In the God particle we trust (?) – Understanding the Collisions, Emissions & Omissions

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Summary

Discover the fascinating intersection of modern particle physics and ancient wisdom as we examine what the discovery of the Higgs boson reveals—and omits—about human existence.

Main Highlights

• The Hunt for the Higgs Boson: Using massive particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider, scientists detect the elusive Higgs boson indirectly through particle decay to help complete the Standard Model.

• Science as an Incomplete Map: While modern physics provides functional mathematical models, it remains entirely disconnected from everyday human experience, consciousness, and subjective realities like beauty, emotion, and purpose.

• The Limits of Pure Chance: Attributing the precise, orderly laws of the universe to blind chance or unprovable multiverses requires a conceptual leap of faith comparable to acknowledging a divine architect.

• The Shadow of Materialism: A purely mechanistic view of human life, stripped of inherent spiritual values, has historically coincided with unprecedented technological warfare and widespread social distress.

• Vedic Wisdom as an Experiential Science: Ancient Vedic traditions offer a parallel framework where higher spiritual realities can be personally verified through elevated states of consciousness and dedicated inner practices.

• Toward a Balanced Future: Merging modern scientific innovation with timeless spiritual foundations can provide humanity with the moral direction, inner peace, and holistic harmony it urgently needs.

Full Transcription

Today I will be speaking on the topic of in the God particle we trust, understanding the collisions, emissions and omissions. I have a powerpoint with me to accompany this presentation. So, the media over the last few days has been filled with headlines about the discovery of the God’s particle technically known as Higgs boson and the implications of this finding.
So, I will discuss first the background physics to understand what is the Higgs boson, then after that I will discuss what are the implications of that to understand how physics is actually a map of reality and that how the map is having its relevance and also its irrelevance. So, that will be as connected with the title the omissions part and then we will take a look at the broader implications of this kind of research for humanity and for the spirituality within humanity. So, now according to current mainstream physics there are four fundamental forces in nature, the force of gravitation, the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force.
The strong nuclear force is the force that keeps the particles within the nucleus together. So, these forces are accompanied by a large number of particles. In fact, the number of particles is so large that the American physicist Enrico Fermi said that if we wish to memorise all the names of these particles he would have to become a botanist, as in a botanist have to remember the names of large number of species.
So, the point is that the number of fundamental particles is extremely large. Now, in the attempt to unite all these forces and particles together science or physics more specifically as of now has two main theories. One is the theory of relativity which was formalised by Albert Einstein and the other is a theory of quantum mechanics which had many persons pioneering it Planck, Bohr among many others.
Maxwell’s equation is there, Heisenberg uncertainty principle is there in this. So, these two great theories of modern physics have their own value and validity. Both of them work in their own realms.
In general relativity is applied to particles that have mass and which move at speeds less than the speed of light. But when we go to subatomic particles at that level their motion is not describable by general relativity. Their interactions require a different kind of physics that’s quantum physics and these two are contradictory in the sense that both have certain assumptions about the nature of reality and these assumptions are fundamentally different.
General relativity to some extent agrees with our day-to-day perception in the sense that it assumes that there is matter around us and matter has mass. But in quantum mechanics all of matter reduces down to waves which all have their behaviour governed by probability functions. So, according to quantum mechanics there is no fundamental mass that is there.
Ultimately there are only waves. So, these two theories are violently contradictory and if we visualise nature like a bull and a matador is trying to tame the bull or defeat the bull. So, the general theory of general relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics are like matadors and they are fighting the bull of nature.
The bull of nature has knocked both of them down and each of them can grasp the bull partially but then just when they think they have got a hold in the bull the bull breaks free and both of them cannot come together. Both of these two matadors cannot see eye-to-eye. So, like this these two theories have created a great divide in physics and this has fuelled the hope for a theory that will unify both of them which is called as the TOE, the theory of everything.
The theory of the everything has been in the air has been touted for more than several decades now but it is not anywhere near coming. Now the Higgs boson is a part of another theory which is called the standard model. The standard model is a theory that primarily deals with the behaviour of fundamental particles.
Fundamental particles or fundamental elements refer to the elements which comprise an atom and which cannot be divided further into anything lower. That is the broad understanding and the standard model attempts to unify these forces and elements into one theoretical framework. So, it has succeeded in unifying the weak gravitational force, the strong gravitational force and the electromagnetic force but it has no understanding of how gravity can be integrated into it and so the whole theory of relativity is left apart in the standard model.
The Higgs boson is an elementary particle that is predicted by the standard model and the Higgs boson is extremely tiny and it by its interactions with the Higgs field is supposed to give mass to other particles and if at all the existence of the Higgs boson is proven then by this gravity may possibly be introduced into the standard model and then eventually the standard model will have to start coping with all the complexities of the relativity theory and to see whether this can be integrated into it. So, the discovery of the Higgs boson has been hyped so much because the standard model was not able to account for mass at all despite its mathematical complexity and its theoretical sophistication. So, now by the confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson it is now supposed that it can understand gravity incorporate gravity into it.
So, here now I have put an image in the slide which explains what exactly the Higgs boson is. So, I am enlarging the image so that you can see it over here. As you can see basically according to current physics we know that nucleus contains protons and neutrons.
So, as per the current physics protons are made of two parts there are quarks and there are gluons. So, a proton has three quarks within it which are held together by gluons. Now when these protons are accelerated to extremely high speed which is as close to the speed of light as is conceivably possible according to current physics and current technology then the quarks and the gluons inside the protons collide and explode.
When this explosion happens a large amount of energy is created and this energy is enough to create a Higgs particle. Now the Higgs particle is much heavier than a proton 100 to 200 times but it lasts for an infinitesimal span of time a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second and then it decays into a spray of other particles. So, because the lifespan of the Higgs particle is so small therefore it cannot be detected by even the best sensors.
So, the only way to detect it is by the spray of particle that it emits during decay. So, that’s why there are collisions and there are emissions. So, collisions create the Higgs particle for a fraction of a moment and then the emissions are supposed to give an indication of the existence of the Higgs particle.
So, now to accelerate protons to this extremely high speed is no easy thing. So, the European Research Institute has a LHC as it is known Large Hadron Collider. So, the Large Hadron Collider is the world’s most powerful accelerator 27 kilometres in circumference and it has actually been made at a extremely high cost.
So, there are almost 10,000 scientists working on it and it cost 10.5 billion dollars to make it. And in this 27 kilometre or 17 mile instrument particles are accelerated to extremely high speed and then they are collided and when the collision takes place then at that time this whole apparatus is practically speaking buried under the ground. So, it is in the border of France and Switzerland as you can see and in this place by colliding these subatomic particles the hope is that evidence for the existence of Higgs boson will be detected.
So, now hadron is a generic term that is used for any elementary particle that interacts strongly with other particles. So, this is apparatus which can be used for various purposes in that sense. So, what was done in this particular experiment? In this particular experiment the particles were accelerated to extremely high speed and in the pattern the telltale signs that were seen after the collisions took place scientists claim that they have found the evidence of the Higgs boson.
So, now we may think about this whole thing as seeming extremely abstract and complex. So, to understand this let us look at the broad principles governing science and its interaction with the world of our experience which if may you we may use the word tentatively here can call as reality. Of course, what is the reality is itself a debatable issue philosophically, but for our practical discussion over here we can use the world of reality, but if you look at our day to day experience science originally started off as an attempt to explain the world of experience.
So, Newton observed the fruit falling and he pondered why is the fruit falling. So, as explanation to that he postulated the law of gravity. So, originally science started with protection that means we observe some things and then we try to explain it and for explaining those things the science comes up with theories and when the theories are tested and verified and especially they are expressed in terms of mathematical laws mathematical equations then they are said to assume the status of laws.
So, normally science starts with protection observation then there is an attempt to explain that observation by postulation of some theory this is Anuman and then based on that postulation of the theory there are certain experiments that are conducted the theory postulate that certain things will happen in certain way every theory should make some predictions and future experiments will test those predictions. So, again science returns to Anuman to do experiments. And then after the experiments are done and investigated repeatedly by various scientists if the experimental findings agree with the predictions of the theory then it is said that a theory has been proven to be correct.
So, now through this whole process science actually does not study all of reality because when it makes some observations at that time there is so much to observe in nature certain parameters are selected for observation. So, when certain parameters are selected that means others are neglected and that is why science uses only a selective explanation of reality that is why Geoff Capra in his book power of physics explains how science is actually a map of reality what science also offers us is a partial depiction of reality just as a map offers as a partial depiction of the territory. And now a map does not include the human beings over there the map does not include the emotions of the human beings over there all of the map includes us the physical features and depending on whether it is a physical map or a political map or a transport transportation communication map certain features will be depicted and others will be neglected.
So, even all physical features can’t be depicted. Now a map as a navigational tool is useful sometimes even indispensable but the map in and of itself is not the territory nor is it a complete description of the territory. Similarly the world that science reveals to us is also not complete nor is it a proper description of the territory.
Territory here refers to the world of experience that we inhabit and we experience in our day to day life. So, let us see now what is the difference between the map and the territory that means the world of physics and the world we live in the world of our experience. So, Dr. David Berlinski in his book the devil’s delusion points out this difference in a very poignant way.
So, over there fields are pregnant with latent energy particles flicker into existence and disappear things are entangled and no one can quite tell what is possible and what is actual what is here and what is there what is now and what was then. So, actually if we study quantum physics one it takes several years of even decades sometimes more than 6 to 12 years of study to understand the world as it is depicted by quantum physics and even after that it is practically impossible to understand the world in any coherent correlation with the world we understand it as its practical particles appear and disappear and there is actually no space in that world. So, if there is no space in that world then what is actually where and that is very difficult to understand for most people and not just for most people even for scientists and that is why so as the physicist David Mermin puts it he says when he was asked by a student what does this whole quantum physics mean he just replied shut up and calculate.
So, quantum physics is entirely based on calculations and the calculations in themselves do seem to give some results which can be used in very significant ways in various technologies but in terms of understanding what the whole thing means there is very little correlation of the world as depicted by physics with the world as we understand it and therefore actually speaking the world there has very little correlation or connection with the world as we know it. So, solid forms give away nothing is stable time and space contract into some sort of agitated quantum form nothing is continuous nothing stays the same for long except the electrons and they are identical like porcelain Chinese soldiers a pointless frenzy prevails throughout. So, basically at the subatomic level the world is just the motion of electrons and other similar particles and the motion is also there is no conception of space and time as we know it.
So, the motion is also not as we understand it but in the world that we live in over here space and time are stable and continuous matter is what it is and energy is what it does there are solid enduring shapes and forms changes appear slowly but even when rapid they appear in stable patterns there is a dazzling variety everywhere the great river of time flows forward we anticipate the future but we remember the past we begin knowing we will end. So, we have the world of daily experience where time flows in one direction and time is a fundamental reality as a space these two constitute the fabric of existence but there is no time and space in the world that is delineated by modern physics and Berlinski explains that no scientist or anyone else in the world for that matter has idea no idea whatsoever how the ordered physical moral mental aesthetic and social world that we live in could ever have arisen from the seething anarchy of the elementary particles it is like imagining seafoam resolving itself into the Parthenon the Parthenon was a is a very significant architecture within the Greek civilisation so just as seafoam as it is just bubbling around suddenly from the seafoam emerges a magnificent building it’s absurd and how it can happen is not conceivable nor has anyone seen it happening so science has depicted a map of the world which is so radically disconnected with the world as we know it that even the best of scientists have no idea of how to connect the two so here we have Nobel laureate Arvind Schrodinger who’s Schrodinger’s equation is quite significant in modern physics he is pointing this out this radical disconnect between the world of science and the world of everyday experience I am very astonished to know that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient what are the deficiencies first he tells so he’s himself a scientist and he first outlines the strengths of the scientific worldview he says it gives us a lot of factual information puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart we can we can understand through science magnificently consistent order means that we can predict the behaviour of particles and we can order matter to behave accordingly not in the sense of matter obeying our commands but predicting according to laws of nature how it will act and arranging it accordingly but things that are dear to our heart that really matter to us science doesn’t say anything it cannot tell us a word about red and blue bitter and sweet physical pain and physical delight it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly good or bad God in eternity sometimes science pretends to answer questions in this realm in these domains but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously so how from this world of seething atoms our world of love and longing of happiness and distress of multiple colours and multiple fragrances and multiple days how it can come we can’t say not only can we not say actually nobody can say this even the best of scientists have no idea about this and this is not just something which was 50 years ago as science is progressing here we have physicist even mean bug saying that the more comprehensible universe becomes the more it seems pointless what is its point what is it how does it exist what is the purpose of its existence all these electrons that are moving at a breakneck speed near the speed of light whizzing around here and there the point of their existence it just doesn’t seem to be there at all and that is why the world of physics is entirely disconnected from the world that we live in now at this point this is not just one or two scientists saying this there is a significant body of scientists and sociologists of science philosophers of science who are pointing it out and here I quoted Andrew Pickering sociologists of science at the University of Illinois in his book constructing quarks his points are the scientific worldview is partial and oddly an optional there is no obligation upon anyone framing a view of the world to take into account what 20th century science has to say it is a culturally specific product a communally congenial representation of reality what does it mean he says that we don’t have to take into account what 20th century science has to say it is one map and that map has been prepared within a particular culture by a particular kind of people and they find it useful so just as there are people who live in their houses and their places without looking at maps and there are thousands millions of people who never heard about the Higgs boson and it doesn’t matter to them so you’re saying it is worse one way of looking at reality and it is a culturally specific that means it’s not a universal way of looking at reality and because it’s not universal people don’t have any obligation to accept it as their way of looking at the world at this point objection may form if it is just one way of looking at the world then how does it work we have so many technological gadgets all around us we have mobiles and laptops and internet and so many other forms of scientific and technological wizardry so yes science through its technology does work but the question comes who makes it work it is not the scientists because scientists are only discovering the workings of nature and they are tapping those workings but who or what is behind the workings that is the question so Joel Primack the cosmologist at the University of California Santa Cruz once asked a question to physicist Neil Durack he said asked him what is it that makes the electrons continue to follow the laws what how Durack was stunned by the question and he realised that it’s a forceful question for which there are no easy answers if electrons stop following the laws that they follow then all of physics would collapse so now certainly scientists are not making electrons follow the laws the laws are actually following the laws are actually being followed by electrons and we are only trying to discover the laws that they are following and the whole basis of the scientific enterprise is that nature behaves in organised or orderly ways so where does that order come from now there are three possible answers one is that that is just the way things are they are inbuilt in nature they are logical necessities and the second possibility is that nothing that means the wire the wire the electron following the laws because that’s how it is it’s chance and the third is God so now from the time of Isaac Newton when he postulated the law of gravity and the laws of motion physicists have recognised that the laws of nature are not laws of logic nor are they like the laws of logic what does it mean they’re not laws of logic logic means that if one thing is there logically the second thing should follow so if a is a man and all men are mortal then a is also mortal this is a logical statement but as a the law of gravity f is equal to gm 1 m 2 upon r square actually there is nothing logical about that in the sense that nature doesn’t have to have you could have rq you could have the instead of m1 m2 we could have m1 square and m2 square and just r instead of r square now it is not a necessity that the equation has to be like this now the equation is like this and nature does seem to behave according to the equation but why that nature should follow this equation is not a logical necessity it there is it in that sense these laws are not logical they are arbitrary they are arbitrary in the sense that these figures could possibly have been anything but they are these particular figures so why are they like this they’re not surely because of logic because the laws of nature are not logical necessities nature doesn’t have to behave in these particular these then the other explanation could be chance but chance is often touted as a magic wand explanation but for anything that cannot be explained as a logical necessity chance is touted by some scientists but when is chance a valid explanation say if a person is playing a game of dice and the dice falls six on the toss and they say you are lucky how did the dice fall six and you won the game by chance now chance is a valid explanation over here because there is a well-defined process with a known probability of a certain result and when there is a process that is repeatable testable and we know based on experience that it has a certain probability for a particular result then chance is a valid explanation and the other hand chance becomes an excuse when there is no well-defined process and no known probability of a particular result no pattern of results are there within it so for example if a bridge across a river suddenly collapses and all the people who are on the bridge die and the whole transport network gets disrupted by that and then the government appoints a panel of researchers to enquire into the collapse and they give a report that the bridge collapsed because of chance now would that be expected as explanation obviously not so this is the fundamental point that is made to indicate that snap as chance is not a blanket explanation for anything and everything so Stephen C Mayer and his book signature in the cell use these example to explain how chance is not a valid explanation where there is no repeatable testable process with known probability and pattern of results so now if the laws of nature are what they are is there a process by which the laws of nature is generated is that process repeatable has anybody done any experiments to know what all are the possible results within the processes and does anyone know what is the possibility of one particular result within those processes if all that is not known then chance is not explanation it is a evasion it is an excuse given to avoid acknowledging that one does not have an explanation now of course science has especially atheistic science has tried to wiggle out of this difficulty by proposing the existence of parallel universes so the idea of parallel universes supposes that okay the laws of nature are like this in a particular universe the electrons obey the laws of nature and follow its course but it all happened by chance and there are millions of parallel universes and in one of those universes the laws follow are followed the way we are observing it so Paul Davies is a prominent physicist and he analyses this concept of parallel universes which is also known as multiverses in his book a brief history of the multiverse he says how is the existence of the other universes to be tested to be sure all cosmologies except that there are some regions of the universe that lie beyond the reach of our telescopes but somewhere on the slippery slope between that and the idea that there are an infinite number of universes credibility reaches a limit as one falls down that slope more and more must be accepted in faith and less and less is open to scientific verification the multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language but in a sense it requires the same leap of faith as the full quote is that as is required to believe in God so basically there is no way even theoretically to taste the parallel universes actually speaking they are just conceptual tools are not digital tools just concepts pro postulated from the imagination of the physicists and one of the prime reason why parallel universes are postulated is to avoid the explanation of God and this is pointed out by Genesis Richard Lewontin who is himself a theist he said if the third explanation could be for the laws of nature could be God he said no so he points out we take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories just-so stories because we cannot allow a divine food in the door a divine food obviously refers to God so he says science may be absurd in some of its ideas science may not be able to fulfil his promises science may just give just-so stories and how did the universe how did the world that we live in come from the succeeding mass of some atomic particles it just happened just-so story how did man evolve from primordial soup just it happened there are no clear stories how does universe come from a Big Bang these are to some extent just-so stories now there may be explanations are given by scientists but actually those experiences are not much more than stories those explanations are not much more than stories so all these have to be accepted because we cannot allow a divine food in the door we cannot allow God inside so this is not science this is atheism masquerading as science actually science is an open-minded search for the truth and if the evidence from our scientific observations leads us to conclude that there has to be some divine organising principle then that is where science should go it is not that science should block God out of its arena and be ready to accept anything and everything for that sake so among these two explanations parallel universes and God actually speaking it is science normally accepts the simpler explanation because why postulate something which is far more difficult to imagine and far more difficult to test or realise so parallel universes are theoretically itself untestable whereas instead of proposing an infinity of parallel universes and even in after postulating those parallel universes that is just the beginning of the explanation if one accepts that actually it is the laws of God that are making electrons move in a particular way so now coming to the broader point the explainability of the universe requires an explanation this means that why does nature behave in comprehensible and predictable ways that itself requires an explanation which is not present within mainstream science and that’s why we need to look for alternative explanations for this and there are scientists themselves who have gone where the evidence points so Srinivas Ramavidya is India’s famous mathematician and he points out that an equation for me has no meaning unless it represents a part of God unless it represents a part of God so why is it f is equal to g m1 m2 upon r square why is it equal that is because God made that equality so this of course may not be the view of science that is taught in the textbooks today but it is a valid question and here’s historian of science well-known researcher writer thinker Paul Fairbairn in the compilation criticism and the growth of knowledge writes it is good to be constantly reminded of the fact that science as we know it today is not inescapable and that we may construct a world in which it plays no role whatsoever such a world I venture to suggest would be more pleasant than the world we live in today now earlier we discussed the quote about how scientific worldview is not compulsory it is a sectarian view of reality it’s a map that is relevant to some people and here Fairbairn is saying that we can have an alternative map and that alternative map might be better now few people today might agree to this because most people feel that technology has improved the condition of the world so dramatically it is improved the condition of the world so dramatically and that is the gift of science is technology may have improved the lifestyle of people but has it improved our life per se what has been the human effect to the scientific worldview let us look at scientists own findings in terms of statistics so the 20th century has been the century of science we have had more scientific and technological developments in the last century than ever before but just look at the figures of casualties according to the World Watch Institute the 20th century was the most violent century known human history indeed three times more people died in the wars of 20th century than in the entire history of humanity from 81 to 1899 this is World Watch Institute speaking this so what does this indicate does this indicate that science has made the world a better place it’s a serious question now let us look at the specifics of the statistics which are hinted at by this World Watch Institute release so we in the last century we had the First World War from 1914 to 18 which killed 15 million people the Russian Civil War killed 9 million people during Stalin’s regime from 1924 to 53 20 million people were killed in the Second World War 55 million people were killed in Chinese Civil War from 1945 to 49 2.5 million people were killed during Mao Zedong’s regime 40 million people were killed in the Congo Free State 8 million people were killed at the turn of the last century at the turn of the 18th to 19th century Mexico 1 million people were killed the Turkish massacre of the Armenians 1.5 million the nationalist era within Chinese science 3.1 million the Korean War 2.8 million between 1950 to 53 North Korea 1948 2 million Rwanda and Burundi 1959 to 1995 1.35 million in the Indochina War 1960 to 75 there were several occasions when there were wars 3.5 million people were killed Nigeria 1 million Bangladesh 1971 when it became independent of Pakistan 1.25 million people were killed Cambodia in the Khmer Rouge time 1.65 million Mozambique 1 million Afghanistan 1.8 million Iran-Iraq War went over a decade in 1980s 1 million people Sudan 1983 1.9 million people Kinshasa Congo 3.8 so behind these statistics is a massive weight of human misery every one of these millions of people who were killed is a human being with family relatives dreams fears like all of us and millions and millions and millions of people were killed so we may get a rosy picture of how science has improved our life if we just look at the technology that we have but if we look beyond our technology to the history of life in the last century it is extremely sobering and to some extent frightening now of course this is not to say that science is responsible for these killings certainly it is humans who are responsible for these killings but the point is that it is humans who were equipped by science who were able to kill in the scale in the previous centuries because the weapons of mass destruction were not there so so many people could not be killed no doubt there were at that time also people who were malevolent people who are evil minded but they did not have such weapons of mass destruction and in all these statistics actually the atom bomb was used only once now we have far worse one we have weapons of biological destruction and then we have chemical weapons and we have much much more fearsome nuclear weapons so at one level although science is not responsible for this destruction directly indirectly it is science which has equipped people to destroy others and not only that to some extent when life becomes just materialistically seen that life becomes reduced to just a lump of chemicals and if a chemicals is coming in my way why not just throw it out why not just destroy it so it is quite a sobering issue that certainly the technology that science provided has contributed to this destruction and along with the technology there’s a mentality that science brings the mentality is ultimately human beings are nothing but just lumps of matter and if they are just lumps of matter then if a particular lump of matter comes in my way then what is wrong in sending it out of my way so there are researchers who have pointed out the consequences of this also there is the book by historian Richard Picard from Darwin to Hitler evolutionary ethics eugenics and racism in Germany and he said that a sinister current of influence ran from Darwin’s theory of evolution to Hitler’s policy of extermination so Hitler’s autobiography main camp was based on which means my struggle which was actually there are many themes within which parallel the Darwin’s theory of evolution and the struggle for existence therein so Darwin proposed that there are species that are struggling for existence and Hitler went forward and said that actually the various races are also struggling for existence and he came up with the idea that actually the Jew race is the race that is obstructing the onwards march of humanity and especially the onwards march of Nazi Germany and they will be exterminated by nature over a period of time because they are unfit for survival but we can accelerate evolution by helping nature by exterminating those races that have to be exterminated faster so eugenics was a historically dangerous and disastrous project where at that time at least where the idea was that those people who are seen to be physically mentally or even biologically unfit genetically unfit they can be eliminated so that the better races can reproduce and flourish and bring about a better humanity so certainly at one level we can’t deny the influence of science in promoting this mentality but that is not the main issue of concern here ultimately it is human beings who destroy each other but science provides them the weapons to destroy and science also removes some previous ethical barriers that might have been there science in itself does not offer any systems of values or morality and the atheistic science that is propagated in the textbooks today often undermines if not rejects the systems of morality that are there in the wisdom traditions of the world since time immemorial so therefore people feel no hesitation in killing each other if they have to so certainly science can and will and should play a role in shaping humanity’s future but at this stage it’s so much destruction all around us and we are not even concerned considered here the ecological destruction that is happening because of various aspects of climate change so humanity needs a game changer and is particle physics a likely candidate for the game changer no will the discovery of the Higgs boson change the disastrous course no in fact by tapping understanding of the elementary particles more it may result in the development of more fearsome weapons also even if that doesn’t happen it may have its utility but it is not going to bring meaning purpose value and direction to our lives we need that and for that we have to go somewhere else the Vedic scriptures offer as a body of wisdom that can take us in this direction they can help us learn how we can actually develop a holistic conception of humanity without this holistic conception of humanity we will not have individuals who will use science in a proper way so here I quote Nobel laureate Richard Ernst he says that India has a well developed academic community with a surplus of highly creative scientists perhaps with a special inclination towards the more theoretical aspects of science and still maintaining a link to the ancient Indian culture I am convinced that India could become once again the cradle of a new school of thought that may significantly influence the fate of the globe during the third millennium perhaps the contribution of India to nuclear power technology and space science will turn out to be relevant but the contributions towards a new ethical foundation could be turning the wheel of history in the proper balanced way so certainly scientists today are celebrating the discovery of the Higgs boson and they have worked hard for it and that celebration to some extent is a reward for their efforts but we need to recognise that science has its jurisdiction and it has things outside its jurisdiction and certainly the touting of the Higgs boson as a god particle itself indicates the desire of at least some scientists to overstep that jurisdiction to know how to indeed understand that there are areas of human life which are outside the jurisdiction of science is not an insult to science just as to say that the president of America is not the president of the world is not an insult to the president of America it is just an objective statement of fact so science cannot bring meaning purpose value and direction to our lives it cannot tell us why we exist it cannot tell us what is the goal of life it cannot tell us what is right and what is wrong science can provide us nuclear energy maybe even more sophisticated forms of energy but science doesn’t tell us how we should use nuclear energy so here what Dr. Ernst is saying is that that knowledge can come from the Indian wisdom tradition now we may wonder is the knowledge given the Indian wisdom tradition scientific that’s a valid doubt may say who the Indian wisdom tradition or talks about soul and God and as continuing the topic of laws of nature what is it that makes the laws of nature work Lord Krishna says in the bhagavad-gita it is maya dhyakshena prakriti that actually the laws of nature work under the supervision of God so that being the case is the concept of God as in the Vedic literature is it scientific let us look at it the bhagavad-gita explained that this knowledge is pratyaksha avagamam it is verifiable by direct personal experience now modern science is experimental Vedic science is experiential so the two are having many significant parallels in their methodology let us look at those parallels so these four parallels is what we’ll discuss as the concluding part of this class things are not as they appear that which does not appear to arise the unapparent is stunningly greater than the apparent this unapparent can be known not by ordinary ways but only by ways appropriate to it these appropriate rays require instrument and cultivation so things are not as they appear the particle physics says that the desk in front of me is not solid but is made mostly empty space it appears to be solid but it is empty space it is not static but is filled with electrons whirling around the nuclei a million billion times a second I don’t see it that way but science is our vision is uninformed that means as far as the way we observe things even science is saying that the reality is not like that so often people say seeing is believing that show me God show me soul but even science says that seeing is not believing even science says that what we see is a misleading picture of reality that the physical world that science is revealing is very different from the world that we observe now at least conceivably the world that physics that Vedic spirituality is talking about and there is a there is a God who is supremely intelligent and he can design the world so it is conceivable that by his intelligent action we can connect his in his unapparent world with the apparent world around us but with respect to particle physics the unapparent world of seething mass of quantum form from there how the world as we experience it come up actually there is no connection there is no conceivable connection and it is just an article of faith so that’s why the title of the seminar in God particle we trust that the world as we experience it can emerge from the world as physics is telling us is just a matter of faith it is a something which a certain community scientists believe but they have no demonstration not they have the theoretical understanding of how that world could emerge from their quantum notions of reality now the second point the unapparent is much much greater than the apparent for example but particle physics will say that within one small quantity of water there are billions and billions of molecules are there so is astronomical number six hundred thousand billion billion that’s the number of molecules in half an ounce of water that’s a lot that means the invisible unapparent is far far greater than the apparent similarly the things are not as they appear Vedic spirituality says that we are not the body we are the soul beyond the body and there is a God who has designed the world so beyond that Vedic spirituality says that the spiritual level of reality is a level of great individuality activity variety and beauty far greater than what we find in our world then after that the unapparent can be known not by ordinary ways but only by ways appropriate to it so now the idea of science that there are so many particles that are existing how can we know it it is possible only through devices like the let’s see the large electron collider so we cannot see it with our eyes and the demand that we be shown the Higgs boson by eyes will be rejected with disdain by scientists and yet we demand that the spiritual level of reality be shown to our eyes that does not mean scientists will say that the Higgs boson cannot be detected there are ways appropriate to it and that’s why they have their large electron collider but then the spiritualist will say there are ways for detecting the spiritual level of reality also there is the spiritual process of yoga and there are various yogas among them the easiest and the most effective is the process of bhakti yoga as is taught in the Vedic literature especially the Bhagavad Gita and the Srimad Bhagavatam now science also says that these unapparent realities if we have to perceive them it requires instruments and it requires cultivation so we need this massive particle accelerator and then we need sophisticated sensors and even with these an uninformed person if he goes to these instruments he will not be able to understand what is being shown over there so when scientists see a particular pattern on their graphs in their computers then they understand okay this indicates that there is a spray of particle that has come out in this spray of particle indicates that there is the Higgs boson which has existed which has gone out decayed out of existence now so one needs a systematic education to be able to use the instruments and to understand the results that have been given by the instruments similarly the Vedic scriptures say that there is a spiritual level of reality and that requires appropriate instrument that instrument is spiritual consciousness that spiritual consciousness is what each one of us needs to developed and without that consciousness we cannot perceive that reality so there are various levels of consciousness according to the Vedic literature and the present level of consciousness that we are in is called as Jagruti so there is the soul there is subtle body there is the gross body and there is the spiritual level of reality where there is God and other things related with God so here you can see the slide so normally when the consciousness is rooted to the body and through the gross body to the external world then the consciousness is said to be in the state of Jagruti then when the consciousness is rooted only to the subtle body then it is said to be the state of Swapna that means when we are sleeping we are conscious but we are conscious of a different level of reality that we perceive in our dreams now when the consciousness is withdrawn entirely within self that is called as Shukti but when the consciousness is redirected to the spiritual realm that is called as Turiya or Samadhi so actually there is the consciousness redirected towards the spiritual realm that is the instrument that is required for detecting the spiritual realm and to get that instrument to use that instrument to understand what that instrument is revealing requires cultivation it requires practise so the process of mantra meditation centred on chanting of the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra is a process of spiritual science which redirects our consciousness from matter to spirit and enables us to experience the spiritual reality so some people may say that who has seen God the counter question could be argued who has seen the Higgs boson nobody has seen and nobody can see but there are certain inferences that can be made which indicates the existence so similarly it is not that nobody has seen God there are saints who have seen God but even if though among those who have not yet seen God there are certain inferences can be made by which we can indicate the existence of God but even to understand those inferences require some education without that education one cannot understand at all so if we see the whole area of particle physics is extremely elitist elitist means it is restricted to a small number of people first one has to go for years and maybe decades of education then after that one has to join the pottery of scientists who are doing this research and only then one will get access to the instruments and then one can detect it and then one can verify whether these results are actually there or not for the rest of humanity we are actually putting faith in what the scientists are saying now somebody may say that oh there are thousands of scientists involved in it yes but then there are thousands of people who were in Hitler’s Nazi Germany and all of them had consensus opinion that you should be killed so just because a large number of people are there that does not make something true ultimately it’s a matter of faith somebody may say no no these are these are not that kind of people actually what do you mean by that kind of people even in Nazi Germany that some of Hitler’s Germany was the most scientifically developed country at this time and it prided itself on its scientific ethos and eugenics which was the scientific branch which postulated that you should be killed to allow the progress of the human race they were all scientists so of course I am not in any way imputing any negative or diabolical motives on the scientists who are doing research on the Higgs boson all that I am saying here is that ultimately what the scientists are saying is a matter of faith that the faith could be wrong I’m not saying the faith is wrong but I am saying that just because there is peer review within scientific community there is consensus among the scientists who are doing research that doesn’t mean that this is even an accurate map of reality certainly it’s not it has nothing to do with the reality that we experience every day but even within its own map whether it’s accurate map that is a matter of faith for us the only point I am emphasising here is that the existence of Higgs boson is for all the people outside the scientific community an article of faith similarly there is a peer review within the spiritual realm there is Guru Sadhu Shastra it’s not just one person claiming that I have seen God there are the books which are either the revelations of God or which are the realisations of these great souls who have had experiences of God in the Shastra then there is Guru the spiritual teacher who gives us spiritual knowledge and then his understanding is corroborated by many other spiritual teachers in the contemporary or in the past tradition and in this way there is his own system of peer review so certainly there is an element of faith over here but the demand for faith is no more than the demand for faith in Higgs boson actually there is a process if we follow it of purifying our consciousness and refining our perception then each of us can perceive the Atma each of us can perceive God and we can perceive the relationship between the two and the potential benefits of this will be enormous now if people start experiencing the spiritual level of reality and they start experiencing happiness over there then they will be less materialistic and if they are less materialistic then our ecology will face less problems and then the destructiveness that we see in society that will also become lesser because ultimately people fight and kill each other because of competition over scarce material resources so the potential for improvement of humanity by adoption of scientifically spiritual principles is profound so certainly if even a small endeavour small percentage of the endeavour that was put in discovering the Higgs boson could have been rooted towards discovering through analysis and experience the spiritual level of reality we would have a far better humanity today we would have a humanity which would be less violent more satisfied and more cooperative because to the extent we understand that this life is not all that there is to that extent we understand that I will be preparing my post-mortem post a destiny by how I am living here and therefore let me not live rashly so I’m not going to go here into the whole issue of morality but suffice it to say that there is no reason to reject this spirituality because this spirituality the Vedic spirituality only asked for as much faith as is asked by the scientist doing Higgs boson and there’s Arnold Toynbee a famous historian he writes that a chapter in world history that had a western beginning must have an eastern ending if it is not to end in the destruction of the world so it is already becoming clear that a chapter in which had a western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in the self-destruction of the human race at this supremely dangerous moment in history the only way of salvation for mankind is the Indian way so let us try for ourselves this experiment of spirituality and see for ourselves whether it is science and we will find that the discovery of the spiritual particle within the existence of God we could call it the godly particle the not the God particle the soul is a part of God and the soul has the characteristics of God so the discovery of the godly particle is something which each and every one of us can do and the discovery of that particle will make all of us godly it’ll make all of us better individuals better human beings and better contributors and players in this world so that we can make our lives better help in making others lives better and I’ll achieve the ultimate happiness that is possible for us thank you