How to understand Prabhupada’s statement that planets move because of cosmic air, not gravity?

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Transcript

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Prabhupada says in a purport that the planets don’t float by the law of gravity. They float by the movement of the air.
So, how is this to be understood? Firstly, the Bhagavatam and modern science observe from different scales of observation. What I mean by scales of observation? If I take, say, a black chalk, sorry, a black coal and a white chalk, and make both of them into powder, then I’ll see black powder, white powder. I mix it together, I’ll see grey powder.
But if I see the same thing under microscope, I’ll not see any grey powder. I’ll see white particles and black particles. Now, what is it really? Is it grey particles or is it white and black particles? It depends on the scale of observation.
Both are true, but depending on the scale of observation, different things will be seen. So, like that, based on the scale, the Bhagavatam, when it talks about the universe, to a large extent, it is not talking at the human scale of observation. It is because even in the Indian tradition itself, there are two broad bodies of cosmological knowledge.
One is called the Puranic cosmology and the other is called as Jyotisha cosmology. Jyotisha, you know, Jyotisha, we use astrologer. But Jyotisha is a body, is a group of books which study the universe.
Bhakti Siddhanta Swami Thakur in his early days used to study a book called Surya Siddhanta. That’s how he got that name. Surya Siddhanta is a book of Jyotisha Shastra.
So now, within the Indian knowledge system itself, these two are different ways of looking. Jyotisha Shastra is in many ways similar to modern cosmology. And Puranic cosmology is different.
So, many of the big names in Indian cosmology, like Aryabhatta. Aryabhatta, he studied Jyotisha Shastra and he said, I cannot understand Puranic cosmology. now which is true? See, both have come from the same knowledge source and both have been accepted by the tradition.
At the same time, even Vishwanath Chakravarti Thakur, when he is talking about, say, the horoscope of Krishna, as mentioned in Bhagavatam, 10th Canto, when he is talking about cosmology for the purposes of making horoscope, he uses the Jyotisha cosmology. So, for practical purposes, even in the Indian tradition, has used Puranic cosmology. So, Puranic cosmology is more of a conceptual, it’s a conceptual, not conceptual in terms of imaginary, but conceptual in terms of something which is not directly perceivable to our senses.
Puranic cosmology is primarily a vision of the cosmos from another scale of observation. So, the two don’t, they just come from, because they are different scales of observation, we cannot really interrelate both of them directly. I have explained this, I have written an article on did man go to the moon, on the same spiritscientist.com, where, whatever I am telling, I have explained this in more detail about these two different bodies of knowledge.
So, my understanding of that purport would be that at our scale of observation, gravity is an explanation. Prabhupada also used planes. Prabhupada used motors.
And they all work based on our understanding of gravity. Science’s understanding of gravity. And Prabhupada did not reject this technology as false.
It works and Prabhupada also used it. So, to say that, to make that an absolute statement that nothing is happening by gravity, that, now, one difference is, of course, we are talking about earthly motion, whereas Prabhupada is talking about celestial motion. But gravity holds that the same principle that applies to celestial motion also applies for earthly motion.
So, and the principles on which gravity operates, that matter attracts each other, these are similar, whether celestial or terrestrial. So, in that sense, I would not take Prabhupada’s statement there as absolute rejection of gravity. I would take it as rejection of gravity as an absolute explanation or as an ultimate explanation.
So, gravity is also one level of explanation. But it is not the absolute explanation. So, from some other higher scale of observation, because even now, scientists are not really very clear about the origin of gravity.
When Newton himself proposed gravity, at that time, he said, I am simply giving a mathematical formulation to explain observed phenomena. I am not talking about cause. Where does gravity come from? Because how does a force act over millions of miles through space? So, many of Newton’s contemporaries criticized him for being too mystical sort of, you know, dabbling in the paranormal sort of things.
So, gravity was criticized as not being rational. How can force travel for thousands of miles like that? What is the force? Where does it come from exactly? So, he said, I am not talking about the origin of the force. I am talking only about the observation.
And for almost 400 years after Newton, the origin of gravity remained a question. And currently science considers that it is explained. And that is explained by Einstein who says that space, gravity, the space, he has combined space and time together.
And then he says space-time, the shifts in the space-time, I am just giving a very simple expression here, shifts in the space-time create the gravity. Now, actually all the science accepts this as an explanation, but it is more of a piling concept upon concept. So, what is observed is there are forces, that there are particles of matter they attract to each other.
So, to explain that we propose a concept called gravity. And to explain gravity, we propose another concept called space-time. So, it is an explanation that is falling back into itself.
It is not really an explanation in terms of something which we can empirically verify in any way. So, the point is that Prabhupada used science, which indicates that he accepted it for functional purposes, but we don’t accept it as a final explanation. So, a ball going into the billiards hole, that is explainable by the laws of physics, of this ball hit at this speed or whatever, but that is not the ultimate explanation.
The skill of the player is also not the explanation. So, like that, from the Puranic cosmology perspective, the motion of the planets may be caused by something else, what Prabhupada talks about the air. And basically, Prabhupada talks about the purport where he talks about the pravaha, the vayu, which is moving in the universe.
Now, Sadaput Prabhu, Sadaput Prabhu is a prominent scientist in ISKCON, Dr. Mitchell Thompson. So, he says that when the scripture talks about, say, many other things in the universe, they are of a different nature only. For example, you talk about ocean of milk, or ocean of salt water, or ocean of water, mango juice, or whatever they talk about.
Now, scripture itself tells us that the higher levels of the universe are made of subtle matter. So, whatever is talked about as milk or mango juice or whatever, they are not like the milk or mango juice here. They are of a different nature.
So, one problem comes when we try to take knowledge which is from a different scale of observation, from a different frame of reference, and then we try to mix it with knowledge that we are getting from the present frame of reference. So, they are different world views. And, we cannot understand from the higher dimensional perspective, but what we can understand is, our present understanding may be useful for functional purposes,