What does sound travels to ether mean when science says ether doesn’t exist?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
Question. Bhagavatam says that sound propagates through ether, whereas modern science says that sound requires a medium to propagate. So, how do we reconcile the two? Answer.
The Vedic culture explains that sound exists at multiple levels, just like there is gross matter and subtle matter. So, similarly, there is subtle sound and there is gross sound. And in fact, beyond subtle sound, there is spiritual sound.
So, for example, when we chant the holy name, when we say the word Hare Krishna, now, we are speaking with our physical tongue and we are uttering a physical sound. But that is not all that there is to the sound of the holy name. And similar to sacred sounds like that.
So, when we talk about sound being propagated through ether, sound, it refers to subtler dimensions. In fact, the conception of ether which is there in modern science and which is apparently disproved by the Morrison-Morley experiment, that conception of ether stemmed from gross matter itself. That, okay, for propagation, we need a medium and therefore, there should be something which is the medium.
And they tried to check whether there is a medium. It’s not. But the Vedic conception of ether is quite different.
And it’s a subtler conception. And Siddhartha Prabhu in his books explains that that conception of ether is because it is the it is the subtlest of all the gross elements. So, perceiving it with our gross senses is almost impossible for us.
And the only understanding that we have is that which allows sound to propagate. Now, sound also has multiple levels to it. So, it is described that there are there are Para, Pashyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari.
So, actually Para is the transcendental consciousness. Pashyanti is the intellectual consciousness. Then Vaikhari is the Madhyama refers to the mental consciousness and Vaikhari refers to the physical consciousness.
What this means is that there are four states of consciousness. We know there is Jagrati, there is Swapna, there is Sushupti and there is Samadhi. So, corresponding to these four, there are four levels of sound.
So, Para is the sound that is existing at the transcendental level. Pashyanti is what exists at the intellectual level. Then Madhyama is what exists at the mental level that corresponds to Swapna.
And then there is Vaikhari, the physical sound. So, what modern science studies is just the physical sound. So, although the word sound is common, what is implied by sound is quite different in the two contexts.
And that’s why we cannot just superimpose one worldview on another and try to transpose concepts from here to there. What you have to understand is when the Vedic culture talks about sound, it talks about something much deeper and it is referring to ether also. It is referring to something significantly different.
So, for the sound to propagate in the material world, the Vedic worldview explains that ether as a medium is required and ether acts as the medium. So, ether is present everywhere in the material world as a substratum within which everything, all other gross matters exist. And it is through that that sound gets propagated.
So, basically there are subtler conceptions and understandings which modern science is unaware of and that’s why there appears to be a contradiction. But there is actually no contradiction because there is a deeper level of reality which the Vedic culture is referring to.