Rationally choosing our life’s purpose and process

[Renaissance youth session at ISKCON, Punjabi Bagh, Delhi, India]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So today, the session, as well as the afternoon session, we will discuss about the concept of sadhan and sadhya. Sadhan is means, sadhya is goal.
Whenever we want to go from one place to another, so tomorrow morning I am going from here back to Mumbai, so then any journey, it requires a destination. So if I put in Google, I want to go from Delhi to Mumbai, Google will give options, how long will it take to drive, how long will it take by train, how long will it take by flight. So that way there are these two things, where we are going and how we are going.
So where we are going is sadhya and how we are going is sadhana. So broadly speaking, if we have a little spiritual inclination, if we get some philosophical understanding, then we understand that there is a world beyond this world, there is an eternal spiritual world, and that is our destination, where there is God. There are many religions in the world, most of them are theistic religions, they centre on God, theistic, and they do talk about attaining the higher world.
So I will talk a little bit from the historical perspective, about how world views have changed, and then we will look at what are the possible objections, or possible reservations, doubts, that we may face when we are ourselves trying to take up a spiritual path. So one common question you might get is, there are so many different religions, there are so many different religious organisations, there are so many teachers, there are so many books, what do I follow? And if I am following something, how do I know that what I am following is right? So for this purpose, it’s important to have a standpoint, or a starting point, that is logical. So that standpoint is from where we are standing and looking.
Starting point is our point for moving on a journey. So if we consider that historically in the western world, western civilisation has culturally and intellectually influenced most of the world. Culturally in terms of, if we consider science, it is the predominating shaper of people’s world views today.
And science as it is understood in today’s world, emerged in a particular historical setting. So basically that led, if you consider, there is the materialistic world view, there is the spiritual world view. There are two broad world views.
Now within spiritual you can say, there can be this path, that path, that path. Within materialism also, there can be various alternatives. There can be various isms, there is communism, capitalism, socialism.
So today, majority of the world is materialistic. And it is not just materialistic, actually people in this world have always been materialistic. Even in the past, they have been materialistic.
But in the past, the materialism was, we could say, religious materialism. Or pious materialism. When people accepted that as God, and even if you want some material prosperity, it is God who will provide us that.
So in Christianity, there is a prayer, Bhagavad Gita Hallowed be thy name, give us our daily bread. The idea is we are going to God, because we want some things. Give us our daily bread.
So moving on, from that perspective, if you consider, the Vedic teachings can be seen in terms of they being the source of the cultural and philosophical understandings that underlies Hinduism today. So what we call as Hinduism has broadly emerged from the Vedas. But at the same time, the broad body of Vedic literature, not just the four Vedas, but the broad body of Vedic literature, talks about principles that are universal.
What do we mean by universal principles? These are ways of approaching the world. So broadly speaking, the Vedic body of literature talks about three ways of approaching the world. The path of Karma, the path of Jnana, and the path of Bhakti.
Karma Marga, Jnana Marga, and Bhakti Marga. Now, what do these mean basically? So we could say there are particular rituals which are talked about in the Vedas. Say, okay, you do this, then you will get a better, you will have children, or you can, if you are not having a child, you can have a child.
You can do this, then you will get better crops, your business will go well. These are all part of what we call Karma Kanda. The path of Karma is basically the idea that we can do some things by which we can make life in this world better.
The path of Jnana, on the other hand, is based on the understanding that things in this world ultimately can’t be made much better. That this world is a temporary place. And therefore, we need to get out of this world.
And the path of Bhakti centres more on what is there beyond this world? And how can we connect with that reality beyond the world? And in the path of Bhakti, the focus is not on rejecting the world so much, as in connecting with the Supreme. So the Karma Marga is what? We find means by which we can make things in life better. So now this can be done in two ways.
One is by religious ways. We pray to God, we perform some rituals, and by that we make things in this world better. This is broadly called in the Vedic literature as Karma Kanda.
There are four Purusharthas. Do you know what are the four Purusharthas? Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha. So Dharma means we do some kind of religious activities by which we will get money.
Everybody needs Artha. And by that we fulfil our desires, Kama. And after we have been doing this for a long time, when we realise that fulfilling desires doesn’t lead to any fulfilment, then we look for Moksha.
So we could say Dharma, Artha and Kama are broadly related with Karma Kanda. And Moksha is related with Jnana Kanda. Now if I talk about the Biblical prayer, O Father, give us our daily bread.
This is more or less of the Karma Kanda level. The idea is that by praying to some higher beings, we can make life in this world better. So this is a principle which applies to all religions.
Most religions are at this level. In the Bible also it is said that we should love God with all our heart, all our might, all our being, all our soul, whatever. But that is not the thrust of most people.
Most people go to God to make their life in this world better. And the same applies to most religions. In Islam also, people practise Islam so that they can get more powerful, more prosperous in this world.
Now science, especially in the modern times, the age of modernity, it began more or less from the 17th, 18th centuries, since science took off. So if we consider historical, there was the ancient age, there was the mediaeval age, then there is the, we could say, the modern age. And before the modern, there is a transition which we call as pre-modern.
So from mediaeval to modern. So almost across the world, all traditional cultures had some understanding that there is a world beyond this world. And that world is our ultimate goal.
But science focused more on two things. They called empiricism and rationality. Empiricism is what we call as Vatyaksha, observe things.
See what is for real, observe. And rationality is reason, do reasoning. That is what we call as Hanuman.
And based on these two things, science, or some people who followed science, they felt that there is no proof for the existence of God, there is no proof for the existence of soul, there is no proof for the existence of the spiritual world. Most of the pioneering scientists were not atheists. They were all theists, very expressive theists.
In fact, Newton said, when he made his inventions, O father, I think thy thoughts after thee. That is, he saw his scientific discoveries as spiritual insights into the way God has fashioned this world. However, over a period of time, if you look at the founders of science, I have a book Science and Spirituality, which are quotes from the founders of various fields of science, ranging from cosmology, they are not founders, but founding fathers, those were the founding insights.
Cosmology to microbiology, everybody believed in God. And so they saw science as a way of understanding how God has fashioned this world. But over a period of time, as science, and especially the product of science, technology, started making things more and more changeable in this world, we can, if it’s too hot, we can regulate the temperature of fans and ACs.
If there’s a storm going to come, we can predict it and we can protect ourselves from it. We can get resources from deep within the earth. We can make cars and trains and planes.
So as science through technology started providing us more and more facility to make things better in this world, the result was the idea of the other world started going more and more into the background. So initially, many Christians, many of the founding fathers of science were believers in God. And at that time, the majority religion, practically the only religion in the mediaeval world, in Europe, where most scientific research happened, that was Christianity.
So they were Christians. Many Christians saw science and technology as a gift of God. And they felt that what Jesus will do through Christianity lift us up spiritually, that God will do to us materially through technology.
That means we’ll be spiritually uplifted by our religion and we’ll be materially uplifted by our science. But as this was going on, subsequent generations of scientists and subsequent generations of thinkers, more than scientists, they started feeling that if we can make life in this world better, why do we need any other world? Why do we need to think about any other world? So these religions talk about a paradise where we’ll be always happy. So it is more like a spiritual paradise or a religious paradise.
So technology started promising us you don’t need a religious paradise because technology will create paradise in this world itself. You can have a comfortable, happy, successful life if we just make enough technological progress. And thus God started becoming dimmer and dimmer on the screen of science.
And suppose if you’re looking through a telescope and you’re looking at the vast sky. Now we will move the telescope here, there, everywhere. But as we move the telescope, if we find something very interesting at a particular point, then we will zoom in on that.
And as we keep zooming in on that, the nature of human attention is that the more we focus on one thing, the more we become oblivious to other things. So as science and technology started focussing more and more on changing this world, then the idea of other worlds started becoming more and more irrelevant. Now science in itself is simply a tool for acquiring knowledge.
Science intrinsically is neither theistic nor atheistic. Why? Because of course science can also be defined in different ways. But the way science is defined by mainstream scientists is that scientists look at the material world, look at the nature around us, and they try to find natural explanations for natural phenomena.
By natural, they use the word natural to refer to material. So for example, if somebody has got a disease, then in the past some people may have thought, oh, in the mediaeval times there was a black plague and it was a horrible disease. That black plague was such a terrible disease that almost one third of Europe died in that.
So you can imagine the magnitude of the diseases that right now all of us are sitting. In three to five years, one out of every three persons in this room is dead. It’s a devastating disease.
And some people said, oh, maybe some evil spirit has afflicted people. Maybe some demon has attacked. Maybe Satan has attacked.
And that’s why so many people are dying. Now scientists, they did some research and they found that there were some germs which were attacking. And they tried to isolate those germs and cure those germs.
So their idea is that as soon as we bring in something beyond this world, then we can’t do anything about it. If there is some explanation from this world, why are people sick? Because there are germs. Then we can isolate those germs.
We can study those germs. Then we can counter those germs. So science basically looks for material explanations for material phenomena.
That is what is called as science is based on methodological naturalism. Naturalism means we study nature and look for natural explanations for natural phenomena. And this is methodological.
It’s a matter of methodology. Is there anything beyond nature? Are there any factors beyond nature? They may be there. They may not be there.
Science doesn’t study them. Now while studying like this, what happened? As we focus more and more on material phenomena and actually science doesn’t even study the material world fully. At the start of the age of science, Galileo and other scientists, they divided the material world into what they called as primary properties and secondary properties.
According to them, primary properties are those which are measurable. And secondary properties are those which are not measurable. So for example, length, breadth, height, mass, velocity, all these are measurable.
Now when we interact with the world, say for example, I came to this room. The first thing I may say, oh this is a big room. It’s one thing I observe.
But when we interact with people, somebody is very tall, somebody is very short, somebody is very fat, somebody is very thin, you may notice that. But suppose you go back from this BTW and you go to your home and you go to some friend and say, yesterday I met a very interesting person. Okay.
He is 5 feet 5 inches. Okay. He weighs 63 kg.
Okay. His complexion is fair. Okay, what next? When we interact with people, we are not primarily concerned about physical dimensions, measurable dimensions.
They are a part of who we are, but they are not the essence of who we are. We are concerned more about the personality of people. So when we observe the world, if somebody makes a poster of something and says, does this look good? Now what we look for is, does it overall look good? You don’t look, you know, you have got 33% green, 7% yellow, 20% black, 40% brown.
We don’t think like that. We look at the world holistically and colour, shape, taste, these are what we look at. So for example, when we eat some food, if we are eating a gulab jamun, now at that time, how many of us think, we must have put about 5 spoons of sugar in this and this much of this, this much of this, how many of us think of mathematics and numbers in the normal course of our life, especially while interacting with people? We don’t.
So they are a part of the reality and when required, we use it. So science considers the measurable aspects to be primary. But if we consider our experience, it is not the measurable aspects that are primary.
Suppose somebody gave me a flower. Now if it is a very large or very small flower, I will notice it. But primarily how fragrant it is.
Now fragrance, we can’t really quantify it. How will you quantify? Can you use a fragrance metre and you put this much fragrance? A little difficult. Most of medicine is meant to free us from disease and pain.
But there is no scientific device which can measure pain. You can’t measure pain. You can’t have, if I got a fracture, I put my hand in some machine and it will be a pain-o-metre.
How much pain are you in? Or even more practically, one of the greatest fears for people in today’s world, especially among the youth, is the fear of rejection. People want to form some relationship with someone and if that person rejects me, I will be abandoned. I will be lonely.
This fear of rejection. When people want to form a relationship with someone, they want to know, does the other person really like me? Does this person really have feelings for me? Does the other person really love me? And based on that, they decide if they want to form a relationship or not. And this occupies so much of our thought and desire and causes so much worry.
With all the technology in the world, can science make something like a love-o-metre? If somebody wants to form a relationship, put this device on their heart and see, do they really love me? You can’t do that. Now these emotions and these experiences are real for us. In fact, they are the primary reality in our life.
Our mother loves us. Our friends may have affection for us. But this cannot be quantified.
It cannot be statistically measured. So the point which I am making is that science is a very powerful tool but it focusses on a fragment of reality. What is the fragment of reality? Science says, we will only look for natural explanations for natural phenomena.
That means material explanations for material phenomena. So if there is anything non-material, science doesn’t talk about it. And even within the material, it focusses on the measurable.
And those measurable things, it tries to come up with equations to explain those phenomena. So in this process, what happens? The reality has three levels. There is a physical level, subtle level and spiritual level.
In the scientific world, you lose out the subtle level and you lose out the spiritual level also. And in the physical level, it focusses more on the measurable level of reality. Because of this, a lot of people end up evaluating spirituality through the lens of science.
And that just doesn’t work. Why? Because science doesn’t show anything spiritual directly. If I am purchasing a piano and I want to evaluate how good the piano is.
If I start simply touching all the piano everywhere. Well, simply by touching, I am not able to evaluate. I have to play it.
The right tool for it is the ears. So, what has happened? So here, when science monopolises people’s idea of acquiring knowledge, then religion is reduced simply to a subjective, faith-based belief system. That means, Oh, you believe in this religion? You believe in this religion? You believe in that religion? Okay, you believe in whatever you want.
Ultimately, none of this is scientific. None of this is provable. So, religion becomes a subjective idea.
So, what we will be discussing is two things primarily. I gave this historical background about how the scientific worldview has become prominent, but the scientific worldview has left out a lot of things. And there are prominent scientists also recognising the problems of this worldview.
So, one problem is there are enormous amount of mental health issues that people are facing. Mind-related problems are far, far more than in the past. So, when religion becomes a subjective affair, then how do we know which religion I am meant to follow? So, we can evaluate it rationally.
Empirically, rationally, and scripturally. These are three ways. So, rationally if we decide to evaluate, I was travelling once and one Christian preacher was sitting next to me.
And now Christians are a huge number of people and they have a wide variety of opinions. But about some things, they are common. They say Jesus is the only way.
And you cannot go back to God except through Jesus. So, he started talking like that. I said, okay.
I said, do you believe God is unlimited? Of course, God is unlimited. Is God’s love unlimited? Of course, God’s love is unlimited. Since God is unlimited and His love is unlimited, then why are you limiting Him and His love by saying that there is only one way to Him? He said, no, no, no, I am not limiting.
This is God has given His mercy to us through one path. So, I explained to him that actually there is different religions if there is a mountain. So, the bottom of the mountain and top of the mountain.
So, top of the mountain is spiritual consciousness. Bottom of the mountain is material consciousness. There can be different paths by which you can rise from the bottom to the top.
The important thing is not which path we take. The important thing is whether we are rising to spiritual consciousness. And rising to spiritual consciousness means we become detached from gross bodily things.
We become more attached to spiritual things. That’s the idea of rising. So, then I said, no, no, this is the only path that God has arranged.
So, I said, okay. If that is the case, then what happens to all the people who don’t come to this path? He said, no. Then they will all go to hell.
He says, what about people who never get a chance? He said, people are born in a place where they never heard about Jesus. And they live and they die. And according to Christianity, they have only one lifetime.
So, then there is no opportunity for them also. They were born and they died. And they never got an opportunity.
So, that’s like they are doomed to go to hell. That is why we preach so much. We have to give an opportunity to people to come to God and not go to hell.
He said, okay. But what if you are not able to reach some people? That’s their misfortune. Okay.
Now, who arranged for that misfortune? Because they don’t believe in a previous life. So, there is no question of karma from a previous life. That means God only arranged for them to be born in a place where they never heard about Jesus.
And they never heard about Jesus. And because they did not hear about Jesus, they didn’t surrender to him. And they go to hell.
That means God becomes responsible for sending people to hell. No, no, no. God is not responsible.
God wants us all to go back to God. Can you tell me? Then who is responsible? If Jesus is the only way, then who is responsible? So, he did not have any answer. Then I asked him another question.
That, okay. What happens to the babies, the embryos who are aborted? He said, they didn’t even get a chance to live. What happens to them? Oh, they are innocent.
They, God will deliver them and they will all go to heaven. I said, okay. What is the purpose of life? Is to go to heaven.
Then why not abort everyone? No, no, no. How can you abort? That’s sinful. He says, no.
The goal of life is to go to heaven. If the person is born, that person may not surrender to Jesus. And they will go to hell.
So, there is a possibility that they may go to hell if they are born. If they are not born, there is a guarantee they will go to heaven. So, why not just abort everyone? He said, no, no, no.
Abortion is very sinful. I said, no. If the destination is heaven, then what is wrong with it? So, Jesus had no answers to it.
Now, the point of this is not to criticise Christianity. The point of this is to illustrate how certain religions, their ideas, Christianity also, there were, if you look at the Bible, there are passages which are broadly compatible with reincarnation. And Jesus seems to have at least talked about reincarnation as an acceptable idea, although he did not directly propagate it.
But, it was discussable during his times. And he refers to it. But the point which I am making is here, that when reincarnation is removed from a worldview, that worldview doesn’t become very intellectually defensible.
It doesn’t seem rationally appealing. There are many other problems also come up. Suppose, they have an idea that you have only one life and after that, if you surrender to Jesus, you go to heaven.
Then, and you live happily ever after in heaven. So, what happens is, okay, if you have a grandfather, the grandfather goes to heaven. And then, is the grandfather of the age of a grandfather? If he was the age of 80 when he died, then is he eternally at the age of 80? Well, if it is eternally at the age of 80, then that will, being in heaven will not be a heavenly prospect for him? Oh, no, no, he is eternally young.
If he is eternally young, then how is he a grandfather? No, no, if he is young, then he is a grandfather. Okay, but what about babies who die when they are very one or two years old? They all go to heaven? Yeah, they go to heaven. Then, are they babies eternally? You know, do they not grow up? Or worse still, suppose a couple is married and one of them dies and then the widow or the widower, they remarry.
Then, well, in heaven they have two husbands or two wives and will that be a heavenly prospect for them? So, what happens? All these questions come up which really do not have answers. And, if we want to approach the other world with a rational understanding, then Christianity, not just Christianity, Islam and Judaism also, they do not accept reincarnation and that is why they are not very rationally appealing. They are not very intellectually appealing.
And many people reject because of that. So, the bhakti understanding of Siddhishtha Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavad Gita literature is that God loves unlimitedly and he gives us unlimited chances. So, we are all souls on a multi-life journey of spiritual evolution.
And, in each life we can go forward, we can go backward, we can stay wherever we are. We can go wherever we want. Now, if we are going to evaluate, what path should I follow? So, if we rationally evaluate, there are some fundamental questions which should have answers.
If these fundamental questions don’t have satisfactory answers, then it becomes very difficult to intellectually commit to a particular path. Now, it is not that Christians at an individual level are not intellectual. There are many Christians who are very philosophical, very intelligent, but the Bible itself does not contain much philosophy.
So, why does it not contain much philosophy? Because, it is a book written in a particular genre. Here, I’ll talk about, now, what was the point which I am discussing through all this is that we have grown up in a scientific world now. And, that’s why for us to have faith in some other world and there is a God and I have to go to that world that is very difficult to immediately accept.
Science focusses on the world here and now. So, rationally we observe this world, rationally we observe various religious ideas and we analyse them rationally. So, for such rational analysis, what is the goal and what is the process to that goal? That was sadhana and sadhya we were discussing.
So, sadhana and our sadhya to say that this is the only one path that is narrow minded. And, sadhana that we are all just, all of us we just surrender to God as we are here so we will be there. That leads to logical paradoxes.
So, these paradoxes come up because these religions or their core texts did not emerge in a very intellectual ethos. So, Judaism, Christianity and Islam these three religions they are descendants from the same ancestors. There was a prophet Abraham and these religions are called as Abrahamic religions.
So, in the Abraham, Moses, all these old prophets are there in the old testament they describe. They had an idea that in future some great powerful messenger of God will come and he will deliver us. So, Moses came and the people who accepted Moses they became Jews.
So, most of those people were at that time slaves in Egypt and Moses came and Moses guided them to Israel to Jerusalem specifically which is their promised land and they went to lot of adventures, lot of dangers, lot of calamities and through it God miraculously intervened and protected them and their journey is what is described in the old testament. So, there is no direct description of God in the old testament. All that is there is the journey of the people chosen by God and God’s miraculous intervention during those times.
So, the old testament is largely stories, very little philosophy. The new testament which is the sacred book of the Christians that is what is commonly called the bible, the old testament is called the Hebrew bible and new testament is the Christian bible. That is largely the four main books of the gospels which are the description of Jesus life given by his four prominent apostles and the majority of the Bible after is a later prophet named Paul, his epistles, the instructions that he gave to various people whom he preached to.
And Jesus basically gives a moral teaching, parables, some stories and some lessons from But there was no serious philosophical discussion about it. Those people who accepted Jesus as the prophet, they became Christians. And around the fourth century AD, the Christians had a big meeting and they signed what is called the Nicene Creed.
In the Nicene Creed, they accepted Jesus not as the son of God but as God himself. So Christians consider the transcendent God to have manifested as Jesus. Then, there are many who did not accept Jesus as the prophet.
In the sixth and seventh century, when Mohammed came, some people accepted Mohammed as the prophet. And those who accepted Mohammed to be the prophet, they became Muslims. And Mohammed lived a difficult life.
His parents died when he was small. His uncle took care of him. He lived in poverty.
He was working as an aide to a businesswoman who was 15 years older than him. And then they developed a relationship. He married her and then his fortunes changed.
And till this point, his life was mostly normal life. But once he had gone to a cave, and in that cave he heard a voice saying, write. He said, I can’t write.
He was illiterate. Write. I can’t write.
He said, write. And then he understood that this was the archangel Gabriel speaking to him. And periodically, during the rest of his life, from the age of 40 onwards, he got these divine visions when he felt that someone was speaking to him.
And the words that were spoken to him at that time, they were called as the, they became later the Quran. And there were a couple of times when he spoke some things, and then after it, that was noted down by his followers, and then he said, actually, this was what I spoke, that was not told to me by God, that was told to me by Satan. So, therefore, delete those things.
So, those verses were deleted and they are called the satanic verses. And satanic verses was one book which Salman Rushdie had written, and that book was banned. And then there was a fatwa issued against him.
So, the point I’m making is the Quran is a very unilateral, unidirectional revelation, that God is not seen, God’s messenger also is not, Gabriel is also not seen, Muhammad simply hears the voice, and then he speaks something when he is in a trance kind of state, and people note it down. And many years after Muhammad died, then whatever he had spoken to different people was all put together into a book which became the Quran. So, again, there is no scope here for systematic question answers, for asking questions, getting answers, and that is why overall, a rational world view to form based on these books is difficult.
Now, yes, as I said, you Christians can be intelligent, but when they have philosophy, they draw in other schools of thought to build that philosophy. So, for example, much of what is called a Christian philosophy is today the result of not just the Bible’s teachings, but the Bible’s teachings integrated with pre-biblical teachers’ teachings, like Plato and Aristotle. So, similarly, Islam also drew in from various schools of thought and made their own philosophy.
But, as of now, the rational explanations for why we are existing in this world, why we are suffering in this world, what is the ultimate purpose of life, who is God, these rational answers are very difficult to get. And because these rational answers are difficult to get, so people feel that if I have to be rational, I can’t be religious, I can’t be spiritual, I have to be materialistic. However, if we are materialistic, we can’t even be rational.
I conclude with this point and then you can have some questions. That, what do I mean by, so, you know, whether God exists or not, or which religion’s God is a real God, which visual texts are true, many people feel that rationally we can’t know these things. So, we just reject that.
Let me be materialistic. But, even materialism itself is not rational. Why is it not rational? Because, let’s consider science.
Science itself is based on faith. What do I mean by science is based on faith? When Newton observed the fruit falling, couple of years ago, I had gone to Cambridge, you know, to give a talk over there on science and spirituality. So, while going along to Cambridge, we went by that tree, that same tree where Newton said to have seen the fruit falling.
Some people say he saw the fruit falling in front of him, some people say the fruit fell on him. And that place, that tree and that place is like a pilgrimage place for scientists. So, people go there and they try to get inspiration for their scientific research over there.
And yes, it is the brilliance of Newton that he observed simple thing like a fruit falling and from there he postulated theory of gravity. This brilliance is accepted over there. At the same time, that brilliance is based on some assumption.
The assumption is, what made this fruit fall? The assumption there is that fruits don’t fall by chance. There is some order to nature and that order is what we are trying to understand. Now, why should there be any order in nature at all? If we consider the materialistic worldview, which is basically atheistic because in materialistic worldview, there is no God, then everything emerged by unguided natural processes.
If everything emerged by unguided natural processes, so, what is the, if you wanted to atheistic autobiography of a universe or you the universe as this kind of atheistic perspective, you can say that 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. This is a very rational theory, isn’t it? So, not only it gave rise to everything, it is that if you consider F is equal to g m1 m2 upon r square, what is this? The law of gravity.
Now, if you consider division, multiplication, square, these things, they don’t exist, they don’t exist directly in nature. We may take natural objects, we may subtract them, we may add them and multiply them, but the idea of squaring a number, that is a human mental construct. Or further if we go, we have integral calculus, we have imaginary numbers, these are ideas which have come up from the human mind.
So, why should something out there, nature out there, why should it work in a way that the human mind can understand? And not only understand, but understand in terms of language. So, to illustrate this example, to illustrate this point, let us consider that suppose we are lost, and when we are lost we need to find a way back and suddenly from the wind some, some paper just comes flying by. And on that paper we find there are some directions written and those directions are written in language that we can understand and those directions are all the directions we need to go home.
And you ask me, where did this paper come from? First of all, the paper may not have come to us, when the paper came to us, it could have been written in some other language that we didn’t know, or it could have contained some other directions also. So, how similarly we exist in this world, our minds think in a particular way and if our mind is a random result of unguided natural processes, the world out there is a result of random unguided natural processes, then why should there be a correlation between the way how our mind thinks and the way nature works? So, actually, it is because both nature and our mind, by our mind I refer to our intelligence, our thinking for capacity, both of these have been shaped by the same divine intelligence. So, God and science are not contradictory.
Rather, God is the explanation for the explainability of science. I’ll repeat this. God is the explanation for the explainability of science.
Why does science explain things? Eugene Wigner is a Nobel Laureate scientist and he says that the fact that nature obeys the laws of mathematics is a gift that we neither understand nor deserve. It is simply a gift that benefits us. We are we.
So, basically, if we look at the world in a truly scientific way, we’ll appreciate that the materialistic world view can’t even explain science. Some people say, is it scientific to believe in God? Actually, you can argue, is it scientific to believe in matter? Is it scientific to believe that material organisation of things will, random unguided forces will lead to the universe that is governed by the laws of nature? There is no reason for us to believe that it will happen like that. So, once I was debating with an atheist in UK, she said, actually, how can you believe in God? It requires so much faith.
So, yes, believing in God requires faith, but I said, believing in atheism requires even greater faith. Because at least, if we postulate the existence of God, there is a divine intelligent being, and from his intelligence, the organisation has come around in this world. But, if I don’t accept God, then what happens? Then I have to accept that nothing existed because of nothing, nothing exploded because of nothing, and then that gave rise to everything, and gave rise to everything in such a way that it’s all well organised in a way that our minds can comprehend.
So, science itself will become invalid if we accept an atheistic world. Science itself does not have a foundation. Why should science work at all? The foundation for science is that nature works according to certain laws.
But why should nature work according to certain laws? There is no explanation for that. That explanation is if nature is manifested from a divine being. So, to summarise what I spoke, I had to draw towards a conclusion.
I spoke today on the topic of sadhana and sadhya. Understanding where we are meant to go and what is the means by which we will go there. So, in that connection, I started by talking about how a little bit of the history of western intellectual history and say today there are so many different religions, so many different paths.
So, we will try to evaluate them rationally. So, traditionally, all religions had the idea there is some other world where we are meant to go and that’s where we’ll be happy. So, the Vedas, they don’t just give specific teachings, they give broad principles.
So, the karma marga, that can be the jnana marga and the bhakti marga. So, the jnana and bhakti margas, I’ll be talking a little later, but the karma marga is the idea that by making some changes, by changing things in this material world, we can make this world a happy place. So, one way to make the changes is through religion and the other way to make those changes is also through technology.
science, technically speaking, is also part of karma kanda. Science is not a part of jnana because you are not thinking about going beyond this world, thinking of making this world itself a happy place. So, originally people did religious practises and thought by that we can become happy either in this world or in heaven.
And their idea of heaven is also like a material place itself where we have material relationships and material bodies and we will have material happiness over there. But, as science progressed, initially, the initial scientists all believed in God and they thought we are looking at studying nature to understand God’s wisdom in fashioning nature. But, over a period of time, technology started making things better in this world.
People started feeling that why do we need any other world and paradise over there. We will make this world into paradise through technology. But, the result of their idea is that although we have a lot of technology, people have tremendous mental health problems because we cannot be satisfied simply at the material level in life.
And then, I discussed about how in the because of this idea that science looks for natural explanation for natural phenomena. So, it led to the rejection of any supernatural, anything spiritual. But, not only spiritual science doesn’t just look at natural things, it looks at measurable natural things.
So, even emotions and experiences, they also can’t be studied much by science. So, it looks only at numbers and the correlation between various numbers through equations. The study is a fragment of reality.
But, because this fragment of reality is highlighted, so, religion started to become a subjective idea. You believe in this, you believe in that, whatever you want to believe in. And then, we discussed about which religion would be rationally intelligible.
So, because the Abrahamic religions reject the idea of reincarnation, so, rationally they can’t explain how is God loving. If God gives only one chance through one teacher, then God is not really loving, because what about those people who don’t get that chance through their teacher. So, then they discussed about why are these religions not so rational, because they evolved or emerged through a historical situation wherein there is not much philosophical discussion.
The Old Testament is basically about God’s people and their activities. The New Testament is about Jesus’ life and activities and the instructions given by the prophet of Jesus. And then, the Quran is primarily revelations, no question answer, no philosophical revelation, just revelations coming one after another at different times and eventually brought together by the followers of Muhammad.
So, in contrast, if you look at the Bhagavad Gita, the Bhagavatam, there are sages who are sitting systematically and having philosophical discussions. Abundant scope for question answers are there. So, that’s why there’s much more rational explanation available.
Then I went back to science. I talked about, so if broadly speaking, I choose the material world view or the spiritual world view. So, spiritual world view, let’s look at what is rational.
And the material world view, if you take, actually, the material world view is not rational. Because, in the materialistic world view, science itself has no rationale. Why should they have any order and especially order that correlates with each other.
By understanding this, we can recognise that actually, it is not just belief in God that requires faith, it is belief in materialism also requires faith. And that requires greater faith. But there are so many complex phenomena, so many laws, how did all of them emerge? Therefore, from a rational perspective, choosing a spiritual world view and choosing a broad-minded path to a spiritual world view, that is much more rational than choosing a materialistic world view or choosing a narrow-minded religious ideology.
So, we’ll continue in the future session. Are there any questions or comments at this point? Yes. Thank you for such a detailed explanation regarding the holistic view of religions in our society.
I had one other question that you mentioned in the beginning regarding the primary activities, primary qualities and secondary qualities. Primary qualities regarding the seeing the person from outside, this 10% grade, 12% age band. Professor Astral also talked about the quality of Krishna in the seeing.
So, should we consider that the Pitampara reflects some higher reality also and all these paraphernalia of Krishna represents something higher other than the primary qualities which we are discussing. So, Krishna’s personal attributes described in the Bhagavad Gita are higher than me. for Krishna, all his attributes are integral and eternal to him.
There will be some story why Krishna wears a peacock feather, there might be somebody writing some explanation about how Krishna plays the flute. Those are all explanations which are meant to relish rasa. Krishna is God and he is supremely independent.
He is fully independent. Why is Krishna Gopal? Why is Krishna not? Why does people in the west love dogs? So, why is Krishna Gopal? Why is not Krishna Ashwapal? Ashwapal is a protector of dogs. Or why is Krishna Ashwapal? The protector of horses.
Krishna has choice. Krishna of course protects all living beings. But he has his personality.
So, the specifics about Krishna’s personality, some bhakti teachers, some others may come up with some explanations for them. But, it is not because of that Krishna is like this. Krishna is eternally like that and for relishing rasa, you might have some other explanations of that also.
But, Krishna is himself a person with his own supreme freedom and he chooses to live and act in a particular way and devotees relish that. So, there is no, I would say there is a higher explanation, something beyond Krishna to explain that. Rather, we just understand that all these specific features reflect Krishna’s distinctive, attractive personality.
And, we might have some explanations for this. But, our acharyas have not gone into symbolic explanations of Krishna’s attributes because they are not, they seem to, they often tend to minimise Krishna’s personality and think that the symbolism is more important. No, but Krishna himself is the highest reality.
Any other questions? Yes. Where is the mic? Yeah. Q. There is a question.
There are so many religions and following a particular religion, path of particular religion gives the same result as following a certain religion. So, how long to reach that? This is one of my first questions. My second question is that… One question.
No, one question. So, how do we follow all religions here the same path? Well, there are three broad ideas about religion. You could call it exclusivism, pluralism and inclusivism.
Exclusivism means my religion is the only true religion. And only by following this my religion has exclusive rights to God. They say some cricket match is going on and some channel may say.
Exclusively on our channel. So, these religions say God is exclusively in our religion only. No other religion.
So, that is exclusivism. That I said is narrow minded. So, if you have a pendulum, one extreme of the pendulum is exclusivism.
But if you go to the other extreme, there is pluralism. Pluralism means all religions are right. So, now this can seem very broad minded.
It can seem to promote tolerance. But actually it promotes not tolerance but importance. Importance means if all religions are right, then what is wrong? Logically speaking also, if all paths are right, then among all paths there is one path which says only my path is right.
So, if all paths are right, then even the path that says only my path is right is also right. And if only my path is right, then all paths can’t be right. So, this idea is, did you get this? This is self contradictory.
So, if somebody says all paths are right, then among all paths, one path is only my path is right and all paths are wrong. So, then if all paths are right, then this path is also right. But if this path is right, then that path cannot be right.
That simply cannot be right. So, if A is true, then B has to be true. But if B is true, then A can’t be true.
So, it becomes like that. So, pluralism is logically contradictory. It’s like, earlier I said, you have the example of, there is a mountain, there are different paths up the mountain.
So, these different paths, they all have something in common. They are all taking us up the mountain. But if somebody says, okay, I am standing here, any path from here, anywhere it goes, it will all take me to the top of the mountain.
That is not true. You have to have objective criteria to know whether you are going up the mountain or not. So, one objective criteria one could say is, okay, how close will I have come to the peak? Or how much height I have gone up? If I am just going on the flat terrain, then I am not going up the mountain.
So, the pluralist idea is, it sounds broad-minded, but it is said that you should be open-minded, but don’t be so open-minded that your brain falls out. We have to have some analytical skill. It’s like when you want to eat food, we have to open our mouth so that we eat food.
But in order to eat that food, we also have to close our mouth. If I just keep my mouth open and never close it, I will not be able to eat my food. So, similarly, we have to open our minds to understand things.
But after opening our mind, we have to come to some understanding. And hold on to that understanding. If you are only open-minded, you will not understand anything at all.
So, the more correct understanding is inclusivism. Inclusivism means there is one path with multiple levels of that path. And there is one purpose.
So, all the people who are trying to go up the mountain, they are all trying to go up the mountain, they have one purpose to reach the top. But whether all paths are equally comfortable going up to the top, whether all paths actually take up to the top, sometimes we may go half way to the top, and then there might be so many barriers, that it is practically impossible to go further up. So, that is something which has to be seen individually.
The purpose of all paths is to get to the top. Not all paths, all paths everywhere, but up the mountain. So, the objective criteria, how do you know that you are going to go up? Two things.
Spiritual attachment and material detachment. If somebody by going up a path is going to the higher spiritual consciousness, and they should be becoming spiritually attached, and they should be becoming materially detached. They should be becoming not so concerned about the many pleasures and promises of this world.
We live more balanced, responsible, but detached lives. Not infatuated with worldly things. So, the inclusivist idea is that we have to have objective criteria.
Prabhupada told us that the purpose of all religions is to develop love for God. So, if love for God is developed, then it’s valid. If love for God is not developed, then we can’t say that all paths are right.
So, it’s like, if you go to an engineering college, if somebody says, somebody comes from say IIT Mumbai, and he says, only my college is an engineering college. Anybody who goes to any other engineering college, they are all bogus. You say, who gave your college monopoly on engineering? You say that.
At the same time, it’s like saying, only my college is an engineering college. But pluralism is what? Every building everywhere is an engineering college. Well, obviously not.
How do you know something is an engineering college? There are criteria. What are the facilities you have? What are the faculties you have? What are the kind of companies who come and get the degrees? Who are your products? There are objective criteria. So, based on that, we can evaluate.
So, what is the kind of philosophical understanding that is provided? What are the calibre of the people you are practising? What is the calibre of the saints of your tradition who are spiritually advanced? What is the conception of God? What is the rational explanation to support system for giving people intellectual conviction? So, you have to look at these criteria. And based on that, you have to take a decision. It’s not that all paths will take us all the way to the same destination.
All spiritual paths, broadly speaking, may be intended for the same destination. But whether they take us to that destination, that is something which has to be evaluated. Okay.
Yeah. Yes, sir. Come.
Sir, as it is said that law created us for its internal. So, my question is that law for its internal might have only created internal potency, but does not need to create marginal potency, which might make a wrong choice not to love the law, but to use the law. Okay.
If the law created us for its enjoyment, and equally simply created internal potency, why did they create external marginal potency, which could make a wrong choice? First of all, Krishna did not create us. We are all co-eternal with Krishna. There is no such time as when Krishna existed and we didn’t exist.
It’s not like parents create a child, so like that Krishna created us. That way, when we use the word creation, we use it for material creation. And we use it for the material body.
So, our material bodies are created at a particular time. Material world is created at a particular time, but Krishna does not create us. So, in that sense, we are co-eternal with Krishna.
Now, the question could be that, could Krishna have made us in such a way that we will never misuse our free will? Well, that means, he doesn’t give us free will. If there is free will, what is the meaning of saying you are free, but you cannot do this? It’s like say, a boy wants to propose to a girl. Boy offers a rose, please marry me.
The girl says no. Boy takes out a gun, marry me. You are free to say no, but you say no, I will shoot you.
That’s not freedom, isn’t it? So, love requires free will. And even the internal potency has free will. Sometimes Krishna wants to be with Radha Rani, Radha Rani doesn’t want to be with Krishna.
And Radha Rani walks away, Krishna chases after her. So, Radha Rani has her free will. So, free will is always there.
Now, some of us, we misuse our free will. It’s up to us. Many of you in future will become parents.
Sometimes when children don’t obey their parents, parents become very frustrated. But, how many parents would think, I don’t want a child, I just want a robo who will always obey me. There is no joy in raising a robo.
So, free will always comes with the possibility of misusing of free will. But that is something which each of us has to responsibly choose from. So, we are eternally existing and our purpose of our existence is the reciprocation of love.
And the reciprocation of love requires the existence of free will. And the very nature of the existence of free will means, there is possibility of misusing it. Some souls misuse it, some don’t.
So, they misuse it, they gradually learn. And then they also come back on the right path. Any case of confusion where we see, just to violate one’s happiness, to form the world system there? Can we say that the world is like a programmed algorithm of numbers? It’s like in computers, we have two numbers through which, two digits, through which full variation can provide us so many things.
Actually, numbers are one feature of reality. In philosophy, there is a whole question, do numbers exist? Do numbers exist? What do you mean by that? I can say that there is a count. There is one apple, two apples, three apples.
So, I can say these apples are three. But, so three is a count which I give to these apples. Or say, I can say there are 75 of you over here.
75 is a count I give to you. But, does 75 exist as an entity in nature? Separate from a count ascribed to someone or from a concept in our brain? You are getting my question? This is a serious philosophical question. Actually, in the materialistic world view, the existence of numbers itself is a very complicated question.
So, having said that, as far as the world being programmed. So, numbers are, whether numbers themselves are a foundational reality, distinct reality, apart from a count ascribed by a conscious observer. You say, all of you 75 may be exist, there may be 75 apples in a big basket.
But, unless there is somebody who is going to count it, is 75 as a number existing independent of a conscious observer? No, the conscious observer will observe it as an account. So, the conscious observer is a fundamental reality required to process numbers. So, numbers themselves cannot be the foundational reality.
Is this point clear? So, now let me complete this point. Now, with respect to the algorithmic… So, computers can do a lot of things. But, computers cannot experience emotions.
The computer may defeat a chess grandmaster. The chess grandmaster will be depressed. But, the computer will not be jumping in joy.
Computer doesn’t even understood that I won. It will say, OK, I defeated you. The computer does not experience the excitement of playing, the thrill, the suspense of what is going to happen next, and the joy of winning.
It doesn’t experience anything. So, the consciousness is a non-numerical reality. In fact, numbers get a reality because of consciousness.
So, how you said that now going from the point of algorithm or a programme. Is this world programmed by God? Even if you don’t consider numbers, but otherwise is it programmed? Krishna says that this world is programmed in terms of causes and effects. A person does A, the result B will be there.
Somebody does this, this result will be there. But, which cause we choose to actuate, that is up to us. If we choose a particular path, a particular result will come.
Like say, if I come to a crossroad. Then, if I take this turn, I will go here. If I take that turn, I will go there.
So, the road is designed. So, in that sense, there is some programming. But, which turn I choose on that road, that is up to me.
So, the programming is in terms of the overall terrain, the overall trajectory. But, which turn I take within that terrain or trajectory, that is up to me. So, in that sense, if we use the word programming to say that we don’t have free will, that is not true.
We do have free will. But, based on our past use of free will, past use or misuse of free will, we may be pushed towards particular directions. An alcoholic may be pushed towards drinking.
But, alcoholic can choose also not to drink. So, in that sense, there is, we could say that our body and mind are like programmed machines. But, we ourselves are distinct from the body and the mind.
And, we can choose to accept the programming and go along with it. Or, we can choose to resist and change the programming. I may be a short tempered person and that’s my brain wiring.
I just explore when things go wrong. But, I have a capacity to change myself. It’s gradual, it’s incremental, but it’s definitely possible.
So, in that sense, our bodies are programmes, are programmed machines. But, we ourselves are the possessors of those machines. And, we can reprogram those machines.
Does that answer your question? Yeah. Raoji, why are the numbers transcendental numbers like e and pi? I wonder if we have a mathematical explanation of this word. Okay.
So, why are numbers like say e or pi coming in the explanation of this word? First of all, I wouldn’t say the numbers are transcendental. Because, numbers themselves as I said is a complex philosophical concept. But, numbers can be used for transcendental purposes.
But, numbers intrinsically are not transcendental. But, you could say that the fact that certain specific numbers come up in the postulation of explanations for how things occur in this world that indicates the presence of a divine intelligence. Srimas Ramanujan was probably India’s greatest mathematician.
And, he said that an equation for me has no meaning unless it represents a part of God. So, why is e equal to m c square? Why is equations which sometimes involve numbers like pi or circumference when we take of a circle, whatever. So, why are these there? They are there because there is a higher intelligence which made them equal.
Einstein discovered equality. Einstein did not make that equality. So, the presence of certain figures which come repeatedly we could say they are on the intellectual exploration of the universe they are like telltale clues pointing to a higher intelligence.
Like somebody is doing a treasure hunt. And, they find some clue. Oh, you should go like this.
You should go here. Go here. So, they are like clues.
They are telltale clues which point to a higher intelligence which is organised in this world. Who has the mic? Why can’t we take the possibility that we could be created by a superior civilisation? Considering that we were driven by God. Ok.
So, can we say that we were created by some superior civilisation instead of God? Yeah, when it is a we consider a possibility that is definitely a possibility. At the same time that only raises the question further where did that superior civilisation come from? So, we have to in our historical research we want to have some foundational explanation. The idea that we were created by some advanced civilisation is not entirely incompatible with the Vedic teachings also.
The Vedic teachings explain that there are multilevel cosmos. And, there are higher beings like Brahma and Devatas who are created first. And, from them we are created.
So, we could say that we are created by a higher civilisation. It is slightly different from say books like Fingerprint of the Gods talk about. We say that there is a higher civilisation which has populated the earth or whatever.
So, that is true in one sense. But, that is not the ultimate explanation. How you may say that ok then if you say God created then who created God? That question can always come.
That is a fair enough question. But, when we ask the question who created God? That indicates a lack of understanding of the concept of God. God, the very word God means Sarva Karana Karana.
The cause of all causes. There are contingent beings and there are non-contingent beings. Contingent beings means? Contingent means conditional.
So, the being whose existence is contingent on other things. So, our existence is contingent on the existence of our grandparents or parents and grandparents. If our parents didn’t exist we would not exist.
Our existence is contingent on the existence of oxygen in the atmosphere. Water on the planet. So, our existence is contingent.
The very definition of God says that God is a supreme non-contingent being. His existence is not contingent on anything else. Sarva Karana Karana.
Now, you can have a philosophical discussion separately whether there is such a non-contingent being exists or not. That’s a different question. But, the very definition of God is that he is a non-contingent being.
That he is the supreme cause of all causes. Therefore, to ask who created God is like asking who made a circle circular. A circle by definition is circular.
Isn’t it? Nobody has to make a circle circular. Somebody can say I made a figure that is a circle or that is circular. But, if I say a circle then it is by definition circular.
So, just as circularity is an intrinsic defining attribute of a circle. Similarly, non-contingence. That means non-dependence on anyone else.
Not being sourced by anyone else. That is a defining characteristic of God. So, this chain of cause-effects.
Where does it start from? Suppose a child reads a novel for the first time. And then after reading the novel, enjoying the novel. Okay, this person, this person’s son.
This person, this person’s daughter. This person is from here. This person is from here.
After reading the whole book the child comes to know that there is an author. And the child starts reading the whole book again. Oh! Where is the author in the book? It’s a book of fiction.
The child may read the novel as many times as they want. They will not find any author over there. Why not? Because the author exists in a different genre.
The author created the storyline. The author created the timeline. The author created the characters.
But the author is not present as one of the characters. As the author is not present as one of the, in any of the genealogies in the fictional. So, similarly, God by definition exists outside the fabric of space and time.
That is the very meaning of his being transcendental. So, we can either choose that the cause of all causes is a transcendental being, God. Who started off the chain of causes in this world.
Who set up the system of cause and effect in this world. Or we can choose some other explanation like say an advanced civilisation. But the advanced civilisation in Indian civilisation, where did that come from? So, we do not reject the idea that humans came from advanced civilisation.
But we just say that it is not a complete explanation. It is a possible explanation. But it does not give us the complete understanding.
Because it does not go to the foundational source. Spiritual world also exists beyond time and space. Yes.
Can we, with our knowledge of physical world, can we understand what is physical world? Is it a planet or something? Ok. With our knowledge of the, with our current knowledge of the physical world, can we understand the spiritual world? There are three things which we could infer. Ultimately, spiritual world we have to understand either through revelation, which is told in the scriptures.
Or we can understand it through inference. Through inference what can we understand? Say, if somebody, some child has been living in Africa. A small tribe with no phone, no internet, no connection with the rest of the world.
And suddenly that child goes to his mother and says, Mamma, mamma, I want a pizza. What is the first thing the mother will ask? What will she ask? Yeah, where did you hear about a pizza? Because nowhere in the environment will the child know anything about a pizza. So, if you come to this room and suddenly you find a gold necklace lying over here.
Or a gold ring lying over here. Look around, where does this gold ring come from? Nobody is wearing gold over here. So, something is out of place, it immediately raises the question, What is this first thing’s place? Where did this come from? So, if we consider the world around us, everything is temporary.
Even huge mountains, they also emerge at particular time. They are also temporary. When I was in New York, we passed by the place where the Twin Towers was there.
And when the Twin Towers collapsed, it was not just the fall of a building. It was the fall of what it represented. The power and prosperity of the western world.
And lot of people got security by looking at that magnificent edifice. So, when it fell, it created a permanent scar on the American psyche. And it is that even the Twin Towers is not eternal.
So, nothing in this world is eternal. And yet, all of us have a strong desire to live eternally. All of us want to live on and on and on.
Even materialists are thinking how we can prolong our life and live forever. So, if nothing around us lasts forever, where does our desire to live forever come from? It is as unusual as finding a gold particle in a stone house. Or as unusual as an African boy talking about a pizza.
So, this desire to live forever does not come from our body. Because the body is temporary. It comes from our core, which is the soul.
The soul is eternal and then where does it belong to? So, you could infer that there is an eternal world from which that soul has come. Now, another inference which you could make is that we have certain core desires. We may have some superficial desires.
I want this phone, I want this car. But we have core desires. We want to love, we want to have relationships.
We want to have reciprocation of reciprocations. So, these desires are very innate to our being. So, where do they come from? The desire for eternal life is innate to our being.
Similarly, the desire to love and be loved is also innate to our being. So, then you can also infer that in that eternal realm, there will be eternal love. And for eternal love, there will be objects.
For people, we will be reciprocating that love. And we all want to love someone who is very attractive. Attraction can be beautiful, they can be wealthy, they can be powerful.
So, where does our longing to love someone attractive come from? It’s a very deep inner longing. That points to a supreme all attractive being who is the eternal supreme object of our life. So, broadly, we can infer the existence of an eternal world, the existence of eternal love and the existence of a supreme attractive eternal object of love.
But beyond that specifics, that is not a matter of inference. That is a matter of revelation. That God exists is something which can infer by logic.
But that God is a blueish black cowherd boy who wears a peacock feather and plays a flute. That is not something which can come by inference. That requires revelation.
Thank you. Any other questions? Yes. How can we explain UFOs and unidentified flying objects? There are three main things here.
First is, there are indications within the scientific world view that the current conceptions of science are not complete. That there is more to reality beyond what we can perceive. And there are many phenomena which point to this.
As I said, science focusses primarily on physical reality and measurable aspects of physical reality. And then, it just doesn’t talk much about anything beyond that. So, UFOs are sighted by different people.
Generally, this is treated with a lot of scepticism. People have imagined it. Indian abductions or injections or alien infiltrations.
But there are prominent Ivy League scientists who have done research on this. And there is well documented evidence for those who are open minded. So, I won’t go specifically into the evidence for UFOs.
I will focus on the explanation for UFOs. So, what we understand is that the universe is multilevel. And there is life at various levels within the universe.
Prabhupada, your simple reason. From current conceptions of the universe, they say life is present only on the earth and not on other planets. Now, this is a valid inference when taken from a particular world view.
From the materialistic world view, we have the idea that we are carbon based beings who require oxygen and water and a particular range of temperature to live. So, when scientists or cosmologists look at the universe, how do they know whether there is life on other planets or not? They look for these things. Is there enough oxygen? Is there enough water? Is the temperature suitable? So, all that scientists can say honestly is that life as we know it doesn’t exist on other planets.
Not life doesn’t exist on other planets. Because we are assuming life as we know it. There is a prominent scientist who has said that now scientists claim to have studied the moon and they say there is no life on the moon.
But he said, have we gone under the surface of the moon and explored? There are so many beings which exist inside the earth and these are called as extremophiles. Extremophiles are living beings who thrive in extreme conditions, extreme heat or extreme cold. In the deep depth of the oceans, scientists have found aquatic beings.
They take in nitrogen dioxide and live based on that. We need oxygen, they don’t need oxygen. They just take nitrogen dioxide and live by that.
There is a wide variety of life forms even within our experience. So, we understand the universe is very complicated and there are different kinds of beings who exist in different areas of the universe and some of them may come on this earth. So, Prabhupada says in a purport that the interplanetary travel can be possible in three ways.
One is through transmigration. We die in this world and we go to another world. Second is through mystic power.
Like some yogis may go from one planet to another planet. Like say Durvasa Muni went when he was afflicted by the Suryasana Chakra. Or he uses mechanical spacecrafts, mechanical devices.
For example, when Rama was fighting with Ravana, at that time from the heaven a chariot came to help him fight on equal terms with Ravana. When Arjuna had gone to the heavens, from there a chariot came with Maitreya in the chariot and he took him to heavens. So, these three are possible.
So, now the spacecrafts or what we call UFOs, they could be spacecrafts coming from living beings at another level of the cosmos. So, we are not evaluating here the validity of specific sightings. Some specific sightings may be hoaxes, some specific sightings may be true.
But the universe itself is very complicated and there are different living beings that exist in different universes. So, Dutta Karmaprabhu, Dr. Michael Primo, he has written a whole book about this. No, he has written a book Human Devolution.
And another scientist Richard L. Thompson, he has written a book called Alien Identities. In that book Alien Identities, he talks extensively about how the various sightings of UFOs, they correlate with descriptions of the Vahanas that are there in the Vedic literature. For example, I think on YouTube there is a video about if you search for Alien Identities, Dr. Michael Primo, you will find there is a video which talks about how Shalva was a demon who had attacked Dwarka.
And he had something like a spacecraft. It was like a floating plane. It would appear at one place, disappear, again appear, again disappear, move very fast, suddenly stop moving, suddenly change course.
He is trying to attack Dwarka. And Krishna and others defended Dwarka from that. So, that description is very similar to many other descriptions of the UFO spacecraft that are talked about, UFO flying saucers or whatever talked about.
So, I would say that from our perspective, if from the Shastric perspective, if particular sightings are true, we are not saying all sightings are true, they will have to be evaluated on merit. But if certain sightings are true, there is a robust explanation for them within the Vedic world view. But there is no explanation for them within the materialistic world view.
Or even in the world view of other religions. Because in other religions, the idea is that if Jesus is the only way to God, then life on no other planet will ever be able to go back to God. Because Jesus has not come over there.
So, they think life is only on this earth. So, they have a very, you could say, geocentric view of the universe. But our world view is not like that.
Any other questions? So, we will stop here. And we will continue in the afternoon. And if you have any further questions, which you would like to write them down and give, that’s also perfectly fine.
Or we can continue question and answers the way we have right now. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.