My journey from material science to spiritual science – QA session

[Seminar at Alachua Learning Center, Alachua, Florida, USA]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
I’m grateful to be here and so, I just put my story as something like I was frustrated by success. So, my dream since my childhood was that I wanted to be an academic achiever. I did my engineering and I was always among the best students, but never the best student.
And then finally, when I gave my GRE for coming into America, at that time, I got a 2350 out of 2400, which was I was the first in my, not just my college, but the history of my college. I was first in the whole state of Maharashtra, just several million people in it. So, I thought, this is, my dream has come true.
I’ve become an achiever now. And yes, there was some elation, but after some time, it just struck me that there’s no happiness in just looking at a mark sheet. It’s only when people come and congratulate you, then you feel happy.
And somehow it happened that at that time, three of my friends, they met me and they forgot to congratulate me. So, first time, second, first time I was annoyed, second time I was annoyed, third time, it just struck me, there are times in my life when something very dramatic happens. It’s almost like I see myself from an out of body perspective.
For example, I’m sitting here and as if I’m here looking at myself. And then it struck me at that time, if I look at myself objectively, this academic achievement has not made me happy. Actually, it has made me more dependent for my happiness on others.
In the past, I could just meet other people and I could talk with them and have normal interactions. Now, when I meet with them, I’m expecting that they will congratulate me. I’m depending on their congratulation and without that, I’m feeling agitated.
So, I thought tomorrow, in future, I might achieve something more. But this path of path to achievement will not lead to fulfilment. There’s nothing wrong per se with the path to achievement.
But what I had thought that it will lead to satisfaction, it will lead to fulfilment, I realised that is not going to work. So, that’s how I started exploring something more in my life. And I had heard of Bhagavad Gita since my childhood.
But it was at that time that I first started exploring the Bhagavad Gita seriously. An old friend of mine who had been much more materialistic than me and he came and met me and he had become a devotee. So, he came in to offer me a Bhagavad Gita.
He had come from Bhagavad Gita distribution. The first thought that came in my mind at that time, I have read this. I don’t need to read this.
I have read this already. But then, when I saw that he was so transformed, I talked with him. He looked much more peaceful, much more sober.
I said that he must have found something in this book which I had not found. So, what is that? So, I started exploring that. And that’s how I came to understand the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita.
I came to understand the fact of spiritual growth and inner fulfilment. In the sixth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna talks about how when we become spiritually realised, यम्लब्ध्वा चापरं लाभं मन्यते न धिकंततः यस्मिन्स्तितो दुखेन गुरुणापी चाल्यते This is Yamlabdha. Having attained this, there is nothing more to be attained.
One does not feel that there is anything more to attain. And यस्मिन्स्तितो means situated in this way, दुखेन गुरुणापी चाल्यते No matter how great a distress comes in one’s life, one will not be agitated by it. So, Krishna is talking about a state of consciousness where there is no more hankering and no more lamenting.
I want something more, something more. That hankering is not there and Krishna is not making a utopian promise that there are no problems. Problems will come but they will not disturb.
So, I started thinking whatever achievement I can envision in my life, can I, can any achievement promise this? That there will be no more hankering and no more being distressed. No, nothing can promise that. So, I felt this is a goal worth achieving.
That’s how I started exploring spiritual life, started practising it. And gradually that’s how I, after I practised it for some time, I found myself internally transformed. I started, I was known to be a very short tempered person at that time.
So, I found that my temper went down substantially. One of my friends was sliding into alcoholism and I introduced him to Krishna Bhakti and he just gave it up. One day he said I am not going to drink and just he left it forever.
So, I felt this is something substantial. After I completed my engineering and I was working in a software company. I worked as a software engineer for some time.
Then I felt at that time that there are there are thousands of other people who will take up that job if I don’t do it. But how many people are actually going to share the spiritual wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita. So, I see science as one tall mountain and spirituality as another big mountain.
These are two very valuable and empowering sources of knowledge for people today. But these two need to be bridged together. So, I felt with my scientific background and my spiritual study I could serve in some way to bring these two sources together.
That’s why I have a website which is called The Spiritual Scientist. So, I feel that Krishna is the supreme spiritual scientist and as a servant as his messenger I try to share that message with others. So, when we speak about science and spiritual science and you have a website called The Spiritual Scientist I mean usually people think about science as something different than spirituality.
It can be something like students tell me I can believe in what you can measure and prove and when you say spiritual science can you explain maybe? So, what do we exactly mean by spiritual science? Essentially science can be understood in three different ways. One is as a particular subject that is studied in the university yesterday. The other is as a systematic body of knowledge.
And third is as a approach to knowing. There are three different things. in our academic studies when we study science we have certain subjects within science, physics, chemistry, biology.
As we go advanced science we may have many more specialisations. These study a particular section of nature and go deep in trying to understand the mechanisms by which the things work. So, thermodynamics analyses how dynamics or thermal dynamics work.
So, like that there are different fields. When we use science in a normal conversational sense we do not necessarily restrict ourselves to this particular method. This particular we are not when somebody says is the concept of soul or god or spirituality scientific we are not really talking about physics or chemistry.
It is not exactly like a branch within science. But we are using the second meaning in a systematic body of knowledge. Is it systematic? Is it verifiable? Is it provable? Now, in science itself there are different methods of proof that are used.
So, broadly speaking there are three kinds of reasoning that is used. See, when people are seeing is believing. Now, most of scientific advancement has been by going beyond seeing is believing.
In fact, in all branches of knowledge we progress by moving from the visible phenomena to invisible principles for explaining the phenomena. So, when Newton saw the fruit falling at Wolfer’s Manor in his house, so he basically saw a visible phenomena of fruit falling. And, what did he do? He proposed an invisible principle, that is gravity.
So, actually most of scientific progress is not about seeing is believing. It is about proposing something to explain what we are seeing. And, what we propose is not visible.
Most of the principles that science proposes, electricity we can’t see. We can see the bulb illuminated. So, we can see the effect.
But, most of the principles that science talks about we can’t see them. And, in fact, as science advances more and more, even the fundamental entities in science, say for example, Einsteinian physics, we have space-time. Now, space-time is not perceivable.
It is not perceivable at all. It is a conceptual entity. And, considers that to be existent.
We go into particle physics. Then, even there also, many, most of the entities, they can’t be seen at all. So, recently, a few years ago, there was this huge sensation of the discovery of a power particle.
But, Higgs boson, that cannot be seen at all by any means. So, even in science, this idea of seeing is believing is not applicable. If Newton had stuck to seeing is believing, he would not have been able to postulate gravity.
So, it is wrong to say that science operates on seeing is believing. Science operates on proposing something invisible to explain what is visible. And, within science, there are three broad methods of reasoning that are used.
One is deductive, second is inductive, and third is abductive. So, deductive reasoning is basically mathematics. It is based on principles.
3 plus 5 is 8. 4 into 4 is 16. These are like, these are basically fundamental definitional things. Mathematics is considered to be the most exact of sciences.
Now, most of science that we function with, most of reality is not precisely mathematical. So, it is based on inductive reasoning, not deductive. Inductive means that we do, say, 100 experiments and based on that we find a pattern and we say the 101st will also follow that pattern.
So, when Newton proposed the law of gravity, now he saw fruit falling, he observed other objects fall and he proposed the law of gravity and then he observed whether it is true, whether other objects also fall as per that law. It is true. So, here basically what happens in induction, we observe and then we extrapolate.
Now, this is the way most of the technology that we use in today’s world, it functions based on inductive science. But, when science talks about origins, we cannot do any inductive science. There are three basic questions of origin, origin of everything, origin of the universe, origin of consciousness and origin of human beings.
Whenever we go to anything about origins, it is a one-time event. We cannot do any experiment to tangibly repeat and check it. So, how do scientists find out what happened hundreds or thousands of years ago or millions of years ago? So, what happens is science has to use an entirely different method for that.
That is called as abductive reasoning. Why are we talking about these three kinds of reasoning? Because spirituality can also be understood through abductive reasoning. But, when most people think of science, they think science is limited only to inductive reasoning or inductive and inductive.
So, to explain abductive reasoning, consider a mystery for an investigator. Say, in a particular room, a person was found murdered. And, it’s like a mystery novel is there.
So, you have to find out. So, at 9 o’clock in the night, a person was alive. 6 o’clock, when the maid went into the house, the person was dead.
So, who came in between? How do you find out? You cannot tell the murderer, please come and murder once again, we want to catch you on camera. We want to do a repeatable experiment to prove it. So, how do you find out there? There, it’s a, the method is abductive reasoning or it’s called IBE, inference to best explanation.
So, you find out, okay, this, who, what are the cameras? So, then, there is another woman who, may be some other woman went in, she is 80 year old, she also doesn’t have enough strength to start. So, then, there was a 25 year old butler, who went in at 5 am, he is young and healthy. So, now, the inference to best explanation would be that butler would be the killer.
This is not a irrefutably provable thing. In the house, there might be a trap door and somebody might have come in through a trap door and killed and gone out also. So, when we make an inference to best explanation, it depends on the information that we have.
So, if new information comes in, we might make a different explanation. So, basically, when scientists talk about origins, there is a fundamental limitation that scientists have, that they can’t replicate historical limits and that’s why the scientific knowledge about origins is far more speculative and tentative than scientific knowledge about operational things right now. So, we often think of science as one body of knowledge.
I think there is law of gravity and there is say the big bang theory. These are both scientific theories and because we see technology working so well, so we think that if scientists say something it must be true. Yes, scientists are proposing something but which branch of scientific knowledge is proposing it? So, if that particular scientific theory is coming from inductive reasoning where there are repeatable experiments which can be done right now to see things, then it is on far more stronger ground than if it is based on abductive reasoning where actually we are simply arriving at inference to best explanation.
But still, having said this, science does use abductive reasoning quite extensively. So, when we look at the world around us and we try to infer okay, how did this come about? For example, we have the continental drift theory. How did the continents come out in the position they are? Their idea is that all the continents were together at one time, they drifted away.
So, you cannot make the continents drift once again. So, we are simply doing it. It is an inference to best explanation.
So, like that, with respect to spirituality, we can do inference to best explanations. So, for example, the fundamental spiritual entity is the soul. Inside the body, there is a source of consciousness, which is what animates the body.
Now, we cannot, because the soul by definition is spiritual, we cannot empirically quantify or measure it. We cannot place it under a microscope and see it, because the microscope sees material things. It is a spiritual thing.
But, what is the inference to best explanation that we can do in this case? We can look at the nature of the body, we can look at the nature of the soul, or nature of consciousness. See, consciousness involves feeling, thinking, feeling, willing, experience of emotions, thoughts. Now, there is nothing in matter that experiences that.
Suppose, I ask one of you, do you exist? What a stupid question you would say. Obviously, I exist. Now, does this mic exist? See, it exists.
There is a big difference. See, you are aware that you exist, the mic is not aware that it exists. But, if you look at it from a physical perspective, this is made of the same building blocks essentially, atoms and molecules, as is our body.
So, where does our awareness come from? Even we say it comes from the brain. But, the brain is also made ultimately of chemicals, same atoms and molecules. They have been arranged in more complicated patterns.
But, there is a fundamental difference between complexity and quality. There is a qualitative difference between matter and consciousness. So, consciousness is spiritual.
Just like, if I have, if you know something about the history of computers, basically, they started, the basic thing that computers do is they simply crunch numbers. 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1. That is what happens at a digital level. But, they do it so fast that they can actually make amazing calculations, amazing information processing.
But, ultimately, all that is happening in the most sophisticated computer is numbers are changing, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1. Now, if you had a computer in which a digital, say, digital is 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, just changing rapidly, would you say that if it is changing from 0 to 1 at say 1 minute per second, then it starts changing from 0 to 1 at 1 second per change. 1 micro, now you say, Was it conscious when it was changing from 0 to 1 at 1 minute per second change? No. So will it become conscious because it starts changing from 0 to 1 at 1 second per change? Whether it is at 1 microsecond per change? No.
So the speed or complexity itself does not lead to consciousness. So consciousness does not come from the body. Consciousness actually has to come from something entirely different.
So this way, this is just a simple analysis I am giving. And the point is that spirituality is also a science in the sense that it uses the scientific method of inference to best explanation. And by that method, the inference of the fundamental spiritual entity, the soul, as well as the supreme spiritual entity, the infinite consciousness, both can be inferred.
You remind me of a joke. It is okay if I tell you a joke about the origin of man. It is about a young girl.
She is like 4 or 5 years old. And she goes to her mom and she asks her what is the origin of man. And she said there was Adam and there was Eve.
So she is satisfied. After a few days, she goes to her father and she asks him the same question. And he says there were monkeys and then the monkeys.
So she came back to her mother and she said you told me this and father told me that. And her mother said my family origin is from Adam and Eve. And her father’s family origin is from the monkeys.
So it looks like there are theories that I guess we can accept or not accept when we go to those big questions. So what would you advise to someone who is not a believer yet, who likes to find the truth? And is there a scientific or any method to progress in the way we… So are there some scientific theories which we need to evaluate and somebody may not have faith in spirituality. So say the origin of life or origin of species, how do we understand this? The first point to understand is that theories explain some things.
But the more fundamental question is what explains the theories? They are two different things. See when I say theories explain something but what explains the theories? What this means is that if we consider science and spirituality. So just now I came in a car from Alachua.
If somebody is an external observer, say okay what made this car move? I say that okay the car moved because the wheels moved. What made the wheels move? The wheels moved because there was ignition in the engine. But what caused the ignition in the engine? That’s because this key which is in the vertical position, it moved to the horizontal position.
That’s the reason why the car moved. The car moved because the key moved from vertical position to horizontal position. Now is that a correct explanation? Yeah it is correct but it’s not a complete explanation.
The car moved because I wanted to come here for the programme. So the personal explanation and the mechanical explanation, they are not contradictory necessarily. They can both work in parallel.
So when Newton saw the fruit falling, he accepted the existence of God. Yes there is a God who exists but at that particular point he was not looking for God as the explanation. What is the mechanism by which the fruit falls? So basically when we look at science, there is science and there is scientism.
Scientism is the ideology which claims that science can answer all questions. But that is not a scientific claim. Science can answer all questions.
There is no scientific experiment to prove this. So it’s actually unscientific or extra scientific claim which is made over there. So the point which I am making over here is that we can discuss the merits or demerits of specific theories.
But more important than that is to look at the scope of explanation that certain theories can offer. So Newton when he saw the fruit falling and he inferred a theory of gravity from it. Which is fine as far as the theory goes.
So in the history of science some theories are proved to be correct, some theories are proved to be wrong. And that is the history of science which goes on. So theories explain certain things but our question is what explains the theories? Where do the theories themselves come from? If we start from a completely atheistic version of life or of the universe then what is the atheistic biography of the universe so to say? So it will be something like this.
Nothing existed because of nothing. Nothing existed because of nothing. Nothing exploded because of nothing.
And gave rise to everything. That’s essentially what it is. Now this makes fantastic logical sense, isn’t it? Nothing existed because of nothing.
Nothing exploded because of nothing. And gave rise to everything. Nothing exploded because of nothing and gave rise to everything.
So now where is the logic or the reasoning in this? So we don’t have to get into specific theories. The theories themselves need an explanation. Why would nature operate according to certain mathematical laws? So there is an example.
Eugene Wigner is a Nobel laureate scientist. He gives an example. He has written a paper called The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.
That’s a paper he wrote. So he gives an example. He says that suppose you go into a house and while going to the house on the road accidentally you found a pair of keys.
And when you reach this house, use one key and the door opens. Another door, use the next key, it opens. And like that if you find that there are 25 doors open because of a set of keys which is found accidentally along the way.
You are thinking, you know, there is something going on over here. This, either this keychain belongs to someone who left it and I came here to this house, that’s how. There is some connection.
It cannot be by chance. So first of all our finding the keychain is one thing. Second thing is there existing a house which uses this keychain.
So basically when science studies the laws of nature and postulates that this phenomenon in nature works this way. All that it means is, it tells us this key works for this lock. This key works for this lock.
That’s great. F is equal to g m1 m2 upon r square. That’s the equation for gravity.
It’s a great insight. E is equal to mc square. Einstein’s insight.
Now these are all good insights. But the question is Einstein postulated that equality. Who created that equality? If a room is locked and somebody finds a key to open it, that’s great.
But you know, finding the key for a room is very different from creating the room, creating the key and then using the key for the room. There are three different things. So when scientists discover the laws, what do the laws explain? Laws are like the keys which open a door.
But the house has to exist before that. The key has to exist before that and the key is used to open the house. So basically the laws of nature, they explain first of all when nature exists and nature obeys laws.
So nature’s existence is like the door existing with a lock in it. And the mathematical equations which are the ways in which we express the laws of nature, they are like the key. So scientists do deserve the credit for finding out the laws of nature.
But the mathematical equations which express the laws of nature. So most of the concepts in mathematics, they are simply creations of the human mind. For example, if you consider a square or cube or square root or the imagined number i, do they exist in nature? Is there something like a square root existing in nature? It’s a mathematical conception.
It’s an interesting mathematical conception. But why should it equate with something functioning in nature? So what Eugene Wigner says is that, that nature works according to mathematics is a gift that we neither understand nor know the reason for. We can only be grateful for it.
So what the basic understanding of spirituality is that God is not the explanation for the unexplainable. Science can’t explain this, therefore we need God. No, it’s not like that.
God is the explanation for explainability. The explanation is the explanation for explainability. Why is anything explainable at all? Yes, you found a key to open the door, that’s good.
But who created the key? Who created the door? See, f is equal to gm1 m2 upon r square. It’s a great insight to find that. But first of all, nature has to be obeying that laws and there has to be something called mathematics which involves the division, square root, square and everything, all those concepts of mathematics.
And then the two are brought together. The human mind, say the brain of Newton, which brought these two together, that is a brilliant brain, but that has brought basically the key and the lock together. But the lock and the key already existed.
So, to give another simpler example, which I’ll conclude this, the laws of nature explain certain things, but the laws of nature themselves require an explanation. Say, there is a very important football match going on. And the goal is there and the football player is here.
And the football player just kicks the ball with such speed that before the goalkeeper can jump in, the ball has shot into the goal. So now, if the felicitation is going on, they have won the match, at that time, somebody asks the football coach, you know, how this player hit this goal so well? He says, by the law of gravity. Now, the law of gravity may explain, okay, he hit the ball with this speed and because the speed was so great that before the goalkeeper could kick, the ball shot in.
But the law of gravity did not create the ball, the law of gravity did not create the player, the law of gravity did not create the goal post. So, the laws explain the correlations between pre-existing objects. But where do these objects come from and why do they have that correlation? So, science explains certain things and what it explains, we are grateful for that explanation.
But we also have to recognise that the very explainability of science requires an explanation that science itself does not have. That’s why if we see science and spirituality as two distinct branches of knowledge, then there is no contradiction between them. We see that science is explaining the theories between objects that exist and their interactions.
But the existence of those objects and the principles by which they interact, they require some other explanation. And that is what spirituality offers us. Okay? Thank you.
I can’t remember how to finish. So, usually we finish at one. We have Prashanth and I think we’ll open the floor for a few questions.
And then Chittanacharam said that he’s willing to stay for 20 minutes more. And if while we start serving you, you still have questions, you’re welcome to come and sit and speak with me personally. So, who had a question? I had a question regarding… So, there’s the idea that we want to enjoy separate from God.
So, that’s why he set up this material world for us to come and experience trying to enjoy without God. But the thought that I had was, why wouldn’t God just create another, say, dimension for us to enjoy not only separate from him? Instead of us being always… I mean, us being intrinsically being connected with God. Why couldn’t he just separately create a different dimension for us to enjoy rather than us being always connected? Okay.
So, why couldn’t God create another dimension for us to enjoy instead of we always being connected with him? We have to understand what enjoyment means before we can answer this question. Basically, we often have the idea of enjoyment means, okay, I have a lot of wealth, I have a lot of popularity, I have a lot of talents, I have someone who loves me, I have sensual pleasure. We think of all these as a part of an enjoyable life, as a successful life, as a happy life.
Among all these, actually, what is the most important? Now, we have our friend in North Korea who is threatening to blow up America. Now, or Japan, or whatever. Suppose, there was a nuclear Armageddon and all life was destroyed in the earth and you were the only person alive.
And it’s only life that is destroyed, property is not destroyed. Everything in the earth belongs to you now. But you are the only person there.
How much happiness would be there in that? Okay, you have everything, but what do you do with it? So, see, our fundamental need is to love and to be loved. That’s what we fundamentally need. And normally, we can love, we want to love someone who is attractive.
In different ways. Attraction may not be physical, it may be in different ways. Wealth is an attractive thing.
Strength is an attractive thing. Beauty is an attractive thing. Many different things can be attractive.
So, we at our core as souls are made in such a way that we are meant to love God. And He is a supreme lovable being. And by very definition, the supreme cannot have a substitute.
Because supreme means one. If there is a substitute to supreme, then that substitute is supreme or the first is supreme. You cannot have two supremes.
Supreme is one. So, by our very nature, we are meant to love God. And by the very definition of the supreme, there cannot be any substitute for the supreme.
So, in that sense, when we say that God could have created another dimension where we could have enjoyed, we need some reciprocation. And we need an eminently lovable object for reciprocation. And that lovable object, supremely lovable object is God.
So, without Him, we might get some pleasure. But we will never know the deep fulfilment of enduring love. So, in principle, we cannot have the fulfilment of fulfilment that our heart longs for without the object who will fulfil that heart’s longing.
So, this world is an arena for us for experimentation and rectification. So, somehow we want a substitute for God. So, in our soul is a hole.
Not literally, but conceptually. There is something missing in us. And that hole, we could say, is like a God-sized hole.
Only God can fill that hole in the heart. We try to have others fill that hole and we experiment. It can be other people, it can be other objects, it can be other concepts.
We can direct our love to so many things in this world. And we try various objects and then we find that this doesn’t satisfy the heart. So, this world offers us the arena for experimentation.
And when the experimentation doesn’t satisfy us, then the world also acts as the arena for rectification. That we can learn to love God. So, this world is a distressful place.
But it is the best possible place for the exercise of our free will for these two purposes. Experimentation and rectification. And rectification, redirection of our heart to God ultimately.
Rectify, correct. Any other questions? Anything related with the topic? Yes, please. I was kind of going to add on to that.
Where existence was created for us and we were created for God, so that if God created money just like this one, because we were the centre of creation. So, wanting to create another dimension so that we could be what we want to be is really just a way of us wanting to be God. So, this dimension is perfectly made for what we are.
We just have to find out how to get that in this creation. Yeah, thank you. I was thinking, you know, all these books about the defence effort, I was thinking it sounds like the book itself claims that knowledge in this book is true.
So, I was thinking if someone comes up to me and says, I am a bully man, well, I’ll question it further. I wouldn’t say, oh, someone said I am Barack Obama. I can’t just trust the person.
He himself is saying something. I just don’t want to trust the person. The book itself is saying that you have to accept what we are saying in this book.
How can we accept, how is that actually scientific? Okay. So, if we have the Bhagavad Gita itself, we have say Krishna claiming that, say, Bhagavad Gita is claiming that knowledge is authoritative or Krishna is claiming that I am God. So, if somebody comes and claims, say, I am the president of America or whatever.
So, how do we consider that as authoritative? There are two different things going on in the Bhagavad Gita. As far as the idea that, is it that, say, the Gita is promoting itself or Krishna is boasting. No, we can just look at the setting.
Krishna is in the Bhagavad Gita acting as a charioteer. A charioteer is basically like a chauffeur. It is not a particularly glorious position.
So, Krishna is choosing to act as an assistant, as an aide, as a servant of his devotee. So, if his idea was, I am God, all of you have to bow down to me, then why would he be acting as a servant? So, the setting itself doesn’t point to, point strongly against the idea of a self-congratulatory being. Secondly, if you look at the thread of the reasoning of the Bhagavad Gita, its thread of reasoning is not based on the idea that Krishna is God.
That is the point that it does declare. But its central argument is not that because I am God, you have to accept this. Nowhere does Krishna say that I am God, so therefore you obey what I am saying.
No, Krishna says that, he gives logical reasoning, how the body is not the source of consciousness, that there is something non-physical that is the source of consciousness, that is the soul. And then he gives further reasoning to explain how there is a supreme being. And Krishna even shows the universal form.
But Arjuna has already accepted before that, Krishna, I surrender to you. He has already accepted that, I accept you as the absolute truth. So the point is that suppose somebody is sick, and they need to be treated urgently.
And there is a doctor who has come to treat them. And that person says, no, no, no, maybe I will go to this doctor, maybe I will go to that doctor. Then suppose the doctor who has come to treat them at that particular point, if that doctor is the best doctor in not just the town but the country, and whoever other doctor this person is about to consult, they are all this doctor’s students.
And this doctor says, they have learnt from you. I am the doctor who has taught all these doctors. And now if we take it out of the context of the purpose, it could be bragging, I have taught all the doctors in the city.
But the point was that to make sure the patient does not waste valuable time in consulting other doctors, just focus on taking the medicine. Then for that purpose, for a doctor to tell one’s credentials is important. If a patient has directly come to a doctor’s place to consult the doctor, then there the credentials are written down.
But if say there is an accident that has happened on the road, and immediately some stitching has to be done. And at that particular point, if the doctor tells, these are my credentials and therefore I will do this for you. So the doctors telling the credentials is not bragging.
It is in the context, first of all it’s true, and it is essential. So like that if we see when Krishna is speaking in the Bhagavad Gita about the authoritativeness of the knowledge that he is giving. He is giving reasoning.
But Arjuna is confused. And Arjuna needs to be given some guidance for making a decision. And if you see further, at the end of it all also, Krishna doesn’t impose on Arjuna.
The Bhagavad Gita is not a book of commandments. It is a book of choices. At the end Krishna says, if you do this, this will happen.
If you become conscious of me, you will pass over all obstacles by my grace. If you don’t become conscious of me, you will be lost. So Krishna further, this is 18.58, 5 verses later he says this.
Now you deliberate, deliberate deeply. Then do as you desire. So Krishna is a God who respects human independence and respects human intelligence.
He acknowledges, you have free will, you can do what you like. But I am appealing to your intelligence. Deliberate on what I am telling you.
So nowhere in the Bhagavad Gita is this seen that Krishna is saying, I am God, you have to obey me. So the Godhood of Krishna or the authoritativeness of the knowledge of the Gita, that is told in the course of its thread of reasoning. But that claim for authoritativeness, that is not the central point of the Gita.
It gives reasoning, it acknowledges human independence, it appeals to the intelligence. And that is not at all the characteristic of anything that is self-promotional or dogmatic. It is actually the characteristic of a very rational and reasonable discussion.
Does that address your question? I want to say thank you and start serving Prashadam. And you will be available for 12 more minutes. Yeah, sure.
So, first of all, thank you to you, Jyotanetra, for making the choice to take the car from here. Thank you. We had people who worked in the kitchen all morning.
I think he’s not here, but he can still. Thank Radha Govinda for doing it. For arranging and doing all those different things and singing.
So, thank Suri. Thank all of you for coming. If we can speak, like, in some circle or something, and some of you want to speak in Japanese, I can sit there and will serve you, wait.
And it’s a great opportunity to speak more about spiritual things and learn more. If you like, we have some books, and we’ll be happy to give you to read more about Bhagavad-Gita and other books. And if you have extra energy, you can stay with us and help us clean the temple room in the kitchen.
Thank you, everyone. So, I am a Mahayana student, and Mahayana textbooks generally say that human beings are me and me. And textbooks say that we can only manage to maintain the food chain, the food cycle, via eating and for us.
So, that’s how the food chain can be maintained. How can spiritual science enlighten us that we are meant to eat vegetarian food