Inquiries Into the Absolute: Digest 151, Moon Landing

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Digest 151, January 10th, 2006. Answers by His Holiness Romapada Swami Maharaja

**You are welcome to send in your questions to HH Romapada Swami at

iskcondc with the word "Question" included in the subject line. Moon

Landing ************ Q: When we look at the sky at night do we see the moon or

some other planet like Rahu? I have a lot of trouble explaining and

understanding the whole lunar controversy. I am willing to accept that the

lunar mission landed elsewhere other than the moon. I just feel like a stubborn

idiot when trying to defend Srila Prabhupada's comments on the matter by using

the theory that the whole landing was filmed in some fake stage. The hard bit

is to accept that the lunar mission traveled towards the moon that we see in

the night sky, but didn’t get there. Answer: Srila Prabhupada, based on his

firm conviction in the Vedic truth, challenged the lunar-mission on two

accounts: (1) it is not possible to reach the heavenly moon by mechanical

means; (2) the moon is not a barren desert devoid of life. According to Vedic

evidence, the moon is counted among the heavenly planets and is inhabited by

heavenly denizens who live for 10,000 years and is presided by the Deity

Candra; only those with much pious credits can enter the moon, and that only

after attaining a suitable body fit to live there. Even if humans made the

effort for mechanical travel towards the moon, we are dependent on the

authority of Candra to actually reach there. Therefore, Srila Prabhupada was

convinced that man could not have landed on the moon. One explanation offered

by Prabhupada was perhaps they were deluded and diverted by higher authorities

to the invisible planet Rahu (incidentally, Rahu is connected to the ascending

node of the moon, astronomically.) He also offered other possible explanations,

including one that the whole thing might have been faked (which, by the way, is

a prominent proposal by several modern writers). In any case, the basic

principle that Prabhupada wanted us to understand is the unreliability of

empirical methods which are always open to question. At present, we do not have

sufficient empiric facts to prove either way, while based on Vedic assertions,

to the contrary, he urged us to think and question rather than blindly accept

the claim of man landing on the moon and finding it lifeless. One of the

scientist-disciples of Prabhupada, Sadaputa dasa, who has done much work in

laying the scientific framework for understanding the cosmological materials

from Bhagavatam, explores this subject from a higher-dimensional perspective: A

higher dimensional realm may have a 3-dimensional location, just as a

three-dimensional object has its location in two-dimensional space. For

example, if one needs to reach a certain office in Manhattan, one could move

up, down and across the grid of streets and arrive at the right address, and

yet may not be able to perceive the office one is looking for; to reach the

actual destination, they may have to further move 50 stories in the vertical

dimension, and a being whose sense-perception is restricted to two-dimensions

only cannot access this region. (Cf. Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy by

Sadaputa Dasa, Ch 3) This is a crude example but by way of drawing a parallel,

even supposing that astronauts might have reached the phenomenal moon –- which

the event itself is not beyond question -- even so, they still could not have

made the higher-dimensional travel necessary to perceive the moon's heavenly

inhabitants and surroundings. Being restricted in the gross realm, they would

have had to return with the impressions of a lifeless planet. For those who are

scientifically trained and keen on such details, there are works as mentioned

above that analyze this subject with technical rigor. For our purposes or in

preliminary discussions with others, however, it would suffice to stick to the

basic principle of establishing faith in Vedic authority, which is our goal,

rather than get into involved technical debates. Important Related Digests:

Mars and Moon Missions: Digest 151

http://iskcondc.org/cgi-bin/renderphilo.pl?digestname=digest149 About Sun and

Stars: Digest 150

http://iskcondc.org/cgi-bin/renderphilo.pl?digestname=digest150

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