve our life in this world.
That it will make us better human beings. It will transform us. We all have certain negativities within us.
Those negativities could be simply negative thinking in terms of pessimism. It could be negative emotions. It could be negative drives in terms of selfish drives like greed or envy or lust or anger.
So, all these are coming from our dark side. They are coming, the bhakti tradition says, from the darkness that is inside us because we are not invoking the supreme light of God within us. And the more we connect with him, the more that light starts illuminating our hearts and illuminating our life.
And as that starts happening, the darkness within us starts receding. And this transformation is something which we all can experience if we try. So, what this means is that these old truths are giving us something which is workable, which is experimentable.
If we try for this inner transformation, we are not going to be the losers. If somebody has anger issue and by something their anger can go down, why not? On Saturday, I am going to speak on Bhagavad Gita in the age of science here itself. But at that time, I will talk more about specifically what the Bhagavad Gita teaches.
But generically, if we consider, with all of our scientific advancement today, the best scientists have not been able to make a anger pill. If you feel angry, just take that pill. Your anger goes away.
Yeah, you can take a pill and put a person to sleep. But they wake up and anger is still there. So, the quality of our life can improve if the darkness within us goes down.
And thus the Bhagavad Gita says, Pratyakshavagam Amdharamyam Susukham Kartum Avayam Pratyakshavagam You can experience the results in this life itself. The inner purification of the heart, the inner decline of the darkness within us and the inner ascendance of the light within us, that is something which each one of us can experience. And that can empower us.
So, the old truths that we can see with new eyes is that these are truths which are timeless. And they can empower us to become better human beings, to become better channels for the light of God to manifest through our hearts, into our life and into our world. And we all can have a meaningful life.
Today’s world with its incessant materialism can make us feel life is insignificant. If we don’t accept this idea that there is a spiritual indestructible essence within us, then what are we? We are just bags of protoplasm flapping around for a few years before a bug or a blow levels us and it’s all over. Is that what life is all about? Is life that meaningless? None of us lives our life as if it is meaningless.
So, if we don’t live our life like that, if we live our life, we take our decisions considering them important, considering them meaningful. If we live our life like that, then why not explore a worldview that gives our life meaning? Why stick with a default materialistic worldview which actually strips our life of all meaning? We live, we struggle, we grow old and we die. Is that all there is to life? So, both ways in terms of sensibility and in terms of workability.
Spirituality offers us a worldview that is eminently, and it’s this worldview that the Bhagavad Gita teaches, which Shrila Prabhupada taught and that we all can live and find our lives transformed by. So, I’ll summarise what I spoke. So, I spoke on the topic of how to see old truths with new eyes.
I talked in three parts. First is, what is old truths? Old truths is not old-fashioned truths. It is timeless truths revealed in old times.
So, within any ancient book, like the Shakespeare’s book, the language will be of that particular time. But still, it can teach us something valuable which is beyond the language of that time. Similarly, in scripture, there are timeless truths such as, what is the right thing to do in life? What should we do at the time of death to make our life meaningful? What is the nature of ultimate reality? These are universal questions.
So, these are given in a particular context. So, there are certain things which are contextual but beyond that, the essence of scripture is eternal. So, we need to look at those old truths not as old-fashioned, but timeless.
Like the sun always illumines irrespective of the age we live in. Then, what are the new eyes? We say that we live in an age of technology. But yes, technology is external.
What is the world view that we carry? So, the world view might say, seeing is believing. But that’s oversimplification because science itself progresses by postulating invisible principles to explain visible phenomena. So, we could say the view is rational.
It’s not just empirical, seeing is believing, but it’s rational. Rational means, it should make sense. So, that means, we are ready to believe which is invisible also, that which is invisible provided it is sensible and it is workable, it’s verifiable.
So, then let’s look whether what scripture teaches us is rational. So, then the third part is, how do we look at old truths with new eyes? For that, I introduce the concept of the ladder of abstraction. That if something is very specific, then it doesn’t make sense for us.
So, from specific details, we climb up the ladder of abstraction to concrete principles. And then we climb down the ladder of abstraction to our specific situation. So, when Prabhupada said that LSD, that the spiritual happiness is like an ocean of LSD, he’s actually expertly climbing up and down the ladder of abstraction.
And so, we discussed how do we apply this to scripture. So, scripture may contain many, many details, but the essential teaching of scripture, what is the right thing to do? Krishna’s answer centres on the principle that there is a soul and there’s a whole and there’s a bond of love between the two. Now, is this rational? I talked about how nothing around us lasts forever.
So, why do we have a longing for lasting love? So, that’s as unusual, as counterintuitive as a remote African tribal boy wanting a pizza. So, nothing around us lasts forever. So, that longing can come from inside us.
And that verifies the Bhagavad Gita, the idea that there’s a soul and there is a whole, which is an object of love. And what is the workable or verifiable part of this? That if we connect with God, because he’s the source of the supreme light, he will remove the darkness within us. So, the negativities, the negative thinking, the selfishness, the short temper, all these negativities within us will start decreasing.
And this is something which can empower us in this world here and now. Not something abstract like a pie in the sky beyond the world. So, materialism on the other hand offers us no such empowerment.
There is no anger removal pills available. Nor does materialism give us any meaning to life. It just exists.
We grow old, or even before we grow old, sometimes we die. So, we want meaning. I talked about how we want not just pleasure, but meaningful pleasure.
Not just watching comedy, but doing something meaningful. So, why not explore a worldview that offers us meaning, that is sensible, and that invites us to work so that we can practically experience its veracity. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna. Are there any questions or comments? Yes, please. So, the three-point approach that you… The first two are straightforward.
The context in which the truth was spoken and what the essential principle is. Yeah. But then when we talk about how we narrow it down as to how it applies to us, many times we end up seeing multiple worldviews, which might be sometimes contradictory in themselves, but at the same time they are both sensible and verifiable.
Can you give an example? What do you mean by that? Like, for example, you spoke about… I heard one of your lectures about conservative and liberal aspects of one of the spiritual scientists. So, then you gave an example of Prabhupada, you know, meeting a politician, but as opposed to Mahaprabhu who refused to meet Pratapudra. So, that is one example.
Or it might come to very simple things as in how should I be practising bhakti, you know, should I… Okay. So, when we come down the ladder of abstraction, there can be different approaches that different people may take. Yes, that’s true.
And that is where bhakti is individual. We see actually Prabhupada often gave different instructions to different disciples. Prabhupada himself, when the devotees were doing book distribution, and some devotees were very successful in book distribution.
So, they said, Prabhupada, we found that if we speak certain lines to people, they get captivated, and they take the books. So, can we go around temple to temple and teach people these lines? Prabhupada said, Prabhupada became very brave actually. He said that bhakti is voluntary, spontaneous and individual.
Don’t tell people what lines to speak. Don’t tell devotees what lines to speak. Inspire them to serve Krishna.
Inspire them to distribute books. When they have the desire to serve Krishna, the service will be performed, and they will speak in their way. Prabhupada even said, realisation means to speak in your own words.
Now, we don’t want to speak our own words. We want to speak in our own words. There is a difference between that.
Speak our own words means we just give our own opinions. But speak in our own words, that gives authenticity. So, bhakti is individual.
And it’s not wrong to have different approaches. Because everybody is an individual. Now, of course, there is, rather thinking of following scripture as like going along one line.
If you’re following this line, you’re following scripture. We see following scripture, Thank you. We see following scripture as more like a circumference.
There is a whole circumference which is broadly compliant with the purpose of scripture. So, within that circumference, there are many things which may fall, and there are different things that can be adopted. So, scripture has a purpose.
That purpose is to help us to raise our consciousness toward Krishna. Now, how that purpose can be served, that’s what the individual is supposed to learn. Now, we cannot learn on our own.
We need our spiritual guides. But that’s where the context comes in. If you don’t consider the context, then it won’t work.
So, for example, now many of us, like you yourself said, you heard that class which I gave in London. You heard it online. Now, maybe 50 years ago, there was no online facility.
Now, if you look at scripture literally, literally if you look at the letter of scripture, does scripture say anywhere that hearing classes digitally is also shravanam? Is that hearing classes digitally, is that also limb of bhakti? Scripture doesn’t say that. But we use our common sense. We look at how devotees are doing around us.
And we see the effect. Is this helping us to remember Krishna? Is this helping us to know Krishna? Yes, it is. So, we have to look at the purpose of raising our consciousness toward Krishna and see how it can be served in our particular context.
Now, we can clearly say that if this is a circle, that there are some things which will go outside the circle. If somebody says that I am watching sensual movies and I am remembering Krishna. Well, that’s quite unlikely.
Isn’t it? So, there are certain things which are quite clear. These are not going to foster the remembrance of Krishna. So, we have to see scripture in that more inclusive way.
Rather than it is one line that has to be adhered to, rather it is an ambit. And within that ambit, everything will take us toward Krishna. So, we shouldn’t do this on our own entirely.
We need to consult senior devotees. But ultimately, it is we who will have to apply scripture. It is unless we are convinced that it is workable, unless we know how to make it work, there are hundreds of situations that we will face in our lives where we have to find out how do this work, how am I going to make it work.
So, that individual conviction is vital. So, we follow the process. There is a standard process which we definitely should follow diligently.
But within the… So, there are certain… You could say broadly speaking there are certain things which we all need to do. There is no selectivity of opinion about that. So, for example, the Yugadharma is chanting the holy names.
We need to study Shastra. There are certain do’s which are universal. There are certain do’s which are universal.
Now, within that, there are certain things which are in the shade of grey. Now, for different people, different things might be more or less conducive for their particular growth of the consciousness toward Krishna. If you keep the purpose in mind, then we will be able to move forward more progressively.
Prabhupada’s example was a different example. If Prabhupada said it is an ocean of energy, but at the same time we are at the same time more bona fide in such type of preaching. So, if we are giving examples to people, to new people to attract them, how do we ensure that it is… While it is attractive to them, it is also not going too far off.
It is also faithful to the tradition. Yes, that is why if we are going to do… anything that is radically new, we need to be sceptical of ourselves. We should not think that I know what to do.
It is best that we consult our seniors and present our perspective. We cannot just arbitrarily just reject the tradition and what has been done in the tradition. The tradition is like a tree and we are sitting on one branch of that tree.
If we cut off that branch, we do not know how high we are and how much we may fall. Therefore, we have to be cautious. At the same time, now our movement is quite big.
It is not huge, but it is significantly big and devotees are penetrated into various areas. Whether it is psychology or quantum physics or astrophysics, there are devotees in practically every field. If we are going to do something specific in a particular field, it might be helpful to connect with devotees in that field, somebody senior, and talk with them and learn from them.
At least get things verified from them. Then that can be a guard for us to ensure that we do not do anything which is off. In general, that process of checking if we do regularly, then gradually our own innate compass also starts developing.
We need to initially start checking and most important is that we study scripture to assimilate the mood of scripture. Then everything else will fall in place. The mood and purpose of scripture, if you understand, then everything else will fall in place.
Thank you. Yes, please. To be? Purpose of life is to be? Okay.
Well, no, I said two different things. I said the purpose of life is to be meaningfully happy and we will accept something which is reasonable. Reasonable faith.
Not reasonably happy. Okay. So, what was your question? Okay.
So, when I said the purpose of our life is to be meaningfully happy or reasonably happy, what would I mean by that? Well, I did not exactly say reasonably happy because if you consider today when people watch movies, what is reasonable about watching a movie? You are just imagining an illusion and trying to, maybe some hero is embracing a heroine and we are imagining, if only I had been there, it would be so nice. So, you are just enjoying some second-hand pleasure. So, what is so great about it? Most of what we conceive of as pleasure today, if you could examine it from objective or detached perspective, say what is going on? Is this really pleasure? So, what we are talking about is meaningful happiness.
Meaningful happiness means that something we do, it has some substantial meaning to it. Substantial meaning means all of us, for us, when we go through life, we see so much distress around us. Sometimes we see so much distress in our own lives.
And if we consider pleasure alone to be the purpose of life, pleasure is too fragile to find a purpose to sustain us through life’s troubles. Because if I think pleasure is the purpose of my life, if I go through a phase in my life where there is no pleasure at all, then I may start thinking what am I living for? But if we consider what is something meaningful that can make all this trouble worthwhile. So, generally meaning comes in our life to the proportion that we take responsibility.
Like a simple example, somebody has severe stomach pain. Just irritating. They have pain and they are like severe pain, aches and and it’s just meaningless.
Horrible. But if somebody, some woman is pregnant and she is having pain in the stomach. Now that’s pain, but that pain is purposeful.
New life is going to be born from that. So, we are ready to accept pain also if it is meaningful. And earlier I talked about pleasure also becomes not so appealing if it is meaningless.
So, all of us have very deep rooted need for a sense of meaning and purpose in our life. So, when we are going through our life, if we look back at the most satisfying moments of our life, they are not just when we went to a hill station or we went somewhere and it’s just for the sake of enjoying. It was when we attempted something challenging and not just something challenging, something worthwhile.
We were able to do it. Those are usually the most fulfilling moments of our life. So, the responsibility that the Bhagavad Gita urges us to take 11.33 in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that, that you, Arjuna, have been given some abilities.
You are an archer. So, use that ability to do good in the world. So, every one of us, we can look at ourselves from a third person perspective.
Okay, this person. Who is this person? What are the strengths of this person? What are the limitations of this person? Treat yourself like someone you care about and take responsibility for yourself. What can we do the best with our particular abilities? And when we start striving to use our abilities for doing something good in the world, in a mood of service to God, because it is God who has given us these abilities.
We didn’t do anything to create those abilities for ourselves. We might have honed and developed those abilities. But we have been given certain things.
So, if we start using those abilities in a mood of service to God to make a contribution in the world, then that will bring meaning in our life. So, Arjuna was an archer. So, he used his archery.
He had some talent and he honed that talent by tireless practise. And then he used it against antisocial elements. So, we might have particular abilities and we use that in a devotional spirit.
So, there are two aspects. There is, for us to have meaningful happiness in life, there are two things that are required. There is inner connection and there is outer contribution.
We need to have inner connection with God. Otherwise, we will be like a small leaf in an ocean swept away by life’s ups and downs. But inner connection, that gives our life ultimate meaning.
Yes, whatever I am doing, I am connected with God, I am moving toward God. But sometimes the movement toward God can seem very abstract. It seems very far away.
So, we need inner connection and we need outer contribution. That I am doing something worthwhile with the abilities that I have. So, when we take responsibility for our talents and gifts, seeing them as gifts from God and then try to use those abilities for establishing an inner connection and making an outer contribution, then that will take us toward meaningful happiness.
So, any one last question? So, thank you very much for your attention and participation. Shri Prabhupada ki, Gaura Bhakta Vrinda ki,