Is Belief In Soul Scientific – Chaitanya Charan

Transcript

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Thank you I have just met somebody in Canada who was who came from India to Canada on a on a sports visa they came as a cricketer to Canada and then he was in the Canadian national team and then once he was fielding and he fell on his shoulder and he had an injury and that ended his cricket career and as he left his country and come here and that was the time somehow he was so depressed but he met devotees got a Bhagavad Gita and that’s how he understood he thought I am a cricketer and now I can’t be a cricketer then who am I then he understood actually I am a soul so then that gave him such relief and now he has become a business person and he travels across the world and he is a very wonderful devotee speaker and leader of a community there so the point is that sometimes the whole identity which we have formed might come crumbling down like a tsunami coming on the surface of the ocean so if we are on the surface we will be swept away if we identify with our functional roles alone if we identify that this is my functional identity and this is who I am and tomorrow we can’t do that then we will be destroyed but if we do we go deep in understand yes this is my functional identity yes I am a doctor I am an engineer but that is only a part of who I am below all these I am a soul so understanding our functional identity gives us stability Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that yam he navyatayantyete purusham purusharishabha sama dukkha sukham dheeram somrutatvaya kalpate so yam he navyatayantyete navyatayantyete you will not be disturbed why? because you will understand that you are a soul purusham purusharishabha sama dukkha sukham dheeram happiness and distress will come somrutatvaya kalpate if you understand you are a soul then and you act accordingly you will rise to the spiritual level of understanding and then Krishna gives various frames of analysis to explain how actually we are souls so he says that avinashitu tad viddhi yena sarvam idam tatam pinasham avyayasyasya nakashchit kartum arhate that there is something which pervades the whole body and that is consciousness now as soon as we talk about something like the soul we may get the question is it scientific? is it scientific? yes, it’s a good question to ask but science is a particular way of looking at the world and science is the study of matter the Bhagavad Gita is the study of what matters science is the study of matter ok, how do various material things interact with each other ok, this Newton saw that fruit falling some people say it fell in front of him, some people say it fell on him and then most people would have just picked up the fruit and eaten it and gone their way but Newton asked him what made this fruit fall and then he came up with gravity, so it’s a study of matter and science is phenomenally effective in the study of matter but the study of what matters what is really important in life that science doesn’t tell us science is not moral, it is not immoral it is amoral amoral means science can tell if some young boy is there and he has a grandmother who has a big mansion which she has given as inheritance to him now he knows by studying chemistry he can know that if I put arsenic in my grandmother’s breakfast I can get the inheritance faster but should I do that or not do that that science doesn’t tell this is not an efficiency of science because science doesn’t study that Einstein said that we can talk about the ethical foundation of science but we can’t talk about a scientific foundation of ethics so ethics is something which it’s very important for us to know what to do and what not to do but how do we know that we know that not by any scientifically measurable parameter what is to be done science can tell us if you do this, this will happen if you do this, this will happen but the study of what matters that is outside the domain of science say nowadays I recently gave a seminar on overcoming fear so I did a study of different fears that people had across different centuries so what are the top 10 fears in the 18th century 19th century, 20th century, 21st century in the 21st century two fears have been added in the top 10 list one is the fear of terrorists and the second is the fear of rejection we form a relationship with someone and that person just rejects us and goes away so now that is a great great fear when we enter into a relationship does the other person really care for us now suppose a boy proposes to a girl I love you, please marry me now the girl can’t take out a love-o-meter let me put it on your heart do you really love me no matter how much scientific advancement we make we cannot quantify love this doesn’t mean it is not real science studies mathematical measurable parameters and it studies material interactions of material phenomena but there is much that is beyond the arena of science so is there scientific evidence for the soul or we can say that we can make inferences about it but there is physical matter, there is subtle matter and there is spirit so physical matter is primarily what science studies subtle matter is what is beyond science and spirit is entirely beyond science so the soul is not against science the soul is above science now there is scientific evidence in the sense that where does consciousness come from this is very difficult for people to understand for scientists to understand I have written a book on reincarnation and in that book on the 125th anniversary of the science magazine they had 125 questions answers science doesn’t have the second question there was the second question there was where does consciousness come from the second most unanswered question the first unanswered question was where does the universe come from so where does the universe come from and where does our consciousness come from these are questions which are very difficult to answer so now the Bhagavad Gita gives us a possible answer it says consciousness comes from the soul and if it comes from the soul what is the practical implication of that so Krishna gives characteristics of the soul he says it’s like if we have a particular object we might want to know about physics and chemistry Krishna says this cannot be dissolved this cannot be burned this cannot be withered this is indestructible and now understanding ourselves as a soul gives us an internal level of security that no amount of financial security social security any kind of insurance can provide us because we understand as a soul I am indestructible so this is the central message that Krishna gives shift your identity understand that you are neither a Kshatriya nor you are a Kurnandana you are first and foremost a Atma a soul and as a soul decide what is your function so there Krishna says that that everybody is going to die and after everybody dies