The Bluff of Modern Science

[Guest guest]

13 April 1983, Gainsville, Florida

 

The Bluff of Modern Science Pt. 1

 

 

I would like to depart a little bit from our normal format and I would like to personally introduce

a special speaker we have tonight. Uh Dr. Richard Thompson sitting to my right uh earned a Ph.D.. in mathematics I believe at ???

Guest: At Cornell.

Hridy: … at Cornell University. a very prestigious university ??? New York. So after distinguishing himself at Cornell earning a Ph.D. and so on… and after more or less understanding all that material science has to offer, uh Dr, Thompson became dissatisfied with the amount and quality of information which was available through the methodologies of material science. And therefore he began investigating different systems of knowledge and finally concluded that the information available in the original system of knowledge which is called Veda.…We say original because it is the oldest. Uh Vedic knowledge which is a very elaborate, systematic compilation of information covering all material and spiritual aspects of human activity, uh transcends the processes by which material scientists assign dates to artifacts. In other words, uh there is no demonstratable beginning to this knowledge. It has always existed for as long as there has been recorded human history. As I said it is a very elaborate, systematic body of knowledge which has not only been studied theoretically, but practiced also for many, many thousands of years by many successful transcendentalists. So at the present time Dr. Thompson is on the faculty at the State University of New York at Binghamton… at New York where he's doing research there. And he has just published a book called Mechanistic and Nonmechanistic Science in which his basic thesis is uh that one cannot adequately describe observable reality through the reductionistic or mechanistic methodologies of material science. And therefore if one wants to at least attempt to get a full understanding of reality, there is a need to pursue other methodologies and other processes of knowledge. Uh he has also made many other points in his book which he will discuss in his talk. This book is… has been recognized… uh Dr. Thompson received very favorable commentaries from several Nobel lauriets in physics, uh at the Eugene Wigner, at Princeton University and by Joseph ??? at Cambridge University in England. So it's not just a… he's not just a quack. He is bona-fide recognized scientists. Uh and um we are very happy he has come down from Binghamton for a few days and he will be speaking. I'll will also be addressing around his thoughts. And then there will be an opportunity for all of you to present any questions that you'd like to ask. So we'd like to thank again all of you who have kindly taken the time out from a business schedule to come to this program. And now I'd like to present Dr. Richard Thompson, uh Ph.D..

 

So ???. I'm going to speak for just a few minutes, about a half-hour or so. I'm just going to try to introduce some basic ideas which may be food for thought. So the basic topic I would like to discuss, uh fundamental limitations on what one can understand through modern science. And I'm not going to speak specifically about any bluffing, you can conclude for yourself whether my ??? has any relevance toward that theme. But I am going to discuss the limitations. And there are two categories of limitations that I'd like to talk about briefly here tonight. Uh one of these is the subject of complex form and the other is consciousness. So I'll see if I can manage to time this so I can make a… points about each of these topics.

 

This first question complex form, we're really asking what is the origin of the forms of living organisms? If you look at the world you'll see many different kinds of living entities, plants, animals, human beings, birds, trees and so forth. and you can see that their bodily structure is extremely complex. For example if you look at the structure of a single cell as elucidated by the biochemists of today, you find all kinds of extremely complicated molecular structures within the cells. And of course, in higher organisms, the cells combine together to form very complicated organisms such as for example the human brain. So in this world, we find very complex and very specific forms in the forms of living organisms.

 

And so the first thing we'd like to grab is the ??? of what you can say about the origin of complex form. So in order to discuss that we first have talk a little bit about the concept of chance or randomness because this very much comes into the whole issue. So what do we mean by chance? Well, I'll start by giving the example of say tossing a coin. You may perhaps say that there is a 50/50 chance that it will come up heads and 50/50 chance that it will come up tails. So what do you mean by that? Well, first what we mean in practice is that if we flip the coin many times, about half the time it's going to come up heads and about half the time it will come up tails. Actually, we don't expect that it will be exactly half heads and exactly half tails. In fact if that happens we'd be suspicious that something other than chance was involved behind the flipping of that coin. But in fact there are certain statistical formulas that say we would expect a certain percentage of heads close to 50 percent and a percentage of tails close to 50 percent. And also we would expect the order of the heads and tails to be disorderly in the sense that if it came up heads one time, then it could come up tails the next time with 50 percent chance and heads the next time with 50 percent chance. Uh there's no reason to say if it came up tails, it would then come up tails for a whole screen of times after that. So we would expect more or less an alternation, no particular pattern should be discernable in the arrangement of heads and tails. So that's what we mean when we say that the coin is coming up heads or tails with uh… by chance. In this case, with probabilities of .5 for heads and .5 for tails. It's a statement about what we expect to find if we toss the coin many times. And if you ask how many, well obviously if you tossed it just once that wouldn't be sufficient. But suppose you did and say it came up heads. Well what would that tell you? It came up heads. It wouldn't say anything about this concept of 50/50 chance. And even if you did it ten times, it really couldn't tell you much. You'd have to do it at least a hundred times, maybe a thousand and then you begin to get some confidence that you knew what you meant by saying that has happened by 50/50 chance. So that's a simple example.

 

But now let's go to the case of the coin which is perhaps weighted so that it's saying… comes out heads with a 1 percent chance and comes up tails at a 99 percent chance. So suppose we have a coin like that. Well in that case, uh if you tossed it, you'd expect that most of the time it'd come up tails and occasionally it would come up heads. So once again we have to toss the coin many times in order to give meaning to this statement that the chance of heads is 1 percent and the chance of tails is 99 percent. And so the question here is will how many times do you have to toss the coin? Well this time lets say you tossed it 50 times, well maybe it would come up tails during that entire run of tosses. In that case you might say Well, this coin always comes up tails, 100 percent certain that it comes up tails. Or if you tossed it 50 times and maybe it came up heads once and tails the rest of the time, you might say Well, there's one chance in 50 that it will come up heads and uh 54 chances it comes up tails. So your conclusion in any case would be inaccurate. so 50 times isn't enough. You'd have to do it many hundreds of times in order to see that pattern and give meaning to that statement.

 

continued…

[Guest guest]

So now we just go one more step. Uh let's make the probability of heads much smaller. I'm going to use here what's called scientific notation. If we write a number with a minus sign next to a ten like this that means a decimal follows in this case by a thousand zeros and then a 1. That's scientific notation. So let's say the percentage probability of heads is ten to the minus 1,000th power just to pick a number. And the percentage probability of tails is what's left over from that. In other words 100 percent minus this, which would mean 99.99999 percent. You'd have about a thousand 9's there. So let us say that is the case. Well, how would you give meaning to that statement. Or pursuing our whole line of thought, to give meaning to that statement you'd have to toss the coin many, many times, ten to the thousandth power times because as we said, if it's a 1 percent chance of having heads you'd have to do it… toss it many, many times a hundredth. Well, if it's a ten to the minus thousandth power, you'd have to toss it many, many times ten to the thousandth. Now at this point we come to an interesting observation. Is it at all possible to toss the coin that many times?

 

Well I'll give a little calculation here which should throw some light on the subject. Uh let us say that an event like tossing a coin or doing something involving a random action at most can occur as fast as atomic events occur. Let's assume that. So atomic events involving say chemical reactions can occur about ten to the 12th power per second. And let's say that an event can occupy in terms of what it involves materially at most the action of one… at least the action of one particle, one subatomic particle. You couldn't go less than that. So that means the total limit on the number of events that we could talk about in the universe would be the number of ten to the minus 12th power fractions of a second in the history of the universe multiplied by the total number of particles in the universe. Well, modern science provides us with some rather speculative numbers we can put in just to calculate this. So I'll just put in the numbers. Uh it's an interesting calculation… which we have ten to the 12th, ten to the minus 12th fractions of a second and we have 3 36,000ths seconds uh an hour, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Now they say… we say the universe is in the order of 16 billion years old. Let's call it 10 billion anyway. So that's 10 to the 10th years. So if you multiply… And then you multiply… Well, the figure is also provided for the number of particles in the universe. Now this is pretty speculative, but uh you see it in alot of books. So on the authority of alot of books, just for the sake of argument I'll throw in that number. This number is 10 to the 80th particles in the universe. So that's alot of particles. But uh… Wo what does this all come out to? Well, it's smaller than 10 to the 1100th power if you multiply all this out. Now ten to the 1100th power then is the greatest number of events that you could talk about within the universe as conceived by modern science. But in order to verify this statement about a probability of ten to the minus 1000th, you'd have to repeat that event uh many, many times, ten to the 1000th power times which is vastly bigger than ten to the 100 and 11th which is the upper limit of the number of events you could actually talk about. What this means then is to speak of a probability, to speak of something happening by chance with a probability of ten to the minus 1000th power is a statement to which no meaning can be given. In other words, if you say that it's a statement which is actually devoid of meaning. You're not saying anything. There's no way of assigning meaning to that statement. So this is a little bit of observation about chance. So the basic point is we can speak of some… assigning some kind of meaning to large chances like 50 percent or maybe a hundredth of a percent. But when we get down to chances like this they become meaningless. Now what is the relevance of this whole thing? ??? uh we get to that, I'd like to raise the following question.

 

Let us consider some classes of organisms. Now there are various classes you can consider. And I'll list a few. One would say the human beings. Another would be a different species, say horses. Or you could have a broader class, say mammals. Or you could have a class even broader than that, say living beings. And there are other kinds of classes you could consider. You could even consider a class which wouldn't even necessarily be living beings as we look at them. Something like say intelligent beings. So these are different classes. And the question I would like to raise is given a physical process, purely physical process which begins with a chaotic distribution of atoms, uh and let's say for the sake of making it concrete, that we start with the solar system in the form of a big cloud of gas (in which all molecules are shooting around at random) and we allow purely physical process to cause the sun to condense and the earth to form and start rotating around the sun and then primordial oceans form on the earth and then we can imagine that this chemical process, physical and chemical process continues further and generates living cells and these gradually evolve and we finally get all the different living beings on the earth including human beings. So that's the scenario which you'll see very often presented. So what is the probability given such a process that elements of one of these classes will appear?

 

Say I can have probability (this is the way they sometimes write it with abbreviation… a human computer) uh and that could be within billions of years. We're not talking about something popping up instantaneously. But the process is allowed to run over billions of years. So probability of the humans appear or that mammals appear of intelligent beings appear or any class you like to substitute. Well, what I propose to you is given the scenario of evolutionary theory which is based on a physical process, this probability comes out to be something like less that 10 to the minus 150,000th. Now, the justification for making a statement like this which is the main statement we'd like to make here, uh is going to take more than the limited amount of time I have to go into. But basically I'll just briefly indicate the kind of argument that leads to a figure like this. And the basic argument to be used is that physical processes run according to modern science by very simple laws. The fundamental law of the physics are simple. Of course if you study physics you may not think they're that simple. But they are simple compared to what we have in living organisms. And that's the point. It's a matter of relative simplicity. For example in physics, we have things like the inverse-square law of attraction and repulsion to pre-charged particles. This is a law in which is given by a fairly simple formula. We have the various laws involving electro-magnetism as expressed by let's say Maxwell's equation which can be written ???. So basically the processes involved in physics are very simple. In fact physicists for years have tried to make them as simple as they can. Uh it's considered to be something of a victory in physics if you can take a complicated law and show how you simplify it in say a very simple eloquent statement. So the basic physical processes that are contemplated are very simple in nature. But the classes of entities we're talking about have in common many highly complicated features. Uh here is an important idea. The idea of information shared in common by a class of forms. If I ask you what is the probability of one exact human being would appear, uh exact right down to the last atom, then of course you'd no doubt agree that that's incredibly improbable. But we're not even doing that. We're considering a broad category of beings such as humans in general or mammals in general… and so on. So I won't go into the mathematical apparatus whereby you get a particular figure like 150,000th. But basically, I'd like to make the proposal that this is the kind of result you get if you examine what physical laws can do uh starting with a chaotic arrangement of matter. How likely is it under… within that scenario that you'll get members of such categories as humans, mammals, intelligent beings and so on?

Hridy: Actually, ???.

Guest: Uh well, let us… let us take up this point. Uh now… Well if you like ???

Hridy: ???

Guest: Ok. Um, the basic principle behind this actually depends on the idea of the amount of information needed to describe the class. Uh, information, just to give some idea of what we mean by that. If you consider a book as containing a certain amount of information. And you can measure the amount of information by using a standard code. For example uh one book may use English letters and another may use Russian savillic letters. So there are various standards for coding of that information. So we can find a common standard which can be used to evaluate information. And that's using 1's and 0's. Uh this is the kind of thing that is used in computers. Um what you can do is take all the letters in the book, code them as patterns of 1's and 0's so that whole book becomes a long string of 1's and 0's. So then you say Well how much information does that represent? Well, there's a concept known as information compression in which you illuminate redundancy in the pattern of 1's and 0's. Uh just to give you an example of that, in telegraphs frequently instead of saying Christmas they'll say Xmas. And they do this to save money when they send a message across the wires. So that's information compression. If christ in christmas appears many times it's a redundancy. And if you reduce it… replace it by just one simple x and people know the code at the other end so that they can interpret that and put it back to Christmas, then you can send the same message and make it shorter. So there's an idea called information compression whereby you take a message and remove as much redundancy as you can and you compact the informa… the message down into the shortest possible string of 1's and 0's. And the number of 1's and 0's we've got is the amount of information. For example… Just to give you an extreme example. If I had a book and it was all just the letter a repeatedly, there were several million of them, then I could say – instead of giving you the book with all those a's – I could say this message consists of 10 million a's. And that would tell you everything you needed to know to reproduce the message. so that's the case of extreme redundancy in which case you could compress the message way down. But if I gave you a book of Shakespeare's plays on the other hand, you could compress that message to some extent, but they're be some limit, an irreducible limit to how much you could compress it. So the subject involves let's say looking at a category of entities and making some estimate of the amount of raw information that is there and seeing how far you can compress it down. And it turns out that if you can't compress the information down to more than say n this, then the probability that that form will appear under the action of physical laws and the at most 2 to the minus n, plus a certain constant which has to do with the representation of the laws of physics. So this is a basic mathematical conclusion of information theory. And it's that kind of thing which leads to considerations like this.

 

continued…

[Guest guest]

So there are many, many details involved with this and I won't try to go into them any further. The basic point though that I'd like to make then is at this stage is if this is accepted… And by the way I'd like to mention that this is a falsifiable scientific proposal. And you've heard of the idea of science ??? falsifiable. This one is because you can… uh if it is incorrect to say that the uh information content of a stated class of human beings is larger than a certain amount, then this can be demonstrated by showing the coding of that information which is shorter than that amount. In other words, we're not just talking about the kind of mythological or unverifiable statements here. We're talking about something objective. So let us just consider this statement. If the probability of let's say human appear is less than 10 to the minus 150,000th as we discussed before in the talk about chance, that is a meaningless statement. There's no way that you can even assign meaning to a statement involving probability that small. So if you say Well indeed, this is what happened by chance… That if you say there's a process involved and uh as a consequence of the working of this process by chance humans did arrive on the scene, uh um and this is the chance, then that's meaningless. So sometimes you'll here people make statements like that. Sometimes people actually say that they're quite comfortable with the idea that human beings in fact… or any other category you'd like to mention, mammals, etc, etc. have come about by chance. Uh but if you consider the kinds of chances involved, it turns out that that is a meaningless statement. Uh so what this means then is that reductionistic science, at least as we have it today, cannot say to us anything about how it is that we have these categories of forms because the theory when you work it out according to all the algebraic rules and so on, tells you that it happens by chance with a probability less than this, but that is a meaningless statement. So your left with nothing. The theories of modern science don't tell you anything about how it is that we have all these complex forms. So that's one ??? thing to consider. So that was the first basic point that I wanted to make and of course I've hardly done justice to the subject. There are all kinds of questions and considerations we'd have to go into. But that's sort of the basic outline. So we have all these complex forms and no explanation of… they're just there. What it amounts to is that modern science can only tell us that Well, they're there which anyone could assess in the first place without going through all the trouble.

 

So now I'd like to go to the second topic here which is consciousness. So this is also why we propose a subject about which reductionistic science cannot say anything. And in the case of consciousness, this immediately involves us in a delima. Actually a similar delima comes up when you deal with this topic of complex form which very clear indicates consciousness. Very frequently in addressing a scientific audience or an audience of people who are sophisticated in modern philosophy, when you begin to speak about consciousness you'll be told Well, you can't define that. So therefore your statements about it are meaningless. You'll encounter that argument. And what I'd like to point out here is that in terms of reductionistic science as we have it today you can't define consciousness. So as far as reductionistic science is concerned, it is indeed meaningless to talk about it. But that doesn't mean it's meaningless to talk about consciousness.

 

In other words, to discuss consciousness we have to go beyond the limits of reductionistic science. It's a sort of turning the objection around the other way. So let me explain what I mean by that. Uh we have to say Well, what do we mean by consciousness? So, if asked what you mean by consciousness, naturally you can respond by saying some things about it to identify what you mean. You can say consciousness refers to our awareness, our inner awareness of events, uh refers to the perception of sensation or impressions, uh refers to ideas, thoughts, feelings such as say pain. Take for example the idea of pain which philosophers have written about at great length. What do we mean by pain anyway? Uh as far as reductionistic science is concerned, you can study the body in great detail and examine what happens when a person is feeling pain. Uh you can say that Well, there is certain nerve endings. Let's say you hit the persons hand with a hammer and he certainly feels pain. So there are certain nerve endings in the hand and the hammer hits the hand and those are stimulated and certain nerve fibers carrying impulses and there's certain synaptic junctions where the impulses introduce their impulses to other neurons. And the principle… you could follow this into the brain. Although in practice you really can't follow the process very far. At least we can imagine in principle you go from one neuron to another. And in fact ??? of the brain is really nothing but neurons plus supportive tissues and blood vessels and so on. Uh we could just follow a train of impulses from one neuron to another until finally you got to motor neurons in which case the pulses would go down the motor neurons to the muscles and also to some glands and the muscles would contract and the glands would secrete different fluid, hormones and so forth which in turn would cause other neurons to fire. And you could describe the whole thing in very great detail, at least in principle. But what I propose is in the whole course of this you having said anything about that feeling of pain. Now you might – if you follow this in enough detail – at least in principle, describe how the muscles contracted to form the word ouch. That's at least in principle possible. Though still, what about the feeling of pain? Because even… For example, I could build a machine easy which will say ouch if you hit it with a hammer. You could easily design that. You um… for example, take a pesiolectric crystal and hook it up to some wires to an amplifier, hook the amplifier up to a tape player with the word recorded on the tape. And sure enough if you hit that, it will say ouch. And so similarly in that case you can also trace a series of physical actions and reactions with a result that certain behavior is manifested. But all of this discussion actually doesn't tell us anything about the persons feelings. What ya feel inwardly.

 

And it's when you begin to discuss this that the objection is then brought up Well, what do you mean by his inner feeling anyway? Please define that for me. You're just talking around the subject. Uh and so I can say various things about feeling. I could give illustrations of other feelings. And I could speak words about perception, awareness, and so on. But all that you could say then Well, this is all circular. Because you're not defining any of those words. So the point I'd basically like to make here is indeed, within the framework of definition of modern reductionistic science, you can't define those words. But we all know what they mean. Because if you talk to any ordinary person, especially one who hasn't studied modern philosophy, he'll know what you mean by pain, he'll know what you mean be perceiving something, by having and ida or emotion, a feeling and so on. Actually, the marvelous thing here is somehow children are able to assign words, just like inner perception and they do it in correctly consistent ways such that people can then communicate about these things. That's actually a very marvelous process which isn't understood at all. But… so the basic point then that I would make here is that these words referring to thought, feeling, consciousness, and so on all are meaningful.If you refer to something real. But they cannot be defined by modern scientific terms.

 

Now what do you mean by definition? First you define the word. Typically you define that in terms of another word, and you define the other word in still other words. But at some point you have to stop introducing more words and relate it to reality somehow. Uh one way of doing that is pointing. Ultimately, how do you define a dot? Well, you go to a pie and point to one and say That's a dot. And then the person says Oh, ok. That's a dot. And then he knows what the word means. So somehow we are also able to point to our feelings. Somehow when a kid hits his thumb and starts crying and the parents say Do you fell the pain? It's the idea of what that means. And he gets the idea correctly. So this is all practical. One can understand what these words mean. But in modern science as a convention that all definitions have to be reduced to things we can measure expressed in quantitative terms. The bottom line… Of course there are many sciences which are somewhat… uh that ??? and still ill-defined states. For example they'd like to make anthropology into a science. And they make big generalities about uh culture. This is an abolonian culture. This is a dyanisian culture. So how do you quantify that? But they would like to quantify it. At least some of them would. Of course there are others who are also radical on the subject of scientific reduction and they wouldn't do that. But in principle anyway, um the paridyne for modern science is physics in which great success has been achieved in reducing everything to things we can measure with meter sticks, uh galvanometers and various devices which give you some number. So the basic paridyne is that to define something in science really means you have to reduce it down to measurements that we can make.

 

So what I'm proposing then is that consciousness is something very real, we can talk about it, we know what it means, it's part of what is, but you can't define it in that way. So therefore, it is something lying outside the paridyne of modern science, reductionistic science as we have it today. So these are two basic categories of things in which modern science comes to a dead end. In order to get further understanding of these things, you will have to transcend the realm of modern science. And I would also like to propose that there might be some connection between these things. How do we understand complex form and how we understand consciousness may well be related to one another. Um this is um, what Srila Acaryadeva is going to speak about further. I can say some more things but I think he'd like to speak also and say a few words more about how it is we could learn something about complex form and about consciousness which we cannot learn using the reductionistic paridyne of modern science. And that's it.

Hridy: I'd like to thank Dr. Rihard Thompson, also, Sadaputa. He is in addition to being a very excellent scientists, he's also um a recognized student of Vedic culture that's been initiated in the process of bhakti yoga and is known as Sadaputa. We'd like to thank him very much for his presentation and after I say a few words you can have questions if you like. ???

 

continued…

[Guest guest]

So I would like to address you concerning some of the implications of what we just heard. Uh there's a statement in the Bhagavad-gita ???. Bhagavad-gita is spoken by Krsna whom we accept as authority. So this statement by Krsna is that ??? or a living being… Let us say human being for now. It's also true for any other living being. But it's especially human being. A human being can be analyzed or understood or designated or defined in terms of the particular type of faith which he has developed. So um, everyone believes in something. Even if you say I don't believe in anything, then you have to believe that statement. If you say there is no absolute truth, um you also have to have faith that there is no absolute truth and you have to defend your faith against many persons who say the opposite. So if you say I believe in God, I don't believe in God, I believe in science, I don't believe in science, whatever you say you have to believe it.So you speak to someone, that also implies a certain type of faith that there is some person there, I'm communicating with someone. If you decided not to speak to anyone, if you decide nothing is real, I won't bother talking. You also have to believe that. Because people who come up and try talk to you are likely to be the people in the white coats. And they'll come and try to talk to you, but you really have to stick to your faith No, it's not real. So the simple point I'm trying to make is it is superficial and uh superficial and whimsical to say these people are believers, these people aren't true believers. No. Everyone believes in something. The object of faith varies. But the psychological act of having confidence in something, that psychological activity is a constant in every person, that's a ???, that psychological act to believe in something. Now what you believe in is a variable.

 

That's the first point I'd like to… So uh Dr. Thompson has specifically requested me to speak on consciousness and complex form… just been handed the baton. So um we take it for granted that we are conscious. If you are not conscious, then you didn't hear that statement I just made so don't argue about it. If you aren't conscious, if you don't have consciousness, then you aren't listening to what I'm saying anyway, so why should we bother talking to you about it? …about something that you are not conscious of? So don't ask questions about something that you are not conscious of. So in other words, we are giving these lectures for sane people, not crazy people… not crazy people. If you say there is no such thing as consciousness, then the question is whether you are conscious of that fact or not? So we are not going to waste time. Of course I don't think at the University of Florida there are too many of those crazy people that say that there is no such thing as consciousness. But uh that consciousness is not a by-product of any material interaction. That's the point. It is irreducible. Just like for example you can break water down into Hydrogen and Oxygen. And Hydrogen and Oxygen can also be broken down into sub-particles, but sooner or later we come to something that we just can't break any more. (Is that a correct statement?)

Guest: ???, they keep breaking more and more. Well?

Hridy: So consciousness may be covered or uncovered, it may expand or contract, but it's not a material product. If you say my consciousness is a product of the brain, that all these atoms and molecules combine in a certain way and then I became conscious, that is not a scientific statement for the simple reason that you cannot demonstrate it. Well that… so materially it is not scientific. In other words, Dr. Frankenstein took his best shot and couldn't do it. And other scientists have tried. But we cannot manufacture consciousness. That's the point. We cannot manufacture consciousness. If someone gives us material elements we cannot manufacture consciousness. So it has never been demonstrated… Of course people have sex. Men and women have sex and the result is a baby. And then the baby is conscious. So all we can say with certainty is that in order for one to be conscious in the material sphere or in this material dimension, one must be within a material body which has a particular… which has particular conditions. Just like for example if my body becomes diseased and I die, that means I'm no longer conscious. Death… all we can say about death really is that that body is no longer conscious. We can't say the person who was within that body no longer exists. We can't say that. But we can say that body is no longer conscious. In other words, there are certain conditions necessary for consciousness to exist in a particular body, although we cannot say that consciousness cannot exists outside the body. For example, take the simple example of a television set. A television in order to broadcast or manifest a show, the television has to be in good repair… or it has to be a healthy tv set. (I don't know how to say it) So if you pull out one of the wires or kick the screen because something happened you didn't like on it (so you kicked the screen), then the show is no longer visible on your TV set. Now that doesn't mean that your TV set was the original cause of that show, that all the people on the screen were created by your TV set. You see? That would be a pretty stupid thing to say… that the television program was created by your TV set. Oh yes, you say it's true. The proof is that if I turn off the TV set the show disappears, it doesn't exits anymore. You see, this type of inane, idiotic logic is considered to be science at the present time. I'm not a scientists so I can speak very frankly. I'm not going to pull my punches. I speak honestly. This type of idiotic pseudo-logic is actually accepted by most people to be science or rationality you see. Now we can demonstrate that in order for the TV show to go on there must has to be a certain electronic state within the TV set. And if that electronic state is altered, modified or damaged, the TV show disappears. Similarly, when a body is in a particular state, consciousness appears. Therefore you may conclude consciousness is caused by a particular physical state. But as I demonstrated that is not logic, that is something you may simply have faith in because you want to believe it. Now why you want to believe it is your business. That of course is a question for psychologists. Why do you want to believe that you are a product of a material organism? There are certain psychological reasons that make people want to believe that.

 

Um so the aggregate, total of psychological motivations or desires which lead one to identify or the believe or to have faith that one is a product of a material organism, this aggregate of psychological activity is called in Sanskrit ahumkara or false ego. False ego, that we want to believe or we do believe, we place our faith in the idea that I am matter, I am material. I am a product of the interaction of molecules or atoms or whatever and that's what I am. So this of course is a technical statement. But in practical terms it means I am this body. I am a twenty year old good-looking young man. Or I am a shapely young girl. Or I am doctor so and so. You see? I am this young man with big muscles in my arms. Or I am the guy that's winning the race or that's making all this money or that's you know out at the Dairy Queen with Betty Sue. You see? So this is the practical way it manifest. Obviously, most people don't walk around thinking in terms of I am atoms and molecules, although some people do. But uh most people don't think technically. Most people walk around thinking Boy, I sure am good looking. This is just an ordinary thing people think. Now, if you're walking around thinking I'm really a good looking guy and I'm a really good-looking girl, I am really the most fantastic person on this campus or I'm the smartest person. Now if you're thinking that or even thinking I'm an American or I'm a boy or I'm a girl or I'm black, I'm white, I'm so many years old, I'm Joe Smith you see, and I belong to the Smith family. That's my father, that's my grandfather, that's my brother, that's my mother. You see if you're thinking in any of these ways, that's called in Sanskrit ahumkara, false ego… because what it means is that you're thinking that I'm a bunch of molecules. I'm a bunch of molecules uh.

 

continued…

[Guest guest]

But as we pointed out, consciousness is not simply a bunch of molecules. Consciousness is somehow different. What if for… When you die, then all the molecules are still there, but you're not conscious. You have a simple… It's a very simple demonstration. Now we have living bodies and we are conscious. Now when the body dies, all the molecules are there in the body, but if there's no consciousness. That means consciousness is somehow different from all the molecules or any individual molecule, 'cause even when those molecules are present consciousness may not be present. Even to take another example, when you go to sleep you're not conscious. But all of the molecules of your body are there. Now certainly no one would be nutty enough to say that there's no difference between being awake and asleep. That would be a very bizarre statement. You see? In other words, sane people don't say things like that. Obviously there's a big difference because when you take your test in school you sleep through them. You have to be awake. If you just put your head down on the desk and go to sleep you're not gonna get a good grade. Or if you're a brain surgeon and they bring the patient in and you just (snoring) fall asleep on the patient's chest, obviously you'd be fired. So in our ordinary real life there is a difference between being awake and asleep. There is a difference. But even when you're asleep, all the molecules are there in your body but you're not conscious. So consciousness is actually something else. Anyway, I don't want to belabor this point. I'd rather assume that most people here are sane.

 

So consciousness is not a material element according to the Bhagavad-gita. Consciousness is something different. In fact, consciousness according to our philosophy is spiritual. So if you say you want evidence of the soul, why should I believe in the soul? Of course you can call it the self which is a fancy word from California or you can call it the soul which is a rebutiated word from Rome. But uh… So depending on uh… you know different strokes. Anyway, however you… depending on what word is more attractive you, the self or the soul, uh is actually a spiritual entity. So if you say how do I know there's a self? Or how do I know there's a soul? Because you're conscious. And if you're not conscious you're not even talking much about it so it doesn't matter. If you are talking much about it you are conscious. And if you are conscious that means you have… you've already had direct experience of the soul because consciousness itself is not material. It is a spiritual entity. Therefore, even if your conscious of a material thing… Just like I may look at the wall. Uh the wall is a bunch of molecules. It's a bunch of cement or plaster or whatever. So I'm looking at the wall. So I'm conscious of a material thing, but the act of cognition is not material, it's a spiritual. And of itself, it is awareness of the soul. So every conscious person is at every moment perceiving the soul because he's perceiving his own consciousness. So therefore, simply by a little common sense you can come to the point of self-realization.

 

Of course, there is very little common sense at the present time and that's why the world is in the state it's in. That's why we have the leaders we do. There's a saying in Spanish in Portuguese, ???, uh which means that every country has the leader it deserves. They have to make up sayings like that in Latin America because otherwise it'd be pretty hard to live with the kinds of leaders they have down there. So they try to make it more tolerable by making up sayings like that. but there's also some truth to it. There's also some truth to it. So why is the world on… just on the brink of total disaster? Because somehow things are going in the wrong direction. somehow instead of trying to understand ourselves, we're trying to understand external superfluous things. So uh many people have said this. We're not the only people that say this. Anybody who thinks a little bit usually says something like that.

 

So consciousness is in itself spiritual. And if you just think about your own consciousness you are experiencing self-realization. but you may ask What is the difference between a really self-realized person, an enlightened person, and just any common man in the street who thinks about consciousness? the difference is that consciousness has the characteristic that it can be contaminated or purified. So if your consciousness is impure and you think about it because that perception is mixed with the perception of other things which are not consciousness, you cannot isolate your consciousness and therefore you cannot isolate self-realization as an entity, so your self-awareness would be limited. Now I'll go back and try to say that in English. Uh what I said was that just as water or air has a property or characteristic that they can be purified or contaminated, so does consciousness. There's pure water and there's also contaminated water. Pure water has the property of being transparent. Pure water serves as a medium through which you can perceive because it's transparent. Similarly, pure air can serve as a medium through which you can perceive. Now ultimately consciousness is a medium of the self and through consciousness you can perceive the soul or the self can perceive. So for example, if you have water mixed with dirt, then it's difficult to see water or to know what water is. If you look at muddy water, then you're not simply seeing water, but you're seeing water mixed with dirt. So if after observing muddy water, someone asks you what does muddy water look like, you couldn't answer very clearly. You could answer to some extent. You could say it flows and it's liquid, it sometimes forms wave patterns. So you could say something about water, but because you did not perceive water in a pure or isolated condition you could not describe it's properties sufficiently. similarly if you look up at the sky, there's a dirty sky, there's an L.A. sky or uh the Mexico City sky or whatever, then someone says what does sky look like? You say well it's very dark brown and yellow and you can see about one block through it and so on. so because you are seeing sky mixed with other elements you could not describe it's properties efficiently until you see sky… until you saw sky in an isolated or pure condition. Similarly, although anyone can understand some of the properties of the self or the soul, simply by recognizing his own consciousness… because at the present time our consciousness is mixed in a subtle psychological way with material properties which are not consciousness, even if we think about our own awareness, we cannot sufficiently define it because it is polluted by extraneous elements.

 

continued…

[Guest guest]

So the whole process of self-realization is to separate consciousness from the which consciousness is perceiving. By making that separation, you can study consciousness in an isolated or pure form and understand it's own distinct properties. When you understand the distinct or isolated properties of consciousness, at that time you are a self-realized person. So when you become a self-realized person you become eligible to begin God consciousness. In other words, God consciousness is not simply the sentimental system of folk rituals that we may think it is. god consciousness is actually the ultimate stage of awareness or cognition which occurs after one has come to the point of self-realization which involves the isolated study of the properties of consciousness. So if we say the goal of life is to love God or to understand God, uh we are not simply making a non-rational, non-intellectual, sentimental, pious statement which has nothing to do with the intellectual life of modern people. In other words, although this Krsna consciousness movement is dedicated to this God consciousness, this is a very complex and scientific system of raising consciousness to the point of God consciousness. How consciousness can be raised or expand can be very easily demonstrated. Just like for example you can take some metal and heat it. What does metal do when it gets hot?

Guest: It expands.

Hridy: It expands. I didn't take that many science courses. I was in college because I can do other things. But anyway, when you put metal in the fire it expands. And when it cools what happens?

Guest: It contracts.

Hridy: It contracts. So just as we can demonstrate that metal expands and contracts, we can demonstrate that consciousness expands and contracts. For example when you're a little baby, uh you're in a state which is called in technically in Sanskrit anamoy or simply aware of your own immediate body and desires to get food… or to scratch your arm or to urinate or whatever. So this very contracted state of consciousness which we've all experienced in infancy, later expands as the brain develops and we get older we become conscious not only of our own bodies, but of other people's bodies. And by different processes of psychological extrapolation we can understand other people have similar feelings to ours. So first I become… I'm conscious of my own organism. Then I become conscious of perhaps my mother or whoever is taking my ???, whoever is taking care of me. That there is a room. I'm in a room. Then that I'm within a house. That house is on a street. That street is in a neighborhood. that there are neighbors, there are brothers or sisters, aunts and uncles. There is a city. That city is within a state. That state is within a nation. So as you grow older, you understand your nation exits within a world order, that world order is on this particular planet, that planet is within a solar system which is within a galaxy which is within a universe, which is within a total field of existence which of course exceeds the existential properties of the universe. In this way consciousness can expand. Or it can also go back and contract. For example someone may be… sometimes in existential literature, the point comes up that someone is trying to understand the universe, figures it's too much trouble, it's just a big pain in the neck, so better just go back and get a job as an insurance salesman and uh marry the girl I left behind. You see? So sometimes our consciousness contracts also. So consciousness just like metal, or rubber bands or many other things, consciousness also expands and contracts.

 

So in Krsna consciousness… When we say Krsna consciousness, we are referring to the ultimate expansion of consciousness. By that we don't mean to say there's a particular state of consciousness in which it becomes static and can no longer grow. But we mean to say that consciousness enters into a particular field or a particular situation in which it's growth becomes unrestricted and constant. When you remove all the impediments to the growth of consciousness then you are in a spiritual field called Krsna consciousness.

 

And in fact the word Krsna, that vibration in Sanskrit indicates the supreme conscious entity. Just as for example when scientists are trying to postulate the origin of the universe, because the universe is composed of molecules and atoms, they contemplate that it must have been generated from another particular state of atoms and molecules. We here about the primordial soup or some gas cloud. But that primordial soup or gas cloud or whatever is all composed of molecules. In other words it's assume molecules come from molecules. Just like squirrels are born from squirrels and chimpanzees are born from chimpanzees and human beings are born from humans and so on and so forth. I won't discuss the subject of mutations because that's a whole other topic. But at least, as far as we can observe, life comes from life and molecules come from molecules and so on and so forth. So similarly consciousness must come from consciousness. Anyway, this is another theorem in spiritual science which I won't go into fully now. but at least in this particular lecture, we are trying to acquaint you with some of the basic principles of spiritual science which also involves negation and assertion.

 

Any scientific or rational statement… or even a nonrational statement must assert and also deny something. Just like if I say it's cold, I'm denying that it's hot. If I say how do you do? I'm denying that I know how you do, so therefore I'm asking you. So either implicitly or explicitly, directly or indirectly, uh stated or unstated, any type of information which is transmitted, either political information, or nonpolitical, descriptive or narrative, whatever type of transmission of information may go on, there is always explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly a negative and positive assertion… or an assertion of denial. So in the same way, it is to be understood that the expression or transmission of spiritual science, there is the assertion of certain spiritual realities and there is a denial or that pseudo-information which denies the reality of spiritual things.

 

So therefore, naturally in this introductory statement which myself and Dr. Thompson… uh Dr. Thompson and I (the way you're suppose to say it) in this program… uh Dr. thompson of course is especially learned in material science because he is a material scientists, in addition to doing other things. And I have spend considerable time studying Vedic literature as he also has. So we are trying to give to our guest at least a preliminary introduction into the complexities and the depths of spiritual science. Ultimately there is scientific knowledge of God. There is a science of God which is a legitimate complex science.

 

And I wish you could understand ultimately where you come from. You don't really come from the monkey. That's not really where you come from. You actually come from God. If you want to believe you come from a monkey then you have to think that way. ??? Actually, it made Charles Darwin very miserable. If you read his autobiography, he admits that actually he was speculating more and enjoying it less. And uh it actually made him a pretty miserable guy. He admitted that. didn't he? Good ole Charles Darwin. So anyway, we are inviting all of you to try to understand seriously this Vedic literature.

 

This is not simply some hypothetical system which I created while standing around in my yacht. Uh but actually, this is a very ancient process or system of knowledge which goes back thousands… as I said it goes back beyond the ability of modern science to establish chronological states. So… In other words, they can't date it. It goes beyond the dating method. And it is a great spiritual science called Vedic knowledge or Veda. The summary of the knowledge is called Bhagavad-gita which is the most important spiritual book in India, uh and it is the standard book of reference for yogis and meditators and gurus and people like that. So it's a name brand scripture. And uh in the Bhagavad-gita you'll find… In other words, we're not just presenting some hypothetical modern concoction. It's not simply a… some new movement or cult or a sect. But we're actually presenting the most ancient knowledge of a very spiritual science which has been applied successfully by many millions of people over a very large time span and they've been able to understand God and the Absolute Truth. It is not sectarian. It is not simply a sectarian sentimental religion. But rather a very proven, ancient spiritual science uh in which one ultimately comes to the Supreme Godhead. It is not polytheistic. It is not atheistic.

 

It doesn't involve smashing your ego to blithereens or anything like that, but rather it involves purifying your ego. It's just like you have an infection in your hand that hurts so much you can't stand it. That you were discussing pain. So we all know what pain is. So if you have a very severe pain in your hand, you can't stand it, you go to a doctor. He says Well I can get rid of your infection right away. Just put your hand right on the chopping block, and starts uh… he starts sharpening the big butcher knife, the hacker, and then he wants to hack your hand off. Another doctor comes in and says Wait a second. Don't let this crazy guy chop your hand off. This is the way you heal an infection. So… You know I just rub something on it and the infection will go away and you can keep your hand. So which doctor is going to seem more appealing to you? The doctor that just wants to rub something on your hand and make the pain go away or the guy that's sharpening his butcher knife? You see? Everyone… You got a sliver in your finger that's infected so he gets out his butcher knife, Well, I'll get rid of that thing for you. So this may seem a little shocking, but it's not shocking because alot of people are doing that right now. They even taking it as spiritual. For example, because my ego… because my ego is impure… I have this ego and it's impure and it give me some psychological pain. So I'll be a Buddhist and just chop it off. I'll just chop off this ego. You see? Amputate. People are actually trying to do that. You can't really do it because ultimately ego will pop back up again. Like one of those clowns, you knock it down and then it pops back up. Even if you become a great master of some meditational processes, you kick the ego down and say now I am egoless. Well look. I am egoless. So you can't really get rid of the ego. Because even the egoless people that travel around and give personal lectures. Or write books. ??? their personal name… which doesn't exists of course. So you can't really get rid of the ego. You can play games like that. But you can't I have no ego. I know I don't. I can feel it. So you can play games with yourself and pretend you don't have an ego. But really ego is eternal. So the solution is not just to try and chop off your ego, annihilate it, but just purify it. don't be so quick to chop. Just purify your ego. Don't think I'm the master, I'm the most intelligent person, I'm the best looking person, I'm this or that… Just think I'm a humble servant of God. As soon as you're willing to say that, whatever your religion is, then your ego is actually pure. That statement I am a servant of God and therefore I'm meant to serve everyone because everyone is part of God, that statement doesn't hurt. It's not a painful egotistical statement. It's actually a pure spiritual statement and yet there's ego involved. So that's pure ego. As opposed to false ego thinking I'm the greatest.

 

continued…

[Guest guest]

So in that way there is a God. God also has conscious personality. God is also conscious. I t would be absurd to say God is less than we are 'cause then you'd have to… you couldn't use the world God. You'd have to say that that guy over there is not a s good as I am or something like that. Or that telephone pole there is not as good as I am. I'm more important than a telephone pole. But you can't say that God is not as good as you are because then of course you wouldn't want to use the word God. Because God means the supreme being. You'd have to choose a more accurate term. So God means the supreme being. So you're conscious. You have personality. So how can you say God has no consciousness and no personality?

 

You see, that would mean to say that zero is an infinite state. But that's not really true. If you think that zero is infinite, then you should give all your money away and then you're infinitely rich. Of course that's not really what's gonna happen. Give all your food away and then you're infinitely well fed. You see? Pull your eyes out and then you have infinite vision. Pull your fingers off, then you'll be the greatest piano player. So this type of logic that by bringing something down to zero becomes infinite is also… it's a pretty irrational way of reason. But this is called logic nowadays… or philosophy or even mysticism. You see, that by coming to the point of zero it becomes infinite. No it doesn't. It becomes useless. So in that way if you say God couldn't be a person because He would be limited, therefore God has not personality, God has no form, god has no this, God has no that. I've gotten God down to zero, now we have an infinite entity. You see, now that God is dead, now it's unlimited. Of course this is not logic, this is simply whim, whimsy. It has nothing to do with rationality or logic or philosophy or anything. It's simply a dumb thing to say.

 

So if you think that God is an infinite being as He is traditionally defined, then you have to accept infinite personality. You can't deny that we have personality, nor can you deny that God is the source of everything, if you accept the existence of God as most people do. So if God is the source of everything and personality exists, personality must also come from God. Therefore, God must have personality. Otherwise, how can He generate it? And if God has personality and God is infinite, He must have infinite personality. So this is philosophy. Just like the sun gives off heat. So if you say But, I know the sun is actually cold. You see? This is modern philosophy. This is modern philosophy. A very tight logic. You see the sun is hot… or the sun gives off unlimited heat, therefore the sun is cold. This is the brilliance of… This is the tight logic of modern philosophy. Similarly, God has created unlimited personalities, therefore God has no personality. No one can deny the existence of unlimited personalities. There are billions of people now on the earth and there were billions of people before and there'll be billions of people in the future. And there are other planets also with life although we may not know it. We may be local yodels of the earth and think that there's no one out there… We may think that there's no one out there. It's just us. This is a very prosaic and provincial concept which is not true of course. There's lots of people out there. so there are innumerable personalities, but God has no personality. You see? There's innumerable consciousnesses, there's innumerable instances of consciousnesses, therefore the source of all these is unconscious. Obviously these statements are totally irrational and illogical. So therefore in Vedic science we come to the conclusion that God is personal and God is conscious. And God has infinite activity, infinite form… not no form, but infinite form. Not no personality, but infinite personality. Not no activity, but infinite activity.

 

But we've never seen infinite form. To us the very term form indicates a type of limitation. Space may be unlimited, as if a particular way in which you define a particular space by limiting it or separating it from unlimited space is called form, according to material cognition. Therefore since the very term or concept of form in the material sphere indicates a way of indicating or limiting an entity from unlimited space, we therefore assume God should not have form because then God would be limited or separated. but God should be something which is all-pervading and not separated and unlimited and not limited, therefore God has no form. But all that can really assert is that God has no material form. Because if there is another type of form, another category, another dimension of form in which form is an expansive and unlimited principle, then God could have form. But due to our egocentrism or ethnocentrism or all kinds of centrism which all come from the idea that we're the center of everything which isn't true, we think that our knowledge exhaust all the possibilities of entities and existences… which is a pretty arrogant and dumb thing to think. But still that's the way people think in this universe. In other words wee think that form means form that we have perceived. Personality means which we have perceived. Activities mean like mine. So this is anthropomorphism. If there is… You see first we anthropomorphically say that if God had form it would be like my form, but since God doesn't have form like me God has no form. So actually, it is not the statement that God is personal and has form which is anthropomorphic, but the assertion that God is formless and impersonal is based on the anthropomorphic premise that if God did have these things, they would have to be like those of the anthropomorphists, those of the man, God… So we refute our own anthropomorphic statement and come to an impersonal conclusion about God. So this is not real philosophy, it is pseudo-philosophy. And this pseudo-philosophy has unfortunately or is unfortunately killing the natural human quest to find God.This type of pseudo-philosophy is killing the human spirit which ultimately is seeking to achieve God.

 

So therefore, it is the purpose of our Krsna consciousness movement uh, to try to give people this insight or this methodology by which you can learn spiritual science, real philosophy, spiritual philosophy and there's a practical result. You actually transcend the material world. It's not just you walk around with a bunch of terms in your head. But you actually open your spiritual eyes and you can eventually see God. that's also possible. So we invite everyone to… our guest, especially those who have kindly come to this meeting, have taken their valuable time to come. We request them earnestly to learn about this great Vedic philosophy. It's not simply some… it's not simply Hinduism. It's not Hinduism. It's not simply some sentimental religion. We chant and dance on the street because we're mindless or childishly nonrational, uh but because when you actually understand the end of all knowledge, the conclusion is to glorify God. So we invite all of you to please try to understand this movement. We are not trying to enroll you or inscribe you or enlist you or… in something or convert you to something. We are trying to give you information. And if you accept this information and try to apply it in your own life, uh you'll get great benefit. We're not trying to get people to join something, but rather to understand something and apply it in your own life and there'll be great benefit. So we thankyou very much for your kind attention. Uh we've gone through all the points. We appreciate your patience. And at this point we'd like to request you if you have a question, please present your question and uh when you present your question, please specify to whom you'd like to answer your question, either myself or Dr. Thompson or anyone else you'd like to. So thankyou very much.

Guest: Srila Acarayadeva, I was wondering is it possible to do irreparable damage to say your bodily consciousness or your cellular consciousness?

Hridy: Irreparable damage?

Guest: Yeah.

Hridy: Well, at least irreparable damage in this life. Just like let's say for example you have a car. So you may get… do irreparable damage to the motor so you have to get a new motor and a new car. You as a driver, you are not damaged. But that car may be beyond repair. So yes, a material body or a brain… Just like a radio or TV set may be damaged irreparably. You have to get a new one. You won't see a show until you get a new TV set. So this body or brain may be irreparable damaged and then in order for the consciousness to manifest, at least in the material world, you have to have a new ???. Another question? So if you don't have any questions, we'd like to request you to chant with us for a few minutes Hare Krsna, a non-sectarian transcendental sound vibration. Yes, you have a question?

Guest: Um, I have a question for Dr. Thompson. ??? ten to the 11th power, was that all the events in the earth or all the events in the universe?

Guest: That was for the universe. According to that uh number 10 to the 80th power for the number of particles in the universe which originally came from Edington and how he got it… Well, it's quite an interesting line of reason he used. It's a very speculative figure, but just for the sake of argument, to give you some idea, you can also do a calculation for the earth if you like. Uh say the total number of hydrogen molecules you that can fit in the earth. that is you take the volume of a hydrogen atom if you like and take the volume of the earth and you divide and you'll get some number. that also comes out to something less that 10 to the 80th. In other words, when you have powers of ten and you get up to 80/100th or so, you're getting very bit numbers. So but the remarkable, at least in this context is, that you make calculations for the probability that these different forms of living entities would come about through physical processes, then you get negative exponents which are even bigger. So… Yea?

Guest:How is consciousness related to complex form?

Guest: Well, that relationship is the subject of what Srila Acaryadeva was saying last. Namely, that there is a supreme consciousness. God is a supreme unlimited conscious person and the complex forms are emanating from God. So the idea is here that the ultimate explanation of complex form is it was generated by God. Now at this point a skeptic will immediately raise the question: What is the difference between saying that the complex form came about by the action of God and the statement that it came about by chance? Well, the answer there is as I was saying, I was trying to argue, that there is no meaning to saying that it came about by chance. (That's what this whole line of meeting in here was). So someone might say Well there's no reason… there's no meaning to saying that it came about by God, because if you say that there's a dead end. You can't do anything more. You either have faith in it or not have faith in it as you choose. But the whole point of this idea of self-realization and God realization is that you can obtain transcendental knowledge of God. That is statements about God do not have to be simply a dead end. You either have faith in or don't have faith in as a matter or religious belief. But the possibility is there that there is a process of self-realization whereby you can actually have concrete practical knowledge of God and that's transcendental knowledge. And this depends upon the purification of your consciousness.

 

continued…

[Guest guest]

So uh of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So one can say as a matter of a theoretical statement that such a process exists and uh to know that such a process does exists, the ultimate proof is you have to try it and see if it works. That's true of anything in life. You have to have actual experience. The point is then in answer to your question that the uh Vedic viewpoint is that the complex form is coming from the supreme conscious being. And you can know that supreme conscious being yourself. You can relate with the supreme conscious being because you are also a conscious being of the same quality you see. But right now you're in a material state of consciousness. Your consciousness is contaminated. But once it's purified, then seeing god, communicating with God will not simply be a matter of hallucination or imagination, but can become an actual practical fact. That's the idea.

Guest: If you allow me I'd like to make a comment. Uh… I would like to raise a question which is often raised in science and philosophy meetings that well, we don't know the laws at present, but we will know in future. that's a statement normally made. Because people found that we have gone to moon and we have space shuttle, we have gone to microlevel, we have gone to macrolevel. So in future we will know all this. But if you look more carefully into the basic processes of the science things become more clear. For example, extracting the macro-behavior of a material through micro-behavior is almost impossible. It has been recognized. For example as Srila Acaryadeva pointed out, the water can be broken down into Hydrogenn and Oxygen. but by knowing completely the Hydrogen and Oxygen behavior, it's almost impossible to predict what will be the behavior of water under all circumstances. ??? flowing fluid like water or what kind of property this water will present under all kinds of circumstances. So even this simplest problem, this almost is impossible to extract the information of the macro-behavior from micro-behavior or visa-versa. So these are the questions which have been raised in the past also by very celebrated scientists. However, these are very pure in number. And these arguments get lost because we've found when there are genes, we've found there are the ??? apart from here, then we've finally found we're 200 genes apart and all of that. but if you look more carefully ??? one and two year, even in material behavior there are serious questions, there are serious dead ends which have to be answered before they can talk of ???.

Guest: So that's a good point, a very good point to recognize. that… and this brings up the subject of the bluff of modern science. So we get back to the theme here. Uh there is a bluff. And that is that we understand much more than we think we understand.

[Guest guest]

13 April 1983, Gainsville, Florida

 

The Bluff of Modern Science Pt. 2

 

 

 

(Dr. Richard Thompson) the basic propaganda which is very widely disseminated about modern science is that we can understand everything from the origin of the universe to the nature of the mind to the origin or species and so on through the methods of reductionistic science. And maybe we haven't done it yet, but surely in the future we'll do it because just see the progress we've made. Just look now, we have computers and so on in the 19th century. We just had steam engines. Surely given enough time, we will answer all these things by these marvelous methods that we have. Therefore, we should accept right now the conclusion that actually mind can be understood in terms of matter, uh the origins of life can be understood in terms of the interaction of molecules by the laws of physics… uh physical process and so on.

 

But this amounts to actually to a massive delusion. It's a bluff. But actually the bluffers and the people who are bluffed are the same people. So it's a self delusion. And as the gentleman pointed out, it's a fact that we can't even understand water in molecular terms. That's a fact. I actually use to study this. Um I studied… I'll tell you a story. I studied uh statistical mechanics which is the science is which you try and describe the macroscopic properties of say something like water… and the microscopic properties. And we used very artificial models such as the Eising model in which you assume you have alot of little arrows which can point up or down and you make statistical statements about them and in this way you express various things that are similar to freezing and liquefying of water let's say or liquefying and evaporating of a gas and so on. So I was attending a meeting once and a very old physicists named Onsagger stood up and he said Well, enough of this. I'd like to talk about real physics now. I'd like to talk about water. We've been talking about all these artificial models… And essentially what he said, We don't know anything about water. It's too complicated. H20, you know that's too complicated. We can't predict when it will freeze, we can't predict the fact that the ice is less dense than the liquid water and hence it floats down the surface, we can't do anything with water. So if that is true, think about a living organism like an amoeba. It is incredibly complicated molecules. Or think about a human being. We can't confidently state Yes, we know these beings evolved by a process of mutation and natural selection and this and that going over hundreds of millions of years. But we don't know anything of this kind.

 

And the unfortunate thing about all this is that if we think we know that, it blocks us off from other avenues of pursuit. For example, pursuit of self-realization. If we think we've explained it all by the study of matter, then we're going to think let's study matter some more. And it's very absorbing. It can take up your whole life. And if we think there's nothing but matter and the scientist have proved it or else they're going to eventually, then obviously spiritual pursuits are pointless cause there's nothing but matter, so therefore we should just pursue material… uh material pursuits. And these are very involving, very addictive, uh you get wrapped up in them, spend our whole life that way and then our life is finished and that's that. So from a point of view from a spiritual perspective this is actually most unfortunate because the person has missed out on an opportunity for self-realization that he could've had. But he's lost it. So therefore this uh bluff of modern science is unfortunate in it's consequences. Yea?

Guest: I don't quite understand why you're saying that you can't predict what happens to water or ???

Guest: Oh, well you should try it. You see, in physics… You know if you really want to do it, it's quite something. You write down the Schrodenger equation… I mean if you do this with quantum mechanics which is what's involved here. You write down the Schrodenger equation and you put in what's called the Hamiltonian or the energy term, all the terms for the interaction that go on in a water molecule. So you put all those in there. You get a big equation, fills up the whole blackboard. And then… I mean that's not so bad. You have the equation now. But then you try to solve it. Well, if you've ever tried to solve mathematical equations, you may know that sometimes it's pretty hard to get the solution. And with an equation like this, no one can do it. And so instead of really solving it, you then say Well maybe I can say something about the solution without actually getting the solution. So let me think about it very carefully. And you try. But with this problem no has succeeded. It's really a tough problem. And that's water. What to speak of writing down all the equations describing what the molecules in an amoeba are doing? And if you admit surely we can't do that, then what can you say about it in scientific terms? All you can do is make vague statements, which when it comes down to it are based on your faith. For example you can say this amoeba evolved from some combination of amino acids in the primordial soup over a period of four and a-half billion years. But what is that? That's a matter of faith. To really show it you'd have to get down to how the molecules interact and solve the equations and show the solution is an amoeba. But this is uh impossible task practically. Mathematics is quite difficult when it comes down to it. Especially when you confront some of these real problems. Actually… Yeah?

Guest: In one time in one of your previous articles in Micrionic Magazine you made an estimation of the time span it would take if some simple organism were to evolve? Could you… In other words, you presented like a um, so many chemicals on the surface of the earth and then so many interactions…

Guest: Well that was… That's related to this whole thing. Uh you can look at this from the point of view of time if you like. Uh you can either say that the probability is extremely small that it would evolve within a limited time period of let's say four and a-half billion years which is what they give for the length of time for the earth's existence. Or you could say how long would you have to wait for the time to become reasonably large? And then the length of time you'd have to wait would be in this case 10 to the 150,000th power years. Something of that order. Or actually, a multiple of that, a substantial multiple.

Guest: And uh, how many years is four and a-half billion? Ten to the what power?

Guest: Uh, billion is ten to the ninth compared with 10 to the 150,000th. In other words, it becomes ridiculous. Someone else perhaps? Yeah?

Guest: ??? also true for other living organisms or plants ??? not be possible to explain that how human being came into ???. but one scientists gives some… I don't know how ??? was informed. But he can prove it that suddenly with half-an-hour, suddenly the first element Hydrogen was formed. But how ???. then in due course ??? modern or materialistic body. But this doesn't explain how life came and how the soul came ???. What I am talking about… Just about the Big Bang Theory?

Guest: Yeah, Big Bang Theory.

Guest: So from that Big Bang Theory he can ???

Guest: Well you see there is this Big Bang Theory which surprisingly one finds in talking to people that many people accept that yes, there was a big bang and everything came out in that way. Uh I think since that's been brought up, I should mention one point that many people don't know about the Big Bang Theory… just for your information. To have the Big Bang Theory you have to put together two things: The general theory of relativity which gives you curve, space and so on and quantum mechanics which tells you how subatomic particles interact. Now it so happens that no one has been able to put these two together because they're mathematically incompatible. They're still working on it very hard, but no one has ever been able to do it. That means that to date, there is no Big Bang Theory. There's a hoped for theory. You can set up… have a new category of entities you can call the hoped-for theories, something we hope we'll be able to put together. But the theory hasn't been put together yet. So when one speaks of the problem of explaining say how Hydrogen arose in the big bang, we should realize that we don't even have a Big Bang theory. So it's therefore difficult to use the theory to tell us how Hydrogen came about. So…

Hridy: That's uh, a bluff. I'd like to say one thing… uh that the question of motivation has to arise… What is the motivation for example of Newsweek Magazine for putting this hoped-for theory on the cover of one of their recent issues? In other words, why are they so overanxious to establish these things… a material explanation of creation? Of course we are not simply understanding cosmology or creation. In our philosophy we're interested in self-realization, the science of God and not simply some cosmology of creation which is not the most significant event in the history of our existence… the history of this universe which is not the most significant event. We're not simply talking about creation or cosmology, but you should all think very carefully why there are some people, who publish big magazines who are bluffing so much. There must be some psychological factor involved. You take a… not even theory, something which has not even theory and crystallize into a theory… They are trying to make it into a theory. And if they succeed to make it into a theory, it still theoretical. You know it's already been propagated on the cover of a big new magazine and it's not… it hasn't even reached the point of a theory yet. In other words, why are some people trying so hard to push their creationism, uh material creationism? So uh there's something rotten in all of this. Something is not right. Something is not right. They're trying too hard. It betrays there… There's some motivation. Yes?

Guest: Acarayadeva, if uh all consciousness comes from another consciousness and that source is the supreme consciousness, God, uh I guess this sounds silly, but where did He get it?

Hridy: He is ???. In Sanskrit the word adi means origin. And ??? is a negation without any origin. So uh the property of God is that He's eternally the source of everything. But that's not material. There are no material things with such properties. You can observe, you can't observe something like that. Although the sun, even in the material universe, the sun which is the source of so much energy… and scientists have ascribed a great deal of things in our solar system to the sun. ???

 

continued…

[Guest guest]

Guest: Well, there are different theories.

Hridy: Well, I won't go into that. Although you may theoretically say the sun must have been created by something…, but we don't… we've never observed that. Our experience is simply the sun has always existed. As far as… As long as there have been people, there has been a sun. So God uh, always exists. You can go backward in time infinitely and God exists. And you can go into the future infinitely… And we also exists in a span of infinite time. So the very question which is common that what is the origin of God? That question implies or assumes that God has material properties. Because the property of being generated is a material property. Or uh let's say not only a material property, but let's say it is a relative quality. Because you may say that we are not material but we come from God. So let's say it's not even a material property. Let's say that it is a relative quality. In other words, I exists, but not absolutely. I… but my… cause my existence is dependent upon some other existence. My existence is not absolute. So all of us have relative existence. We exists in certain condition. Or because of certain things we exists, not absolutely. But the question where does God come from implies that there… God has relative properties. So if we say uh what are the relative properties of the absolute truth, the very question is contradictory. The question is linguistically meaningless. Because if we say God we say the absolute truth. So what are the absolute qualities of the absolute truth? You… it's… That question has to be restated. If you say God, and you're inquiring about the origin of something, then by definition or by… simply by simple… or the consistent use of language, the inquiry about origins cannot be applied to God. Because you have to use some other word, not God. So God… So this property of existing in infinite time and infinite time-span and having absolute existence which does not depend upon any other condition, uh is something which is not understandable by let's say the types of conclusions which the mind makes after an inductive process of observation. For example we observe things and then we make conclusions based on our observations. But based on previous experience, we imagine what something must be. So uh the absolute truth is not material. So if we try to extrapolate from or hypothesize from our material experience in order to understand something which is not material, uh it… it's not possible. It's simply not possible. Because you're dealing with an entity which is not material and doesn't have material properties. So the very question what is the origin of God is not… has no linguistic meaning. Yes?

Guest: Um, alot of everything we've heard tonight sort of seems to have… disproving or calling it a bluff, uh this material science where ??? very complex ???. Um as far as understanding how these things really do come about such as the human body which is a very complex thing, as far as giving a truthful answer to that is there just… that's it's not very important cause we're concerned with the soul, so we won't even talk about the body? Or can it be understood with Vedic knowledge in detail scientifically?

Hridy: Yea, just like for example…

Guest: ??? the origin of species.

Hridy: Just like for example if we are interested in art and we go to a museum and see a great work of art and we know that some great artists painted that. So exactly what time of the day he painted it or how many hairs were on the hand of the artist or what kind of brush he used or whether he first made a brush go up or made it go down or how he mixed his colors, that may be interesting to someone, especially a person writing a Ph.D. thesis on it. But, other people probably are not… are interested in the spirit of the painting. So this is practical. Just like if we here a great musical work, we're not so much concerned with the exact type of ink the composer was using when he wrote down the notes or things like that, even what time of day it was. In other words it's like assorted biographical information that you may read somewhere one time in a book and then forget ???. But basically is we just hear a great musical work, we appreciate the spirit of that work. If we see a great architectural monument, we appreciate the spirit of that architecture. Or even if we meet an intelligent person.

 

So in the same way, the exact technical details… uh this is getting back to information theory which Dr. Thompson was explaining, that there must be information. Just like if you want to build a house, you have to have in your brain a certain amount of information. Otherwise, you can't build a house. If you want to operate a computer or build a computer, you have to have a certain amount of information. If you want to build a bridge which spans a river, unless you have a certain amount of information in your brain, it's just not going to happen. So in the same way we can understand that the building of a universe or the building of species as was being explained, requires a tremendous amount of information. Even to build a bridge or a computer requires knowledge, information. So in the same way, the engineering which is involved in producing organic things is millions of times more complicated than bridges or computers. So we're talking about an engineering accomplishment which is millions of times more complex than anything we have experience of, so complex that to this day scientists cannot understand the blueprint. So this requires information. The building of a very complex thing requires information. And so therefore the builder must present that information.

So the basic point… I think I've read Dr. Thompson's book. So I know a few things about this. And uh the point is the laws of physics or chemistry are very simple. And simply do not contain the necessary complexity of information to generate organic things. So therefore, there must be some principle, some law, some entity, some unconsciousness, some God, some something which possesses sufficient information to generate structures of almost unfathomable complexity (which is a very common sense thing though). Maybe in a higher… uh a call to the plumber uh you know to build… to fix your toilet, then you're using the concept of information theory. You see that the plumber should have enough bits of information in his brain to get your toilet unplugged. You see? So in the same way if we're trying to postulate what or who or whatever has generated highly complex form, we must postulate a principle, a law, an entity, a something which possesses sufficiently complex or sufficiently extensive information to actually generate that kind of structure. So therefore, the conclusion is that the generation of almost unlimitedly complex entities must be done by another entity existing prior to the generated living entity by definition which possesses information sufficiently complex to actually affect that creation. So therefore you come to an omniscient being and you come to God. Well, not even omniscient, you come to a real smart person at least who can create the universe. He must have a real big IQ. So ??? of course if we study the matter we will come to God. And it does require faith. But if you don't believe in that, then you have to believe in something else. And what is your justification for that. And what's even the use of it? So it's not a question of whether you should believe or not, it's what you're going to believe? And what's the use of believing something else? And why… and what's the justification for it? So at this point I'd like to terminate this particular question and answer period because it's a little late… and uh we have some prasadam? We have some nice non-food for everyone. It's spiritual. So it's nonfood. We can't give out food in the student union, so it's nonfood. Anyway, we invite everyone to take some. And uh perhaps if you have any further questions that have not been answered, you can come up and ask your questions. And we thank everyone for attending. Also, Dr. Thompson's book is there Mechanistic and Non-mechanistic Science. We invite everyone to get one. And we thank everyone for coming. Hare Krsna! Jai!

 

4 March 1983, Allachua, Florida: Newspaper Reporters Interview

The actual purpose of farming is to… is self-sufficiency. The ideal is self-sufficiency, not to be unnecessarily dependent on a sophisticated economic structure where prices go up and down, the taxes go up and down and this goes up and down. If you just grow your own food and eat it, then you know you don't have to really worry about what's going up or down. Just plants come up, eat it…

Guest: How are your lectures going at the university? I mean you had the first one on Wednesday. Is that right?

Hridy: Yes.

Guest: Did you get much response from 'em?

Hridy: Huh, yeah some response. It wasn't bad. It's a little bit of a dull campus.

Guest: I don't know how you can say that. I don't find it dull at all. I think it…

Guest: When the sun comes out they get rather excited.

Guest: Yeah.

Hridy: Dull in this sense… that uh there is uh… not only the University of Florida, but in general… In general the world has become very dull. So in that sense I don't mean to single out University of Florida as a uh… But it's… I happen to be here. But the world has become very dull because people have become more or less sophisticated animals. People have lost their human characteristics. There's one Sanskrit proverb ???, unless someone uh… unless someone is seriously engaged in spiritual advancement somehow or other, either in our movement or… somehow or other… unless someone is seriously engaged in spiritual advancement, then he's no better than an animal. Uh because if you analyze the four basic principles or the four basic activities of animals are eating, sleeping, defending and mating… and all of the activities associated. Just like to eat an animal may have to prey on another animal or jump or hide in a tree. You know they do so many things to accomplish their eating and sleeping and defending and mating. There are so many different rituals associated with it. But those are to form the basic activities and unfortunately nowadays, human society and uh including the university of Florida which is supposed to be an educational institution, basically everyone is concerned with these four things. If you read a typical issue of your newspaper, basically you won't find anything but something related to those four things.

Guest: Hmm. The eating, sleeping, mating and …?

Hridy: Yeah, defending.

gust: Defending.

Hridy: Either something to do with… ether some political or military issue regarding uh… or something about food, or something about sex, or something about… these things… housing. And unfortunately, people's brains have become so dull and retarded, that even big scholars can't go beyond these four activities. so therefore, uh unfortunately, although human life is distinguished by a very large brain – they say we only use a small part of our brain – because we're living like animals… So if people live like animals, you don't need a big brain to be an animal.

 

continued…

[Guest guest]

Guest: True.

Hridy: Just like there's one article in the Gator about aphrodisiacs and things like that.

Guest: I missed that one.

Hridy: Yes. But the point is that just like there are so many liberation movements. This was a topic of our lecture.

Guest: I heard, I read the one quote in campus page, liberate this, liberate that, there's no liberation without um the oneness with God… paraphrased something like that. How did that go?

Hridy: Well, uh the goal of these liberation movements basically is uh… Actually I should give him a copy of that speech. I don't… I'll have to make a copy and then maybe she can give it to you tomorrow or something.

Guest: Ok.

Hridy: The basic point was that these liberation movements want some material benefit. That's alright. We're not denying that a human being has to eat or sleep or so on. We're not trying to prohibit these activites or deny them or engage people in severe pennances or austerities. That's not the point. but these activities are preliminary activities. The real business of human life is to understand what we are, what the self is. I gave the example that if you take the materialistic viewpoint which is that there is no soul and there is no God, then we are simply genetic machines composed of molecules and atoms. So if you take that viewpoint, then how can you justify morality or liberation movements or anything? Because if my genes happened to have created an aggressive brain in my body and so therefore… or if I attack you or you attack me or if I exploit you or you exploit me, these are just… these are just physiochemical events. You know why should you artificially say that it's just or unjust, moral or immoral…

Guest: That's hard to define.

Hridy: … exploitative or benificent? In other words, why should you… These are just whimsical value judgements… if you accept materialism. Now unfortunately, many of these so-called liberation movements, they do accept the viewpoint of material science. They don't accept the soul and God. If you don't accept a seperate existence of consciousness as an irreducible entity, if you accept that consciousness is simply a by-product of biological interaction or physiochemical interaction and by the evolution of organic matter consciousness is produced, if you accept this obviously idiotic theory, then the result is that how will you justify any of the nicer things in life like being honest, being generous, or being anything? …being just, being moral. How can you justify these things?

Guest: Hm.

Hridy: So this is the defect. That people in order to… you see, in order to justify their… let's say their um… in order to justify their humanistic exploitation of the earth, that the earth is meant for human beings to exploit. So in order to justify that general fallacy that we human beings may exploit the earth, they take the soul away, they elliminate the idea of God… God is either nonexistent or irrelevant or indefinable… You see? …irrelevant, indefinable, nonexistent, uh something. Then this means that we human beings are in charge, the scientists are in charge, the politicians are in charge, every man is you know, God. So then… But then once you do that then they want to come back, they want to you know retrace their steps and then try to artificially insert things like justice, morality, freedom, liberation. You understand? So it's a very… This position is hypocritical, artificial and illogical. You can't have your cake and eat it too. In other words, they have to decide which way their goiing. Do you want to live in a society where the official definition of every person is that he's a machine? He's simply a whimsical genetic arrangement, that's all, just a bunch of atoms and molecules bumping into each other and your molecules happen to bump into the shape that you're in and his molecules bumped into that shape. and so if you really want to go that way, you say we're a bunch of machines and then Why shouldn't I exploit you? then there is no such thing as exploitation. It's just a… If someone comes and robs you or kills you, it's just a molecular interaction, that's all.

Guest: Another expression of chemistry almost.

Hridy: Exactly. It's simply… you know if someone kills you, that can just be expressed as a mathematical equation or something, what actually took place. So the problem is that uh so-called progressive thinkers, they deny the soul, they deny God, then they want to bring in morality. So it's just a hypocritical position. If you accept that consciousness is a reducible entity, then you're just left with a bunch of atoms and molecules and what are you gonna do with them? We say that consciousness is irreducible, that we are irreducible persons. That's the basis for nonexploitation you see. If I say or if I accept that you are let's say part of God, then how can I exploit you?

Guest: Without commiting a sin?

Hridy: Yes, that's the point. so unless you accept the existence of the soul and God, all this hot air about liberation and morality and justice, it's all just a bunch of hypocritical hot air. And there… So people… The problem is that in the modern society, people are in gross ignorance. They don't know what the self is, what consciousness is. They don't know what the original state of consciousness is. Just like one psychology professor at the University of Florida, he was out here one time. So we were discussing… we only had a chance to discuss for a few minutes, he had to go. But I was explaining that there is an original state of consciousness. Just like water has an original state which is pure and transparent. but just as water can become contaminated by association with other elements, consciousness becomes contaminated. So he couldn't defeat this proposition or he couldn't demonstrate a better explainatory theory. But then later uh he said he absolutely no interest in this philosophy. I'm just giving this as an example of how a completely superficial person can be accepted as a scholar. He's not interested in understanding consciousness, but he's a professor of psychology. Yes, my point is that it's a bluff. It's not actually education. The university simply teaches people to become sophisticated animals. that's all. Just like for example uh if some animals injured, some other animal comes and licks his wounds. but you may get a medical degree. Not that we are criticizing that. Yes, I'm glad there are doctors just like you are. All of us take… I'm not saying there shouldn't be these things. But why should we be so proud just because we've invented a fancy way to lick wounds? In other words, the animals do all these things. At the university, everyone knows that modern educa… that modern education as a time and people completely loose control of their senses, they become just like dogs and cats and they have no control of themself. Education means learn how to control yourself, to control the senses, to control the mind and then to elevate your consciousness beyond this gross matter. But instead… It's just like I was in Berkeley or … I'm not just talking about U.F. I mean it's not… this isn't like a very special place. It's just one of the big American universities. So I mean how is it possible that grown… you know men you know adult men and women are actually getting excited about football games and beer drinking and sex? You know, how is it possible? Even the insects are having sex. I mean you can see it all over the place. So what about the love bugs? Even the insects have sex. The pigs… you know it's hogtown. So the pigs have sex. The dogs have sex. You know everyone is having sex. The horse, the bugs, the birds. And yet these so-called university students who have the audacity to claim that they are being… that they are students, when actually they are behaving like dogs and cats. so this is not real education. It's a bluff. This whole culture is a bluff. And not just America. I'm not just into an anti-American thing. I'm talking about America, Russia, South America, Africa; it's all a big bluff. there's simply… It's simply a society of sophisticated dogs and cats who have no idea of what the purpose of life is. And much less how to accomplish that purpose. And yet they are so proud, they actually think that they are you know, scholars and students and leaders and poets and philosophers when they're actually in ignorance. This is our challenge.

Guest: To convert?

Hridy: Hmm?

Guest: To convert?

Hridy: To convert? No, to wake up! ??? And the religious leaders are also in ignorance. This may sound very bold. But let them prove it's not true. We say that practically all the leaders of society are in ignorance. And they'e… If the leaders are in ignorance, ceratainly the followers are in ignorance. Who can actually come forward and give a systematic, scientific description of the soul or of God?

 

continued…

[Guest guest]

Guest: Nobody I know of.

Hridy: Yes. So it's all a big bluff. It's actually all a… This human life is very temporary. You know students may walk around thinking it's our campus, but in a few years they'll be old and there'll be a new batch, then they'll die. No one will give a damn that they ever lived. No one… people couldn't care less. Just like now there's a bunch of students there, you know having their sex and drugs and so on. And so they couldn't care less about who as on the campus twenty years ago. They couldn't care less. And twenty years from now or ten years from now, no one could care less about them. Isn't it? So it's all… It's just like lemmings jumping off the cliff. Mindlessness. They don't even have the common sense to seriously inquire who am I? Can you image someone so totally mindless that he doesn't even try to find out who am I? Where did I come from? Whre am I going? What is the purpose of life? This is the last word in mindlessness… that their so foolish. They have this course, that course, so many different courses. And they don't even bother to find out who they are.

Guest: The question is often too big for alot of people.

Hridy: That means they're small-minded.

Geust: There sure is alot of small-mindedness around, lots of it.

Hridy: And… and uh killing animals. They want liberation, but only for human beings. Why are they killing animals? They're so-called students. But why do they kill animals? They have no mercy. They want justice for themselves. But they slaughter innocent animals. Every university in America is surrounded by hamburger joints. Isn't it?

Guest: It's true.

Guest: That's right

Hridy: They don't… you see… you see these cows out here in the fields. They're innocent creatures. They don't harm anyone, they don't bother anyone. They drag them in screaming into a slaughterhouse, cut their throats and then ship it out to the college towns and all these mindless students sit there eating flesh and blood. They're just big animals. That's all. The difference is that the human beings are simply sophisticated animals. And the biggest animals among them become the political leaders and educational leaders… the biggest animals. How can they justify this? Education should make a person kind. Where is their mercy? They're so proud that they're human beings. they're the leaders of the earth. They're controlling the whole ecosystem, whatever they call it now. I don't know what the latest "in" word is. So where is their mercy? A leader should be kind. A leader should be merciful. They're slaughtering so many millions of creatures just for their whims so they can go down in the rats cellar and have some beer and eat the flesh of some poor animal. that means they're less than animals. This is their so-called education, simply to drink beer, to become an intoxicated idiot and eat the flesh and blood of some innocent creature. And this is called education. Or to mindlessly read so many books. They think if I read these books I can get money, I'll get a degree. And with my degree then I can get a good job. With that good job we'll get money. With that money I can fill my belly. But all these bugs and animals out here on the farm, they're filling their bellies without this whole process. If you just want to fill your belly and get some sex, then why do you even need a human body? Even the dogs do that. The dogs fill their belly and they have sex. why do you have to get a big university degree just to fill your belly and have sex? So it's all a big farce. It is all a farce.

Guest: It bothers you quite a bit doesn't it?

Hridy: Hmm?

Guest: I say it bothers you quite a bit doesn't it?

Hridy: Well, because we're concerned. I mean how would you feel if you saw your family for example… if your family was being killed. Would it bother you? So practically, form the spiritual point of view, all of us are related. Isn't it?

Guest: Hmm huh.

Hridy: From the spiritual point of view all of us are related. So we are very sorry… we are criticizing not because we hate everyone, but because we're very sorry to see that these people are becoming animals. they're suppose to be human beings, but they're acting like animals.

Guest: Can you explain to me the uh Krsna form of aborting the meat and uh sex and beer and all these things.

Hridy: These things are abominable and discusting. That's the first thing. The first thing is you have to purify your senses. You have to desire to elevate yourself. If you desire to elevate yourself and you take up some purificatory process, then as you purify your consciousness, you'll see that these things are completely disgusting. It's just like a pig eats stool. That's disgusting. So for us meat and beer, these things are disgusting. These things aren't attractive. So the first thing is you have to admit that human life is meant for elevation. How can you justify a society which uses ten percent of the brain? So nature must have created that other 90 percent for some purpose. Why should we use our human brain to do what animals do when they have tiny little brains? In all these courses, computer technology, engineering, this science, that science, all simply technology just for gratification of the body.

Guest: And um do you produce all the food here on the farm that you need?

Hridy: We're coming to that point. We just started a year or two ago and yes, we're more and more coming to the point of self-sufficiency. So my… I'm not criticising out of… to be malicious. I'm not trying to be malicious, not that I hate anyone. But uh we… you have to call a spade a spade. There's a big beautiful campus and they are all young and intelligent, they have such a nice opportunity, they could… people could actually become self-realized. They don't care what they are. Just like for example it's a scientific fact that every seven years your body changes. So that means that you, the person, are not the body. I mean obviously you're still your mother's son and you still have the same name. You're the same person. But you're body is changing constantly. They don't even care. Therefore I frankly say they are like animals. How can you deny that?

Guest: Not very easily. it's not… it's not too difficult to see your point of something as simple as that.

Hridy: Yes, so that's my criticism that it's actually a form of violence to misuse it.

Geust: I have a question. You mentioned…

Hridy: Just like for example… Just like for example… let's say for example you hear that uh that some rich people, they have money and so many resources and they're just wasting it. No one likes to hear that. Isn't it? … that there's gross wasting. You understand? It's not… it's not pleasing. So in the same way, it's not nice that they're wasting this opportunity. And yet they're so proud these students. … and professors, they're all very proud. But what do they know? Just technical things. What are technical things? Their knowledge is complicated, it's not deep. It's superficial… it's simply complicated, but superficial. They're simply making a very complex analysis of the surface. They have no deep knowledge. superficial.

Guest: You mentioned earlier evolution and I think you sort of chuckled when you said it, ridiculous theory.

Hridy: Yeah, of course. There's no evidence of it.

Guest: When you refer to the state of humans as you see them now as being so animal like, do you see any link there at all between the theory of evolution and the fact that people behave in the way they do?

Hridy: The link is that uh we are souls. But we are covered by this body. So because people are misusing their human body, they're going to have to take an animal body. So within the animals also there is a soul also. The same soul is in all the different bodies. There's the same soul in the insect body, the tree body or the animal body, your body. But the bodies are different. Not the soul. The soul is the same. Just like for example light. Light is the same. But if it passes through a green light, a glass, it becomes green light. If it passes through a red glass it becomes red light. So this theory of evolution is false because life does not come from matter. Life comes from life. There is no evidence. There is no actual scientific data to support this theory of evolution. It's just a dogma, that's all. It's simply an agnostic mafia, that's all… an agnostic mafia, this evolution club. Even among themselves they admit it. But it's just like… it's like a puppet theory.

 

(tape ends without warning)