~ Substance and Shadow The Vedic Method of Knowledge

 

A masterpiece! With clarity and humor, the author shows us what Vedic knowledge is. I especially appreciate the abundant references. The glossary of philosophical names and terms is about the best I have ever seen. Substance and Shadow well deserves the attention of those curious to know more about Vedic thought, and also of members of the scholarly world. Suhotra Swami has really succeeded in making difficult concepts understandable.

Ronny Sjöblom, MA

Department of Comparative Religion,

Abo Academy, Turku (Finland)

 

 

Dedication

I offer my humble obeisances in the dust of the lotus feet of my spiritual master, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupäda, who said:

"Cultivate this knowledge, Kåñëa consciousness, and you'll be happy. Your life will be successful. That is all. And the method is simple—chant Hare Kåñëa:

Hare Kåñëa Hare Kåñëa Kåñëa Kåñëa Hare Hare

Hare Räma Hare Räma Räma Räma Hare Hare

If you simply chant, that is sufficient for your self-realization. But if you want to study this philosophy, or the science of God, through your philosophy and argument, logic, we have got enough stock of books. Don't think that we are all sentimentalists, simply dancing. No. There is a background."

on Çré Nåsiàha-caturdaçé (May 2, 1996)

at ISKCON's Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir

in Çrédham Mayapur, W.B., India

Preface to the Second Edition

 

 

Preface

Seeing his book reprinted, an author likely feels a sense of accomplishment, even vanity. With the second printing of Substance and Shadow, I simply feel great relief. The first edition was rushed to the printer along with numerous errata so as to be offered during Çréla Prabhupäda's Centennial year (1996). Still, in the main, the reaction to the book was favorable. Brisk sales prompted me to revise the manuscript for a second edition. And this is the result a polished text in a new size under a new cover. Not that I claim it perfect; but I am relieved to say I've done all that I could to make it better. Most of the corrections are minor matters of spelling and punctuation. But there are some revisions of content too. Several of these deal with science. At least one reader with a scientific background was unsatisfied by how the first edition handled certain scientific issues. I've done what I can to show sensitivity to his complaint. But I won't be surprised if this edition also attracts criticism, since I have no formal training in, for example, quantum mechanics though in Substance and Shadow I dare make comments about it. What are my intentions (or pretensions) towards science? In answering that question, I offer six points here.

 

The narrow basis of science

First, the main purpose of Substance and Shadow is to distinguish the Vedic method of knowledge from other methods. Humanity has different methods of knowledge available to it. I hold that only through Vedic knowledge can we grade the validity of these methods. Substance and Shadow examines four such methods: empiricism, scepticism, rationalism and authoritative testimony. I hold that Western science isn't capable of comparing and contrasting the validity of one method of knowledge against others. Why? Because its own basis is too narrow. That basis was summed up by Albert Einstein in Out of My Late Years (1936):

Out of the multitude of our sense experiences we take, mentally and arbitrarily, certain repeatedly occuring complexes of sense impression ... and we attribute to them a meaning the meaning of bodily objects.

Einstein admitted that this method cannot even prove the existence of the external world. So how can we be sure that the bodily objects scientists study are real things? Aren't such objects just mental interpretations of a jumble of sense data that, with a nonhuman mind, or even with a human mind culturally different than ours, could be interpreted in a very different way? Wouldn't a different interpretation of sense data reveal a very different world? Which interpretation is the right one? And how, by this method Einstein described, can we ever know whether there is a reality outside the range of our sense experiences? These questions are not for science to answer. They are for philosophy. There is a difference between the scientific approach and the philosophical approach. Substance and Shadow takes the latter; it is therefore not remarkable that a scientifically-minded person could have a problem with my book. Of course, science began in philosophy. But it cut its ties to the parent as it accelerated down the narrow path of the study of bodily objects. Professor Lewis Wolpert, erudite biologist at London's University College, writes that most scientists today are ignorant of philosophical issues. Though at the beginning of the twentieth century a professional scientist normally had a background in philosophy,

Today things are quite different, and the stars of modern science are more likely to have been brought up on science fiction ... the physicist who is a quantum mechanic has no more knowledge of philosophy than the average car mechanic.*

Wolpert admits that the fundamental assumptions of science may not be acceptable as philosophy, but speaking as a scientist, he finds that irrelevant. If scientists don't care about the concerns of philosophy, then why, my readers might ask, should a philosophical book like Substance and Shadow be at all concerned with what scientists say specially if the author admits he is not very well-versed in what they say? I offer this, from a noted journalist in the field of cyber technology, as an answer:

Science, as we have already discovered, is outrageously demanding. It demands that it is not simply a way of explaining certain bits of the world, or even the local quarter of the universe within telescopic range. It demands that it explains absolutely everything.*

 

 

Science is not philosophy

This leads us to the second point: today's scientists are not shy about tackling philosophical questions yet they are not trained in philosophy and, as Wolpert admits, they follow a rule that all scientific ideas are contrary to common sense.* Here's an example. Wolpert puts forward the oft-heard argument that a scientific theory ultimately counts for nothing if it does not measure up to what can be observed in nature.* Yet he approvingly quotes Albert Einstein as saying that a theory is significant not to the degree it is confirmed by facts observed in nature, but to the degree it is simple and logical; and he quotes Arthur Eddington as saying that observations are not to be given much confidence unless they are confirmed by theory.* Common sense tells us there's a contradiction here. Wolpert admits it: Scientists have to face at least two problems that drive them in opposite directions.* The first problem is that science postulates causal mechanisms to explain why the world appears as it does to us. The second is that since a fundamental cause is always before its visible effect in the form of the bodily objects of this world, the cause cannot be perceived as a bodily object can be. In other words, the objectivity of a scientist is restricted by his material body. Thus from his embodied standpoint, he has a difficult task proving that his postulated fundamental cause is real. But prove it he will try, starting with what Einstein termed free fantasy.* Thus fundamental causes (or to be precise, postulations about fundamental causes) such as mechanical forces, electromagnetic and other fields, wave functions, and ultimate particles like the Higgs boson, acquire by free fantasy the same real status as bodily objects. And by the same free fantasy, the everyday bodily objects around us like people, animals, plants, houses, tables and chairs become unstable, hazy theoretical concepts. In the meantime, where did common sense go? I would contend, writes Wolpert, that if something fits in with common sense it almost certainly isn't science.* LSD prophet Timothy Leary may have best put his finger on it when he wrote that in science, realities are determined by whoever determines them.*

 

 

Science as popular mythology

The third point is that Substance and Shadow addresses particular scientific theories in terms of how they are presented to the nonscientific public by authors and journalists who may or may not be professional scientists themselves. No, in researching this book I did not plod through the original writings of Darwin, Einstein, Eddington and Bohr. Wolpert says nobody does this anyway:

...no one is interested that [calculus] was discovered independently by Leibniz and by Newton ... and no one would now read their almost impenetrable papers. As ideas become incorporated into the body of knowledge, the discoverers, the creators (of whom there may be many), simply disappear. Likewise, no one reads Watson and Crick's original paper if they want to know about DNA, or Darwin if they wish to understand evolution.*

From statements like this I contend that science is a modern myth.* Dramatic storytelling is essential to mythology, and through popular science books and magazines, myth is reborn today as Wolpert's body of knowledge. It is the science writer's myth, not the science researcher/theorist's grind, that captures the public's imagination, seizing for science popular credibility. Even if the myth insults common sense, that only adds to the mystique scientists enjoy in society. Swedish physicist Hannes Alfvn explained this in his 1978 paper entitled How Should We Approach Cosmology?

The people were told that the true nature of the physical world could not be understood except by Einstein and a few other geniuses who were able to think in four dimensions. Science was something to believe in, not something which should be understood. Soon the best-sellers among the popular science books became those that presented scientific results as insults to common sense. One of the consequences was that the limit between science and pseudo-science began to be erased. To most people it was increasingly difficult to find any difference between science and science fiction.

 

 

What is science supposed to mean?

The fourth point is that whenever science calls the possibility of philosophy into question, it also calls the possibility of science into question, since philosophy is a parent of science. In the West, science owes a foundational debt to, among other philosophers, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz and Kant. Scientists are often heard to dismiss the speculations of these great thinkers as unreliable. But they should not dismiss the original purpose of philosophy, which is to explain informationto probe beneath the surface data that makes up the world of bodily objects. Philosophy grapples with the why of the world. If Professor Wolpert means to say that this is irrelevant to today's scientists, then science only informs. Though by the grace of science today's world is perhaps better informed than it ever has been, there is no certain metaphysical foundation to all this information. The result is information chaos.

To the question What problem does the information solve? the answer is usually How to generate, store, and distribute more information, more conveniently, at greater speeds than ever before. ... For what purpose or with what limitations, it is not for us to ask; and we are not accustomed to asking, since the problem is unprecedented.*

 

 

Beyond the senses and mind

The fifth point is that from the Vedic standpoint, the attempt to explain sense data by mental speculation is a lower method of knowledge. The failure of Western philosophy is that it never rose above this level, which is limited by factors of time, space, the defects of human sense organs and the distortion and unclarity inherent in mundane vocabulary and grammar. The Vedic method of knowledge is darçana, a systematic revelation of deep reality. It does not fish in muddy depths for meaning; rather, it purifies the depths so that the self-evident truth emerges.

The Vedas are spiritual sound, and therefore there is no need of material interpretation for the sound incarnation of the Vedic literature ... In the ultimate issue there is nothing material because everything has its origin in the spiritual world. The material manifestation is therefore sometimes called illusion in the proper sense of the term. For those who are realized souls there is nothing but spirit.*

 

 

Vedic science

My last point concerning science is that the Vedic darçana goes hand in hand with Vedic science. By Vedic science, I mean for example the scriptural explanation of the cosmic manifestation in terms of the three modes of material nature, or the calculation of time and distance from the movement of the sun, or predictions made from the law of karma, or the tabulation of the species of life. There is no denying that Vedic science shares themata (background principles) with Western science, such as:

1) within nature there are regularities;

2) knowing the regularities, one can predict certain events  in nature;

3) thus a reliable body of knowledge about nature is useful;

4) such knowledge is taught in a language of numerical measurement.

As Wolpert writes, these presuppositions are universal.* Substance and Shadow does not aim to denigrate these the mata. But Western science attempts to demonstrate the universality of it's the mata from human powers of observation and theory. This is like trying to hold an elephant on a dish. The universe is a display of the unlimited power of the Supreme. Human power is limited. Freely admitting this, Vedic science follows the universal standard of regularity, prediction, reliability and numerical measurement given by the Supreme. Moving away from the topic of science, I should like to conclude the preface to this second edition by advising the reader that this book is not supposed to be a global survey of all philosophies or philosophical problems. Nor is it supposed to submerge you in abstract, technical complexities. It serves up what I hope are bite-sized samples from a select number of pots of controversy that have been cooking in philosophy for a long time. And alongside each sample, Substance and Shadow supplies the straight sauce of Vedic wisdom. You are invited to taste each sample first without, then with, the sauce. I think you'll find that when Vedic wisdom is added, philosophy satisfies as never before.

 

Suhotra Swami

on Çré Rämacandra-vijaya (October 11, 1997)

in Altenburg am Hochrhein, Germany

 

 

Purpose and Principles

The year 1996 marks the first century of the glorious advent of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupäda in this world. Around the globe, his disciples and followers are commemorating Çréla Prabhupäda's Centennial in many ways; one is by publishing literature in homage to Çréla Prabhupäda's contribution to philosophy. Substance and Shadow is a result of that effort. My hope is that those who've found joy in reading my spiritual master's books will bless this effort by reading mine. The title is taken from a theme Çréla Prabhupäda often employed in his writing and lectures. Note these two sentences from his introduction to Bhagavad-gétä As It Is:

The material world is but a shadow of reality. In the shadow there is no reality or substantiality, but from the shadow we can understand that there are substance and reality.

In Substance and Shadow, I try to show why this statement is axiomatic. Shadow yields only an impression of substance. If we want substantial knowledge, we must trace shadow back to its source. Since shadow completely depends upon substance, it cannot be known separately.

 

 

Substance and category

A pragmatic Western philosopher of the early twentieth century said, mind is matter seen from the inside, and matter is mind seen from the outside. This suggests that mind and matter are really not different. The universe is actually one substance in two categories. One category is the inner world of consciousness. The other is the world out there. Together they form the whole, the One. However, this leaves us with a nagging question: why does the One make itself suffer the pangs of birth and death? The Vedic scriptures agree that subtle mind and gross matter are categories of one energy, called prakåti (material nature). But something other than prakåti is doing the seeing of mind and matter. That something else is spirit. If while seeing mind and matter, spirit thinks I am what I see, that sense of oneness is illusion, mäyä. Spirit is always different from material nature. The illusion of being one with material nature is the shadow of the true substance of reality. It is the root cause of our suffering in material existence. If the world in which we think ourselves to be mind and matter is only shadow, what is the substance? Some philosophers say the seer, the spirit self, is the substance. By knowing its own substance as different from material nature, the seer knows reality. The problem here is that if the soul is the substance, then mind and matter are the shadow of the soul. It's been established that a soul in illusion is a soul in the shadow of substance. If that soul is itself substance, how does it come under its own shadow? No logical answer can be found to this question. The reader will understand the difficulty clearly by going outside on a sunny day and trying to stand in his or her own shadow. The Vedic answer is that while the seer is not himself alone the substance, he belongs to substance, as light belongs to the sun. The substance of light is its source, the sun, for without the source, light cannot be. Similarly, the substance of the spirit self is the Supreme Spiritual Person, known in the Vedas as Viñëu or Kåñëa. However, due to forgetting his link with the source, the soul imagines the substance of everything to be either himself or the mind-matter shadow, prakåti. The source of all shadow (the daytime shade as well as the great gloom of night that covers half the earth) is the sun. Likewise, all light, including the light of fire and electricity, comes from the sun. The sun is the root of both light and shadow, yet it remains unaffected by them. Similarly, the categories of spirit (light), mind (daytime shade) and matter (night) are the effects of God, who is unaffected by them. He is all there is for the seer-self to know, either spiritually, mentally or materially. Not knowing the one substance of all categories, the seer is perplexed by duality everywhere, beginning with mind and matter. We struggle to find coherence in so many incompatible opposites. This lady enjoys sweets, but suffers from fatness. This gentleman can't live with women, and can't live without them. Daily we try to adjust heat and cold, pleasure and pain, big and small, rich and poor, light and dark, love and hatred, good and evil, life and death. Resolving duality has been the subject of philosophical speculation for thousands of years both in the East and in the West.

 

 

Living knowledge

Knowledge means more than information content. A vast amount of information is contained within the Vedas; but that alone does not amount to the whole of Vedic knowledge. Substance and Shadow focuses upon method how content is understood, how knowledge is experienced as true. What is the method of knowing that our world is a shadow of substance? How is this knowledge to be applied in life? This is Çréla Prabhupäda's unique gift to the world the method to experience a life beyond the limits of mind, matter, foolish youth, wise old age, and all such dualities of material existence. This experience is immediate to the soul as living Vedic knowledge. Even today, Çréla Prabhupäda continues to disseminate living Vedic knowledge in his transcendental books, distributed by Hare Kåñëa devotees worldwide. This knowledge, Çréla Prabhupäda said, is ...

... beyond any consideration of material qualifications such as age or intelligence. Just like thunder in the sky does not need any explanation to any old person or to a young child, similarly, the transcendental sound vibration of Hare Krishna and preaching of Bhagavad-gétä philosophy will act on everyone, regardless of whether or not they are understanding at first.*

Material knowledge is a per lust ration of mundane thoughts and perceptions. But what we think and perceive of the world around us are features of the soul's ignorance. Thus it can be argued that there is no method of material knowledge (no how) at all. There is only the content of our ignorance, an illusory what, into which we stumble and lose ourselves as we search for knowledge through our thoughts and perceptions. The Vedas compare ignorance to the sleep of the soul. The content of that sleep is a dream world the material world, the shadow of the spiritual world. Material knowledge is knowledge of dreams. Vedic knowledge is a method of spiritual awakening that begins with hearing (çravaëädi) the Vedic sound. As material sound lifts consciousness from deep sleep and dreaming to wakefulness, so spiritual sound lifts consciousness from matter and mind to the self's eternal connection to Kåñëa the source of mind and matter, deep sleep and dreams, and the source of the living Vedic sound that is ever beyond these. Thus the method, or the how of Vedic knowledge, is the same as the why, the eternal reason behind the temporal world. The method is the end in itself transcendence.

The Kåñëa consciousness is there. In everyone's heart it is dormant. Simply by çravaëädi, by pure hearing process. ... Just like a man is sleeping. The consciousness is there, but he appears to be unconscious. He is sleeping. But if somebody calls him, Mr. such and such, wake up, wake up. Wake up. So after two, three callings, he wakes up. He remembers, Oh, I have got to do so many things.

Similarly, the Kåñëa consciousness is dormant in everyone's heart. This Hare Kåñëa mantra is the process of awakening. That's all. This Hare Kåñëa mantra, if we chant repeatedly Hare Kåñëa Hare Kåñëa, Hare Kåñëa, Kåñëa Kåñëa, Hare Hare/ Hare Räma, Hare Räma, Räma Räma, Hare Hare then the sleeping man awakens to Kåñëa consciousness. This is the process.*

 

 

What is Vedic sound?

The word Vedic is not a man-made religious, historical, regional, linguistic, or theoretical designation. In Sanskrit, the word veda means knowledge. So when we speak of the Vedic method of knowledge, we are really just saying the knowledgeable method of knowledge. The intent is to distinguish the Vedic method from the non-method of ignorant knowledge the invention of theories, i.e. dreaming to explain dreams. Na vilakñaëatväd asya, Vedänta- sütra 2.1.4 explains, Vedic knowledge is of a nature different from mundane theories, because tathätvaà ca çabdät: the Vedic sound is eternal reality. Vedic sound does not mean language as we ordinarily understand language to be, not even the Sanskrit language. This may come as a surprise to those acquainted with popular claims such as this one:

It [Sanskrit] is the language of the higher mind and thereby gives us access to its laws and vibratory structures. It is the language of the gods, the higher planes of the mind, and affords access to the powers of these domains.*

Now, the above quotation is not untrue, as far as it goes. But it is wrong to assume that the laws and vibratory structures of Sanskrit, by which higher planes are accessed, are the means of crossing from the shadow to the substance. Kena Upaniñad 1.1 urges us to seek the substance beyond the structure of speech: keneñitäà väcam imäà vadanti Who impells those words they speak? The inquiry into who gives words their shape and power is our entrance to para-vidyä, knowledge of transcendence. Studies of vyäkaraëa (Sanskrit grammar), nirukta (the meaning of Sanskrit words), sphoöa (the essence of Sanskrit words) and manomaya (the plane of mind), belong to apara-vidyä, the çästra-guided science of mind and matter. Para-vidyä concerns only the Supreme Personality of Godhead. But to take up para-vidyä does not entail leaving words behind. This knowledge is not transmitted by the sound of silence, by one hand clapping. It is transmitted by words that have the power to reveal who gives words their meaning. That power comes from the pürveñäm, the ancient tradition of spiritual masters beginning with Kåñëa Himself.

na tatra cakñur gacchati na väg gacchati no manaù

na vidmo na vijänémo yathaitad anuçiñyät

anyad eva viditäd atho aviditäd adhi

iti çuçruma pürveñäà ye nas tad vyäcacakñire

The eye does not go there. Nor does speech go there, nor the mind. We know it not. We do not understand how anyone might teach us about it. It is different from the known, and even more different from the unknown. Thus we have heard from teachers in the ancient tradition who explained this to us. (Kena Upaniñad 1.3-4)

Na vijänémo yathaitad anuçiñyät: we do not understand how anyone might teach us about it. Yet, iti çuçruma pürveñäà ye nas tad vyäcacakñire: thus we have heard from teachers in the ancient tradition who explained this to us. Are these two statements mutually contradictory? Kena Upaniñad 2.3 clears this doubt:

yasyämataà tasya mataà mataà yasya na veda saù

He who is of the opinion that he does not know, knows; he who is of the opinion that he knows, does not know.

In other words, one who teaches or learns Vedic knowledge from his or her own opinion (mata) of what that knowledge is does not know Veda. Opinion means theories of correspondence and coherence; more about that will come in Chapters One, Two and Five. A Bengali slogan that has unfortunately become popular in recent times is yata mata tata patha, for as many opinions as there might be, there are as many paths of Vedic understanding. Unquestionably, according to Kena Upaniñad, this is false. In a world where knowledge means opinions about mind and matter, we do not know how anyone might teach or learn that which is beyond mind and matter. Therefore a genuine Vedic teacher is sudurlabha, very rare. He puts forward no opinion, for he knows that opinion ation is not the method. The Vedic teacher, the bona fide spiritual master, humbly passes on to his disciple what was revealed by his own teacher. Such is the ancient tradition of guru- paramparä. As Kena Upaniñad 1.2. states, yad väco ha väcaà. What is taught by the guru is not speech, a linguistic formulation of human utterances, but Speech, transcendence made manifest as sound spoken and heard in pure consciousness. The clear measure of pure consciousness is the fidelity to pürveñäm, the tradition of old. But the tradition of old does not preserve Vedic knowledge the way the ancient Egyptians preserved their Pharaohs, by hiding them away in the darkness of a tomb. Though it is the oldest knowledge, if it is actually Vedic, it is still eternally alive. If it is actually truth, it dispells illusion for all time. With ever-youthful ease, Vedic knowledge sets straight the gnarled philosophical issues of this or any age. That is why I've taken the liberty in these pages to employ terms of Western philosophical discourse. For instance, reflexive criticism is an up-to- date way to indicate what happens when, as it is commonly said, somebody shoots himself in the foot with his own argument. Now, if my purpose was to be Vedic in the academic, historical or linguistic sense, I could have chosen an old Sanskrit term, pratijïä-häni, hurting the proposition. But modernity has to be met on its own terms. The refutation of up-to-date formulations of ignorance is itself the living Vedic tradition. As I write these words, I have before me an academician's review of an uncommonly philosophical book published a few years ago. He comments that it takes risks, it makes unusual connections and tangles mercilessly with the real problems. It is provocative and will excite some sharp disagreement. Something is said there about what it takes to write a book in this field. I haven't dared to hope that by publishing Substance and Shadow, my ideas will be welcomed in the contentious atmosphere of professional philosophy. My hope is that this book may help those educated in the Western way of thought to get a grasp of Vedic ideas.

 

 

Five truths and three means

Çréla Baladeva Vidyäbhüñaëa, a learned Gauòéya Vaiñëava who lived in the eighteenth century, is celebrated for his Govinda-bhäñya commentary on the Vedänta-sütra. In the introduction to that work he explains that Vedic knowledge categorizes reality into five tattvas, or ontological truths. These are:

1) éçvara the Supreme Lord

2) jéva the living entity

3) prakåti nature

4) käla eternal time

5) karma activity.

Knowing these, one comes to the limit of our capacity for knowledge. It may be noted that the Vedic literature presents other enumerations of basic truths. In His instructions to Uddhava, Lord Kåñëa approves a variety of ways that tattvas were compiled by various sages. For brevity's sake, this book concerns itself only with the five-fold compilation of Baladeva. In Prameya-ratnävalé, Çréla Baladeva Vidyäbhüñaëa informs us by what evidence (pramäëa) the five truths of the Vedas are to be known: akñädi tritayam pramäëam, Beginning with 1) perception [then 2) reasoning and 3) authoritative testimony], there are three means of valid knowledge. Substance and Shadow takes great pains to explain how our perception of matter (in Sanskrit, pratyakña) and our reasoning of mind (anumäna) can be valid means to certain knowledge when they are correctly aligned with Vedic testimony (çabda).

 

 

SHADOW JOURNAL ( NOTEBOOK , DIARY ) 

 

 

Humble obeisances

The certain knowledge that is to be obtained by the Vedic method is Kåñëa Himself. But Kåñëa is obtainable only by Kåñëa's grace. Therefore, before proceeding further, we fall at His lotus feet and pray as did the wives of the Käliya-näga:

namaù pramäëa-müläya kavaye çästra-yonaye

pravåttäya nivåttäya nigamäya namo namaù

We offer our obeisances again and again to You, Lord Çré Kåñëa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who are the basis of all authoritative evidence, who are the author and ultimate source of the revealed scriptures, and who have manifested Yourself in those Vedic literatures encouraging sense gratification as well as in those encouraging renunciation of the material world. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 10.16.44)

Here it is stated that Lord Kåñëa is the basis of all evidence (the three pramäëas). It is also mentioned that there are different grades of Vedic literatures, and the Lord is the source of all of them. Substance and Shadow particularly adheres to the version of the Çrémad-Bhägavatam, which excels not only the evidence of pratyakña and anumäna, but also all other Vedic çabda.* Çrémad-Bhägavatam alone is sarva-siddhänta, the essence of all knowledge. I am greatly indebted to the ISKCON devotees and friends of Lord Kåñëa who contributed in different ways to making Substance and Shadow what it is: His Holiness Bhakti Charu Mahäräja, Governing Body Commissioner for ISKCON Mayapur, West Bengal; His Holiness Bhakti-vidyä-pürëa Mahäräja, head of the ISKCON Çré Rüpänuga Paramärthika Vidyäpéöha at Çrédhäma Mayapur; His Holiness Hådayänanda Mahäräja, GBC Minister for Advanced Vaiñëava Studies; His Grace Gopéparäëadhana Prabhu, Sanskritist for BBT International; His Grace Aja Prabhu, ISKCON Copenhagen; His Grace Bimala Prasäda Prabhu, Mayapur Gurukula instructor; Çréman Mathureça däsa, Sanskritist at the Mayapura Vidyäpéöha; Çréman Mathurä-pati däsa, student of Indology at the University of Warsaw; Çrématé Bäìkä-bihäré devé-däsé, corresponding secretary at the Vaishnava Graduate School, California; Çréman Räja Vidyä däsa, Govinda Verlag, Neuhausen; Professor Dr. Bruno Nagel, University of Amsterdam; Professor Dr. Marius Crisan (Muräri Kåñëa däsa), Technical University of Timisoara; Bhaktin Lisa, ISKCON Amsterdam; and two professional translators who volunteered their skills, Yani (Greece) and Fagu (Rumania). I offer my apologies to anyone I may have missed.

 

 

Introduction

 

Doubt and certainty in Vedic philosophy

How can I be certain that what you are telling me is true? Every thinking person asks, and gets asked, this question. The Vedic philosophy arrives at certitude through pramäëa. The Sanskrit word pramäëa refers to sources of knowledge that are held to be valid. In the Brahmä-Madhva-Gauòéya Sampradäya, the school of Vedic knowledge that ISKCON represents, there are three pramäëas. They are pratyakña (direct perception), anumäna (reason), and çabda (authoritative testimony). Of these three pramäëas, çabda is imperative, while pratyakña and anumäna are supportive. Therefore, when a devotee of Kåñëa is asked about the certainty of his beliefs, he usually answers by quoting authority: guru (the spiritual master), çästra (the Vedic scriptures) and sädhu (other devotees respected for their realization of the teachings of guru and çästra). In modern schools of thought, citing authority to certify what we say doesn't seem to count for much anymore. There is a Latin phrase for this kind of proof, ipse dixit (he himself has said it), after the answer that disciples of an ancient Greek sage used to give whenever an opponent called the certitude of the sage's doctrine into question. The problem modern thinkers have with ipse dixit proof is that its evidence lies only in words. And words alone don't prove anything.

 

 

Lucy in the land of Narnia

A story by C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, illustrates the modern difficulty with ipse dixit proof. Lucy is the youngest of four children on a visit to the large, eccentric home of an elderly professor. There an odd thing happens to her. She passes through the back of a clothes closet into another land called Narnia. When Lucy returns and relates her experience to her brothers and sister, they conclude that her senses had to have been mysteriously deluded. Finally the children bring the matter before an authority, the professor himself. His decision is that because Lucy is not known to be a liar nor mad, she must be telling the truth. Lucy's brother Peter still cannot believe it. He argues that the other children found no strange land through the back of the closet. What's that got to do with it? the professor asks. Well, Sir, if things are real, they are there all the time. Are they? But do you really mean, Sir, demands Peter, that there could be other worlds all over the place, just around the cornerlike that? Nothing is more probable, the professor replies.* Wouldn't you say Peter has a right to think his sister is hyperimaginitive? As for that authority, the dear professor, bless him, he may be well into his second childhood. At first glance, Lucy's Narnia fantasy seems similar to the Vedic description of worlds other than our own. The Vedas were spoken by sage Brahmä after he had a vision of a transcendental realm called Vaikuëöha, the kingdom of God. For a person educated the modern way, the authority Brahmä might have as a sage does not make the existence of Vaikuëöha at all certain. Neither is Narnia made certain by the professor's authority. The modern outlook is summed up by another Latin phrase: de omnibus est dubitandum, doubt is everything. This was coined by Ren Descartes (1596-1650), often called the father of modern philosophy. While on a military duty outside his native France, the well-educated Descartes came to wonder if he knew anything at all. He doubted what he perceived with his senses. He doubted the ipse dixit authority of his schooling in the Greek classics. From out of these doubts arose a certitude about his own being, which he expressed in his famous maxim cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. Oxford philosopher A.J. Ayer (1910-1989) explains:

The sense in which I cannot doubt the statement that I think is just that my doubting entails its truth: and in the same sense I cannot doubt that I exist.*

 

 

The modern method of thought

Doubt itself, then, formed Descartes' immediate, indubitable data. From there he doubted his way to an understanding of the external world, questioning at every step both his senses and the teachings of previous authorities. His method looks quite reasonable to people today, but for his time it was a most radical break with the Medieval intellectual tradition. Descartes' method of systematic doubt marks the starting point of the modern notion of knowledge as something worked out rather then something received. Now, what would Descartes do with Lucy's story of Narnia? As he himself wrote:

In our search for the direct road to truth, we should busy ourselves with no object about which we cannot attain a certitude equal to that of the demonstrations of arithmetic and geometry.*

In other words, the reality of a thing is to be certified by a system of logical proof (anumäna), like geometry. It is not enough just for Lucy to see Narnia (pratyakña), or even get authoritative confirmation that she saw it (çabda). If anumäna certifies it, then Narnia exists even if Peter can't see it or didn't learn about it in school. If anumäna doesn't certify it, Narnia doesn't exist, no matter what Lucy saw or the professor says. As physicist Paul Davies points out, Descartes' method of analytic geometry is a historical antecedent to today's theoretical physics, which also promotes anumäna over çabda and pratyakña.* Like Descartes, today's physicist relies upon a system of mathematical logic to decide what is real and what is not. And, like Descartes, he asserts that mathematical proof overrides even direct perception. The old adage, seeing is believing, is out the window. We can't see quarks, black holes or space-time worms, but the calculations tell us they are certain. Therefore they are certain.

 

 

The quantum Narnia

Now, as many of us may know from popular science magazines and pocketbooks, quantum theory proposes the existence of alternative worlds that influence our own.* Suppose Lucy drops her claim of having directly seen Narnia and instead tells her siblings, Physicists say that the structure of everything rests upon mathematical laws. They also say there are unlimited other universes in mathematical dimensions. Given the infinite possibilities involved, I am completely certain that in one of these other parallel universes is a place called Narnia. The professor concurs that she is right. Still Peter protests, Do you really mean, Sir, that there could be other worlds all over the place, just around the corner like that? Nothing is more probable, the professor replies. Peter, Lucy chimes in, you should pay attention to the professor now. This is no fairy tale. It's science. You were right to be dubious about the original form of my Narnia tale. But throw in a little physics and hey presto. It's rather tame, actually. We've heard so much about the quirky quantum world that by the mid-1990's, Narnia is just cold pudding. Many educated people today would tend to agree with Lucy. But Peter remains dubious that the quantized tale of Narnia is any more credible. These are his reasons. Even if I say I believe you now, I still don't get to see Narnia for myself. Quantum physics says that the alternative worlds are completely disconnected from each other. Communication between them is impossible. An individual cannot leave one world and visit another, nor can we even glimpse what life is like in all those other worlds.* Not only can't you show me Narnia, you can't even give me a solid reason for believing that Narnia exists, because as a kid I'll never be able to work out the mathematics for myself. Admit it Sir, you're asking me to swallow the same old ipse dixit proof as before! His voice kind and fatherly, the professor patiently says, Peter, settle down. In the original tale of Narnia, Lucy's only evidence was her direct perception. We can't trust that because, after all, she's only human. But reason is more developed than perception. Therefore the quantum explanation is superior. Since your perception is also untrustworthy, you're not able to use it to question logic and reason. Even if you can't understand the quantum method of logic, it has an authority of its own, different from ipse dixit proof. Are you telling me the quantum Narnia has the certain authority of truth? Peter, I said nothing could be more probable. I didn't guarantee that it is true. The point is that scientific reason has its own authority that is worth your while to listen to and follow, young man. No doubt, Sir, scientific reason is more developed than the simple words of a little girl, but it seems to me that you're the one missing the point. If we simply believe scientific theories without verifying whether they are true, we grant the scientists testimonial authority over our lives, not just theoretical authority. Theoretical authority means I'm giving you a hearing just for argument's sake. I may accept what you say or not. But testimonial authority supposes you to be speaking real facts that I as a schoolboy ought to take seriously if I want knowledge. You admit you cannot guarantee that what you are saying about Narnia is true. There is no evidence by direct perception that Narnia is real. Yet still you expect me to grant you testimonial authority. But how can I be certain that what you are telling me is true?

 

 

Self-evident authority

To summarize, Peter and the professor disagree whether reason has authority. The professor's position is that if a statement is backed up by scientific logic (which he admits is not necessarily true), it has authority and should be accepted as testimony. Peter argues that logic in itself does not have the certain authority of truth. He accuses the professor, and modern science, of obliging schoolchildren like him to believe in theories about unseen things like Narnia as if they were true. This is just the sort of ipse dixit authority that Descartes rejected. Peter's objection to the authority of logic is well worth marking. A notorious problem of modern systems of reason is that their claims to authority are beyond reason. For example, what is the reason for the professor's argument that logic is the better method to certitude? The professor admits that logic does not guarantee truth. He speaks in terms of probability instead. But if the truth cannot really be guaranteed through logic, then how can we establish whether something is even probably true? And so the professor's argument for logical certification of knowledge is not reasonable at all.* If his argument for the authority of logic is beyond reason, he is not really open to discussion. Rather, he is preaching from the pulpit: Logic has authority because I say so. Why should we believe that because he says so? This is the essence of Peter's challenge. In the same way, an argument based upon the authority of sense perception (pratyakña) cannot be proved certain by sense perception itself. Our senses are limited. They cannot show that there is no reality beyond their limits of perception. What is the authority for my claiming that what I perceive is the whole truth and nothing but the truth? My brute ego? Like Peter, Vedic pramäëa distinguishes between logic and testimonial authority. The word çabda means sound, but the çabda that is cited as authoritative Vedic testimony is çabda-brahma, spiritual sound. It is in a category by itself, distinct from anumäna (logic) and pratyakña (direct perception). Spiritual sound, as opposed to ordinary sound, is svataù-pramäëa. That means its authority is self-evident. It does not derive its authority from another pramäëa. Çrémad- Bhägavatam 6.3.19 points out the essential difference between speech that carries self-evident authority, and speech that does not:

dharmaà tu säkñäd bhagavat-praëétaà

na vai vidur åñayo näpi deväù

na siddha-mukhyä asurä manuñyäù

kuto nu vidyädhara-cäraëädayaù

Authoritative laws of religion (dharma) are those directly spoken by the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Even the great sages in the higher planets cannot ascertain the real religious principles, nor can the demigods or the leaders of Siddhaloka, to say nothing of the asuras, ordinary human beings, Vidyädharas and Cäraëas.

What Kåñëa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, says, has the full authority of truth. Kåñëa Himself is the Supreme Truth, the paraà brahman. Now, Bhagavad-gétä 10.12-13 states that great sages like Närada, Asita, Devala and Vyäsa confirm this truth. That does not mean that the truth Kåñëa speaks depends upon the confirmation of others. Rather, the sages confirm they know the truth by repeating what Kåñëa says. Thus they are also accepted in the Vedas as authorities whose words are always true, because their authority derives from Kåñëa. Apart from this, sages, demigods, angels, human beings and demons have no self-evident authority. Similarly, sense perception and logic have no self-evident authority; they depend upon çabda. For instance, I perceive that people die. Reason impels me to ask whether every human being, including myself, will also die. But my senses and mind cannot answer that with certitude. I must turn to authoritative testimony. After so learning that I and everybody else will die, reason then forces me to ask, What is the use of this life? As before, the senses and mind cannot give me a certain answer. Only çabda has that authority. Anumäna can help us form a reasonable basis for a belief in worlds other than our own, as quantum physics does. But reason alone cannot bring us to the realization, with complete certainty, of other worlds in even a different material dimension, what to speak of the certain realization of transcendental worlds in the spiritual dimension (Vaikuëöha). The spiritual dimension is self- evident only via the medium of çabda, pure Vedic sound as transmitted by Kåñëa and His authorized representatives. On the other hand, sound spoken by someone who has no self-evident authority, who does not refer to Kåñëa, and who derives authority from pratyakña and anumäna, is not çabda. Such ipse dixit evidence certifies only uncertainty. But that is also a part of knowledge. So that the certain may be distinguished from the uncertain, the latter must be exemplified. To that end, many (pardon) mundane authorities are cited in this book to demonstrate the uncertainty of material knowledge.

 

 

Problems of self-referential logic

But aren't we who adhere to Vedic philosophy being too creed bound in citing çabda as proof of certain knowledge? Can there be anything more dubious than an appeal to some sort of self-evident authority? Yes: declaiming the principle of self-evident authority. The sense in which I cannot doubt self- evident authority is that my doubting entails the acceptance of a presumed self- evident authority namely, doubt itself (anumäna). The central theme of Descartes' philosophy, the so-called Cartesian principle, is that the mind, by referring to itself alone, can arrive at the fundamental certainties of existence: that I exist, God exists, and that geometric logic is intrinsically superior to all other types of knowledge. Nowadays it is fashionable for philosophers to reject Descartes' arguments for the soul and God. That logic, they point out, was just a holdover of his Christian upbringing. Still, the basic theme of the Cartesian principle, that the mind should be its own authority in deciding what is true and what is not, remains very prominent in the West. If the truth about everything is knowable only by the mind's systematic doubt, then truly, de omnibus est dubitandum, doubt is everything. But what can we know with certitude by doubt alone? Descartes tried to prove that doubt yields self-referential certainty by equating thought (I think) with the self (therefore I am). For the Christian that he was, I am meant I am an eternal soul, different by my thought from matter. This sense of non-physical identity formed his ground of certitude. On that ground, he devised his indubitable Cartesianism. But all his maxim really says with any certitude is, I am thinking now, therefore I exist now. The self does not always engage in thought. Sometimes it is completely unconscious, as during dreamless sleep. If thought is the self's nature, and thought is not always, then it does not follow that the self is always. I think, therefore I am is no more or less valid a statement than I sleep, therefore I am not. Anumäna, then, does not self-referentially establish a certain ground of eternal existence nor a certain ground of nonexistence. A second problem is that self-referential logic leads to paradox. Everyone who regularly uses a computer has experienced a hang, when the computer gets stuck in a function and cannot execute further commands. The only remedy is for the operator to reset the system. A hang happens when the computer slips into a logical loop that keeps referring back to itself. In the same way, our minds slip into a logical loop as we consider Descartes' own central theme: doubt is everything. If the statement is true, it is false, because by asserting that doubt is everything, it leaves no doubt about what everything is. But if it is false, then it is true, because the falsity of the statement provokes doubt in everything once more. Yet again, if it is true, it is false; but still, if it is false, it is true ... on and on without end. There is no way out of the loop because the logic of the statement has only itself to refer to. This strongly suggests that for logic to be meaningful, it must be directed by truth beyond itself, just as a hang must be reset by an operator external to the computer itself. Truth, then, is something beyond anumäna. A third problem is that Descartes himself could not put into practice the tenet of self-referential anumäna. He did experiments to test his theories, resorting to observation (pratyakña) to support his anumäna.

 

 

I am not the mind

Descartes' intentions were pious. With his maxim, I think, therefore I am, he offered everyone a simple method of self-realization that he supposed certified our identity as soul. He hoped his method of logical analysis would put religion on a rational footing. Unfortunately, his method does not really lead to self-realization, because it confuses the soul with the mind. Vedic çabda reveals truths the mind is unable to discern when referring to itself. One such truth is that the mind is a subtle material covering of consciousness, something like the smoke that clouds a flame that is not burning cleanly. The flame is comparable to the soul, for the flame spreads its light like the soul spreads consciousness. A flame burning uncleanly is like a soul in mäyä, the state of forgetfulness of Kåñëa, or God. From the soul in mäyä, the mind arises, like smoke rising from a flame. Smoke and flame are closely associated yet have opposite qualities. Flame gives light, while smoke obscures light. The mind is called caïcala in Sanskrit, meaning unsteady. Sometimes it is awake. Sometimes it dreams. Sometimes it is in deep dreamless sleep. When the light of self-knowledge is obscured, wakefulness, dreaming and deep sleep delude consciousness. We therefore make such false statements as I think, last night I dreamt, I was unconscious, and so on. But all the while the flame of the self, the soul, burns eternally, unaffected by this clouding of its light. The unsteady mind is captivated by external sense impressions. Through the mind and senses, the soul's attention is focused upon the ever-changing material world. This misdirection of consciousness (the power of the soul) powers the turning of the saàsära-cakra, the wheel of birth and death. The mind is misinformed by the imperfect senses. Illusioned by uncertain sense data, the mind makes mistakes. When in spite of this, we stubbornly think we've gained indubitable knowledge, we are cheated. Suppose you and I agree, on the basis of mathematical logic like that deemed indubitable by Descartes, that one plus one is two is a sure fact. We form a school of philosophy, the Too True To Two school. We challenge any other school to come forward and prove that one plus one is two is not certain. The losers have to give the winners all the money in their wallets except one banknote. A member of the One On One Won school takes up the bet. He places one drop of water on a flat glass surface with an eyedropper, then carefully adds a second drop to it. The result, to our chagrined surprise, is not two drops. We lose, cheated by our own minds and senses. After giving away the money, I have one dollar in my wallet. You have a ten dollar bill in yours. Pooling our funds, we fall into a grave philosophical contradiction. My senses tell me we now have two notes, but your mind tells you we have eleven dollars. We quarrel. I shout, Believe your eyes! Two! You shout back, Believe your mind! Eleven! Condemning one another, we dissolve our school.

 

 

Can we be certain about çabda?

The dispute over the two bills is not just comedy relief for readers weary of epistemology. Friction between rationalists (who believe their minds, i.e. reason) and empiricists (who believe their eyes, i.e. the senses) has been a flashpoint of regular philosophical controversy since classical times. Like unsupervised children, pratyakña and anumäna quarrel whenever the authoritative parent pramäëa, Vedic çabda, is absent. As mentioned before, theoretical physicists, following Descartes, give anumäna the last word over pratyakña. They labor to devise a Theory of Everything, a mathematical formula that explains the universe so concisely that it can be worn on the front of a T-shirt. It's all very exciting, but nobody knows if there is any truth in it: One theory builds upon another. We can't escape the suspicion that we may be constructing a very ephemeral house of cards.* Unfortunately, the tendency is to equate Vedic çabda-pramäëa with the sort of ipse dixit authority that Descartes rejected. And so, among intellectuals, anumäna remains the favored pramäëa, though it is never beyond doubt. But there are three simple, standard rules of semantics (the study of linguistic communication) that suggest a method by which we may assure ourselves that there is more to çabda than empty words. These rules, considered reasonable in the modern context, have always operated within the Vedic context. If I want to know whether a statement has real authority, I ought to:

1) Know what the statement means;

2) Know the right way to verify it;

3) Have good evidence for believing it.*

First, knowing what a statement means requires me to accept an appropriate discipline of thought. For instance, I cannot know what nondeterministic, polynomial-time-complete means through the disciplines of basket weaving, horticulture or phrenology. The appropriate discipline is combinatorics, the study of complex logical problems. Similarly, if I want to know what çabda is the sound incarnation of Kåñëa means, I have to accept the system of discipline (paramparä) through which çabda is handed down. Second, I verify the statement çabda is the sound incarnation of Kåñëa by consulting the three paramparä sources of çabda: guru, çästra and sädhu. If I read this statement in çästra, I consult guru and sädhu for verification. If I hear it from guru, it is verified by çästra and sädhu; and if I hear it from sädhu, it is verified by çästra and guru. And when I actually follow the çabda myself, it is verified from within the heart by Lord Kåñëa Himself, the source of all knowledge. Third, there is very good evidence for believing the statement çabda is the sound incarnation of Kåñëa. One who makes the senses and mind his authorities is bound by them, and is thus bound by ignorance of the self. In other living creatures such ignorance of the self is natural; but in man it is a vice that results in vice. Ipse dixit sound does not have the potency to free the self from the vicious demands of the mind and senses. Çabda that is understood and verified as per the two previous rules transforms the hearer in a way that ipse dixit sound does not. As Çréla Prabhupäda writes in Bhagavad-gétä As It Is:

Perfect knowledge, received from the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is the path of liberation.*

Liberation of consciousness from the dictation of the mind and senses, and from ignorance and vice, is self-evident in the devotees who take to the path. The direct experience of the purifying power of çabda convinces the devotee of its authority. At the end of the path of liberation, the path of hearing Vedic çabda, Kåñëa personally reveals Himself as Absolute Knowledge, the Absolute Knower and the Absolute Object of Knowledge. This state of full realization of the truth is called Kåñëa consciousness. As this introduction comes to a close, at least a couple of questions still linger in the air: How are pratyakña and anumäna to be guided by çabda? How does çabda directly reveal the transcendental worlds of the spiritual dimension? These and many more problems are dealt with in the chapters to come.

 

 

 

Magic Spell Book of Shadow: Magic Spell Book, Potion Log, Magic Journal | 210 Blank Pages with Skull Frame | Cream paper | Large ( 8.5"x11")

 

 

Chapter One: Perception (Pratyakña)

 

In Vedänta-syamantaka 1.2, Çréla Baladeva Vidyäbhüñaëa defines perception as indryärtha sannikarñe pratyakñam, the direct contact of the senses with their objects. This produces an experience. But is that experience knowledge? It is for those who adopt the viewpoint known as naive realismthat everything is simply the way it appears to be. However, since the time of Descartes, naive realism has been considered deficient. What the senses readily experience is only what Western philosophers term the manifest qualities of nature: tastes and colors, for example. But manifest qualities do not reveal their own cause, and finding the cause was the main concern of the New Philosophy of the seventeenth century. During this period, the first modern scientists developed a vigorous program of methodical experimentationin an effort to push beyond the limits of naive experience. The Latin words experientia and experimentum (from which we get experience and experiment) are closely related. Before Descartes, they were almost synonyms. Experiments in the Middle Ages were naive experimenta fructifera, fruitive experiments, designed to produce a particular effect or useful purpose. Metallurgists of that time sought ways to make higher-quality iron tools by quenching them, red-hot, in experimental baths prepared from plant and animal matter. For instance, the juice of the horseradish, being sharp, was so tested in the hope it would sharpen the edges of blades. Such fruitive experiments were concerned only with the manifest qualities of nature. But as time went by, craftsmen and chemists, emboldened by new techniques brought to Europe from the Muslim world, performed sophisticated experimenta lucifera, experiments of light meant to uncover nature's occult qualities. Originally, an occult quality was supposed to be a mysterious, yet natural, phenomenon like the magnetism of a lodestone. With the rise of New Philosophy, all the perceived qualities of nature came to be thought of as occult. The English scientist Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680), writing in Scepsis scientifica, declared:

The most common phenomena may be neither known, nor improved, without insight into the more hidden frame. For Nature works by an invisible hand in all things.

This succinctly expresses the basic premise of science not just the science of the West, but also the Vedic science. Both agree that sense experience is not what it seems to be; the truth goes deeper. But the two sciences differ in method. Western science relies on experiments of light, whereas Vedic science relies upon adhyätma-dépa, the light of transcendental knowledge. In any case, light is required to dispel darkness. What is that darkness? According to the Vedic version, it is false ego (in Sanskrit, ahaìkära) summarized by Lord Kåñëa to Uddhava in Çrémad- Bhägavatam 11.24.7-8.*

 

 

Mysterious Painting (Book 1): My Own NFT Collection

Mysterious Painting (Book 2): My Own NFT Collection

Mysterious Painting (Book 3): My Own NFT Collection

 

 

The false ego

Perception itself is a faculty of consciousness. When consciousness is pure, then perception is likewise pure, as indicated by Lord Kåñëa in Bhagavad-gétä 9.2 (pavitram idam uttamam pratyakñävagamaà dharmyaà). Physical sense perception is a darkening, an occlusion, of that faculty. This occurs when the self is mistaken to be the body. That mistake is the false ego. The real ego who witnesses the sense objects is the soul (ätmä), always different from matter: evaà drañöä tanoù påthak.* The soul is distinguished from matter by consciousness. Yet consciousness is bound to matter by the false ego. The false ego reflects three modes of impure consciousness. The ignorant mode (tämasa-ahaìkära) governs perception. From out of ignorance, the five manifest qualities (païca-tan-mätras) appear within consciousness: sound, touch, form, taste and smell. These are the subtle qualities of five elements (païca-mahä-bhütas): earth, water, fire, air and ether. In Vedic science, an element is that which, when contacted by a sense, manifests a quality as when sound manifests from contact of the ear with ether (vibrating space), or as when form manifests from the contact of the eye with the solar fire (sunlight). From the passionate mode of the false ego (räjasa- or taijasa- ahaìkära), the senses are produced. And from the mode of goodness (sättvika- or vaikärika-ahaìkära) come eleven demigods, five of whom manage the functions of the five perceptive senses (ear, tactile faculty, eye, tongue and nose). Another five demigods manage the working senses: mouth, hand, leg, genitals and anus. The eleventh demigod manages the mind.*

 

 

Real perception

By adhyätma-dépa, the light of transcendental knowledge, we distinguish sense perception from perception itself. Inasmuch as the self is known to be different from the body, correspondingly the self's perceptive power is freed from the limits of the material sense organs. When the self is completely liberated, the universe is seen as the energy of the Supreme. This way of perception is direct knowledge of reality, as we are told by Kåñëa Himself in Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.24.19:

The material universe may be considered real, having nature as its original ingredient and final state. Lord Mahä-Viñëu is the resting place of nature, which becomes manifest by the power of time. Thus nature, the almighty Viñëu and time are not different from Me, the Supreme Absolute Truth.

Here, then, is the reason for Çréla Baladeva Vidyäbhüñaëa's counting as tattvas (truths) the material nature, time and their interaction (karma). In reality, they are not different from Kåñëa, just as the living entities are not different from Him. Yet they remain always subordinate to Him, for He is ever their controller (éçvara). Though the tattvas are not different from Him, Kåñëa is different from them, as the sun is different from the light and shadow it displays. Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.24.20 states that the material world exists only due to the perception of the Supreme Personality of Godhead:

As long as the Supreme Personality of Godhead continues to glance upon nature, the material world continues to exist, perpetually manifesting through procreation the great and variegated flow of universal creation.

The Supreme Lord's standard of perception is the standard of reality itself. This is real knowledge, or Kåñëa consciousness, as confirmed in Çrémad- Bhägavatam 4.29.69:

Kåñëa consciousness means constantly associating with the Supreme Personality of Godhead in such a mental state that the devotee can observe the cosmic manifestation exactly as the Supreme Personality of Godhead does.

Great souls like Brahmä, purified by extraordinary austerity, directly see the whole universe in that way. Such austerity is beyond our reach. But at least we can learn to see things rightly through the eyes of revealed scripture (çästra). Scriptural vision is called çästra-cakñuña. In Vedic circles, this pratyakña is acceptable as bona fide pramäëa. Otherwise, as Çréla Prabhupäda used to say, even if God personally came before us now, we lack the eyes to see Him. Our present eyes are material, but they can be scripturally trained. Çästra-cakñuña is directed not by the body and mind, but by the vision of the Supreme Lord and His authorized representatives, of whom the first is Brahmä. Actually, God is present before us right now, accompanied by His various energies. But as long as our vision is steeped in the shadow of our real self, we cannot see Him.

 

 

Illusory perception

The foregoing explanation, involving as it does God, the soul and eleven demigods, must appear occult to some readers. But let us not forget that Europe's own New Philosophy, the direct precursor to modern science, considered all qualities of nature manifest within our perception to be occult. The reason is the problem of causation. An occult quality is simply our limited experience of a hidden cause. The New Philosophy sought to scientifically explain that cause. The Vedic literatures explain that our minds receive impressions from the senses; these impressions signal the existence of a substance (in Sanskrit, vastu) external to us. That substance is the cause of what we perceive. In truth, that substance is Kåñëa, the cause of all causes. However, unless we are fully Kåñëa conscious, we do not perceive Him as the substance on the other side of sense perception. As Çréla Prabhupäda states in his purport to Bhagavad-gétä 14.8: Vastu-yäthätmya-jïänävarakaà viparyaya-jïäna- janakaà tamaù: under the spell of ignorance, one cannot understand a thing as it is. Instead, we perceive only whatever impressions our materially conditioned senses are able to convey: sound, touch, form, taste and smell.* We cannot know beyond these impressions what actually is out there.* Hence, perception is occult, since its cause is ever-hidden. Any knowledge that depends upon the authority of pratyakña is curtailed on all sides by our ignorance of the substance of reality. Not only is pratyakña limited to impressions, our senses grasp these impressions imperfectly. Çréla Baladeva Vidyäbhüñaëa points out that our senses are able to perceive only objects that are within their range. They cannot detect those that are far away or very near. An object too small or too great likewise cannot be perceived. And when the mind is distracted, we miss even those objects that are within the range of perception. Sense objects obscure one other, as when the sunshine covers the shining of the stars, or when milk and curd mix together.* Other defects of sense perception are described in Çrémad-Bhägavatam. We perceive a candle flame as a steady light, when in reality, moment by moment, the flame comes into being, transforms and passes out of existence. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.22.45) Sometimes, due to a mirage, we perceive water where there is only dry land. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 7.13.29) We perceive an object reflected upon a moving surface as moving when in fact it is not. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.22.54) Western philosophy likewise admits that sense perception is defective. Four standard examples are 1) the same object sometimes appears different to the same person, as when a green tree appears black at night; 2) the same object sometimes appears different to different persons, as when a green tree looks red to a person who is color-blind; 3) we derive the forms and other qualities of sense objects from the functions of our sense organs, but objects and organs are really just atoms arrayed in empty space; 4) what we perceive cannot be what really is at the moment we perceive it, since it takes time for perception to occur (for instance, if sunlight takes eight minutes to reach the earth, we only see the sun as it was eight minutes before). Each of these examples further underscores the problem of the occult quality of perception: what's really out there? The grave difficulty with the attempt of experimental scientists to solve this problem is that their proposed solution just renews the problem. Experimental science questions existence, and answers those same questions, from the standpoint of pratyakña (experience and experiment). In Vedic terms, such philosophy is called pratyakñaväda.* There are two types of pratyakñavädésempiricists and sceptics. Empiricists equate sense perception with knowledge. Though that knowledge is presently incomplete, they argue that it should be increased by advances in experimental technique. Vedic authorities reject this attempt as being inherently flawed. Even if we extend the range of our senses by using scientific instruments, the defects of the senses stay apace of the senses' range. Sceptics argue that since perception is always defective, knowledge is not worth pursuing. Cratylus, a sceptic of ancient Athens, found sense perception to be so meaningless that he gave up speaking altogether. He merely wiggled his finger to indicate he was fleetingly responding to stimuli. This too is not approved by Vedic authorities.

 

 

Presence and absence

The conflicting views of the empiricists and the sceptics center on the presence and absence of the objects of perception. Impelled by desire, the senses seek contact with their objects. In the presence of desired objects, we feel satisfaction; but time inevitably separates us from them. Either the objects are removed against our will, or in time we become sated by their presence and give the objects up. Despite this, some people maintain a strong hope that the presence of sense objects will yield happiness. Others, after repeated separation from them, lose that hope. And almost everybody vacillates between that hope and hopelessness. All of us have at one time or another felt completely unfulfilled in our present sphere of experience. All of us have at one time or another hoped to break through that hopelessness to a completely new experience. The dedicated empiricist is attached to sense objects, and so philosophizes that all knowledge springs from the contact of the senses with their objects. The dedicated sceptic contrarily prefers the senselessness of the unknown. He denies the meaningfulness of perception. It is rare in history to find pratyakñavädés who, like Cratylus, never swerve from one extreme or the other; but let the terms empiricist and sceptic serve as markers of the limits of pratyakñaväda. From the Vedic viewpoint, neither position is reasonable, for in neither is there an understanding of the cause. When the cause of the presence and absence of sense objects is understood, only then does perception make sense. From Çréla Baladeva Vidyäbhüñaëa comes the example of a waterpot taken from one room to another by a servant. After the waterpot is removed from our sight, it is clear by our not seeing it that the pot is elsewhere.* But if we lose our memory of what governs the presence and absence of that pot, the defects of the senses overwhelm our intelligence. Seeing the pot absent, we might disbelieve our eyes that it is really gone. Seeing the pot present, we might not believe it is here. Such bewilderment indicates a deranged state of mind. For a deranged mind, the truth or falsity of knowledge acquired through the senses becomes a grave philosophical problem. Çrémad-Bhägavatam 4.22.31 states:

When one deviates from his original [Kåñëa] consciousness, he loses the capacity to remember his previous position or recognize his present one. When remembrance is lost, all knowledge acquired is based on a false foundation. When this occurs, learned scholars consider that the soul is lost.

In the period beginning with Descartes, when doubt became everything, philosophers came to question whether what we perceive really exists, and if it does exist, where it exists in the world, or in the mind. Here is an example of contemporary reasoning in this respect. Note how the problem of self- reference, seen to undermine the authority of anumäna in the introduction of this book, now undermines the authority of pratyakña.

If you try to argue that there must be an external physical world, because you wouldn't see buildings, people, or stars unless there were things out there that reflected or shed light into your eyes and caused your visual experiences, the reply is obvious: how do you know that? It's just another claim about the external world and your relation to it, and it has to be based upon the evidence of your senses. But you can rely on that specific evidence about how visual experiences are caused only if you can already rely in general on the contents of your mind to tell you about the external world. And that is exactly what has been called into question. If you try to prove the reliability of your impressions by appealing to your impressions, you're arguing in a circle and won't get anywhere.*

 

 

 

 

The uncertain foundation of empirical knowledge

How do we know if and when what we perceive is reliable? How do we know if and when it is not? When we stand on a stretch of railroad that extends straight to the horizon, we know that the space between the tracks is always the same, even though we see the tracks gradually meet in the distance. We know that what we see in this case is just an illusion. How do we know that? Well, if I walk towards the horizon, I will see that the tracks are always the same distance apart. But here the problem of self-reference stops us in our tracks. It already established that our seeing is imperfect therefore we see the two tracks meeting in the distance. Which perception is real? Which perception is an illusion? How much of what we think we perceive is really an interpretation of the mind? How do I know that what you understand in your mind to be the color blue is the same as what I understand it to be? How do we know that everything we perceive is not just a hallucination? These are some of the many problems faced by the pratyakñavädés as they strive to determine the truth through sense perception. Naive realism, that everything is simply the way it appears to be, does not give us a purchase on separating true perceptions from false ones. Experimental science is said to be empirical, in that it equates proven knowledge with that which is directly observed. Yet scientists are quick to argue that their observations are not naive. They do not accept any and all pratyakña as valid knowledge. Now, the interesting point here is that in separating valid perceptions from invalid ones, scientists rely upon ipsedixitist assumptions. Thus perception, even when it is regulated by strict rules of observation and enhanced by instruments, is not actually the measure of proof in science. A so-called hardnosed realist who says, I accept as true only that which is proven by empirical science, is in the main accepting assumptions that cannot be proven by empiricism.* To separate valid perceptions from invalid ones, scientists first must assume that the world can be known through the senses. They must also assume that the world is objectively real. These assumptions do not get along well with one other. To say the world is objectively real is to say it is independent of and indifferent to sense perception. Then what in the world can we know? We can know only the effects of the world upon our senses, not the world itself. The problem for empiricists, notes philosopher D.W. Hamlyn, is

... that if we perceive only the effects of physical objects upon us we are not in the position to have any direct knowledge of those physical objects. We are not therefore in the position to verify any statement about the causation of our perceptions, and in consequence physical objects as such are what Immanuel Kant called things in themselves, forever unknowable and outside our experience.*

The things in themselves are actually Kåñëa and His energies, the tattvas. But, as noted before, when the living entity is not in his original state of Kåñëa consciousness, he is restricted to perceiving only impressions of those tattvas. Since the cause of the impressions remains unknown, sense perception is ever out of touch with reality. Thus it has no self-evident authority. Yet scientists, following the assumption that the world can be known through the senses, continue to strive for direct knowledge of reality through perception. Faith in the empirical method moved a number of prominent philosophers of science to abandon causal theories of perception in favor of a theory known as phenomenalism.

 

Phenomenalism

The phenomenal theory of perception argues that all knowledge about reality is drawn from sense data, but no knowledge about sense data can be drawn from reality hence there is no deep reality beyond sense data that causes perception. This serves empiricism well. But it also serves scepticism well.* Radical sceptics, like the solipsists, argue that our perception of reality might just as well be a dream. If there is no reality beyond sense data, then existence is wholly a state of mind. Objective knowledge is impossible. All I can know is the contents of my mind; there is no way to determine beyond my mental impressions whether what I know is true or false. Empiricists reply that the comparison of our knowledge of sense data to a dream isn't appropriate, because we don't ever wake up into a reality beyond the senses. Reality is immediately physical. We need not submit to an occult cause beyond physical matter, since the brain of each one of us, as anatomist J.Z. Young argues, literally creates his or her own world.* All that we know depends on the physical brain; the mind is just an epiphenomenon of neurochemistry. Because sense perception is generated by the measurable flow of neural impulses, it is objectively real. A sceptic might retort that matter is the mode of being that the world appears to have, when observed by a mind.* The human brain, that gray lump seen within the skull, is simply a mental image labeled physical matter by our minds! There is no proof that the brain, or anything we perceive, is matter. After all, scientists who take the empirical method to its uttermost limit themselves conclude that the universe is more like a great thought than a great machine.* Empiricism and scepticism are mirror images of one another: identical, yet reversed. Arguments back and forth of sense data is mental, no, it is physical, will never demonstrate the final validity of either of these viewpoints over the other, since both sides accept that imperfect sense data constitutes all we can know. Because it is imperfect, sense data cannot be veda, or certain knowledge. The bottom line is this: if we rely only upon perception, we can never be sure if what we know is true. Philosophical author Bryan Magee writes:

That the whole of science, of all things, should rest on foundations whose validity is impossible to demonstrate has been found uniquely embarrassing. It has turned many empirical philosophers into sceptics, or irrationalists, or mystics. Some it has led to religion.*

What Magee is saying here is that the foundation of empiricism is a belief, not the objective truth. We should try to understand this carefully. Belief is defined in philosophy as a state of mind that is appropriate to truth.* A state of mind is subjective. The objective confirmation of belief is truth. Now, if the claim of empiricism, sense data is knowledge, was a truth, empiricists would be able to demonstrate objectively that there is nothing to be known beyond sense data. But the very term empiricism (coming from the Greek empeira, experience) means that sense experience is the limit of empirical knowledge. Confined by their method within this limit, empiricists have no means of knowing whether or not there is something beyond the experience of the senses. Therefore the claim, sense data is knowledge, is nothing more than a belief. What empiricists ought to understand from this state of affairs is that

... you have to accept that your senses are imperfect. So you, by speculation, cannot have perfect knowledge. This is axiomatic truth.*

 

 

The problem of reflexivity

The truth is, then, that pratyakñavädés are in ignorance.* They can only truthfully speak of what they believe they perceive and thus what they believe they know. They are not in any position to be judgemental about other beliefs for instance, the belief in God and the survival of the soul beyond death. Yet perplexingly, famous empiricists are wont to publicly declare, as did A.J. Ayer in an address at London's Conway Hall, that the deity does not exist and there is no world to come.* In this connection, a term that crops up in recent philosophical writings is reflexivity. It comes from the Latin reflectare, to bend back. To reflexively criticize an opponent means that the critic's argument bends back to refute his own position:

Sawing off the branch one is sitting on is not generally regarded as good practice in human life, and such damaging reflexivity must always be seen as a warning that something is going wrong with our reasoning.*

For an empiricist to argue that God and the soul exist only as subjective beliefs is reflexive, for the empiricist is sunk in his own subjective belief that sense data is knowledge. Reflexivity rears its head whenever someone who believes that sense data is all we can know won't admit his belief is not knowledge. For example, how can the sceptic who says We can't know the truth know that his statement is the truth? In recent times, an attempt by pratyakñavädés to deal with the problem of reflexivity has resulted in statements like this:

At no stage are we able to prove that what we now know is true, and it is always possible that it will turn out to be false. Indeed, it is an elementary fact about the intellectual history of mankind that most of what has been known at one time or another has eventually turned out to be not the case. So it is a profound mistake to try to do what scientists and philosophers have almost always tried to do, namely prove the truth of a theory, or justify our belief in a theory, since this is to attempt the logically impossible.*

That sums up the view of the philosopher Karl Popper (1902-1994), who argued that science cannot verify anything. It is only able to falsify, to disprove claims of knowledge. A truly scientific statement is one that gives a high degree of information and is subjectable to rigorous attempts to disprove it. As long as it passes the tests, it may be called knowledge, although it can never be absolutely true. Sooner or later, as testing methods advance, the statement will be proved false. Now, science cannot test a believer's claim that God exists. Therefore science will never prove that God is false. But neither will a believer be able to prove that God is true, for according to Popper there is no way to prove any truth. So while God may exist in some way, He does not exist scientifically, hence science need not be bothered. The strategy of ignoring God statements and other dogmas as nonscience, instead of attacking them as nonsense, spares science from reflexively becoming a dogma itself. At least, that was Popper's hope. There is one problem, though. If Popper's theory is checked against his definition of scientific knowledge, it must be deemed unscientific. Falsifi ability fails as science because of the very paradox of self-reference it was supposed to be immune to. There is no way the theory of falsify ability can test itself!

 

 

The correspondence theory of truth

We've been looking at how empirical philosophy (sense data is knowledge) is really just a belief, and how that spells trouble for material science. Empiricism is inseparable from experimental science. Yet because of it, science can never know what is true. But wait: empiricists do put forward a definition of truth. Interestingly enough, it is not a new idea; in fact, there is an ancient Sanskrit term for it: artha-särüpya or viñaya- särüpya, the structural resemblance between a verbal proposition and its factual object. The term used by recent empiricists is the correspondence theory of truth. This theory argues that truth is to be had when language corresponds to the observable world. Is such correspondence possible? Shortly we shall see why it is not. But even if it was, it would be vexed by paradox. Language that exactly corresponds to perception would report only sense data. How do we know that sense data is the truth? To rephrase the question, how do we know that what the world seems to us to be, is what the world really is? We won't find the answer in a report on what the world seems to us to be. And a report that tells us with complete certainty that there is no truth beyond what the world seems to us to be is a report about what is outside the range of our senses. Such a report cannot be empirically true, for it does not correspond to perception. There are no perceptions beyond pratyakña to verify such a report as certain. An empirical argument ought to conform to sense perception. The correspondence theory doesn't. It conforms to other theories of what language is, what meaning is, and what the nature of the world is. And these theories, in turn, depend upon the power and influence of theoreticians, not on sense perception. Now, to be fair, science assumes from the start that the world is rational (i.e. it can be comprehended by the mind). I am not suggesting that because science is empirical, it has no valid place for theoreticians. But at the end of the day, only a theory that is shown to correspond to sense data deserves to be called scientificor so we are led to believe. An example of a theory of the nature of the world is Einstein's theory of relativity. Einstein is probably the greatest name in modern science. His relativity theory is extremely influential. A scientific report that defies Einstein's theory will likely not be accepted today. Yet relativity does not correspond to the readily observable world. It argues that there is nothing in the universe that is not always moving in relation to other things. In contrast to this, every day we observe things that are fixed and motionless. But that's just your naive experience, someone might reply. Scientists observe the world to a greater depth than we do. They tell us that all matter is constantly moving in ways most folks miss. Well, then correspondence is out of reach of the senses of most of us. We'll just have to make do with following scientific authority. But does that authority have substance? Let us briefly review the way scientists themselves validated Einstein's theory. Special relativity predicts that the velocity of light is always the same, whether light emanates from a source moving towards the observer or from a source moving away. General relativity predicts that gravitation bends light. Two historical experiments, so the textbooks tell us, demonstrated the accuracy of these key predictions of Einstein's theory. These were the Michelson-Morley measurement of the speed of light in 1887, and the measurement of the bending of starlight near the edge of the solar disk by A.S. Eddington during the total eclipse of the sun in 1919. At the time of the latter experiment, Eddington was a world-famous fellow of Great Britain's Royal Astronomical Society, while Einstein was practically unknown outside of a small circle of theoreticians. The fame Eddington lent to Einstein's predictions had immediate impact. LIGHTS ALL ASKEW IN THE HEAVENS, a New York Times headline trumpeted on November 10, 1919: MEN OF SCIENCE MORE OR LESS AGOG. Einstein was quoted as saying not more than twelve people on earth could understand his theory. The names Einstein and relativity were suddenly on everyone's lips and the word reality just as suddenly took on a new meaning as millions of people discarded overnight the Newtonian view of the universe they'd learned in school ... one more sentimental memory of a world the Great War of 1914-18 turned upside-down. Western society of 1919 was ready for a total redefinition of existence, and here it was, Einstein's theory: verified not by correspondence to observation, but by the mystical manipulations of mäyä. Careful study of the findings of the Michelson-Morley and Eddington experiments show they did not factually support relativity at all.* What they really show is that Einstein's theory corresponds not to the observable world, but to Einstein's imagination. He himself declared that theory cannot be fabricated out of observation, but that it can only be invented.* In practice, then, correspondence between statement and observation is not the golden rule of modern science.

In the real world, the process of scientific discovery is less like a carefully controlled experiment and more like a pantomime of coincidence, accident and adversity. Whatever they may profess outwardly, many scientists construct theories, models, ideas, speculations, that are way ahead of any data they may have, and then set about looking for evidence that might support the theory.*

 

 

Tacit and explicit knowledge

The correspondence theory is unrealistic in another way, as explained by the philosopher Friedrich Waismann:

If I had to describe [this] right hand of mine, which I am now holding up, I may say different things of it: I may state its size, its shape, its color, its tissue, the chemical compound of its bones, its cells, and perhaps add some more particulars; but, however far I go, I shall never reach a point where my description will be completed: logically speaking, it is always possible to extend the description by adding some detail or other.*

In his book The Tacit Dimension, scientist Michael Polyani writes that perception has inexhaustible profundity containing boundless undisclosed, perhaps yet unthinkable, experiences.* In other words, we always perceive more than we can tell. Polyani argues that most of what we know in life is tacit as opposed to explicit: it cannot be captured in words or even in symbols. He gives piano playing as one of several examples. It would be nearly impossible for someone to learn to play well this instrument only from a verbal description, or even from a combination of words and pictures. Just as the experience of a piano concert only partially corresponds to the words describing it, so Polyani holds that all of experience, even the scientific experience, is more tacit than explicit. Learning science is mostly learning an activity that is too multifarious to make wholly explicit in words. Explicit knowledge follows tacit knowledge the way a map follows a terrain. A map helps us orient ourselves to the terrain, but by no means corresponds to the terrain in fullness of experience.

 

Corresponding to what?

Even if we settle for limited correspondence between a statement and observed data, that still does not mean the truth I derive from the statement is the same as yours. There is an old Indian saying that a playboy, an ascetic and a carrion dog each sees one thing, a woman, in three different ways: as an object of pleasure, a lump of matter, and a meal. If truth is correspondence, then to whose truth does the sentence, Here is a woman, correspond? Advocates for a strictly scientific language would say the word woman should be defined ostensively. This is done by pointing at a scientifically-verified example of a human female while a scientist's voice intones, Woman. Ostensive definition, so it is hoped, fixes the word once and for all to an unambiguous object. In The Philosophies of Science, Rom Harr comments:

A little reflection on this theory shows how unsatisfactory it is. Of course pointing to samples does play a part in the learning of words, but what part exactly? It cannot be the whole part, since wherever a finger points there are many qualities, relations, individuals, and materials, any one of which might be what was sought.*

A playboy, ascetic and a carrion dog, sitting in on the ostensive definition of woman, would each focus on particular qualities, relations and materials of the defined object. Thus each would continue to understand the word woman and its meaning in different ways. The correspondence theory can't account for a statement like I have a pain in my arm. Although it is understood by everyone, the word pain corresponds to no empirically determinable thing in the world. Pain is subjective. It does not avail itself to scientific observation. Even if the arm is connected to an instrument that detects a nervous reaction whenever the patient feels pain, we would not recognize a printout of that instrument's readings as corresponding to the word pain. Some empiricists have therefore issued a call to banish the word pain as we know it from science.* But will they also banish the word electron? The word electron corresponds to no observed thing. In the course of explaining to us the results of a cloud chamber experiment, a scientist might say, Here we can see an electron. But all we really see is a streak of condensation within the chamber. As little as the word pain corresponds to the readings of an instrument, so little does the word electron correspond to a streak of condensation. Yet for some empiricists, pain is not a scientific word, while electron is. It is not surprising, then, that scientific definitions of words have come to be seen as just one of many language games, a term coined by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Language games are not able to represent a final truth. They represent only what goes on in various fields within human society. Businessmen play their language games, poets play theirs, musicians theirs, priests theirs, scientists theirs, and so on. Truth in language depends upon agreement between the players of the games, not the correspondence of statements with things outside of language. Wittgenstein argued that the attempt of scientists to establish their language game as paramount over others is pretentious, because the scientists, like everybody else, can only observe how the world looks. Observing the world does not come to grips with the real problem of life, so no observer, scientific or otherwise, can make a special claim on truth. As Wittgenstein pointed out in his aphorisms, the real problem of life is not what the world looks like, but why it exists:

We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched.

We find certain things about seeing puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough.

The sense of the world must lie outside the world.

Wittgenstein's philosophy of language is very influential, though it has its own inconsistencies, as we shall see in Chapter Three. But to Wittgenstein's credit, the spread of his ideas considerably undermined belief in empirical science as a self-evident means to truth. And his positing Why does the world exist? as the real question of knowledge, instead of What exists in the world?, agrees very well with the Vedic understanding.

 

Perception and the mind

Strict empiricists think that perception is most accurate when the influence of the mind on the senses is kept to a minimum. One should carefully observe and not permit preconceived ideas to interfere with objectivity. Ridiculing this notion in Conjectures and Refutations, Karl Popper tells of a lecture he gave in which he asked his students to carefully observe, then write down what they observe. The students naturally wanted to know what they should observe. In other words, they asked for an idea to guide their observation. The idea, in turn, has to be fixed to a perception: Watch what I do, or Watch what happens in the window. Even the empirical truth that reality is limited to what our senses can perceive is really just an idea fixed to perception. Vaiñëava Vedänta admits two kinds of pratyakñabähya (external) and antara (internal). Bähya-pratyakña is the contact of the bodily sense organs with external objects. But sense objects must become objects of the mind for us to comprehend them. The mind, in the words of Çréla Bhaktisiddhänta Sarasvaté Öhäkura, is the telegraphic center of the senses.* From that center, the outflow of mental energy communicates with the senses, the information-gathering outposts of the body. When stimulated by contact with their objects, the senses transmit subtle signals to the common sense, the mind. Mental consciousness then reads this sense data as sound, touch, form, taste and smell. The mind's reading of sense data is antara-pratyakña. Thus the boundaries of sense perception define the egoistic field (or, to put it another way, the claimed territory) of mental functions (mänaso-våtti).* By its attachment to sense data, the mind becomes agitated. Since egoistic attachment is produced from the tamo-guëa (mode of ignorance), it is to be understood that this agitation is a result of the mind's lack of knowledge about sense perception especially, its lack of knowledge how sound, touch and the rest may be enjoyed without problems. In its agitated state, the mind manufactures many ideas to solve problems encountered in the field of sense perception. This is called mano-dharma, imagination. Even the scientists themselves admit their method is a combination of the functions of the senses with imagination.* The result material knowledge then, is imaginary. To get a clearer picture of this, we may consider a line spoken by Prahläda Mahäräja in Çrémad-Bhägavatam 7.5.31: duräçayä ye bahir-artha-mäninaù. Dur means difficult, and äçaya is a person's intention. Thus duräçaya refers to a contradictory intention, one that lands us in difficulty. What intention of life does Prahläda consider contradictory? The enjoyment of the material world, in which external sense objects (bahiù) are the gain (artha). The contradiction here is that our claiming possession of sense objects does not make us the enjoyers of the material world, because we don't know how to enjoy matter without suffering. In our efforts to overcome this contradiction, we let the imagination (mänina) do what it will with sense objects. An example of that type of imagination is the empirical measurement of material nature. Material nature is mahat, immeasurably great. But the intention of the scientist is to gain control over nature. As a means to limit nature, to render it manipulable, measurement is central to the empirical method. It is a systematic attempt to define nature in terms of human duality: big/small, hot/cold, heavy/light, bright/dark, fast/slow, positive/negative, successful/unsuccessful. Such measurements are analogies of mind imposed upon matter. When ridden home, they prove to be spectral, in both senses of the word. Instead of representing the reality of things in themselves, they represent the spectra (ranges) of human sensations. And we resort to them as primitives resort to good and evil specters (ghosts), to make sense of the unknown. For instance, physicists measure subatomic quantum objects as either waves or as particles. Whether an object appears to be a wave or a particle depends in some uncertain way upon the observer. Now, apart from the wave-particle duality in the scientist's mind, what are quantum objects really? At present, at least nine schools of thought are in disagreement. The debate about the existence of quantum objects is not unlike the debate about the existence of ghosts. According to astrophysicist John Gribben:

It is hard to see quantum physics as anything but analogy the wave- particle duality being the classic example, where we struggle to explain something we do not understand.*

Empirical measurement is a human enterprise and to err is human. The idea that the measurements of science constitute well-verified facts is sheer imagination.* Mäyä, the illusory aspect of material nature (prakåti), entices our imagination by apparently confirming and rewarding it. In 1919, Albert Einstein rose to world fame when Eddington's measurements seemingly confirmed the theory of relativity. Since then, by mäyä's grace, scientists have used the theory to their great profit. Today, relativity seems to be a well-verified fact. But this is just one side of the story. The other side is that Einstein and Eddington are dead and buried, overcome by the nature they attempted to measure and explain. Where they might be now is unknown even to their most devoted followers. And, in time, the theory of relativity will also pass away. It will be replaced by a new theory that mäyä will confirm, reward, and then drop by the wayside of history. The passage of time turns the cycle of duality; thus knowledge comes to us followed by ignorance, happiness comes followed by distress, heat comes followed by cold, honor comes followed by dishonor, and so on. The soul who achieves great material success in this life is sure to be landed by time in the midst of proportionate failure in the future. Therefore Çrémad-Bhägavatam 4.29.2b concludes:

Everything happening within time, which consists of past, present and future, is merely a dream. That is the secret understanding in all Vedic literature.

Now, this dream is not like that proposed by the sceptics who say the world is entirely subjective, existing only within the human mind. Our senses do connect with a substance that has a factual existence external to us. The dream of everything happening in time refers to the transitory nature of our impressions of that substance. The dreams we have in sleep are antara-pratyakña impressions of subtle elements. Though subtle, they appear as solid as our wakeful impressions of gross elements. We understand the dream-quality of our sleeping perceptions not by how they look but how they vanish in time. And our wakeful perceptions also vanish in time. The moment of death is very like the moment a dream breaks. It is therefore sheer imagination to hold that either waking or sleeping perceptions are ever-reliable concrete facts. Mäyä's reward of our imagination with profit, adoration and distinction intoxicates the mind with pride and attachment. Kåñëa does not intend for His parts and parcels to be immersed deeper and deeper in such illusion. Time, Kåñëa's käla-tattva, breaks pride and attachment by force. Time therefore represents Kåñëa's intention. As soon as the living entity gives up his wrong intention and surrenders to Kåñëa, his intention becomes the Lord's intention. Immediately his perception and knowledge are freed from the cycle of time. But one who remains duräçaya (wrongly-intended) again and again takes shelter of imagination. In history, there were famous empiricists who, stubbornly intending to enjoy their senses forever, imagined death could be conquered through science. There were famous sceptics who, imagining death to be a creation of the mind, stubbornly intended to surpass it by mentally negating its reality. Both positions, in time, proved hopeless.

The speculative argument of philosophers, This world is real, No, it is not real, is based upon incomplete knowledge of the Supreme Soul and is simply aimed at understanding material dualities. Although such argument is useless, persons who have turned their attention away from Me, their own true Self, are unable to give it up .(Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.22.34)

 

 

Making Vedic sense of sense perception

In conclusion, four facts about pratyakña will be summarized. The first is that it is generated from ignorance. Therefore knowledge limited to sense perception is not knowledge at all. The circular arguments of the empiricists and sceptics demonstrate that on the level of sense perception, mind and matter cannot be distinguished. The second fact is that perception indicates the presence of an objective reality. But we are unable to directly connect with that reality through pratyakña. That is because of the third fact: our senses are defective. On Vedic authority, then, we should simply accept that perception evinces that something is really out there. If we doubt the Vedic causal explanation of pratyakña, it is only because, being enamored with our senses, we are stubbornly blind to their imperfections. The fourth fact about sense perception is that everything we perceive has a beginning. The evidence is so strong that it is only reasonable to accept it.

Anything you see, material, it has got a date of birth. Who can deny it? Can you present anything material which has no beginning? Everything has got beginning. So how you can say this material world has no beginning? This is nonsense. Therefore hetumadbhir viniçcitaiù. Hetu means with reason, not like dogmatic obstinacy. You must have the beginning.*

Through reason, the occult beginnings of natural phenomena can be glimpsed. When we were little children, our eyes were not trained in telling time. We saw a clock as a manifestation of metal, plastic and glass. What it meant was occult, since the reason for the clock's existence was unknown to our senses. But after being trained in thinking reasonably in knowing what a clock is for we could see time (one of the tattvas) whenever we looked at one. Then clocks made sense. Similarly, by the method of Vedic knowledge, consciousness is released from the thrall of the false ego, whereby the qualities of prakåti manifest in consciousness from occult beginnings. Liberated consciousness connects with the supreme tattva, the Personality of Godhead, Çré Kåñëa, from whom everything time, nature, activity and life has its beginning. This consciousness is called Kåñëa consciousness. It is the real sense behind the manifest qualities of material nature.

 

 

Chapter Two: Reason (Anumäna)

 

In a quotation near the end of the last chapter, Çréla Prabhupäda declared it reasonable that there is a beginning to all we perceive. Since it is the very cause of sense objects, senses and sensations, that beginning lies outside pratyakña. Where the senses fail to find the beginning, the mind takes over, for the mind is superior: indriyebhyaù paraà manaù, as Bhagavad-gétä 3.42 states. The mind's attempt to know what is beyond the reach of sense perception is called anumäna, reasoning. For example, while writing these words, I am sitting in a bamboo hut within an äçrama school in Bengal, India. Hearing a strange noise outside, I think it reasonable that a student at play is the cause of this sound.

 

 

Logic

Reasonable thinking is distinguished from deranged thinking by the factor we call logic. The word logic is defined in the dictionary as the study of the rules of exact reasoning, of the forms of sound or valid thought patterns. Its Greek ancestor, lgos, had three aspects of meaning: structured thought, structured speech and the structured appearance of the world.* Thus we think of logic as 1) systematic thought 2) expressed in language 3) that accounts for what we know in this world. But is reality itself objectively logical? At every moment, the telegraphic center of the mind is overloaded with data from the senses. As the mind deciphers this data, logical structures manifest within and outside us. Yet how do we know these structures are not mere assemblages of our imagination that have no foundation in fact? After all, different minds interpret the data differently, as did the playboy, ascetic and carrion dog. Moreover, the sheer quantity and profundity of tacit sense data challenges the mind's capacity to render it logically explicit. Can we ever fully understand what it all means? Does it even have a meaning? Recall again the problem of the occult quality of our experience of the universe. The cause of that experience does not make sense (make it to the senses). Therefore, why we see the universe in a structured way, why we describe it in words, why we even think rationally about it, remains occult, outside our understanding. So how can we say for sure that existence is logical? Here begins a problem of philosophy which, as expressed by a modern thinker, is

... how are we to distinguish the objective from the merely subjective, if we are not allowed to say what objective truth represents?*

Let's try to get a clearer idea of this problem. Suppose I am sitting in my hut with a friend. I hear a strange noise outside and ask him, What is that? I wonder, he replies. Why, it really sounds like there's an ostrich out there. But how could it be? I ask. The ostrich lives in Africa, not India. True. Well, one possibility is that an African ostrich escaped from the Calcutta zoo and wandered up this way. Not very likely, but possible. It's also possible there's a boy out there who's become expert in making ostrich sounds. But then, how could a local boy learn to do that when there are no ostriches native to India? The whole thing is very puzzling. Its strangeness leads me to consider yet another possibility. What's that? I just might be sleeping now. This all could be a dream. Oh come now. You look wide awake to me. Besides, I can hear the sound too. This is not a dream. That I look awake, or that you can hear the sound too, doesn't prove a thing. Both of us might be wide awake and talking in my dream. I could be dreaming you're telling me I'm not dreaming. Get serious. The sound just has to be some boy outside having fun with us by imitating an ostrich. I'll go have a look. You can't go outside. I won't let you. If it is an ostrich, that bird has a nasty kick. But if you don't allow me to go out, how will we say what that noise represents? Look, it might represent an ostrich, a boy, or nothing but a dream. We can't say for sure. After all, what is certain in this life? Life itself could be a grand hallucination. The friend is my mind, the walls are the limits of my senses, and the noise is sense data. The mind moves through three modes of thought in an attempt to logically uncover the cause of the sound. These modes are reflective, creative and critical thinking. In the first, the mind lays out the scope of the problem apparently something outside is making a sound like that of an ostrich. In the second, the mind creates a number of possible causes for the sound an ostrich, a boy or a dream. In the third, the mind critically assesses these possibilities in terms of evidence and logic. But critical thinking leaves us ever-uncertain about what the cause of the sound really is, because we are not allowed to cross beyond the limits of the senses to see what that sound objectively represents. Extreme critical thinking denies us the right to say that there is anything beyond the three modes of thought. This leads to skepticism the suspicion that my experience of the sound, the hut, the whole universe, even my very person, could just be a dream. By what kind of evidence and logic can the critical mind know that the universe exists as an objective fact?

 

 

Objective versus subjective logic

Greek philosophers of old answered that question with the doctrine of lgos spermatiks, the life-giving word. They believed that logic can prove the objective reality of our world because it is sown throughout the universe in seeds of reason. Unless it is fertilized by these seeds (spermatiko), passive matter is bereft of objective shape and activity. The seeds are transmitted by lgos, a divine word that expresses the logical why of everything. For more clarity, we may turn to Vedic testimony. At first material nature (prakåti) was inert and unconscious. A glance by the original father, Lord Kåñëa, impregnated her with countless seeds of spiritual sparks, as Çréla Prabhupäda called them. They, the jévas, appeared from her womb in structured forms of mind and matter.* We are seeds of intelligent life. Our mother, prakåti, provided each of her children with senses and a mind, through which the innate intelligence of the soul spread forth into the universe. But because we spiritual sparks are so tiny, our comprehension of the structure of the universe is very limited. Subjectively, sense data comes to us from an occult source. We do not know if it is objectively real, and we cannot say with any certainty what it represents. But the Vedic word allows us to say what sense data represents. That is because Kåñëa is the source of the Veda. For Him, there is no gap to be bridged between subjective impressions and the objective universe. How so? The objective universe exists only by His divine perception. He impregnated prakåti with the souls and brought forth the complete structure of the universe just by His glance. The gap between perception and reality is not His problem. It is ours. We try to bridge that gap with the help of our incapable friend, the mind. But since Kåñëa's perception is the factual standard of reality, there can be no better bridge than Kåñëa's reason in the form of çabda-brahma, Vedic sound. In Bhagavad-gétä 14.27, Kåñëa says, brahmaëo hi pratiñöhäham, that He is the basis of Brahman, the effulgent substance out of which this and many other universes appear (see also Brahma-saàhitä 5.40: yasya prabhä prabhavato jagad-aëòa-koöi). And Åg-veda 10.114.8 states, yävad brahma viñöhitaà tävaté väkas much as Brahman is extended, so much is Väc. Väc literally means voice. The voice or sound of Brahman is the Veda, which testifies to the logic of creation in full detail. Çréla Prabhupäda used the example of his dictaphone to make this point clear:

Of course, the manufacture of the dictaphone is wholly within the energy of Kåñëa. All the parts of the instrument, including the electronic functions, are made from different combinations and interactions of the five basic types of material energy namely, bhümi, jala, agni, väyu and äkäça. The inventor used his brain to make this complicated machine, and his brain, as well as the ingredients, were supplied by Kåñëa. According to the statement of Kåñëa, mat-sthäni sarva-bhütäni: Everything is depending on My energy.*

The other day I explained, Veda means, just like this dictaphone machine is manufactured, along with [it] one literature is also compiled. So customers, they are given the delivery of the machine as well as the literature how to use it. That is the Vedas. Therefore Kåñëa says that vedänta-kåd, I am the compiler of the Vedas. Because if He does not give the literature, then how will [we] use the machine. The manufacturer of the machine, he knows how to use it, what for it is, how to manipulate it.*

 

 

Forms of reason

Objective reason, then, is to follow the authorized Vedic user's manual in all fields of thought and action. This form of reason is called deduction. Çréla Prabhupäda explained deduction as follows:

Our knowledge is from the deductive process. Kåñëa said, This is this. We accept. That is our movement, Kåñëa consciousness. We may be imperfect, but Kåñëa is perfect. Therefore, whatever Kåñëa says, if we accept it and if we... Not accept blindly, but you can employ your logic and argument and try to understand.*

To illustrate, suppose Bhaktividyä-pürëa Mahäräja, the sannyäsé in charge of the äçrama school, drops by my hut for a visit. I can ask him what the ostrich sound outside represents. He is the authority over the school, and having just entered my hut, he knows exactly what is going on out there. Even though I can't see the cause of the sound myself, I can count fully on his explanation as valid proof of the cause of the sound. That does not make my acceptance of his testimony blind, because Bhaktividyä-pürëa Mahäräja is not blind. As many details as I may reasonably want (e.g. which boy is making the sound and why), Mahäräja is able to provide. In a similar way, Vedic deduction relies upon knowledge that is authoritative and indubitable. Brahmä, the first Vedic sage of the universe, received that knowledge from the Supreme Personality of Godhead at the dawn of creation. And after that, whenever the Vedic teachings were misinterpreted, the Lord appeared again and again (sambhavämi yuge yuge) to objectively re-establish the correct understanding. Let us briefly look at three features of Vedic deduction. 1) It reasons from the cause. Çréla Prabhupäda's reasoning of the dictaphone rests upon the logic of an original cause of everything, mat- sthäni sarva-bhütäni. 2) It reasons to the cause, arguing that there is no goal to be known except the cause of everything. Different scriptures seem to teach different goals: dharma (social and religious duties), artha (economic development), käma (sensual pleasure) and mokña (liberation from these three goals). This is confusing, and confusion leads to wrong philosophies. Therefore the sage Vyäsa wrote Vedänta-sütra and Çrémad-Bhägavatam to teach the ultimate logic of the Vedic scriptures. These books distinguish the paramärtha, the supreme goal of the Vedas, from the lesser four goals.* The paramärtha and the original cause of everything are shown to be one and the same: puruñärtho 'taù çabdäd iti bädaräyaëaù.* There is nothing to be sought in life except the self- existent cause of the four lesser goals. 3) Vedic deduction is çästramülaka, i.e. rooted in çästra, the Vedic scriptures. As the logic of transcendence, it is not under the limitations of the mind and senses, as commonplace reasoning is. Commonplace (laukika) reasoning is called induction, the logic of pratyakña. We get a good model of induction from the method the police uses to investigate a crime. Let us say a millionaire was found murdered in his bed. The chief detective carefully gathers and examines every shred of experientia evidence. From this, he logically assembles a hypothesis (a provisional solution): the butler did it. That hypothesis is tested by rigorously applied experimentum. The butler is repeatedly interrogated, his background is checked, his movements are followed. If these tests confirm the butler is the murderer, the hypothesis becomes the reasonable solution. Thus the detective charges the butler with the crime. If the tests do not confirm it, the hypothesis is overturned and the butler is dropped from the list of suspects. The detective then assembles a new hypothesis from the evidence, and tests it. But as Çréla Prabhupäda noted:

Because we have got our senses with limited power, and there are so many defects in our conditioned stage, therefore inductive process is not always perfect.*

Perfect induction is a standard term from Aristotelian logic. Induction is called perfect when pratyakña confirms that my hypothesis solves the problem. To give an example, suppose the notebook computer I am using to write this sentence suddenly quits. Not being skilled in the repair of these machines, I can only guess that the cause is a depleted battery. I test this hypothesis by reconnecting the computer to the mains supply. As soon as I do that, pratyakña confirms that the computer works again. My induction was perfect because the problem did not exceed my capability to solve it. If after trying all solutions within my capacity, the computer still won't work, it would be useless for me to speculate further on the cause of the problem. I should turn to deduction: the bringing in of an expert. We should note again that even when an inductive inference is considered perfect, it is laukika. Commonplace logic is ultimately subjective logic, because its proof or disproof depends on sense perception, which is inherently limited and imperfect. Even in perfect induction there is always a possibility of error. Thus sometimes innocent men are sent to prison, convicted for objective reasons that, many years later, are shown to be wrong, though logically consistent. Objective reasoning is purely çästramülaka reasoning. As we shall shortly see, deduction is also laukika if its authority is not Vedic.

 

 

Circular reasoning

A charge may be leveled against deductive reason that it leads to a vicious circle (from the Latin circulus vitiosus). In other words, deduction assumes in the beginning what it sets out to prove in the end. Now, logic may be expressed in syllogisms, or reasonable step-by-step arguments. The Sanskrit equivalent of syllogism is parärthänumäna, reasoning for others' understanding. Below, so that we may clearly understand the problem of circular reasoning, is a deductive syllogism from a standard reference book.

1) Major premise: All the beans in this bag are white.

2) Minor premise: These beans are from this bag.

3) Conclusion: These beans are white.*

To get a clearer picture, think of a man in a marketplace standing next to a large sack. All the beans in this bag are white, he tells you. He reaches in the bag and withdraws a closed fist. Holding it up, he says, These beans are from this bag. Then, opening his hand, he concludes, These beans are white. Even if the contents of the man's hand prove to be white beans, you may still question whether the bag really holds only white beans. He offers the handful of beans he took out of the bag as proof, but it could be that just the top portion of the bag contains white beans, while underneath are pebbles scooped up from someone's driveway. If the man insists, No, these beans in my hand mean the bag is full of white beans, you might reply it is only an assumption they do. His insistence that the handful of beans is evidence just brings you back to the question, What's really in that bag? This is what is meant by a vicious circle. Whether his major premise is true depends completely on whether this man's authority is infallible. If it is, then everything follows as a natural sequence, as when the major premise is rooted in çästra and guru, and its goal is Viñëu, the source of everything. If instead the major premise is an ordinary man's fallible speculation, deduction becomes a caricature. How do we know whose authority is infallible? This question is answered in the introduction to this book: only Kåñëa's authority is absolutely certain. A teacher of deductive logic must impart Kåñëa's teachings to have any real authority of his own. If due to egoism he invents his own teaching, he becomes a misleader. Aristotle (384-322 BC), revered in Europe for many centuries as the foremost authority on deduction, taught that women have fewer teeth than men. He could not even be bothered to ask one of his two wives to open her mouth so he could count them. No wonder European philosophers, following Descartes, broke free of the vicious circle of the Greek tradition of laukika deduction.

 

Portfolio Dark Arts ( Book 1): My Own NFT Collection

Portfolio Dark Arts ( Book 2): My Own NFT Collection

 

 Reason, truth and speculation

Even if we have a teacher who does not mislead us, we may still be uneasy with deduction. Is the supreme truth, the cause and the goal of existence, just a mechanical formula passed down a line of authority? How can we realize the explanatory power of Vedic deductive logic? Çréla Prabhupäda gave a simple, profound method. For example, when drinking water, the Vedic philosopher should reflect on Kåñëa's statement in the Bhagavad-gétä (7.8) that He is the pure taste of water. The philosopher then creatively refers to other scriptural texts that detail how the manifest quality of water, taste, is caused by Kåñëa; how He makes our perceptual knowledge possible; how He alone gives power to the senses to do their work. The Vedic philosopher may also critically compare and contrast non-Vedic theories of perception, finding them uncertain and insubstantial. He thus appreciates how it is perfectly reasonable that his experience of the taste of water is an experience of Kåñëa. And finally, Kåñëa personally reciprocates with this effort to know Him by granting the Vedic philosopher wisdom from within the heart. Çréla Prabhupäda termed this method of thought philosophical speculation. Philosophical speculation is different from mental speculation. In the former, pratyakña is understood through anumäna in accordance with the explanation of the Vedic scriptures (çästra) and the spiritual master (guru). Thus our sensory experiences and mental insights are philosophically linked to their cause and goal, Kåñëa. In the latter, pratyakña is not understood in terms of an authorized explanation. Rather, the modes of anumäna (reflection, creation and criticism) are allowed to develop their own explanations in an undisciplined and haphazard way. The difference between the two kinds of speculation can be very subtle. In the history of Indian philosophy, the nyäyés (logicians) claimed the Vedic sage Gautama as their guru. But they used reason to serve their egos instead of Viñëu, entangling themselves in the thorny branches of mundane wrangling and sophistry. Therefore Manu-saàhitä 2.11 resolutely condemns those who give up the true Vedic path for nyäya. A nyäyé might argue, When the Bhagavad-gétä says 'God is the taste of water,' it means nothing more than that the taste of water is all God is. Is God just water? I think not. Therefore to find Him I have to speculate beyond these limiting words of scripture. Mundane logicians, being too enamored by their own limited minds, cannot understand how the direction and goal of speculation remain always outside the range of their speculation. But this is nicely illustrated by the logic of çäkhä-candra-nyäya: a teacher directed his student to look at the branches of a tree. The goal, however, was for the student to see the rising moon through the branches. The meaning is explained in Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Madhya-lélä 21.30:

apära aiçvarya kåñëeranähika gaëana

çäkhä-candra-nyäye kari dig-daraçana

No one can estimate the opulence of Kåñëa. That is unlimited. However, just as one sees the moon through the branches of a tree, I wish to give a little indication.

The shape of the branches (i.e. the form of the philosophical speculation) frames, but cannot hold fast, the moonlike truth of Kåñëa, the transcendental Lord. Tasting water and considering how that is an experience of Kåñëa is like looking at the branches of a tree and noticing the moon shining through them. The argument of the mundane logicians is as if to say the moon is a glowing ball stuck in the branches of that tree. The actual size of the lunar globe, however, dwarfs our imagination and completely transcends that tiny tree. Similarly, Kåñëa appears to us in the taste of water, but at the same time, being always the Supreme Truth, He is infinitely more than anything we may perceive.

 

 

The use and limits of formal reason

Çréla Prabhupäda's example of tasting Kåñëa in water fits a type of formal reason called abduction. Abduction is expressed in this syllogism:

1) Major premise: All the beans in this bag are white.

2) Minor premise: These beans are white.

3) Conclusion: These beans are from this bag.

To get a clearer picture, imagine you are putting a dry goods storeroom into order. The first thing you notice is a large sack in the corner marked white beans. A bit later you find a small tin on a shelf holding a few white beans. You conclude that the beans in the tin came from the bag. Here, the perceived quality (whiteness) of the minor term (the beans in the tin) gives force to the conclusion that the beans in the tin must have come from the bag marked white beans. But ordinarily, the formal limits of abductive logic cannot absolutely guarantee that conclusion. Just because we see the beans in the tin are white doesn't rule out the possibility that they came from somewhere else besides that bag. After all, it is unreasonable to think the bag is the source of all the white beans in the world. But, as Çréla Prabhupäda explained, when the same formal reasoning is directed by guru and çästra with Viñëu as the goal, certainty is guaranteed Kåñëa is the pure taste of water; this water tastes pure; Kåñëa is the taste of this water. Certainty is guaranteed because Kåñëa is the Absolute Truth, the source of everything all water, all beans, all universes, and all living entities. This is the difference between çästramülaka and laukika logic. In comparison to deduction and abduction, an inductive syllogism is presented next:

1) Major premise: These beans are from this bag.

2) Minor premise: These beans are white.

3) Conclusion: All the beans in this bag are white.

To get a clearer picture, you are on your way to put another storeroom into order. As you open the door, a girl comes out with something cupped in her two hands. Seeing that you're about to do an inventory, she gestures with her head in the direction of a bag in the corner. These beans are from this bag, she says. Then, showing you what's in her hands, she explains, These beans are white. As the girl leaves, you wonder why she paused to tell you the beans she has are white. You glance over at the bag. Seeing it is unmarked, you ask yourself whether it is reasonable to assume this bag contains only white beans. Maybe it holds mixed colors white, red and black which the girl sorted through to get her handful of white ones. And that is why she let you know she took only white beans from the bag. You decide that you'll only be sure of the contents if you take a look inside. But suppose the bag is a metaphysical one, i.e. beyond human powers of inspection. Could anyone claim to really know that all the beans in the bag are white because he saw the girl held a few in her hands?* Metaphysical induction is the form of mental speculation that mundane logicians use to hypothesize the cause of sense perception. Mundane logic holds mundane experience to be the final proof of the validity or non-validity of a metaphysical idea. But just as pratyakña is always questionable, so too are the metaphysical ideas that are proved by pratyakña. If a handful of beans proves the idea that all the beans in the unknown bag are white, then the taste of water proves the idea that Kåñëa is only water. But çästra and guru do not direct us to worship mere water. To argue that it is logical that Kåñëa is only water is to argue laukika reasoning to be superior to çästramülaka reasoning.

 

 

Logic and probability

Actually, mental speculation, or metaphysical induction, can't prove any metaphysical idea. It is only a gamble. It guesses, it does not prove, that all the beans in the metaphysical bean bag are white. But its proponents argue that when it is allied with experimental science, it can be a well-informed, highly logical method of gambling. Here is an example of what they mean. For many years before the age of space flight, scientists observed the moon through telescopes and saw mountains there. Now, the same half of the moon faces the earth at all times. So it was a gamble for scientists to assume there must also be mountains on the unseen opposite side. In the nineteen sixties a Russian satellite circled the moon and sent back pictures. Lunar mountains on the far side were confirmed, supposedly validating the logical predictive powers of science. Yet it was also once probable that the heavy layer of clouds around Venus indicated constant rainfall. And that, in turn, probably meant the planet was covered by an ocean. Later, space probes showed the surface to be exactly opposite a hellish desert. Despite the talk of probability, there was no logical imperative for the Venusian ocean. So what does probability mean, and where does it fit into logic? In mathematics, probability, or chance, is the numerical likelihood of some event happening. What might happen when a die is tossed? A die is a well-known thing: a small cube, each side of which is marked with an arrangement of from one to six dots. The law that governs the die is also well-known: a toss has a one in six probability of returning a particular number of dots. This sense of probability is considered logical and objective, in that it follows rules of calculation that no mathematician disputes. In ordinary speech, probability often has a subjective usage that does not conform to rules of calculation. Note, in the four examples that follow, how subjectivity colors the word probably when it is used

1) as a preliminary indication of intention I'll probably go to India this year, although it's not clear how I'll pay for it;

2) as a tentative prediction on the basis of incomplete evidence He probably won't come today, as he's two hours late;

3) as a cautious first evaluation that can be revised after a more careful study There are probably no grains in this preparation, but I'd have to ask the cook to make sure;

4) as a way of avoiding the admission of an unpalatable truth No worry, they were probably just joking when they said my singing was terrible.

 

Then there are appeals to probability that are wholly illegitimate. These misleadingly combine the two senses explained before (objective and subjective). A well-known illegitimate usage is called the gambler's fallacy. Let's suppose that after twelve tosses of the die, every number except three has turned up at least once. I might imagine that this proves each new toss of the die makes a three more probable. But this is just a fallacious combination of the mathematical sense of probability with the ordinary sense. In fact, with each new toss of the die, the odds that three will come up remain the same: one in six. The experts analyze the gambler's fallacy as a psychology of vacillation between objective and subjective probability.* More blatant fallacies of probability are often seen in highly speculative sciences like cosmology. To get a clearer idea of what I mean, think of a black die with five faces covered by bits of masking tape, so that the dots are unseen. On the free face is one white, moonlike dot. The die is tossed and a masked face turns up. Three, I guess. When the tape is removed from the face, ten dots are discovered. It is now clear that the masked faces of this die are unknown in a unique way. There is no certainty how many dots might be found on any of the remaining masked faces. But let's go one step further imagine this die also increased its masked faces every time it was tossed! All talk of probability would be rendered completely illogical. So what does this example have to do with science? Time of November 20, 1995, ran a feature article on the high-resolution photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. These photos lifted the tape from a number of facets of the cosmos, undermining so-called probable estimates about the way the universe came into being. As the magazine reported, cosmologists are scrambling to patch up their theories [and] to save the idea of the Big Bang. (p. 51) This suggests three points. The first is that knowledge of one side of the mysterious cosmic die does not make our guesses about unseen and unknown sides more certain. For example, the verification of mountains on the moon's back side does not lend validity to guesswork about other regions of the universe, nor does it insure that one day man will know everything there is to know about what the universe looks like and how it came into being. The second point is that cosmologists are clinging to a doctrinaire estimate about the origin of the universe despite growing uncertainty. The more facets of the universe they uncover, the less sure they are of how the universe began. How many more facets will be uncovered in the future? And when they are, what totally unexpected facts will be revealed? That no scientist can say. So to estimate that a Big Bang probably happened twelve billion years ago is meaningless, because the odds of the game are unknown. Cosmologists have mathematically dressed up what is no more than a first evaluation or a tentative prediction to look like a sure winner. But the Big Bang theory has no substance. The third point is that cosmologists have a hard time facing the simple fact that the Big Bang theory is just a subjective mental concoction. To say, even when the evidence goes against it, No worry, the Big Bang is still probably right, will never do as logic. Yet the Big Bang remains a key feature of what physicists call the Standard Model of the universe.

 

 

The deceptive universe

Metaphysical induction thrives on the belief the hope that the world is not essentially deceptive.* Remember that the side of the moon visible from the earth did not deceive us about the side we couldn't see before the sixties. Presumably it follows that the whole universe will turn out to be more of what our senses tell us right now. This belief, unfortunately, is essentially self-deceptive. Inductive probability deals only with the physical appearance of things. Sometimes, as in the case of the far side of the moon, how a thing is supposed to appear is guessed correctly. Sometimes, as in the case of Venus, the guess is wrong. But at all times, whatever appears to our material senses remains deceptive because we are ignorant of the cause behind that appearance. Frankly, scientific induction puts humanity in the same epistemological boat as the animals. There are unknown laws at work behind how things look. Gambling with appearances as the animals do puts us at risk of falling afoul of these laws. The deer bets that the sweet sound of the hunter's horn means pleasure. Ignorance of the law behind that sound means death. The moth bets that the attractive flame means pleasure. Ignorance of the law behind that sight means death. The fish bets that the tasty bait means pleasure. Ignorance of the law behind that taste means death. Some two centuries ago, as the Industrial Revolution gathered momentum, scientists bet that Nature was ripe for the taking. Now, as we approach the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is clear that this gamble put humanity into grave peril. Yet scientists, like the moths that never learn not to fly into the fire, continue to push the odds in a high-stakes flirtation with disaster. As the physicists who built the first atom bomb prepared to test-fire it, they bet among themselves on the magnitude of the explosion. Some wagered it would ignite the earth's atmosphere and incinerate all of New Mexico or even all of the world.*

 

 

Why?

Conceiving ideas is comparable to conceiving offspring. As human beings, we are urged from deep within to search out the truth. Just as the reproductive urge compels us to have children, so the urge for the truth compels us to have ideas. But if the truth is one, the world has certainly become overpopulated with conflicting opinions of what it is. As the history of philosophy shows, the study of one opinion after another can come to no final conclusion. No matter how interesting a particular idea may seem, another idea will come along to challenge it. A mind crowded with incompatible opinions is a mind confused. To get to the root of philosophy, we need to pursue just one question: why are human beings urged from within to find the truth and be rid of illusion? This question, Why?, forever separates deduction from induction. Why is essential to deduction. Why can never be understood inductively. This is because induction is a speculative leap from partial knowledge to the whole, and here's the rub the partial knowledge it starts with is sense data, and the guess about the whole is verifiable only by more sense data. As we learned in the previous chapter, sense data can only imperfectly tell us what is in the world, not why the world exists.

Induction is the familiar process by which we form generalizations. You see a raven. It's black. You see other ravens, and they're black too. Never do you see a raven that isn't black. It is inductive reasoning to conclude that all ravens are black. ... Induction is reasoning from circumstantial evidence or David Hume's matters of fact. It extrapolates from observations that are not understood on a deeper level. You don't know why all the ravens seen have to be black. Even after seeing 100,000 ravens, all black, the 100,001st just might be white. A white raven isn't inherently absurd, like a triangle with four sides. There is no logical necessity to an inductive conclusion. For this reason, induction has always seemed less legitimate than deduction.*

There is no logical necessity, no reason why, to induction. This paradox has been called the skeleton in the closet of Western philosophy. And though the retort may be, But because of induction we now have photographs of the far side of the moon, that does not change the fact that sense perception cannot explain itself. Those photographs will never reveal the why behind sense perception. The method of inductive reasoning is restricted to the sense objects, the senses and the mind, which spring from the modes of the false ego. Hence it is impossible for induction to transcend the subjective ego and connect with the objective reality that is the cause of the sense objects, senses and mind. The false ego is induction's logical dead end. This is demonstrated in quantum physics, which comes to a point where the objects of perception (the material elements) become indistinguishable from the ego. Only bafflement, not the reason why, then remains. In Are We Alone?, physicist Paul Davies explains:

In classical physics the world is there, and the observer is here, and they're separated, in spite of the fact that we know there must be linkages via the senses and so on. What quantum physics says is that the observer is entangled with the observed reality in a very baffling manner. ... The observer is not a trivial detail. She, he or it may actually be essential to make sense of the notion of an external reality in a physical, not just a philosophical way.*

And in Other Worlds, he plainly informs us of the logical end-consequence of quantum induction:

Taken to its extreme, this idea implies that the universe only achieves a concrete existence as a result of this perception it is created by its own inhabitants!*

 

 

The logic of ignorance

It is less than perspicacious to believe that mortal human beings, most of whom live for less than a hundred years, create by a glance the universe many billions of years old. But, at its extreme, this is where the logic of science ends up. True, not many scientists defend the notion that human beings are the cause of the universe. Yet still they defend inductive speculation as the only way to understand the world:

We use it [induction] because it is the only way of getting broadly applicable facts about the real world. ... Induction provides the fundamental facts from which we reason about the world.*

Rom Harr gives an insight into a fundamental fact of particle physics, that since all electrons are not observed to be different, it is logical that they are exactly alike. He says this is

... very likely a consequence of our ignorance of their nature, and there is no reason to suppose that were we able to study electrons closely, they would not show identifiable characteristics that marked them off as individuals.*

A guess about the nature of things unseen, like electrons, is hardly a substantial fundamental fact. It might be argued that it can be called a fundamental fact because there is no proof to the contrary. But this is a logical fallacy (called argumentum ad ignorantium, an argument from ignorance). Is it a fundamental fact that all Martians are green because there is no proof otherwise? All we are left with is the certainty that the fundamental facts of induction cannot be called truths.

We cannot identify science with truth, for we think that both Newton's and Einstein's theories belong to science, but they cannot both be true, and they may well both be false.*

Reason fermented within sense perception distills no certain truth, because sense perception always raises further questions about itself. Inductive thinkers freely admit that there is no limit to speculative explanations of observations. Observations explained by one theory (for instance, Newton's) can be explained by a quite opposite theory (Einstein's). Speculation, scientists say, is the best estimate of the truth. But all that is certain about a best estimate is that it cannot be certain. Scientific theory and discovery often turn out to have less to do with logic and more to do with haphazard, capricious and even mystical states of mind.* While I am not arguing that science is useless, much of it is indistinguishable from science fiction.

Whole areas of the Western scientific model come into this category: theories that seem as solid as rock and, indeed, are foundations of much of Western thinking, yet in reality are at best unsubstantiated and at worse no more than superstitions.*

It is ironic, then, that a scientist's uncertain estimates are his source of professional pride. And that pride is the envy of other scientists, whose profession is to refute him and establish their own best estimates. Thus how can science reach a final conclusion, an ultimate truth, an end to all arguments? Its purpose is to lend the appearance of reasonability to a profession of competing egoists. The only why it finds, and the only reason for its own existence, is the ego itself.

Scientific knowledge is not some tested body of truths about how the world works but is the result of a competitive struggle for the ear of the community, waged by the protagonists of various competing points of view by whatever means comes to hand, including propaganda, the unscrupulous exercise of power, and skillful use of persuasive rhetoric.*

 

 

Buddhi, the faculty of discernment

In Vedic philosophy, there are two conceptions of ego, false (ahaìkära) and real (ätmä). Haphazard metaphysical speculations end in the false ego. The real ego, the soul, may be known through the disciplined use of intelligence, or buddhi. The Sanskrit dictionary translates buddhi as discernment, i.e. discrimination, or the correct perception of distinctions. It is similar to the Greek term dinoia, used by Plato and Aristotle, who laid the foundations of Western philosophy. By dinoia (discernment), factual knowledge (nesis or epistme) is to be distinguished from mere opinion (dxa). Unfortunately, because Western intellectualism is inductive, what factual knowledge might be is a matter of subjective opinion. One who practices the Vedic method is said to ascend to factual knowledge by experiencing the self as having no material affinities. Buddhi, guided by spiritual authority, yields that experience directly. Vivekena tato vimuktiù, a great spiritual master declared: Discernment frees the soul from illusion.* Adept yogés discern their real, spiritual ego by the total cessation of anumäna (that is, by trance). Most people today will not be able to stop thought for more than a few seconds. But our non-material identity can be inferred by surrendering anumäna to buddhi as Çréla Prabhupäda directs in his purport to Çrémad-Bhägavatam 2.2.35. One begins by reflecting upon his own existence. From here he can discern himself, the seer, as different from the parts of the body, which are seen. Next, one may reason that he depends upon nature for all his perceptions and actions. This means that all mental functions within the field of the senses are material. We are dissatisfied with this present state of affairs. Consciousness aspires to push beyond the limits of the imperfect knowledge of the material mind. While considering how to transcend the boundaries of the mind, we depend upon the intelligence which acts like a higher authority. If a person renounces the direction of the intelligence, he becomes deranged. Buddhi is offered us by the Supersoul, our inner friend and guide. Our good use of this grace makes possible the direct perception of the self as eternal spirit soul, beyond the gross body and subtle mind. Çrémad-Bhägavatam 3.26.30 says buddhi has five functions: saàçaya, viparyäsa, niçcaya, småti and sväpa. Of these, niçcaya (apprehension) and viparyäsa (misapprehension) are the functions by which the soul is directly experienced. In the purport, Çréla Prabhupäda elaborates:

When one is able to analyze his actual position, the false identification with the body is detected. This is viparyäsa. When false identification is detected, then real identification can be understood. Real understanding is described here as niçcaya, or proved experimental knowledge. This experimental knowledge can be achieved when one has understood the false knowledge. By experimental or proved knowledge, one can understand that he is not the body but spirit soul.

Thus one can experience the soul by proving to oneself that the self cannot reasonably be material. This process begins with saàçaya (doubt). I must first doubt I am the body before I can seriously seek the soul. Why would I doubt that I am the body? That doubt arises from småti (memory), another feature of buddhi.

The first lesson in spiritual life is that we are not these bodies, but eternal spirit souls. Once you were a child. Now you are a grown man. Where is your childhood body? That body does not exist, but you still exist because you are eternal. The circumstantial body has changed, but you have not changed. This is the proof of eternality. You remember that you did certain things yesterday and certain things today, but you forget other things. Your body of yesterday is not today's body. Do you admit it or not? You cannot say that today is the thirteenth of May, 1973. You cannot say that today is yesterday. The thirteenth was yesterday. The day has changed. But you remember yesterday; and that remembrance is evidence of your eternality. The body has changed, but you remember it; therefore you are eternal, although the body is temporary. This proof is very simple. Even a child can understand it.*

Besides småti, the conscious power of recollection, there is subconscious memory. This is termed svabhäva, translated by Çréla Prabhupäda as intuition, nature, or natural instinct. As indicated by Çrémad-Bhägavatam 10.8.39, svabhäva is allied with karma-äçaya, the intention to perform certain actions. Svabhäva is a living entity's intuitive psychology, the subtle fingerprint of his destiny over lifetimes past, present and future. Why, all else in this lifetime being equal, is one person a natural-born musician and another not? It is due to svabhäva, the nature inherited from the past lives. Souls surrendered to Kåñëa also exhibit an intuitive psychology, one that is pure and free of the influence of false ego.* Now, an argument raised against reincarnation is that (for most of us, anyway) there is no overt memory of our previous lives. How, then, is reincarnation reasonable? It is reasonable because one of the five functions of buddhi permits us to directly experience a change of body and the forgetfulness associated with that change. This faculty is svapna, dreaming. As Çréla Prabhupäda often explained, just as we've forgotten the body we had in our last birth, we forget this present body while dreaming at night. When our dream ends, we forget our subtle dream-body and return to the gross body. So this is the proof, Çréla Prabhupäda said, that you are a living entity, but the body's changing daily.*

 

 

Reason is not infallible

Anumäna is superior to sense perception because it asks the reason why.* It starts, but cannot finish, the process of finding the answer. The mind is subtle matter, a shadow cast upon consciousness. Its search for the reason beyond perception is the material energy's way of urging the soul to intelligently apply Vedic knowledge. When anumäna heeds Vedic direction and deduces the self beyond matter, the mind is pacified by niçcaya, the fixed perception of the soul. We must pacify the mind to achieve the goal all philosophers strive forthe resolution of duality. The reason is given in Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Antya-lélä 4.176:

'dvaite' bhadräbhadra-jïäna, saba'manodharma'

'ei bhäla, ei manda,'ei saba 'bhrama'

In the material world, conceptions of good and bad are all mental speculations. Therefore, saying, This is good, and this is bad, is all a mistake.

The mind is the locus of all contradiction. Left to itself, anumäna finds no end to its struggle with duality. When, through discernment cultivated with the help of a spiritual master, all dualities of mind at last subside, the soul turns its undivided attention to the truth hidden behind thought and perception. Then, at last, consciousness enters the direct presence of the Supersoul, the Éçvara. Bhagavad-gétä 6.6-7 states:

For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends; but for one who has failed to do so, his mind will remain the greatest enemy.

For one who has conquered the mind, the Supersoul is already reached, for he has attained tranquillity. To such a man happiness and distress, heat and cold, honor and dishonor are all the same.

As was noted in the introduction, the philosophical school known as rationalism emphasizes anumäna or reason as the svataù-pramäëa, the self- evident means to truth. Central to rationalism is the notion that the mind can know the underlying meaning of everything by deep thought alone. This idea is very old in Western philosophy. Aristotle spoke of the nous poietiks, the inward aspect of the mind by which the eternal beginnings of all phenomena may be understood. It may seem that rationalism and the Vedic method of discernment described above are alike. But the former comes to a very different conclusion. It rationalizes existence, or in other words, gives it a mental basis. When anumänavädés discuss God and the soul, time and space, good and evil and so on, they do so as if they are talking about objective realities. But their discussions are really only about ideas of God, soul and the rest. Thus rationalists investigate the world as they think it should be (as opposed to empiricists, who investigate the world as they perceive it to be). Vedic philosophy does not accept anumäna as the svataù-pramäëa. The perfect, self-established knowledge (svataù-siddha-jïäna) is transcendental.* It is divya-pratyakña, divine perception that depends upon nothing material, not even the logical functions of the mind. Çrémad-Bhägavatam 2.2.6 states that svataù-siddha is the omnipotency of the Supersoul situated within the heart of this body. His potency alone frees the soul from birth and death. Even though we may theoretically understand I am not this body, reason alone has no power to stop the cycle of saàsära. Kåñëa is acintya, not subject to our powers of mind. But He permits Himself to be known via the saintly person in whom dwells Väc, the Vedic sound: brahmäyam väcaù paramaà vyoma, the brähmaëa (knower of Brahman) is the supreme, most excellent abode of Väc.*

 

 

Rationalism as hypothetico-deduction

In early 1996 I gave a talk on some of the topics of this chapter in Berlin. At the end a young man wanted to know why I'd said that all Western philosophy is inductive, and only Vedic philosophy is truly deductive. He pointed out that the European rationalists beginning with Plato are highly regarded as deductive philosophers. The remainder of Chapter Two elaborates on the theme of the answer I gave him. It should be noted that his question was not misinformed. Standard philosophy textbooks do count European rationalism as deductive. This is because rationalists, unlike empiricists, posit an a priori knowledge (i.e. knowledge prior to sense perception), made up of first principles. From these principles they try to deduce the logic of everything a posteriori, after sense perception. Nonetheless, the first principles of European rationalism are tainted by induction, even when they are derived from scriptural revelation. It is very useful to follow why this is so. That will help us pinpoint how inductive thinkers attempt to subvert Vedic knowledge, a problem dealt with in Chapters Four and Five. To use the precise terminology, rationalism is a hypothetico-deductive system of thought. Some logicians treat hypothetico-deduction and induction as two aspects of the same reasoning procedure. I share this view, since both systems begin their reasoning with a hypothesis. The difference is that unlike empiricism, rationalism does not strive to confirm with evidence from the senses its basic hypothesis of a priori first principles. The aim is to prove by logic alone that there is an ideal meaning to all things even prior to pratyakña. For instance, rationalists argue that the categories of meaning into which we sort objects of perception This object is a pencil (or a chair, table, and so on)are programmed in our heads by an innate knowledge. Thus categorical meaning is different from the sense data being categorized. A hypothesis of this sort cannot be proved or disproved empirically, even though it explains something we have direct familiarity with. (Rationalists have their own theory of proof that will be looked at shortly.) But though rationalism tries to transcend inductive empiricism, it is not infallible. It remains limited to the field of human experience the experience of the human mind. Now at this point a doubtful reader may interpose, But many prominent rationalists gave logical arguments for the existence of God. Are you saying that just because they used their reason, the deity they defended was only a hypothesis? They did not invent God in their minds. They believed in Him from the scriptures, and then tried to explain Him rationally. No doubt that in the past at least, Western rationalism defended theism. European rationalists tried their best to mentally assemble an infallible deity. But they failed. It is beyond the power of man-made reasons to establish God as éçvara, the infallible master of all energies. Let us examine why.

 

 

Rationalism and scepticism

Nowadays it is not uncommon for persons who are completely sceptical of religion to call themselves rationalists. But in the Europe of a few centuries back, the aim of most rationalists was to prove that the Bible is perfectly reasonable and God is a logical necessity. One logical proof rationalists offered was that just as a watch requires a watchmaker, so the intricate arrangement of the world requires a creator, God.* This is a form of the well-known design argument, which holds that intelligent design is a priori to material form. But the Scottish dubitante David Hume (1711-1776) raised such difficult questions about the design argument that it was swept completely off the stage of serious European philosophy. In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume analyzed the rationale of divine cause and decided that it proved that God is neither benevolent, perfect, magnanimous, infallible nor even existent. Here are four of his arguments in summary.

1) All creatures are subject to pain as well as pleasure but why, if God is benevolent?

2) The world is controlled by strict laws. But if God has to resort to rule of law, how can He be perfect?

3) Powers and faculties are distributed to the living entities with great frugality. Why, if God is magnanimous?

4) Though the different parts of the great machine of nature work together systematically, these parts (for instance, rainfall) are sometimes deficient, sometimes excessive. Thus it seems nature works without higher supervision. Why, if God is infallible?

Hume's scepticism left ravages upon the European mind.* The response of the rationalists came from Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who was highly impressed by Hume's logic. Kant attempted to synthesize scepticism and rationalism into what is known as Critical Philosophy. In doing this, he fell victim to reflexive criticism. He argued that while reason is transcendental (i.e. it stands outside sense perception), it is meaningful to us only in terms of sense perception. We must rely upon our senses to know whether an idea is reasonable or not. Therefore the design argument is (from the human perspective) unreasonable, because the world we perceive does not appear to have been created by a beneficent and omnipotent God. But if perception proves reason, how does Kant prove from sense perception his contention that reason is transcendental to the senses? On this point, he fell victim to reflexivity. Kant's conclusion was, for all practical purposes, agnostic: God is confined to the realm of the unprovable, beyond the senses. Therefore discussing God is a waste of the philosopher's time. Rationalists who philosophize about a reality transcending our experience are in what Kant called transcendental illusion. Thus Kant ended an era of rationalist defense of Christianity. What followed was an era of rationalist attack on Christianity. Kant's Critical Philosophy spawned such atheistic strains of thought as Marxism, Positivism, Pragmatism and Existentialism. These bring us right up to the contemporary period of uninhibited materialism. The irony is that before Kant, rationalism was largely identified with theism and deism. Today, people take rationalism to be a synonym for atheism and scientific scepticism. There is an Indian Rationalist's Association dedicated to debunking religious beliefs through scientific proofs. Western philosophy, whether it is called empirical or rationalist, is ultimately dedicated to human-devised, human-centered inductive thinking. Induction may sometimes float theistic ideas. But as the Chinese say, water floats a ship, and water sinks a ship.

 

 

The Vedic logic of design

Kant said that Hume awoke him from his dogmatic slumber.* The religious dogmatism in rationalism transformed, after Kant, into dogmatic materialism. We shall look at this shortly. But now let us briefly consider the Vedic reply to Hume, whose arguments so revolutionized the European intellectual attitude to religion.

1) Hume questioned why a benevolent, loving God would subject all living entities to the duality of pain and pleasure. His definition of living entity was limited to the physical body. The Vedic response is that every living creature is in essence jéva-tattva, an eternal spirit soul. Because of the attraction to lord it over prakåti, the jéva is entrapped in the bodily concept, and subject to the cycle of repeated birth and death throughout all the species in nature. The jéva's perception of pleasure and pain within these bodies is but an illusion generated by the false ego. By yoga (discipline and purification of the mind and senses), pleasure and pain are transcended. And by engaging the purified mind and senses in Kåñëa's service, the living entity is established in an eternal loving relationship with the Supreme Person.

2) Hume asked why a perfect God would have to resort to strict laws to govern the universe. The answer is that the universe is formed out of the bhinnä- prakåti-tattva, the separated material energy of éçvara. Material nature is separated, and thus organized by the rule of law instead of the rule of love, because of the separate interests of the living entities under the sway of false ego. Hume's interest in a world emancipated from material laws is to be fulfilled within the spiritual nature (daivi-prakåti), which is not separated from éçvara.

3) Hume's next doubt is answered by knowledge of the actual purpose of the material world. The universe is a reformatory for souls who, due to false ego, foolishly aspire to be the lords of all they survey. Nature's frugality is to help the soul understand his real position: he is a servant, not the master.

4) The last doubt is cleared up by knowledge of the käla and karma tattvas. When a person performs sinful activities, reactions such as flood, drought, famine, pestilence and so on are destined by time to fall upon him in this and future lifetimes. Such misfortune is sobering. One should inquire from a saintly person how to become relieved from sin and its reactions. But too often, human beings are stubbornly animalistic. When hit with a stick by its master, an animal cannot understand what it did to deserve punishment. For all the animal knows, the beating is purposeless and chaotic. In this sense, Hume's view of the natural disturbances that befall mankind is animalistic. Hume's philosophical revolution soon became a scientific one. Less than a century after Hume's death, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) would confide in a letter to Asa Gray that the theory of evolution had to be reasonable because a beneficent and omnipotent God could not have created bloodthirsty creatures that kill with savage delight.

 

 

Reason and scripture

The rational argument of design started off with a serious handicap that left it open to Hume's attack. The handicap was incomplete knowledge of the purpose of creation. In her book Heresy, Joan O'Grady writes that this problem arose from a tenet ...

... developed from the Old Testament, that God, the Creator, made a world that is good. And God saw everything that He had made and, behold, it was very good. (Gen 1.31) From that it follows that our bodies are good.*

If the world and our bodies are good, what are they good for? And what is evil? On these points, the 'orthodox' teaching has never been completely clear.* Being unable to deduce what the creation is good for from an unclear premise, rationalist Christians induced it to be good for what historian Paul Johnson calls enlightened self-interest.* This self-interest was defined as the long-term and prudent pursuit of happiness.* In simple language, the rationalists supposed God's creation to be good for sense gratification. The comparison of God to a watchmaker is a reasonable assumption inasmuch as we know that watches do not assemble themselves. But the analogy of the watchmaker implies a further assumption about God's relationship with His creation. A watchmaker manufactures the watch for another person, who becomes its owner, controller and enjoyer. What makes the watch good is the satisfaction it gives the one who takes possession of it. Hume's scepticism struck just this point. How can you say God created a world good for our sense gratification? It isn't logical. We suffer pain as well as pleasure, we are forced to live under strict controlling laws, we have only limited powers and faculties, and our world is too often chaotic. The definition of a good world as good for sense gratification is not good. It is passionate, as Çrémad-Bhägavatam 3.5.31 confirms: taijasänéndriyäëy eva jïäna-karma-mayäni caphilosophical speculation in connection with sense enjoyment is passionate, because the senses are products of the mode of passion. In the mode of passion, it is very hard to understand why a God who made the world good allows pain to offset pleasure; why He strictly rules this good world by law; why He is frugal in distributing powers and faculties; and why this good world is too often disturbed. Rather than trouble themselves with these contradictions, passionate philosophers find it reasonable to jettison God from their systems, and get working on remaking the world into what it should be. Éçvara, the Supreme, is properly understood only in the mode of goodness.* Bhagavad-gétä 14.17 states, rajaso lobha eva ca: from the mode of passion, greed develops. Greed for material pleasure, power, wealth, and comfort is the path of materialism. This path bends reason away from the real logic of creation, which is to reform us from our illusion. In the name of awakening from the slumber of dogma, materialistic reasoning first assumes God irrelevant, as did Kant's Critical Philosophy, and then assumes the material world as mankind's own godless paradise, as did Marxism, Positivism, Pragmatism and Existentialism.

 

 

The monistic tendency of rationalism

Thus the assumptions of rationalism are open to the same criticism leveled at the assumptions of empirical metaphysics: because they, like all other kinds of postulates, are assumed, they distort reality and define it selectively.* That selective definition is assumed to be the truth. Empiricism defines truth as correspondence with what is perceived in the world. But as we have seen, correspondence breaks down into contradiction because sense perception raises more questions than it can answer. Rationalists find contradiction very frustrating. Their aim is to push past the senses to coherence, or the underlying connection of everything to everything else. The coherence theory of truth holds that truth is a grand unified explanation, completely consistent within itself, of all the levels of our cognition of the universe. Empirical facts are merely the external details. Once a completely coherent logical truth is established, empirical facts can be added at any time; they will cohere to the system without contradiction. At the lowest level of the system are theories of perception. Above these are theories by which perceptions are judged. Above these are theories about the basic laws governing the world. Above these are theories of logic, the dictionary of the whole system. Above these, the ultimate unifying principle is that all things below cohere to existence itself. Why do all things exist? The old answer was that God created everything, but this has lost favor with rationalists. And Kant's warning about transcendental illusion also puts the brakes on philosophical talk of a reality beyond that gave existence to our world. Thus rationalists say everything exists because of Entity, the bare fact of existence itself. And what is Entity, apart from the things that exist?

Entity has no properties and stands in no relation to other things, or, as Hegel would say, it has no determinations. But this implies, according to Hegel's line of reasoning, that pure being is absolute negation, since it is not this, that or the other. And absolute negation, to complete the argument, is nothing, that is, it is non-being. Being and non- being, therefore, are ultimately one and the same undifferentiated thing.*

This quotation is an example of monistic metaphysics in modern rationalism. Metaphysics is speculation beyond the limits of the senses. Monism refers to any doctrine that reduces reality to oneness. The tendency to coherence, to bring everything under one unifying principle, is logically a tendency to monism. Now, when a rationalist speculates that Entity is the unifying principle, he is not really telling us anything different from his rivals, the empiricists, who say that everything exists because the senses reveal that everything exists. We still do not know why everything exists. But the rationalists do go one step further than the empiricists by distinguishing the fact of existence (Entity itself) from the things that exist as revealed by the senses. In the previous quotation, this is done by negation, which concludes that being is non-being. Though it is not sensible, this hypothesis halts further inquiry into the why of existence. But if being is non-being and non-being is being, how can the origin of the world be explained coherently? How can an entity that is zero manage the energies of creation? Çréla Prabhupäda analyzes the problem:

But if God is zero, how are so many figures emanating from Him? As the Vedänta-sütra says (janmädy asya yataù), Everything is generating from the Supreme. Therefore the Supreme cannot be zero. We have to study how so many forms, so many infinite living entities, are being generated from the Supreme. This is also explained in the Vedänta-sütra, which is the study of ultimate knowledge. The word veda means knowledge, and anta means ultimate. Ultimate knowledge is knowledge of the Supreme Lord.*

European speculations about how an impersonal Entity gave rise to the forms of this world go back to ancient Greek metaphysicians. Unmoved and changeless, Entity is a disembodied mind that thinks only of itself. While this mind is ever-oblivious of the moving, changing world that depends on it, creation somehow arises from its self-preoccupation. Aristotle proposed four causes (aitai in Greek, or reasons for something happening) to explain how creation occurs. These are the material, formal, efficient, and final causes. Something created must have substance. That substance is the material (or ingredient) cause (causa materialis). Something created must have shape. That shape is the formal cause (causa formalis). Creating something is an act, and that act must be initiated. That which initiates creation is the efficient cause (causa efficiens). Something created must have a purpose. That purpose is the final cause (causa finalis). Any realistic plan of creation must account for these four causes. For instance, to create a house, there must be materials, an architectural design, a skilled construction crew, and a purpose that makes the building of the house worth the time and money. That, we would agree, is only reasonable. But we would not think it very reasonable if we were told that behind the four causes of the house there is a completely self-absorbed impersonal being that has no concern whatsoever whether the house is built or not. We reasonably expect that only a person with the will to see the job done can be responsible for the four-fold causation of the house. A personal controller of the four causes is coherent. An impersonal controller of the four causes is incoherent, because something impersonal has no intention and purpose. How, then, can impersonalists coherently answer the question why? They aver it is not quite right to say that Entity is completely disinterested in creation. Rather, Entity divides into the observer and the observed so as to observe itself. The real Entity is lost in this act of observation. The individual observer and the forms he observes are not Entity, which has neither individuality nor form. This answer to the question why? is paradoxical. What sense is there for Entity to observe itself not be so that it can observe itself be? Impersonalists defend their paradoxical answer thusly: it's only when we reach the paradox that we're forced to give up asking questions.* But giving up in the face of the paradox still does not answer why there is a paradox. The Vedic answer is not paradoxical. An artist's creation may be a kind of illusion, but still it inspires the observer with appreciation for the artistic skill of the creator. Similarly, Kåñëa's artistry as the creator of this temporary universe is meant to inspire us with appreciation for His supreme skill. Therefore in the Çvetäçvatara Upaniñad, God is praised as Mäyén, He whose power is mäyä, the paradoxical material energy. That Kåñëa is Himself the four causes proposed by Aristotle is indicated in Çrémad-Bhägavatam 6.9.42: as upädäna, He is the giver of the ingredients of creation. As sva-rüpeëa pradhäna-rüpeëa, all material forms emanate from His eternal personal spiritual form. As nimittäyamäna, He is the efficient cause. And as artha-viçeña, He manifests the special necessity or purpose of every living entity. Understanding Kåñëa in these ways liberates one from illusion. But if I think the four causes of cosmic creation are myself observing myself, that is false ego interfering with logic.

 

 

The rational false ego

The young Berliner suggested that ancient Greek rationalists like Plato were as much deductive philosophers as the sages of the Vedas. A similar point of view is evident in this remark by a modern exponent of Indian mysticism:

Yet we find in both [the philosophers of ancient Greece and India] the same profound sense of reason, logic, order, harmony, experimentation and experience.*

Some parallels are undeniable. But to correctly apprehend the Vedic method of knowledge, we have to come to terms with the facts. Greek philosophy, which is the foundation of the European philosophical tradition, began as an intellectual reaction against the limitations of Hellenic religious scriptures. In contrast, Vedic philosophy explains the cause revealed in the Vedic scriptures. Historians tell us that philosophy was born when ancient Greek thinkers became doubtful about the Theogony, one of the main religious texts of their time. The Theogony (genealogy of the gods), written by the poet Hesiod in the eighth century BC, is said to have been inspired by angelic entities called the Muses. It relates that the world and the gods arose from chos, a word very close in meaning to its English cognate chasm, a gap.* Chos was a gap in logic, a void unpenetrated by the intellect. The svabhäva (natural instinct) of the Greeks was fond of logical speculation, so it was natural for some thinkers to take the problem of chos as a challenge. Different causal agents (water, fire, air and so on) were argumentatively proposed to fill the gap. Gradually a few philosophers, possibly influenced by ideas from India, turned away from physical theories of causation to speculate about an underlying Entity of pure thought. One of the greatest of these was Plato. He conceived Entity (from Greek t n, that which is) to be a feature of aut t agathn, the Good itself. The Good is to be found on a higher plane of abstraction, a mindscape independent of human thinkers, where the intellect of the philosopher might enjoy the full meaning of truth, beauty, form, soul, and other ideals. Our world is just a shadow of that. But Plato did not achieve the substance beyond the shadow. His philosophy cultimates in the doctrine of exemplarism, that the finite things of this world are copies of only the ideas of the universal mind. However, this is not the end of the Vedic inquiry, which asks further, keneñitaà patati preñitaà manaù: By whom is the mind set in motion?* The Greeks did not ask this question because they were fettered by their assumptions. The Theogony taught that all persons, including the Olympian gods, are created from chos, which is impersonal. Plato similarly assumed that beyond the gap that separates persons from the truth, Entity is asmatos, incorporeal and invisible. There, the forms are thought of but not seen.* Thus Platonic logic is not Vedic. As a kind of impersonalism, it fails to connect the shadow of personality to the substance of personality. Plato's rejection of the person in the form of the gross material body (sthüla- çaréra) left him with the subtle mind (liìga-çaréra). There, person, soul, are just good ideas, i.e. concepts of mind. But in fact, mind and matter are coverings of the real personality, the soul, which alone is para, transcendental. As Närada Muni explains in Çrémad-Bhägavatam 1.5.27:

O great sage, as soon as I got a taste for the Personality of Godhead, my attention to hear of the Lord was unflinching. And as my taste developed, I could realize that it was only in my ignorance that I had accepted gross and subtle coverings, for both the Lord and I are transcendental.

The lofty thoughts of the ancient Greek rationalists were the product of their svabhäva, or intuition. But to merely follow intuition is not proof of an actual realization of the truth. Even people unread in philosophy mentally negate whatever they do not like about this world, and dream a better world to come. Modern ideals like liberty, equality, fraternity, world peace which people all around the world agree are glorious remain tantalizing mental concepts that somehow do not quite take hold of our lives, at least not for very long. Thus the mental plane proves itself to be no more dependable than the physical plane. Yet throughout history people of an intellectual nature turn away from the discrepancies of the physical world to search for certainty on the higher plane of the mind. Why?

Higher plane means you are seeking after pleasure, but that is being obstructed. That is your position. You are seeking pleasure, but it is not unobstructed. Therefore you are seeking higher, where there is no obstruction. Pleasure is the purpose, but when you speak of higher plane, that means you are experiencing obstruction in getting pleasure. So you are seeking a platform where there is no obstruction. But the purpose is the same.*

The root of svabhäva is the pleasure principle.* Each person's philosophy of life begins here. When svabhäva or intuition is not directed by Vedic logic, it aims at erroneous goals of supreme happiness. The svabhäva of the ancient Greek rationalists was to seek happiness in abstract logical speculation. The Theogony had no satisfying answers to their questions of how the world came to be. So they left religion behind, following their minds deeper and deeper into the realm of thought. Being thinkers who, naturally, liked thinking, they assumed it is clear that reason (nous) is the goal of all things and that everything proceeds from reason and that the whole universe has its being from reason.* In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defined intuitive reason as God: ho thes ka ho nous. The goal of Neoplatonic philosophy was hnosis, oneness with the Divine Mind which has its being in the thinking of its own being. On the other hand, the Christian rationalists accepted from the start the Bible's account of a personal God as the cause. But their svabhäva turned them back to the material world to find pleasure in what God created. They rationalized God to be an indulgent parent who handed His creation down to mankind for our pious material happiness. They supposed scientific progress to be service to God, because it advances civilized sense gratification. This binding of the intellect to matter finally forced a choice between God and material happiness. Rejecting God and embracing materialism, the rationalists concluded, Man is God, the supreme enjoyer of the world. Anumäna, unlike pratyakña, can help us understand that the conscious self is different from the body. But if we grant it full authority, anumäna leads us to our own ego as the ultimate Entity, the why of existence. Egoism is the belief that self-interest is the just and proper motive force. It manifests as ahaà-mameti, I and mine. Mama (mine) is the basis of karma-väda, the philosophy of claiming the world for one's enjoyment. Aham (I) is the basis of jïäna-väda, the philosophy of leaving the world aside to enjoy the higher plane of abstract thought. Both philosophies are imposed by men upon the creation of the Lord; indeed, these are means by which men propose to become God themselves. Now, what is the wrong in men imposing their own philosophies upon the creation? The wrong is that such an imposition is not an act of knowledge. It is an act of blind faith, of inductive gambling. Neither the Christian rationalists nor the ancient Greeks had a truly deductive teleology. The word teleology comes from the Greek tlos, purpose, goal and lgos, knowledge of. The logic of teleology is that one can know the purpose of something by deducing it from its origin. Çréla Prabhupäda gave the example of a Calcutta playwright who was asked why he entitled a historical drama Shah Jahan, after the medieval Indian king who built the famous Taj Mahal. In the play, the king's son, Aurangzeb, performs the best part of the action, while his father languishes under Aurangzeb's house arrest. So why wasn't the play called Aurangzeb? The answer was that the play's purpose was to focus upon the suffering of Shah Jahan at the hands of his son. This explanation could only come from the creator of the play and no one else. Similarly, the purpose of the world is to be known from the creator, éçvara. That is deductive teleology. Unfortunately, in neither Greek nor Judaeo-Christian rationalism was there a starting point of complete information about the purpose of creation. This made induction unavoidable. Induction, as we have seen, is a method of egoism. Empiricism, apparently opposed to rationalism, is in fact no different. Quantum physics, for instance, begins in the empirical study of particles of matter. But it ends in speculation about an egoistic consciousness that creates the universe via perception.

 

 

The deduction of real happiness

Philosophers often liken the universe to an incredibly vast mechanical apparatus. We are very insignificant creatures who try to make our happy nests deep within its cogs, blindly hoping, as did the Christian rationalists, that the machine was built just for that purpose. Or perhaps, like the Greeks, we speculate on the machinery from our insignificant point of view, in the hope of achieving happiness on a higher plane of understanding. However, in either case our position is very dangerous, like that of a cat that has crawled into the warm environs of the engine of a parked automobile to take a nap. The cat risks severe injury as soon as the owner returns and starts up the motor. And this is because the cat does not understand the real purpose of an automobile engine. According to deductive, Vedic logic, the creation is not meant to be enjoyed by us because there is no ultimate happiness for us in it. As Kåñëa says in Bhagavad-gétä 13.9, janma-måtyu-jarä-vyädhi-duùkha-doñänudarçanam: right knowledge is seeing the world as a place of misery, full of birth, death, old age and disease. Human beings are meant to get liberated from this misery: labdhväpavargyaà mänuñyaà. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 4.23.28) And that is why human beings have discerning power: vivekena tato vimuktiù. What, then, is the truth that is to be discerned from illusion? Jade baddhasyänanda bhramo vaikuëöha bhramäçcasaìgät: the illusion is to mistake enjoyment of the mind and senses as änanda (spiritual bliss); this must be distinguished from the änanda of the liberated state of Vaikuëöha, our spiritual home.* Vaikuëöha is the transcendental abode of éçvara, explained by Lord Kåñëa in Bhagavad-gétä 8.21:

avyakto 'kñara ity uktas tam ähuù paramäà gatim

yaà präpya na nivartante tad dhäma paramaà mama

That which the Vedäntists describe as unmanifest and infallible, that which is known as the supreme destination, that place from which, having attained it, one never returnsthat is My supreme abode.

The word avyakta (unmanifest) means that the bliss of Vaikuëöha cannot be perceived by our material senses, nor conceived of by our material minds. And akñara (infallible) means that Vaikuëöha is not under the control of material nature, time, and the chain of karma, as we are in our present condition. Vaikuëöha is not different from the Supreme Controller. It is the unlimited realm of His personal transcendental happiness. The material world is a perverted reflection of Vaikuëöha, projected upon the false ego of the living entities who have chosen to enjoy separately from Kåñëa. When the Vaikuëöha consciousness is discerned from the selfish material consciousness, it yields complete happiness for the soul. But if pratyakña and anumäna cannot reach Vaikuëöha, then how is it to be known? This is the topic of the next chapter.

 

 

 

Chapter Three: Verbal Testimony (Çabda)

 

The word çabda is found in the Upaniñads, Vedänta- sütra, Çrémad-Bhägavatam, Mahäbhärata, and many other ancient Sanskrit texts. Its basic meaning is sound, or voice. Çabda is the vibration of the element äkäça, the ethereal space of the sky. This is not a difficult concept to grasp. Educated people know that the sky is the medium of not only audible sound, but radio signals, light, cosmic rays and so on. These all exhibit vibratory properties. Though modern scientists do not count ethereal space as a material element as do Vedic scientists, they agree it is not a void, but rather a sea of energy in which we and all other things in the universe are swimming.* Some suppose there is a fundamental vibration that permeates the universe, holding all matter together.* There is indeed a fundamental vibration Veda. It originates in the spiritual sky:

Çabda-mätram abhüt tasmän nabhaù. Nabhaù is sky. So there is a point wherefrom the sky, the material sky, begins. And there is spiritual sky. The sky is spiritual wherefrom the çabda is resounded. Because there is sky, therefore there is sound. Because there is sound, therefore the instrument of hearing sound, the ear, is there. So our material position and spiritual position the ultimate point is sound. And this sound is presented in its original spiritual form. That is called Veda, çabda-brahma.*

 

The yoga of spiritual sound

Material sound gives rise to material existence. Spiritual sound gives rise to liberation from material existence:

It is stated also in the Vedänta-sütra that sound is the origin of all objects of material possession and that by sound one can also dissolve this material existence. Anävåttiù çabdät means liberation by sound. The entire material manifestation began from sound, and sound can also end material entanglement, if it has a particular potency.*

By the particular potency of spiritual sound, the transcendental qualities of Vaikuëöha, the spiritual world, are transmitted through the medium of words (vacäàsi vaikuëöha-guëänuvarëane). (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 9.4.18) As the form of the material world is made up of three guëas or material qualities (goodness, passion and ignorance), so also are there three qualities of Vaikuëöha. The Vaikuëöha qualities, however, are transcendental: sac-cid-änanda eternity, knowledge and bliss.* Some portions of the Vedic scriptures train our ears on sat, the eternal absolute (Brahman) in which the living entities and matter are sheltered. Other portions train our ears on sac-cit, the Supersoul (Paramätmä) who directs the spiritual and material energies in Brahman. The most confidential portion of the Vedas train our ears on sac-cid-änanda-vigraha, eternality known in His original blissful form (Bhagavän).* The particular potency of this sound is Lord Çré Kåñëa Himself, as He confirms in Bhagavad-gétä 7.1:

mayy äsakta-manäù pärtha yogaà yuïjan mad-äçrayaù

asaàçayaà samagraà mäà yathä jïäsyasi tac chåëu

Here Kåñëa speaks of five results of hearing directly from Him: 1) one becomes established in yoga (yoga-yuïjan); 2) one's consciousness takes shelter of Him (mat-äçrayaù); 3) one's mind becomes attached to Him (mayi äsakta-manäù); 4) all doubts are completely vanquished (asaàçayaà samagram), and 5) one comes to know Kåñëa in full (mäà yathä jïäsyasi). Yoga is defined in Bhagavad-gétä 5.11 as käyena manasä buddhyä kevalair indriyair api, the state in which the functions of the body, mind, intellect and even the senses are kevala, completely pure. In the kevala state, consciousness passes over the barrier of deceptive sense impressions to take shelter of the cause of all causes, Lord Kåñëa. Taking shelter of Kåñëa is not a hypothetical venture that the mind may reject later on. Indeed, the only real happiness for the purified mind is the transcendental excellence of the Lord's holy name, form, quality, pastimes and relationships. When one thus comes to know the Lord in full, ignorance and the doubts it spawns are destroyed. All this is accomplished by hearing sound infused with Kåñëa's spiritual potency. Kåñëa is therefore known as çrutekñita, He who is seen through the ears. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 3.9.11) If we do not see God, it is because we don't hear Him. And we do not hear him because our desire is impure:

Kåñëa, or God, is situated in everyone's heart. As you become purified, He speaks. He speaks always, but in our impure condition, we cannot hear.*

 

 

The sky in the lotus of the heart

In his purport to Çrémad-Bhägavatam 1.3.1, Çréla Prabhupäda elaborates on the location of the material sky:

In the spiritual sky, the effulgence of Brahman is spread all around, and the whole system is dazzling in spiritual light. The mahat-tattva is assembled in some corner of the vast, unlimited spiritual sky, and the part which is thus covered by the mahat-tattva is called the material sky. This part of the spiritual sky, called the mahat-tattva, is only an insignificant portion of the whole spiritual sky, and within this mahat- tattva there are innumerable universes. All these universes are collectively produced by the Käraëodakaçäyé Viñëu, called also the Mahä-Viñëu, who simply throws His glance to impregnate the material sky.

Lord Mahä-Viñëu then expands into each of the universes as Garbhodakaçäyé Viñëu. Describing this, Çrémad-Bhägavatam 3.5.6 states:

yathä punaù sve kha idaà niveçya

çete guhäyäà sa nivåtta-våttiù

Without any endeavor, the Supreme Lord lies down on His own heart spread in the form of the sky.

Here, heart (guhä) refers to the space or sky (khe) within the shell of the universe. Other verses reveal that this cosmic space is pervaded by präëa, an expansion of the Lord Himself. Präëa, the original life force, reverberates; this reverberation branches out in all directions as the sound of the Vedas, created by the mind of the Lord. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.21.38-40) The Chändogya Upaniñad 8.1.1. tells of a small sky within a lotus palace located in a great city (daharo 'sminn antaräkäçaù). Explaining this, Çréla Baladeva Vidyäbhüñaëa says that the great city is the body of a worshipper of the Lord, the lotus palace is the heart, and the small sky is the Supersoul.* The human body, then, is a microcosm. The sky in the heart of the body, like the universal sky, constantly vibrates with çabda. The jéva, the spark of spirit that is the pure self of the living being, floats within the vibrating präëa of that sky. When the jéva is not a worshipper of the Lord, the heart becomes the locus of käma (lusty desire). The Åg-Veda states that prior to creation, the original seed of the material mentality was käma.* Lord Kåñëa tells Uddhava that this lust cancels the soul's knowledge of the Lord situated within the heart. When knowledge of the Lord in the heart is lost, the knowledge that the entire universe emanates from Kåñëa, and that it is nondifferent from Him, is also lost. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.21.28) Närada Muni uses the term svabhäva-rakta, the inclination to enjoy, to explain the waywardness of the ignorant jévas. He warns that in this condition, they are attracted by the Vedic vibration in a wrong way. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 1.5.15) They receive it via the false ego instead of from their original spiritual master, the Lord in the heart. Egoism is the starting point of material sound, which generates all the objects of material possession. False ego is a creation of prakåti, the material nature. Dwelling in the heart along with the Lord and the jéva, the prakåti-tattva is always attentive to the Lord's command. As soon as the jéva becomes inclined to enjoy apart from Kåñëa, as her service to the Lord, she takes control of that soul via the false ego. Her long-term aim is to bring the soul back to the shelter of His lotus feet by making his life very difficult. Thus she is known as Durgä (dur, difficult; gä, to go [out]). Having gripped the jéva, false ego transforms into the mind. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 3.5.30) The mind's vijïäna-rüpiëé, or feature of deliberation, is the intelligence. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 2.10.32) These three false ego, mind and intelligence form the subtle material body of living entity. Then prakåti causes the sense of hearing to arise from the vibration of the subtle body. The tactile sense follows, then vision, taste and smell. Thus helped by material nature, the jéva floating in the space of the heart realizes, as the object of his desire, the gross body and its five sense objects. Underlying all this is the order of the Lord, the çabda-brahma, manifesting within the senses, mind and life energy itself. For souls under the influence of prakåti, the transcendental significance of this sound is su-durbodham, very difficult to know. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.21.36) They give attention only to the material names and forms that flicker on the screen of false ego. Mundane names and forms appear in consciousness as the result of prakåti's perpetual agitation of the thought and perception of the jéva. Çrémad-Bhägavatam 5.11.11 points out the precise means by which prakåti accomplishes this: through dravya (physical objects), svabhäva (our conditioned nature, by which all our material desires develop), äçaya (culture), karma (the predestined reactions of work), and käla (time). Agitated by these, the mind and senses multiply hundreds, then thousands, and then millions of functions. Each of these functions assumes a name and a form, becoming a subject of mundane hearing and speech. As Çrémad-Bhägavatam 2.1.2 states:

çrotavyädéni räjendra nåëäà santi sahasraçaù

apaçyatäm ätma-tattvaà gåheñu gåha-medhinäm

Those persons who are materially engrossed, being blind to the knowledge of ultimate truth, have many subject matters for hearing in human society, O Emperor.

 

 

Mythologies of why

And so, myriad mundane subject matters bubble forth from pratyakña and anumäna to form imaginary explanations of why we and the world exist. These explanations fall into two categories: karma-väda (the philosophy of fruitive activities) and jïäna-väda (the philosophy of mental speculation). They are the cause of our falldown into material entanglement, as Çréla Bhaktivinoda Öhäkura states in his Tattva-viveka 17:

karma-jïäna-vimiçrä yä yuktis-tarka-mayé nare

citra-mata-prasüté sa saàsära-phala-däyini

A person whose logic and arguments are mixed with fruitive activities (karma) and speculative knowledge (jïäna) comes to multifarious conclusions that simply cause him material bondage.

Mundane knowledge is a myth. Like the myths of primitive people, it is inseparable from the material conditions that prevail upon our minds: the time, place, and cultural circumstances in which we live. Western man measures world culture by his own standards of pratyakña and anumäna. Anything he detects that does not fit into his outlook he is liable to classify as mythology. But as philosopher Stephen Toulmin points out, this very method of trying to winnow mythology from reality is itself mythological!* By reliance upon the authority of the imperfect senses and mind, all that is accomplished is the invention of a new body of myths to explain the old. Toulmin writes of two kinds of myths: anthropomorphic and mechanomorphic. The first personalizes the natural world in the image of man. For example, Christian rationalists conceived of an anthropomorphic God whose purpose in creating the world reflected their own mundane desires. World history abounds in examples of anthropomorphic mythology. The second type depersonalizes nature, leaving only a schema of mechanical pushes and pulls. Mechanomorphic mythmaking is evident today in the theories of modern science. Instances can be seen in other cultures as well, for instance the atheistic Säìkhya philosophy of India. The aim of the mythmaker is to lay the objective foundations of a culture of karma and jïäna. The mythmaking religionist, philosopher, scientist, or historian is convinced, and is too often successful in convincing others, that his sense perception and mental speculation are a lawful tradition for all humanity. Unfortunately, as we have seen previously, knowledge that draws its authority from pratyakña and anumäna cannot be objective. How can we be sure there can never be genuine objectivity in karma-väda and jïäna-väda? Because the subjective yearnings of karmés and jïänés are pitted against an objective contradiction time. Both want lasting happiness in a world where nothing lasts. Karmés seek happiness in sense pleasure on the physical plane. Jïänés seek happiness in intellectual pursuits on the higher plane of abstraction. Both schools spin out reams and reams of literature promoting their respective mythologies. But in neither case is the promised happiness attainable, since saàsära-phala- däyiné, the fruit of karma-väda and jïäna-väda is only the repetition of birth and death.

 

Dream Interpretation: This book explains in detail the interpretation of dreams

 

Çabda as objective knowledge

But can we say Vedic knowledge is objective? We've learned çabda is a spiritual sound that vibrates in the deepest core of the heart as a language of interior illumination. Yet according to the modern understanding, only when knowledge is open to confirmation by the public can it actually be called objective. How, then, can the public confirm Vedic knowledge? Because of impure desire, we, the public, are drawn to the topics of bondage, çabda received through the false ego. Only when desire is pure, can the pure sound be heard. Vedic sages teach an objective means to purify desire. It is called yajïa (sacrifice). Vedic yajïas set karmés and jïänés on the path leading to the Vedic sages, in whom Vedic sound dwells. As Åg-Veda 10.71.3 states:

yajïena väcaù padavéyam äyan täm

anv avindann åñiñu pravistäm

By means of yajïa (sacrifice), they followed the tracks of Väc (Mother Veda) and found she had entered in the sages.

The greatest Vedic sage is Brahmä, whom Kåñëa deputes with the task of cosmic creation. Brahmä is first among those rare souls in the universe who directly hear the instructions of the Lord in the heart. He is the ädi-kavi, the first reciter of the çruti-çästra, the Vedic texts. His recitation at the dawn of creation is the universal standard of Vedic knowledge. Brahmä is therefore the spiritual master of all other Vedic sages. In his purport to Çrémad-Bhägavatam 2.9.42, Çréla Prabhupäda explains:

Lord Brahmä, being the creator of all living beings in the universe, is originally the father of several well-known sons, like Dakña, the catuù- sanas [the four Kumäras], and Närada. In three departments of human knowledge disseminated by the Vedas, namely fruitive work (karma-käëòa), transcendental knowledge (jïäna-käëòa), and devotional service (upäsanä-käëòa), Devarñi Närada inherited from his father Lord Brahmä devotional service, whereas Dakña inherited from his father fruitive work, and Sanaka, Sanätana, Sanandana and Sanat-kumära inherited from their father information about jïäna-käëòa, or transcendental knowledge. But out of them all, Närada is described here as the most beloved son of Lord Brahmä because of good behavior, obedience, meekness and readiness to render service unto the father. And Närada is famous as the greatest of all sages because of his being the greatest of all devotees.

Dakña and the four Kumäras preside over the Vedic paths known as karma- käëòa and jïäna-käëòa. Karma-käëòa scriptures allow for the personalization of the world in the image of theandric sensualism. The why of the world is the mutual sense gratification of the creator and the created. Jïäna-käëòa scriptures allow for the depersonalization of that world. The why of everything is reduced to mechanistic forces, or the impersonal logic behind such forces. But because they are Vedic, karma-käëòa and jïäna-käëòa scriptures lead to upäsanä, the worship of great sages and ultimately of God Himself. The karma-käëòa and jïäna-käëòa scriptures make up the apara-vidyä of the Vedas.

 

 

Paramparä: the link of hearts

In Bhagavad-gétä 18.64, Lord Kåñëa says He awards the most excellent knowledge (paramaà väcaù, or para-vidyä) only to those who are dear to Him. Brahmä, the first of the sages, is dear to Kåñëa as a personal friend.* Simply by being dear to the Lord, he was able to hear Him directly through the heart. The best of what he heard is upäsanä, knowledge of how Kåñëa is to be worshiped. Närada Muni is dear to Brahmä because he alone among his sons teaches upäsanä free of any taint of karma or jïäna. The system of paramparä (one after another) thus began as a linking of hearts to Kåñëa. That which links the hearts of Närada and Brahmä to Kåñëa is bhakti, pure devotion. In Çrémad-Bhägavatam, Närada Muni speaks of the loving attachment a disciple feels for his spiritual master. He uses the term anurakta. This attachment is exactly opposite the svabhäva-rakta mentioned earlier, the attraction to material enjoyment that puts the jéva under the spell of material nature. Anurakta and bhakti are synonyms: bhaktiù pürëänuraktiù parebhakti is complete loving attachment to the Supreme Lord.* The attachment of the heart of the disciple to the spiritual master can be understood by outward symptoms. Närada lists them as obedience, sinlessness, faithfulness, subjugation of the senses and strict adherance to the order of guru. These symptoms attract the spiritual master's mercy. By that mercy alone, the disciple becomes dear to Kåñëa. Therefore the spiritual master is considered to be the heart of the Lord Himself. Hearing from such a devotee is identical to hearing from Kåñëa in the heart, as confirmed in Çrémad- Bhägavatam 9.4.68: sädhavo hådayaà mahyaà sädhünäà hådayaà tv aham. The pure devotee is always within the core of My heart, and I am always in the heart of the pure devotee. Hearing the Lord in the heart, one sees with the eye of pure devotion through the baffling curtain of physical objects, conditioned nature, culture, karmic reactions and time with which material nature has covered the heart. In his heart, Brahmä saw all things as they really areas the tattvas devotedly serving their éçvara. What he saw in his heart is the description of Vaikuëöha:

The Lord was seated on His throne and was surrounded by different energies like the four, the sixteen, the five, and the six natural opulences, along with other insignificant energies of the temporary character. But He was the factual Supreme Lord, enjoying His own abode. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 2.9.17)

The four are spirit, matter, their combination as mahat-tattva and the false ego. The sixteen are the five material elements (mahä-bhütas), the five sense organs (jïänendriyas), the five working organs (karmendriyas), and the mind. The five are the sense objects. The six are the bhagas (all riches, all strength, all fame, all beauty, all knowledge and all renunciation) by which the Lord is known as Bhagavän. Brahmä saw all these as the personal servants of the Supreme Person. Each of us sees at this very moment the same divine forms Brahmä saw. But we see them in ignorance, as matter viewed from mind and mind viewed from matter.

 

Mystical is not the word

A word, a scholar of language tells us, is like a big sack into which we throw a very large number of things. Brahmä's darçana (vision) of the spiritual world may prompt us to reach for the word mystical. But we should be cautious. Unpack mystical as people use it today and we'll find it contains a holy grail, a seagull, a Zen motorcycle, and many other symbols of the ineffable. But Brahmä's spiritual vision was not mystical in this sense. It does not symbolize something that cannot be expressed, as Wittgenstein would have us believe:

There are indeed things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.*

In a book entitled Mysticism Examined, Richard H. Jones analyzes the problems mystics encounter with language.* He offers many quotations to show that through the ages these problems have obliged mystics to resort to symbolism, negation, paradox and silence. The reason, he argues, is that mystics share with materialistically-minded people a mistaken mirror-theory of language. The mirror-theory is plagued by two problems. One is the assumption that language can have no metaphysical depth. It can only mirror human experience. Alice could step through her magic looking-glass into a world beyond, but language has no such magic. It is only a two-dimensional reflection that ever denies us direct entry into the truth represented by words. In short, words cannot convey substance. The second problem is the assumption that our use of words is like looking at a mirror both embed a subject-object concept in the intellect. But all that is really there is our own self. Jones defines a mystical experience in this way:

One moves away from the normal cognitive situation of a subject knowing a mental or physical object set off from the subject in some sense. More exactly, the result is a state of consciousness without an object of consciousness.*

Jones cites a famous mystic as saying, Everything in the Godhead is one, and of that there is nothing to be said.* Commenting, he notes that when mystics defend with words

... the claim Everything in the Godhead is one ... far from aiding in inducing such an experience, [that verbal defense] embeds concepts more firmly as acceptable to the intellect. An antimystical effect is thereby produced. We are still left in the realm of language and, as the Ch'an adage goes, Wordiness and intellection the more with them, the further astray we go.*

It is true that words vibrating through attitudes of false ego I am one with everything, The cosmic power is mine, I am God cannot convey the message of transcendence. These words reflexively return to illusion even as they attempt to go beyond it. The mirror-theory of language knows only the words of illusion. It cannot account for Vedic language. Beyond material sound is spiritual sound (çabda), as Vedänta-sütra 4.4.22 confirms: anävåttiù çabdät, There is no return to illusion because of çabda. Words did not prevent Brahmä from sharing his experience of Vaikuëöha to his disciples. Quite to the contrary. He was empowered by his spiritual vision to be the first brähmaëa (teacher of çabda). In assuming this exalted position, Brahmä did not fall under the material spell of the false ego, by which the illusory duality of mind-subject and matter-object is generated. He knew through Vedic spiritual vision exactly what the false ego really is: a personal servant of the Supreme Lord. The special feature of Vedic knowledge that sets it apart from much of the mystical is mäyänubhävam avidam, the clear, easy understanding of the influence of the Lord's energy (mäyä). (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 1.5.31) Let us suppose we want to understand the influence of alcohol. We could try induction, and taste it. But this leads to intoxication, addiction and other dangerous consequences. The easy way to understand alcohol is to hear about it from an authority, who instructs us all about its positive and negative uses. When one knows the influence of alcohol the easy way, he sees clearly that a drunkard's condition is abominable. Because the drunkard is under the influence, he cannot see his own position. Staggering from one bar to the next, he doesn't think of himself as inebriated he thinks himself the greatest man alive. Similarly, when the living entity comes under the influence of the material potency of Kåñëa's servants (the mind, senses and so on), he thinks himself the controller of these potencies. He thinks himself God. That only means he has fallen under the control of the false ego. Vedic knowledge puts the living entity under the influence of svataù-siddha-jïäna, the knowledge of the real ego as an eternal servant of Kåñëa. Mysticism is often an attempt to realize the infinite and unspeakable by the suspension of thought and action in silent meditation.* But one who is endowed with Vedic knowledge expertly uses his mind, senses and words in devotional service. Yet the false sense of I and mine does not arise, because his relationship with the mind, senses and everything is transformed. It is like this: milk, which can cause diarrhea, can cure the same when it is transformed into curd. Similarly, the material energy, the cause of the soul's disease of repeated birth and death, becomes the cure for the same disease when it is transformed in the service of the Lord. The Lord's energy (the mind, the senses, conditioned nature, physical objects and so on) helps the devotee in his efforts to get free of illusion. Illusion simply means forgetfulness of the fact that there is nothing separate from Kåñëa at any time, because everything is His energy. Yet the same energy confounds the efforts of the karmés and jïänés as mäyä, the cause of all their sufferings. Knowing the truth of Kåñëa's energy, we know the answer to the question raised in the last two chapters why? Why are we born? Why do we have a body and mind? Why is there a material world? The answer is that everything, both material and spiritual, is meant to be engaged in Kåñëa's service. We have the chance to realize that in this human birth. As Çréla Prabhupäda states in his purport to Çrémad-Bhägavatam 1.5.33, by using everything in relation to the Supreme,

... we can experience that there is nothing except the Supreme Brahman. The Vedic mantra that everything is Brahman is thus realized by us.

Brahman means the Absolute Truth, and absolute means all-inclusive. The all- inclusive truth is that there is nothing that does not originate in Kåñëa. Therefore everything has a dharma, an essential purpose, in relation to Him. That purpose is called Vedic dharma because it is revealed in the Vedas. Taittiréya Upaniñad 3.1.1. states, yato vä imäni bhütäni jäyante. This means everything, including words, thoughts, actions, objects, space and time, manifests from Brahman. Brahman is the very substance of all creations, the way the ocean is the substance of its waves. Chändogya Upaniñad 3.14.1 confirms: sarvaà khalv idaà brahma, everything is Brahman.

 

 

Beyond the duality of matter and spirit

Karmés suppose the true nature of reality to be material. Matter is real, and spirit (consciousness) is a product of matter. Words cannot be sensibly used in a spiritual way, for they apply only to the practical affairs of human life. Jïänés suppose the opposite. The world of matter is imaginary. Words are part of this imagination. They only convey falsity. The truth is an inexpressible impersonal spirit or Entity that mysteriously manifests itself as the world around us. Çréla Prabhupäda sheds more light on this matter-spirit duality in the following quotation from the purport to Çrémad-Bhägavatam 10.3.18:

Not knowing the conclusions of the Vedas, some people accept the material nature as substance, and others accept the spirit soul as substance, but actually Brahman is the substance. Brahman is the cause of all causes. The ingredients and the immediate cause of this manifested material world are Brahman, and we cannot make the ingredients of this world independent of Brahman. Furthermore, since the ingredients and the immediate cause of this material manifestation are Brahman, both of them are truth, satya; there is no validity to the expression brahma satyaà jagan mithyä. The world is not false.

Jïänés reject this world, and foolish persons [karmés] accept this world as reality, and in this way they are both misguided. Although the body is not as important as the soul, we cannot say that it is false. Yet the body is temporary, and only foolish, materialistic persons, who do not have full knowledge of the soul, regard the temporary body as reality and engage in decorating this body. Both of these pitfallsrejection of the body as false and acceptance of the body as all in allcan be avoided when one is fully situated in Kåñëa consciousness. If we regard this world as false, we fall into the category of asuras, who say that this world is unreal, with no foundation and no God in control (asatyam apratiñöhaà te jagad ähur anéçvaram). As described in the Sixteenth Chapter of Bhagavad-gétä, this is the conclusion of demons.

 

 

 

The five stages of Vedic knowledge

Vedic çabda is self-evident and objective. But as it was noted before, çabda is su-durbodham, very difficult for one under the covering of false ego to understand. We are deaf and blind to our own hearts, to the transcendental sound within, and to the Lord from whom that sound emanates.

jéve säkñät nähi täte guru caittya-rüpe

çikñä-guru haya kåñëa-mahänta-svarüpe

Since one cannot visually experience the presence of the Supersoul, He appears before us as a liberated devotee. Such a spiritual master is no one other than Kåñëa Himself.

This verse from Çré Caitanya-caritämåta (Ädi-lélä 1.58) begins with the words jéva säkñät: the jéva visually experiences. The Bengali word säkñät means direct experience. Its root is the word akña (the eye or the senses). It conveys the same meaning as pratyakña (prati means near or through, and akña means senses). The idea is that because the perception of the conditioned soul is limited to pratyakña, he therefore cannot (nähi täte) inwardly perceive the guru in the heart. But he can perceive the guru who appears externally as a great devotee to impart çikñä (spiritual instruction). The jéva should therefore surrender his senses to the service of the visible, living çikñä-guru. Through the senses he receives the Vedic teachings, which begin with äcära, behavior. The spiritual master is äcärya, one who teaches by example how Vedic knowledge is to be practiced. By pratyakña, seeing, hearing and following the teacher's practical example, the jéva is established in bhakti-yoga. This is the first of five stages of Vedic knowledge:

1) pratyakña knowledge through one's own senses

2) parokña knowledge though another's senses

3) aparokña direct knowledge

4) adhokñaja revealed knowledge

5) apräkåta spiritual knowledge.

Following the saintly behavior of his teacher, the disciple ascends from pratyakña to the second stage of learning called parokña. Parokña means indirect knowledge, seeing the truth with the eyes of a superior. For instance, at midnight we might call a friend living thousands of miles to the west of us and ask if he sees the sun. Hearing his report, Yes, it is a sunny day here, we see the sun through parokña vision.* By hearing and repeating authoritative testimony, and shunning speculative interpretation, one takes shelter of those with superior vision. Philosophical understanding gradually follows. This is called aparokña, direct knowledge by realizing what was heard from authorities. At this stage, one's anumäna (logic and reason) is attached to Vedic knowledge. This is not mental speculation but vicära, the philosophical considerations of a disciple who follows strictly the example and teachings of his spiritual master.*

Vicära means you just try to understand the gift of Lord Caitanya by logic, vicära. Don't follow blindly. Following blindly something, that is not good. That will not stay. But one should take everything with logic.*

Aparokña leads the disciple to the adhokñaja platform, the fourth stage of Vedic knowledge. Adhaù means downwards, and akña-ja means born of the senses. The idea is that adhokñaja knowledge defeats, or pushes downwards, all knowledge born of the senses and mind. At the adhokñaja stage, the shroud of the occult is at last lifted from the éçvara, jéva, prakåti, käla and karma tattvas. In Çrémad- Bhägavatam 7.7.37, Prahläda Mahäräja explains adhokñaja-älambham (constant contact with adhokñaja knowledge) as being the result of meditation and worship of the håt-éçvara, the Lord in the heart. All doubting ends here. Now at last çabda is directly perceived in its self- evident glory as the truth beyond mind and matter. Spiritual sound is tasted as nectar at the fifth and ultimate stage of Vedic knowledge, called apräkåta (not manufactured, or not prakåti, not within the range of material nature). Apräkåta knowledge is the divine perception of the Lord's transcendental pastimes, beyond the mechanical functions of material nature (i.e. prakåti, käla and karma) in which the fallen jévas are entrapped. Apräkåta is spiritual activity, Çréla Prabhupäda said.* Surpassing the logic of material causation, surpassing even the discrimination of spirit from matter, apräkåta knowledge reveals the jéva's original position as an eternal loving associate of Kåñëa in the spiritual world, Vaikuëöha. This is pratyakña of the highest order (called divya-pratyakña), direct perception through spiritual senses of Kåñëa and His divine abode. It floods the devotee's consciousness with unending bliss. Such divya-pratyakña is knowledge of the Lord in full through yoga, the linking of the spiritually transformed body, mind, intelligence, and senses to Kåñëa. This linking process begins with the ear. And the permanent fixing of the ear, body, mind and the rest in yoga is effected by anurakta, attachment to the spiritual master, and bhakti, pure devotion to Kåñëa.*

 

 

The transmission of knowledge through sound

To receive Vedic knowledge, the disciple must surrender his full attention to the spiritual master. And to transmit the message onward, a disciple must faithfully and accurately represent his spiritual master's words. Even when a disciple has his own realization of the philosophy, he still uses that realization in the service of the message of his guru. If he tries to reinvent the philosophy, his link to the paramparä is lost. What to speak of deliberate invention, a break of attention is enough to separate the disciple from the potency of çabda. As Çréla Prabhupäda warns:

An illusion is a misunderstanding which arises from inattention while hearing, and cheating is the transmission of such defective knowledge to others.*

In the next two chapters, we will examine more closely how defects attempt to infiltrate the transmission of çabda. But even if there is no deviation or break of attention, how can words transmit transcendental knowledge? To give attention to words, we must hear and read them. And for that, the words must be tangible, physical. How can materially formed words convey nonmaterial information? The answer is that the vibration of the spiritual master's words is untainted by false ego. This is the meaning of çästramülaka: words that are ever- rooted in pure Vedic knowledge. Even though conveyed by a tangible medium (a voice, or printed matter), çästramülaka words remain pure. We all know that sound is a most versatile medium. For instance, if I speak with a dear friend over the telephone, I experience much more than a tinny voice in the earpiece. I experience his warmth, his humor, his concern for my well-being. In short, I experience his personality. But because the potency of his words are limited, his smiling face, his firm handshake and so many other features are not made explicit through the telephone. I do not experience his total personality. But çästramülaka words have the particular potency to make fully explicit the source of all experience, Kåñëa. Çréla Prabhupäda said, This sound and the person who is transmitting the sound are identical.* As this sound cuts through the darkness of false ego surrounding the heart, the personalities of the Lord and His eternal associates gradually appear in the five stages of knowledge. At the transcendental stage, every word vibrating in any language is known to be rooted in the spiritual sky of Brahman, which eternally resounds with the glories of the Lord and His devotees.* Commonplace laukika words, when spoken from the Brahman platform where they originate, convey the supramundane Absolute Truth. But how can a person still on the pratyakña stage reasonably believe in the spiritual potency of words spoken by a brahmavit (knower of Brahman)? Via pratyakña, the Personality of Godhead is not directly seen through words that describe Him. But the proof of His potency is the effect of those words. A blazing fireplace, the heat of the fire, and the servant tending the fire are equally responsible for keeping a room warm on a winter's night. Sleeping in this room, I cannot see throughout the course of the night how the fire is burning nicely, nor whether the servant tends it. But the proof of all this is the effect: the room does not grow cold at any time. Similarly, as Çréla Prabhupäda said, the potency of spiritual sound, the potency of the person speaking that sound, and Kåñëa's own potency, can be understood through spiritual warmth.* When one is warmed by the potency of spiritual sound, he becomes transcendentally joyful. Sense gratification and mental speculation, which chill the heart and cause us distress, are dispelled as soon as the heart is flooded by the joy of Kåñëa consciousness.

 

 

Where is the meaning of words?

Someone may respond, You say that spiritual sound has the potency to reveal the Personality of Godhead. You say the immediate proof is the joy of hearing that sound. Then you speak of higher stages of knowledge that will come later. Well, I don't share your joy of hearing Vedic sound because I am frankly sceptical that words can refer to anything higher than pratyakña. For a word to be understandable, it must convey a meaning that I can link to an experience. You speak of transcendental forms. My experience is that all forms are material, perishable and limited. Whatever could an 'eternal self' be? All the selves I know die. How can anyone grasp these occult meanings you give to words? I find them impossible to accept, and so I get no joy from what you say. Apart from your 'proof of joy', which neither appeals nor applies to me, can you give a sensible reason why you think this so-called transcendental knowledge can be transmitted through the language of my present experience? But before challenging the meaningfulness of spiritual sound, a person on the pratyakña level should explain how words transmit knowledge within his experience.* The word airplane does not apply simply to winged flying vehicles that I have had personal experience of. It refers to the Wright brothers' first biplane and the Japanese dive bombers that attacked Pearl Harbor. I have never seen these. It refers to thousands upon thousands of propeller-driven planes, jet airliners, supersonic interceptors, and the odd top-secret experimental aircraft. I have not seen most of these either. Every example on earth of a winged flying vehicle, in the past, present and in the future, is called airplane, or an equivalent name in other languages Flugzeug in German, bimän in Bengali, and so on. Each person on earth who is acquainted with modern civilization knows instantly what the word airplane means, and can match it with any example he or she may come to know. Yet each person on earth has had a direct experience of only a small percentage of all airplanes. So the claim that a person on the pratyakña level can only understand a word in terms of experience does not match up to our easy familiarity with the word airplane. Our pratyakñavädé might then transform into an anumäna-vädé. Actually, the word 'airplane' evokes a concept, a 'universal' that includes all examples of winged flying machines. When we hear the word 'airplane', we refer to that concept. That is why we understand the word. But this just makes it more complicated. Before we had a word and innumerable examples. Now we have a word, innumerable examples, and a concept. Why should a word, which is just a certain noise in the air or mark on a page, evoke a concept in our minds? What, indeed, is a concept? Why does the concept airplane include all examples? Why does the word airplane fit any or all innumerable examples of the concept? These puzzling questions just lead us to the conclusion that there is an occult power behind words that our perceptions and thoughts fail to grasp. Perhaps it is simpler to ask, Where is the location of the meaning of the word 'airplane'? It is clear that it is not merely located in our experience. Nor does it sit on some reference shelf in the back of our minds, if that's what a concept is supposed to be. I do not need to check some mental dictionary every time I hear the word airplane. Without the slightest mental effort, I know what an airplane is. The meaning transcends time and space, even the duality of truth and falsity. An airplane in the sky means the same whether it refers to the flight of an airplane here and now, or a flight ten years ago, or a future flight, or a flight that is merely being imagined. It means the same even if the speaker is lying about an airplane in the sky that isn't there. Why do we hundreds and hundreds of millions of people instantly recognize the meaning of airplane in all these different cases? Now, by saying, a Vaikuëöha airplane in the spiritual sky, the word airplane does not suddenly lose meaning. The meaning is as clear as it would be about any airplane outside of our experience. Perhaps a few details have to be explained. This particular airplane, the Vaikuëöha variety, is beyond ordinary perception, since it is eternal and made of pure consciousness. Another airplane, the first one flown by the Wrights, is also beyond ordinary perception, since it is now destroyed; it was made of wood and fabric that now we cannot see. In both cases, the word airplane conveys meaning. In neither case do we perceive why the word airplane conveys meaning. The logic of, We have no experience of a Vaikuëöha airplane, therefore such a thing can't be understood, can be applied to hundreds of thousands of other instances of the word airplane for which we have no experience: a Japanese dive bomber, the Spirit of St. Louis, an Air Bhutan passenger plane. But in spite of the sceptic's logic, we do learn about these airplanes through the medium of words. We may not have as much faith in the sources of words about Vaikuëöha airplanes as we do in the sources of words about material airplanes. But that does not make us men and women of superior reason. After all, we do not even know the reason why we know what the word airplane means. Similarly, we know what a form is without knowing why. We know what a self is without knowing why. As with airplane, the word-meanings of form and self are not simply our limited experiences of particular examples of material forms or bodies. Nor are they particular concepts stored in our heads. For instance, nobody thinks of the self as an automobile, unless he is crazy. Yet if a car bumps mine in city traffic, I may spontaneously shout, You hit me! Someone else hearing this statement immediately understands what I mean, even though me and automobile are dissimilar concepts. You hit me transcends both experience (since I am not perceived as an automobile) and concepts (since I don't fancy myself as an automobile). Yet still it conveys meaning. When our pratyakñavädé argues, I can't understand what you mean when you say 'transcendental form', since I have no present experience of that, we might ask him how he can understand a statement about the human form a hundred years in the future. Any talk of form in the future transcends our present experience of form.

 

 

The original sense of language

Wittgenstein wrote, language itself is the vehicle of thought.* As far as it goes, this accords with the Vedic version. But a question remains. Whose thought does language convey? Only the thought of humanity, it might be supposed, since Wittgenstein said language is just a game that people play. If that is true, then humanity should be able to explain why words have meaning, what meaning is and what an idea is. But no clear answer is forthcoming even from the most erudite philosophers. * The Vedic version is that the transmission of commonplace topics is only a secondary function of words. Primarily, there is a transcendental sense to language. Words originate in the heart of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. They mean just what Kåñëa wants them to mean. The Kena Upaniñad 1.2. explains:

çrotrasya çrotraà manaso mano yad

väco ha väcaà sa u präëasya präëaù

cakñuñaç cakñur atimucya dhéräù

pretyäsmäl lokäd amåtä bhavanti

The Lord is the Ear of the ear, the Mind of the mind, the Speech of speech, the Breath of breath and the Eye of the eye. Knowing this [having given up the notions I am the hearer, thinker, speaker, breather and seer], the wise transcend this world and become immortal.

The desire to fly in a winged vehicle is originally Kåñëa's own. The glorious airplanes of Vaikuëöha are the eternal servants of that particular desire. Whatever Kåñëa desires within His mind is immediately true and self-existent; hence He is called Satya-saìkalpa.* And so His airplanes are meaningful and true beyond all relativities of human thought; they are an eternal feature of the divine glories of Vaikuëöha. These glories pervade the spiritual sky as transcendental vibration. That same vibration energizes the egoistic sky deep within the hearts of human beings. It generates millions of names and forms in the mind, including the name airplane and the form of a winged vehicle. Agitated by the material representation of airplane in consciousness, men developed through jïäna- karma (theory and experiment) this subtle name and form into the gross examples of airplanes we see today. By our inclination to illusion, we use the words Kåñëa gave us for purposes other than His pleasure. But the actual purpose of words whether airplane, form and self, or any other is to glorify the Lord, His pleasure pastimes, and His devotees who share His divine qualities. When so utilized, the power of these words to invoke a meaning that transcends our senses, minds, time, place, circumstance and even relative truth and illusion, is, on the apräkåta platform, fully realized as the eternal Absolute Reality. When we use words for a separate purpose, their power binds us to temporary relativities.

It is very much regrettable that unfortunate people do not discuss the description of the Vaikuëöha planets but engage in topics which are unworthy to hear and which bewilder one's intelligence. Those who give up the topics of Vaikuëöha and take to talk of the material world are thrown into the darkest region of ignorance. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 3.15.23)

A materialist, his intelligence perverted by the action of his deceptive senses, cannot recognize You at all, although You are always present within his own senses and heart and also among the objects of his perception. Yet even though one's understanding has been covered by Your illusory potency, if one obtains Vedic knowledge from You, the supreme spiritual master of all, he can directly understand You. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 12.8.48)

 

 

Notes to Chapter Three

1. Kitty Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations, 1994, p. 174. One modern speculative equivalent to äkäça is called the Higgs field. Another is quantum ether, a term used by the distinguished physicist David Bohm.

2. According to Bohm, reality is a holomovement, a complex of infinitely subtle vibratory phenomena out of which so-called stable material structures are abstracted.

3. Çréla Prabhupäda, lecture on Çrémad-Bhägavatam in Bombay, January 9, 1975.

4. Çréla Prabhupäda, Çrémad-Bhägavatam 3.26.32, purport.

5. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 9.4.18)

6. From Çréla Prabhupäda's purport to Çrémad-Bhägavatam 2.6.32: This external energy is also displayed in the three modes of goodness, passion and ignorance. Similarly, the internal potency is also displayed in three spiritual modessamvit, sandhiné and hlädiné. The terms sandhiné, samvit and hlädiné mean the same as sat, cid and änanda (cf. Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Ädi-lélä 4.62).

7. Çréla Prabhupäda, lecture on Bhagavad-gétä in New York, February 19, 1966: Impersonal Brahman realization is the realization of His sat part, eternity. And Paramätmä realization is the realization of sac-cit, eternal knowledge part realization. But realization of the Personality of Godhead as Kåñëa is realization of all the transcendental features like sat, cid, and änanda, in complete vigraha. Vigraha means form. Vigraha means form. Avyaktaà vyaktim äpannaà manyante mäm abuddhayaù. People with less intelligence, they consider the Supreme Truth as impersonal, but He is a person, a transcendental person. This is confirmed in all Vedic literature.

8. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 3.9.11)

9. Çréla Prabhupäda, Çrémad-Bhägavatam lecture in Delhi, November 16, 1973.

10. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.21.38-40)

11. Çréla Baladeva Vidyäbhüñaëa, Govinda-bhäñya commentary on Vedänta-sütra 1.3.14.

12. Åg-Veda 10.129.4: kämas tad agre sam avartatädhi manaso retaù prathamaà yad äsét: In the beginning there was desire (käma), which was the primal germ of the mind.

13. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.21.28)

14. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 1.5.15)

15. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 3.5.30)

16. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 2.10.32)

17. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.21.36)

18. In The Return to Cosmology, 1982, p. 24, Stephen Toulmin compares the making of humanity's myths to the trickiest of crime stories, in which the detective himself turns out to have done the deed.

19. Yävat sakhä sakhyur iveça te kåtaù: O my Lord, the unborn, You have shaken hands with me just as a friend does with a friend [as if equal in position]. (from Çrémad-Bhägavatam 2.9.30)

20. Çréla Bhaktivinoda Öhäkura, Tattva-sütra 31.

21. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 2.9.17)

22. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922, 6.522.

23. Richard H. Jones, Mysticism Examined (Philosophical Inquiries into Mysticism), 1993, pp. 12-13.

24. Richard H. Jones, Mysticism Examined (Philosophical Inquiries into Mysticism), 1993, p. 101.

25. These are the words of Meister Eckhart. Jones credits this quotation to Meister Eckhart by John M. Watkins (1924), volume 1, p. 143.

26. Richard H. Jones, Mysticism Examined (Philosophical Inquiries into Mysticism), 1993, p. 123.

27. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 1.5.31)

28. In The Mysticism of Rämänuja, Chapter One (An Understanding of Mysticism), Cyril Veliath typifies mystical realization as mysterious and wholly other, and totally beyond human language or understanding. To practice mysticism, one should let oneself go, be quiet and receptive. A mystic who attempts to communicate his experience to others, may continue to use the religious language of his own respective tradition, but all his efforts to communicate are doomed to failure.

29. Çréla Prabhupäda, conversation in Los Angeles, June 10, 1976: Just like pratyakña, directly, you do not see the sun on the sky, but the same example, if you phone your friend, 'Where is the sun?' then he'll say, 'Yes, here is the sun.' So this is called parokña, means you get the knowledge by other sources. Your direct sources, you cannot see, but you get from other sources, you understand, 'Yes, sun is there in the sky.'

30. Çréla Prabhupäda defined aparokña as realizing in Detroit on July 18, 1971. He spoke about äcära and vicära in a Bhagavad- gétä lecture in Hyderabad on December 15, 1976. So vicära-päëòita. Unless one is very learned, he cannot consider things. But äcära, äcära everyone can do. àcära means just like to rise early in the morning, to take bath, chant Hare Kåñëa, have tilaka, observe maìgala-ärati. This is called äcära. Then there is hygienic. And vicära means consideration.

31. Çréla Prabhupäda, Çrémad-Bhägavatam lecture in Calcutta, January 6, 1971.

32. Çréla Prabhupäda, conversation in Honolulu, June 10, 1975: Then apräkåta, spiritual. Spiritual platform is not understood by machine, material machine. Then what is the spiritual platform? Kåñëa is understood not by machine. Kåñëa says, bhaktyä mäm abhijänäti: 'Through devotion only.' So devotion is not machine. That is spiritual activity.

33. Çréla Prabhupäda explained the five stages of Vedic knowledge (pratyakña, parokña, aparokña, adhokñaja and apräkåta) on several occasions. The reader may refer to the following for more details: 1) a Çrémad-Bhägavatam lecture in Montreal, July 6, 1968 (680706SB.MON); 2) an initiation lecture in Detroit, July 18, 1971 (710718IN.DET); 3) a Çrémad-Bhägavatam lecture in Bombay, January 12, 1975 (750112SB.BOM); 4) a conversation in Honolulu, June 10, 1975 (750610RC.HON); 5) a conversation in Los Angeles, June 10, 1976 (760610RC.LA).

In The Bhägavat, Çréla Bhaktivinoda Öhäkura presents pratyakña and parokña as methods of the ascending (inductive) process of knowledge. He defines parokña as the collective sense perception by many persons past and present. In other words, the term refers to the acceptance of mundane authority. Çréla Prabhupäda uses parokña in that sense too, but also in terms of the acceptance of paramparä authority (see the Bombay lecture). Çréla Bhaktivinoda Öhäkura says aparokña is ascending if it merely negates the previous two stages. Aparokña is descending (deductive) knowledge when it positively searches for transcendence. Only adhokñaja and apräkåta are fully descending. The former is devotional service under rules and regulations, says the Öhäkura, and the latter is realization of love of Godhead. Likewise, in a Bhagavad-gétä lecture in London on August 8, 1973, Çréla Prabhupäda said, Kåñëa consciousness means adhokñaja and apräkåta. But in the Montreal class he placed the first four stages within vaidhi-bhakti and the last within räga-bhakti.

34. Çréla Prabhupäda, Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Ädi-lélä 7.107, purport.

35. Çréla Prabhupäda, lecture in Boston, December 23, 1969.

36. Vedänta-sütra 2.3.15: caräcara-vyapäçrayas tu syät tad- vyapadeço 'bhäktas tad-bhäva-bhävitvät, As will be learned from hearing the Vedic çabda, every word is a name of the Lord, because He resides in all moving and non-moving things.

37. Çréla Prabhupäda, lecture in Boston, December 23, 1969.

38. The cue for some of the arguments that follow next comes from Thomas Nagel's What does It All Mean?, 1987, chapter 5.

39. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953, p. 329.

40. W.V. Quine, held to be one of the most influential American philosophers of the twentieth century, on why words have meaning: I see no prospect of a precise answer, nor any need of one. As to what meaning is, he said: Evidently then meaning and ideas are the same things. About what ideas are: The way to clarify our talk of ideas is not to say what ideas are. His conclusion: There is no place in science for ideas. From Quiddities, 1987, under the entries for Meaning, and Ideas.

41. (See for example Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.1.5 and 11.15.26)

42. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 3.15.23)

43. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 12.8.48)

 

 

 

Chapter Four: A Discussion on the Means to Knowledge

 

And now, in the order of their appearance, Dr. Viçva Parägdåñöi (a scientist), Vedasära däsa (a Bhakti-Vedäntist), Khagäkña (a religious rationalist), Vidyäviruddha (an impersonal monist), and Svapnarätri (a subjective idealist), will discuss some of the topics raised in the previous chapters.

 

Dr. Parägdåñöi: The fact is that scientists are not ideologists. We are practical men and women, most of whom are not very concerned with philosophy. That's why I suppose Paul Feyerabend declared back in 1975 that the only principle of progress we scientists really have is anything goes. Speaking as a scientist myself, that's what makes science so exciting. Within the range of modern scientific disciplines you'll find believers in Christianity, Vedänta, Platonism, Cartesian dualism, logical positivism, materialism, idealism, functionalism, phenomenology, and more. But scientists share the same common denominator, which is the scientific work ethic: get off your theoretical backside, go into the lab or out in the field, and come back with some hard results, something the rest of the world can get their hands on. That's the criterion I think a method of knowledge has to be judged by what it does for the rest of the world. Science is what works. And what is special about the scientific community, what sets us apart from religious people and even philosophers, is that we make sure it works, or we just don't have time for it. It's got to stand up to criticism yes, rigorous and unforgiving criticism. But that's how you tell if something works or not. Hermetic logic, pure theory, abstruse super- sophistication, secret wisdom from ancient texts, doesn't impress me. There is nothing certain in any of that. Just give me something that passes the tests. Then I'll use it. Among my scientist friends, I don't know a single one who does not believe that the universe is governed by objective laws from which all phenomena can be deduced. On the basis of this belief, we theorize the big picture. But to see that big picture, you've got to inductively investigate what's out there, bit by bit. See what works, see what's real, and as you fit the pieces together, the deductive logic of the universe is made manifest.

 

Vedasära däsa: Thank you, Dr. Parägdåñöi, for your defense of the method of modern science. I must say with all respect to you that your remarks confirm our analysis of the modern scientific method. You told us there's a bottom line in science, and that is getting tangible results in the lab and in the field results the world can get its hands on. From this, I gather you mean technology, which enhances material life. But material life is in the hands of death, the ultimate suffering. At the time of death, our hands lose their grip on technology. Then how is technology a tangible gain? Whatever the results of the scientific method may be, they do not answer life's substantial questions: why was I born, why must I die, and what is the purpose of this temporary human life? You've quoted Mr. Feyerabend's phrase, anything goes, as if he meant to say that the scientific method is freethinking. Actually, what he really meant he made clear in another phrase: there is no scientific method. I agree. Science is insubstantial, both in method and in goal. You said that scientists are not ideologists. You've suggested that the attitude of science is one of philosophical uncertainty. I think what you're getting at is that the philosophy of science is uncertainty. Science does not know whether anything it does is based upon fact. Herbert Feigl, a leading philosopher of science, admitted that it may very well be that all the theories of science are born false. Yet scientists continue to give birth to new theories. This is why we insist the whole enterprise of scientific induction is just gambling.

 

Khagäkña: I'd like reply to that. Vedasära, you and I share a theistic view of the world. But unlike you, I firmly believe that from knowledge of a part of a thing, a valid inductive conclusion may be drawn about the whole thing. May I remind you, Vedasära, that your äcärya Çréla Prabhupäda taught this very principle himself when he said that the test of a single grain of rice can prove whether the whole pot is cooked. You seem to only want to look at the whole pot, not at any one grain. Of course, any individual rice grain cannot be the whole pot. But that does not mean we should reject the testimony of a grain of rice about the whole pot. We should learn how to test the whole by induction from the single grain. There are so many religious people in the world, so many philosophers, scientists, and other people with insight into the meaning of life. Any one of them won't have the whole truth. But from any one of them you can get a sense of the truth, one that will help you see the truth of the whole pot. You have to keep an open mind. I suggest you may be forgetting that in your own Kåñëa conscious philosophy, utility is the principle. Dr. Parägdåñöi was saying that the bottom-line principle of science is practicality. So didn't Çréla Prabhupäda mean the same when he said utility is the principle? In utility you have the possibility of a common ground between Kåñëa and modern science. You've unnecessarily closed your mind to the good use the inductive method can be put to in service to Kåñëa. You've said the scientific method is gambling; well, I say your method is dogmatic.

 

Vedasära däsa: We are in agreement that utility is the principle. Modern science and technology can be used in Kåñëa's service, there is no doubt about that. But utility is not just knowing how to use something. We have to know why. However expert we may be in technique, if we use Kåñëa's energy with wrong intentions, we will remain sunk in the ocean of repeated birth and death. Çréla Prabhupäda taught us that the why of utility is understood by the basis, essence and force of our intention. The intention to serve mäyä is based upon material instinct (svabhäva), which is our ignorance. But the intention to serve Kåñëa is based upon knowledge for example, the books of his pure devotee, Çréla Prabhu-päda. Devotees sometimes read other books to learn how to do certain things. But the actual basis of intention is seen not in how but in why we do a thing. And the essence of our intention is seen in the message we broadcast by our use of Kåñëa's energy. Materialistic utility broadcasts egoism, I and mine. But the essence of a devotee's use of Kåñëa's energy is that Kåñëa is the Supreme Self, and everything belongs to Him. Thus preaching Kåñëa consciousness is the essence. The force that powers Kåñëa conscious utility is purity of intention. Purity depends upon anurakta (attachment to guru), not svabhäva-rakta (attachment to our material inclinations). As for your example of the single grain and whole pot of rice, this is how Çréla Prabhupäda explained that analogy:

So everything, what you have got, the same thing God has also got. The difference is that you are like a drop of seawater and He is vast sea. That's all. Big quantity. Quantitatively, we are different, but qualitatively, we are one. The same quality. ... If you are cooking rice, you take one grain of rice and you press it, if you see that it is now soft, then the whole rice is cooked.*

Çréla Prabhupäda is not being inductive. Though he uses the analogy of cooking rice, he is not referring it to a material experience or experiment. You cannot test What you have got, the same thing God has also got by trial and error. Remember, induction is the logic of empiricism. Can you empirically measure that what you've got, God has also got? No. You have to accept on authority that there is a God, that He is the cause, and that you are related to God as an effect is related to a cause. Then, through the use of deductive and abductive reasoning, you can try to understand more about this relationship, guided by çästra. Even if you take the grain/pot example as a lesson in nothing more philosophical than cooking, you have to first accept on authority that one cooked grain means the whole pot is cooked. Once you've accepted that, you can deduce a conclusion about any pot of rice by testing just one grain. If you assume the inductive stance, then the grain/pot example can only be a hypothesis. That hypothesis would have to be tested by pressing every grain of rice in the pot to prove that one grain is the measure of them all. Finally, the question is not why a devotee of Kåñëa is forbidden to use inductive logic. It is common, everyday logic, and of course we use it in the Lord's service. For instance, in 1966, when ISKCON was just a storefront on New York's Second Avenue, Çréla Prabhupäda sent a disciple to the IBM company. He'd heard of its policy of donating typewriters to educational institutions, and told that devotee to ask for one. You might say it was a kind of an inductive gamble to approach IBM on behalf of such a small, unknown and highly unusual society as ours was then. The company representative refused, saying ISKCON didn't qualify. Still, there was nothing lost in trying. Even though he did not get a typewriter, to this very day that disciple considers himself fortunate to have had the chance to serve Çréla Prabhupäda in that way. Çréla Prabhupäda encouraged his disciples to take risks in preaching. So there is plenty of scope for engaging the inductive method in Kåñëa's service. The question we are disputing is whether metaphysical induction has validity as a method of higher knowledge. The Vedic answer is no. On the basis of pratyakña and anumäna, we do not hypothesize what the original cause of sense perception might be. Knowledge of that, the substance of reality, comes to us as çabda. When induction is applied to çabda, it immediately thwarts the proper understanding, as Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Madhya-lélä 6.137 confirms:

svataù-pramäëa veda satya yei kaya

'lakñaëä' karila svataù-prämäëya-häni haya

The Vedic statements are self-evident. Whatever is stated there must be accepted. If we interpret according to our own imagination, the authority of the Vedas is immediately lost.

 

Vidyäviruddha: But it is admitted that there is a stage when a person sufficiently learned in Vedic knowledge explains the çästra- pramäëa from his or her realization aparokña. I don't see the difference between this and imagination.

 

Vedasära däsa: In the purport to the verse I just quoted, Çréla Prabhupäda writes that imagination proceeds from our intention (what we want to do). The intention of a scientist to bring material nature under his control manifests as his attempt to measure matter by observation and imagination. Similarly, one who attempts to measure the Vedic knowledge has a wrong intention. His measurement is his imagination. But aparokña, or vicära philosophical speculation, does not try to confine the Absolute Truth within human limits. Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Madhya-lélä 21.16 explains:

seha rahuvraje yabe kåñëa avatära

täìra caritra vicärite mana nä päya pära

Apart from all argument, logic and negative or positive processes, when Lord Çré Kåñëa was present as the Supreme Personality of Godhead at Våndävana, one could not find a limit to His potencies by studying His characteristics and activities.

 

Vidyäviruddha: I agree that Vedic knowledge is as vast as an ocean. The çästra says, ekaà sad viprä bahudhä vadanti, the truth, though one, was described differently by different sages.* The sages are people, people are limited, and so no one sage's explanation can represent the pure, original Vedic intention. They all had to fill out the gaps of their limited realization with some amount of imaginative interpretation. That's why you end up with different explanations from different gurus. But that's all right, since the Vedas are meant to be explained differently. They have unlimited meaning. I don't think the authoritarian approach you take does justice to the true Vedic tradition, which always invites new ideas.

 

Vedasära däsa: The intention of the Vedas is clear: that we stop mental speculation. The various kinds of mental speculation, word jugglery and bluffing are clearly defined in the Vedas, and they are just as clearly rejected. For instance, we have verse 4.30 from Manu-saàhitä:

päñaëòino vikarma-sthän baiòäla-vratikäï chaöhän

haitukän baka-våttéàç ca väòmätreëäpi närcayet

One should not give honor, even with mere words, to päñaëòis (those who argue that God can be worshiped in some imaginary way), vikarmés (those who are engaged in sinful actions), baiòäla- vratikas (those whose meditation is like that of a cat before a mousehole), çaöhas (those who are hypocrites), haitukas (metaphysicians who try to make çästra subservient to inductive logic), and baka- våttis (people who behave like wicked herons and yet think they are superior to the haàsas, the swan-like devotees).

What impels such speculators to speak is the false ego, another term for ignorance. They are ignorant, yet still they opine, each trying to outdo the other. A genuine Vedic sage is pratibuddha-västu. He knows that Kåñëa, not the ego, is the very substance (vastu) of reality. That vastu, Lord Çré Kåñëa, is an unlimited ocean of wonderful qualities. Different sages do explain Him from different angles of vision but not for argument's sake. In modern science, new theories are put forward for argument's sake, simply to refute other theories. This is egoism. àcäryas in the line of disciplic succession do not argue against the explanations of previous äcäryas. The example is given of a valuable gemstone that reflects different colors of light according to the angle from which it is observed. I may say it is a green stone, you may say it is a red stone, but if our purpose is to glorify the substance this wonderful gem we have no occasion to argue. The argumentative approach of the speculators is condemned in the Mahäbhärata as being apratiñöhä, without any basis or foundation.* It ushers one into the shadow of Vedic knowledge. Lost in that shadow, one imagines a sage to be just someone who has a different opinion from other sages. For one lost in that shadow, the various Vedic texts are full of contradictions. For one lost in that shadow, the factual goal of the Vedas Lord Kåñëa is never found, because he is too busy splitting hairs.

 

Svapnarätri: I have a point to make about the logic of Vedänta. If I understood correctly, the followers of the Vedas think that their logic is unique, in that it is the only real deductive logic. An example was given from the Vedänta-sütra. The logic there is that the goal of life must be the cause of all desirable objects. Hence, the goal is the cause, and the cause is the goal. I would say this logic is not unique at all. Buddhist philosophers say asmin sati, idaà bhavati, When this is, that is. Now, this, the cause, is abhütaparikalpa, the imagination of unreality. And that is çünyatä, the void. In other words, imagination creates all the many objects of perception, which are actually just void. So the object of life is just our own imagination. But that's not an object either, because there is no object. All objects are only imaginary. Thus the only real cause is the void, and the only real goal is the void. When imagination arises from the void, the void appears to have attributes. These illusory attributes simultaneously provoke imagination. When this is, that is.

 

Dr. Parägdåñöi: Now this is interesting. According to Niels Bohr's Complementary Principle, the only things we can say about matter arise from the act of measurement. The material attributes we experience are the joint relationship of the object observed and the method of observation. If you take one or the other away, there can be no attributes.

 

Svapnarätri: Yes, that is my point exactly. The logic of the cause as the effect and the effect as the cause is self-evident and universal. It can be understood from many points of view, not just the Vedic way.

 

Dr. Parägdåñöi: The Buddhist conclusion is not that far away from Bohr's principle: there is no big truth, no deep reality, to talk about. We can only describe what things seem to us to be. But that doesn't really mean there is nothing to know. As Bohr himself said, The opposite of a big truth is also a big truth.

 

Svapnarätri: That reminds me of the old Chinese paradox of Chuang-tzu's dream: One night I dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither. Suddenly I awoke and I was Chuang-tzu again. Who am I in reality? A butterfly dreaming he is Chuang-tzu or Chuang-tzu dreaming he is a butterfly? When you said the opposite of a big truth is also a big truth, I remembered this riddle. Is the world a dream, and am I the dreamer? Or am I the dream, and the world the dreamer? Or do I and the world dream of one another? Any one is a big truth. And any one is just a dream at the same time. Does it matter which truth we choose to dream?

 

Vedasära däsa: Thank you both for making it so clear that material knowledge rests upon ignorance. Regarding the dream of the butterfly, the story is cute. But if he were a real person in the world today, Chuang-tzu would probably be advised to seek professional help. In any case, the philosophy is not sound. We know the difference between dreamer and the dream because when we awake from our dreams, we are the same person. One night I may dream I am a butterfly. Another night I may dream I am a king. But each morning I awake as the same person I was the day before. That's how I know I dreamed of the butterfly, and not that the butterfly dreamed of me. Our perception of attributes is not caused by imagination, but by vastu, a real substance. That substance is the Supreme Person and His energy. But our perception of Him is limited and imperfect. To compensate for our ignorance, we invent imaginary ways to measure the substance empiricism, voidism, whatever. Imagination (mänina) arises from our wrong intention (duräçaya) towards the substance. Mäyä (illusion) then reciprocates with our imagination and captures us. Why does a thief intend to steal? That intention is nothing else than his wrong attitude towards Kåñëa, the supreme proprietor. So he takes measures to burgle houses at night. Mäyä gives him the chance to commit crimes. But in the end he is caught and punished. It is here that the thief's illusion becomes clear. It is not that the illusion is his perception of a house. The thief's imagination does not create ex nihilo a house to plunder. His perception of the house is caused by Kåñëa. Then what does the thief imagine? He imagines how to rob the house and get away with it. But the fact is that while he may or may not be caught by the police, he will surely be caught by the law of karma.

 

Dr. Parägdåñöi: I thought your standpoint is that empirical measurement is imagination. Yet now you say the thief's imagination does not create the house he plunders. But a house, or any object we can perceive, is just the result of our sensory measurement of the infinity of the total material energy. So why do you now say the house is a creation of God?

 

Vedasära däsa: The Lord is the efficient, material, formal and final cause of every object we perceive. In other words, why we perceive something is not due to empirical measurement. It is due to Kåñëa. Consider something very ordinary, like a cup filled with flour. It is an aspect of Kåñëa's infinite energy we are permitted to see with our material senses. Being an aspect of infinity, that cup of flour is infinite, meaning that we can never describe or quantify it completely. Still, we can see it, and we can try to measure it. Measurement is how we estimate a thing in relation to other things Kåñëa reveals before our mind and senses. It turns out that there is a valid reason why we may try to measure the flour in that cup. It is that Kåñëa makes certain objects manifest within our perception so that we may offer them back to Him in devotion. Therefore, when a devotee prepares an offering of food, he carefully measures the ingredients (such as flour) so that his cooking will please the Lord. It is only because empirical measurement is not capable of completely quantifying or describing something that we say it is imaginary. If we speak of a cup as a measurement of flour, we're talking about a mental image of an amount of flour. Our image is likely to be that one cup is a small amount of flour. But that much flour is made up of more tiny individual particles of finely ground wheat than we can possibly count. Each of these particles is made of smaller particles chemical, molecular, atomic, subatomic particles, on and on indefinitely. The notion of a cup as a small amount of flour says more about our state of mind than the state of the flour. Still, measurement is useful and desirable when done in Kåñëa's service. But if our intention towards the objects of perception is wrong, then our measurement of these objects is not only imaginary, it encourages a dangerously misleading goal of life: the domination of material nature. That goal is due to svabhäva, the lower instinct of the fallen soul, his ignorance, or egoism. The egoist that house robber, for instance is either ignorant of the punishment that awaits him for trying to dominate nature, or he knows but ignores it due to lust. Within the shadows of his ignorance, imagination makes visible many illusory ways to measure and take control of nature. These seem substantial by mäyä's grace. But mäyä has no substance. The explanations of cause and effect you've given are not based upon vastu, the substance of reality. They are your imagination, directed by mäyä. As Dr. Parägdåñöi said, There is no deep reality. This logic without depth, without substance, is mäyä, illusion. Logic with depth, with substance, is Vedänta. You must know what reality is first before you can explain illusion. To give a practical example, you cannot explain counterfeit money unless you know what real money is. Just as counterfeit money is the perverted reflection of real money, the realm of shadow is a perverted reflection of the realm of substance. Now, let's ask ourselves, why on earth do some people go through all the risk and botheration of printing illegal bank notes? You can say the cause is cheating. And you can say that the effect is illusion, because counterfeit money is unreal money. Now you have a logical formula similar to Svapnarätri's: cheating causes illusion. But what compels one to cheat by printing illusory bank notes? To answer this, Svapnarätri simply reverses the logic: illusion provokes cheating. However, this doesn't say anything substantial. It does not explain why anyone, either the cheater or the cheated, would see value in counterfeit money. The answer is that real money has value. Honest people will give goods in exchange for it. Therefore rascals try to cheat the unwitting with false money. Yes, the whole material world is nothing but an arrangement of cheaters and cheated. However, the world does not appear out of thin air by cheating or illusion. It is a perverted reflection of the spiritual world. Spirit is the substance upon which the shadow is based.

 

Vidyäviruddha: I don't find the example you gave of money very satisfying. Real money and counterfeit money are made exactly of the same substance paper. And real money can be used for cheating and illusion just as much as counterfeit money can.

 

Vedasära däsa: That may be. But that does not mean it's all one. The difference between real and counterfeit money remains. We can compare real money to the apara-vidyä of the Vedas. Apara-vidyä is Vedic knowledge appearing within the three modes of material nature: logic, grammar, astrology, medicine, social organization, martial arts, music, dance and so on. Though all this is material, it comes from Kåñëa. Because it is Vedic, it is backed up by Kåñëa. Kåñëa is the substance of Vedic knowledge. Similarly, money is just paper, but it is backed up by substance the government's gold reserves. When money is used lawfully, the government recognizes it as good as gold. When it is used to break the law, the same government will seize the money, nullify the illegal transaction and punish the cheater. So when it is not used for Kåñëa's satisfaction, apara-vidyä is mäyä. When it is, it is as good as He is. In other words, it is spiritual. Counterfeit money, however, is comparable to avidyä complete ignorance. This is so-called knowledge aimed only at sinful ends: how to slaughter animals and prepare the flesh for eating, how to brew intoxicants, how to seduce girls into prostitution, and how to gamble and speculate wildly, even in the name of philosophy and science. Avidyä promotes human degredation; but Vedic civilization promotes step-by-step human upliftment. The goal of all Vedic goals is para-vidyä, Kåñëa consciousness.

 

Khagäkña: So if we dedicate ourselves to truth in our daily lives, we'll see it right here in the so-called world of illusion. That's true oneness of cause and effect. But truth cannot be neatly packaged into a fixed doctrine. Truth calls for us to regularly revise our maps. I don't mean that we should revise the ultimate goal of life. I agree with you, Vedasära, that the goal is the original cause, God. But I also find resonance in Dr. Parägdåñöi's view that criticism is needed to make progress in understanding the truth. After all, the revealed scriptures from which we make our maps are unlimitedly deep. I may read scripture one way, and you may read it another. Correct me if I am wrong, Vedasära, but I think an avatära of Kåñëa named Caitanya explained just one verse from Çrémad-Bhägavatam in sixty-one different ways. The mind has to break out of narrow doctrines in order to locate the goal of scripture at the end of the journey of life. The only way we can be certain that our map to the goal is valid is to expose it to the criticisms and challenges of other map-makers.

 

Vedasära däsa: No doubt, because we are so imperfect, even with a good map, we can get lost. And if we get lost, we need criticism. But it should come from someone in knowledge. One in knowledge knows where we've gone wrong. He knows where we are supposed to be. He points this out to us on the map. If you are lost, what is the use of different conflicting opinions? Trying to redraw your map from various opinions is no way to get back on the right track. The method of reading the map of çabda is to take the help of those who know the waythe guru (spiritual master) and the sädhus (pure devotees of the Lord). This method brings us to the goal, or rather, this method satisfies Kåñëa, and svayam eva sphuraty adaù, by His kindness, He reveals Himself to His devotee. Khagäkña, Çré Caitanya Mahäprabhu's manifold explanation of a single verse in the Çrémad-Bhägavatam is not a justification for interpreting çabda through anumäna. I noted already that Lord Caitanya taught:

The Vedic statements are self-evident. Whatever is stated there must be accepted. If we interpret according to our own imagination, the authority of the Vedas is immediately lost.

How are we to comprehend this term self-evident (svataù-pramäëa)? The sun is self-evident, obviously. But how are the Vedic scriptures self-evident? They are books. Books contain words, and from our experience, words are about things, they are not the things in themselves. To this it may be rightly replied, In the Vedas the words are çabda, spiritual sound. Thus they are not different from what they mean. So the next question is, But how can we realize that? The self-evidence of çabda is not obvious at first. This question, how the self-evidence of the Vedic scriptures is to be perceived, is answered in terms of taste:

çrémad-bhägavatärthänäm äsvädo rasikaiù saha

One should taste the meaning of Çrémad-Bhägavatam in the association of pure devotees.*

In Bengal, when the devotees of Kåñëa take their meals, a bitter vegetable called shukta is served first. This is the culinary culture. It's healthy. It helps your digestion. Now, if you come from the West to Bengal for the first time, you may be surprised and even disappointed when you taste that first morsel of prasädam they serve you. Oh, why this bitter stuff? Let me have a nice fried savory first. But if you just learn the culture of tasting prasädam in the association of those who know it, you quickly become attached to it. That does not mean you lose your personal preference for eating sweets or whatever. But if you follow the culture, it becomes self-evident that this way of taking meals, starting with bitter, is most healthy and satisfying. Similarly, there is a culture of tasting the scriptures that is to be learned from advanced devotees. To actually taste the meaning of scripture is different from just gulping down facts and figures any way you like off of a printed page. The message of Bhagavad-gétä and Çrémad-Bhägavatam is the Supreme Person Himself. So developing a taste for hearing and discussing that message means entering deeper and deeper into a personal relationship with Kåñëa. Çré Caitanya Mahäprabhu is Kåñëa Himself come in the role of Kåñëa's own devotee. The Lord descended as His own devotee to show us what love and devotion to Kåñëa really means. His explaining one verse in sixty-one different ways was not a matter of mental speculation. It was a demonstration of His incomparable taste for the Çrémad-Bhägavatam. Not one of His explanations contradicted the other, because the substance of each one was the same Kåñëa. So there's no controversy. When a group of devotees come together to discuss scripture, if they are actually advanced, their mutual taste draws them together at the Lord's lotus feet. That does not mean that each devotee in the group sacrifices his or her individual point of view. Point of view is never lost, because the goal of the whole process of Kåñëa consciousness is personal. Every devotee has an eternal, individual relationship with the Supreme Person that becomes clearer and clearer as we develop our taste for serving Him. But the common ground shared by the whole group is the satisfaction of the Lord, not the mere satisfaction of individual minds. To interpret scripture by mental speculation is not pleasing to Kåñëa. It is a disservice. Arguing divisive points of view cannot be justified by Lord Caitanya's teachings.* Actually, it is a symptom of a lack of higher taste. Thus one's attraction is drawn away from serving the Lord to trying to control His energies. This results in agitation of the mind and senses, which produces divisive arguments. Lord Kåñëa confirms this in Çrémad- Bhägavatam 11.22.6:

yäsäà vyatikaräd äséd vikalpo vadatäà padam

präpte çama-dame 'pyeti vädas tam anu çämyati

By interaction of My energies different opinions arise. But for those who have fixed their intelligence on Me and controlled their senses, differences of perception disappear, and consequently the very cause for argument is removed.

Yes, because Lord Caitanya revealed many ways of appreciating a verse, let us appreciate that verse in those ways. Let us not invent new interpretations that conflict with Lord Caitanya, and then try to defend ourselves by citing His example. Kåñëa consciousness does not mean inventing new ways to imitate the éçvara. Kåñëa consciousness means getting liberated from that contaminated svabhäva by which we try to imitate Kåñëa whenever we see a chance to. Kåñëa declares in the Bhagavad-gétä that by hearing His message, the mind becomes attached to Him. This is yoga. In Kåñëa consciousness, the urges of the mind and the senses are subordinated in devotional service. Kåñëa is the center of our life, not passionate desires that inflame the mind with agitation, contradiction and argument.

 

Vidyäviruddha: I follow the Vedas. But there is much of what Vedasära says with which I cannot agree. He speaks of éçvara as the cause. But the éçvara is not the absolute truth. Éçvara is represented by the root of the Vedic çabda, which is the syllable oà or auà. The letters a-u-à stand for creation, maintenance and destruction, and also for the three phases of the mind, deep sleep, dreaming and wakefulness. This is material consciousness. Only in material consciousness does the logic of cause and effect apply. The éçvara is the ultimate logical conception. But beyond this conception of cause and effect is the eternal awareness of tat tvam asiI am that. Above éçvara, above logic, even above the Vedic çabda, the pure self is absolute. All of us here are one in that absolute self. That is the only reality. Everything else is duality, mäyä, illusion, and must be given up.

 

Vedasära däsa: So if we are one, then why do you say you don't agree with me?

 

Vidyäviruddha: It is on the lower platform of logic that we don't agree. On the higher platform of reality, we are one.

 

Vedasära däsa: Well, if the lower platform is just duality and illusion, then why are you trying to establish something on that platform by logical argument?

 

Vidyäviruddha: I just want you to know that I have realized the oneness, but you have not. Therefore my explanation of çabda surpasses yours.

 

Vedasära däsa: Your criticism is reflexive. You say that logic only applies to material consciousness, and you say you have transcended material consciousness. And yet you use logic to tell me that you have realized the oneness, and that your explanation is therefore better. But logically, if you know everything is one, why talk at all? Speech itself is logic, and your philosophy says logic must be given up. But in my philosophy, speech and logic are to be brought in line with çabda, not given up. So, if as you say, you follow the Vedas, as I do too, then why not let me do the talking? After all, according to your theory, you and I are one.

 

Svapnarätri: Vidyäviruddha's point, that éçvara is a logical construct, I agree with completely. I wish to add that it is a construct that fails in the end. Merely from extending the chain of cause backwards into time, all we could ever know of the first cause (éçvara) would be that it was a cause. It would therefore be perfectly in order to ask, What was the cause of éçvara? As soon as you posit éçvara as a cause of so many other causes, you face the paradox of infinite regress. What caused éçvara? And what caused the cause of éçvara? And what caused the cause of the cause of éçvara? Thus the logic of a first cause never reaches a conclusion. I find Vidyäviruddha's admission that éçvara is just an ultimate logical concept harmonizes very well with the points Dr. Parägdåñöi and I made earlier. Yes, cause and effect are the superficial logic of the material world. But there is no deep reality of causation. Causation has nothing to do with the Beyond. In the Beyond, there is no logic. There, being and non-being are one and the same.

 

Vedasära däsa: May I focus for a moment on the essence of what you've just said, to make sure I've understood you correctly? You said that éçvara is nothing more than a logical hypothesis. The truth beyond this hypothesis is that there can be no first cause. In the ultimate end, we can really make no logical sense out of anything.

 

Svapnarätri: Yes, I suppose you could put it that way.

 

Vedasära däsa: In other words, you're saying that what the Vedic scriptures teach about causation is imaginary. When Kåñëa declares in Bhagavad-gétä, I am the source of everything, your reply is that He is not telling the truth. In other words, Kåñëa and the Vedas have no authority.

 

Svapnarätri: Well ... I can't say that your analysis of what I said is wrong. Yes, that is what I mean.

 

Vedasära däsa: So the conclusion is that you are the authority.

 

Svapnarätri: No, not at all. Logic is the authority. I am not merely telling you what I believe. It is logical that if everything is caused, and Kåñëa says, I am the cause, then there must be a cause behind Kåñëa, since everything is caused. Everything includes Kåñëa too.

 

Vedasära däsa: No, my point still stands. The Vedas say that anumäna, logical thought, is subordinate to çabda, the Vedic sound. We should use logic in support of the Vedic revelation. Apart from that, logic has no authority. This is the Vedic method of knowledge. Now my question to you is, what is your authority to say the Vedic method is wrong? What is your authority to say that anumäna has authority over çabda?

 

Svapnarätri: Well, it makes sense to me.

 

Vedasära däsa: But a few moments ago you agreed that the conclusion of your philosophy is that we can really make no sense out of anything. Then how can you argue that it makes sense that anumäna is superior to çabda?

 

Svapnarätri: I am not saying Vedic testimony makes no sense. What the Vedas say may be logically correct. But beyond logic, being and non-being are one and the same. There is something other than the logic of causation. It is infinite, mysterious, and silent.

 

Vedasära däsa: It seems that the only way you can properly represent this doctrine of yours is by being infinitely mysterious and silent.

 

Svapnarätri: Yes, this is the teaching that cannot be taught.

 

Vedasära däsa: From çabda we learn that eternal being is logically consistent with causation. Sarvaà khalv idaà brahma, everything is Brahman. That means everything is eternal substance. Even matter (prakåti) is not created or destroyed. Éçvara is eternal, jéva is eternal, prakåti is eternal and käla is eternal. Only karma, or the activity seen within matter, is temporal. Matter, the insentient energy of éçvara from which unlimited universes are formed, periodically acts, periodically sustains, and periodically rests. When, on the order of éçvara, prakåti acts, that is called creation. When prakåti rests, creation dissolves into inert potential. The paradox of infinite regress troubles those who think that substance is created. If the chain of causation meant that a substance took being from a previous substance, and this previous substance took being from an even earlier substance, back and back until we arrive at a first substance, then we are left with the question why the chain of causes stops with this particular substance. In the Vedic version, causation starts with tattva, the eternal truth Kåñëa and His energies. Neither spirit, matter nor their source are ever created. All is eternal and all is substance, vastu. The chain of material causation is a chain of activity, sustenance and rest, activity, sustenance and rest, on and on. It is not a chain of one substance giving being to other substances, one after another.

 

Svapnarätri: But still, when you said neither spirit, matter nor the source of both are ever created, the word source implies that spirit and matter are not original. They come from something else.

 

Vedasära däsa: Source implies the source of stimulation. The dictionary definition of stimulate is, to rouse to activity or to increased action or interest; stir. This is a good description of the influence of the éçvara over His eternal energies. By His mere glance upon prakåti, He stimulates the endless chain of creation, maintenance and dissolution. In this way, because He inspires His energies to act creatively, Kåñëa is the source of creation.

 

Dr. Parägdåñöi: You're saying that God has no choice about whether to exist or not. Nor does God decide what shall exist and what shall not exist. Everything just is. This means God is subject to being, while nothingness is not subject to God.

 

Vedasära däsa: The choice between being and nothingness is really no choice at all. Nothing means no thing. It does not exist. The actual choice is between being and illusion the self as it is (the spirit soul) versus the self as it isn't (the false ego). For God, there is no illusion. But there is for us. It is clear that illusion exists. We know illusion by its consequences the sufferings of this material body. Yet though it exists, illusion is unreal (asat). The true vision (tattva-darçana) of the self reveals that the self we imagine this body to be is nonexistent.* But you are suggesting that nonexistence could be an entity in its own right: an abhava-tattva, a real nonexistence, a void state existing as an alternative to being. What can be more useless than discussing the existence of nonexistence? This is mäyä. Of course, if you insist on sustaining within your mind a choice between existence and nonexistence, mäyä will respond by keeping you here in the material world, which is subject to destruction by time. During the dissolution, the deluded living entities are plunged into the illusion of nonexistence for aeons of time. Each of you is desirous of knowledge. There is a verse spoken by Uddhava in Çrémad-Bhägavatam (11.29.3) that explains what true knowledge is:

athäta änanda-dughaà padämbhujaà

haàsäù çrayerann aravinda-locana

sukhaà nu viçveçvara yoga-karmabhis

tvan-mäyayämé vihatä na mäninaù

Athäta means now therefore, and änanda-dughaà pada-ambhujam means Kåñëa's lotus feet, the source of all ecstasy. Haàsäù refers to the transcendentalists, those who are truly wise. Çrayeran means they take shelter of, they surrender. Aravinda-locana is a name of Kåñëa, meaning He has lotus eyes. Sukhaà nu viçveçvara means the devotees are happy under the shelter of the viçva-éçvara, the Lord of the universe. So, the meaning so far is that the devotees happily take shelter of Lord Kåñëa's lotus feet, which are the source of all spiritual ecstasy. This is real knowledge. The verse goes on to say yoga-karmabhis tvan-mäyayä amé vihatä na mäninaù, those who take pride in their accomplishments in yoga and karma fail to take shelter of Kåñëa and are defeated by His illusory energy. The word yoga here refers to all kinds of physical, mental and mystical sciences and philosophies. Karma refers to works of accomplishment in these areas. Mäninaù is the mental plane, where egoistic speculation flourishes. Vihatäù means defeated or obstructed, and tvan-mäyayä means by Your material energy. The message is that anyone who remains on the mental platform, even if he is greatly accomplished in works of speculation, is sure to be overcome by illusion. To get beyond the mental platform, we must surrender to Kåñëa's lotus feet, for the happiness we seek is there, not in egoistic speculation. The mind bereft of änanda is dragged by mäyä down to the most abominable state of consciousness all in the name of so-called knowledge. Lately, there was a report from China that scientists managed to artificially impregnate a woman with the embryo of a chimpanzee. But a public outcry forced them to abort that pregnancy. An Indian biologist expressed regret over the termination of the experiment, as so much new knowledge was lost. But such works of speculation are not knowledge. This is mäyä's degradation of the human mind, which may lead to birth in lower species. Knowledge without änanda is called çuñka-jïäna, dry knowledge. It is said in Çré Caitanya-caritämåta (Madhya-lélä 24.130) that, çuñka-jïane jévan-mukta aparädhe adho maje. Even if by dry knowledge someone achieves jévan-mukta, the release of his soul from material distress, that knowledge becomes perverted for want of änanda. Perverted knowledge leads to offensive activities, which throw the living entity down into the pit of illusion again.

 

Dr. Parägdåñöi: If you take away the choice of nonexistence, then existence is eternal, timeless, and necessary. But then how is it possible for the universe to be ever-changing? Unless, of course, everything that happens is planned out to the smallest detail, and free will is just an illusion.

 

Vedasära däsa: Please don't mind, but I feel I should point out a significance I note in your line of questioning. From existence or to be precise, from what you understand about your own existence you are trying to determine the plausibility of the existence of God. We share existence with God, so it is not unnatural for us to try to establish contact with Him on the ground of being. But He is not to repeat a phrase you used earlier subject to being. In His personhood, He transcends mere existence. It is we who are stuck with existence. The ground of being is sat, the eternal existence of consciousness, of which the jévas are a part. Sat is a feature of Kåñëa's spiritual potency. That potency playfully becomes different media through which the Lord enjoys Himself. So sat is the medium through which the Lord enjoys Himself as the infinite, all-pervading, effulgent Brahman. Through the medium of cit or perfect knowledge, the Lord enjoys Himself as the Supersoul, Çré Viñëu, who creates, maintains and destroys countless universes filled with countless living entities. He dwells transcendentally within the hearts of each of those living entities, giving them knowledge, remembrance and forgetfulness as they deserve. ànanda, unlimited happiness, is the medium of Kåñëa's confidential pastimes of divine love with His personal associates in the spiritual world. Now, we souls separated from Kåñëa are stuck on the sat platform. Even that fact, that we exist eternally, is obscured due to our strong attachment to this temporary body, the very form of our ignorance. Thus eternal existence becomes perpetual bondage. But if we rationally distinguish body from soul, renounce attachment and fix our minds upon the self, sat is as far as we can go. It is the limit of the ascending process (äroha-panthä), or the inductive method. I find it significant that because you are fixed in the inductive method, you see existence as a great problem. But it is a mistake to project your problem with existence upon Kåñëa. He enjoys His existence eternally. We can choose to likewise enjoy existence eternally if we turn to Him, and are thus blessed by the cit and änanda potencies to enter His direct association. Your question if existence is eternal, timeless, and necessary, how is it possible for the universe to be ever-changing? is a problem for the dualistic mind, not for Kåñëa. It simply speaks for the failure of our powers of measurement. Kåñëa is acintya, inconceivable, and His energy is acintya-çakti, inconceivably powerful. Because both are inconceivable, they act in ways that appear contradictory to the dualistic mind.

acintya-çakti éçvara jagad-rüpe pariëata

Inconceivably, the éçvara transforms His energy into the form of the universe (jagad-rüpa).

jagad-rüpa haya éçvara, tabu avikära

The éçvara Himself is the form of the universe. Yet at the same time He remains unchanged in His eternal, transcendental form.*

The jéva floating in the sky of the heart has the free will to choose between the éçvara Himself and His expanded jagad-rüpa. Which way he chooses depends on how he receives the Vedic çabda: in ignorant egoism, or in pure devotion.

 

Khagäkña: Vedasära, it is not fair of you to say that inductive thinkers can't get beyond the problem of existence to knowledge and bliss. Or are you just not aware of the vast wealth of knowledge and happiness to be found in the inductive tradition?

 

Vedasära däsa: But it is mundane knowledge and bliss. Induction is confined within the limits of human existence, which is always problematic. If there are always problems with material knowledge, then how is it real knowledge? If there are always problems with material happiness, then how is it real happiness?

 

Svapnarätri: I agree with you on this point. But I would go a step further to say that is not reasonable for you to argue that Vedic knowledge transcends human existence. Çabda depends upon pratyakña. You have to hear it to understand it. To hear something, both the sound and you have to exist materially. So Vedic çabda and the knowledge it conveys is also mundane.

 

Vedasära däsa: No, çabda is originally spiritual. Therefore it conveys meaning. Why words have meaning cannot be understood in terms of our material experience. It is true that we have to receive the Vedic sound through our material ears. But that does not mean the sound itself is material. To fully realize the spirituality of sound, you have to accept the Vedic method of knowledge, which starts with pratyakña as you've said. But that knowledge graduates through parokña, aparokña, adhokñaja and at the end comes to apräkåta. If you insist on staying at the pratyakña level, then you'll persist in perceiving sound as materialwhich just means that you're persisting in ignorance. But then be honest and don't ascribe any meaning to Vedic sound. If pratyakña is really all there is to knowing sound, then give up the concept that it can't be spiritual. That concept comes from your anumäna, not from pratyakña. If you are a pure pratyakñavädé, you shouldn't have any concept. On the pratyakña platform there are no conceptions of verbal meaning whatsoever, whether spiritual or material. A baby hears speech purely from the pratyakña platform. She can't understand a word, because her anumäna is undeveloped. As soon as you say, Vedic çabda and the knowledge it conveys is mundane, you've already gone beyond pratyakña. If you can't stop yourself from deriving meaning from çabda, then you should derive a meaning appropriate to the method of knowledge by which Vedic sound is transmitted. According to that method, Vedic sound is transcendental. If I am going to derive meaning from the words in a book about the ocean, I should derive a meaning appropriate to oceanography, the method of knowledge by which the book was written. I should not interpret the book according to my experience of the water in my bathroom sink. I have no right to suppose that the book is full of falsehoods about the size and depth of the ocean and the millions of life forms it contains, simply because my bathroom sink holds only a little water and exhibits no undersea life. I have no right to assume the book is sadly ignorant because it does not say that somewhere on the bottom of the sea is a plug, which when pulled, will empty the oceans of the world of all water. Similarly you have no right to assume Vedic sound is material simply from your limited experience of sound.

 

Vidyäviruddha: Çabda is but broken light upon the depth of the unspoken. The Vedic sound only points us in the direction of the truth, but as Kaöha Upaniñad declares, The Supreme is beyond çabda.

 

Vedasära däsa: Lord Kåñëa tells Arjuna that there are many followers of the Vedas who are attracted only by flowery words of heavenly sense enjoyment. These people He calls veda-vädés. They perform sacrifice (yajïa) for selfish purposes like material elevation and salvation from sin. Their egoism blinds them to the fact that beyond these sensual and mental fruits, Kåñëa is Yajïa, the supreme sacrifice.* Our English word sacrifice comes from a Latin expression that means to make sacred. So the actual purpose of yajïa, which begins with hearing and chanting the Vedic sound, is to transform our existence from material to spiritual. But for this to be accomplished, as Kåñëa tells Uddhava, the material rendition of Vedic sound must cease (vacasäà viräme). (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.28.35) To bring us over the obstacle of the egoistic material sounds of karma-väda and jïäna-väda, the Lord personally spoke the Bhagavad-gétä.

If you become conscious of Me, you will pass over all the obstacles of conditioned life by My grace. If, however, you do not work in such consciousness but act through false ego, not hearing Me, you will be lost. (Bhagavad-gétä 18.58)

Na çroñyasi vinaìkñyasi: if you do not hear Me, you will be lost. Kåñëa is the supreme authority, the origin of Vedic knowledge. To know the true meaning of çabda, we have to hear His explanation. As long as we hear in our own way, the absolute truth will ever remain açabdama, outside of that egoistic sound. Hearing in our own way means to take anumäna as our guru. But the mind cannot give us real knowledge, because it is limited by the false ego. It is only logical that éçvara, being the Supreme Lord, is not within the range of our egoism. Therefore it is stated:

anumäne nahe éçvara-jïäne

One cannot attain real knowledge of the Supreme Personality of Godhead by logical hypothesis and argument. (Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Madhya-lélä 6.81)

anumäna pramäëa nahe éçvara-tattva-jïäne

kåpä vinä éçvarere keha nähi jäne

One can understand the Supreme Personality of Godhead only by His mercy, not by guesswork or hypothesis. (Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Madhya-lélä 6.82)

 

Khagäkña: But how do you know that you're getting the mercy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead?

 

Vedasära däsa: Here is the answer:

vastu-viñaye haya vastu-jïäna

vastu-tattva-jïäna haya kåpäte pramäëa

Knowledge of the substance, the Absolute Truth, is evidence of the mercy of the Supreme Lord. (Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Madhya-lélä 6.89)

The word vastu is repeated three times to stress that knowledge of the substance is the pramäëa, evidence, of kåpa, mercy. Kåñëa, the éçvara, is the substance. His substance is expanded as the tattvas of jéva, prakåti, käla and karma. Vastu-tattva-jïäna means true knowledge of the tattvas of vastu. It is practical knowledge. If practically we are entangled in these tattvas, agitated by their influence and thus unable to check sinful activities that hold us fast to the gross bodily conception, we should know we are in ignorance. As mentioned before, one who actually knows the truth passes over all the obstacles of karma-väda and jïäna-väda by Kåñëa's mercy. There are so many obstacles that foil the progress of the karmés and jïänés: faultfinding, the desire for name and fame, envy of other living entities, accepting things forbidden in the çästra, desires for material gain, and hankering for popularity. Unless one has the mercy of Kåñëa, one's attempt to follow the Vedic method will be riddled by such defects, which are all symptomatic of ignorance. The mercy of Kåñëa is transmitted by pure sound vibrating from a devotee whose heart is completely bound to Him by attachment. That devotee is personally protected by the Lord, and thus he exhibits by his life's example vastu- tattva-jïäna. The instructions of such a devotee brings us in contact with Kåñëa's lotus feet.

 

Vidyäviruddha: But at the highest stage, so Çaìkaräcärya taught, each living being is the nameless, formless One Soul. Names, forms and distinctions are illusory. You speak of surrender to Kåñëa and His pure devotee. But these words are concerned with difference, not oneness. Oneness is absolute, for oneness is all-inclusive. As soon as you tell us to surrender to a particular individual, a particular person, you exclude others. You create a sectarian viewpoint. For humanitarian unity, the Supreme should not be given a name or a form. Rather, God should be seen and served within every human being. Then men and women all over the world will love and worship one another. Peace and brotherhood will reign everywhere.

 

Vedasära däsa: Yes, Çaìkaräcärya's philosophy is advaita, the non-duality of God and the soul. We agree that in pure spiritual consciousness, God and the souls share the same quality of eternality, knowledge and bliss. They are one. But since it is a oneness of love, there is a difference of love too. For example, a boy and a girl who love one another are one in that they are inseparable. Yet again, only the difference between them makes their mutual enjoyment possible. Now, a relationship of love is voluntary. Some souls choose not love Kåñëa in pure devotion. They would rather be independent lords. God sends them forth into material existence where they can attempt to enjoy separately from Him. In this condition of ignorance, the oneness between the soul and God seems lost, while the difference between them seems terrifying. You've said that when I advise you to surrender to guru and Kåñëa, I create a sectarian viewpoint by excluding others. But Çaìkaräcärya is a guru too. His followers surrender to him, and those who don't are excluded. You say that because the doctrine of difference is exclusive, it cannot be true, whereas Çaìkaräcärya's doctrine of oneness is the absolute truth because oneness is all-inclusive. But yet even the doctrine of oneness is not one. After Çaìkaräcärya departed this world, his followers split into two rival groups, the Bhämaté school and the Vivarana school. They found enough differences in Çaìkaräcäryas's teachings to disagree even over oneness. Down to this very day, the impersonalists continue to divide into more and more schools. The actual Vedic philosophy is that oneness is real and difference is real. Together, oneness and difference are all-inclusive. You cannot dispose of difference just by labelling it unreal. Even Çaìkaräcärya admitted this. In his Ñaö-padé-stotram (3) he wrote:

satyapi bhedäpagame nätha

taväham na mämakénas-tvam

sämudro hi taraìgaù kvacana

samudra na täraìgaù

O Lord, even when difference is removed, I am Yours (I am Your servant). You are not mine. As the wave belongs to the ocean, the ocean does not belong to the wave. A wave lives in the ocean. The ocean does not live in the wave.

You've said every human being is God, and men and women all over the world should love and worship one another. This will establish peace and brotherhood. My reply is that your formula is the problem, not the solution. The basis of material consciousness is the false ego. In this world, everybody already thinks they are God. There are humanitarian socio-political systems that try to get these gods to serve one another. But they never serve one another. They serve the demands of their senses. And that is animal life. Where is the peace and brotherhood in animal society? When men become servants of their senses, human society becomes a jungle. The downfall of impersonalism is that it does not have a method of subduing the five knowledge-acquiring senses (ear, tactile sense, eye, tongue and nose), the five active senses (hand, leg, belly, genitals and rectum), and the common sense, the mind. As things in themselves, to borrow Kant's phrase, these eleven are personal attendants of Håñékeça, the Master of the Senses Kåñëa. Lord Kapiladeva explains:

devänäà guëa-liìgänäm änuçravika-karmaëäm

sattva evaika-manaso våttiù sväbhäviké tu yä

animittä bhägavaté bhaktiù siddher garéyasé

The senses are symbolic representations of the demigods, and their natural inclination is to work under the direction of the Vedic injunctions. As the senses are representatives of the demigods, so the mind is the representative of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The mind's natural duty is to serve. When that service spirit is engaged in devotional service to the Personality of Godhead, without any motive, that is far better even than salvation. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 3.25.32)

These attendants of the Lord, the mind and the senses, are devotees. If we do not take care to engage them carefully in Håñékeça's service, we offend them, and they punish us in return by dragging us into sinful activities. According to Çaìkaräcärya's philosophy, the absolute can be realized only after the functions of the senses and mind have been utterly stopped. The world's people are not going to do that. The real answer is given by Närada Muni in his Païcarätra:

sarvopädhi-vinirmuktaà tat paratvena nirmalam

håñékeëa håñékeça- sevanaà bhaktir ucyate

Sarvopädhi-vinirmuktam means liberation from bodily designation. Tat paratvena nirmalam means purification from all contamination. So how is that to be attained? By surrendering the senses in the service of Håñékeça, the Master of the Senses. As I mentioned before, He is also known as Yajïa, the supreme sacrifice. By sacrificing our senses and mind in His service, we realize in stages the original transcendental nature of the senses and mind in the spiritual world. The spiritual senses in turn reveal the true oneness: the inseparability of our desire from Kåñëa, Who is the only viñaya (object of desire). Finally, your argument that God should not be given a name or form for humanitarian reasons is mundane rationalism. It is a myth that God is a human invention. Humanitarianism is an insignificant, ephemeral mental concoction. God, His holy name and His form are the eternal absolute truth. Who among mortal men shall compel God to renounce His name and form? The sane course is for mortal men to renounce their arrogance, chant the holy name of the Lord and worship His transcendental form. Earlier you remarked that the éçvara is the ultimate logical conception, as if to say that Kåñëa is fabricated in the mind of some philosopher. But the Vedas are apauruñeya, not made by mankind. What gives you the right to interpret the Vedic knowledge as if it were just a hypothesis? That means that first of all you have hypothesized it is a hypothesis. You claim to be a follower of the Vedas, but your argument amounts to decrying the Vedas as mythology. But this is just your mythology. Do you think you know the Vedas better than Lord Kåñëa, Brahmä, Devarñi Närada, Vyäsadeva and Çukadeva Gosvämé? If you were a follower of another scriptural tradition, one with an uncertain philosophy of causation, I could understand your attempt to fill in the gap with hypothesis. But in the case of the Vedic scriptures, such an attempt is uncalled for. The tradition speaks for itself: äcäryavän puruño vedaone who knows the teachings of the äcärya, the paramparä authority, is a knower of the Veda.

 

Khagäkña: Often authorities expect us to follow blindly. But one only becomes free from doubt and delusion by accepting nothing blindly. We cannot grow by giving up our capacity to observe and reason and apply critical thinking.

 

Vedasära däsa: But kindly look again at what you've just said from an epistemological point of view. You say authorities expect you to follow blindly but sense perception is blind. You say we cannot grow by giving up our capacity to observe, reason and apply critical thinking. What are these capacities? We observe sense impressions, not the substance of reality. We reason from svabhäva, our conditioned psychology. We apply critical thinking by measuring phenomena against standards we hatch from our imagination. This all amounts only to an imposition of our own intentions upon mäyä, who then deceives us into thinking we are right. Vedic knowledge is not mental speculation. It is a method. One must be trained to practice it properly.

 

Khagäkña: So are you saying that Vedic knowledge belongs to an elite intellectual circle? What if that circle is just an intellectual Mafia, brähmaëas whose only goal is to protect their privileged position in society?

 

Vedasära däsa: It is said, brahma jänätéti brähmaëa: one who knows the Absolute Truth he is a brähmaëa. But a brähmaëa is not an armchair intellectual. Neither is Vedic knowledge idle navel-gazing. It is a method. Anyone can become a brähmaëa and have Vedic knowledge by accepting the Vedic method of knowledge as his life's duty. Manu- saàhitä 4.14 defines the main duty of a brähmaëa thusly:

vedoditaà svakaà karma nityaà kuryäd atandritaù

tad dhi kurvan yathä-çakti präpnoti paramäà gatià

Tirelessly he should carry out the prescribed activities given in the Vedas, for by doing so to the best of his capacity he attains the supreme goal of life.

The method, then, is to hear the Vedic sound and act upon it. The following of the path of Vedic sound is defined in the Åg-Veda as yajïa. The Laws of Manu explain that the regular performance of yajïa gradually elevates the performer to knowledge. As Lord Kåñëa declares in Bhagavad- gétä 4.33:

çreyän dravya-mayäd yajïaj jïäna-yajïaù parantapa

sarvaà karmäkhilaà pärtha jïane parisamäpyate

O chastiser of the enemy, the sacrifice performed in knowledge is better than the mere sacrifice of material possessions. After all, O son of Prtha, all sacrifices of work culminate in transcendental knowledge.

In the next two verses, Kåñëa says that one can attain this knowledge of sacrifice (tad viddhi) in one step by approaching the tattva- darçé, the spiritual master who sees reality beyond pratyakña and anumäna. Having gained this knowledge from him, one is freed from the illusion of thinking the living entities are anything but the Lord's own parts and parcels. But we should not think that by accepting a spiritual master and becoming Kåñëa conscious, we are freed from sacrificial duties. Rather, they should be performed in higher knowledge.

sarva tu samavekñyedaà nikhilaà jïäna-cakñuñä

çruti-prämäëyato vidvän svadharme niviçeta vai

When a learned man has looked thoroughly at all this with the eye of knowledge, he should devote himself to his own duty in accordance with the authority of the revealed scriptures. (Manu-saàhitä 2.8)

As Lord Kåñëa confirms in Bhagavad-gétä 6.1, he who performs his prescribed sacrifices as a duty to the Lord is the real transcendentalist, not he who lights no fire and performs no work. The sacrifice of this age is the saìkértana-yajïa, the congregational chanting of the holy name of the Lord, which is meant to deliver all living entities. Manu says, kurvanyathä- çakti, sacrifice is to be performed with full power. This is how a brähmaëa, one in knowledge, is to be recognized.

saìkértana-yajïe kalau kåñëa-ärädhana

sei ta' sumedhä päya kåñëera caraëa

In this age of Kali, the process of worshiping Kåñëa is to perform sacrifice by chanting the holy name of the Lord. One who does so is certainly very intelligent, and he attains shelter at the lotus feet of the Lord. (Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Antya-lélä 20.9)

Khagäkña, Vedic knowledge is not restricted to a small circle of intellectuals. It is available to anyone who takes the Vedic methodyajïa, which begins with çruti (hearing). Someone who does not take the method, but just speculates on the meaning of the Vedas, simply hovers on the mental plane. Conversely, one may not be a so-called intellectual, but yet attains the supreme goal simply by following the prescribed method:

kevala jïäna 'mukti' dite näre bhakti vine

kåñëonmukhe sei mukti haya vinä jïäne

Speculative knowledge alone, without devotional service, is not able to give liberation. On the other hand, even without knowledge one can obtain liberation if one engages in the Lord's devotional service. (Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Madhya-lélä 22.21)

The Vedic verdict is that dry speculative knowledge is dangerous:

çuñka-brahma-jïäné, nähi kåñëera 'sambandha'

sarva loka nindä kare, nindäte nirbandha

One who is attached to dry speculative knowledge has no relationship with Kåñëa. His occupation is criticizing Vaiñëavas. Thus he is situated in criticism. (Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Antya-lélä 8.27)

 

Khagäkña: But criticism has priceless value. You don't grow from praise.

 

Vedasära däsa: You grow from love. A loving father criticizes his young son and so helps him grow into a self-disciplined adult. So criticism does have a place in love. A spiritual master sometimes has to criticize his disciples. But Çréla Prabhupäda said it is love that is the basic principle of obedience. If it were not for love, criticism would have no effect.

 

Khagäkña: That's not what I meant. You are justifying the way authorities play the sentiment card to get people to line up behind them. The real criticism takes place when the faults of the authorities are unsentimentally revealed in the cold light of logic and reason. Then society as a whole will progress.

 

Vedasära däsa: There is a line from the Mahäbhärata: äkroñöä cäbhivaktä ca brahmoväkya ca dvijäna, which means, I used to speak irreverently of the Vedas and of the brähmaëas. These are the words of a jackal who in his last life was himself a brähmaëa. That brähmaëa was tarkavidyämanurakto nirarthakämvery attached (anurakta) to dry arguments (tarka), and indifferent to the Vedic goal of human life (nirarthakäm).* Khagäkña, you've said it is sentimental to follow the rule of love laid down by spiritual authorities. Actually, the rule of love is the means to cross beyond the agitation of the mind and senses. The word sentiment is derived from the Latin word sentimentum, which refers to sense-impressions within the mind. Therefore, to be sentimental means to be subject to the rule of pratyakña and anumäna, as was this unfortunate jackal in his previous life. Under their rule, his intelligence became the breeding ground for argument and criticism. Dry argument and criticism offer society no means of purification. Without purification, there is no question of social progress. Purification comes through sacrifice. According to Bhagavad-gétä 3.10, yajïa is the God-given means of progress for human society. No doubt error will be found among human beings, even among those who take to the Vedic path. But egoistic fault-finding, dry argument and mental speculation are themselves human errors. Error versus error breeds more error, not the cure. The cure for human error is this: duñöaraà yasya säma cid ådhag yajïo na mänuñaù chanting unassailed (by error), that yajïa is perfect for the human.*

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Five: The Ethics of Sacrifice

 

Philosophy is said to have four main branches. These are epistemology, logic, metaphysics and ethics. Epistemology covers questions about how we get knowledge. Much of this book has been epistemological. Logic, the study of reasoning, was examined in Chapter Two. Metaphysics, or the investigation of reality beyond physical limits, was a major topic of Chapter Three. Ethics (also called moral philosophy) is a system of principles behind the moral institution of life.* A moral institution religion, law or traditional social values must be grounded upon principles that presume to determine what sort of life is good, which goals are worthy, whose intentions are respectable, how right and wrong are defined, and how to choose between right and wrong. Ethics is philosophy in action. It is the moral outcome of epistemology, logic and metaphysics. If a philosophy well-established in the world is rent by epistemological, logical and metaphysical doubts, we can expect ethical troubles in society. In modern philosophy, doubt is everything. And so doubts swamp the moral institutions of today's world. Around the world, people debate about where the limits of individual freedom should be drawn; or what role government should play in our lives; or whether abortion is good or bad. There are hundreds of such questions. When clear, satisfactory answers are not forthcoming, doubts give way to political strife, violence, revolution and war. Such conflicts are endless, and at last breed indifference to ethical values, and disregard for essential social norms.

 

 

Sacrificial ethics

The moral institution of Vedic culture rests upon the logic of sacrifice (yajïa)which says that the Lord makes dravya (material objects) and jïäna (knowledge) available to us on the condition that we offer these back to Him. If we do not perform sacrifice, we waste the human form of life. For the purpose of this chapter, I do not mean the terms yajïa and sacrifice to imply a particular kind of ritual (for example, an agnihotra sacrifice). I follow a general definition given by Çréla Prabhupäda in his purport to Bhagavad-gétä 4.25:

Factually sacrifice means to satisfy the Supreme Lord, Viñëu, who is also known as Yajïa. All the different varieties of sacrifice can be placed within two primary divisions: namely, sacrifice of worldly possessions and sacrifice in pursuit of transcendental knowledge.

I've posited sacrifice here as the ethics of Vedic culture because, as Lord Kåñëa explains in Bhagavad-gétä 3.10, its performance will bestow upon you all good things. In Western philosophy, ethics presumes to determine the good life; in Vedic culture, sacrifice yields the good life. Sacrifice is the science (we may even call it the technology) upon which the prosperity of Vedic civilization depends. It is as good as life itself, for the supply of air, light, water, grains and all other natural benedictions, without which we cannot live, depends upon the pleasure and displeasure of the demigods; and their pleasure and displeasure depends upon the performance of sacrifice. In contrast, Western science is demoniac. It attempts to forcibly wrest the bounties of nature away from the demigods. Scientists of today readily admit that there is no morality or ethics intrinsic to their method. Science and technology are just blind tools of mankind's desires. But the science of sacrifice requires the mingling of the desires of mankind and the demigods on the sacred ground of Vedic morality and religiousity. Of course, modern people don't even know about, what to speak of believe in, the demigods, who are agents of Lord Kåñëa in charge of the ebb and flow of natural phenomena. Regardless, this is the Vedic science. It is not mythology. The efficacy of this knowledge is demonstrated by the performance of sacrifice. Sacrificial ethics makes Vedic culture a giving culture. People so cultured are happy to render service to others, especially to good persons. By giving to the good, the good is received. For example, the gåhastas (married householders) are considered to be in the most fortunate of the four social stations of Vedic society. Why? Because they give service to the sannyäsés (renunciates), vänaprasthas (retired householders) and brahmacärés (students). In ancient times, even a haughty, despotic ruler like King Jaräsandha was always eager, if only for his own prestige, to give great wealth away in charity to the brähmaëas. Today, in contrast, ours is a taking culture. In glossy magazines, social and psychological theorists pontificate that there can be no self-respect in a culture of servitude. Thus there is a constant agitation from among the stations of modern society for the increase of rights and the decrease of duties. Sacrifice yields the good life. But this good is not calculated in terms of sensual and mental pleasures (though, of course, Vedic sacrifice does make such pleasures availableso as to be sacrificed in further acts of sacrifice). The good is calculated in terms of morality and devotion to Kåñëa. These are blessings than which nothing is more valued in Vedic society.

 

 

The intention of creation

The science and ethics of sacrifice was taught by Prajäpati Brahmä, the first Vedic sage, as the factual intention of the creation.* In the beginning, when he sent forth generations of men and demigods, Brahmä instituted sacrifice as the one method for all to satisfy their desires in the most beneficial way.* In his purport to Çrémad- Bhägavatam 2.9.40, Çréla Prabhupäda explains Brahmä's plan:

He desired the welfare of all as servants of God, and anyone desiring the welfare of the members of his family and generations must conduct a moral, religious life. The highest life of moral principles is to become a devotee of the Lord because a pure devotee of the Lord has all the good qualities of the Lord.

Brahmä's universal program of sacrifical ethics anticipates Lord Kåñëa's desire: that living entities throughout the universe may return to their original self-interest, or their pure natural instinct (svabhäva)as His loving associates. Brahmä helps Kåñëa's plan by creating bodies for the living entities with which they can serve the Lord. But he forms these bodies from prakåti, which charms the living entities as mind and matter. Impelled by materialistic svabhäva, most living entities show more interest in serving these bodies than serving Kåñëa. The rajo-guëa, the mode of passion, deludes the self into identifying with the body. The body is born out of the passionate ties of other bodies. Thus to identify with a body means to identify with and become attached to ever-larger circles of bodies the immediate family, the extended family, the social group, the national group, and finally humanity at large. But rajo-guëa must sooner or later be undermined by tamo-guëa, the mode of ignorance. This deludes the self into rejecting the responsibilities that come with this body and the larger circles of bodies. A soul deluded by tamo-guëa, finding responsibility frustrating, takes shelter of ignorant mental speculation or destructive sense indulgence.* Those under passion and ignorance are dead to the original svabhäva of the soul:

jévera svabhävakåñëa-'däsa'-abhimäna

dehe ätma-jïäne äcchädita sei 'jïäna'

The original nature of every living entity is to consider himself the eternal servant of Kåñëa. However, under the influence of mäyä, he thinks himself to be the body, and thus his original consciousness is covered. (Çré Caitanya-caritämåta, Madhya-lélä 24.201)

To help the jéva control passionate attachment and ignorant frustration, the Vedas teach two methods of regulation: 1) religious family life, and then, after the mind is strengthened by knowledge and detachment, 2) renunciation. But the spirit soul is never really free of material entanglement until the duality of attachment and aversion to the body is completely overcome. Family life and renunciation are themselves dualities; they alone can't carry us beyond duality. Thus there are two perspectives on Vedic ethics, one from para-vidyä (transcendental knowledge), and the other from apara-vidyä (knowledge relating to the material world). The first perspective does not approve of any material (pro-matter or against matter) desires. The second does approve of them, but only in terms of sacrificial works (karma-yajïa and jïäna- yajïa). The two perspectives can be appreciated in this verse froms Manu- saàhitä:

kämätmatä na praçastä na caivehästy akämatä

kämyo hi vedädhigamaù karma-yogaç ca vaidikaù

Action impelled by desire is not approved. But here in the material world, there is no such thing as no desire. Even studying the Veda and performing the duties enjoined therein is based upon desire.*

 

 

Ethical tension in the Bhagavad-gétä

In all literature, what most arrests the reader's attention is the element of conflict. This is true of the Vedic literature too. In the Bhagavad-gétä, the conflict is between para and apara ethics. Arjuna, an eternal associate of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, fell into confusion on the Kurukñetra warfield, Lord Kåñëa right by his side, while viewing the army of his belligerent cousin-brothers, the Kauravas. He was a Vedic kñatriya (warrior) expert in the noble culture and martial skills known as kñatriya-dharma. In kñatriya-dharma, war is waged as a sacrifice. The ethical conflict here was Arjuna's doubt whether there was anything sacred about the sacrifice-at-arms that was about to transpire. Wars are usually fought out of desire for sex, honor, land, wealth and power. A kñatriya on the apara platform is impelled by these desires; but his desires are regulated by the sacrifice of fighting only when there is a need to protect the innocent for example, the guru (spiritual master), the brähmaëas, women, children, elderly, and cows. The term kñatriya means one who protects from harm. Arjuna had no personal interest in winning sex, honor, land, wealth and power. He was not a karmé or jïäné afflicted by desires. He was a devotee distressed by an ethical dilemma. He knew that Kåñëa intended the battle of Kurukñetra be fought so that Arjuna and his brothers, the Päëòavas, could rule the world righteously after defeating the Kauravas. But what was the good in it? Arjuna's only interest was to protect the innocent; but this war would leave millions of innocent woman and children bereft of protection. Thus the family tradition of his dynasty would be destroyed. As he argues in Bhagavad-gétä 1.43:

O Kåñëa, maintainer of the people, I have heard by disciplic succession that those who destroy family traditions dwell always in hell.

In Bhagavad-gétä 2.4 and 5, Arjuna asked Kåñëa how his waging war against his own teachers could be ethical. Like women and children, the guru is to be protected. Moreover, worship of the guru is enshrined above all other duties in the Vedic scriptures; yet on that cruel plain, Arjuna would have to kill his beloved gurus, or be killed by them. From Kåñëa's own example, Arjuna knew that duties to the family and superiors are sacred. Lord Kåñëa Himself observes the same duties, as He declares in Bhagavad-gétä 3.23: if I ever failed to engage in carefully performing prescribed duties, O Pärtha, certainly all men would follow My path. Since to preserve the universe, God Himself personally upholds the ethics of the Vedas, Arjuna failed to see why the Lord expected him to fight this terrible war. To avoid damnation, he decided to renounce his duty as a warrior. But Lord Kåñëa surprised Arjuna by telling him that Vedic ethics demanded he perform his duty. By pacificism, he would incur sin. Now, when the Bhagavad-gétä is considered within the context of the Mahäbhärata, it is apparent that even ordinary moral considerations justified Arjuna's fighting back against the aggression of the unrighteous Kauravas. If Arjuna gave up the fight, then his sacred commitment to protect the innocent would be violated. If the Kauravas, headed by the evil Duryodhana, were victorious, the innocence of every person on the whole planet would be threatened by sin. Kñatriyas protect the people by governing them according to Vedic ethics; but when government is sinful, people stray from the path of morality and religion, and are lost. But these facts are not the essential message of Bhagavad-gétä. What is essential is that Kåñëa taught Arjuna how to perform his duty in the same transcendental manner as the Lord performs His. Kåñëa asked Arjuna to rise above his worry for the protection of the perishable bodies of his relatives. The Lord revealed the substance of ethics on the para platform, beyond ordinary moral codes that presume to make embodied life good. Transcendental morality is in relation to Kåñëa, not mind and matter. It is lélä, the duty of pure love through which God and His devotees enjoy themselves eternally.* The apara prescription of duty is the shadow of the loving ethics of lélä. By religious, moral and legal restraints, apara ethics checks, but does not conquer, material desires. Lélä is the unconditional display of spiritual desire.

 

 

Lord Yajïa's bridge

But the Lord and His devotees do not disparage apara ethics as useless. Apara morality, religion and law rest upon yajïa, and yajïa is purifying. By following Vedic ethics, if even only externally, people are purified. Kåñëa Himself, the supreme pure, is the agent of purification behind apara sacrifice. The scriptures compare Lord Yajïa to a bridge (setu) that spans the shores of material desire and spiritual desire. Çatapatha Brähmaëa, a karma-käëòa scripture, follows this bridge from earth to heaven.* Muëòaka Upaniñad, a jïäna-käëòa scripture, follows the bridge farther, to the immortal Self.* Çvetäçvatara Upaniñad follows the bridge farther still, to the Supreme Personality of Godhead (puruñaà mahäntam).* Inviting karmés and jïänés to associate with His setu form, the Lord becomes sacrifices that attract their natures. It is Lord Yajïa alone who awards karmés the sensual pleasures of heaven, and jïänés the philosophical resolution of duality:

The Supreme Personality of Godhead is transcendental and not contaminated by this material world. But although He is concentrated spirit soul without material variety, for the benefit of the conditioned soul He nevertheless accepts different types of sacrifice performed with various material elements, rituals and mantras and offered to the demigods under different names according to the interests and purposes of the performers. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 4.21.34)

I am the ritualistic sacrifice enjoined by the Vedas, and I am the worshipable Deity. It is I who am presented as various philosophical hypotheses, and it is I alone who am then refuted by philosophical analysis. The transcendental sound vibration thus establishes Me as the essential meaning of all Vedic knowledge. The Vedas, elaborately analyzing all material duality as nothing but My illusory potency, ultimately completely negate this duality and achieve their own satisfaction. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.21.43)

In Chapter Two, we learned that while all human beings are endowed with reason, only Vedic reason Kåñëa's reason for creation is objective. And so it is with ethics. The Lord in everyone's heart, as seen in Bhagavad-gétä 8.2, is called adhiyajïa, the Lord of everyone's sacrifice. But His purpose in inspiring us to sacrifice is known only through the Vedas. Manu-saàhitä 2.3 tells us that out of human desire, a fixed intention of mind (saìkalpa) appears. From saìkalpa appears ethics (sacrifices, vows, regulations and duties):

saìkalpamülaù kämo vai yajïäù saìkalpasaàbhaväù

vratämi yamadharmäçca sarve saìkalpajäù småtäù

Desire is the very root of intention, and sacrifice appears in intention. All vows, regulations and duties also appear in intention.

Even the sacrifices, vows and so on that make up the ethics of a person with no connection to Vedic culture are inspired by the Lord of Sacrifice within. But without Vedic guidance, the fruits of such sacrifice are inauspicious. Today, many people have a saìkalpa (fixed intention of mind) to avoid contracting AIDS. With this aim in mind, people ritualistically take vows, make sacrifices, follow regulations, perform duties. Now the difficulty here is that such rituals, even if (by the grace of adhiyajïa) they successfully stop AIDS, will not purify the populus of the real reason that AIDS became so virulent: sexual immorality. Modern sexuality is whimsical; unfortunately, people are very serious about this whimsy so much so that they go about making sacrifices in the hope that immoral sex can be enjoyed without the fear of AIDS. If such sacrifice can be called a type of ethics, then it is surely subjective ethics. Vedic authorities would call it avidyä. AIDS or not, death must come to us in one form or other. A human being who sacrifices to safely enjoy immoral sex is left with no ethical asset at the time of death. Such sacrifice is only a doorway to the lower species. What we might call objective ethics is a doorway to the gains recommended in the Vedic scriptures. We are spirit souls who finally achieved this human birth after innumerable births in lower species. The Vedas recommend we use this brief human life to gain control of the mind, regulate the senses and get free of sins. An uncontrolled mind, unregulated senses and sinful contamination will pull us back down into animal life or less. There can be no loss greater than this. Purification by the Vedic method takes place for no other reason than that the sacrificer respectfully approaches the Lord of Sacrifice as directed by çästra:

sarve 'py ete yajïa-vido yajïa-kñapita-kalmañäù

yajïa-çiñöämåta-bhujo yänti brahma sanätanam

All these performers who know the meaning of sacrifice become cleansed of sinful reactions, and, having tasted the nectar of the results of sacrifices, they advance toward the supreme eternal atmosphere. (Bhagavad-gétä 4.30)

As a person continues to perform sacrifice, he or she develops the qualities of goodness. Goodness (sattva-guëa) frees one from the demands of the body and mind; as he or she advances in purity, the sacrifices so performed increasingly satisfy the Supreme Pure. This is brahminical life. When at last a brähmaëa gives up every trace of material desire (käma), fruitive work (karma), and mental speculation (jïäna), and simply engages his or her senses and mind in favorable service to the Lord, that brähmaëa attains pure devotion (bhakti) to Çré Kåñëa. It is for this reason the Lord Himself becomes the ethics of sacrifice, to help people approach His devotional service. In the neophyte stage, the egotistical performer of yajïa exhibits many faults. A famous example is Dakña, whose pompous sacrifices were offensive to the great soul Çiva.* But still, Lord Yajïa is the steady bridge that leads mankind away from selfish intention to pure, transcendental intention. If one sticks to this path of satisfying Yajïa, he gradually comes to know that the Lord Himself is the only substantial blessing obtainable from sacrifice. Thus he sacrifices everything for Him.

mayy arpitätmanaù sabhya nirapekñasya sarvataù

mayätmanä sukhaà yat tat kutaù syäd viñayätmanäm

O learned Uddhava, those who fix their consciousness on Me, giving up all material desires, share with Me a happiness that cannot possibly be experienced by those engaged in sense gratification. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.14.12)

This, at last, is where Vedic ethics is meant to bring us. Through shadowy landscapes and misty mindscapes we've searched for substance. Where is it to be found? With Lord Kåñëa and His devotees, who share a happiness that cannot possibly be experienced by those obsessed with mind and matter. Here, sacrifice loses every trace of the sense of loss that nags at the edge of our false ego whenever we have to give something up that we are attached to. The devotees happily sacrifice their very selves in love of Kåñëa, and Kåñëa happily sacrifices His own self in love of His devotees. This sharing of happiness on the spiritual platform defeats all material desires. And though devotees have no desires for anything other than Kåñëa, He is the source and shelter of all ideal attainments sought by wise, noble, moral and just philosophers throughout the history of the world. In the beginning of Bhagavad-gétä, Arjuna asked whether there could be any morality in the battle of Kurukñetra. At the end, when Arjuna at last did exactly what Kåñëa desired him to do ride on the war chariot piloted by the Lord, sharing with Him the chivalrous bliss of the Lord's mission at Kurukñetra morality became Arjuna's constant companion. Dhruvä nétir matir mama, says Saïjaya at the close, In my opinion, morality is certain wherever there is Lord Yogeçvara, the Master of all Mystics, and Dhanur-dhara, the wielder of the mighty bow Gandiva. (Bhagavad-gétä 18.78)

 

 

Questions and answers

The following questions and answers bring out the relevance of sacrifice to our lives in today's world.

 

Question: You said that Arjuna was not a karmé or a jïäné, but a devotee in distress. How did he fall into such distress, if Kåñëa shares spiritual happiness with His pure devotee?

Answer: It could be said that it was all the Lord's lélä, or play. Thus Arjuna's distress was impelled within the heart by Kåñëa's wish to speak, for the benefit of the whole world, Bhagavad-gétä to His dear friend. But we should not assume that because we, unlike Arjuna, are really in illusion, Arjuna's distress has no relevance to our own. One of the great lessons of Bhagavad-gétä is that even a personal associate of Lord Kåñëa can become bewildered by the influence of the Lord's energy. Then how careful we have to be! A famous verse from the Kaöha Upaniñad, often quoted by Çréla Prabhupäda, warns that even after one has approached a bona fide spiritual master, even after one has embarked upon the path back home, Back to Godhead, he may have difficulty at any time due to inattention. One must be ever-vigilant.* What I've understood from Çréla Prabhupäda is that Arjuna proposed to serve his own pious nature (his svabhäva) instead of Kåñëa. From the standpoint of pratyakña and anumäna, his compassion, his gentle behavior, his readiness to renounce name, fame and social status, were all very good. But when good differs with the best Kåñëa that's not very good. Therefore Kåñëa asked Arjuna, How have these impurities come upon you? (Bhagavad-gétä 2.2)

 

Question: I thank you for your explanation of why Arjuna's killing his relatives was ethical both in an ordinary and transcendental sense. But still, Çréla Prabhupäda writes that anyone desiring the welfare of the members of his family and generations must conduct a moral, religious life.* It's hard for me to see how killing one's own kinsmen can be moral and religious. If I slaughter my relatives, it is a heinous crime deserving the severest punishment. How was it moral for Arjuna to slaughter his? How could such slaughter be for their welfare? Is this divine culture? Does Kåñëa slaughter His own family?

 

Answer: In one sense, you could say Kåñëa does slaughter His own family. We are all the family of Lord Kåñëa, for He is our original father (ahaà béja-pradaù pitä). (Bhagavad-gétä 14.4) But He is also our destroyer. It is said in Çrémad-Bhägavatam 6.12.12:

bhütaiù såjati bhütäni grasate täni taiù svayam

The Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself creates and devours the living beings through other living beings.

Arjuna thought it would be good for him to spare the lives of his kinsmen fated to be annihilated by the Lord. But Kåñëa told him that his compassion was useless. Every living creature great or small is under sentence of death by the order of the Supreme. Why did Arjuna care only for those particular ones facing him at Kurukñetra?

While speaking learned words, you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief. Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor for the dead. (Bhagavad-gétä 2.11)

Consider this: we who would question why God destroys His own children forget that we ourselves enjoy that destruction. Having accepted this body as the self, we are çiçnodara-tåpäà, very devoted to the genitals and the belly. (Çrémad-Bhägavatam 11.26.3) Enjoying the genitals, we participate in Kåñëa's creation of bodies. Enjoying the belly, we participate in His destruction of bodies, for it is on a diet of bodies of other living entities that we maintain our lives. Even on a diet of spoiled fruit, as taken by certain renunciates trying to live non- violently, countless unseen microbes are consumed with each bite. With every step we take, untold innocent creatures are crushed underfoot. Using fire, we burn them alive by the millions. According to the ethics of the ego, as long as I find these arrangements enjoyable, they are good. If they cause me suffering, they are bad and God is bad for having arranged them. But actually my intentions are bad. It is obnoxious of me to live comfortably at the cost of others. My every selfish act in this body must therefore be repaid under the law of karma. The Lord of all creatures impartially arranged the material world to facilitate the selfish desires of His wayward children. And so, helping each one to gratify his desires, He creates and devours other living beings. But He has nothing personally to do with the pleasures and pains of any of them, for He is the Supreme Transcendence. Neither have we anything to do with pleasures and pains, for we are tiny sparks of His transcendence. The pleasures and pains of the material body are experienced not by transcendence but by the ahaìkära, the false conception of our separateness from the Lord. As Çrémad- Bhägavatam 11.13.29 states:

ahaìkära-kåtaà bandham ätmano 'rtha-viparyayam

vidvän nirvidya saàsära- cintäà turye sthitas tyajet

The false ego of the living entity places him in bondage and awards him exactly the opposite of what he really desires. Therefore, an intelligent person should give up his constant anxiety to enjoy material life and remain situated in the Lord, who is beyond the functions of material consciousness.

Kåñëa is compared to a kalpa-taru, a wish-fulfilling tree. He placed us in this dog-eat-dog world because we wanted to be the éçvara, the controller. In truth, Kåñëa is the only controller. Our wish should be to remain situated in Him as His eternal servant, instead of being anxious to imitate Him by playing with His energies. As soon as we try to imitate Him, His energies (prakåti, käla, karma and the other jévas) conspire to wreck our plans and lock us up in eternal bondage. To rescue us from this predicament, the Lord appears as the spiritual master either personally, as He did for Arjuna, or through His pure devotee. One who is intelligent learns from the spiritual master how to give up his vain exploitation of Kåñëa's energies, and instead to assist in Kåñëa's enjoyment of them as the yajïa-puruña, the Enjoyer of Sacrifice. Kåñëa directed Arjuna to fight the battle of Kurukñetra as a sacrifice solely for His pleasure. After all, fight and kill we must in this material world. Fighting for ourselves perpetuates bondage; but fighting for Kåñëa is liberating. Now, we are not going to fight armed conflicts for Kåñëa, because we are not kñatriyas like Arjuna. But we can still learn from Arjuna how to sacrifice all our abilities in the Lord's service. Arjuna became Kåñëa's instrument. The soldiers who died by his hand gave up their lives in the presence of the Lord on the holy Kurukñetra field to achieve freedom from the bondage of repeated birth and death. Material welfare work, rooted in the ethics of the bodily concept of life, is incapable of delivering the soul from saàsära. In the Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavad-gétä, Kåñëa revealed His Viçvarüpa form by which He would receive Arjuna's sacrifice of war. As he watched this furiously effulgent feature of the Supreme Person span the sky with unlimited faces and arms, Arjuna cried out in amazement:

O Lord of lords, so fierce of form, please tell me who You are. I offer my obeisances unto You; please be gracious to me. You are the primal Lord. I want to know about You, for I do not know what Your mission is.  (Bhagavad-gétä 11.31)

In Kåñëa's universal form, the real form of the universe, there is no correspondence with selfish perception (pratyakña), nor coherence with selfish speculation (anumäna). This form of the universe corresponds and coheres to Kåñëa's mission. By Kåñëa's grace, Arjuna saw the shapes of things beyond the constraints of his sense perception and mental speculation. After this, in the beginning of the Twelfth Chapter, he intelligently inquired how the Lord is to be worshiped best.

 

 

Question: How can a person like me, with no background in Vedic knowledge, perform sacrifice?

Answer: In our time, the congregational chanting of Kåñëa's holy names näma-saìkértana-yajïa replaces all other sacrifices as the only effective one.* The Lord who enjoys this sacrifice is the Golden Avatära, Çré Caitanya Mahäprabhu the combined form of the original éçvara, Çré Kåñëa, and His original daivi-prakåti, His divine consort Çrématé Rädhäräëé. Whenever and wherever His devotees chant His holy names, and induce other living entities to do the same, Çré Caitanya personally crosses the bridge of sacrifice to distribute the rarest of spiritual gifts pure love of Kåñëa (prema).* This completely satisfies the mind and senses of the devotee. When satisfied, the mind and senses, in their eagerness to taste the nectar of the Lord's association, become the best friends of the soul. This is Vaikuëöha, where minds, senses and souls have one purpose to serve Kåñëa. Just by raising our arms to chant and dance in saìkértana, we enter Vaikuëöha. The stubborn obsessions born of empiricism, rationalism and egoistic ethics flee far away.

 

Question: Is saìkértana as effective a sacrifice today as were the fire sacrifices in ancient times?

Answer: The saìkértana-yajïa is so powerful that it cannot be compared to yajïas of old performed to fulfill material desires. Neither can the saìkértana devotees be compared to performers of Vedic rituals. In his purport to Çrémad-Bhägavatam 5.19.24, Çréla Prabhupäda explains:

In Caitanya-caritämåta, Kåñëadäsa Kaviräja Gosvämé says that since Çré Caitanya Mahäprabhu is the inaugurator of the saìkértana movement, anyone who performs saìkértana to please the Lord is very, very glorious. Such a person has perfect intelligence, whereas others are in the ignorance of material existence. Of all the sacrifices mentioned in the Vedic literatures, the performance of saìkértana-yajïa is the best. Even the performance of one hundred açvamedha sacrifices cannot compare to the sacrifice of saìkértana.

Like the sacrifice performed by Arjuna at Kurukñetra, saìkértana is for the transcendental good of the whole world. Arjuna liberated millions of men with his divine weapons. Today, millions of people are made sacred (in this sense, sacrificed) by the public chanting of Hare Kåñëa and the distribution of the books of Çréla Prabhupäda. This method of sacrifice Kåñëa personally identifies with: yajïänäà japa-yajïo 'smi, Of sacrifices, I am the chanting of the holy names. (Bhagavad-gétä 10.25) Sometimes saìkértana is misunderstood as a disturbance. But that is because it is ever-outside the narrow limits of the dreary ideologies that oppress men's minds today: mechanomorphism, anthropomorphism, humanism, egalitarianism, authoritarianism, male chauvinism, feminism, voidism, and so on. The saìkértana-yajïa overturns all such materialistic conceptions by teaching the best philosophy Lord Kåñëa's exact plan for successful human life.

Our Kåñëa consciousness movement is designed to teach people (and to learn ourselves) the exact instruction of the Personality of Godhead. In this way we shall continuously perform the saìkértana-yajïa and continuously chant the Hare Kåñëa mantra. Then at the end of our lives we shall certainly be able to remember Kåñëa, and our program of life will be successful.*

 

Question: Can we really compare Kåñëa's mission at Kurukñetra to the saìkértana mission in Kali-yuga? Arjuna blasted the Kaurava soldiers back to the spiritual sky. The saìkértana-yajïa leaves everyone here in their bodies to carry on with life. Is chanting of Hare Kåñëa enough to solve our day-to-day problems? Arjuna's role as a kñatriya was so clearly defined in the society of his time that he was spared from niggling concerns like paying the rent, keeping his kids out of trouble or getting along with envious neighbors. But nowadays, all of us have so many other duties that it is impossible for us to focus only on saìkértana.

Answer: The saìkértana movement of Çré Caitanya Mahäprabhu is destined to be much more than a weekly kértana in the local marketplace. It is more than a few books passed out here and there. Saìkértana is the yuga-dharma. Yuga means age, saìkértana means glorifying together, and dharma, means essential purpose, religion, occupation and attribute. The main occupation and attribute of our time is mass propaganda: religious, scientific, political, social, commercial, technical, and recreational. In this Information Age, people's success already depends upon publicity, advertising, promotion, media exposure, getting your message into every home, opinion polls, ratings, networking, prime time airplay ... all that is simply a shadow of the substance of saìkértana. If the shadow can provide a livelihood for millions of people all over the world, then the substance most certainly will. Our mission, should we decide to accept it, is to bring the substance forth from the shadow. It's not impossible. In fact, it is a Mission Unstoppable, because it is Kåñëa's own plan.

From shadow to substance

From shadow to substance

The philosophy presented in this book leads to the following three conclusions:

1) Whatever is seen in the shadow, has its source in the substance.

2) To move from the shadow to the substance, we must completely sacrifice our egoism.

3) Doing that requires us to surrender to the instructions of a bona fide spiritual master who perfectly teaches how we may offer pratyakña, anumäna, çabda, dravya, svabhäva, äçaya, prakåti, karma, käla and jéva in sacrifice to éçvara.

But our free movement from shadow to substance is now blocked by evil. Evil is the persistence of ignorance. Ignorance is material knowledge based upon a two- fold egoistic belief: that substance 1) corresponds to sense perception (pratyakña) and 2) coheres to induction (anumäna). Real knowledge, however, comes from çabda, authoritative Vedic testimony, or revelation. The English word revelation is derived from the Latin revelare, which approximately translates as removing the veil that covers real knowledge (svataù-siddha-jïäna). The veil is this most persistent of evils, ignorance. Where does ignorance persist? In the conditioned nature, the sva- bhäva, of the deluded soul. This svabhäva is not difficult to analyze. We do not need to visit a hypnotherapist to know that what persists in our hearts life after life is the desire to be the masters of our own fatesin other words, to be the éçvara. By practicing the Vedic method of knowledge, one leaves the shore of blind egoism and moves through the stages of karma and jïäna along the bridge of sacrifice. At last surpassing these stages to render favorable service to Kåñëa, he or she touches the transcendental shore of Vaikuëöha.

anyäbhiläñitä-çünyaà jïäna-karmädy-anävåtam

änukülyena kåñëänu- çélanaà bhaktir uttamä

One should render transcendental loving service to the Supreme Lord Kåñëa favorably, without contaminated desires or fruitive work and mental speculation.*

This is our real svabhäva, to serve Kåñëa the substance. But when, due to the paradoxical influence of mäyä, our svabhäva serves itself, that is false ego the shadow. In the First Chapter of Bhagavad-gétä, Arjuna proposed to serve his own svabhäva. But Kåñëa's revelation of the Bhagavad-gétä removed the evil of self-referential svabhäva, preserving Arjuna's true nature.

In the Bhagavad-gétä we can see that Arjuna desired not to fight with his brothers and relations just to satisfy his own personal desires. But when he heard the message of the Lord, Çrémad Bhagavad-gétä, he changed his decision and served the Lord. ... The fighting was there, the friendship was there, Arjuna was there, and Kåñëa was there, but Arjuna became a different person by devotional service.*

 

Let the evil that threatens us be similarly removed.

 

 

سلسلة كتب الخيال العلمي : ويليام جراهام الحالم: ويليام جراهام وممالك العالم المتوازي