​What science can’t provide – and spirituality can

​Talk at Bhaktivedanta Academy, Alachua, USA

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So I think Ramidhar Prabhu will just let everybody know what Prabhu’s schedule will be. I am happy to be here amongst all of you. And I’ll try to speak on a topic which some of you may have questions about because we live in an age of science and we are also practising spirituality.
So science and scripture, is it possible to reconcile them? And what is the nature of scientific knowledge? What is the nature of scriptural knowledge? So I’ll start with one diagram which will actually define the whole class, theme of the class. So if you consider scriptural knowledge to be like a big circle, within that circle we can say there are three sectors. Some part of it is what agrees with science.
Some part of it is that which contradicts science. And some part of it is that which transcends science. So can any of you give examples of some part which seems to contradict science? Is everything revolve around the earth, geocentrism? That is one way of looking at scripture.
That is not the only way. But that’s one point, good point, example. Thank you.
The chronology of the scripture, yeah. So the time scales and the timelines, they seem to be substantially different. Now can you give an example of what we mean by transcend science? That which is beyond science? So I’ll give an example of this as I come forward.
To understand this, first let us look at how science works. Can any of you say what is the, if you wanted to tell someone what is the essential method of science? What would you say? How does science work? Science has, what did Newton do when he saw a fruit falling? Most of you know about Newton. He saw the fruit falling.
Now thousands of people before him had seen a fruit falling. Thousands of people after him had seen a fruit falling. They all picked up the fruit and ate it and went away.
That’s all they did. What did Newton do? Yeah, he asked, what made this fruit fall? Sorry, yeah, yeah, good. So that was the answer he came up with.
So before that, he asked the question. So science is about asking questions. And then once we ask questions, we try to find answers to those questions.
And the way science finds answers is by conducting experiments. So if any of this is a little too difficult for you to understand, let me know and I will try to simplify things. So science, there are three ways in which science learns.
One is called deductive reasoning. So deductive reasoning is a straight two is defined. Two plus two is four.
This is clear mathematics. And only mathematics works like this. Sometimes people ask, what is the proof for the existence of God? Now, we can turn around and ask these people, if you are talking about proof in mathematical terms, what is the proof that you exist? There is no proof in a mathematical sense that anything can be proven.
Nothing can actually be proven in real life in terms of mathematics. So mathematics is an abstract branch of knowledge which deals with numbers. So now, do you have roll numbers or some numbers in your, do you have roll numbers in your school? They do.
They have a number. So all of you have a number. So now that number refers to you.
But does that number describe you? No, it doesn’t describe you, isn’t it? That number relates with only one part of you. It’s just an easy system of referring for understanding one aspect of, say, having some orderly structure in the student management. So it’s just one part of you, one part of your identity.
And you are much bigger than the numbers. So like that maths, which is dealing with numbers, it deals with one part of reality. Now, much of science focusses on inductive reasoning.
Inductive reasoning means that science does some experiments. So Newton observed a fruit falling. And he thought, what makes this fruit fall? It falls because maybe there’s a force that attracts the particles together.
If that force attracts things together, then not only this fruit should fall, maybe if I drop a stone it should also fall. Any object that I drop, it should fall. So then we try to drop different objects and see what happens.
That is the part of experiments. And once we do experiments, if the original theory is confirmed, then this becomes a law. So first there is a theory, there is an experiment.
And if the experiment confirms the theory, then it becomes a law. Now the problem with inductive reasoning is that we can never be certain about anything. Just a few days ago I was reading that Samsung company has released some new mobiles.
And when the mobiles were put for charging, they started exploding. It exploded. And almost 50-60 mobiles exploded.
And then the US legal body has said that all these mobiles need to be withdrawn back. So now they said that actually when we did the experiment, mobiles did not explode. When we were charging, they did not explode.
But now they’re exploding. So what happened? They did the tests. During the tests, nothing went wrong.
But just because nothing went wrong in the test does not mean that it will never go wrong. So inductive knowledge means we do a certain number of experiments. And based on that, we assume that things are like this.
But it may not be always like that. But still, it is fairly reliable. I’ll come to this a little later once again.
But do any of you read detective fiction? You know about detective fiction where say somebody, there’s a particular room in which the owner has been murdered. And then you have to find out who murdered him. There is only one door over there.
And the owner was alive at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. And at 9 o’clock when somebody came to meet him, there was a knife in the stomach and he was dead. So you try to find out.
Between 3 to 9, look at the camera. And see if there’s one door, who all came in from the door? There’s one six-year-old boy who came in. Now he did not have enough strength to put a knife in the stomach.
He could not have killed. And one 80-year-old friend came. He also did not have enough strength.
Then there’s one man who was 35 years old, maybe the butler or someone. He came in. So now in such a case, if the detectives are to find out who actually did the crime, they can’t ask the criminal, please come back and commit the crime again.
We want to do an experiment to prove things. So now when the… So in this case, the way they find out who did the crime is you cannot make the person do the crime again. So they have to have what is called as best inference.
Who could have done this? This person was the only person who came in over there, who had enough strength to commit the crime. And therefore they say this is the person who killed. Now in this case, it seems to be reasonable.
But suppose that house had some secret door, underground trap door. And the investigators did not know that there’s a trap door over there. One of the tiles in the house is movable and when it moves, there’s a passage which goes out.
And the criminal had come in through that. Now what has happened when we do a best inference, our knowledge is limited. And based on that when we do best inference, we cannot be sure that what we have inferred is right or not.
So like that, when scientists talk about the past, how the universe came about, how life came about, for that, they actually can’t do experiments to find out. We can’t tell the universe, oh, if the universe came by a Big Bang, we can’t tell the universe, please have a Big Bang once again. So that we can do the experiment, we can observe and we can find out.
So therefore, it all requires inference. And inference is never very reliable. It’s never decisively reliable.
So now suppose, how many of you know about cricket? Oh, almost all of you. Some of you don’t. Now, suppose there’s a last ball in cricket and you have to hit a boundary to win the match.
And the last ball, the baller bowls and the batsman swings the bat and the ball goes over the boundary. And it’s a sixer and the match is won. Then somebody goes and asks the batsman, how did you hit that shot? And the batsman says, by the law of gravity, by the laws of motion.
Now, is that true? It is true. The laws of motion do explain how the ball was hit. So, but the laws of motion, they are not the causes.
I’ll give another example for this. All of you know about billiards? Suppose somebody is watching a billiards game from just above the billiards table. Somebody is an upper story and they’re watching.
And all that they can see is the ball being hit. There’s a stick coming, hitting the ball here. And then the ball hits this ball, this ball hits this ball, this ball hits this ball.
And then that last ball goes into the hole. Now, this entire motion can be explained in terms of the laws of physics. This stick hit the ball at this angle, at this velocity, with this momentum.
And that’s how it triggered a chain of motion of all the balls. And finally, that ball went into the hole. So, this is a correct explanation.
Why did the ball go into the hole? Because this stick hit the ball at this velocity. That is correct. But is it complete? There is an expert billiards player who has hit the ball.
And it is the expertise of the billiards player hitting the ball that has caused the balls to move in such a way that finally a ball went into the hole. So, here the point I’m trying to make is that there are laws of physics which explain things. But that explanation is a correct explanation.
But it is not a complete explanation. Just like I told earlier, all of you have a roll number. Your roll number is correct.
You can identify different people by the roll number. But your roll number is not you. So, like that, we are different from the laws that describe things around us.
The laws that describe things around us, they describe a part of reality. I’ll explain this over here. Let’s go here.
So, how does science work? Basically, there are three levels of reality. There is gross reality. Have you heard of this gross reality, subtle reality, spiritual reality? So, gross reality is like the hardware of the computer.
The subtle reality is like the software. And the spiritual reality is the soul. So, now there is gross reality.
Then there is subtle reality. And then there is the spirit, which is the spiritual reality. Now, what happens? Science, if you see, it studies one part of reality.
That is gross reality. Science does not study anything beyond that. Suppose somebody goes for fishing.
And when they go for fishing, they have a net, which is, say, 1 inch by 1 inch. We use inches here or we use centimetres? Inches, okay. Say, if it’s a hole, 1 inch by 1 inch.
Now, if the fish in that lake are, say, bigger than 1 inch by 1 inch, then the fishermen, no matter how long they keep the fishing net there, they will, sorry, if the fish are smaller than 1 inch by 1 inch, then the fish will simply slip out of the holes in the net. No matter how long the fishing net is kept, what is going to happen? The fish will slip away, slip away, slip away. It doesn’t matter how expert the fisherman is.
The net is such that with that net one cannot catch the fish because the holes are too big and the fish are too small. So, like that, when we have science, which gives us knowledge, science focusses on gross material reality. So, suppose if I have a virus in my computer and when there is a virus in the computer, because of which the computer is not working, and I get a hardware specialist.
And that hardware specialist opens the full computer, looks at this part, looks at that part, replaces this part, replaces the whole motherboard. They change everything in the computer. But still, they will not be able to fix the problem.
Why? Because the problem is not in the hardware. The problem is in the software. So, like that, science, it studies the hardware, it studies the gross reality.
It doesn’t study the subtle reality. And that subtle reality and ultimately the spiritual reality, that is what scripture tells us about. So, we turn towards scripture because we get a different kind of knowledge there.
And that knowledge is what enables us to understand life’s ultimate purpose. Suppose, once a group of ten friends, they came to a city, they lived in a small town, and they came to a city. And in that city, they came to a hotel.
The hotel was 100 stories, 100 floors. And they got a house at the 100th floor. They got a room at the 100th floor.
So, they went there by lift, came down, and went around and saw the various sites in the city. And when they came back, they found that the power had gone off. Like recently, the hurricane power had gone off.
Now, this power had gone off meant that they have to climb up 100 floors. How do you climb up 100 floors? But that was the only way, they had to go up. So, one of them got an idea.
Let’s all tell stories to each other. There are ten of us. Each of us can tell a story which is long enough so that we climb up ten floors.
So, like that, we will entertain each other, take our mind off the burden of the climb. And like that, they went up 10 stories, 20 stories. Some of them told a little long story.
So, by the time the last person’s turn came, they had come to the 90th floor. He says, now it’s your turn. He says, no, I cannot tell my story.
He says, why? All of us told the story. No, I cannot tell. Why? My story is a tragedy.
Please tell the story. No, if I tell the story, all of you will start crying. He says, no, no, no, I will not cry.
Just tell the story. By this time, they had come to the 99th floor. Please tell the story.
No, no, no, I cannot fear to shatter your hearts. I will not tell the story. Tell! By this time, they had climbed up, they came to the 100th floor.
He said, now I have to tell you the story. I have forgotten the key downstairs. Laughter So, what does the story tell us? Laughter Laughter The science has helped humanity climb up and up, higher and higher, in the quest for knowledge.
And they climbed one story, two story, five story, fifty story, hundred stories. They climbed high up in the quest for knowledge. But the purpose of knowledge is ultimately to become happy.
And although now people have enormous amount of technology, but unfortunately, people are not happy. So, the secret to happiness is the key. And that key has been forgotten.
That key has been forgotten. And how can we say that people are not happy? Actually, one simple way, simple, it’s sad way to understand this is, that actually, when people are unhappy, they do various undesirable things because they are unhappy. Last year, when I had come to America from here, I had gone to Ohio State University Columbus.
So, I gave a talk on the mind. And after that, I was at a vegetarian club. So, I spoke there about regulating the mind’s diet.
About what we take in with the mind. After that, one young boy, healthy looking boy, he came. And he told me that just before the lecture, he had been planning to commit suicide.
But somehow, he felt from within that, let me go and hear this lecture. And in my lecture, I was telling about the mind and how the mind makes us do foolish things. He said, now I understand.
Actually, it was not that I wanted to commit suicide. My mind was telling me, commit suicide. Do this, do this.
So, actually, suicide is very tragic. But all of you have heard of terrorist attacks. It causes very great fear.
Somebody comes up and suddenly blows up and hundreds of people may die. But actually, if we consider suicide, now one million people commit suicide every year. One million people means, is one person who commits suicide every 40 seconds.
That means, since I started talking, almost 40-50 people have committed suicide. And this means, actually that, why I talk about terrorist is, that the total number of people who die in terrorist attacks, the total number of people who die in murderous crimes, the total number of people who die in wars, all these combined together, every year, is less than one million. That means, more than the number of people who are killed by others, is the number of people who are killing themselves.
So, not so many people are being killed by others as they are killing themselves. Especially Prabhupada, when he came to America, he said that, Americans, you build big, big temples, big, big buildings, skyscrapers. That is good, but unfortunately, people climb up these big buildings and they jump down and end their lives.
So, what is missing? What is missing? That missing thing is the key. That is the art of becoming happy. And that is taught in scripture.
Scripture tells us that we are souls. And the soul is meant to love and serve Krishna. And to the extent the soul loves and serves Krishna, the soul will be happy.
And that service can be done in any field. You can do it through science, you can do it through arts, you can do it through music. Whatever is our interest, we can use that and serve Krishna.
And we can find happiness that way. So, science cannot give us happiness. I will conclude with this point, then you can ask some questions.
Now, around 30 years ago, some scientists said that, in future, we will find out a button for happiness. Their idea was that whenever, that when different chemicals are placed in different parts of the brain, just like when we see some delicious food item, then what happens? Our tongue salivates. So, like that, one part of the brain also gets activated.
So, they said that in future, we will find out which part of the brain is activated and which chemicals are activated in the brain, when we are happy. And what we will do is, we will provide a button on your head. So, whenever you want to be happy, press the happiness button.
Press the happiness button and you will become happy. You don’t need to do anything else. So, now, this is actually a very simplistic idea.
Now, there are, unfortunately or fortunately, that same scientist who said that we will provide a happiness button, that scientist committed suicide. So, the thing is, there is no such happiness button. It is like, suppose, you know, sometimes, I don’t know if it happens here, in India, when some relatives come to meet a small child, then just to have fun, they tickle the child.
They come and tickle the child. Do people do like this here? Or not for your age? You have grown up now. You have become a grown-up.
So, now, what happens? When a child is tickled, the child will laugh. Parents come and tickle the child. The child will start laughing.
But is that laughter happiness? If that laughter were happiness, then all of us can have our own perpetual tickling machine. And whenever we are happy, we start tickling ourselves. That is not happiness.
So, yes, a physical sensation may produce a certain result. But that is not happiness. So, just as the physical sensation of tickling, even if it makes somebody laugh, that is not happiness.
Similarly, even if certain chemicals are secreted in the brain, that does not actually make people happy. What makes us happy is when the soul loves Krishna. When the soul learns to love Krishna, that is when we experience happiness.
And that is the knowledge that scripture gives us. And to the extent we learn this knowledge, then all other knowledge that we have, we can use it for the right purpose. So, whatever we study in school, it’s all important.
But it’s all directed by the knowledge that we get in scripture. So, I’ll summarise and then we can have some questions. So, I started by talking about how science and scripture, are they looking at, are they sometimes contradictory or how do they go together? Remember the first diagram I showed here? There are three sections.
There is some knowledge in scripture which agrees with science, some knowledge which disagrees with science, some contradict science, some transcend science. So, I focused on that part which transcends science. Now, somebody may say, no, by science we can know everything.
So, in that connection, I talked about how science knows things. Three ways I talked about, inductive reasoning, inductive reasoning and abductive reasoning. So, by maths, which focusses on inductive reasoning, we cannot even know, we cannot even prove that I and you exist.
Because maths is simply numbers. It is just like, if I reduce you to your own number, and I say there is nothing more than your own number to you, that’s obviously not correct. So, then we discuss about inductive reasoning, that means we do experiments to find out what is the truth.
But then, a future experiment may prove something to be wrong. Like the Samsung mobile, in the test, there was no problem, but outside when they brought it, when it charged, it started exploding. So, by experimental knowledge, we can never be sure.
And then, especially when science goes to origins, how everything came about, that science uses abductive reasoning over here, that’s inference. I talked about how in a detective novel, you try to find out, how do we learn? Who committed the crime? There it is very uncertain, because we can’t repeat the experiment to find out. So, like that, when it comes to origins, where everything came from, where life came from, science cannot answer these questions.
The answers are very uncertain, very speculative. And then, does that mean that science itself does not give us any knowledge? Are we saying science is wrong? No. Science and scripture, they look at things from different perspectives.
Just like I gave the billiards game, one way of it is looking, why did the ball go into the hole? Because the stick hit the ball with this force at this angle and this momentum. That’s true. And I can say, why did the ball go into the hole? Because the player expertly hit the ball.
Both of these are complementary. They are not contradictory. Both of them are true.
There are different ways of looking at things. So, science looks only at material things. Like a fishing net, which is too small, whose holes are too big, then small fish cannot be caught in it.
Like that, science cannot detect subtle truths. Just as if I have a software problem in my computer and I keep fixing the hardware, it doesn’t solve the problem. Similarly, when we stick only to science, then subtler problems, like how to become happy in life, there is no answer to that.
I give the example of ten friends climbing up the hundred-story building. Forgot the key downstairs. Like that, science has climbed a lot in the human search for knowledge.
But how to become happy, that, unfortunately, people don’t know. That’s why there are so many suicides. So many people are destroying themselves.
More are the number of people who are killing themselves than are being killed by others. And this art of becoming happy, what is that art? Actually, we are souls, and the soul needs to love Krishna. When the soul comes in contact with Krishna, then there is happiness.
Happiness is not just an external sensation. We cannot have a happiness button. It’s like we cannot tickle ourselves and become happy.
But there has to be inner joy that comes up. And that comes when we serve Krishna. And scripture gives us that knowledge.
This knowledge is actually beyond the scope of science. Science gives us one kind of knowledge, which we can and which we should use. But scripture gives us the knowledge of what purpose to use this knowledge.
And thus, by understanding the domains of science and of scripture, we can learn to use both in our life. Any questions? Any comments? Was it too difficult, what I spoke? Good question. So, if we say bhakti is the art of becoming happy, then why is it that as devotees of Krishna, we are not happy? Actually, we are on the way to become devotees of Krishna.
We are not yet devotees of Krishna. It’s like if a person has been sick. You know, if somebody has had flu, somebody has had some sickness, then imagine there are two people in the hospital.
Both of them are coughing. Both of them have temperature. But for one of them, the disease has been diagnosed and the treatment has been prescribed.
For the other person, the disease has not been diagnosed and no treatment has been prescribed. Now, in this case, externally it seems both of them are similar. Both of them are coughing.
Both of them have fever. But there is a world of difference between the two. For the person who has been diagnosed and treatment has been prescribed, that person is on the way to becoming healthy.
Their pain will decrease and their health will come back. On the other hand, for a person who has not been diagnosed, what is the disease? Nothing has been prescribed. Their condition is going to become worse and worse.
So, like that, we are devotees. We are like the person, the patient, whose disease has been diagnosed and the treatment has been prescribed. Now, it is not that as soon as you start taking the treatment, automatically all pain goes away.
If the sickness is there, some distress will be there. But on the other hand, for a person who has not been diagnosed, that is like the people who are non-devotees. They don’t know what to do in life.
Maybe I’ll do this. Maybe I’ll do that. Maybe this will make me happy.
Maybe that will make me happy. And actually, whatever they try, they get a little happiness. But afterwards, they become frustrated.
I once wrote a poem. I would say, people go to parties and they say cheers. You must have seen in movies.
They drink and they say cheers. So, their hearts are filled with fears. Their hearts are filled with fears.
Their minds are pierced by desires. Their hearts are filled with, this goes wrong, that goes wrong, that goes wrong. Their minds are pierced by desires.
I want this. I want that. I want that.
So, their hearts are filled with fears, their minds are pierced by desires and they say cheers. So, what it means is, actually, there is no real happiness. There is a facade.
So, for devotees, we may not be happy right now, but we are in the process to becoming happy. Whereas materialistic people, often they are doing things which they may seem to be okay right now, but they are actually increasing their sickness. As they increase their sickness, they will actually suffer more and more, unfortunately, till they take the treatment.
So, we are happy because we are on the path to happiness. Others, they don’t even know the path to happiness right now. Does it answer the question? Any other questions? Yeah.
Yeah. So, how do we balance our studies and our devotional life? One big problem we all have is, so much to do, and so little time to do it. to do it.
Have you felt like that you don’t have enough time? We all have felt like that. It’s like we have so many things to do. Sometimes, you want to go for a trip and then, you know, you feel, I want to take this dress also.
I want to take this dress also. I want to take this also. And then, some people want to take their whole house in their suitcase.
Now, it looks impossible because it is impossible. We cannot fit the whole house into the suitcase. We have to select.
Okay, these are things which I really need. These are things I don’t, I really don’t need them. I can manage without them.
So like that, our 24 hours is like the suitcase. And all the things that we have to do is like our house. So now, we can’t fit all the things that we have to do in 24 hours.
That means we may not be able to do every day all the things which we would like to do. But on different trips, you might take different things. So like that, on different days, we do different things.
And what this means practically is that we have to prioritise. What is more important? What is less important? And sometimes, when our study pressure is more, at that time, our devotional activities may become less. And the study pressure is not so much, our devotional activities may become more.
It’s like say, if you are going from here to Florida, sometimes the traffic is more, at that time, we go at a slower speed. And the traffic is less, we just move faster. So like that, sometimes in our life, the traffic of things to do becomes too much.
And we may not be able to move so fast. Other times we move faster. One important thing to recognise is that we often think of time in terms of activities.
Okay, in the morning, I’ll be doing this. Afternoon, I’ll be doing this. Evening, I’ll be doing this.
We think of time in terms of activities. But time is not taken only by activities. Time is also taken by thoughts.
Time is also taken by desires. Suppose you come to school and you have a friend who snubs you, or who neglects you, or who disrespects you. And then you feel so angry.
Why did they do that? And then we are sitting in the class, we’re looking at the teacher, and we are thinking of revenge fantasies. Next time, I will show you. So now, one hour I sit in front of the class, sit in front of the teacher in class, and I’m only thinking of revenge fantasies.
Nothing else. So what has happened? That one thought has taken so much time. So now, in terms of our daily schedule, we don’t write in the schedule.
You know, in my timetable, one hour for revenge fantasy. But our thoughts do take time. So when we actually practise bhakti nicely, when we chant, when we study scripture, then we can catch our mind when it starts wasting our time.
So when the thought comes like this and it starts wasting our time, okay, the person did like that. It’s not a good thing to do. But I’ll see how to deal with it later.
I’ll not bother about it right now. Maybe we talk with them and maybe they had no intention of snubbing us. They just didn’t notice us only.
Or maybe we had done something which they had misunderstood because of which they had got angry. We clarify. Afterwards, we can deal with that.
So if you observe, a lot of time goes because of our thoughts. And then if you start practising, if you put the time for bhakti, whatever devotional activities we are doing, if you put the time in doing those activities nicely, you’ll be able to catch. Sometimes you play some games in which you have to catch some thief.
So like that we can treat catching the mind as a game. Now, where is the mind going? And we treat it like that, we’ll find that we’ll be able to save a lot of time. We’ll be able to avoid a lot of unnecessary trouble if we can just avoid the mind going here and there.
So that way, when we save that time, we will have more time to do constructive things. So we shouldn’t think that the time that we are doing in bhakti is actually taking so much of my time. I have studies to do, I have this to do, I have that to do.
The time we spend in bhakti, that will actually save our time and that will enable us to do our other activities better because the time we waste invisibly in thoughts, that time will be saved. Any other questions? Yes, what is your name? My name is Madhuri. Going back a little bit to the question beforehand, seeing as well, if you go backwards and you feel like you’re not feeling happy, is there any way that you can stop for and go farther than you were before? So the question is that if we are practising bhakti, but then say because of something, we go away a little bit from Krishna.
How can we go back there and how can we go in further ahead towards Krishna while doing our material activities also? So you know water, say if this floor is inclined, it’s tilted in a particular way. If I pour water over here, the water will naturally go in this direction because the inclination is of the floor in that direction. So like that, all of us have certain inclinations.
Inclination means our thoughts, our desires, our ambitions, they all flow in a particular direction. So suppose say somebody has a lot of interest in music, then whenever some music comes up, they get very caught in that. They can easily connect with that, easily they can absorb themselves in that.
So somebody else it may be art, somebody else it may be language. There are different fields in which we may find ourselves interested. So we have to, if we consider the circle of bhakti to be one circle and the circle of our interests to be another circle.
These two circles, they intersect somewhere. Where that intersection point comes, intersection sector comes, that means what is it that I like to do and what is it that is in the practise of bhakti? Where do the two intersect? If I can find that and then because we like to do that, we will naturally do that, we’ll happily do that and because it is also within the circle of bhakti, we can move forward towards Krishna easily. So once we become habituated to doing that, then we can very steadily and rapidly move towards Krishna.
So while we are practising bhakti, while we are doing our studies, while we are observing ourselves, then we can try to find out what it is that we like to do and we try to develop that. So in the Bhakti Rasamrta Siddha, this is called as uddhipan. Uddhipan means that which acts as a spiritual stimulus.
So all of us have certain stimulus which attract us. So somebody is, say, mad for cricket. In India, when the World Cup is going on, just go along the, if you go along in a car for a programme, you can see young people, they are swinging their hands.
They’re imagining, oh, I’m a batsman and somebody’s bowling and they’re hitting. So what is happening? People are in their own world. So why? Because they are attached to cricket.
So when we are attached to something, then naturally we think of those things. So we have to find out what is the circle of our interest and what is the circle of Krishna Bhakti. Where is the intersection? And if we can situate ourselves in that intersection, we can move forward rapidly.
That’s one part. Second part is that, say, if we had been at this level earlier, now we have come to this level. Now we want to rise up again.
So the important thing is to never become discouraged. Now suppose two players are fighting a boxing match. And say, one person, it’s a big blow and this player falls back.
He’s fallen on the ground. It’s been quite a severe blow. Now, this boxer has fallen down.
What should he do if he wants to be encouraged? He needs to look at the coach. The coach says, come on, fight! Isn’t it? But suppose instead of looking at this coach, he looks at the other boxer only. Do you think I can win? What do you think this boxer will say? Never! I’ll crush you! Accept defeat right now! So now, when somebody is fighting a boxing match, if they want encouragement, they won’t get it from the opposing boxer.
They need their own coach for that. So like that, sometimes inside us, we can consider that we are fighting a boxing match in the mind. The mind acts as our enemy.
And sometimes the mind makes us do stupid things. And then we’re knocked down. Why did I do that? Why did I do that? I just feel I wasted my time, I did that.
But then, if you want encouragement, if you want to rise again, the mind is very tricky. First it makes us do the wrong thing and then it says, you are such a big fool! You are such a big fool! You will never learn! You are hopeless! So, the mind defeats us and then discourages us. So whenever we feel discouraged, we shouldn’t just keep hearing our inside voice.
That inside voice will discourage us more and more. We have to have some friends, some elders, our parents who will encourage us. They are our coaches.
So, all of us in our life will go through phases when we had this practise. We may go lower. It happens to everyone.
That is just the way of life. We cannot always be at a consistent level. There will be ups and downs.
But when we go down, at that time, we shouldn’t become discouraged. If we become discouraged, then there is no hope for us. If the boxer has fallen down, he has been knocked down but not been knocked out.
He is knocked down. He has fallen down but not knocked out. He is still awake.
He is conscious. He still can get up and fight. So sometimes we may be knocked down.
But we are never knocked out. So what we have to do is, we have to look at our coach. So all of us need to have some friends, some guides who will encourage us when we feel down.
And then with their encouragement, we can rise. Actually, that is what happened to Arjuna at the start of the Gita. What happened at the start? Arjuna, if you see, in the first chapter, he has picked up his bow and he is ready to fight.
At that time, when he sees all the soldiers on the opposite side, he sees his relatives and he says, I can’t fight. He put aside his bow feeling dejected. He felt dejected.
But what did he do at that time? He turned towards Krishna. And the first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita ends, 46th verse ends with Arjuna putting down his bow. Whereas the last verse of the Bhagavad Gita, that is 18.78, it ends with describing that Arjuna has picked up his bow.
So what does it mean? Arjuna’s bow represents our enthusiasm, our encouragement. So in life, things may happen because of which we become discouraged. Just like Arjuna became discouraged.
But then when we hear Krishna’s message, when we get the wisdom from Krishna or Krishna’s devotees, just as Arjuna lifted up his bow and became ready to fight, similarly, we too can become ready to fight. We also become inspired. We also become enthusiastic.
That happens when we hear from the right source. Otherwise, if we keep hearing from the mind, first the mind makes us do wrong, and then it condemns us for doing wrong. So we have to be careful whom we hear from.
Never become discouraged no matter what happens. Does it answer your question? Any other questions? One last question.