THE VEDIC PERSPECTIVE ON THE ISSUE (continuation)

THE VEDIC PERSPECTIVE ON THE ISSUE (continuation)

Lord Krishna was Himself acting as guru for Arjuna (i.e. as means of knowledge) and giving knowledge of Himself, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, which is the highest aspect of the Absolute Truth (i.e object of knowledge)

"The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: Now hear, O son of Prtha, how by practising yoga in full consciousness of Me, with mind attached to Me, you can know Me in full, free from doubt. I shall now declare unto you in full this knowledge, both phenomenal and numinous. This being known, nothing further shall remain for you to know." (Bhagavad gita 7.1 - 2)

This is the verdict of the Lord. We can either accept His injunction and obtain perfect and complete knowledge, or else settle for incomplete, uncertain and unreliable knowledge based on speculative inferences and faulty observation. In the latter case we can go on speculating for thousands of lifetimes in the manner of the Western philosophical tradition. There is a special word for such a philosopher in sanskrit: muni. The definition of "muni" is "someone who agitates his mind in various ways without coming to a factual conclusion." After lifetimes and lifetimes of such useless speculation, such a muni may one day realize the true object of his search for knowledge, Krishna, and the real means to achieve it, surrender and devotional service to Him:

"After many births and deaths, he who is actually in knowledge surrenders unto Me, knowing Me to be the cause of all causes and all that is. Such a great soul is very rare." (Bhagavad - Gita 7.19)

At this point, a critic might object that we are simply propagating some religious dogma based on blind faith and that there is no way to experimentally verify any of our claims. We strongly disagree with this. There certainly is a systematic way of testing the validity of the assertions made in the Vedic texts. But it does not rely on faulty observation based on our imperfect faculties of perception and cognition. Our present senses, mind and intelligence are all covered due to our material conditioning. But if we are reawakened our original spiritual identity then our innate faculties will begin to emerge and we shall no longer be under the influence of the four defects of the conditioned soul.

Then spiritual, and even material, reality can be apprehended by actual experience. In fact, this is one of the attributes of the soul: he is fully cognizant of all knowledge (cit). The other attributes are eternality (sat) and bliss (ananda).

Due to the influence of false ego, wherein the spirit soul mistakenly identifies with its outer covering, the perishable material body, these attributes are not manifested. One consequence is that our sensual, mental, intellectual and spiritual faculties all become covered over and dulled in much the same way as wearing gloves impairs our sense of touch. There is a process whereby this covering can be removed and one can be re-established in one's original spiritual identity. This is the method of bhakti yoga, as described in scriptures like the Bhagavad gita. The inquisitive reader is invited to study this great science scrutinizingly and to practically experiment with it. (See "Bhagavad Gita As It Is" by His Divine Grace A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.)

In the case of mundane, all its theories and experiments are well beyond the reach of the general public. The latter simply has to accept the testimony of the scientific experts on faith. But the scientific community itself does have access to the means of evaluating and verifying scientific theories. In the same way, the community of self-realized souls can directly perceive and verify spiritual truths. It would be very unreasonable for a layman in this spiritual science to maintain the agnostic position that "no one knows" or "there is no way to know" on the basis of "I don't know" This would be an unjustifiable inductive argument! It is as unreasonable as concluding that no one knows Newton's laws of motion because I don't. Further, as far as spiritual science is concerned, anyone can develop the qualities and skills necessary to directly perceive these spiritual truths by following a simple procedure to reawaken one's original faculties. Therefore the initial "blind faith" that is sometimes necessary on this path is simply incidental and eventually will not be necessary. On the other hand, the implicit faith that the scientist has in his various speculative procedures, such as relying on imperfect observations, inferential analysis, speculative conjectures, rational thinking as well as so many other fallible human traits, is methodical and central to the whole scientific enterprise and cannot be dispensed with at any stage. So, to play in science , both among the general public and amongst scientists themselves.

Therefore, our conclusion is that, from a purely epistemological point of view, the Vedic system of acquiring knowledge is superior to science in all respects.

Let us now briefly examine things from a slightly more practical point of view. We have spoken of Vedic scriptures as giving information on both material and spiritual subject matter. This inevitably leads to contact between material and spiritual science on material and spiritual science on certain issues. Interesting light is thrown on the relationship between the two at this interface. It is nothing new that there are many correspondences between the results of modern science and some of the statements of scripture. We will only very briefly mention just a few of them here. In doing so let us make it clear that we are not trying to prove scripture by recourse to scientific results. It should be quite clear by now what the status of science is and what the status of the Vedas is.

The first example is an account of the development of the embryo by Lord Kapila in the third canto of Srimad Bhagavatam. Of course, Lord Kapila did not have to use all the modern equipment that is necessary for the modern researcher to acquire such knowledge. He could simply perceive it directly by His transcendental senses.

Another example is provided in the ninth canto, where the concept of the relativity of time is depicted in the story of Kind Kadudmi, who traveled to the topmost planet in the Universe, Brahmaloka, and came back after what seemed to him like half and hour, but only to find that millenniums had already passed by on Earth. Although this story would have seemed absurd only a hundred years ago, the physical principle involved was corroborated at the beginning of the century by Einstein's theory of relativity.

Lastly we mention the philosophical implications of quantum theory, a discussion of which would necessitate another paper on its own. Let us simply quote Physics Nobel prize winner Eugene Wigner:

"... the basic philosophical ideas of the Bhagavad Gita on existence are virtually identical with those which quantum mechanics lead me to."

Thus we find that modern science is reproducing some of the results of Vedic scriptures albeit in a rather crude and brute force manner. Of courses it is no secret either that there is some very prominent discrepancies between the two on certain other issues. In those cases we maintain faith in the Vedic version because its methods are completely reliable, whereas scientific methods is incomplete and fallible and so called scientific knowledge and theories are changing all the time.

CONCLUSION

We now sum up our arguments. Let us first make it clear what we are not claiming or doing. By refuting the naive inductivist account of science above we are not claiming that science is impossible or useless. Nor ware we claiming that there is no consistent theory of science. Inductivism could certainly be refined by modifying its assumptions so as to survive the objections leveled against it, but only at the expense of dispensing with the popular conceptions about the nature of science.

Alternative philosophies of science, such as Popper's falsificationism, Lakatos's research programmes or Kuhn's paradigms certainly do provide a more adequate description of scientific methodology, although they no doubt have flaws of their own. We do not wish to establish our own philosophy of science, as this would be a futile endeavor from our own perspective.

The important point is that the more adequate the theory purporting to describe science is, the further removed it seems to be from the naive ideas that are commonly held, as outlined in the introduction.

This is the purpose we wanted to fulfill. We hope that by now the intrepid reader who has ventured thus far will be sufficiently equipped to realize the inadequacy of popular notions. Science should no longer be seen as objective, axiomatic truth deduced from facts by the reliable process of induction. Rather it is more of a human enterprise, where factors like intuition, creativity, uncertainty, guessing etc, play a crucial role.

Scientific theories certainly cannot be proved to be absolutely true or even probably true. Neither is the claim that science is the best and most reliable source of knowledge of any validity. On the contrary we have seen how the Vedic tradition provides a viable and epistemologically superior means of obtaining knowledge both within and beyond the realm of empirical science.

REFERENCES

1. Gillies. Donald. philosophy of science in the twentieth century. Blackwell 1993

2. Chalmers. A.F. What is this thing called Science. Open University 1986

3. Popper Karl R., The logic of Scientific Discovery. Harlper & Row 1965

4. Popper, Kkarl R., Objective Knowledge, Oxford University Press 1972

5. His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada Bhagavad gita As It Is.

6. Srila Jiva Goswami, Sri Tattva sandarbha, translated by Kusakratha dasa, the Krsna Institute Los Angeles. 1987