Understanding the compassionate intent of the Vedas 1 – Are the Vedas agnostic?

[Bhagavatam class at ISKCON, Sydney, Australia]

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
About how the Vedic body of knowledge has to be understood by its intent, not just its content. So, sometimes a hospital might seem like a torture chamber if we look at the surgical war or if we look at certain, say, places where there’s some shock therapy being given.
As to a school book might seem contradictory, mathematics occupies saying 3-5 is not possible, and literature says 3-5 is possible. So, an author might be quoting the purvapaksha, the opposing argument in a polemic book or apologetic book. And if that is what is quoted, then the author will be misrepresented.
The author may be shown as saying that they are saying the opposite of what they are actually intending to say. So, we have to look not just the content, but also the intent to understand what a particular body of knowledge or a particular work is actually saying. So, the purpose of the Vedas is the elevation of consciousness from wherever people are to one level higher.
And for that purpose, what do the Vedas do? They, the Vedas themselves, we could have, they have karmakant, they have jnanakant and they have bhakti. And karmakant, the primary thrust is to elevate people’s consciousness from where they are upwards. So, how adjusting things materially can make life better.
So, either in the next world or, which is also we can say heaven, which is a material world, or in this world. So, people in the past were more attracted to religious paradise because they didn’t have much hope or promise of enjoying, of improving this world. Because technology now promises to improve this world.
So, people want a technological paradise rather than a religious paradise. And transhumanism promises to solve the same problem which religion claims to solve, ultimately, old age, disease, death, and birth. So, if we consider, we don’t look at the mechanisms of how technology seeks to achieve something and how religion was achieving it.
If you look at the intent, both are similar. The mechanisms will be different. So, somebody might, by quoting a particular verse in the Vedas, say the Vedas are agnostic or atheistic.
Because they don’t talk about, there is a verse which says, is there ultimate truth existing or not existing, who knows. So, if the focus is how to improve this world, then what exists beyond the world is not very, is not a thrust. Science is functionally non-theistic.
Because it looks for material explanations of material phenomena. You saw the fruit falling, it didn’t say that God made the fruit fall. That was the ultimate goal.
But I want to know the mechanism by which the fruit fell. So, that’s why scientists, some may study science and become theistic by the study of nature and some may become atheistic. Those who become atheistic, they don’t actually reject God.
They replace God with nature or evolution or some other idea which they consider is greatly powerful. But the point is, the Vedas, when they are focusing on how to improve this world, their thrust is not, what is the nature of the ultimate reality beyond this world. So, that’s why it might seem that some passages might be non-theistic, might be agnostic.
But overall purpose of the Vedic body of knowledge is to raise people’s consciousness from where they are ultimately to Krishna. But they are like a long winding series of stairs where from one level you may just see to the end of that level. And so, for people who are irreligiously materialistic, the Vedas show only one series of stairs.
Become religiously materialistic. Those who think that that level of the stairs is the ultimate purpose of the stairs. They are mistaken.
And the Bhagavatam counters them by revealing the highest purpose of the stairs which is to ultimately know Krishna and love Krishna. When the intermediate is mistaken to be the ultimate, then the intermediate becomes the enemy of the ultimate. So, how the intermediate and the ultimate work harmoniously, how from becoming, from elevating people to become religiously materialistic to ultimately becoming religiously spiritualist, tangible spiritualist, that we’ll discuss in tomorrow’s session.
Thank you very much. Do we have time for questions?