Spirituality in the age of Science (Science – Modern)

[Online Wednesday feast class for Boston devotees from Seattle]

Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so thank you very much for being here today evening here and I apologise that I somehow missed the flight and I couldn’t be there with you my thanks to Manmali Pandit Rao for accommodating this arrangement of a Skype talk and thanks especially to the devotees here in Seattle especially Namavrat Prabhu, the temple president here he has arranged everything so that I could address all of you on Skype today and so our topic is spirituality in the age of science so we are certainly in the age of science the fact that we are using so much technology and we will look at how science and spirituality sometimes they are thought to be contradictory or sometimes people feel that science has made spirituality redundant but we will discuss in this talk how both are important in our lives so we have a powerpoint presentation which I will share my screen here and you will notice the powerpoint presentation also over here that powerpoint is it here? it has to be here also for the Skype ok so the topic is do we need spirituality in an age of science so we are just arranging for the powerpoint actually we are also live streaming this on YouTube and there we have the powerpoint we just don’t have it right now here in a minute we will get it but I will start so Albert Einstein said that all the arts religions and sciences they are parts of the same human tree, they are the fruits of the same tree so can we go to the next slide so we are streaming this on YouTube also so I am sharing the screen let me know if you are able to see this ok ok so do we need all can you see this next slide religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree this is said by Albert Einstein this is the multifaceted nature of human intelligence and essentially he is acknowledging that actually all of these have roles, the same human intelligence that has led to such dazzling progress in technological field in the field of science that same human intelligence when it is used to study the natural world it leads to the development of it leads to development of science when it is used to experiment with the creative world that means we try to visualise recreate what is there in nature through our artistic imagination that leads to the arts and when we try to enquire what is beyond this world that time we come to the religions later on I will talk about the difference between religion and spirituality there is significant difference but at this point the difference between religion and spirituality that was not so much there when Einstein made this quote so when he is using the word religion he is actually referring to the spiritual side of life so these are all aspects of the same human person who is living in this world and who is doing various things now now there are some people who claim that science can provide all knowledge and that is called as scientism that is not actually science science is a tool for acquiring knowledge wherein people can observe the natural world and come to know things about the natural world so when science claims omniscience it becomes scientific imperialism or scientism that means when actually it is not science but when certain people they claim that through science we can know everything that is there to be known so science then that is not science actually that is scientism that is imperialism expanded in the name of science so now the idea that science can provide all knowledge about everything this is itself an unscientific idea because you consider science as something which is logical which gives us proof, which is objective which is verifiable but there is no scientific experiment or even scientific theory for that matter which can persuasively argue leave alone prove that science is the sole source of all knowledge so because science observes the world that is observable and tries to explain its behaviour in terms of the laws of mathematics but if there is something which is non observable, if there is something which is non material science just doesn’t take that into account. So if a person is inside a room and that person has never come out of the room and that person refuses to come out of the room and then that person says nothing exists outside this room how can you prove that? So science operates within the world of matter and it is phenomenally accurate within the world of matter but that does not mean that there is nothing outside the world of matter Now you may wonder how do we know that there is something non material existing at all? So let’s look at the quote of a prominent scientist here So at any time if you are not able to see or hear please let me know So here science, it has a tremendous scope its scope focusses and it also limits So here we have a quote of Nobel laureate Arvind Schrodinger physicist He says I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient It gives a lot of factual information puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart that really matters to us The same quote continues It cannot tell us a word about red and blue bitter and sweet physical pain and physical delight It knows nothing of beautiful and ugly good or bad God and eternity Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously Now this is not a science bachelor who is speaking against science This is a prominent scientist a Nobel laureate scientist He is honestly acknowledging the limitations of science Now let’s understand what he is saying Science cannot tell us a word about physical pain and physical delight The whole purpose one of the major purposes of medical science is to free people from pain and to restore them to health At the same time there is no scientific device that can measure pain If somebody has got a fracture we can’t put a do a x-ray and find out how much bone is cracked how much the bone is misaligned but we can’t know how much pain a person is going through Pain is an experienced reality All of us have experienced pain and none of us want to experience pain It is a reality but it is not quantifiable Because it is not quantifiable it is not measurable by science and yet it is real Science cannot tell us a word about red and blue What does that mean? That means that suppose we are using photoshop or some other software to make some good artwork maybe cover page of a book or a poster or whatever at that time we will see that the computer can tell us very precisely Ok here I have 53% red 23% green 17% yellow and 5% this colour like that it can tell us everything but it cannot tell us whether that picture looks good or not whether that picture is pleasing or it is jarring That is something which we experience individually We all experience something as beautiful, something as not beautiful but that is not something which is measurable or knowable by science So the point of stating this is simply to recognise that there is a lot in the real world around us that is real for us At the same time that is not quantifiable through science Again the point of this is not to criticise The point is to just objectively recognise that science has tremendous power in a particular area but that does not mean that it has knowledge in all areas It’s like say if you have a very good investment consultant and that person whatever advice they give you you invest accordingly and your stocks just rise Now today morning you wake up and you have a very severe stomachache Now would you consult your stock investor? Now he is a stock investing expert whatever advice he has given is perfect till now but you would not consult an investment expert when we have a stomachache These are two different fields of knowledge So science is phenomenally powerful in its field of knowledge At the same time we may say I don’t believe in anything non-material anything spiritual Fine at this stage but even in our day to day experience there is pleasure, pain there is red, blue there is sweet, sour These are things which are experienced they are realities but they are not measurable through science So there is much in the world today that science cannot tell us about and this implies therefore that actually there is more to reality than what science tells us Now so whenever we talk about anything spiritual this is the next slide now people ask the question is that scientific? Is the idea of the soul, is the idea of God, is it scientific? So now the question comes up that there are actually different kinds of evidences So if you want to know what is the time and one person tells us it is 345 another person tells us it is 645 then we there is an objective way to know what is the time The way time is an objectively measurable reality and we can know the way to know what is the right time is different from if you ask for evidence does he love me? Does she love me? Love is also a reality at the same time we cannot quantify love Love is a reality and we would like to really know whether somebody loves us or not if you want to have a long term relationship with them we have to decide how we are going to relate with them also but we can’t expect the same kind of proof for all things for the time of the day and for whether somebody loves us or not they are two different realities both are real, knowing about them is important but we don’t use the same method we don’t use the same form of logical inference or proving for knowing these things So there are different forms of knowledge and there are different ways of knowing in these different forms of knowledge So going to the next slide So is there something which is material, which is real but science does not know about that is Consciousness this is Nick Hurworth in quantum reality beyond the new physics he writes, science biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness it is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness we simply have no such theories at all about all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head rather than the foot this is again a scientist he is telling that we have no theories about consciousness actually there are many materialists who try to explain consciousness but actually they are not explaining consciousness they are explaining away consciousness so what does it mean explaining away consciousness going to the next slide now somebody may say, some people actually consciousness does not exist at all yes what is the basis for saying that actually we cannot measure consciousness in terms of mathematically quantified, we can measure brain waves and by the presence or absence of brain waves, researchers may say whether somebody is conscious or not but consciousness itself cannot be measured so there is no scientifically measurable proof for consciousness yet, it is the consciousness is the basis of all measurable proofs if there had been no consciousness we would not be able to measure anything we would not be able to prove anything and there would be no science at all so consciousness is the fundamental reality that enables us to know all other realities some people may say, no no this consciousness we think of, this is the next slide consciousness is just an illusion, it doesn’t exist however if somebody argues like that the fact is that even the denial of consciousness is an affirmation of consciousness what does it mean if somebody says that, I am not conscious, I don’t have any consciousness now to say that I don’t have any consciousness we need consciousness if a computer is there if a table is there, if a glass is there, it can’t say I don’t have consciousness because the very denial of consciousness requires consciousness because denial is also an act of consciousness so to say that I have no consciousness or consciousness doesn’t exist, it is a self contradictory statement it’s a statement like somebody saying I can’t speak a single word of English well, you have already spoken 8 words so to say that I can’t speak a single word of English, we have to have knowledge of English, so the very sentence disproves itself so like that those who say consciousness doesn’t exist they themselves have consciousness consciousness requires is itself an affirmation of consciousness now why are we talking about consciousness right now, because consciousness is a fundamental reality which although it is not measurable through science, it is real and it is the basis of all other realities moving on to the next slide now Einstein himself was profoundly conflicted by the implications of the materialistic worldview if we are just chemical robots, then we have no free will, what does this mean? that actually if there is nothing non-material to us then we are all just made of biochemicals, that is all that there is and we are basically robots, machines this is a machine works according to certain programmes certain digital programmes you could say we are we are robots, biological robots who work according to some neural programmes, some programmes in our brain now if a robot goes and hits someone a robot goes and kills someone we won’t take the robot to law court and sue it because the robot has no free will so if there is nothing non-material to us, if we are simply just chemical robots, if matter is all that exists, then that means the matter simply follows laws so for example now if I have this pouch and if I drop it when I drop it the pouch has no free will whether to fall or not, it is simply going to fall, matter simply works according to the laws of nature and it has no free will whether to work accordingly or not, whatever is the law the prompting, it will just act accordingly so if we are, if there is nothing non-material to us, if matter is all that we are made up of then we too are simply products of matter controlled by the laws of nature by laws of nature we refer to the laws of physics specifically and we have no free will so you know if I come to one of you and slap you on the face why did you slap me my genes told me to slap you and if I say my genes told me to slap you you may as well slap me back you may slap me back and say why did you slap me my genes told me to slap you so the result of the idea that we have no free will is profoundly counterintuitive and not only that as I said nobody could be held responsible for anything, there would be no justice no accountability Einstein himself was profoundly conflicted by this implication because he had to leave Germany when Jews were persecuted by the Nazis and the Nazis killed millions of Jews but if there is nothing non-material to us if we are simply material automatons, we are simply chemical robots then the Nazis are not responsible for the Holocaust their genes were programmed in that way and that’s why they killed now if a person murders someone if a person rapes someone, if a person abuses someone, can we say that they are not responsible all justice all order, all society would collapse if there were no acknowledgement of free will so free will is also a fundamental reality so material ends up by the denial of consciousness it will deny the free will also and the consequences are catastrophic at a social level at an individual level if somebody sticks to the idea that there is nothing non-material science is all that exists, all that is known by science is the only thing that exists matter is all that exists then even at an individual level, the consequences are quite grave most people in their lives, they dream that somebody should say with great intention I love you we all want to love and be loved this is one of the fondest aspirations of the human heart the millions of movies the millions of novels they all are centred around this theme of love but from the materialistic perspective what is the meaning of I love you I and you are simply biological robots so we all have no free will and then what is our love, the feeling of love, actually love is nothing in the materialistic world view it is just a surge of chemicals in our cranial cavity now is this all that there is that when a mother feels love for her baby, is what happening what is happening, is it that some chemicals are just rushing from one part of our brain to another is there nothing more to the deepest emotions that we cherish in our heart now we all can understand intuitively how irrational this is how limited and incomplete such an understanding of our personality of our emotions, of our aspirations is so now the point is this is the inevitable result that comes up if we indiscriminately accept a wholly materialistic world view going further is there any scientific evidence that there is something beyond matter so Dr.Wilder Penfield who is known as the father of neurosurgery, he wrote a book called the mystery of the mind and he actually is a Canadian neurosurgeon, he studied the human brain for almost four decades and he conducted a wide variety of experiments to try to figure out the relationship between brain and consciousness one of the experiments that he conducted was as follows now we all know that certain areas of the brain are connected to certain bodily functions so for example if a particular part of the brain is activated a particular part of the brain controls say the motor nervous system for say raising the hand and lowering the hand so he had a subject and he was observing the brain of the subject, I told the subject raise your hand the subject raised the hand he found that the particular part of the brain that got activated I told the subject lower your hand he put his hand down he found that that part of the brain had got deactivated now after this Dr. Penfield himself through electronic probes through electrodes basically he activated that part of the brain when that part of the brain got activated then the subject’s hand went up when the subject’s hand asked what happened subject said my hand went up did you raise your hand no I didn’t, you did then he deactivated that part of the brain the hand fell down then he asked what happened, he said my hand fell down, did you put your hand down no I didn’t, you did this is a simple experiment but its implications are profound to understand the implications let’s compare another example say I have a computer in front of me and near my computer I have a printer and then in my computer I have a print button and the print button is pressed the printing hand of the computer moves to and fro to and fro to and fro so now if I press the print button and the printing hand moves now somebody else can come and they can press the print button and even if the print button is pressed by them the printing hand will move so if we compare our hand with the printing hand and the particular area of the brain which controls the motor nervous system which controls the moving, rising and falling of the hand that is like the print button in the second case it was Dr. Penfield who pressed the print button, who activated that part of the brain in the first case who activated it who pressed the print button in the first case that is a question which has been unanswered and which is unanswerable Dr. Penfield decided to repeat this experiment by various means with some various alterations what he did was he repeated the same setup for rising and falling of the hand and he activated different parts of the brain and by activating these different parts of the brain he no part of the brain when activated ever gave the subject the feeling that I am raising my hand all the time the subject was saying I am seeing my hand being raised my hand is going up, my hand is falling down so after 40 years of study like this Dr. Penfield concluded that the brain is a computer but it is programmed by something that is outside itself so outside itself means that it is not material, it is not physical it is something else different from the body and the matter that it is made up of so science itself is pointing to a non-material reality as the inner activator that inner activator, the non-material reality is called as consciousness is called in the language of the Bhagavad Gita as the soul, the Atma and the consciousness is the energy of the Atma just as we have a source of light that source of light gives out light, similarly the soul radiates out consciousness and this non-material source of consciousness, we are on the next slide now so this the previous slide the non-material source of consciousness is we are not programmed machines, we are the owners of the programmable machines what this means is that our body is a machine it definitely is a programmed machine it’s like a computer is a programmed machine but we ourselves are not programmed machines, we ourselves are the owners and if we have a machine with a particular programming we can change the if we become expert enough we can change the programming, like that we can change the programming of our body in the machine we are different from it, we are the owners of programmable machines that’s why there is the possibility for all of us to change some of us may be lazy but from lazy habits we can become industrious, we can become hard working some of us may be short tempered but we can change and become more moderate in our temper some of us may be gluttonous but we can learn to control it, if we were simply programmed machines then there is no possibility of change at all, we would just be the way we are born, that is the way we are doomed to live and that is the way we are doomed to die so it’s a very pessimistic world view so actually whereas the materialistic view makes us just functions of the matter that makes up our bodies, the spiritual world view opens up the options for free will, it opens up the options for self improvement and that’s how the spiritual world view is an empowering world view, in the beginning I said I’ll talk about the relationship between spirituality and science so with those two slides I’ll conclude this talk so now can you see this, spirituality is like a higher dimensional science in science we have two limbs, theory and experiment similarly in spirituality we have two limbs there is philosophy and there is religion, so what does this mean, that the theoretical part in science the theoretical part what it does is it gives us the opportunity it gives postulates ok this is like this that is like that and the experiment enables us to verify it so when Newton saw the fruit falling he came up with a theory that ok there is a force of gravity and the experiments help him to verify it so similarly in spirituality there are two air fields, there is philosophy and there is religion philosophy tells us about the nature of reality so for example what all exists in reality that the components of reality the interactions of components all that are talked about in philosophy philosophy gives us theoretical postulates and religion is not meant to be just a set of rituals religion is actually meant to be a set of practises that enable us to verify the whatever is taught in the philosophy so for example the philosophy tells us that say you are not the body, you are the soul we all have at our core a spiritual essence which is who we really are now this is a philosophical postulate, now we may accept it, we may not accept it but religion gives us a set of practises by which we can evaluate so for example religion will tell us that if we are spiritual beings then by doing spiritual activities we can nourish ourselves spiritually when we nourish ourselves spiritually then we become elevated so by chanting Hare Krishna by practising kirtan, kirtan is something which nourishes our soul and this nourishment of our soul it brings us satisfaction and this satisfaction which we get through kirtan that is like the proof of the reality of the philosophy so in this way philosophy and religion both work together and in this way this is a science, the physical science or material science it brings about outer transformation what does spiritual science do? spiritual science brings about inner transformation so science can make things better spirituality can make people better science can make things better we have external things nowadays we see that as technology is advancing the machines are becoming smaller and smaller and smaller so for example there are weighing machines so weighing machines are becoming smaller and smaller and smaller but unfortunately people on those weighing machines are becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and the reason for this is that science can provide us a technology to make things smaller but science cannot provide us any pill for self control if a person is getting angry we can’t take a pill and cure anger yes if sometimes in a mental asylum people get angry then they are given a pill by which they are put to sleep, that the anger doesn’t go away, when they wake up the anger comes back again so science can make things better but we need spirituality to make people better, to make ourselves better so we all have selfish desires there is greed, there is anger there is possessiveness there is manipulative tendency, all these negative attributes which bring out the worst within us, they are curbed and cured by spiritual practises so spirituality it makes us better so Martin Luther King said that we have guided missiles and misguided men we have guided missiles and misguided men our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power so we need a balance of both for our society to be progressive we truly bring for progress to bring real happiness we can use science to operate and function in the outer world, we need spirituality to bring order in our inner world by which we can find lasting happiness let me summarise I spoke about the topic do we need spirituality in the age of science I started by talking about how Einstein said that arts religions and sciences are all the fruits of the same tree just the same intelligence directed in different directions so science is a method for acquiring knowledge but when some people use science as an ideology to claim that nothing exists except matter that leads to scientism we discussed Arvind Schrodinger’s quote he points out the limitations of science even from a material perspective that it can’t tell us about pain and pleasure, red and blue, sweet and sour these are experiences which we have internally that science cannot tell us about that then a fundamental reality which science cannot tell us about is consciousness that consciousness some people just try to explain that consciousness does not exist but even the denial of consciousness is an affirmation of consciousness we discussed how science points towards the existence of consciousness by Dr. Penfield’s experiment where the activator was outside the brain this understanding that we are at our core non-material that opens the possibility for free will for accountability and self-improvement Einstein was conflicted that if we are all material beings then the Nazis who caused the Holocaust are not responsible by the materialistic worldview, I love you that simply becomes two biological robots having a surge of chemicals in their brains, in their cranial cavities it makes life utterly meaningless so the spiritual worldview tells us that the source of consciousness is the Atma and we are not programmed machines we are the owners of programmable machines and we all can improve and how do we improve? Approaching spirituality is a higher dimensional science, just as science has theory and experiments, spirituality has philosophy and religion so philosophy and religion they both bring together the science of self-transformation and we can all learn science can make things better spirituality can make people better all the negative desires behaviours, attitudes that drag us down, they can be transformed, they can be purged from our consciousness by the practise of spirituality and thus science and spirituality can both be harmonised for our all-round development, not just external progress but also internal progress Thank you very much