The Science of Krsna Consciousness

[leyh]

In what ways can Krsna Consciousness be considered a science?

 

[Audarya lila]

Only in the sense that if you follow a certain process you will get a certain result. The scientific process is one in which a hypothesis is made and experiments are designed and performed in order to investigate if the hypothesis fits with observable data. If one says that hypotheses are generated by inspiration from the supersoul then in that sense also krsna consciousness may be likened to the scientific process. 'Spiritual scientists' who have received inspiration from Krsna experiemented with their consciousness and received data that fit with their inspiration and if we follow the road that they have laid out in the form of the scriptures we will recieve 'data' in the form or altered/spiritualized consciousness which will confirm for us the experience of these great spiritual scientists.

 

Your servant,

Audarya lila dasa

[amanpeter]

Scriptures are the manuals

Sadhus are the living proof

Sri Guru is the catalyst

Self is the laboratory

 

Krsna provides all that is needed

Through chanting the Holy Names.

 

Seeing is believing!

Proof is in the pudding!

 

 

 

[This message has been edited by amanpeter (edited 09-09-2001).]

[Janus]

Krsna consciousness is purely scientific. It establishes the incontrovertable, pure objectivity through empiric tests. This is only seemingly not so to one who has no knowledge that the senses can be spiritualized. The scientific process consists of a methodology for testing the validity of whatever propositions one hypothosises. This method consists of the application of pure reason to the data recieved through the senses and whatever mechanisms, like microscopes, telescopes etc., that are needed to assist them in both the acquisition and in the analysis of the data that the senses recieve. Through the scienticic process of Krsna consciousness pure reason is actually developed, and the senses become also purified, coverted to a capacity never experienced in the conditioned state and to a capability of discrimination through touch, taste, sight, scent and sound of spiritual tangibility, to the perception of absolute truth or of that which is is known by the soul. This is Raja Vidyam, Raja Guyam, the highest science. It refutes Lockes postulate that God cannot be known and thus destroys completely the basis for Western demoniac society that is simply based upon exploitation and selfish interests by smashing its model to pieces and thus freeing the conditioned soul from fear of being considered unscientifi, or sentimental hor even allowing oneself to hope that there is something more. Krsna consciousness is a "seeing", rather than a "blind" faith, and this is provable.

That is my opinion of how Krsna consciousness is scientific. Needless to say I do not understand it myself very well.

Hri bol

[Janus]

PS One thing to avoid though are the by products of this experiement such as the ability to upscale subatomic particals to corporeal manifestation, or to refute the second law of thermodynamics apparently by creating energy out of seemingly nothing. This "trick" is a minor development of sidhas and has some pragmatic usages such as an ability to maninfest fruit trees and lost keys seemingly out of air. I don't believe this, but then again when one states that they believe or disbelieve in something that is merely a revelation (or it should be) that they do not themselves actually know. Krsna consciousness does not depend upon "belief" but upon faith for its sucessful employment. Faith in Guru and Gouranga and in ones Godbrothers and Godsisters through Krsna's grace and Guru's guidance to triumph against all adversity.

A great deal of problem has been occaisioned by our consideration (conditioned), that we must blindly believe. But Srila Prabhupada has said (I have it in an article from an old BTG in which he is speaking to a Yogi) that we must never "believe" in this manner. We have buried our doubts through fear that if we examine to closely that Krsna consciousness might disolve into some human contrivance; the effect of Mayvadi and Sunyavadi upon us through our cultures infection with such concepts over the last some hundred or so years.

Hari bol

 

[leyh]

Dear Audarya lila dasa and amanpeter prabhu:

 

I thank the both of you for so intelligently commenting on the science of Krsna Consciousness.

 

 

 

 

[Janus]

Of course it is a mark of the intelligence of the devotees that it takes about twenty-five to thirty years after first hearing that Krsna consciousness is scientific for anyone of them to ask "how" it is scientific.

I guess that just goes to show that most are acting in accordance with an emotionaal impetus rather than from a philosophical justification.

Bearing this all in mind I guess we should be encouraged if it takes less than twenty years for another intelligent question to be posted on this thread and should be patient.

 

[amanpeter]

It is possible for the impetus to be emotional, the foundation philosophical and the process scientific. Still, we tend to perceive truth as we wish it to be in order to justify our material attachments. Without the intervention of causeless Divine Grace, all our efforts would continue to be fruitless.

 

The best we can do is to recognize and appreciate that Grace, co-operating in every way we can. Ultimately it becomes a uniquely personal experience, between each of us and our God.

[Janus]

Originally posted by amanpeter:

It is possible for the impetus to be emotional, the foundation philosophical and the process scientific. Still, we tend to perceive truth as we wish it to be in order to justify our material attachments. Without the intervention of causeless Divine Grace, all our efforts would continue to be fruitless.

 

Everything we see Peter, the sun, the moon, the entire universe, we see nowhere else except withing our own tiny heads. This is an indisputable fact proven by the modern day science of optics, but even the Yavanas or the Classicists like Aritotle were aware of it, causing him to correct the phrase "I see" to the more technically correct "I have seen", reflecting the unconscious mechanism by which images are edited to conform to our expectations and desires before appearing before our conscious appraisal. Every brief moment of our lives we are being bombarded or apprenhending hundreds of thousands of signals of sensory imput. Due to the imperfections of our senses however, as well as to factors imposed by our conditioning by the time (and there is always a brief interval, some fraction of a second between the impact of the energy from a space time even upon our sensory receptor and the appearance of the conscious precept before our minds eye), by the time any of those hundreds of thousands of signals appear before our conscious appraisal we are actually only percieving about 10 of them. 10 out of 100,000. Another thing is that the mind adds color, form and a great deal else before we obtain an image of the thing that we are viewing and thus it is a process of addition as well as of subtraction. All thoughts therefore are somewhat conjectural and inferential and yet, due to another one of our conditioned defects, the defect of being subject to delusion; we imagine ourselves to be both objective and comprehensive. The main point of this reply in answer to your post is to point out that the process that you are refering to is promarily unconscious and yet it is also, and again conditioned. We are in fact programed or conditioned from the very moment of our births to "see" or to percieve reality in a particular way, and woe betide those who percieve reality any differently that us for it substantianially reduces their chances of survival. We are thus, all of us the "walking wounded". A couple of illustrations of this are as follows. A friend of mind, a Wiccan priestess told me once of her recollection of being a little girl of about four. She was in the park and at that time she recalled that she was conscious of the voices of ther trees (some older ones are actually awake), but even as she recalled that she was conscious of this she was conscious that this ability to hear their voices was already fading. There is an old Irish saying that "If you see a two headed pig on the road don't tell anyone." The ability to percieve things differently than others marks one as different. The Celts saw things differently, there world view was different which is why the Romans had to wipe them out. For example of this look at two coins, one Celtic, the other Roman; both depicting a horse. The Roman coin shows the horse as an object disting from its surroundings while the Celtic coin shows the horse and its surroundings as swirling energy, as process. That the ability to see things this way is natural is shown by the similarity of the Celts to the native AmerIndians. The Iriquois for example have a word for a living entity that means a swirl of sentient energy, this is all quite fascinating, but the point is that we are the products of our conditioning, that there is no true autonomy as most people imagine there to be. We are products, manufactured, and it is only through self realization, through the attainment of direct perception of our actual autonomous selves that we become free. Still, the mind can and must be used to discriminate, and you are right in your perception that there is also a conscious factor involved in our perception. As Neitche put it people don't want challenging questions, they want comforting explanations.

Hari bol

 

The best we can do is to recognize and appreciate that Grace, co-operating in every way we can. Ultimately it becomes a uniquely personal experience, between each of us and our God.

 

[Janus]

P.S. The anthropologist Max Gluckman, once remarked that "a science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation." This explains quite nicely how it is that explanation of the four defects of the living entities in Srila Prabhupadas books are in seed form, not very detailed but yet here is a fool elaborating upon them beyond the point of his genius. One is always a fool before his spiritual master, but it is also the duty always of a disciple to further elaborate, to prove and to explain the science of Krsna consciousness, and as you say, for that purpose Guru's mercy is given. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

Hari bol

[dasanudas]

There is an old Irish saying that "If you see a two headed pig on the road don't tell anyone." The ability to percieve things differently than others marks one as different.

 

Too funny, too true janus!!! I appreciate your serious depth also.

[Janus]

"There is an old Irish saying that "If you see a two headed pig on the road don't tell anyone." The ability to percieve things differently than others marks one as different."

 

Too funny, too true janus!!! I appreciate your serious depth also.

 

Deep calls unto deep Dasanudas, and laughter asures us of the friendliness of the touch, banishing fear and making easier the sharing of deeper understandings.

Every world view or emic reality, the unified field made up of thoughts, feelings, and apparent sense perceptions that organizes our inchoate experience into the meaningful patterns has its architects, those who sketch out the blueprint that they then leave us to fill in and fill up with our own tiny selves alocation of the human form of life, even this one, this predominant consensual world view that we were born into and that governs us, for we are ourselves of it, made into the image, not of God, but of the beast, of the Machine Age whose linear progress is at it's culmination, leaving us with only two outcomes to anticipate in our typical Aristotelian fashion, the end of all things or everlasting world without end.

The formula of Kali yuga is simply this:

"The total energy content of the universe is constant and the total entropy is continually increasing."

 

Looking back over the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth, the recognized founder of America and one of the three chief architects of the Machine Age's world view, we only detect his fear and frustration in the pages of his Novum Organum. We must turn to the pages of his play The Tempest and to his character Prospero the magician to detect his hope.

 

We see through a glass darkly my brother. Out of many, many thousands of men some few may endeavor to attain to perfection. What hubris we had, and how blind.