Light to see the world – Science, Spirituality and Life’s Big Questions

[Talk to IIT Kharagpur students at Kharagpur, India]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna It’s very grateful to be here amongst all of you. As Mr. Rupa mentioned, it’s after many years and the many changes I’ve seen over here right from the altar to the many new faces. Ultimately, the heart is directed towards the same goal.
That we are all, whatever stage of spiritual evolution we are in, we are ultimately searching for the same source of everything, whether we know it or not. So today I will speak on how ultimately, through science or through any other field of knowledge, we all human beings are searching for answers to the same fundamental questions of life. The topic I’ll speak on is the light to see the world.
Science, spirituality and light are big questions. So, if we are going along a dark road, we need some kind of light, either a street light or a flashlight, by which we can see the way ahead. Now, we don’t see only with our eyes.
Just as there is light as an external thing which enables us to see, internally also we need light to make sense of things. We don’t just see with our eyes. Actually, we see with the knowledge that enables us to make sense of what we see.
So, for example, a person who is completely uneducated in economics, that person goes to a stock market and there suddenly, say, the BSE index just crashes down and then that graph goes down. People just catch their heart. They get heart attacks.
They start getting wild in panic. What is this? What has happened? Why are you getting so worked up about it? Just one line went down on one screen. So, now, that line going down on the screen is something which is entering into the vision of everyone, into the eyes of everyone.
But, because this person has no knowledge of economics, they can’t make sense of what they are seeing. So, seeing is not just perceiving. Seeing is also comprehending.
It’s like sometimes you may say, if somebody explains a point, I see. I see, what it means? I understand. I get what you are saying.
I understand. So, we see not just with our eyes. We see with our knowledge which helps us to make sense of the visual data that is entering through our eyes.
And that knowledge we all need for making sense of life at large, not just specific events in life. We need it for making sense of life at large. So, last year, I was invited to Cambridge University to give a talk on science and spirituality.
And while going there, we went by the tree where Newton is said to have seen the fruit falling or when he felt the fruit falling, whichever version of the story you want to believe. Of course, it may not be the same tree. It’s a descendant of the same tree.
But, that place is considered, it’s preserved, it has the aura of a pilgrimage place for scientists. So, that is the place where was included the insight that started the engine of modern science. So, now, if instead of Newton, a monkey had been sitting there, the monkey would have seen the fruit falling, would have just picked it up, eat it and gone on its way.
And not just the monkey, most human beings might have also done the same thing. So, what differentiated Newton was that he asked the question, what made this fruit fall? What made this fruit fall? And we focus generally in the history of science and the brilliance of Newton in coming up with the answer to the question. He postulated the theory of gravity, subsequently the laws of motion.
That is his brilliance. At the same time, asking the question itself is significant. That question indicates essentially a search for meaning.
He is trying to make sense of things. Okay, fruit fall, what makes fruit fall? He is trying to make sense of the observation. Science essentially began as a search for making sense of the observed world.
And yet, as science has progressed over the centuries, it has sometimes led humans not towards meaning, not towards the illumination of meaning, but towards the despair of meaninglessness, towards the frustration of meaninglessness. Let’s see how. So, Einstein as we know was probably among the best scientists of the last century and among the greatest scientists the world has seen in the history of modern science.
And yet, he lived in many ways a conflicted life. For example, his perplexity, his dilemma was that science, if it is taken not just as a methodology, but as a ontology, I’ll explain the difference between the two, that if science is taken to describe all of reality, then the implication is everything happens by the laws of physics. And the laws of physics don’t give any room for freedom.
So, for example, if I take this garment, if I drop it, I won’t drop it, but if I drop it, it doesn’t have any freedom whether to fall or not. It is going to fall. And if we as human beings are nothing but simply products of matter, then that means we also can have no freedom.
Because ultimately, if we are nothing but matter, and matter is governed by impersonal laws, then we also have no freedom. And if we have no freedom, the implication at the time of Einstein, which was very disturbing for him as a lot of thinkers, was that the Nazis who killed millions of people, estimates vary between 10 million to 15 million people, 6 million Jews and 6 million others, just killed in their pogroms apart from the war. So, all the people who were killed, the Nazis couldn’t put any responsibility on anyone.
Because Nazis were simply programmed by their brains. They are ultimately, we are all just programmed machines. And we can’t blame any machine.
So, this rebels against our sense of ethics. It also rebels against our sense of common sense. If I come and slap one of you, why would I slap you? My brain’s programming told me to.
You will slap me back. My brain’s programming told me to slap you. You know, all sense of justice, all sense of order in society, is based on a foundational understanding that we have freedom.
That we are accountable for our actions. So, science has been extended indiscriminately as a framework for explaining everything about everything. Then, it leads to consequences like this.
When people who are mass criminals cannot be held responsible. Now, there is a difference between science and scientism. And before I go into that, I’ll just explain this metaphor.
I took down the light to see the world. So, science is a very powerful light. But suppose we are on a dark road and we have a flashlight.
Now, this is a special flashlight. If we look down, it shows brightly. If we point it straight, it becomes blue.
If we point it up, it becomes completely black. So, science is a flashlight like that. When we point it down, down means we point it to matter.
When we point it to matter, it helps us to make sense of a lot of things. But when we point it towards people, it becomes blurred. It just can’t make sense.
How can we say that people don’t have free will? And we point it up, towards realities higher than ourselves. Towards, say, considering the existence of God. Then, God is not an object that can be subjected to uncontrolled experiments.
So, we just can’t know anything about God. So, that’s why it just becomes black. I’ll explain these points throughout the class.
But this is the metaphor. We’re talking about light to see the world. Our goal is not to discredit science.
Our goal is simply to recognise where is its power. And where it needs to be complemented by something else. So, Einstein himself recognised the limitations.
Would someone like to read this? If you ask me if science can explain everything, I’d firstly provide the following answer. Gravity is not responsible for people falling in love. So, gravity can explain the falling of objects.
But it can’t explain people falling in love. Falling in love, it’s not just a claim of words. But emotions are extremely real.
And they have real consequences. But emotions themselves cannot be explained by science. Yes, there is a neural correlate.
Whenever we experience certain emotions, there are certain chemicals that are secreted in the brain. And that is a correlate. Correlate means, when I raise my hand, when I move my hand, the shadow of the hand moves.
So, the movement of the shadow is not the hand. The shadow is the result of the movement of the hand. The shadow will be precisely correlated with the movement of the hand.
So, our consciousness and our brain states, the secretion of chemicals in our brains, that is correlated. So, when we feel happy, this particular chemical will be secreted. When we are unhappy, another chemical may be secreted.
And this is very simple. Actually, it’s a complex set of chemicals. And it’s not that simple, but it’s for analytical purposes.
But just as the shadow is not the hand, similarly, the state of chemicals is not the emotion. In a simple example for this, say, when we are happy, at that time we smile, we laugh. Now, smiling and laughter are correlated with happiness.
But smiling and laughter, they themselves are not happiness. We can come a little ahead. We can come closer also.
We know, if there are small children, sometimes relatives want to have fun and they tickle the belly of the child. When the belly of the child is tickled, the child will start laughing. Now, when the child starts laughing, is that laughter happiness? If that laughter coming from tickling were happiness, and the goal of all our lives is to be happy, we all could have our own perpetual tickling machines.
And we could be happy for the rest of our lives. We understand that the physical sensation of tickling may produce the physical reaction, response of laughter. But happiness is something much more.
So, similarly, secreting certain chemicals in the brain may lead to certain sensations that we may feel temporary. But that is not happiness. Therefore, there is a whole side to our being which is not accounted through science.
Gravity is not responsible for people falling in love. What he means by this is, our whole aspect of emotions is not explainable through science. I was just in, this came 10 days ago from the West.
So, I was giving a talk in a hospital in New Jersey. Today, I was talking to the doctors and this is the head of the medical department, the head of the hospital is a very spiritual person. And we were discussing about how more and more scientists, especially in the field of medicine, they are recognising that spirituality, mindfulness, meditation is vital for accelerating and facilitating the process of healing.
The whole purpose of medical science at one level is to free people from pain. And here, there is no medical instrument all over the world which can measure pain. We don’t have a pain-o-metre.
We have a thermometer, we have a barometer, we can’t have a pain-o-metre. Why? Because, we may say that, okay, hand is fractured, the angular displacement of the bone is this much, there must be a lot of pain. But we can’t measure pain.
So, conversely, if we consider that I will give many talks in universities in America, no matter how philosophical, how scientific my talks were, after that when the students would come, all their questions, 95% of their questions were about relationships. Relationships. I had this relationship with this person, this person left me, and I don’t know whether I should go ahead with this relationship or not.
All of them were about relationships. So, you know, why is there so much insecurity in relationships? Because, there are many factors, but specifically with respect to our discussion over here, you know, with all our scientific advancement, there is no such thing as a love-o-metre. You know, if a boy wants to form a relationship with a girl, or a girl wants to find a relationship with a boy, does this person really care about it? You can’t put a metre on the heart and say, does this person really love you or not? You can’t do that.
Why? Because love is not mathematically imaginable. It is not a physical thing in nature. So, there is a whole universe to our life, which is beyond the reach of science.
Scientism actually is not a scientific idea. Scientism is a portmanteau. Portmanteau means when two words are brought together to make a new word.
Like there is smoke and fog. The two come together as smoke. So, like that, science and imperialism.
Imperialism is the idea that, you know, one country should have imperial power over all other countries. Like say Britain had imperial authority over India. So, when science and imperialism come together, that becomes scientific imperialism or scientism.
So, scientism is actually not a scientific idea. It is a non-scientific ideology. It is a philosophical claim.
It is a belief system, which holds that actually there is, all that is to be known can be known only through science. And there is nothing beyond, there is no non-valid knowledge beyond the knowledge that can be acquired through science. So, there is no scientific experiment or even theory to prove this.
It is an unscientific claim. So, when we are talking about in this class, our goal is not to criticise science. Science is a very powerful means of knowledge.
It is a flashlight by looking down, it shows very clear lot of things you can’t see otherwise. But it is science, it is not omniscient. It can’t give us all knowledge about everything.
So, now, there is view and there is worldview. We see things, but we all have a frame of reference through which we see things. The Native Americans in America for the first time, they saw a ship coming.
But they had never seen a ship before that. And the Europeans came exploring the world. So, when they were looking, they had no frame of reference to make sense of what they could see.
Similarly, when we see, we need a frame of reference by which we can see things. So, science has changed our world today, dramatically. Just a few decades ago, people would not have thought that just by pressing a few buttons, we could talk with anyone in any part of the world.
So, where credit is due, it has to be given. Phenomenal changes we have made as compared to what we had in recent past. At the same time, it is not just the world that science has changed.
It is the worldview that has been changed. And when we talk about the worldview, we are talking about science morphing into scientism. So, when that happens, now, it is not that all scientists believe in scientism.
Most scientists are simply functional. They use science as a profession. Some other scientists, a few of them, for them it’s a passion.
It’s something which they want to make new discoveries, advance the call of knowledge. And there are very few but vocal people who claim that science is the only way of knowledge. And actually sometimes people say there is a conflict between science and spirituality or science and religion.
It’s not a conflict between science and religion. The conflict is between materialism and spirituality. And there are some materialists, some atheists, who misappropriate science to try to prop up their own ideology of humans.
Science is simply a tool for acquiring knowledge. It’s simply a flashlight. Now, the flashlight can be used to show us certain things.
But, as I said, the flashlight can show us certain things. It cannot show us certain things. Say, another example over here.
Somebody is in a big cosmic balloon. Inside the balloon is floating in the sky. Now, it’s a giant balloon and there is a fly fly to see what all is inside the balloon.
The balloon is a closed system. Then, that same flashlight which will show them what is inside the balloon, they can’t say what is outside the balloon. Because it’s completely closed.
And because it is closed, that flashlight which shows them what is inside the balloon cannot show them what is outside. There is a wall over there. So, what is this balloon? Science functions based on a presumption.
What is a presumption? Science looks for material explanations for material phenomena. Go back please. Go ahead.
Next one. So, science, what does it do? It looks for material explanations for material phenomena. The word more technically used in science is naturalism.
It looks for natural explanation for natural phenomena. Although there are some certain differences between materialism and naturalism, for practical purposes they are equivalent. So, for example, Newton saw the fruit falling.
Now, Newton himself believed in the existence of God. But when he saw the fruit falling, he didn’t ascribe the falling of the fruit to God. That is one level of explanation.
You could say that whatever happens in this world, it happens by the name of God. But that was not the explanation he was looking for. Here is the material phenomena and he was looking for a material cause for explanation.
So, science operates with the methodology that we should look for material explanations for material phenomena. And if there is anything non-material, that science doesn’t make a comment about that. The idea of science is if something is materially observable, materially isolated, then it could be materially experimented.
And then it can be materially tapped around one’s home. So, then there can be progress in scientific knowledge. So, for example, when the Black Plague afflicted Europe in the mediaeval times, that was the time when science was coming of age.
Science started taking off. So, at that time there were some purveyors of black magic who would say that this is caused by some evil spirits. This is caused by some spell, by some deeds.
But scientists said no, we want to look at what is the material phenomena. What is the material cause for it? And they found that there are some germs. And they made progress by that.
So, by looking for material explanations for material phenomena, science makes progress. Because it can observe, it can quantify, it can control, it can tap or transform. At the same time, there is no scientific evidence that there is nothing beyond matter that exists.
It’s an operational presumption. It is not a logical conclusion. The difference between the two.
Presumption means what we start with. The starting is, we were looking for material explanation for material phenomena. That is the starting point of science.
Now, is there something beyond matter? It may be, it may not be. Science cannot make statements about that. But when the presumption is made into a conclusion, then it becomes a serious problem.
So, E. F. Schumacher, one of the prominent thinkers of the last century, and he wrote a book called A Guide to the Perplexed. And he describes his experience when he had gone to the USSR. He was, at that time, the USSR was very strictly regimented.
And all tourists would be very carefully monitored where they are going. So, there was a guide who was taking him around Moscow. And then he had a map with him, he was looking around.
He saw a big church. He was looking at the map, there was no church. So, he said, I have gone wrong somewhere.
I came down this road and I said, this road shows this road. All the landmarks are right, but there is no church. So, he asked the guide, who was there with him, I can’t see the church.
So, the guide replied, trustee, the Soviet policy is, it doesn’t show any churches on the maps. The Soviet Union was officially atheistic. Karl Marx had the idea, religion is the objective of the masses.
So, the Soviet Union was actually, Sweden and China, these were the two biggest experiments in world history of officially administered atheism. Officially religion was persecuted and atheism was administered. So, although churches were existing, but churches were no longer shown on the map.
And then he walked along and said, I didn’t see this church. Oh, that is no longer a church. That is being used as office by the Russian government.
That was shown. So, although it had the architecture of a church, it was no longer working as a church. So, what is happening over here, the map is meant to show the topography.
The map is meant to show what are the landmarks in the city. But because of an ideological bias of the communist government, although there were churches, they were not showing it at all. So, here the map is not a reflector of reality.
The map is a distorter of reality. So, if somebody were to take the map as an absolutely reliable guide to reality, they would be misled. So, similarly science is a map which leaves out the non-believers.
This is not necessarily because of any bias. It’s only an operational principle. But when what is an operational presumption is portrayed as a logical conclusion, that is where a big blunder happens.
The science cannot in principle make any statements directly about the existence or non-existence of God. Because it looks for material explanation for material phenomena. Now, inferences can be made.
And we’ll talk about the inferences a little later. But directly, because God is not a material entity, science cannot make any statements about it. And same applies to the Sun.
But just because science cannot find these things directly, does not mean that those things don’t exist. Nor does it mean that science itself is wrong. It’s just that there are two different domains of knowledge.
What it means? Now, what exactly did Newton do when he saw the fruit fall? What he did was, there was an observed visible phenomena. And from that visible phenomena, he perceived or he inferred an invisible principle. In fact, all of scientific progress is based on moving from observed phenomena to inferred principles, which are unobserved, which are often unobservable.
Gravity, you can’t see gravity. Similarly, Einstein’s postulate of space-time, which he says is the fabric of the universe, space-time cannot be seen. It’s a theoretical construct.
But scientific advancement happens by moving from visible phenomena to invisible principles that explain those phenomena. So those people who say seeing is believing. If you show me God, then I’ll believe in Him.
If they’re really going to advocate seeing is believing, they should stop using e-mails. They should stop using phones. Why? Because all of these are based on invisible realities.
Telecommunications, electromagnetic waves, invisible. Most of science is foundationally based on invisible principles which explain observed phenomena. So just because the non-material cannot be seen, that does not necessarily mean it doesn’t exist.
In fact, just as science proposes a spiritual world, a domain of reality called the spiritual, which is not perceived, science also proposes a world that is not visible. That is called quantum physics. Now, Max Planck, he said, if you are not confused by quantum physics, you have not understood it.
So what he meant is that quantum physics is profoundly counter-intuitive. Einstein was one of the persons who was totally perplexed by quantum physics. Because according to quantum physics, and this is very simple over here, the idea is that nothing except waves exist.
And when there is an observer, then the waves collapse and they form an object. And that’s when we see an object. So one of Einstein’s rebuttals of quantum theory was, he said that I would like to believe that the moon continues to exist even if I am not looking at it.
The moon has an objective reality even if I am not looking at it. But according to quantum physics, the moon has no reality. So only when I look at it, then the waves that are there, they collapse as a moon.
Now, the concepts of quantum physics, they make no sense if we try to picture them. But yet, they are amazingly precise in terms of mathematical calculations. So one of the driving anecdotes in the history of quantum physics is, a student asked a quantum physicist, Sir, I can’t think about this.
How do I make sense of this? So the teacher told him, Stop thinking, start calculating. Stop thinking, start calculating. Quantum physics, the whole idea, it just doesn’t make any sense when we try to conceptualise it or visualise it.
But the mathematics is so precise that from a telescope, from a satellite which is high up in the sky, we can make out if a coin has fallen on a street in Kolkata, whether it is a 50 paise coin or a 1 rupee coin. So, it’s not just a matter of vision. It’s a matter of amazing precision.
So the mathematics works, but visualise makes no sense. So I’m making the point here is, the idea that seeing is believing is actually unscientific. Not only is it not founded in science, it is contradicted by science.
If Newton had believed seeing is believing, he would never have been able to propose the theory of gravity. If scientists had insisted seeing is believing, they would have had to outlaw quantum physics. So, we as intelligent human beings should be open to whatever frames of thought which enable us to make sense of the world.
To make visibility as a driving criteria as a defining criteria would deprive us of many amazing forms of knowledge. Go ahead. So now Steven Weinberg is a prominent physicist.
He’s actually a Nobel laureate physicist. He said that the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless. What it means the more it seems pointless? It means, actually, what is the purpose of everything? Sometimes people who are atheists, they’re very proud.
Science explains everything logically. You’re religious people, you practise so many rituals, they don’t make sense. So, there was this, two Bollywood movies, there was OMG and then there was PKB, which were satires on religion.
And both of them had some valid criticisms of religion, but there were many blanket generalisations. So, I wrote books responding to the questions raised in those movies. So, I wrote a book, a movie PK called GK for PK.
So, GK was at three levels. General knowledge, God knowledge and Gita knowledge. So, based on these three, I answered the question.
So, then an appendix explained that if we just take the purely materialistic worldview, which is what materialists say is scientific, what is the result of it all? What do we get? What makes apples fall? Oh, it’s the law of gravity. What makes the lights turn on? Oh, it’s electricity. What makes us able to talk to people in another part of the world? It’s the communications.
So, we make sense of so many things using science, but what is the purpose of our life? There is no purpose. Why are we living? Our life is just a lucky accident. So, what do we get if we just extend a materialistic worldview indiscriminately and rationalise that materialistic worldview using science is we get islands of meaning in an ocean of meaninglessness.
We get islands of meaning. What makes this fruitful? Oh, it makes us make sense. What makes this? Oh, it makes great sense.
What is the purpose of life? No purpose. How does it make sense? We all consider our life so meaningful, but just one bug or one bang and our life will be over. Is that life? Is life meant for just casual destruction and termination? So, we see that the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more through the scientific worldview we look at a matter and we understand it, it becomes comprehensible, but the more it seems pointless.
Pointless means when we take the flashlight and look at people, look at the big picture, what is the point? There is no point to look. We are just born from matter and we die and it’s over. So, the problem here is an extrapolation.
What is a scientific operational methodology and that is made into ideology. That is when it becomes a problem. Now, physiologist William Sheldon, he is of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.
What does he say? Would someone like to read this? Continued observations in clinical practise lead almost inevitably to the conclusion that deeper and more fundamental than sexuality, deeper than the craving for social power, deeper even than the desire for possession, there is a still more generalised and universal craving in a human mechanism. It is the craving for knowledge of the right direction for orientation. For orientation.
We all want meaning in our life. Love. We all want a sense of purpose.
What am I living for? When people don’t have that, they become profoundly alienated. Their life becomes pointless. First time when I went to America in 2015, I was in Ohio State University and I was speaking about the vegetarian society over there.
Our devotees, the vegetarian cooking classes. Then after that, one boy came. So, I spoke on regulating our mental diet.
And after that, one boy, young, handsome, intelligent boy, he came and told that just before this class, I was contemplating suicide. He had a painful relationship breakup. And he was completely frustrated.
He said, I just saw this poster of this programme. I thought, let me just come to this programme. And then, he said that, now after this class, I understand that actually, it is not I who want to commit suicide.
It is my mind which is telling me. I understand my mind is different from me. So, when we don’t have a higher purpose for life, when we don’t understand what life is all about, small things can become very big.
A relationship breakup may not be a small thing, but a person must go through it. But if you take it from the long-term perspective, it’s not worth anything once you are in it. It’s not just a one-off phenomenon.
According to WHO statistics, one million people commit suicide every year. And one million is actually only the documented suicides. Many suicides are not even documented.
And this one million is also the figure of successful suicides. Successful suicide is oxymoron because suicide itself is an acceptance of failure. But on an average, for every suicide that is done, 10 are attempted.
So, never before in human history have so many people been suicidal. Never before. Although we have had so much technological progress, especially in the first world, there is so much material comfort.
And in the end, people are comfortably frustrated. They live in their AC houses. They are comfortable, but frustrated.
Because life does not have any higher purpose for them. And this one billion, what it means is, it’s actually more than the number of deaths due to murders, wars, and crimes such as terrorism combined together. More than the number of people who are being killed by others are the number of people who are killing themselves.
Yes, suicide is a complex issue and there can be many specific causes for specific cases which need to be addressed at a specific level. But there is a fundamental cause which should not be overlooked. That fundamental cause is that when there is no ultimate purpose to life, then when there is frustration in some intermediate purpose, I want to achieve this, I can’t achieve it, I get frustrated and I just end my life.
We need some higher orientation in our life. A higher purpose to our life. When a higher purpose is there, when smaller things go wrong, you can see those small things.
This is not the end of my life. I didn’t do well in the exam. By some relationship, I frustrated this, that my life is meant for something much bigger than this.
In 2016, again when I went to Ohio to speak, I met that same boy. He started studying the Bhagavad Gita, he was coming to our programmes there and now he is in a stable relationship, doing well in his career. So he said, literally, this knowledge saved my life.
So, for some people it may be literally, but essentially for everyone who is without spiritual knowledge, their life is frittered away in petty things. So, spiritual knowledge is what gives us this orientation. And we all need this.
The need for meaning and purpose in our life is not exactly a physical need. And that’s why when this need is not fulfilled, physically immediately there is no consequence. It’s like hunger is a physical need.
And when food is not given, literally the body starts getting shrivelled, the belly comes out, or basically people just get swollen, not because of fat, but because of malnutrition, people’s hands become like matchsticks. So, when a physical need is not satisfied, then there is immediately physical signs that are seen. But the need for meaning, purpose, direction, in life, that is not a physical need.
So that’s why we do not see physical consequences. As I said, people may be very comfortable, but if they don’t have a sense of meaning and purpose, they are frustrated. So we need orientation.
This is what spirituality provides us. Go ahead. The world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding which has been done hitherto.
But the understanding is to be expanded and opened till it can take the image of the world. Science is a torch, and it gives us a powerful understanding of things below us, the ground. Now if I say, this torch shows me only this much, there is nothing existing at this level, nothing existing at that level.
It’s like shrinking the world down to our conception. But rather, we need to expand our conception so that the world as it is can be understood. And the world is not just material phenomena interacting with the world.
There are emotions, there is consciousness. And this is what spirituality helps us to make sense. So scientism, what it does is, it reduces reality down to that which is perceived by the methods of science.
And in that way, it distorts our picture of reality. Go ahead. That was Francis Bacon, he was one of the pioneers.
This is a quote from Francis Bacon, one of the pioneers of the empirical method in the history of science. But he said we have to be open-minded about this. Go ahead.
So, spirituality is not against science. It is beyond science. By beyond science, it doesn’t mean that it is not in contradiction to science.
It is actually the foundation for science. I’ll explain what I mean by foundation over here. That sometimes some atheists say that in the past, people didn’t know how things happened.
So they ascribed the unknown to God. But now that science is advancing, then we will give the explanation. We have this explanation.
Science explains this. We don’t need God. See, God is not the explanation for the unexplainable.
He is the explanation for explainability. Explainability means what? Why is this word explainable? If we were to write the atheistic story of the universe, what would the story be? Nothing existed because of nothing. Nothing exploded because of nothing.
And gave rise to everything. Nothing existed because of nothing. Nothing exploded because of nothing.
And gave rise to everything. It’s a very rational theory, isn’t it? Very rational theory. So if, say, if the world out there is just a result of an explosion and the brain in here is also a result of explosion, now why should there be a correlation between the way our brain comprehends things and the way the world functions? F is equal to gm1m2 upon r square.
That’s what Newton proposed. He talked about the law of gravity. Now, maths is a concept which the human mind has come up with.
There are quantities, of course, but the concepts of division, subtraction, calculus, these are concepts which the human mind has come up with. So why should something which is there in a construct of the human mind correlate so precisely with objects out there? With the working of things out there? The very correlation between the human capacity to understand and the world’s nature points to that both of them have come from the same source. That same source has given intelligence to us to understand.
That same source has arranged the world so that it is understandable. Einstein said that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. The most incomprehensible thing.
See, sometimes people say, no, we won’t have faith. Religion requires faith. Science is based on facts.
But no, science is based on faith. What is the faith that the universe is comprehensible? That, actually how science is based on faith is a whole seminar separately. I won’t go into that right now.
But in this particular discussion, when Newton saw the fruit falling, he asked the question, what made this fruit fall? The question, what made this fruit fall, has an assumption in it. That assumption is, things don’t happen by chance. Things have a causal connection.
Now why should that assumption be there? That assumption is an article of faith. Science requires the faith that things out there operate in a causal sequence. Like this cause, what is this effect? Therefore, by seeing this effect, we can try to find that cause.
So that’s what he’s saying. This is Eugene Wigner. I’m becoming a little technical here.
So if you don’t understand, don’t bother about it. It’s just something which some of you may find interesting. So Eugene Wigner wrote a paper, which is one of the landmark papers in the philosophy of science on the unreasonable effectiveness of maths in the study of nature.
Sir, would you like to read this? The miracle of appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics. The wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it.
Yeah, so what does it mean, the language of mathematics? As I said, E is equal to mc squared. Now, actually, there is energy, there is mass. These two are objects existing out there.
Now why should they be equated and equated using the language of mathematics? Now in nature, is there something called square? No, square is a concept which we have got to operate things, to understand things. But the language of mathematics, why should it correlate with reality? Something which we neither understand nor we deserve. Why should nature be functioning in a way that we can understand? Something which we are grateful for.
Go ahead. Yes, would you like to read this? We are in a position similar to that of a man. We must provide him with a bunch, always give him the right thing, on the first or second time.
We became sceptical of certain delusions. Yeah. Sir, the metaphor is clear enough, what it signifies.
If you see the history of science, many of the concepts that were developed in science, in mathematics, the concepts were developed on one side in mathematics, and then in the study in nature, they said, no, this concept works over here. This concept works over here. So this correlation between mathematics, which is a conceptual construct, and nature, which is a physical entity existing, it’s precise, this key works with this, this key works with this, this key works with this.
So why is that? India’s pioneer mathematician, Srinath Ramanujan, he said that an equation for me has no meaning unless it represents a thought of God. See here, we are not talking about the design argument. There is something much bigger.
We are talking here about just the foundation that science works. We are not saying that nature is designed. What we are saying is there is a correlation, design argument is a different argument which can also be discussed.
But what I am talking about is something very fundamentally different. We are not saying nature is designed. What we are saying is there is an unreasonable correlation between the way nature works and the way the human mind works.
And this correlation is the foundation for science. And the scientific worldview itself has no explanation for why this correlation should be there. So in this way, science itself is pointing to something beyond itself.
It is pointing to something beyond itself. And thus, the scientific quest, if we take it open-mindedly, it points to an organising principle that makes science possible, that makes our human minds capable of scientific thinking, that makes nature work according to laws that are scientific. So in that sense, science is founded on something beyond science.
And that is what Eugene Wigner is talking about. That is what he is saying. We should be grateful for it.
As a scientist, you will not ascribe it directly to God. But if we understand science far from being a complete body of knowledge, it is founded on something which is beyond itself. And that indicates that there is more to reality than what science offers us.
Go ahead. So I explained this. Go ahead.
So the spiritual worldview explains to us, Be apart. Be apart. Be not apart.
What it means is a materialistic worldview, it fragments us. Now we are just parcels of protoplasm, flapping around for a few years before we are knocked off. Now we are just living a fragmented existence in an indifferent or hostile world where there is nothing more to life than the struggle for existence, the survival of the fittest.
Actually, Prabhupada was present in the survival of the fittest. And Prabhupada said, even the fittest don’t survive. Relating to the fittest, they survive more than others.
But nobody survives. Ultimately. So the point which we are making over here is that materialism gives us a vision of ourselves which is very fragmented.
But if we consider that our brains, the way they work, and the way nature is, this coordination happens. So we are a part of an integrated whole. And that is what the spiritual worldview explains.
I will not go into the spiritual worldview. But I just conclude with how the spiritual worldview explains life as we see it in a more complete way than the material world. Explain that we are all core and spiritual.
As spiritual beings, we are not programmed machines. We are the possessors of programmable machines. There is programming in order.
What science may call as programming, we call as conditioning. Conditioning is there, but it can be changed. We are not programmed machines.
We are spiritual beings who are the possessors of programmable machines. Programmable means they can be reprogrammed. And actually, the whole possibility for self-improvement.
Now all of us want to become better human beings, better students, better friends, better children, better in our relationships, better in our performance. The whole possibility of self-improvement would become an impossibility if we had no freedom. So if we were simply programmed machines, and people think that science leads to progress.
Yes, it leads to progress at one level, at an external level. But at an internal level, if the scientific world is expanded to scientism, then there is no chance for progress. So we can never improve because we are simply driven by our programming.
But the spiritual world view, which helps to understand, yes, we have a programmed machine, but we are different from that. And we are parts of a whole. And the more we connect with the whole, then… So the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita explain that there are three tattvas.
Basically there is Jagat, there is Jiva and there is Jagadish. Jagat is the alliterative J. Jagat is the world, which is what science primarily studies. Scientific torchlight shows us the world quite well, in ways which we are not able to see in the recent past.
Jiva is weak soul, conscious beings. And Jagadish is the supreme being. So science cannot show us the Jiva clearly, because consciousness is non-material, the soul is non-material.
And Jagadish, God cannot be seen. Flashlight of science when it points towards God, it just goes blank. We can’t see anything.
That’s why science requires controlled experiments. Controlled experiment means, you know, put a particular object in an environment. I take this particular chemical and put this chemical, this chemical, let’s see what happens.
And then I make sure that there are no other chemicals over there, no other things contaminate the experiment. So we need to, in a controlled experiment, we need an object that we can put in a controlled environment. That means we need to be able to control the object.
But God cannot be subjected to controlled experiment. Why? Because God is above us. We can’t control Him.
That’s why our intelligence, which we have, which is meant, which we are using in science, to make sense of things. Yes, it’s a wonderful thing to make sense of things. But we shouldn’t restrict that intelligence only to the material realm.
We become open to explore the spiritual realm. We become open to explore the spiritual realm. Then there is a whole genre of spiritual science.
The Bhagavad Gita offers us the process of Bhakti Yoga. And this is the spiritual science for emotional transformation. If we practise Bhakti Yoga, if we connect with the whole, so, as I said, the Jiva is between the Jagat and the Jagdish.
As long as the Jiva, the soul’s consciousness is fixed on matter, matter increasingly controls the soul. The more we are attached to material things, the more we become controlled by them. The more we get addicted.
And practically, our freedom goes less and less. But more the soul, instead of connecting with matter, connects with Jagdish, connects with God. Then the control of matter must decrease.
And then, what happens? We become freer. We can see for ourselves that millions of people all over the world have seen that the practise of spirituality, the practise of Bhakti Yoga transforms people. It transforms in an extremely powerful way.
I can include one incident. I was in Salt Lake City, in the province of Utah, in America. Utah is a predominantly Mormon state.
Mormon is a particular branch of Christianity, which is considered heretical by mainstream Christians, but it is spreading quite a lot. And there, for my programmes, there was a Christian preacher who had come. So, he had wanted to refute all religions.
So, he started reading the Bhagavad Gita. After reading the Bhagavad Gita, I searched in Google for Bhagavad Gita, and he found my website, Gita Daily. He started reading on the Gita.
He told me that almost 80% of what you say, I agree with. In fact, it makes much sense that I feel what I was taught in the Bible, it helps me make more sense through it. Then he said, after that he started coming to the temple and started practising, chanting.
He said that, you know, I have been a Christian preacher for the last 20 years, but Christianity is not very rigid in terms of lifestyle practises. So, even a pastor can smoke and drink. So, he said, but I realised that smoking was harmful for me, I wanted to give it up.
But I couldn’t give it up. He says, 20 years I have been chanting Hare Krishna for 3 months. And I gave it up.
So, he said that, I am right now at crossroads. He is a well-known preacher. And in fact, he is invited to give talks in various churches all over the country.
So, he says, I talk about Jesus, but I chant Hare Krishna privately. Now, the two are not necessarily contradictory. In a future class, I will talk about how different religions interrelate with each other.
The point which I am making here is not a point of religious one-upsmanship. We are not trying to prove our religion is better than another religion. What we are trying to say is that, when there is a spirituality is explained and practised in a scientific way, then it leads to profound transformation.
And that transformation is tangible. That we ourselves become transformed. But spirituality requires a different frame of mind.
Because God is not an object whom we can control. We need to be controlled by Him. Neeta Daliya wrote an article, that to understand Krishna, stand under Krishna.
To understand Krishna, what we have to do? We can’t subject Him to control. We have to stand under Krishna. We submit ourselves to Him.
We practise the process of bhakti and when we connect ourselves with Him, we see ourselves getting transformed. We will see our free will becoming more free. We will be able to make choices that are constructive, that are positive, that are proactive.
We will be able to become better beings. Not just better devotees and attain Krishna. That’s of course the ultimate goal.
But even in this world, if you want empirical proof, you can see the proof of transformation that happens in our lives. So, the way you can correlate science and spirituality is, science can make things better. But spirituality can make people better.
So, science can make things better. It can provide us technologies by which we can get better gadgets. But we need better human beings.
And we want to become better, we want others to become better. And that is spirituality. It is unique privilege.
And by benefiting, rather than being close-minded, I am only scientific. Yes, if you are scientific, just focus on the underlying spirit of science. If you want to make sense of life.
And science helps us to make sense of some things. But for the bigger picture, we need spiritual wisdom. And spiritual wisdom not only helps us make sense of things, but it helps us become better human beings.
And that is not just getting better things, but becoming better beings. That is what is going to give us lasting satisfaction. If we get better things, we get better things, but we don’t become better beings, then we won’t get much satisfaction.
So, spirituality is what will complement science and complete our search for meaning and satisfaction. So, I’ll summarise what I spoke today. I spoke about a light to see the world.
Science, spirituality and life’s big questions. I started by talking about how Newton saw the fruit falling. What did he do? He, rather than acting on his impulse, he asked, what makes this fruit fall? So, science progresses by looking for explanations for observed phenomena.
And by being open to invisible principles that explain visible phenomena. Now, science has a world view. From there, science extrapolated.
Extended explanatorily, some people extrapolated beyond. So, science basically gives material explanations for material phenomena. But if somebody assumes that matter is all that exists, then the result is profoundly counter-intuitive.
What is the result then? We have no free will. So, Einstein himself went to flee Nazi persecution, went to Germany to seek amnesty, refuge in America. The Nazis could not be considered responsible for their actions.
So, free will is a foundational reality for justice-accountability relationships. And we can’t explain that without science, with the scientistic world view. So, scientism is not science, it is ideology, scientific imperialism, which claims that science alone has all answers to all questions.
And this actually limits the scope of what we can know. So, Einstein said that science cannot explain the people falling in love or emotions. There is a physical correlation between, say, the stimulus of tickling and the reaction of laughter.
But happiness is much deeper. Similarly, certain chemicals may be correlated with the emotions, but the emotions are deeper. We cannot have a pain-o-metre or a love-o-metre.
Because these emotions are non-mathematical, non-physical. And linked, they are real. So, I discussed about how when we look at things through the scientific world, it’s like a torchlight.
Look down at matter, it gives us a clear understanding. Shows brightly. We look at people, people have free will, they are conscious of their emotions.
It gets blurred. I mean, look up towards God, it just goes blank, we can’t see anything. So, to say that science and scientism are different, and science is not scientism, this is simply to be objective, so that we can be progressive in our human quest for knowledge.
And then Dr. Baha’s scientists have shown that, the science itself, clinical studies in psychology have shown that more than the need for food or sex, is the need for need. And without that, people just become, they may be comfortable, but they are comfortably frustrated. Although as compared to recent history, science has progressed so much, but people are committing suicide more than to know the truth.
People are committing suicide in unprecedented numbers. There may be specific causes, but the generic cause of suicide is that we don’t have a lofty enough purpose for our life. And that’s why when some small purpose gets frustrated, we say, what is the point of it? So that sense of meaning, we will not get it from a scientistic worldview, not scientific, a scientistic worldview.
So, scientism, what does it do? As Stephen Greenberg said, the more the universe is comprehensible, the more it seems pointless. So we are reduced to looking for islands of meaning in an ocean of meaninglessness. But if you are open-minded, that maybe this ocean is not of meaninglessness, there is meaning, but I have to be open to other frames of reference, other ways of looking at it.
And then science itself points to something beyond science. So I explained that, spirituality and science are not in contradiction, rather, spirituality is the foundation of science. God is not the explanation for the unexplainable.
He is the explanation for explainability. Science operates on the faith that things don’t happen just by chance. There is a cause-effect connection.
But what is the basis of that faith that there is a cause-effect connection? Not only cause-effect connection between the events that happen out there in the world, but also that, according to Eugene Wigner, that math is just a concept which we have come up with, many of the advanced concepts in mathematics. But it’s like, we have a key and we come to a door. Hey, this key works for this door.
And not just once, twice, repeatedly it happens. So there must be someone who has given us the keys in a way by which the door can be opened. So like that, if the atheistic story of the universe would be, nothing existed because of nothing, nothing exploded because of nothing, and you rise to everything, which makes profound sense.
But if we understand that, whatever has organised our brain has organised the world around us. That’s why there is a correlation between the two. Then science’s explanatory potency points to something beyond science.
And thus, we can actually see spirituality as the foundation of science. And I concluded by talking about how our possibility for self-improvement, that is reduced by the materialistic worldview. Because it assumes that we are just programmed machines.
Spirituality tells us that we are the possessors of programmable machines. And we are jiva, souls. The more the jiva is attached to jagat, matter, the soul becomes controlled, conditioned, programmed.
But the more the jiva becomes attached to jagdish, then the control of matter decreases. And the soul becomes truly free to make family choices. And connecting with Krishna is also a spiritual, it’s also spiritual science, but it is a science that requires, not that we treat Krishna as an object to be subjected to a controlled experiment, but to understand Krishna, stand under Krishna.
And Bhakti Yoga, when understood in the practise of spiritual science, is profoundly transformational. And concluded by science, can make things better. Spirituality can make people better.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. Are there any questions or comments? Yes.
You have a mic? Okay, you can ask your comment. You had a question, you can ask your comment. So, today we understood that our science can explain some things regarding matter.
But like morning classes, there was something about qubit was also discussed. Qubit, labometer. So, many times, in Shastra, we see that something to measure that thing is also there.
Something to? Like, qubit is there. And it takes the intensity of attraction. Like, 5 arrows and distance is 9. So, is there any other science which is higher than our science also? Like here, the science that we have, we cannot.
Okay. The question is that, is there some science, which explains the material things in a higher way, as compared to what modern science does? Yes. Basically, matter can be analysed in different ways through different models.
In physics itself. Relativity physics is one model and quantum physics is another model. And the two have significant contradictions which are just not reconcilable.
But both models work in their own ways. So, matter, basically, a model is an explanatory framework. It is like, we have a country, we have a map.
Sometimes a map, we can have one map which is political, another map which is, say, physical, another map which is democratic. Like that, you can have different maps. So, like that, matter can be analysed in different ways.
And that can lead to different analytical frameworks. So, modern science is one way of analysing matter. Sankhya is there in the past.
In history, it is another way of analysing matter. Vimamsa, Vaisheshika, was another way of analysing matter. So, basically, in the 11th canto, in Uddhava Gita, Krishna describes that, in Sankhya also, sometimes the matter is analysed into 24 elements.
Sometimes it is analysed into, say, 15 elements or 14 elements, 12 elements. So, Vishwanath Chakraborty has commented, Uddhava Gita says that, Krishna is saying that he is pleased with the creativity of the sages in analysing matter in different ways. Because they all, after the analysis, they come to the conclusion of that ultimately it all points to Krishna.
Vedaistha sarvair aham eva vimityam. So, yes, matter can be analysed in different ways. And there are, Sankhya, Vaisheshika are examples of frames in which, of models, of another way of analysing matter.
We have two questions. The first question is, Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, he speaks of knowledge in the mode of ignorance. He is considering one thing to be all and all.
So, what does he exactly refer to in that? Is it connected with your philosophy? So, Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita says that knowledge in the mode of ignorance means to consider one thing as everything. Yes. This is 18.22. yattu kuchnavar ekasmi kaarey saktam ahaitukam atatvaarthavar alpamcheta tamasa mudaharitam So, yattu kuchnavar ekasmi, one thing as kuchnavar, everything.
Nothing as one thing as everything. kaarey saktam ahaitukam, one does not consider, one becomes very attached, one does not consider the ultimate cause of things. atatvaarthavar alpamcheta, atatvaarthavar There is no sound understanding of reality, tattva.
Alpam, it is meagre. It takes one fragment of reality and goes into it. So, we could say that in today’s framework, scientism would be tamasa knowledge.
It is knowledge, now this concept of knowledge in ignorance. Normally we say knowledge is opposite of ignorance. So, knowledge in the mode of ignorance means what? How could knowledge be in ignorance? There can be some knowledge that actually increases our ignorance.
Because we get so caught in a tunnel vision of reality, that now a tunnel, I can see somewhere ahead of the tunnel also. But it is a long tunnel and still going deeper and deeper into the tunnel. There is a big world outside which I don’t know anything.
So, one thinks of matter to be everything. There are functional materials who say that matter is all that matters. But there are fanatical materials also.
They say matter is all that exists. So, they are what Krishna talks about, knowledge in the mode of ignorance. They claim matter to be everything.
Instead of trying to be pure devotees of Krishna, they are pure devotees of matter. Matter first, matter only, nothing except matter. So, that is, to take one fragment of reality to make it everything, that is knowledge.
Although we are getting more and more factual knowledge in terms of information, but in terms of comprehension of the full picture, we are actually going deeper and deeper into ignorance. That is knowledge in the mode of ignorance. My next question is, I want to know the definition of science itself, the boundary.
For example, in most of the cases we see mathematics as a language to explain a phenomenon. But then we also add something called pattern recognition. Pattern recognition, when you see a pattern, it becomes easier to recognise a phenomenon than to go through the mathematics.
So, we consider that also in the realm of science. So, what are the exact boundaries in which the modern science considers that it can be called a science? So, what are the definitions for science and what are the boundaries that define science? This is a matter of huge debate. In the last decade or so, a field of science has emerged, a field has emerged in science called intelligent design, which tries to prove that by observing features of the things in the world, they infer that natural processes, unguided natural processes could not have made those happen.
And therefore, you point to some intelligent design. Now, atheists reacted very strongly against it. And they said, no, intelligent design is unscientific.
And they gave a set of credit, this, this, this, this. Because of these reasons, it is unscientific. But then, the idea advocates, they turned around, and if you apply these criteria, even evolution cannot be considered scientific.
Because those same criteria, you know, you cannot, just like evolution, a theory, there is no mathematical formulation for it. You cannot mathematically say that, okay, humanity is at this stage in its evolution and 50 years down the line it will be like this, 100 years down the line it will be like this, or 1000 years down the line it will be like this. Evolution itself is not a mathematical science.
So, basically, the boundaries of science are not very well defined. And that’s why critics often use the derogatory label pseudoscience to refer to anything which they don’t agree with. In fact, you know, when Newton proposed the theory of gravity, Keckhule was his contemporary, not Keckhule, no, no, not Keckhule, Leibniz.
Leibniz was contemporary and Leibniz criticised the theory of gravity. He said, how can some object is far away, how can it exist a force through space? So, he said, this is, this is just spooky action. So, he criticised it as unscientific at that time.
And Newton replied, he said, I am not talking anything about the ontology, what is the nature of this force. I am simply giving a mathematical formulation for observability. So, the limits of science have been, or what are the delimiters, what are the defined characteristics of science, they have often been debilitated.
And there are no clear criteria, rigid criteria, but broadly speaking, what scientists think is that there should be some empirical observation to begin with. And then after that, from there, there should be some, as you say, pattern recognition, where you infer the existence of some, infer some theory. And there are further experiments to try to verify that theory.
But this does not apply in many cases. So, for example, when science goes towards origins, now with respect to origins, we cannot do any experiments. If scientists say that we, basically the three fundamental questions, how the world came, how life came, how we came, how we humans came.
These three fundamental questions about origins, none of them can be subjected to any controlled repeated experiments. So, that is why much of the credibility of science comes from science when it is about things as they exist now. Where we can do repeated experiments.
And in this, science uses the method of induction. Make 100 observations, postulate the theory based on those observations and make 100 more observations to check whether the theory is correct or not. But when it comes in science, when science goes to the origins, it cannot use induction.
So, it is another form of reasoning called abduction. Abduction does not mean kidnapping. Abduction basically means inference to best explanation.
And that is never as reliable as induction. Because, okay, this is evidence, we observe this, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. What is the best explanation for this? Then in that way, abductive logic is more like solving a mystery. Who done it? Found it in this room, this person was murdered.
And then, at 3 o’clock, when the assistant Mary came, he was alive. At 9 o’clock, when a guest came, he was dead. So, between 6 hours, who was he? No, there was a 5-year-old child who came.
No, he couldn’t have put a knife. There was an 80-year-old grandmother who came. She couldn’t have had the strength to stab him.
So, there, oh, there is a 25-year-old butler who had also gone. That’s what the security camera showed. He must have murdered.
Now, when a murder happens, you cannot tell the murderer, please come and murder once again and we will photograph you on camera. So, what you have to do is inference to best explanation. Now, the inference to best explanation works only if we know the parameters well.
Now, what is in that house? There is a trap door. And that opens somewhere outside the garden. And somebody came in through the trap door, killed the person and went back.
Security camera won’t catch that at all. Isn’t it? So, inference to best explanation is always very speculative. And when it comes to origins, okay, you know, life, how did it come about? This happened, that happened, that happened.
That’s how life came. So, there is no experiment to find it out. So, when it comes to origins, science becomes far more speculative.
And that is why, that is where philosophy of science is very important to understand. That what atheists do is, they take the credibility of science, which has come from knowledge acquired through induction. And they use that credibility to prop up theories about origins, which have been acquired, which have been developed through abduction.
So, all science is not born equal. So, Newton’s laws of physics are of a different level of science than, say, theories about origins in the Big Bang or evolution or whatever. So, one is obtained through induction, the other is through abduction.
So, now is abduction scientific? There are debates about it. But as of now, in mainstream scientific books, it is talked about. But broadly speaking, science should, as it is a natural experience of natural phenomena, that’s the basic principle of science.
So, then there should be repeated experiment, repeated observation and experiments to get that further observation. That’s when it can be considered science. Thank you.
Any other questions? Ok, lot of questions. What time can we go on? Yes, please. This question or we stop now? We can continue.
Ok, fine. Sir, you said that if humans are machines, then they cannot have free will. But some people say that free will can be stimulated by infinitely many activities.
By? If humans can do infinitely many activities at different times, so free will is stimulated by this programme. You are making two statements. What is the correlation? Human being can do infinite activities.
What has that got to do with stimulation and free will? What is the exact question? Can you elaborate the question? If infinitely many activities we can do, then we have more freedom. Ok, I understand. The stimulation is not, you are not talking about scientific stimulation or anything like that.
So, as we human beings can do a wide variety of activities, doesn’t that prove that we have free will? Yes, of course. We can do, like when a cat sees a mouse, a cat cannot think, it is a cartesian. So, there is impulse and there is intelligence.
The animals also have intelligence. But their intelligence is used to serve the impulse. Ok, there is a deer over there.
There is a lion. I want to catch it. But the wind is blowing like this.
If I blow like this, it will get the smell. So, I will go around and pounce on it. So, intelligence is there, but the intelligence is used in the service of the impulse.
We humans, we also have impulses. But we can use our intelligence to check our impulse. So, we definitely have free will.
And by that free will, we can do a wide variety of activities. So, this, from an observed perspective, it is true that we have free will. But what I was saying is, this is not explainable.
The existence of free will, which is a fact of life, is not explainable within the scientific world. The scientific world holds that we are simply impulse driven creatures. So, therefore, it is the fact that we have, we can do a variety of activities, that itself indicates we have free will.
And this, how we are able to do activities which are non-impulsive or which are even counter-impulsive, survival of the fittest is the driving principle according to the theory of evolution. It is true at one level. But it is not too exhaustive.
It is true at the physical level. If there is some food and I am hungry, I want to pounce on the food and eat it. That is the impulse.
But we have a higher self. We have intelligence, we have conscience. Although I may be very hungry, so I see others also don’t have food.
Although it is limited, I may divide the food. Sometimes I may give my share to someone else. Now when a person is drowning, at that time, now somebody may jump into the river to save that person.
Now they are risking their life. But they risk their life to save the person. And then what do we see over there? Actually, this is not survival of the fittest.
This is sacrifice by the fittest for the survival of the unfit. And we don’t think this is all, he was not stupid. No, if somebody risks their life, they are considered heroes.
We consider it an ennobling feature for human beings. So we, the very fact that we can do activities with non-impulsive, which are even counter-impulsive, that indicates that we are more than programme machines. That we have a side of us which can resist the programming of the machines and act according to higher principles.
Okay? Yes. Like the way we can’t say we have some analytic ways, but with the scientific and technology advancement, now we are able to at least detect these ways. That yes, these ways exist.
What I believe or think is that soon or later, will there be a technology advancement up to that level when we will be able to discover God, showing that yes, God is detected. With the help of science and technology. If not, what is the reason other than saying that God is not material? So will scientific advancement detect the existence of God? If not, what is the reason other than that he is non-material? There is a saying that believers need no reasons and non-believers accept no reasons.
So when it comes to inferences, as I said God cannot be subjected to experimental tests. He is not a material being. He is not controlled by us.
Electromagnetic waves are still something, their production, their transmission, their reception, there is something which we can control. So God we cannot control. So it’s not just because he is not material, but rather because he is higher than us, he is superior to us.
So therefore we can’t subject him to controlled experiments. And from the scientific evidence, now inferences can be drawn. Now is that inference a persuasive, a decisive inference? That will depend on a person’s preconceptions.
That means, say for example I talked about this, the correlation between human intelligence and world around us. So what is the explanation broadly for this? There are three explanations. One is, it is by chance.
Well that is not satisfactory because the sheer number of correlations, sheer precision of correlations makes it questionable. So even scientists have found out that the probability for all these correlations working out is so astronomically low that it will not work out. Then the other explanation of course could be God.
He is the organising principle who has made the world in a way that is understandable to us. But some sceptics, they come up with another explanation. It is parallel universes.
They say whatever if you say that the probability of a particular thing happening is 1 is 1 in 10 trillion trillion trillion. Then you say there may be 10 trillion trillion trillion universes. And we just happen to be in the universe where this one probability came up.
So now the parallel universes are actually, they are not only unobservable in practise, they are unobservable in principle. Just parallel. There is no scientific way to prove that at all.
They are not in practise unprovable. In principle they are unprovable. But there are many atheists who tout that as an explanation.
They try to explain away the impossibly low probability by postulating an impossibly high number of universes, parallel universes. And they say for example, if I toss a dice and if it falls 6, the probability is 1 out of 6. So if I toss it 10 times, each time it falls 6. So something is fishy over here. How can it be? Every time it is falling 6. So the probability of that is 1 by 6 raised to the power of 10.
Whatever it is. It is mathematical. They will say no.
Just as you are tossing a dice over here, there are that many universes and somebody else is also tossing a dice. And there it is all falling different. You happen to be in the universe where it all falls right.
So now this, there are many scientists also who find this just as pseudoscientific babble. Just babble. So the idea of parallel universes, they may be a mathematical postulation.
But as a way to explain away the design of the world, the precise correlation between our comprehensive capacity and the nature of the world, that is, it borders on irrationality. But still the point which I am making is that in this world, if somebody does not want to believe in God, then there is no evidence that can force them to believe. So in that sense, God will be a matter of inference.
And whether from this evidence this inference is reasonable or not, that is something who does not want to accept will always debate. There was one of the most prominent atheists of the 20th century, Anthony Flew. But he was a, in 1950s, 1960s, he wrote several papers which very strongly oscillated and promoted atheism.
And he was considered one of the most prominent atheists. And in around 2003 or 2004, you know, he became atheist. And he didn’t accept any religion per se.
He did not accept any spiritual practise. But it was simply based on scientific inference. The same point about the correlation between figures in the universe.
So he wrote his autobiography at the end of his life, you know. If you look at the book, it is, there is no God. And Noah is crashed out and there is earth.
There is a God. So his life journey was from there is no God to there is a God. So there have been, not just atheists, but world famous proponents of atheism who have been swayed by the evidence.
And they have, he accepted more of a theistic conception of God, not a theistic conception. Accepted God as the creator, not so much the controller. But still he didn’t accept the idea of God.
So I would say that future scientific evidence can provide more patterns which can point more persuasively towards God as an inference. But whether that inference will be compelling enough for everyone, that is debatable. It’s unlikely.
Those who want to explain it in some other way will always find some way to explain. In the Mahabharata, even when Duryodhana saw the Vishwa Rupa of Krishna, not only saw Krishna, he saw Krishna’s Vishwa Rupa also. He said, you know, Krishna is doing some magic and showing some forms.
I tell him, I am not afraid of that. I can also show many forms. So for one who is determined to disbelieve, there is no evidence that will be enough.
Any other questions? Where is the mic? Hi Krishna Prakash. So in any rocky place or any place, anything we keep at one place for several days, we find that there are some insects or something have come without any chance. It comes by chance.
But we are telling that life cannot come from matter. We are telling that. But whether this insect or all those things are coming without any origin.
So if we keep a rock or any object for some time, we see that there are some insects or some microbes that come over there. And so how do we understand that life cannot come from matter? If we look at it from a more scientific or a precise perspective, we will always find that that particular object, that was a suitable environment for some life form to grow over there or to reproduce over there. There must have been some eggs of some living being which were put by someone and then they reproduced.
Or some microbes came and started inhabiting over there. They came from somewhere. It is not that on the rock they were produced automatically.
There is a difference between origin and appearance. Origin means when something didn’t exist and it came to existence. Appearance means it just became visible to us.
So if you look at it scientifically also, what science tells us is that there is appearance through reproduction. Normal form of reproduction is sexual reproduction. There is also a sexual reproduction that happens.
But still we observe that life doesn’t spring from nowhere. If we look at it scientifically, we find that there are some eggs, some reproductive mechanism is active over there. That’s how things come about.
Now the point here is the specific mechanisms in particular situations may not be observable to us or may not even be known to us. But fundamentally matter and consciousness are two distinct categories of existence. So life, say for example this particular object, this mic, it’s made of matter and say my body, your body is made of matter.
A microbes body is also made of matter. Now matter where there is life present in it, it behaves fundamentally different from matter which has no life in it. This comes into existence, this deteriorates and it is gone.
Whereas we could use the word ensouled life, ensouled matter. Matter in which soul is present. So what happens? It comes into existence, it grows.
It strives to maintain itself. It reproduces. Then deteriorates and then it has destroyed.
So now, you know, this Kharapuru, this Punewala, if number of students become more, it’s not going to grow on its own, isn’t it? This mic is not going to grow on its own. It’s not going to reproduce. If it is cracked, it will still crack.
If my hand gets cut, it will clot and heal itself. So basically, growth, maintenance and reproduction are externally manifest characteristics of matter which are not seen in all matter. So where do they come from? Fundamentally speaking, the building blocks of this mic and the building blocks of this hand, they are the same.
It’s at the molecules. But there is a substantial difference in behaviour of matter when it is in life form and when it is not in life form. So that difference is caused by the presence of spirit.
Any other questions? We’ll come to that. So we can have mics going on parallel so that we can go faster. If there is not a higher purpose in life, then even petty things can prove to be very disastrous or very awful to us.
So even after getting a purpose in life, many times our mental energy will be absorbed in petty things. So what is lacking or how can we improve? So even after practising bhakti, sometimes we get absorbed in petty things. That’s why we need regular philosophical study.
Not just for gathering information, but for reminding ourselves of life’s ultimate purpose. So I came by plane from Mumbai to Kolkata today. Now if you ask a pilot, the plane never goes in a straight line.
Because of atmospheric condition, because of the momentum of the plane, because of wind pressure, the plane keeps getting disoriented. And then how does it reach the destination? In fact, researchers say that between 90-95% of the time, the plane is off track. But there is continuous reorientation.
Either the pilot does it manually or there are systems which do it. Like sometimes you are driving a car. Especially in India, car driving is an adventure.
Because all sorts of unpredictable things happen in the cars. On the roads. But in America, car driving is very smooth.
If you are sitting and observing a car driver, it can appear as if the driver is doing nothing. He is sitting. But the small thing that a driver is doing, he is moving a little bit this way, a little bit that way.
It’s small, but it’s essential. So that periodic moving of the car wheel keeps the car moving straight on the track. Like that, in our life journey also, we will repeatedly get disoriented.
So the small things will just start occupying our mind too much. So basically we get disoriented by two things. Temptations and tribulations.
Temptation is the promise of pleasure. Tribulation is the fear of trouble. Both of them disorient us.
What do we do then? We need to reorient ourselves. And that’s why we need philosophy. The more we have philosophical understanding, Krishna says in 5.20, नप्रहरिषेः प्रियं प्राप्य, नोध्विजेः प्राप्य चाप्ने, सिरभुद्धिरसम्मोः ब्रह्मवित् ब्रह्मनिस्तः, He says, one who is Brahmavit, one who knows spiritual reality, and knows spiritual reality, ब्रह्मनिस्तः, one who is situated in spiritual reality, that person, even if they get something pleasant, they don’t become elated by that.
If they get something unpleasant, they don’t get rejected by that. They keep moving forwards in spiritual path. So by philosophical understanding, which reminds us of the goal of life, and especially association of devotees, and not just any association, but association of devotees who are purposefully focused on life’s ultimate goal, by that association, we can keep reorienting ourselves.
So, the disorientation, the distraction, the disconnection, is just a fact of life. And our intelligence is meant to bring about the reorientation, by which, when we get consumed by petty things, we remind that this is petty, this is not all that important. Let me focus on Krishna.
That’s how we can come back on Krishna. Thank you. One last question.
In the 84 lab species, we said, like there are many species, humans, insects, so microorganisms fall under which species? Indra Gopal, insect. Insects. Microbes fall under insect species.
Thank you very much.