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Getting to Know Him, the Absolute TruthA Conversation with University Students© Hridayananda das GoswamiStudent 1: So far I’m working under one philosophy professor whose main world-view would be that our systems of logic come from experience. We extrapolate from experience.HDG: Oh, I agree with that. What examples does he give of it? Student 1: Physics. The different models of physics arise from what you want to test if you observe large objects or regular size objects within our field of perception, you see them moving around and you can form some concepts, ways of describing their motion — Newtonian physics. That will work for things in this scale. If you are looking at things much larger, on the scale of the universe, they have different properties and there you apply quantum mechanics. So this professor says that logic will change and it is fallible. HDG: Yes. One important consequence is that spiritual logic is also based on experience, spiritual experience. In other words, God’s properties are spiritual, not material and, therefore, there would have to be a spiritual logic based on spiritual experience. But there is an imposing idea among some intellectuals, that logic is God, logic is absolute, and even God cannot do anything illogical. Of course, nothing God does is illogical — something that you will understand if you have the proper foundation of spiritual experience — although it may seem illogical according to material logic. For example, a plane is taking off. Now, that is against ordinary logic. If you had a large piece of metal on a runway, it wouldn’t go up, it would tend to go down, but there are other principles such as combustion and thermodynamics. So someone who is not aware of thermodynamics would consider it illogical for a huge metal machine to go up, instead of down. Similarly, if you have spiritual experience, then there is a whole new type of logic based on that spiritual experience. Conscious beings everywhereHDG: There is another professor in the philosophy department who wrote a book called The Reenchantment of the World. The idea is that in previous times people were aware that there is life within nature — not only such ordinary living things as mosquitoes and alligators, but gods or some type of superior life inhabiting nature — and that all of nature, the sun, the moon, the wind, everything has personality behind it. Yet there is that tremendous effort by Western science to demystify everything, to say that no, there is nothing except molecules composed of atoms, which are moving around according to physical laws, and that’s all there is out there. Everything else is just superstition, primitive superstition. Well, now some people see that this view doesn’t really work, there is something out there, it is not just dead matter, those are the limitations of science. Ultimately, it is very convenient for the scientists to reduce everything down to matter, because then everything in principle can be manipulated, controlled, transformed. It is a very convenient world to live in.Student 1: But it’s not that way. HDG: No, it’s not that way. We can understand that mentality, the type of person who enters a situation, a room and immediately wants to control everything and everyone. And there is that idea in science also. The idea that everything, in principle, can be controlled and manipulated — in principle, because obviously there are some material things they haven’t gotten around to controlling yet, but it’s just a question of time. So then, if you introduce the idea of something that even in principle cannot be controlled by you — not even theoretically, not even given a certain amount of time, because by its own nature is not subject to your control — that spoils everything. This whole monstrous attempt at controlling the universe fails. There was an attempt made to simply declare, in a very medieval way, that anything that cannot in principle be controlled by scientists doesn’t exist. That was a very simple solution: in the name of up to the minute philosophy, the latest, they just declared that it didn’t exist. Consciousness doesn’t exist. When Sadaputa Das, Dr. Richard Thompson, the author of several scientific books, gave a lecture at the Philosophy Club, at the University of Maryland, they almost killed him because he talked about consciousness. And they kept insisting that “no, there is no such thing”. They tried to declare that there is no God or soul. That’s one strategy, snottiness. Where you blow your nose at something, and in a very snotty way you say, “Oh, everyone knows that. All rational people know that it doesn’t even exist. Rational people don’t accept that.” Yes, rational people meaning you and your friends. Then they set up some arbitrary analytic criteria, which the theists couldn’t pass. It is like saying, “well no, it’s not that we don’t allow minorities in our school or in our company, we just have certain requirements that unfortunately none of them can meet.” “If something will be accepted as knowledge, here are the requirements; I’m sorry, you didn’t make it.” It is like sending out a letter to the religion department, “unfortunately your application has not been accepted” and declaring that all these things that bother them don’t exist. Of course, you can make definitions to exclude from reality anything that you don’t like or that you can’t really control. You can make a definition in which that particular thing is excluded so that it doesn’t exist anymore, at least within your system of thought. What we call material logic is a logic based on the way this world operates. And so if another world operates in a different way, logic derived from this world won’t be relevant there. It may be a little useful, but ultimately some other process will be needed. Student 1: Many physicists like that idea of control, computer scientists also want that idea, indeed, that’s why they like computers so much, because computers obey and work the way they are expected to. HDG: Many of these atheistic people, materialistic people, are the ones who have always tried to explain religious claims in terms of psychology: people say there is a God — Freud started it — because of this and that psychological, emotional reason. In other words, there is no God, but people say there is because of certain psychological needs. Of course, that doesn’t constitute a proof, it’s more like intellectual mud slinging. So here we find the same thing. You start with a basic premise, which in this case is more psychological and intellectual — the whole world should be controlled, or it would be nice to control the world, it would be convenient — and then you build up a philosophy that allows you to think you are doing just that. Anything that rocks the boat, you throw it overboard. But there is a variable, which is the soul. The soul doesn’t lend itself to the same type of analysis that material things do. Water boils at a certain temperature. If you can make sure that nothing else is happening in the kitchen that will upset it, if you have the proper conditions, then it will boil at the same temperature. Now, if you try to analyze a person, you run into the problem of free will — people may change their mind. Maybe someone in the past used to always do something in a certain way, but today he decided to do it a different way. Why? He just decided. So the scientists tried to get around this problem that human beings don’t cooperate with the progressive march of science because they keep making their own decisions. They don’t react to things mechanically all the time. At first they tried to get around this by saying, “well, we just don’t know enough factors, if we knew all the factors we could actually predict behavior.” (If you can’t predict, then there is no science.) If you can’t make the statement “in the future, as in the past, water will boil at this temperature, given certain conditions,” you haven’t discovered a law of nature. It is a natural law that water boils at a certain temperature and the water can’t decide, “well, today I don’t think I will boil because I’m feeling a little more peaceful, I don’t feel like boiling.” Or “I’m tired of being manipulated, so I’m not going to boil today.” With human beings, sometimes you can predict because you can have probability. You can make a study, for example, and find out that if you go into a crowded movie theater and yell “fire!” in the average movie theater 17% of the people will be trampled to death, 80% will run that way, and 3% will have heart attacks. Still, to say exactly what a particular individual will do is really hard. In a particular movie theater it may happen all the opposite, they may just do something different, they may not follow the norm. It is hard to be scientific with people. To some extent people do act mechanically, but there is an element of free will, which is something completely different because free will is a spiritual thing. It may be corrupted materially, but free will cannot be understood except in terms of a conscious person. When we say “free will” we imply that there is some conscious decision, and that ability to make a decision is a property of the soul. We don’t say that material things make decisions, such as water deciding to boil, the real water we have in this world. If you strike a pack of billiard balls and they all scatter, they don’t decide to go here and there; they are responding unconsciously. But a person is a different type of thing. Matter and spiritHDG: Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita that there are two energies: the material energy, just things, and the decision makers, the souls. Souls are different although, in a sense, there is oneness and difference — they are both energies and that’s why they can coexist. Since you are a conscious being you can coexist with a body, you can function in this world. You are surrounded by many things that are not exactly like you, they are material objects — your shirt is a different type of thing than yourself — but you can use them. So there must be something that keeps you in the same universe with the shirt. There is some similarity, but at the same time you are different. The shirt doesn’t decide to be worn by you or to be picked up by you, but you decide to pick up the shirt. So there is a soul and there is a body.This is common sense. Philosophers such as Plato and Descartes came to the natural conclusion that there are two things; the body and the soul, or the mind. Yet now you get all these obnoxious people that through logic try to deny that, in the name of philosophy. They all get stuck on this question that doesn’t seem very difficult for us to handle: how do they interact? Indeed, Aristotle challenged Plato’s philosophy on this point: “granted, there is an eternal world and a temporary world, but how do they affect each other?” The answer is obvious: because they are both energies of God, they are both existing within the same system. Electricity and metal can also interact, a little filament in a light bulb, a metal wire can conduct electricity. So there are two different types of energy, one is metal and one is electricity, and yet they can work together. Similarly, the body can conduct consciousness. Matter can conduct consciousness but matter is not conscious. The metal is not electricity but it conducts electricity and thus electricity inhabits the metal. Student 1: Where do you get the electricity from in the first place? HDG: That’s just a type of fire. Student 1: From the scientific models that we have, we can’t say anything for sure. What makes up electricity and what makes up the metal aren’t that different; they are different poles of the same thing. HDG: That’s all right. In the same way, we can say that Krishna has one energy that acts in different ways. There is oneness and there is difference, and you can emphasize the oneness or emphasize the difference, depending on your perspective. Ultimately, the soul can work without the body. A dead body that can no longer conduct spiritual energy, it is useless, like a burnt-out light bulb. Now, if you say that by manipulating the physical light bulb you can modify the light in different ways, that doesn’t prove that the light bulb produces the light. In the same way, if you touch the brain in different areas you can modify consciousness — if you fool around with the conductor you are going to modify the manifestation of what is being conducted. That’s an obvious point. So all these experiments in the brain don’t indicate or suggest that the brain produces consciousness. It is a childish idea that consciousness is produced by the brain, there is no evidence of that. The brain conducts consciousness. Student 1: But there is no evidence of that. HDG: There is spiritual evidence. If there is no evidence this way or that way materially, then why are they so eager to conclude that it happens the material way? You see, they betray their own desires, as in a Freudian slip you betray or you reveal what you want to be true. Let’s say you are presented with a picture a little ambiguous and they ask: “what’s happening here?” And you say: “well this is a ship sinking in the ocean, and everyone is dying.” And the psychologist says: “hmm.” “And this little speck over here is a little kid. His mother just threw him overboard because she hates him.” “Oh, really?” At that point the psychologist starts interpreting. So in the same way, here we have a somewhat ambiguous situation. We have consciousness, we have the physical brain, and we are trying to figure out which way it goes. I think it is very revealing to see the way people interpret it because it reveals something about the desires, the hopes of certain people. Certain people desire to believe, and they do believe it because they want it, that consciousness is produced by the brain. That is an interesting desire, because epiphenomenalism — to say that consciousness is a by-product of the brain, that there is no consciousness existing above and beyond the physical brain — disqualifies us, as living beings, from perpetual existence. We get knocked out of the box. They want to believe that. That is a very curious mental frame, if you think about it. Here is a group of people who want to believe that they are going to die, even though there is no real evidence of that. The body certainly dies, that we know. Now, if we say that consciousness has his own existence beyond the body, then what happens at the time of death is like a whole new ball game, and we need to figure out what happens to the consciousness. And not only at the time of death, even right now. “If I do have a consciousness that exists beyond the body, how did that happen? Do I have some type of responsibility in relation to that consciousness? Maybe the body is not so important, what should I do then?” It opens up a whole new dimension of responsibilities, of inquiry. Yet certain people want to avoid all that. They just want to brush it all aside and believe that consciousness is produced by the body, because by believing that you don’t have to worry about spiritual things. They also want to believe that their existence will be terminated, that there is a definite term in it. Since they could believe something else, it is a very interesting thing: why is it that some people want to believe they are going to die? It is a type of death wish. They are frightened by the idea that they are not going to die, or they are irritated by it, or disturbed by it. They are disturbed by life itself. The idea of perpetual life doesn’t appeal to them, because if it did appeal to them they would go that way. The evidence doesn’t at all discourage eternal life. There is nothing at all within the realm of science to discourage one from thinking that he is eternal. Material science may not confirm it, but it in no way discourages it. It is a whole separate field of inquiry. Student 1: What is spiritual evidence? There are already many material evidences. HDG: Well, to speak of material evidences for a spiritual fact, that statement wouldn’t even make sense. When people take to Krishna consciousness, they are able to give up certain materialistic activities, and they do it peacefully, so how does that happen? Of course, you could try to explain that materially in different ways, and some people do that. There have been books written trying to find out from a sociological perspective why someone joins the Hare Krishna movement. “It tends to attract this kind of person, with this kind of psychological background, and this and that, and it fulfills certain needs.” They tried to find the patterns and find what material needs are being fulfilled, but that wasn’t a very fruitful line of reasoning. It didn’t really work. It seems that people join the Hare Krishna movement because of Krishna, which makes the sociological computer go tilt. Are all “scientific” demonstrations scientific?HDG: Just as logic is based on experience, it is also based on certain assumptions, because without certain assumptions experience is not coherent. A particular material event can take place, but unless you have certain ways of organizing that experience within your mind, it is not really coherent.Student 1: Which came first, the experience or the organization? HDG: They both always exist. The chicken or the egg. I think that we exist, and we experience, and we have the capacity to experience. Now, regarding material evidence for a spiritual thing, because it is experienced materially, you can also derive from it a certain material logic. All you have to do is just declare: from now on, there is a new law. If we imagine, hypothetically, what would be material evidence for Krishna, what would it mean to have material evidence for Krishna? Or material evidence for the soul. Would it mean that we could see the soul? Student 1: It would have an effect on something tangible. HDG: Well fine, then we will say that it has the effect of life. Student 1: They are saying, “well we don’t see any evidence, we can’t even talk about it unless. . .” HDG: That’s the whole point: they have a double standard. They are motivated, they have a certain world-view and they are out to prove it. That’s the problem. There are two divisions of science. There is hard science, where you have to prove things, but then if what you are trying to do sort of replaces religion they lower the standards. If you are trying to prove something like evolution, they lower the standards a lot because they are sponsoring that. Because they want it so much. In hard science you have to show that this explanation is a necessary explanation of what happened. Now take the whole realm of historical phenomena, like the theory of evolution, cosmogony, origins of the universe, cosmology, things that obviously you cannot repeat. You can’t repeat the creation of the universe and yet you have to explain it. In ordinary scientific things you can simulate or you can create certain conditions and actually repeat the experiment, you have that facility of repeatedly causing the event to take place. But when we deal with historical things, then obviously you can’t even simulate the origin of the universe, at least with the present technology. So how can you observe it? In what sense is it empirical? When it comes to explaining things like that, then, the requirement is lowered so that you can give an explanation that is merely compatible with the evidence. Student 1: It could work. HDG: Yes, it is compatible with the evidence. So suddenly necessity as a principle of science, or observation, is replaced by the lesser principle of mere compatibility. In other words, here is a bunch of bones and rocks and here is a theory compatible with all that. Student 1: But it’s the best one they could find at the time. HDG: Well, that depends a lot on taste, you know. Different generations of scientists have their own taste. Now my question is, are we really talking about science when the requirement is merely compatibility? Student 1: I would say so. HDG: Why? Student 1: No one is absolutely sure of anything. HDG: No, but I can give a spiritual explanation that is compatible. You see, the whole claim to fame of material science is that they can do what religion can’t do. Right here and now they can put it before your eyes. But suddenly, when it comes to explaining historical things, things that happened a long time ago and that you can’t observe now, there is a lower requirement. Now you have to give a merely compatible explanation. That is clearly a different type of reasoning — to say that this explanation is compatible with the data is not the same as to say that this explanation is proved by the data. Compatibility is not a type of proof, it only means that there is no contradiction. I can think of a very wild explanation that may not contradict the data. Student 1: It’s true but the only way you would decide among them is to go with what seems best to you. HDG: [Laughs] But wait a second, is that empirical science? That’s my whole point: are we doing science right now? Student 1: It’s science but it’s not objective. HDG: Well, is there such a thing as non-objective science? For the average person, what makes science science is precisely that it takes us beyond the merely subjective into the objective realm. In fact, that’s why the Greeks were such geometry nuts, because it was the only way to escape superstition and mythology and get to something that appeared to be solid and objective. That is the attraction of mathematics, isn’t it? Logical statements, not mere opinion. This is one type of science: if they predict there is going to be an solar eclipse on a certain day, it really happens. Or in the realm of medicine, if I take a pill and it cures the disease I had. That’s what we expect of science. Something really happens and you can see it really happened, it is not just belief. So they have their ordinary scientific realm, where they build things and manipulate material energy in different ways and it does some good for people. If I pick up the telephone right now I can really call someone in some other place. But then there is a whole other branch of what they would like to include as science, where things suddenly take on a completely different look. They are not dealing any longer with proven , observed facts, but with something very speculative and imaginative and yet they also want to call it science. Why do they want to call it science? Precisely because they want to explain the big things. They are going for the grand slam. They want to explain where the universe came from and where man comes from. They want to explain those things because there is a political propensity in man, what you might call the controlling propensity. So scientists not only want to explain things, but they want to establish their authority. They want to answer the big questions. As I said, when it gets into the big questions you deal with things that already took place. You cannot, let’s say, go in the laboratory, begin with a little germ and actually make it mutate into insect and make that mutate into something else, maybe a reptile, and make that mutate again. They would like to do that, but they can’t. What if you could walk into a laboratory and actually see that happening? What if you could walk into the Smithsonian Institute or Stanford University and actually watch things mutating and species transforming one into the other? The problem is that you can’t do that. Student 1: They are starting to do genetic engineering. HDG: That’s very good. That proves our point — that there is a conscious intelligent controller. That is the whole point of religion. Student 1: Not necessarily. They are just taking their place in nature in this sense. HDG: Accepting that statement to be valid, that they are taking the place of nature, we have to assume that nature is a conscious person. Yes, because if a conscious person replaces nature, then we have to assume that there is some analogy there. Student 1: A conscious person is doing it in an ordered, systematic way to reproduce it quicker than nature HDG: There is no proof of that. That doesn’t follow. That is a very irresponsible speculation. Let’s say we have an unknown, x, and that unknown is replaced by a conscious person. So x equals a conscious person. All right, now let’s put a little squiggly f next to the x, the function of x. “Replaced by” can easily be indicated with an equal sign. Student 1: It might not be an equal replacement. HDG: But if it is an unequal replacement you haven’t proven anything. Because the whole strength of the argument is that we have replaced the act of nature. If you have done something else that doesn’t occur in nature, if you have done something more or something less than what occurs in nature, then you haven’t arrived at an explanation, at a good theory. Student 1: If a person messes with the genetic structure of a frog, a baby frog comes out red instead of green, maybe. We can’t say that nature can also do this. HDG: Yes, but to show how a higher being evolves out of a lower one, that is extremely difficult. There are serious problems there, which Sadaputa Das brings up in his books. In order for things to evolve, thousands of different modifications have to take place. Now, would they all occur simultaneously? If they don’t all occur simultaneously, each modification would have to survive on its own merit, and would have no merit until the whole process was completed. Let’s say for an eye to evolve. Darwin was also bewildered by why there are eyes. Now obviously, once an eye evolves it definitely gives you an advantage for survival, because if you are crawling around in some slime somewhere and you have eyeballs and the other slime crawlers don’t have eyeballs, that gives you a big advantage. So probably the eyeball slime crawlers would survive. Now in order for an eye to develop, you are talking about thousands, if not millions, of separate processes that have to take place. And each one of those would have to survive to prepare for the next one. The basic point is the soul. The soul is required. If you say that there is no evidence for the soul, if the game if rigged, if the materialists set up all the criteria and all the ground rules, then obviously they win the game. But the question would be, are the ground rules neutral? Is it really a fair game? Let’s say you and I could have some type of contest. And I could design it in such a way so that I always win, because everything you do doesn’t count. The question is, how will the materialists demonstrate that the criteria they set up are in fact neutral? Doesn’t the very concept of neutrality imply some prior knowledge? To give you an example, I’m trying to design a test and I want to design the test in such a way that it is neutral, it doesn’t give any advantage to any student in particular. I need to know something about language, I need to know the material myself, I need to know what the different students have read and studied, and what the answers are. So, in what sense is it reasonable to say that someone sets up neutral standards in order to find something in nature that he doesn’t know? We have to accept certain types of evidence and we have to give definitions. This is what we consider to be evidence, these are the criteria for evidence, and these are the assumptions under which we are operating. We must assume certain things to be self-evidently true, otherwise we can’t get started. You set all that up, and once you set all that up, then you bring a particular statement or a particular so-called evidence, and then you see whether it fits. Is it a fair ball or a fowl ball? It just depends on where you draw the lines. How do you know whether it is a fair ball or a fowl ball? If what you can show doesn’t qualify as evidence, it is merely your opinion. Everything is subjective because, if it is not subjective, no one perceives it. Science doesn’t deal with imperceptible facts, it has to be perceptible in some way or another, either directly or indirectly. Something entirely imperceptible has nothing to do with science, but every statement has its subjective aspect. If I say the sky is blue, that is subjective also: it is something that a person perceives. All facts have their subjective side. Indeed, all facts are facts or they become facts exactly because they can be perceived by some person. Something that cannot be subjectively perceived would never be called a fact, because no one would know about it. Now, if you say something is merely subjective, that implies on your part a knowledge of the truth. If I say that on the moon there are little green men with antennas coming out of their head, in order for you to deny that statement, you would have to know what is on the moon. And you would have to know what is on the moon in all the different dimensions of reality — you can’t really deny something unless you have complete knowledge. Otherwise, what is your denial? You can say, “well, we have these criteria for evidence — to be accepted as knowledge, something has to pass this and this test — and it didn’t pass the test.” That is a different thing, that is just your definition. Then all you can say is “this particular assertion did not pass my test.” But to actually deny something in a more authoritative way, you have to justify your criteria. Now, if you want to say that something is subjective, or objective, you have to prove that. So you can say, “I accept these criteria.” Then you have to prove that. So you say, “that is based on these assumptions.” Then you have to prove that. So Aristotle said this type of reasoning forms an infinite regress, it doesn’t really get you anywhere. No matter what anyone says, you can ask “prove it” and, as soon as they prove it, you can say “well, prove that.” This, Aristotle said, is like an army on route, retreating, but the army has to take a stand somewhere. You need to have some first principles. The foundation of knowledgeHDG: The idea is there in certain types of Western philosophy, probably beginning with Aristotle, that first principles should be extremely simple and they should be somehow derived from material experience. Aristotle wanted to do that and many other people tried to do that. “Let’s start with simple principles derived from experience, principles any reasonably sane person is going to accept, not argue about, and let’s build up from there. So when we finally get to our conclusion, everyone will accept it, it will be a necessary conclusion.” The problem is that it doesn’t really work, it has never worked up to now.We accept Bhagavad-gita as a first principle, we accept as a first principle that Krishna is God — you may have faith in that or you may have experienced it. Now, if Krishna is God then everything He says in the Bhagavad-gita is true. If Krishna is God and He is speaking sincerely in Bhagavad-gita, His intention is not to delude people but to enlighten them. Student 1: Then the rest will follow. HDG: Yes, then the rest follows and it is logical. In order to do logic you have to say “if this is true, or assuming this is true, then this is also true.” Because in logic you study relationships, statements have logical relationships between them, isn’t it? Logic means: if this is so, then that would follow; or because this is so, that follows; or this is true and that is the cause of it. When we say “logic” we are talking about logical relationships. And as I said, somewhere along the line you have to assume that something is true, otherwise you can’t get the game started. So if Krishna is God, then what we say is logical. Why not assume that Krishna is God? You can say, “well, because it doesn’t follow from a long chain of reasoning beginning with some simple mathematical statement.” But why should we assume that the first principle should be mathematical in nature, that it should be derived from material experience? We can also not make that assumption, we don’t have to make that assumption. Indeed, we can assume the opposite. We can assume that the first thing is something of a completely different nature. We assume that Krishna is God, and that is something we can experience spiritually. You can experience that there is a God named Krishna. He has other names also but “Krishna” will do just fine. So now if we assume that Krishna is God, then everything else is extremely logical, and we have every right to make that our first assumption. It is not against the law — this is a free country. Now to say that the logic you are studying in you headache classes is somehow a better logic, would really mean to say that your opening assumption is better. Obviously, if you make a better opening assumption you will probably get a better logic out of it. Do you see? Student 1: The only answer I have there is that it doesn’t seem probable, assuming that God is Krishna or that there is a God. . . HDG: It doesn’t seem probable among a community of people who don’t believe that. So — Plato made this point — association is very important. Student 1: Right. HDG: If you want to do philosophy, you should associate with philosophers. Now, if you are here in this community of devotees and you say “oh, that’s Krishna’s mercy,” everyone will nod their head, “yeah that’s right, it is Krishna’s mercy.” Now if you make that statement in your philosophy class, people will think you were brainwashed by the Hare Krishnas. Therefore, to say that things seem probable is really begging the question — probable to whom? Student 1: To each person. . . HDG: Well no, because in India, for example, they will think the more probable explanation would be that Krishna did it, or that God did it. And maybe at the genetic engineering lab at Stanford they might see it in a different way. (Although, who knows, maybe they are secretly chanting Hare Krishna in Palo Alto.) But “probability” technically indicates some kind of mathematical percentage, based on some type of pattern that has emerged out of an experiment, which in a sense has nothing to do with what we are talking about here. So if you mean “feasibility” or it makes sense — to whom? Again, that would be a purely subjective statement. If all someone could say is, “I don’t like that explanation,” then they are not saying very much. Should such a person be called a philosopher or a scientist? If after all their hot air and blab, blab, blab, what they ultimately resort to is a rather plebeian statement, “well, I don’t like that explanation,” they are no more a philosopher than anyone else that makes that statement. Any truck driver can say “I don’t like that explanation.” But when you are a philosopher you are supposed to be a little fancier than that. So, getting to the point now of our assumption that Krishna is God, what is wrong with that assumption? There is nothing from the philosophical point of view. We have every right to assume that. Student 1: Why do you assume that? HDG: Because we experience it. Student 1: You experience something and you say, well this is what it is. HDG: I may be correctly identifying it. Student 1: Theoretically identifying it. HDG: So you say theoretically I can be wrong. But theoretically anything can be anything. Theoretically the moon could be made of cheese. Now, it is possible within the realm of pure logic that the moon be made of muenster cheese. Let’s say you took upon yourself the task to assert that the moon is made out of muenster cheese, and then to explain everything we have ever experienced about the moon so that it is compatible with the fact the moon is made of cheese. And you could explain that. And if you live among people that wanted to believe that, they would probably accept it as the best current theory to explain the moon. Now, you say theoretically I’m wrong about Krishna, but that statement really is not interesting. In other words, you have to be willing to, if you are actually professional, to start a different process. You would have to say, “you had some experience that was so compelling to you, that it led you to conclude that Krishna is God.” When we say that a person has had a type of experience, we are also implying that he possesses a certain faculty. If I say that this man is seeing colors, I am saying that he has a faculty to perceive colors. So to say that a person has a particular type of knowledge is to say something about the faculties that he possesses. Therefore, the statement that we experience that Krishna is God implies something very significant, namely, that human beings are equipped with a particular faculty by which they can perceive God. Student 1: But wait, you jumped ahead already. I can’t really. . . HDG: I’m just drawing out some of the implications of my statement to set up something that you can study. Now when I say that I have experienced that Krishna is God, what I am also saying or what is implicit in my statement is that we, all of us, possess the faculty to experience God. That is the nature of consciousness, that it has the power to experience God. So I am asserting that you and I and everyone else, by our being conscious entities, we have certain faculties and powers of perception. There are certain types of things that we can perceive and there are certain processes that will bring us to that awareness. Student 1: Well, they are trying to find an extra route. HDG: No, because they have this fear. They are biased against religion, they operate with the a-priori assumption that the nature of religious experience is such that it ruins your objectivity. When you assume that, what you are assuming is that religious experience is all a big hallucination. Because if by religious processes you experience something that really exists, it would in fact enhance your objectivity — the more you understand what is really out there, the more objective you are. And, conversely, the more you imagine something is out there that is not out there, the more you lose your objectivity. (They think that religious experience is so powerful that you lose your mind.) Therefore, the very assumption that by religious experience you lose your objectivity means to assume that it is false, before you even investigate it. So based on that fear they do everything, they study religion through every possible means except the one that would work, which is to actually see what it is. Student 1: The biggest pioneer in genetic engineering was Gregor Mendel, and he was a monk. HDG: Maybe he was doing genetics without trying to falsify religion or replace it. Now, going back to my original statement — Krishna is God — you said that I may be wrong, so now we are discussing what would be reasonable ways in which we could try to verify, or falsify, particular statements in religious contexts. That question I don’t think has ever been seriously considered by all the sociologists of religion, psychologists, and anthropologists. They can’t seriously confront it, because that would force them to get involved in something that, for them, is very sinister and menacing — self-realization. You see, they don’t have the tools to seriously confront that, they are not able to devise any efficient ways of studying religious statements. Student 1: They are trying to use the same methods as everyone else. HDG: Which are just a joke. One thing they try to do is to study religion structurally — in this and that religion they have certain social hierarchy, they reinforce their beliefs through certain means, they have authority structures like this and that. That’s about as stupid as trying to study the truth value of a particular statement by studying the throat, the larynx, and the tongue. Yet, that type of stupidity you can practically see in many places. For example, there are some sociologists that think they have made a big discovery when they say: “we have similar types of hierarchical structures operating in these different religions, hence beneath the apparent differences in dogmas and doctrines the same basic reality is there.” That is as “intelligent” as saying that here are several people speaking different philosophies and ideas — some apparently true, some apparently false — but “we have discovered the same physiological events taking place, so we will have to rethink all our notions of truth and falsity because we have discovered that they use the same grammatical structures, hence the differences are only apparent and truth is relative.” Then the question is, if we state that Krishna is God, can a materialist or a scientist or even a speculative philosopher, is he really qualified to devise a reliable means of evaluating that statement? He probably isn’t. That’s why they avoid those statements: they recognize their own inability. Up to that point, that would be fine. You could say, “well, that’s an honest position to take, they are admitting that they can’t deal with statements like that.” Well, see, what they say next is: “but still we are philosophers and, therefore, since we can’t deal with those types of statements, those statements are not philosophical.” In other words, they claim to have a monopoly. Rather than saying: “maybe I’m not a very good philosopher if I can’t deal with those statements.” You see, they could also take that position, but they don’t. They rather take the proud position. You can go one of two ways. You can say, “maybe I’m not a philosopher or, maybe that statement is not philosophy.” One is the humble road and one is the proud road. Now, they take the proud way instead of admitting: “my Western tradition hasn’t prepared me to deal with those statements.” These points are not illogical and good philosophy professors should be the first to admit that they have merit. There are some honest philosophy professors who will admit that these are valid statements and who themselves raise some of the same questions. Those who are pretentious, however, may try to avoid the issue. Student 1: So what you come down to is that different types of people will choose certain axioms to start with, and then build their models off that to carry out their purpose. HDG: Yes. Student 1: And one is not necessarily better than the other. HDG: Although it may be better. Student 1: Or maybe not. HDG: You see, what I’m getting at is that there is big bluffing going on when these big universities pay people tens of thousands of dollars to teach philosophy. Of course, there is philosophy built into all the departments, every department has a certain philosophy that guides them. Although it is their own particular doctrine. In a sense they are teaching their own religion, they are teaching their own world-view, while saying that people are not supposed to do that. You see, they have this silly idea that there is a type of neutral state in which you have no values. Student 1: That doesn’t exist. HDG: Right, so why discriminate against religion? Student 1: No reason to. |
