Matters that matter more than matter – Origin Value Meaning

[Seminar at Intel, Phoenix, USA]

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Jai Gaur Pramad Thank you all for coming today afternoon. As I mentioned, I’ll speak on this topic, no, I’ll speak on the topic of matters that matter, more than matter.
All of us go through life with certain conceptions of what is really important. When we are students, we consider the grades that we get important. When we pass out, we consider the job that we are going to get, how much it is going to pay us, what kind of prospects we are going to have.
That is important. And all these things have their importance. At the same time, there are some things whose importance, who matter much more than many of the circumstantial situations based on which we make our decisions.
If we compare, relatively speaking, the first world and the third world, say the western countries and eastern countries like India, we’ll see that there are broad differences in the levels of prosperity, levels of material facilities available. And while everybody would like to have better and better material facilities, yet there is some existential emptiness that comes in people’s lives despite having a lot of material prosperity. There are various parameters which point to this existential emptiness that something important is missing in life.
One of the biggest pointers to this is the increase in mental health issues. Whether it be depression or addiction or even suicide. I was just in Los Angeles yesterday.
I was speaking in the University of Southern California and there the person who is the chaplain over there was telling me that they have a few thousand students over there and these are bright students but there is one suicide every month over there. Just before that I was in India I was at IIT Kharagpur. A professor came and told, we were meeting with a professor we were discussing about values needed among the students.
He was telling that these are the best brains in India but we again have suicides happening extremely disturbing frequency. When we consider we are living in America often in news about India we get news about how say there are farmers in debt committing suicide because they are not able to get rid of their debts. That’s heartbreaking.
And yet the suicide capital of India is not the heartland where farming is happening in the middle of Maharashtra or somewhere. The suicide capital of India unfortunately is Bangalore. Where we have enormous amount of software industry and enormous amount of prosperity because of that.
So the point which I am making over here is that normally when we go through life we think of material things as primarily important and no doubt they are important. Yet even when we achieve a reasonable amount of material things there is something vital which is missing which causes our minds to dysfunction. Which makes us choose courses of action that are self-destructive.
So we will try to discuss today in three broad aspects what is it that matters more than matter and why does it matter. Can you go ahead? So matter or the world view that matter is all that matters. We could say that is materialism.
Materialism can be of two types functional and fundamental or you could say fanatical. Functional means if there is something beyond matter it may be there but I don’t care about it. But the fanatical materialism would be that matter is all that exists and there is nothing beyond matter.
Now with this world view which is the world view which most of us have at a functional level. There are three questions that remain unanswered. The question about origins where did we come from? Where did the life come from? Where did everything come from? Values when we are going through life on what basis do we decide what is right and what is wrong.
On what basis do we make decisions which are involving ethical dimensions. And lastly purpose. What is it that we are living for? What is it that we wish to pursue in our lives? So let’s look at origins.
Where did we come from? Where did everything come from? On the occasion, can you go ahead? As I mentioned we have a tragic amount of suicides. One million suicides happen every year which means one suicide every 40 seconds which means since I started this talk almost 8 people have committed suicide. So we have so much fear almost that terrorists may attack and terrorists may kill and there are so many security measures taken to prevent terrorist attacks.
Now in America we have the concern about guns being in the hands of everyone and that causing violence. There is concern that the shot of violence should not happen. But more than the number of people who are being killed by others are the number of people who are killing themselves.
The number of suicides are much more than the number of deaths because of murders, wars and violent crimes combined together. Can you go ahead? So origins. Now if you look at the materialistic view there will be specific names to specific theories.
But ultimately it boils down to nothing existed. Nothing exploded because of nothing and led to everything. So originally nothing existed.
Somehow nothing exploded because of nothing and because of nothing it led to everything. We can have a lot of world jugglery to cover up this emptiness. But this is not an explanation at all.
The science magazine on its 125th anniversary published 125 questions which science doesn’t yet have answers. The first was where did the universe come from? The second was where does consciousness come from? So everything that exists around us where did it come from and where did we ourselves come from? Now at a day to day level our origins may not matter to us. In a practical way, when you are working in your jobs, your origins don’t matter whether you are from India or from America or from South America or wherever.
But in terms of the overall purpose of our life, in terms of the overall decision about what is important for us, in terms of deciding our self identity of who we are. The question about origins does matter. So if we consider that there is a 100 story building and we are at the 100th story.
We look down from the 100th story to the 99th. We look back, look back, look back. This series of levels in the building, it has to culminate in the ground.
If there were a series of levels but there is no ground, the building could not exist. Similarly if we consider origins, all of us and all the things around us are finite and temporary. So a temporary thing Z can come from a temporary thing Y, which in turn can come from a temporary thing X. Now if we go backward, backward, a series of temporary causes for them to be existing need to have a non-temporary cause.
So the very existence of matter points to something beyond matter. Without which, matter would not be able to function. Science functions based on discovering the order in nature.
When Newton saw the fruit falling, he asked the question, what made the fruit fall? His answer was gravity. But the very fact that he asked the question what made this fruit fall implies that he had some understanding that fruits don’t fall by random. There is some pattern that he was trying to uncover.
Now why should there be such a pattern at all in nature? Science functions based on understanding that there is some order in nature which we try to uncover. Suppose we find ourselves suddenly, we go to sleep one night and we wake up and we find ourselves in an unfamiliar place. Where am I? And then we look around and we see a strip of paper.
And on that paper something is written in some script. And as we look at the script, we find that script is one which we understand. It’s a language which we recognise.
And then as we look at more closely that script is actually telling us directions how to get back home. So here if we were lost and we found ourselves in such a situation, there are three remarkable things. First is that there is a paper itself with something written on it.
Second is that we have the capacity the linguistic capacity to understand what is written over there. And third is that whatever is written over there makes sense to us and it is what we need to know. Similarly, if we consider nature if everything were just a result of unguided natural processes, then why should there be an order in nature? Why should there be human brain which is capable of perceiving that order? Why should there be a natural order that is perceivable, say, in the language of mathematics? Einstein said that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. What he meant by that is, why should the nature out there, the universe out there, have a natural order of the kind that we can perceive? Most of science functions by using the language of mathematics. Now, why should nature exhibit an order that is according to the mathematics much of which is conceived by the human mind? We can consider the imaginary number, we consider calculus.
These are constructs of the human mind. Why should they correlate with the order in nature? Eugene Wigner, Nobel laureate physicist, he wrote a paper called the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. So, this that where did we ourselves come from? Where did the world come from? And why should there be a correlation between the way the world functions and the way our mind functions? All these three correlations, these point to something beyond matter.
Some organising principle, some source that has infused us with intelligence, that has infused nature with order, and that has created a correlation which we can perceive. So, just if we study matter, science has tremendous explaining power. explainability of nature, science offers explanations about how nature functions.
But the very explainability of nature requires an explanation. And that explanation points to something beyond nature. And it’s, as I said, the science magazine has these two questions.
Where did the universe come from? And where did we come from? So, let’s do a thought experiment. Can you go ahead? Understand where our own consciousness comes from. So, I request all of you to sit comfortably on your chair.
Close your eyes. And take three deep breaths. One.
Two. Three. Now, try to look at what you see in front of your eyes while your eyes are closed.
With the eyes closed, you can’t physically see what is in front of you. But still, there is some kind of screen inside you on which various images may appear. You may see this room.
You may see your home. You may see a loud one. You may see the blue sky.
Or you may see just a colourless pattern. Or you may see a stream of images coming by one after another. So, you see an inner screen on which the images keep changing.
As you are observing the screen, try to take a step backwards and try to look at who it is that is looking at the screen. There is an inner screen. So, seeing it must be an inner seer.
Try to step back and try to look at this inner seer. When you try to step back and look at this inner seer, you will find that the inner seer steps back with you. Try again.
Try to move back. The seer moves back with you. What we are looking for is what we are looking with.
You are that inner seer. You can take three deep breaths and you can open your eyes. One.
You can open your eyes now. So, we function on a daily basis based on the consciousness that comes out of our eyes, comes out of our ears, and we perceive. But what is the origin of this consciousness? Could it be the brain? The brain, it could be.
But there is what is scientists identify as the binding problem. Binding problem means that if we have a set of visual stimuli going in front of us, if I say right now a parrot flies in front of you, then the parrot will give us three distinct inputs. There is the colour, there is the shape, and there is the motion.
When our brain perceives, there are different areas in the brain which perceive colour, shape, and motion. And if the parrot is singing, chirping, then that’s another area in the brain. So, these different areas in the brain get input through the eyes or the ears, and yet when we perceive, we don’t perceive three or four different inputs.
We perceive an integrated image. So, where is the integration happening? That is the inner screen. And even after the integration happens, who is the perceiver of that integrated image? That is the inner seer.
So, our existence is not just physical. The physical existence is the body of which the brain is a part. Beyond the body is the mind.
And beyond the mind is consciousness. So, consciousness is non-material. Consciousness is what enables matter to be able to perceive something.
Our eyes will be present even in the dead person. The eyes, similar to us, are present in the dead person, but the dead person can’t perceive. We can.
So, the consciousness is present in a non-material source that can be called the self, the soul, different terms can be used for it. But the origin of our self-awareness, of our consciousness is beyond matter. Dr. Wilder Penfield did a well-known experiment pointing to the non-material nature of consciousness.
So, he wrote, writes about this in his book, The Mystery of the Mind. Dr. Penfield was a Nobel Laureate neurosurgeon. He’s based in Canada.
And he studied the mind of consciousness for 40 years. He tried to correlate different areas of the brain with different functionings of the human body. So, he got a subject to raise one’s hand and found a corresponding area of the brain was activated.
Got the other subject to lower the hand, the corresponding area of the brain gets deactivated. But, then he repeated the experiment while externally activating that area of the brain. Then he asked the subject, what happened? My hand went up.
Did you raise your hand? I didn’t. You did. He deactivated that part of the brain.
The hand went down. What happened? My hand went down. Did you put your hand down? I didn’t.
You did. Now, Penfield raises the question that in the second case, it was he, an external agent, who activated the brain and caused the hand to go up or come down. Who activated the brain in the first case? Who was it that activated the brain in the first case? Who said that in the second case, I am not activating it? You could say the area of the brain which corresponds with the raising and the lowering of the hand.
Like the print button of a computer. In the second case, it was somebody else, Dr. Penfield, came and pressed the print button. In the first case, who was it? He repeated the same experiment while activating various other parts of the brain.
That led to various other stimuli. The person started remembering something that they had seen in their childhood. Some food that they had eaten 15 years ago.
Some fragrance they had smelled maybe a dozen years ago. All different kinds of sensations came up. Recollections came up.
But no part of the brain when stimulated gave the feeling to the subject that I am the doer. That I am doing anything. Things are happening to me and I am perceiving them.
But the doer is someone different. So, after 40 years of studying the brain, he concluded that the brain is a computer but it is programmed by something outside of itself. Another Nobel laureate Charles Sherrington said that the source of consciousness is extra cerebral.
Extra cerebral. So now, origins, where did we come from? Where did everything around us come from? This is a question whose answer points us to a matter beyond matter. That’s a matter beyond matter.
You say, how does this origin really matter? It matters in terms of the next two things. Can you go ahead? Yeah. Now value, values refers to what is right and what is wrong.
And even if we, none of us may like to have somebody giving a moralising lecture to us. But we all have an innate sense of right or wrong. Now, we are walking along the road and we stamp on someone’s leg while walking along.
Hey, why did you do that? I’m sorry, I didn’t want to do that. Now, I just didn’t notice. Now when you ask, why did you do that? What it implies is, we are in that question itself, why did you do that? There is an assumption that there is something which is right and something which is wrong.
What you did was wrong and you shouldn’t do it. Among different people, there may be differences about what is right and what is wrong. Specific ideas of morality may vary among different cultures, different traditions.
But the principle that there is something right and there is something wrong, this is innate to humanity itself. So now, where does this sense of right and wrong come from and what is the basis on which we decide what is right and what is wrong? If we are simply nothing but bags of matter, if we are simply biological robots, then that would mean that we are programmed by our genes to behave in particular ways. Einstein was probably one of the biggest, greatest scientist of the last century and yet he was disturbed by the implications of materialism expanded to include the whole human person.
So he said that if there is nothing to us beyond matter, then the implication would be that the Nazis who killed millions of Jews, they are not responsible for it. Because they did it, because that’s what their genes programmed them to do, that’s what their machines do. If I hold this flask up and I drop it on top of this laptop, I won’t drop it, but suppose I drop it and my laptop breaks apart, I won’t blame this.
Why did you fall on my laptop and break it? It has no free will. It just will fall down and by the law of gravity it will break whatever is below. So if something has no free will, then we don’t hold it responsible for its actions.
We all, we all in our actions, we hold each other responsible. You should not do like this, you should have done like this. So all sense of responsibility would just fall apart.
Einstein said that gravity can explain the falling of objects, but it cannot explain people falling in love with each other. There is something beyond the laws of nature which govern the actions of material objects, but we all have a dimension to us beyond that and that is what gives us free will, that is what makes us responsible and that is what makes relationships and accountability possible. So values, specific values may vary but the principle that there is a right and wrong, this is foundational to our very existence itself and there is no basis for values in materialism.
Can you go ahead? Science centre said that we can talk about ethical foundations of science but we cannot talk about a scientific foundation of ethics. A young man who studies biology may decide that, may come to know a chemistry. If I want to get my mother’s inheritance quickly, my grandmother’s inheritance quickly, I can slip in arsenic in her breakfast.
Now whether he should do it or not, that science won’t tell. It’s not that science will tell him do it, it’s not that science will tell him don’t do it. Science is neither moral nor immoral.
It is amoral. Amoral means morality is an aspect which science does not talk about. It is amoral.
So, one shocking example of this amorality of science being extended right into the face of humanity is what in Journal of Medical Ethics Alberto Gimellini and Francesca Minerva wrote an article which became very controversial and they basically said that there is nothing wrong if after a child is born if the mother wants to abort the child there is nothing wrong. It’s up to the mother. Now when this article was published it created a furore.
The baby is born, how can you kill the baby? So their argument was that from the scientific perspective, before the moment of birth and after the moment of birth there is no difference. So if we can abort the baby before it was born what is wrong with aborting it after it is born? And in fact this idea was when extended further was the basis of what was called as eugenics. Eugenics was what Hitler wanted to use.
He wanted to create a race of superhuman beings and he said that anybody who is deficient in any way anybody who is physically handicapped anybody who is mentally weak such people, they are burdens to the human race. So we should eliminate them or at least we should prevent them from procreating. And he somehow had his own distorted take on history by which he conceived that the Jews are a genetically deficient race.
And that’s why for the progress of humanity we have to eradicate the Jews. So the point which I am making over here is that we all have a sense of something that is right and wrong. Specifically what is right and wrong that may vary.
But this sense of right and wrong has no basis in the materialistic world view. From the materialistic world view, whatever is good for survival is good. Whatever is bad for survival is bad.
But when we function we don’t function like that. When the twin towers were collapsing many heroic firefighters ran into the twin towers to rescue the people over there. And some of those firefighters came back along with those rescued.
Some of them succumbed inside. And they are considered glorious in their sacrifice for the nation. Sacrifice for the innocent who were trapped over there.
Now if we were simply creatures meant to function by our biological programming, which would guide us to simply survive. Then the firefighters running into the tower would be stupid. There is the principle of survival of the fittest according to which we operate.
But there is also another higher principle. Not just survival of the fittest, but also sacrifice by the fittest. Sacrifice by the fit for the unfit.
If we look at human history, some of the most ennobling and inspiring stories which we find are the stories when people voluntarily sacrificed, took up danger and trouble to help those who were underprivileged or who were in distress. So this doesn’t strike us as something which is wrong. It is wonderful.
In fact, this is what makes humanity human. So now where does the sense of values of right and wrong come from? If we were simply creatures made of matter, we would have no free will and we would always operate based on the biological programming within us. But that is not the way we function.
If, say, I came to one of you and suddenly I gave you a slap. What? Why did you slap me? If I say, my biological programming told me to slap you, you would give me a slap back. My biological programming told me to slap you.
Now, we all have certain tendencies. But beyond that, we do have our free will. We have a sense of right and wrong and we may or may not always act according to a sense of right and wrong.
But there is a sense of right and wrong and this would have no reason to exist and this has no explanation for its existence within a materialistic worldview. And without a sense of right and wrong, relationships, love, sacrifice, all the things that bring depth, meaning and joy to our life, they would be non-existent. Go ahead.
Now, if you look at meaning, so I talked about origin, value and meaning. We could relate meaning with purpose. What is it that we live for? What is the point of everything? Science, at a fundamental level, is a search for meaning.
When Newton saw the fruit falling, what made this fruit fall? And the answer he got is, okay, that’s because of gravity. So if we look at the scientific worldview, when we expand it, science is a very powerful tool for acquiring knowledge. At the same time, science because of the methodology it uses, does not look for anything beyond matter.
So if we look from the materialistic worldview, what do we get? Why do fruits fall down? That’s because of the law of gravity. Why does the temperature go up and down? Oh, this is because of certain environmental factors. Why does this happen? Because of this reason.
So for various phenomena in nature, we get certain explanations, by which we can make sense of them. But for the existence of everything, why does it exist? Oh, it has no purpose. It is just a lucky accident.
We are just stardust come alive. So what it means is we are in a big ocean and in that we find some small islets of meaning while we are all drowning in an ocean of meaninglessness. Oh, these things fall because of gravity.
This happens because of electromagnetism. This happens because of this. But why does everything exist? Oh, it has no purpose.
Why do we exist? We have no purpose. So, if there are islands of meaning but there is an ocean of meaninglessness, it raises two possibilities. Either the islands of meaning themselves don’t have any meaning.
Why should there be islands of meaning in an ocean of meaninglessness? Either the islands themselves don’t have any meaning or the ocean has a meaning which we are not able to perceive right now. What is the point of everything? If there were no point to anything, then why would science and scientific knowledge be able to make sense of some things in the universe and make such insightful sense of certain things that we can come up with equations of mathematical precision and phenomenal prediction. So, in science, normally when scientists function, when a particular theory makes sense, they use it.
When that theory doesn’t make sense, then they look for some bigger theory which will explain it. For example, after Newton came up with the laws of motion, Newtonian physics became the bedrock of physics. And that was how it was till the 20th century start.
But by then, it was found that actually if we go too much into the atomic realm and the subatomic level, or if we go too high up at the macroscopic level, then the Newtonian laws of physics, what is called as classical physics, doesn’t work. So then, with this framework, when scientists couldn’t make sense of the behaviour of subatomic and macroscopic particles, macroscopic objects, and what did they do? They did not even abandon it. If you have found an island of meaning at the anthropic level, at the level of human perception, and at the macroscopic and macroscopic level, we seem to have an ocean of meaninglessness.
Maybe there is some other theory that will explain this. And that’s how, for the macroscopic level, quantum physics was developed. For the macroscopic level, relativity was developed.
So, Francis Bacon said that that the universe shouldn’t be reduced to fit into our understanding. Rather, our understanding should be expanded to reveal the universe as it is. Similarly, if we consider these three aspects of life, origin, value, and purpose, these three are all important for us.
And, if within the materialistic world view, we don’t get answers for these, then we ought to have the freedom to look for answers elsewhere. The scientific world view is extremely powerful in terms of explaining certain aspects of nature. And what it is able to explain, credit should be given for that.
But, if you look at the scientific world view, the world of science, if we go down, whichever theory we take, it’s a world filled with subatomic particles moving around according to impersonal laws of nature. The world we experience is the world filled with colours, emotions, tastes, love, meaning. So, the world of science and the world of our experience, they are two worlds with significant differences.
The world of science, we use it for handling objects. But, the world of science is not so helpful when we want to address the full human person. When two people want to develop a relationship with all the best scientific instruments, can we get a love-o-metre, put that on the person’s heart, do you really love me? If you love me, I’ll develop this relationship.
I won’t. Otherwise, I won’t. No, love is something deeper.
We could measure certain chemicals in the brain, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is love over there. So, there is the world of science which helps us to manipulate matter in phenomenally powerful ways. But, there is the world of our lived experience which has much more than what the world of science shows.
And, to look for an explanation of the world we live in, the world that we experience, we ought to have the freedom to explore alternative world views that offer us meaning. Go ahead, please. So, as I said, search for meaning is foundational even to science.
When Newton saw the fruit falling, he asked, what made it fall? Go ahead. So, Arthur Schopenhauer is a philosopher who said that materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself. That means we study everything around us, but we don’t study ourselves.
Who am I? So, the things which are near and dear to us, love, emotions, colours, taste, we can have the best cooking machines, we can have best cooking tasting machines. They can tell us, if we take a food item, how much sugar does it contain, how much carbohydrates, how much fats, how much this, but how does it taste? That is something we need a conscious agent to observe, to taste it and tell us, yeah, this is nice. So, there is a world of experience which we, a world of emotions and experience that we inhabit.
And this world of emotions and experience is very different from the materialistic world or the world of materialism. So, for this world of emotions and experience that we have, how do we explain it? Go ahead. So, the eastern wisdom traditions contain yoga, wisdom, which offer us an alternative worldview, which explain to us what is the source of the origin, value and meaning that we have.
So, they explain that we at our core are non-material beings. We are units of consciousness. We are spiritual beings and this consciousness is what is animating the body, the brain.
And that’s how we are functioning. So, what Wilder-Penfield said, the brain is programmed by something from inside itself. So, that is a non-material self.
And this self is known as the soul or atma in different traditions. And this soul is a part of the whole. And this soul is on a journey of spiritual evolution.
Spiritual evolution means evolution in our understanding. Evolution in our capacity to love and to share. This evolution is something which is meant to be pursued throughout our life and it extends before this life and beyond this life.
It’s a multi-life progression. And our particular life is an opportunity for us to take this spiritual evolution ahead. So, we are eternal spiritual beings, part of an eternal spiritual whole.
And this is the answer to the question of origins. Can you go ahead and explain this? Now, what do we decide what is right or what is wrong? Or where do we get our sense of right and wrong from? So, if we consider that if we are spiritual beings on a journey of spiritual evolution, then whatever helps our consciousness to evolve, that is right or good. Whatever causes our consciousness to shrink, to get constricted, that is wrong or bad.
What do we mean by the expansion or the shrinking of consciousness? Whenever we do any actions, our actions have consequences beyond us. So, if one example of a very shrunk consciousness could be a serial killer. That person goes about killing people and gets a sadistic joy in seeing others cause pain.
So, for that person and the other person is not actually a subject. A living, loving person. For them, the other person is simply an object by inflicting pain on whom they get pleasure.
So, this is very shrunk consciousness. On the other hand, when the consciousness is expanded, we get joy in seeing others experience joy. So, somebody who is in tears, we help bring a smile on their face.
Then that gives us joy. When we are spiritually awakened and when we help others to become spiritually awakened, that gives us joy. So, right and wrong is not just based on some arbitrary system of morality decided by someone in the past.
It is based on the objective parameter of what helps our consciousness to evolve. That is considered good and what doesn’t help our consciousness to evolve, that’s considered bad. So, I talked about biologically, we have the drive of survival of the fittest.
Which is true. Our bodies are meant to function like that. But we are not just our bodies.
There is a body, there is a mind and there is a soul. And at a spiritual level, if our consciousness has evolved, then if somebody else is drowning, somebody else is dying, then we would be, a higher side within us, the more spiritually evolved side within us, would prompt us to sacrifice, to risk, to care, even when caring costs a lot. So, to the extent, humanity is spiritually evolved, to that extent, we will have harmony in society.
Because we will be able to have empathy for each other. When the consciousness is very shrunk, then I care only for myself. And you care only for yourself.
So, with materialistic consciousness, with materialism as an operational worldview, we all become I specialists. Not ophthalmologists, but I specialists. So, what happens because of this, that we just don’t we encounter self-centredness among each other and we just close off.
We all become alienated. We all become lonely. Because our consciousness is shrunk.
When our consciousness is expanded, then we develop a greater capacity to share, to care, to relate at a human level and to relate at a spiritual level. Lastly, we go to purpose. The purpose of life is to take our spiritual evolution to its culmination, to its conclusion.
Now, we are we are parts of the whole and we are meant to come in harmony with the whole. So, to the extent we understand the nature of the new world and come in harmony with that, to that extent we will be as happy as is possible in life. Now, all of you are sitting on the chair.
Now, the chair is resting on the ground and the chair is a firm object. So, there is a law of gravity according to which you are sitting. If you get off the chair and try to sit in thin air, you can’t sit.
You just fall down. Because there trying to sit in thin air is against the law of gravity. So, there are principles according to which nature operates.
And to the extent we understand these and harmonise with it. Science at one level is also an attempt to understand the order in nature and to try to tap it for our benefit. So, the spiritual search, the search for matters beyond matter is for the search for the bigger picture.
So, we are spiritual parts of the eternal whole. And as we progress spiritually, we move towards that eternal whole. So, the various spiritual practises that are there in different traditions, meditation, yoga, prayer, chanting, these are all meant to bring about an evolution of our consciousness.
And as our consciousness will evolve, we’ll start experiencing higher and higher levels of reality. Greater and greater clarity. Greater and greater serenity.
I’ll conclude with one incident which my friend experienced. Last year when I had come to America, I was in Florida when the hurricane Irma hit over there. So, I left from America.
I came to the East Coast, New York and other places to give some talks. And one of my friends who had been there, he was in a retreat kind of centre. He was alone over there doing some solitary writing and solitary contemplation.
He did not get the news that there was a hurricane hitting. And eventually when he got the news, it was too late. The net had gone down.
The phone was not working. And from the small house he was staying in, he saw that the water level was rising, rising, rising. He didn’t know what to do.
He was trying to call, but no one. He could see the water level rising, rising. As he was becoming panicky, he looked around in the house and he saw that there was a closet and behind the closet there seemed to be something like a door.
So he pulled the closet and then he pulled at the door, it opened and it showed a staircase that led to the attic. The small house is a small attic. So he had not noticed the attic at all.
So immediately he went up to the attic and he stayed over there. The water level rose, rose, rose. The ground level got covered completely.
But in the attic he was safe. And then the water level went down. The hurricane subsided and he was rescued.
So similarly, we can say that our existence, we are all existing in a two-level building. There is a ground level and the first level. The ground level is the physical level.
The first level is the spiritual level. Most of the times, we don’t even know that the first level exists. It just functions at the ground level.
But, in times of stress, in times of distress, if we could know that there is a first level existing and that by going to that first level, we can get serenity, we can get clarity, we can get strength, we can rise above our situations, get strength and calmness and then deal with that situation with greater maturity, with greater inner security. And not only that, specific problems we will be able to deal with greater security, greater clarity, but beyond that, by rising to that higher level, we will find that our whole life can have a deeper meaning. We can be a part of a bigger purpose in life.
So, that is what the great spiritual traditions of the world invite us to. To explore this world of meaning which exists beyond the world of matter. So, I’ll summarise what I spoke today.
I spoke about matters that matter more than matter. I started by talking about how we function normally with the world view of materialism, that material things are what matter. And they do matter.
But, even among people who have had significant levels of material progress, there seems to be some existential emptiness, which is causing, leading to mental health problems, addiction, depression, even self-destruction through suicide, which is alarming. More the number of people who are being killed by others, the number of people are killing themselves. So, we human beings, innately need something more than material things.
And what is it that matters, that is more than matter? I’ll discuss three things. Does anyone remember the three things? Origin, then value, and purpose. Where did we come from? How are we meant to make decisions? And what are we ultimately meant to achieve? So, with respect to origins, the materialistic world view would tell us that nothing existed because of nothing, nothing exploded because of nothing, and gave rise to everything.
That’s not very rational. And a 100 level building needs to have the ground to be founded on. Like that, everything material is temporary.
So, a series of temporary material causes need to have a non-temporary sustenance, from which they began. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. Why does nature function according to laws? Why does the human mind have the capacity to perceive say, concepts like mathematics? And why do the concepts thought of by human mind correlate with the way nature works? It’s like we are in a lost place, we find a message, and we can understand the language of the message, and the message is also meaningful for us.
This points to some non-material organising intelligence. Similarly, with respect to our own consciousness, consciousness does not come from the brain. We did the thought experiment, how there is an inner screen, and there is an inner seal.
The source of consciousness is non-material, as several neuroscientists, Nobel laureates have concluded. We may perceive various things, but they need to be integrated somewhere. And the integrated domain needs to be perceived somewhere.
There is a binding problem in physics, in philosophy, in consciousness. And then with respect to values, we may all have different value systems, specifically about what is right and wrong. But we all have the understanding that some things are right and some things are wrong.
And our sense of right and wrong doesn’t come simply from the biological imperative to survive. Normally we may operate according to survival of the fittest, but the most ennobling, inspiring incidents are when people act according to sacrifice for the fittest. If there was simply the materialistic worldview, then we would have no free will.
And we could not be held accountable for our actions, nor could we act in responsible ways. Einstein recognised that Nazis could not be held responsible for the holocaust at all. So we are not just biological robots.
We have some aspect to us which enables us to choose right and wrong. And then purpose or meaning, science is a search for meaning, but if we reduce us, restrict to the materialistic worldview, what we get is islands of meaning in the notion of meaninglessness. When science finds that some things don’t make sense, what it does is, it looks for a deeper theory to make sense.
So when classical physics based on Newtonian ideas didn’t make sense, we expanded and came up with the relativity and quantum physics. So similarly, if the materialistic worldview doesn’t make sense, can’t answer fundamental questions, then we need to expand our worldview. So, the world of science is the world of numbers and fundamental particles which are just floating around in a cosmic bubble.
The world of our experience is the world rich with emotions and reciprocations. These two are significantly different. So for explaining the world as is our lived experience, we ought to have the freedom to explore alternative explanations.
And one such explanation is offered in the Yoga text of ancient India. It says that as far as origin is concerned, we are eternal spiritual beings who are a part of an eternal whole. And value, right and wrong is decided not based on some arbitrary value system thought by someone, but is based on what is favourable for our spiritual evolution, that is good, what is unfavourable, that is bad.
And evolved consciousness means we have greater capacity for empathy. A constricted consciousness means we are self-centred, not caring whether we hurt others or not. So an evolved consciousness would make life better even in this world.
And the ultimate meaning of life is that we are meant to return to harmony with the whole. And the various spiritual traditions of the world are meant to invite us and guide us with various paths to explore life’s spiritual side. And I concluded with this incident of a person, a friend who was trapped in the hurricane and then found a house at a higher level where he could get security.
So like that we, when we live at the material level, sometimes we may just be overwhelmed by negativity or distress. But if we understand that our existence is at a higher level and we rise over there, then we can have greater security, clarity by which not only can we respond to the specific difficulty with greater maturity, but also we can see the difficulty in the overall context of a meaningful life. Thank you very much.
So we’ll go with the questions and just a couple of questions. So does anyone have any questions or comments? Maybe if you don’t have any questions, maybe you can just share some reflections, something that you felt you would carry home after this talk. Yeah.
Sure. Correct. Yeah.
Okay. That’s true, okay. Eventually there’s going to be a correlation in understanding that meditation and all of those parts that are very useful for humans have actually some mathematical and scientific explanation, maybe which is not given enough time.
Yeah, that’s a valid possibility. Let’s say we have been studying using science and mathematics specifically for just a few hundred years. So if we give more time, then possibly the whole of human personality including meditation and spiritual aspects could be explained in the language of mathematics.
Yeah, there is always the exciting possibility that further scientific knowledge will reveal more and more about our human person or about all of existence. Now there are two, you could say, broad ways in which scientific knowledge advances. One is advancement in quantity and the other is advancement in quality.
By quantity I mean that we now have phenomenal amounts of knowledge about practically every field. In atomic physics, there are over a hundred journals which are publishing articles almost every month. The explosion of knowledge in terms of information about every single aspect of many aspects of the material world around us.
At the same time, if we consider in terms of the overall picture, as science is advancing more and more, each branch of knowledge is actually becoming more and more fragmented. Each branch is very specialised and is very sophisticated in terms of what understanding it is providing. But in terms of providing an integrated picture, even in quantum, even in physics if we see, quantum physics and relativity, they offer two pictures of the world which are in some ways violently contradictory.
And for many years, many decades, scientists have been trying to bring it together in one picture. The theory of everything or the grand unified theory or whatever other name we want to use it. There were scientists in the 1980s, they said, by 2000, we will have one equation that you can write on your T-shirt which will explain everything.
In 2000, Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Laureate scientist, he said that we have made tremendous progress in the last 20 years. But the more progress we make, the more the solution seems to be further and further away. In 2004, Stephen Hawking said that I am happy to announce that humanity’s quest for knowledge will never end.
At one sense, it is positive. We can always keep learning. But what he was saying is that a grand unified theory seems to be nowhere.
It is not just that there is no light at the end of the horizon. We don’t even know where the horizon is. I can’t go here in this forum in the technical aspects.
But the quantum physics worldview and the relativity worldview, their implications are so different that even Einstein, in his times was exasperated. One of his most scathing critiques of quantum physics, he said that I would like to believe that the moon continues to exist even if I am not looking at it. What he meant by that is that the quantum physics worldview is that again, putting it in a bare bones way, that ultimately there is nothing but waves.
And when there is a conscious observer, then the waves collapse into an object, which is perceived by the conscious observer. So, if we take the quantum physics worldview to its extreme, what it means is that there is no such thing as a moon existing. But only when I look at the moon, then the waves that comprise the moon come together and they form an object, that’s when I am able to see it.
So, again, quantum physics is a very complicated subject. I am just giving a very simple explanation here from a general educated perspective. The point which I am making is that there is enormous amount of knowledge that is coming through science and this knowledge is likely to increase more and more.
But this knowledge is more and more in the direction of specialisation within individual fields. But in terms of integration of the whole picture, there is even scientists, there are books that are being read like are we coming to the end of physics? Not end of physics in terms of physical information not coming, but an integrated coherent worldview. One of the most prominent quantum physicists, once a student asked him, a student asked him that this quantum physics, how do we make sense? How do we visualise the world as it is talked about by quantum physics? So, his professor told him, it’s a famous reply, stop thinking, start calculating.
That means the calculations work, but translating those calculations into a worldview that we can make sense of. That, we are getting nowhere near that. So, it is good that we be open to the possibility that the advancement of scientific knowledge may reveal something more in future.
At the same time, why not be open to the possibility that there could be an alternative way of knowing, which we have not yet explored. So, till now, most of science has operated using the methodology of what is called as methodological naturalism. That means for all natural explanations, we look for natural phenomena, we look for natural explanations, which is good.
But there are some phenomena for which we look for non-natural explanations also. For example, if we see an artefact, we see a globular object with groovings on it, we find that deep in the earth, then archaeologists will try to infer, could this have happened by natural phenomena, or does this indicate the action of some primitive human beings who are living. So, here what we are looking? We are looking for a natural explanation, but we are also looking for an intelligent explanation.
And, just as in archaeology we are open to this, similarly in criminal investigations, we find that somebody has died with a knife in their stomach, then investigators see, could this knife have just fallen down from somewhere and pierced the stomach, or has the knife gone with such force, such angle, that somebody has to perfectly insert it in their stomach. So, in the normal quest for knowledge, we need to be open to all possible avenues of knowing. So, spirituality and science are not in that sense contradictory.
Spirituality, sometimes people think of religion as requiring faith and dogma, but if we see one of the most fundamental texts in the Vedic canon, Vedanta Sutra, it starts with now ask questions, enquire, Brahma Jigyasa, enquire about life’s ultimate questions. Einstein who said that the sciences, the arts and the religions, they are all fruits of the same tree of human knowledge. So, if we are open to knowledge, from whichever forces we may get it.
So, we can benefit from the ongoing advancement of scientific knowledge within the world of matter, but we can also take that scientific spirit of enquiry and be open to explanations that take us beyond the world of matter. And then for each of us, it’s up to us to see which world view gives us a more coherent, a more cogent explanation of reality. So, shutting off certain theories or certain options without even considering their possibility, without even examining the evidence, that is actually unscientific.
Thank you Chitraji and Babu for giving such a wonderful talk.