Is seeing believing 2 – What the map of science misses

[Talk to IIT Kharagpur students, Kharagpur, India]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
today I continue the discussion on is seeing believing.
Yesterday I talked about how science in order to explain the visible is to postulate the invisible. To explain visible phenomena, science postulates invisible principles. And the very fact that such principles which are basically conceptualised by the human mind can explain the working of nature is something which requires an explanation.
nature’s science capacity to explain requires an explanation. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. In that connection I discussed the example of a message of a key and a door as well as a message when we are lost.
And then I talked further about how the atheistic world view cannot explain the presence of cause and effect. It cannot explain the presence of the rationale for even the idea of good or evil. So, our purpose in this discussion was that in an age of science in a scientific situation can we be spiritual? So, is somebody who is scientific, is it rational for them, is it logical for them, is it scientific for them to be spiritual? So, one objection to spirituality is that the spirit we can’t see.
But in science also there are so many things which we can’t see. If we go further into subtle realms of science then there are two schools of thought in science that is rationalism and empiricism. sense, we should be logically consistent and we should be able to explain them that way.
Empiricism means that we should be able to observe. So, science started from empiricism and then use a rational approach to come up with inferences with theories to explain those things. But as science tends to become more and more mathematical more and more advanced.
So, if we consider the theory of quantum physics as a mathematical model it works phenomenally well. From high up in the sky you know we can observe technology today. If a small coin has fallen on the ground a satellite can tell us whether that coin is a 1 rupee coin or a 50 paise coin.
So, we have that level of sophistication available with us which is the result of technology. But, if you look at quantum physics the model of reality which quantum physics offers us is very counter intuitive. That means in quantum physics the whole there is a famous quantum physicist he says if you think you have understood quantum physics then you have not understood it.
So, the idea is that quantum physics is a as a mathematical tool it is phenomenally powerful. But, as a conceptual or visual tool how do you make sense of this? Einstein and Planck Einstein was the proponent of the relativity theory special theory of relativity and Planck was another Planck Bohr that whole Neal Bohr was especially proponent of the quantum physics. So, now Neal Bohr and Planck and Einstein were friends but they also had a lot of differences because Einstein just could not accept the idea of quantum physics.
He famously said God does not play dice with the universe. So, what he meant by that was quantum physics postulates universe just filled with probabilities and so he famously said that actually I would like to believe that the moon continues to exist even when I am not looking at it. You say obviously moon continues to exist.
That is what our common sense would say. But actually according to quantum physics the model of reality which they have is complex but what to put in simple terms again any simplification of complex scientific concepts is always a challenge but the idea is that the whole reality is primarily made of waves and the wave functions collapse and then we see a particular object as an object when there is a conscious observer who observes it. So that’s why according to quantum physics actually there is no such thing as a moon when somebody observes it then the moon is there.
But this doesn’t seem to make any sense at all. So quantum physics there is another anecdote that a famous quantum physicist asked a student sir how do you make sense of this? So his teacher told him stop thinking start calculating. At the start of the 20th century Lord Kelvin was a prominent physicist of that century.
He famously said the biggest problem for future physicists is going to be unemployment. He said that most of reality has been mapped by physics and now for future generations of physicists all that they have to do is fill in the details. But at that time there were two small clouds on the earth were moving at speed zero the speed of light.
And these two anomalies in classical physics led to two huge storms. One led to the development of quantum physics the other led to relativity. And as these two developed both of them were very potent but the two of them don’t go together.
How the two of them are to be reconciled we just don’t know. So currently the very picture of the world which quantum physics offers us and the picture of the world which relativity offers us are significantly different. Some physicists say they are even violently contradictory.
But how do we bring these two together? No one knows. It is the great pursuit of the grand unified theory of everything which has been going on for a long time and as of now scientists basically work with whichever model works. That means they are pragmatic.
So for macroscopic objects moving at a high speed they usually use the relativity theory and for most of other realities especially fundamental particles they use quantum physics and they consider Newtonian physics as an approximation which works at the anthropic level, at the human observational level. So the reason why I am talking about all this is that science offers us two distinct models of reality. Ridge of Capra was a well-known physicist.
He wrote a book called Tao of Physics and he was trying to bring together eastern wisdom and modern science. So irrespective of the credentials of his actual product but he made a significant point that science basically offers us models which are like maps. So if I want to go from Mumbai to Pune or if I want to go to Kolkata to Kharagpur and I have a map.
Now the map is not the territory. The map is a representation of the territory for a particular purpose. On the map I can see certain things and on the map I can’t see certain things.
Each map based on the purpose that it is serving will highlight certain features. So the political map of say Bengal or India will show the political boundaries between states between countries between between districts. The topographical map of India, the physical map of India will show the mountains, the plains, the plateaus, the rivers.
Now they are both describing the same thing but the two maps if you look at them they will seem significantly different. So the reality is represented by the two maps but the reality itself is different from the two maps. The reality is bigger.
When we draw a map essentially what do we do? Reality is out there. We take certain features of reality which we want to highlight and then we make a representation which highlights those features and we reuse that map for operating according to those features. Now for that purpose maps are very useful.
In fact if you are travelling maps are indispensable. But at the same time when a map is used again and again and again we may get so used to it that we may start thinking that it is the soul or the whole authority. So if say I am supposed to if I am day after tomorrow I am going from here to Mumbai and I am going there to meet a friend.
I will of course go by flight but suppose I was driving and I use a map, go to this highway, go across this bridge, across this river, then you come to this mountain range, cross this mountain range, and as I keep taking steps according to that map, I keep finding that what the map is saying is right and my faith in the map keeps increasing. After saying two or three days I just keep driving, driving, driving, I reach Mumbai and by that time every single thing in the map has told me is right. So my faith in the map has become very strong and then finally I get to the house of my friend and knock on the door of my friend’s house.
He opens the door and says welcome and look at the map. He says you don’t exist on this map therefore you don’t exist. What nonsense! Hey, the map is not going to show me.
Now we would not do, we would not be so ridiculous as to deny the existence of a person just because they are not depicted in the map. But unfortunately this is what has happened in the history of science. The science started off as a very powerful map of reality and then Galileo from his time onwards they focused on in science measurable properties.
So Pythagoras famously said everything is numbers. Of course that is not true many much of reality is non- numerical but Einstein said all that counts is not countable and all that is countable does not count. So all that counts means matters.
All that matters is not countable. Like yesterday I talked about love. It is a real and valuable emotion but we cannot put a figure to it.
So all that counts is not countable and all that is countable does not really count. There are so many things. We can count how many hairs are there on our head.
That is of interest. So all that is countable does not count. But at the dawn of science when it started focussing on the study of nature it divided nature into what it called as primary properties and secondary properties.
The primary properties it said are measurable properties. So length breadth mass height viscous density all these things are measurable properties and that is what science could objectively measure and objectively verify and that is what could be expressed in the language of science. So for example taste smell love anger so sensory experiences we see certain things we see the world in terms of colour height so sorry colour smell smell and all these sensory experiences as well as the emotions that they induce and ultimately consciousness itself.
These were considered secondary attributes. Because they were not measurable science decided not to focus on them. This is just an operational strategy and as an operational strategy by using the language of mathematics to describe the correlation between measurable aspects of reality science did come to lot of advancement in its knowledge but the nature of the human mind is that the more attention gets focused on one thing the more attention goes off from another thing.
A person is drinking alcohol initially they drink and look ok who else is there in this room I want to enjoy talking with them while I drink but as they start becoming more and more alcoholic then they become blinded to the circumstances because the more attention focusses on one thing the more attention goes off other things. So initially a person may not even dream of driving alcoholic influence but if they keep drinking eventually they become oblivious to other things. This is the nature of the way human cognition works.
The more we start focussing on one thing the more focus goes off other things. So similarly in the history of science what happened was that as more and more mathematical equations were postulated and they worked in amazingly precise ways so science started focussing more and more on measurable features in the universe till the non-measurable features started being relegated to the background to the point that some people consider non-measurable features to be non-existent. So that’s how from the scientific perspective the concept of free will that was first introduced by the 19th century and then it they are real for us.
Consciousness itself is a reality. Consciousness is the first reality by which we experience everything else. If we were not conscious, we would not be able to experience anything else.
Without consciousness, science would not be possible. Because it is consciousness that enables observation and in the correlation between various observations is what science tries to find out. So, just like a person who by using a map repeatedly developed so much overconfidence in the map and they rejected the existence of the very person whom they were using the map to go to.
Similarly, science as it has grown, it is a tool for observing and finding the correlation between measurable aspects of reality. And as a tool for that it is very powerful. But when its capacity is extended beyond its scope, its use is taken beyond its scope, then it becomes scientific.
And that is counterproductive. So, if somebody has a grandmother who has a big inheritance, which she has left for them, science can tell them that if you put arsenic in your grandmother’s bed first, you can get to your inheritance quickly. Now, whether you should do that or not, science can’t do that.
See, science is neither moral nor immoral. It is amoral. Amoral means it does not talk about morality.
In science, when this chemical is brought together, this is the reaction. Now, whether that reaction is for good or bad, this chemical is interacting with each other. The morality is a very important aspect in day to day life.
There is a journal of medical ethics which is published in the Western world. And there is a group of a couple of researchers, atheistic philosophers. They wrote a paper where they said that a woman should have the right to abort her child even after the child is born.
Now, when this paper was published, it created a furore. If the child is born, abortion, whatever way it is done, the bigger the child, the more brutal it is. Crush the child.
So, how can you kill the child after it is born? So, it created a furore. And then they said that don’t be sentimental. There is no difference from the medical perspective in the child, whether the child is inside the womb or outside the womb.
If the child can be killed inside the womb, there is no reason why it cannot be killed outside the womb. So, now, what they were saying is that, just because the child has come out of the womb, you can kill it. Now, this idea, what is their reasoning? It is that, okay, the mother feels that she doesn’t want to have a child, she doesn’t want to take care of a child, she doesn’t want to burden the child.
She should have the freedom for that. Now, okay, you can say mother has the freedom, but what about the child’s freedom to live? That is also freedom, importantly. So, science itself can give us the mechanisms by which to do abortion.
But science itself will not tell us whether abortion is right or wrong. So, now, when I am saying that, these atheistic philosophers, they are themselves scientists, but it is their personal opinion. So, from the scientific perspective, there is no difference.
Now, we intuitively know there is a big difference. How can you kill a child after the child is born? Of course, you could take the question further, how can you kill a child after it is conceived? There is a baby there still. But the point is, what is a very real difference for us, this child is.
This child is born, how can you kill it? But science itself is amoral. Amoral means it does not make any statement about morality. In fact, Hitler’s programme, which led to a pogrom, pogrom is annihilation, genocide.
His programme for establishing the supremacy of Nazis centred on applying the principle of biological evolution to human species. And he said, he somehow with his twisted intelligence, he got the idea that Nazis, they are the original Aryans and they are the fittest race in the whole world. And they are meant to survive and the Jews are especially unfit.
So, he said, by nature’s order, the fit will survive and the unfit will perish. But he said, now we have advanced scientifically, so we should help nature along the way. So, he actually, it was not just Jews and gipsies, but his plan was, he had a plan that anybody who is physically handicapped, anybody who is mentally limited, anybody who is in any way deficient, he said, his plan was that first of all, make all of them infertile, prevent them from reproducing, so that they do not make more people like them.
And then eventually his plan was, just eliminate these people, they are not fit. But now, how can you eliminate living people like that? So, he, he extrapolated from the principles of science, started applying it. So, science is, science is not responsible for what Hitler did.
No, we are not saying that. What I am saying is, science itself does not give us any clear moral directives, what is right and what is wrong. In that sense, science is amoral.
At the same time, moral issues are important for us. What is right and what is wrong is important for us. And yet science gives us no answer to that.
No guidelines of what should be done and what should not be done. So, Einstein famously said that we can have, we can talk about the ethical foundations of science. But you cannot talk about a scientific foundation of ethics.
We can talk about the ethical foundation of science. That means, we can discuss whether science is being used ethically or not. When science started making weapons of mass destruction, at that time many, in the, by the time of Second World War, aeroplanes, it came into play.
In the First World War, there were no aeroplanes so much. So, along with that came bombs for killing people in mass and the bombs could be just taken into the enemy territory. I was just in London and there are two parts of London.
One part is very, very modern and the other part is very traditional, very Victorian, it is all construction. And it is a very drastic difference. So, why the difference? Because one part of London, which is modern, was entirely destroyed by the Nazi bombing.
And then they reconstructed the whole thing. The other part is still there because it was not destroyed by the bombing. So, the point I am making is, when the bombs, now of course, we have nuclear weapons also, chemical weapons also, but when they started destroying people, they started making many scientists who were involved in weapon research at that time resigned.
They said we cannot use our intelligence to kill our own fellow humans. But then of course, there are other scientists who took up their positions. And science went on forward.
Einstein wrote a famous letter, which he regretted later, by which he asked the American government to make the nuclear bomb. And he had talked about E is equal to MC square. And that was the defining insight, which led to the establishment of the atomic bomb at that time.
But eventually, when the extent of the devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki came out, it was horrible. Einstein bitterly regretted this decision. And he said, it is only the fear that Hitler might have got such a weapon.
That was what made me write this. But then later they found Hitler was quite a distance away. He had got some quantity of uranium, but he had not actually come anywhere near making the weapon.
But he realised that actually these weapons have tremendous potential for destruction. So, this is one of the striking ironies of the last century that the most brilliant insight of the most brilliant scientist of the last century led to the greatest destruction of the last century. E is equal to MC square, that insight led to the development of the atom bombs, and that led to the biggest mass destruction because of one attack of weapon.
Now, again, I am not saying here science is responsible for this. My point is much more subtle. The point is that science is not moral or immoral.
It is amoral. Scientists now, for example, many countries have nuclear weapons. And in some ways, nuclear weapons are ghastly.
They can destroy a whole city by that. Nuclear weapons are much, much worse than atomic bombs also. But then, nuclear weapons can also serve the power of deterrence.
Deterrence means that if you try to attack us, we will attack you back. And if you try to attack us too much, we can use nuclear weapons. So, if you see the 1960s, 1970s, there are several wars, 1960s especially, India-Pakistan, then India-China.
But after India, China, Pakistan, all have developed nuclear weapons, we have low level confrontation. But we do not have outright wars. But because the nuclear weapons are acting as a deterrent.
Now, of course, hot-headed people may still use nuclear weapons also. We do not know. Again, the point which I am making is that science can make weapons and those weapons can be used to deter people from attacking or the weapons can be used to destroy people.
Science itself does not, in its world view, tell us what is right and what is wrong. So, morality is a very vital thing that we need in our life to understand what is right and what is wrong. But the scientific world does not tell that.
And if somebody says, oh, there is no such thing as morality, then how will you function in life? So, the map of science is very powerful in analysing some aspects of reality, measurable aspects. But there is much in reality which the map of science does not show. And those aspects are also very real.
And one such aspect is the spiritual aspect. So, is it scientific to be spiritual, if somebody asks, the question can be answered in different ways. First of all is that science has its particular scope and without there being a spiritual source of consciousness, we cannot be scientific at all.
Because there will be no science and there will be no scientists. So, consciousness itself is a fundamental reality. And where does consciousness come from? Consciousness is fundamentally different from matter because consciousness is something that experiences matter.
See, matter does not experience itself. If I hit this, it doesn’t experience any pain. If I hit it, if I hit it very hard, I will experience some sensation, I will experience some pain.
So, when I experience pain, what is the I that is experiencing the pain? You see that actually, this bar of the stand is made of the same fundamental elements as my hand. But what is it within me that is experiencing? That is a question which science itself does not answer. Science says, okay, the brain is experiencing.
But the brain is also made of the same chemicals. It is the chemicals, they themselves, no matter how sophisticated the arrangement in which they are functioning, that doesn’t lead to any categorical difference. There is a quantitative difference and there is a qualitative difference.
So, a quantitative difference and a categorical difference. It is like say, if some small child runs on a small cycle, which means when you push with your legs, it is a small cycle in which you put one leg and then you push with the other leg and you just drive it. That will run at a certain speed.
And the child feels some thrill in running that cycle also. The same child may become older, may become an adult and may become a pilot. And they may run, the child as a pilot may run a jumbo jet, super fast.
Now, the sophistication of the machine determines how fast the machine will move. But it is the person who experiences the thrill. Isn’t it? No matter how fast the machine is moving, even if tomorrow we made a machine which could move as fast as the speed of light or could even break the speed of light and move faster.
Just having the machine move faster, would it mean that the machine start experiencing thrill? No. Just as a cycle, which is moving at a small pace, does not experience any thrill. The machine is also, the aeroplane, even a spacecraft, that is also basically a machine.
So, just increasing the complexity or speed of a device, it will not bring in consciousness. Isn’t it? Nowadays, there are many, there is the whole field of artificial intelligence. As I was at Duke University, and there they have a robo, which plays music.
Just consider one of the great achievements, robots that play music. Sorry? Humans play better than robots, humans can play flute and everything. Humans play better than us, humans can play flute and some other instruments.
Yes, that is true. So, the point I am making is that actually, if we consider robots, how do they work? They can simulate the work of human beings. There is this, when robots started being made, especially machines have been used for a long time.
But when computers came in, there is something that changed. Prior to that, it was thought that machines do mechanical work and they aid humans. But computers, it seems can do intellectual work better than humans.
For example, they can calculate, now with Google we can search. Now artificial intelligence can also give us answers to questions. So, now these questions when they answer, it can appear as if they are being very intelligent.
Now, what is happening here is that basically, if you know how Boolean algebra and how the whole computer technology works, it is basically, traditionally we had abacus, you know, we had a slate which move up and down, thread, there are beads, that is how we calculate. Now, if you just move it faster and faster, you are going to calculate faster. You get a machine to move it.
Computers basically, their circuitry is nothing but there are patterns of digital circuits and 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, it is changing. And it changes super fast. And abacus, no matter how fast the beads are moved, it is not going to become conscious.
Now, same way, even in that principle of abacus, of 0, 1, 0, 1 oscillation, it is brought into machines. It is brought into robots. It simply means that they are processing numbers at phenomenally high speeds.
But just the speed of number crunching does not produce consciousness. It is the speed of motion of a plane does not produce the thrill of flight. So, machines may be able to replicate the activities that conscious human beings do.
And as we human beings, as we develop more and more artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence means what? It is the, it pulls together more and more intelligence of human beings. And then it learns to process it faster and faster. So, as long as it is not able to process as fast, it may make mistakes.
In the history of computing, it is said that in translations, in the, there is a, say, somebody did the, may go and translate or computer translation did translation from English to Russian and the Russian to English. So, it said in anecdotal literature that how it can make a mistake. And so, there is a statement in the Bible, the flesh is, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
What it means is that we want to, we want to live according to principles. The spirit is willing to go close to God, but the flesh, the body has its own desires and drives which drag people down. So, this was fed to a computer mechanised, computer translator and it was used to translate.
So, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. It has translated into Russian and the translation came back from Russian to English. And the translation said, the vodka is good, but the meat is rotten.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. So, spirit is wine, wine became vodka and flesh, meat, the meat is rotten. Now, of course, whether a computer actually translated like this or not, and the computers today may not translate like this.
The principle which you are making is the mechanical acts. If the computer becomes fast enough, they will do it. But there is consciousness which is of a different category.
And that is something which is neither present in the digital circuitry of the computers, nor is it present, nor does it originate from the neural circuitry of the brains. It is of a different category. And this is also a fundamental reality.
So, this is what spirituality is all about. So, if we are talking about how the visible points to the invisible, actually, if you look at the world around us, the very visible experiences for us, if you go home and say, I met a very interesting person, I met a very fascinating person today. A friend will tell me about it.
They are 5 feet 3 inches. What else? They weigh 65 pounds, 65 kg. Now, how many of us are going to tell somebody, when you meet someone, oh, I met a person of this height and this weight.
That is okay, that is one feature. But we are interested more in the personality of the person, the looks of the person, the interiors of the person. The personality has so many things apart from the physical features.
Not the physical features, physical dimensions. Physical dimensions are one aspect of the person. But the person is much more in the physical dimensions.
Similarly, reality is much more in the physical dimensions of certain aspects of reality. And science offers us models which are very powerful in their particular domains. But the scientific models themselves are such that they are not mutually harmonious.
There is one model, quantum physics, another model, relativity. And which works, that is what we use. But to bring them together, it is very difficult.
Stephen Hawking said in 2004 that, I am happy to announce that humanity’s quest for knowledge will never end. What he meant was like that, that we will not get the answer to the question of the grand theory of everything, theory of everything, grand unified theory. So, science is ready to work with two different models, which work in their own domains, but which are very difficult to reconcile.
So, similarly, spirituality offers us another model of reality. And this model is a model that is more inclusive. It includes our human personality.
It includes consciousness. It includes emotions. And this model states that actually, there is physical, mental and spiritual domains of reality.
That is the body, mind and soul. So, science looks at physical reality and that to the measurable aspects of physical reality. But there is the mental, there is spiritual.
Like in a computer system, you can have the hardware, the software and the user. So, similarly, the hardware is like the physical level, software is the mental level and the user is the spiritual level of reality. So, this model can actually accommodate consciousness.
It can accommodate emotions. It can accommodate free will. Are we programmed machines? Our bodies are programmed machines.
Our bodies are programmed machines. But we are conscious beings with free will, who can go along with the programming of the body or who can choose to reprogram the body. So, we are not programmed machines.
We are the possessors of programmable machines. We are not programmed machines. We are the possessors, possessors of programmable machines.
So, yes, when a cat sees a mouse, it feels the urge to, it will salivate and it will feel the urge to eat. When we humans see some delicious food, we salivate and we feel the urge to eat. But suppose, it is some sacred day like Ekadashi.
Now, we may say, oh, this food is there, but not today. When a cat sees a mouse, the cat can’t think of Ekadashi. So, in the case of the animal bodies, the cat is also essentially a soul.
But there the soul is tied very strongly to the body. The soul’s consciousness is tied so much to the body that it can’t act much different from the body. Whereas, we humans, our consciousness is also attached to the body, but our consciousness is also separate.
And that’s why when the body’s urges come, we can choose to accept them or we can choose to resist them. And discipline essentially means that we choose to resist the urges of the body. So, the scientific model of reality is accommodative in the spiritual level as the way physical reality functions, as one aspect of all the physical reality functions.
Is there programming? Yes, programming is there. Are there laws of nature? They are there. But the laws of nature, they describe one feature.
Laws of nature means laws of physics we are talking about here. They describe one feature of reality. But reality is bigger than that.
I’ll give you two examples for this and then we can move on to question answers after that. Say, if somebody is playing billiards. Now, in billiards, we could explain in terms of laws of physics, why the ball went into the hole.
This ball hit this set of balls at this angle, this velocity, from this direction and that caused the balls to move this way, this way, and that ball went into the hole. This whole thing could be described in the laws of physics. In terms of laws of physics.
And here, and if you were looking at the table from above, this ball came and hit this ball and that is how the ball went into the hole. That will be fine. But if we expand the picture, we will see that actually that ball which came and hit the mass of balls, that ball was hit using a stick by a person.
And the person’s expertise in hitting the ball is also an explanation why the ball went into the hole. So, the scientific explanation and the personal explanation, they are complementary, they are not contradictory. So, they are not saying science is wrong.
What they are saying is science gives a picture of reality and within that framework, it is fine. We can explain things under the laws of nature. But there are other parameters also involved.
See, the laws of nature, they themselves are not causes of anything. The laws of nature explain the correlation between causes and effects. The laws of nature are not causes in themselves.
They explain the correlation between causes and effects. That means if this ball is hit at this velocity, then that ball will go in the hole. So, this cause-effect correlation is what laws of nature are about.
But the laws of nature do not explain where those balls came from, why this ball hit that ball, and why this whole setup exists at all. That is something which is already assumed as existing by the laws of nature and their correlation is explained. Say, going back to the cricket match, India-Pakistan match, and the last ball, India needs to hit a sixer on the last ball.
And the ball comes and batsman hits. And the ball actually doesn’t hit the bat but hits the outside edge. But somehow the ball is hit so forcefully that the outside edge flies over the boundary.
And the outside edge flies over the boundary, the fielder over there is watching, watching, jumping, jumps up, but somehow the ball goes above them. Now, the Indian fans erupt in joy, the Pakistan fans are in agony. We lost the match.
And at that time, if the commentators, oh, how did India win the match? How did this ball go over the boundary? By Newton’s laws of motion. Well, okay, that’s true. You could use Newton’s laws of motion to explain, okay, this ball was hit this way.
If it had hit a little bit in this direction, then it would not have that much momentum, it would have gone in some other direction only. So, we could say that Newton’s laws of motion could explain why the ball went the distance it went. But Newton’s laws of motion are not the cause why the ball went for a sixer.
The cause was the batsman hit the ball. Isn’t it? So, when there are causes, when there are when there are pre-existing entities, on which causes can be acted upon, then the effects that they will produce that is predicted by the laws of nature. But those causes may come from conscious agents.
The scientific picture of the world and the spiritual picture of the world, they can be complemented. Just like the ball going into the hole because in the billiards, because of the law can be explained by laws of physics, it is also explained by the expertise of a player. So, similarly, the conscious the agent expression of a consciousness and expression in terms of mechanical laws, both can go in parallel.
So, just as science observes the world and infers from it the laws of nature. Similarly, we can observe the world and from it we can infer the existence of conscious agents. Because causes, as I said, laws of nature do not describe all of reality.
They describe the correlation of cause effects within what is present in reality. But how do those things come about? How are the causes initiated? There are things which need to be answered and that answer comes to spirituality. So, in tomorrow’s session, I will talk more about what exactly do we mean by spirituality and which aspects of spirituality can stand rational scrutiny and how we can understand the spiritual realm better in terms of this inferential thread of thought that we have taken.
We will talk in tomorrow’s session. So, I will summarise. Today, I spoke about how in science and spirituality, basically science offers us a model of reality.
It is like a map. And in the history of physics, initially there was a classical physics model based on Newtonian physics. But then that map did not work as it started going towards the subatomic level as well as the macroscopic level, universal level.
And thus, the two other models came out, quantum physics and relativity. And these two are in themselves contradictory. So, a map can be very powerful for the purpose it is meant.
Just like we are travelling along a map, a map at that time is indispensable. But using a tool very often can lead us to overconfidence in the potency of that tool. And if I go to meet a friend, I say the friend does not exist because not on the map, that is ridiculous.
Unfortunately, that is what happened. Science focused on the primary, what it called the primary property, measurable features of nature. And as it found more and more scientific mathematical correlations between various measurable features of the universe, it started relegating more and more to the background the non-measurable features.
So much so that those non-measurable features were considered non-existent. So, one example I gave elaborately was about morality. I tried to give two examples, free will and morality.
Free will is an experienced reality, it is an essential reality for social administration as well as interpersonal relationships. And yet within the mechanistic worldview, there is no scope for free will. But still free will exists, that means it is not that the territory is wrong, it is the map that is inadequate to describe the territory.
And similarly, there is a sense of right and wrong which you all have. And science is either moral or immoral, but a moral. And if you want moral guidelines, we need some other source of knowledge.
We can talk about the ethical foundations of science, but not the scientific foundation of ethics. And then lastly, I talked about how just as we infer two different models for explaining observed reality. Similarly, we can also have another model, which is a spiritual model to explain observed reality.
And this model states that reality is three level, physical, mental and spiritual. And from the spiritual and the mental channels, conscious agents work. So, consciousness is not explainable in terms of either digital circuitry or neural circuitry, because it is a different category of existence.
No matter how sophisticated the digital or neural circuitry may be, that is simply like a plane that is moving faster and faster, or a bacchus whose beads are moving faster and faster. It is just 0 1 0 1 alternating faster and faster, that does not produce consciousness. So, consciousness comes from a spiritual source.
Can a scientific person be spiritual? Actually, without spirituality being a reality, there can be no one, there can be no science and there can be no scientific person itself. And we will discuss how the two models can be harmonised in some ways, that the scientific explanation and the spiritual explanations can be complementary. Because the billiard ball may be hit by, may go into the hole by the laws of physics, it can be explained and it can be explained by the expertise of the player also.
The laws do not explain the totality of reality, laws simply explain the correlation between causal effects in the existing reality. So, spirituality explains us the whole of reality and within that, the laws of nature also have their space. So, we are not programmed machines, but our bodies are programmed machines and we are the possessors of these machines which are programmed and are also programmable.
So, thank you very much. Hare Krishna. So, are there any questions or comments? When a person is voting, there are two different political parties, like one is this and one is this.
There is a machine which is attached to the mind of one person, then his free will is trapped. Like whenever he goes to the, the machine will automatically control and he votes. Then how it is like, is he responsible for the vote, what he has read or.
Is the conceptual experiment or the actual experiment? Not actual experiment. Some philosophy like free will and altruism, while going through it, I have came to this example, like there they have given like this. If there is a machine, if there is a machine which controls your mind, like then is the person responsible for what he votes? Say, if some machine were controlling our actions, then would that person be responsible for their actions? Say, machine programmed somebody to vote for a particular party, then would they be responsible for their voting? There are degrees of programming.
It is, even if you do not have machine like that, you could have cultural indoctrination, you could have political manipulation, you could have ideological domination. Like Nazis, their ideology was dominated with a particular world view, which was fed to them again and again and again. So, basically, when we choose a particular course of action again and again and again, then that course of action starts becoming more and more natural to us.
And then saying no to that becomes more and more difficult. So, the way we use our free will shapes the future ways in which we will use our free will. So, my point is that, we could say, when some people say addiction, addicts, somebody is alcoholic, do they have free will whether to drink alcohol or not? Well, they do have some free will always.
So, it may be understandable that alcoholics, one of my friends, he told me his brother was alcoholic and he said how, to what extent they go to get alcohol. So, he said he was under a recovery programme and he did not have any alcohol. There was strict monitoring of what he was doing.
So, he had gone for some meeting and there somehow he was coming back by a car. So, actually, he pretended his car was spoiled and he had a tow truck bring the car back. And in the car gas tank, he put alcohol and he brought it back and then he was taking it out of a pipe and drinking it from there.
So, people just get mad with the desire. Somebody may be alcoholic, it is almost like they do not have free will, but they always have free will. What is that free will? They do not have the free will whether urge to drink, they may be almost be forced to drink.
But between the urges to drink, what will they do? Between the urges to drink, either they can keep scheming about drinking or they can try to participate wholeheartedly in the recovery programme. So, when the urges come, sometimes they may be so overwhelming that we cannot do anything about them. But in between the urges, we can try to prepare ourselves, equip ourselves.
And then when the urges come, you still may not be able to resist it, but over a period of time, we will build our capacity to resist. So, it is possible and just as conditioning internally can overwhelm our free will temporarily. Similarly, some external programming can also overwhelm our free will temporarily, that is possible.
But that does not mean the free will is completely lost. And at that time if somebody is programmed like that or overwhelmed like that, we also have to understand that they cannot be really held responsible for their actions. But through a machine to actually do that, it is going to be quite difficult.
It depends on how the machine is programmed, how gullible or vulnerable the person is, like hypnosis also makes people do a particular way. Not necessarily wrong, but it can make people act in a particular way. But usually that can be done only when a person is ready to be hypnotised.
Otherwise, it is difficult to do it. So, during that time, we can say that free will is temporarily overwhelming. Okay.
So, how do I understand the Rumi’s quote that from a mineral he came to a higher body? Well, his coming back book was not written by Shilpa Prabhupada. It was written by the followers of Shilpa Prabhupada. And they are simply illustrating the principle of transmigration.
That this, that the soul going through various bodies is not just Eastern or Vedic religious concept. It has had proponents all over the world. So, now, each proponent may have their own understanding of the concept which may not be exactly according to reality.
In a book on reincarnation, I described there are people called Druze in Britain, upper part of Britain. They had such a strong belief in reincarnation that they would actually take loans from each other and people would give loans and they would say, I will repay the loan in my next life. Now, how do we know who is going to come, how we are going to come in the next life, who is going to be that? But they had that faith in reincarnation.
And then they were very fearless also in the face of death. So, I would say that when thinkers across the globe have certain conceptions about reincarnation, we have to be saaragrahi. We have to focus on the essence.
So, in principle, we could say that when somebody says I am a mineral, actually a mineral is not conscious. We could say that that person was a germ in the mineral. Minerals, they may themselves be acting like chemical solvents in which some microbes might be there.
So, there might be microbes in a mineral. So, it might be generically said that I was a mineral. Because if you say Rumi, he probably wrote in Arabic and you translate Arabic into English, whether mineral is a great translation that also you have to say.
So, basically, when we use quotes from say respected authorities who are not from the scriptural tradition, then we have to focus on what exactly is the point we convey through, point which this quote is used to illustrate. I mean, the quotes may have various aspects which we may not agree with. Guruji, one more doubt that when Krishna says that in Bhagavad Gita that what is the last, at the time of death, what is the consciousness of us besides our next body.
So, as we know that every seven years our body gets changed. So, every moment we are dying. So, does each cell which is coming now depends on the consciousness what is real.
Like say, every second many of the cells are dying. So, the new cells are forming. Depends on what is consciousness at this moment, my consciousness at this moment.
And can I transcend my body if I think of Krishna always, like say, at the time of death, if one thinks of Krishna, if one thinks of God, he goes to the spiritual world and attains a transcendental body. So, if I am thinking again and again of Krishna, then does every cell which is coming newly, then he becomes transcendental. Okay.
So, the Bhagavad Gita says that whatever state of being one remembers at the time of death, one will attain that. So, the cells are dying constantly in our body and new ones are coming. So, is it that the cells that are dying, they are all attaining, if you are Krishna conscious, and is it that they are all attaining the spiritual world at that time? The concept of cell is from a different model of the body.
That is the modern medical scientific model. Now, that is one way of explaining how the body functions. Ayurveda has a different model in which the focus is more on the balance of kapha, vata, pitta.
That is used to explain how the body functions. I would say generally, if you try to bring models from one, concepts from one model into another model, it may not work so well. So, for example, in Ayurveda, there is a concept of digestive fire.
All health problems come from manda yatharagni, from mild digestive fire. So, if you increase the digestive fire, the health will improve. But there is no such concept of digestive fire in biomedical science.
There is catabolism, metabolism overall happening, but there is no digestive fire concept. But still people take ayurvedic treatment, they get cured by that. People take allopathic treatment, they also get cured by that.
So, there are two models and they all work. So, I would say that to try to interface the two models, you have to do it a little more cautiously. Broadly, there are two theories of matter, elemental theory of matter and atomic theory of matter.
So, modern physics primarily uses the atomic theory of matter. The Bhagwat Sankhya primarily uses the elemental theory of matter. So, there are two distinct models.
Now, having said that, broadly speaking, you can understand the principle. The principle is that the soul who is attached to Krishna will attain Krishna. When we say we remember Krishna at the time of death, what does it mean? It means that normally at the time of danger and distress, we remember that reality which is closest to us.
We remember the thing which is offered as a British shelter. So, when battle hardens, soldiers, when they are wounded, they may remember their mother in pain. Because in the mother’s arms, they may have experienced great comfort and security.
So, similarly for us, when I said we have to remember Krishna at the time of death, that simply means that Krishna has to be our foremost attachment. And if Krishna is our foremost attachment, we attain Krishna. Now, when the souls die, when a particular cell dies, is it that that cell is remembering Krishna? No, it is you as a conscious being who is the possessor of the body, who is the animating force of consciousness within the body.
It is you who are remembering Krishna. So, it is you, if you remember Krishna at the time of death, you will attain Krishna. But it could be that there is one soul in each cell.
It could be that there are many germs in the body. And there can be many, each of the germs may have a particular soul also. Each of the germs will have a particular soul.
So, there can be many souls in one cell also. So, but those souls are their own conscious beings. And they have to come to human form of life.
And they have to remember Krishna. When they remember Krishna, they attain Krishna. Of course, Prabhupada said that any contact with Krishna also benefits.
So, there are, what to speak of germs inside the body, there are worms and other stuff inside the body. If you take prasad, they eat that prasad, remnants of that prasad, they get touches, they also get benefited. So, Prabhupada said, when you take prasad, you are doing social service.
You are benefiting all the, all the life in the body. But it is that particular soul, which with the desire to love Krishna, has to remember Krishna. Then that soul will attain Krishna.
Yes. One of the prominent atheistic theories is that suppose if someone propagates a very false thing, lie, and for so long and so strongly that everyone should believe them, and create a institution for them so that everyone believes them, that after some time it becomes a truth. They say similar like the Jesus are like, they are lies, but you know people, people started to make power and wealth, they created this lie.
What will be the consequence of this lie? If some atheist says that if you create and propagate a lie long enough, then people will start believing in it and religion and God are lies like that. This argument has no evidential content in it. I could just turn the argument around and say atheism is like that.
If enough people talk about atheism, people will start believing in atheism. So, the way in which a particular thought is propagated does not in any way speak anything about the validity or invalidity of the thought. Right now I am speaking, I may speak to you personally, I may speak to you in mic or I may speak on Facebook live and many of you will be hearing.
So, the way a particular statement is propagated, that mechanism does not in any way tell us about the content of the message. So, I don’t see how this argument in any way proves or disproves the reality of religion. It could be used to challenge any belief, any widespread belief.
You could say communism, it was widely propagated. That’s why it spread all over the Soviet country and Soviet Russia and China. So, any ideology we could say like that.
So, having said that, if we consider that we live in a world where we all have an innate need to seek meaning and purpose. Even science is a search for meaning. When Newton saw the fruit falling, at that time he enquired what made this fruit fall? And the answer he came up with was gravity.
Which is a clever answer, but at the same time it raises the fundamental question on what basis did he ask this question? Like I mentioned all this yesterday to you about science, we need the explanation for explainability. So, humans have an innate need to search for meaning and purpose and science claims to offer some meaning and purpose and religion offers some meaning and purpose. So, now we have to evaluate a particular school of thought based on its content not simply on its mechanism of propagation.
So, if we have an innate need for seeking meaning and there are areas of the universe where we do find meaning then why shouldn’t the whole universe have a meaning? And science itself doesn’t offer us meaning, so religion offers us a meaning. So, in that sense, this is a logical inference, but the argument of the mechanism of propagation is in no way reflective of the content of what is being propagated. In the book, it is said that the universe is made up of 23 elements.
Who said? In the book, it is said that the universe is made up of 23 elements, but the scientists say that the world is made up of 180 elements. Oh God, ok. So, science says that there are 118 elements.
8 or 18? 118. 118 elements, whereas according to the Sankhya or the scripture, the world is made up of 23 or 24 elements. Science says 118 elements.
The word element is used to refer to two very different things over here. As I said, there is an elemental theory of matter and there is an atomic theory of matter. So, in science, atoms when they combine together to form certain elements, which are the fundamental particle forms, you can have compounds and other things.
So, element refers to a particular concept in science and element refers to an entirely different concept in the Vedic literature. In the hierarchy of how things manifest, the fundamental building block in science is atoms, in modern science at least. But in Sankhya, the fundamental building block is called as elements, that is earth, water, fire, air, ether, like that.
So, the words may be the same, but they are referring to very different concepts coming from two very different worldviews. Okay. Yes.
My question is that in the modern age, we are finding that the atheism is rising so much. There are so many institutions and people are dedicated to becoming atheists and full-fledged with teaching atheism in western countries like this. So, what is the driving force for them and what should be your output? Yeah.
There are people aggressively preaching atheism, institutes dedicated to that. What is driving them and what can we do about it? Atheistic fundamentalism is a reaction to religious fundamentalism. So, atheism has always been present, but the ferocity with which atheists are propagating their ideas, that is far, far greater than in the past.
And in some ways, atheists, some of them at least, they reflect the same religious intolerance, they reflect the same intolerance which some fanatical religions reflect. There is a prominent atheist who said that if he were given a choice to either remove race from the world or remove religion from the world. He said, I would remove religion.
Because religion causes greater misery than rape. So, that is the level of antipathy they have towards religion. Basically, religious fundamentalism is one cause.
Because people, when they kill each other in the name of religion, as we are doing in a public and graphic way, that makes people think that religion is a cause of evil and we have to remove it from the world. Another factor also is that science has a huge amount of authority and many atheists claim that atheism is a scientific quality. Now, science itself doesn’t talk about the ultimate nature of reality, it talks about material reality and that too measurable aspects of material reality.
That’s why neither atheism nor theism can be irrefutably proven from science. There are strong pointers from science towards theism. But science itself is a tool for acquiring knowledge.
But atheists, often they pretend that their worldview is based on science and uninformed people think that religion is not scientific, atheism is scientific. So, they misappropriate the prestige of science for propagating their worldview. And that’s why Richard Dawkins wrote a book called The God Delusion.
So, one prominent opponent of his wrote a book called The Devil’s Delusion. Unmasking the scientific pretensions of atheism. So, basically the scientific appeal is misappropriated by atheists.
Another thing also is that there are large number of people who basically want to be materialistic and they see religion as stopping them from being materialistic. So, atheism becomes a convenient worldview for them to justify their materialism and to aggressively propagate their materialism. So, it also becomes a psychological tool for them to rationalise what they are doing.
That’s how they also move forwards. And you can also know this is Kali Yoga. So, this kind of aggressively anti-godly worldviews are going to be there as well.
Now, what can we do about it? If we present the spiritual wisdom systematically, rationally, non-judgementally there are people who are ready to hear. Generally, in any argument there are hardline proponents who are few and they are almost impossible to change. This is an American comedian who said about such people.
I have already made up my mind. Don’t confuse me with the facts. Well, if you don’t know the facts, how have you made up the mind? No, I have already made up my mind.
So, in general, some people who are hardline proponents of particular ideas are almost impossible to change them. But, there are lot of people who are influenced by them or who are influenceable by them. So, if we present spiritual wisdom systematically, rationally those people who are fence sitters instead of going towards the atheistic side of the fence will come towards the more theistic and spiritual side of the fence.
So, basically, it is important for us to scientifically, rationally and non-dogmatically present spiritual wisdom. One last question. You can speak, I will repeat.
Sir, if free will is tried so often, what is the consequence? How to understand bad person? Is it like animal or will we do something whether we get karma or not? So, in mad people, is their free will not there? Yes, the free will is never lost. But the scope for executing the free will can be severely restricted. Just like say, when a person is put in jail.
Sometimes some people are framed and they are put in jail for no crime they have committed. So, even a prisoner in jail has free will. But they don’t have much scope to execute their free will.
There is free will and there is freedom. Freedom is the scope to execute the free will. So, just as physical circumstances can sometimes restrict the freedom substantially as when a person is put in jail, sometimes medical circumstances can restrict that.
I may have the free will to travel all over the world but I may be physically so sick that I can’t even get out of my bed. So, the freedom is restricted. Now, why does that happen? In some cases, it could be past karma.
In some cases, it could be present karma. So, a person who is framed unfairly, I mean, it is because of some past karma. A person who is sick, it could be because of past karma, present karma, whatever.
So, similarly, sometimes the cognitive or the behavioural or psychological faculties that we have, even those resources get taken away from us. So, when that happens, then even normal functioning becomes very difficult. So, people get Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s also.
At that time, basically the soul still has free will, but the soul’s resources with which to execute the free will are substantially decreased. And we understand that is a result of karma. What is the source of Vedic Mathematics? Which came from which part of Vedas? There are four parts of Vedas.
Vig Veda, Sam Veda, Yajur Veda, Atharva Veda. Which part it belongs to? It’s a long question. I’ll answer tomorrow.
Don’t worry. He’ll ask me tomorrow. Thank you very much.
Shri Prabhupada Lekhi. Jai. Gaur Bhakturin Lekhi.
Jai. By Gaur Nirmala Devi. Jai.