Transcendental Nectar of Sadhu-Sanga

 Sri Sri Guru Gauranga Jayatah

Introduction to Srimad Bhagavad-Gita:

The Hidden Treasure of the Sweet Absolute

by His Divine Grace Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj

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vande sri-guru-gaurangau, radha-govinda-sundarau

sa-gunau giyate catha, gita-gudhartha-gauravam

 Bowing down to the holy feet of Sri Guru, Sri Gauranga, and Sri Sri Radha Govindasundara, all accompanied by Their associates, I shall sing the great glory of the hidden treasure of Srimad Bhagavad-gita.

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The Srimad Bhagavad-gita is well-known by the learned. Therefore, some explanation of the procedure adopted by this edition's editor must initially be given. The editor belongs to the school of thought descending in disciplic line from Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. We will therefore distinguish that the present edition is based on the commentaries on Sri Gita as given by the preeminent, exalted Sri Gaudiya Vaisnava Acaryas: Sri Visvanatha, Sri Baladeva, and Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura.

By the manifest grace of our worshipful spiritual master, Om Visnupada Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Prabhupada, and from hints given by the aforementioned great pure devotees, some new light has been shed herein, unfolding deeper meanings throughout the text. The devotional reader will appreciate this distinction particularly in noting the purport of the four verses (10.8-11) which were explained by Sri Visvanathapada to be the four essential verses (catuh-sloki) of the book.

Generally, Sri Gita is known as an excellent study of the science of religion. The language of Sri Gita is simple and sweet; its mood is grave, extensive, and fundamental; its thought is brief, distinct, and impartial; and its logic is sound and natural. The prologue, epilogue, exposition, review, analysis, synthesis, and art of presentation of Sri Gita is unprecendented and charming to the extreme.

Sri Gita is activation for the lazy, courage for the coward, hope for the hopeless, and new life for the dying. Sri Gita unifies and sustains all ranks, whether revolutionist, occultist, optimist, renunciationist, liberationist, or full-fledged theist. From the atheist of grossly crude vision, to the most elevated saint, the essential conceptions of all classes of philosophers are dealt with in clear and forceful logic. The fruitive worker, the learned, and the yoga practitioner (karmi, jnani, and yogi) and the devotee of the Lord will find herein a comprehensive and illuminating exposition on the substance of their respective philosophies, and thus the book is highly esteemed by all.

The essential teachings of the Vedas and Upanisads of the Aryans is directly explained, and upon a little closer scrutiny, the gist of various non-Aryan doctrines may also be detected in the text. Within the purport of Sri Gita we find that the purification of consciousness through wisdom arises from materially unmotivated performance of scripturally enjoined duties, resulting in self-knowledge - absolute existential knowledge, or divine realization. In full maturity, this pure, spotless perception culminates in the quest for loving service in pure cognition, in the divine ecstatic realm.

In the analysis of sambandha-jnana, or knowledge of divine relationship, Sri Gita has revealed that the nature of the most original truth is a transcendental all-conscious  personality. In the analysis of prayojana, or the supreme objective, internal inspiration of pure love in pursuit of the Supreme Absolute Reality has been mentioned as the perfectional attainment. And in the analysis of abhidheya, or the method of attaining the desired goal, the first stage has been revealed as offering all one's actions to the Supreme Lord, followed by the cultivation of internal self-knowledge, which arises according to one's progressive realization of the Lord.

Finally, by giving up all other endeavors, one surrenders exclusively unto the Supreme Lord, Sri Krishna. In other words by taking shelter of pure unalloyed faith, one is situated in one's perfected divine identity and engages in divine loving service to the Lord, which is the ultimate goal of all devotional practices.

Sri Gita has clearly distinguished and delineated the characteristics of the nondevotional paths based on action (karma) and knowledge (jnana) and their corresponding achievable objectives of sense enjoyment (kama) and liberation (moksa).

Therefore, the intelligent can note that by the statement, yo yac chraddhah sa eva sah, "One is identified by his particular faith", Sri Gita has drawn an objective comparison of different paths and their goals, thus disarming and exposing those who create confusion by supporting the concoction that the many paths and goals are "all one". In this respect, the following verses (6.46-47) deserve special attention:

tapasvibhyo 'dhiko yogi, jnanibhyo 'pi mato 'dhikah

karmibhyas cadhiko yogi, tasmad yogi bhavarjuna

yoginam api sarvesam, mad-gatenantaratmana

sraddhavan bhajate yo mam, sa me yuktatamo matah

Tyaga or renunciation has been completely condemned, and its futility has been emphatically asserted. This proclamation shows the conclusive, intrinsic gift of Sri Gita. Karma-yoga, or offering one's actions to the Supreme Lord without provincial interest, is preferred above karma-tyaga, or renunciation of action. Finally, full self-surrender to the Supreme Lord, Sri Krishna, with every action dedicated by divine inspiration in His loving service is the ultimate and supreme teaching of Sri Gita.

By a meticulous, deep study of Sri Gita, one will find it to be the king of all scriptures - the bestower of the highest devotion. In its full-fledged nature, this devotion is the most supreme love divine - love for the all-attractive Supreme Personality - Sri Krishna, Reality the Beautiful.

Sarva-dharman parityajya, mam ekam saranam vraja 

- the grand, vibrant, and resounding clarion call of Sri Gita has proclaimed the glories of life's superexcellent objective. Hidden, more hidden, and the most hidden treasures have been given, from the congregational chanting of the holy names of the Lord (sankirtana) up to spontaneous devotion (bhava-seva) in the life of total dedication to the cultivation of Krishna consciousness with exclusive surrender.

This is the consistent and unanimous conclusion of the pure parampara, or descending spiritual succession, as corroborated by the genuine followers of the lotus footsteps of Sri Chaitanyacandra, the original Supreme Lord, who descends to deliver the fallen souls of Kali-yuga, this iron age of quarrel and strife.

May this edition be an offering unto Lord Sri Krishna.

Swami B. R. Sridhar

Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math

Nabadwip, India

 

*His Divine Grace Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj (founder-acarya of the Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math) is a veteran ascetic preceptor in the divine succession of Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. His unique delivery of pure Vaisnava thought forms the synthesis of the highest ontological truths.

His divine flow of continuous spiritual discourse is evidence of his treasure of devotional, scriptural and practical experience. His dynamic representation corroborates the living presence of the Supreme Autocrat, Sri Krishna, as the fountainhead of all transcendental ecstasy and the Supreme Objective of the conscious world.

Thus, for his deep philosophical, traditional and devotional foundation, Srila Sridhar Maharaj was unanimously declared to be the senior preceptor and authority amongst all his colleagues in the school of noble, erudite personalities and great souls.

His Divine Grace is a prolific author and commentator of pure devotional literature, and he is the composer of innumerable exclusive devotional prayers, stanzas and songs in Sanskrit and Bengali. Because of his purity in the line of Srila Rupa Goswami, he was awarded the title of "Bhakti Raksak" (the guardian of devotion) by his spiritual master, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Thakur Prabhupad.

 

Sri Sri Guru Gauranga Jayatah

Srimad Bhagavad-gita

The Hidden Treasure of the Sweet Absolute

 

Ananya Bhajan

Understand this treasure hidden in Sri Gita:

If you can see beyond the apparent and recognize the substance and then declare this to the world, then you will also get exclusive devotion.

Sri Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj

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Giving Up All Phases of Duties

Once we heard that Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur was chanting the Holy Name and wandering in the sky according to his own sweet will. Suddenly he found that he was just near Yamalaya, where Yamaraj, the Lord of Death holds court to judge the sinners of this world. Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur also found present there Lord Brahma, Narada and others, discussing the meaning of two slokas spoken by Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita, but they could not find any solution.

api chet suduracharo bhajate mam ananya bhak

sadhur eva sa mantavyah samyag vyavasito hi sah

~Bg 9.30

 

"One who has devoted himself exclusively to Me, if he does any mischievous actions--sins--he should still be accepted. He should be judged as a righteous man, as honest as any other person. Although externally a person may commit many crimes, if he is exclusively given to My devotion, then he should be considered pure and spotless. He should be considered a saint. Whatever he does, he is doing cent per cent rightly."

ksipram bhavati dharmatma sasvach-chhantim nigachchhati

kaunteya pratijanihi na me bhaktah pranasyati

~Bg 9.31

"Very soon he will become religious and will acquire real peace in his life. O son of Kunti, go and declare this to the public with firm determination. You may promise and give a guarantee to the public that My devotee never meets with destruction - they can never be ruined."

Yamaraj, Brahma and others could not find a solution to this point.

sarvva dharmman parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja

~Bg 18.66

"Giving up all sorts of duties, one may come to My feet. This is called ananya bhajan. One who has given up all different phases of duties and only accepts duties towards Me is my exclusive devotee."

 

Now, after such exclusive duty, then he will again be seen as a dutiful man, an externally pious man, a dharmmatma? This seems to be an anomaly. The meaning of ananya bhajan is that he will leave all sorts of duties--pure or impure--and come to My feet. Then, he will again become very saintly in his activity in the near future? What is the meaning of this?

 

Accepting the Path of Eternal Truth

At that time, they noticed that Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur was moving in the sky and taking the Holy Name of the Lord. They said, "He is a pure devotee--not an ordinary devotee--and he has got deep knowledge of the Scriptures. Let him come and explain this verse of Bhagavad-gita."

Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur was invited and went there to give the meaning of the slokas. Who will be pious, who is a dharmmatma? He who understands and declares this decision: "that an exclusive devotee of Krishna--whatever his outer practice may be--he is cent per cent saintly. He who understands and utters this principle will become dharmmatma--he will be pious in the near future. The conclusion should be that he who declares that 'My exclusive devotee, despite his ill behavior, is cent per cent saintly' and, his statement is also cent per cent correct. So such a person will become very pure and very soon, he will also get the chance of accepting the path towards eternal Truth."

Sri Krishna said to Arjuna in the Bhagavad-gita, “Take this advantage and go to the public. Declare with boldness that My devotee who is given wholly and exclusively towards Me—if apparently or outwardly he may be doing something wrong—he will never be destroyed. He will be saved, na me bhaktah pranasyati—no destruction is possible for My exclusive devotee, his life is insured. Go to the public and declare this and receive the benefit of becoming saintly. You will have the chance of acceptance of the path of spiritual eternal peace. It is so, because they have got that appreciation, that exclusive devotion for Me.”

Our Duty Towards the Center

Everything is for Him and not for any other part. We may obey or disobey the laws of the provincial or separate interest. We may do or may not do, but we must obey the rule: everything is for Him. This is the main rule. All other rules are subsidiary. We may carry on or we may not carry on, but we must carry on our duty towards the center. This is the all-important factor in every case. One who can appreciate this and boldly asserts it to the public must have some substantial feeling in the matter. He is sure to survive to improve his future condition very soon. He will attain the path of eternal peace that is Myself. This is the underlying meaning.

 

sarvva dharmman parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja

~Bg 18.66

This is the highest quality of every part of the whole. Everyone must be dedicated towards the center, even crossing his dutifulness in respect to other environments. One who can feel this, appreciate this, and assert this, he will also very soon get such a position because of his inner heart’s appreciation. He has some realization in this path and that will also come to be effected very soon. The public will see, “Oh! He is also coming to this path of ananya bhajan, exclusive adherence towards the call of the Absolute Center, and that is all in all.”

 

Purifying Capacity

“Dharmma means moral duties to mother, country, society and humanity. But, neglecting all these duties, if one maintains a straight relationship with Me, then he is considered not to be committing any fault. He is in the line of exclusive devotion towards Me. He is doing rightly.”

One who can appreciate this; he will also very soon be converted to the same class. This is the verdict, the full meaning. Not only he who is following the exclusive devotional path, but who can appreciate this, he will also gain entrance in the path of exclusive devotion to the Lord. In the beginning of devotional practices, there may be some bad tendencies, but when the devotee matures, all these different tendencies will automatically disappear. These unwanted tendencies may disappear or may not disappear, but service to the center is the all-important factor for the devotee.

drstaih svabhava-janitair vapusas cha dosair

na prakrtatvam iha bhata-janasya pasyet

gangambhasam na khalu, budbuda-phena-pankair

brahma-dravatvam apagachchhati, nira-dharmmaih

~Sri Upadesamrta 6

 

Srila Rupa Goswami has given the example, “The Ganges water is sometimes seen to be externally filthy, but it never loses its purifying capacity. The purifying capacity of the Ganges water has got no connection with the external purifying capacity of the Ganges water.”

In the same way, the devotees may have some physical or mental defects. However, devotee means, ‘the atma—the soul’. In the atma—the innermost self—there is a purifying agent which is the purest normal factor of the world. “Whatever externally you may see in My exclusive devotees is like the foam and dirt in the Ganges water. The purifying capacity of the Ganges water cannot be disturbed by any foam or any dirt mixed with the water—that is something separate. The spiritual capacity does not depend in any way on this material, foreign capacity.”

So, some devotees may be seen to be a little greedy and some a little easily excited. Physically, one may be blind, another may be deaf and another may be lame. But these external, apparent defects should not be considered because a devotee’s saintly characteristic is independent of the physical and mental planes.

The Highest Position of Purity

 

In Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s tour of South India, He met Vasudeva Vipra in Kurmaksetra. He was a leper, but a great devotee. The leper, Vasudeva was also very exemplary in his physical conduct. If any worms fell on the ground from his sores, then he would put the worms back on the sores so they would not die. He was suffering from leprosy, but he was a devotee cent per cent. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu happily embraced him and his leprosy disappeared. Also, when Srila Sanatan Goswami was coming back to Puri from Vrndavan, by the contact of bad water in the jungle, he contracted some sores on his body. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu used to welcome him but Sanatan Goswami would push back, “Don’t touch me. This is the body of a sinful man with so many itches and sores that are oozing and emitting a bad odor. Don’t touch me.”

Then one day, Sanatan Goswami disclosed, “I shall leave this place or I shall invite death by falling under the wheel of Lord Jagannath’s cart.” When Mahaprabhu heard of this He chastised Sanatan and then forcibly embraced him—all the good qualities came out immediately and the sores, etc. disappeared. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu told, “Sanatan, you are a Vaisnava. Your body is not defective.—aprakrta-deha tomara ‘prakrta’ kabhu naya—I am a sannyasi. Krishna is testing Me to see whether I have got any difference in the discrimination of My dealings with the devotees. Whether I am seeing, ‘this sore is here’ or ‘that defect is there,’ in the devotee and thereby avoid their company. Krishna is testing Me. It is seen only for this purpose. Your body is already pure. Krishna has created this situation only to test the public. If I cannot see this, then I will be deceived by Krishna. So, it is nothing. It is a show, a mere show. Your body is pure and spotless. You are a Vaisnava, a devotee of Lord Krishna. This is only shown to serve some purpose of the divinity of Krishna. Wherever a devotee’s saintly devotion is present, such things cannot stand. Only to test My devotion, Krishna has sent you to Me in this condition.”

He embraced Srila Sanatan Goswami and showed that he is cent per cent devotee. These circumstances may or may not occur, but still the principle is that our service, our wholesale dutifulness towards Krishna is our primal necessity. In the ordinary sense, the Gopis are also considered to be sinners. They are crossing the laws of the society and the Scriptures so they are considered sinners. However, they hold the highest position of purity as a result of their exclusive devotion towards Krishna and no other—even at the risk of repeatedly crossing society’s standards of morality. They cannot check themselves due to their extreme hankering to serve Krishna cent per cent. Therefore, the Gopis are considered to be in the highest devotional mood. But this sort of devotion is not cheap. Persons of this world may take advantage of these very high ideals, but that will not be beneficial for them. Devotion must be there to a substantial degree. It is not by cheap imitation that anyone will pass in the name of exclusive devotion to the Lord. That is sahajia—imitation—and cannot be allowed.

 

 

Find Out Where the Goodness Lies

 

We should not be too particular about the conduct of other devotees as we lose our own time and energy—and it is also reactionary. “If I try to find fault with anyone, then the same fault will come back to me; and this is especially true in the devotee section. By chewing the poison in his body, that same poison will come back to me.” So we should avoid that and try to find the good qualities in others as that will also be of help to us.

There was a system in our Math at the time of our Guru Maharaj (Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur). Our Guru Maharaj used to order openly in an assembly that one devotee would stand and praise the good qualities of another selected devotee he especially did not like. So, he forced the critic to find out where the goodness lies in that devotee whom he did not like. Finding out the good qualities in him helped the critic eliminate the bad things in his conception. He will search after that which is good and thereby, he will be benefitted. There should be no culture of any misconception, especially in the devotees because Krishna has taken full charge of those who are surrendered souls.

So whatever is good and bad there in the devotees, it is His responsibility. Any fault or evil in a devotee may disappear at any time or Krishna may continue that tendency there in order to serve some purpose. We are to see like that. Therefore, we must not go to criticize those who are directly under the charge of Krishna or we shall be in great difficulty. We should try to find out what is good in them for that will help us a great deal. This is not a theoretical thing but these are the most practical topics.

           All glories to Sri Guru and Sri Gauranga

~ Reservoir of Love and Affection ~

Remembering His Divine Grace Om Visnupada
Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaj

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gurvvabhista-supurakam guru-ganair asisa-sambhusitam
chintyachintya-samasta-veda-nipunam sri-rupa-panthanugam
govindabhidham ujjvalam vara-tanum vande visva-gurun cha
divya-bhagavat-premno hi bija-pradam bhakty anvitam sundaram

"I worship the holy lotus feet of he who perfectly fulfils the most cherished wish of his Divine Master; who is adorned resplendently with the blessings of his Guru-varga; who is adept in all vedic conceptions, both conceivable and inconceivable; who is the faithful follower in the line of Sri Rupa; who is known as Srila Govinda Maharaj; whose beautiful divine figure revels in the mellows of divine love; who is the Guru of the entire universe and the bestower of the seed of divine love for the Supreme Lord."

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Guardian of Spiritual Wealth

Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj saw in Srila Govinda Maharaj, from the very beginning, some extraordinary capacity, and at the age of seventeen he was selected by Srila Guru Maharaj to be his successor. In time, he would entrust him as the guardian of the storehouse of divine spiritual wealth. Srila Gurudev was ornamented with the blessings of all the Guru-varga. His uncle gurus all had so much respect and sweet affection for him and noted that he perfectly fulfilled the desires of his beloved Guru Maharaj. They found in Srila Govinda Maharaj one who could be the architect of the outward expression of Srila Guru Maharaj's high conception.

Srila Govinda Maharaj's qualifications and glories are immeasurable. We have heard how at the tender age of seventeen he left his family and sought the shelter and spiritual guidance of Srila Guru Maharaj; how his family tried to make him leave, even forcibly, but he would not budge from Srila Guru Maharaj's lotus feet. He said, "I am coming. I am giving myself to you. That is forever."

And later, before the close of his manifest pastimes, Srila Guru Maharaj said, "You must take this position." And against his own wishes, he reluctantly obeyed and took the position of Srila Guru Maharaj's successor. Constantly, we saw how he was humbly carrying out this duty. He took what came to him in the way of praise and recognition and placed it, like a golden gift, firmly at the lotus feet of his beloved Spiritual Master, Srila Guru Maharaj. This is his saintly example.

Sripad Bhakti Bimal Avadhut Maharaj once said that because of Srila Govinda Maharaj's gracious visit, all of Russia and the surrounding areas were miraculously and spiritually surcharged. Srila Gurudev sweetly deflected the glow of praise and very affectionately expressed appreciation to all the devotees, reminding us of our direction and our goal by saying, "Vaisnava seva - that is our life."

We Shall Hanker for Connection with Sri Guru

Srila Narottam Das Thakur says, asrayalaiya bhaje tahre krsna nahi tyaje: "If one can get a bona fide guardian, his future is ensured." And in Sermons of the Guardian of Devotion, Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj says, "When we suffer from uncertainty to the extreme, we shall hanker for connection with Guru, the reliable source. I cannot only put an enquiry to him with faith and trust, but Guru is a guardian who is my well-wisher more than I am to my own self. 'Guardian' means a friend who thinks more of me than I think of myself. He knows more about my welfare than I do. Such is the position to have a guardian, a friend, a Guru."

One day, during darshan, Srila Govinda Maharaj said, "One who is happy to see the Vaisnavas, and in turn, the Vaisnavas are happy to see him; he is a real Vaisnava." Also, we have heard, "One who is a lover of the devotee has got substantial devotion." We found that these qualities were always fully present in His Divine Grace.

Heart-capturing Examples

On one holy Vyasa Puja celebration the glorification of Srila Govinda Maharaj went on late into the night. In the nat mandir, senior Vaisnavas spoke deeply and unconditionally about the glories of Sri Guru and the Vaisnavas. These talks were spoken mainly in Bengali, but the sound and the mood were so irresistibly sweet and heart-melting that all were captivated. In Srila Govinda Maharaj's association, in Nabadwip, in the abode of 'inexhaustible sweetness and purity,' we have so many heart-capturing examples of the Vaisnava qualities of tolerance and humility. I feel that there, in the sacred land where one's offenses are lovingly forgiven, we can place ourselves in the pathway of grace. In one essay, author Thomas Merton prayed, "Is it merciful of Your light to bring us, inexorably, to despair? No, it is not despair that You bring me, but to humility. For true humility is, in a way, a very real despair; despair of myself in order that I may hope entirely in You."
Srila Govinda Maharaj constantly reminded the devotees to be humble by way of trnad api sunichena taror api sahisnuna, amanina manadena kirtaniyah sada harih. If we can truly hear this and understand properly, we must think, "I am very, very insignificant and my only hope is the mercy of the Vaisnavas, and my only shelter is my Divine Master."
On our own we cannot do anything, but if grace comes from above, from Sri Guru and Vaisnava, there will be some sweet hope. If we can attract that grace with a most sincere, heartbreaking mood of unworthiness, of emptiness and shame, then we may have some great expectation. The negative mood can invite the Positive. And Sri Guru, like the Supreme Lord, is generous, kind and loving. He is won over by the affection of his devotees.

Jewel of the Garland

We have heard how His Divine Grace Srila Govinda Maharaj and other disciples of Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Maharaj, described the inconceivable pain of his disappearance and how the area of Gauda-desa was shaken by earthquakes in the days preceding and following the close of his manifest lila in this world. All over the world, and particularly in Sridham Nabadwip, the devotees were suffering from the shock and the pain of shattered hearts. Srila Govinda Maharaj said, "Guru Maharaj is a great devotee of Krishna, and when he leaves this mundane world, really, the jewel of the garland must fall down, like a star from the sky. Then some disturbance and symptoms must come again. And it happened."

We were reminded that just as the glorious full moon of Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj's divine Pastimes was setting, the brilliant sun that is his most beloved disciple, His Divine Grace Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaj, was rising and spreading his soothing rays to the hearts of the afflicted devotees.

Their Merciful Glance

Srila Govinda Maharaj has said, ''The sun rises and sets. It does not take birth or die. So the appearance and disappearance of the pure Vaisnava is like the sunrise and sunset. Both are good for the conditioned souls of this world. When they depart, they cast their merciful glance everywhere, and whoever remembers them will get that mercy''

He instructed, "This is Madhava tithi. When Krishna, Radharani, and His associates are appearing in this mundane world, and when disappearing, all these days are very auspicious for the devotee - that is called Madhava tithi. That is, Madhava is getting the happiness. That day we must try in a more glorifying way to give our service to our Lordship and with great care we shall try to give honor to that date."

Now, again, our star has fallen, and our devotional family is struck with the unbearable grief and heartbreak of physical separation from our beloved master and guardian. In The Divine Servitor Srila Govinda Maharaj gives sweet and soothing hope, reminding us, "When Srila Guru Maharaj was directly present he constantly gave his association in order to guide souls as fallen as ourselves on the path of the ultimate good. Now, in his absence, Srila Guru Maharaj remains present as our guardian in the form of his direct representative, dear associates and chaittya-guru who reveals that path of the highest good. Srila Guru Maharaj's presence is found in his message, in his instructions, in his guidance, and in every particle of every single atom of his established place of bhajan, Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math. With the vision of service to the holy abode, we can directly witness and realize this extension of his divine service: this wealth of his divine service."

I Am Only an Instrument

Once, on the observance of Srila Guru Maharaj's disappearance, Srila Govinda Maharaj said, "Chaitanya Saraswat Math is going everywhere and we are surprised, but this was the vision of Srila Guru Maharaj within that small thatched room. The glories of Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math are overflowing. Now I am seeing you all have come here from Hungary, Germany, Holland, Poland, America, England, France‚ everywhere. Now this Mission is everywhere, and we can feel the sun never sets on Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math. California is thirteen hours different from Nabadwip. Then when night comes in Nabadwip, in California the sun is shining; and when it is night in California, in Nabadwip the sun has risen. Therefore the sun is never setting on Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math. Russia, Siberia, Alaska. We cannot conceive. I cannot conceive.

"I am only an instrument, and I am following the Vaisnavas' footsteps. First they are going and making something; I am going after that, and I am surprised. Hearing what Guru Maharaj wants, we are all trying to fulfill his divine desire all over the world. Still we are going on. What can I say? His Gurudeva, Srila Prabhupada Saraswati Thakur, wanted to send him to the West, and that desire he fulfilled through us.

"I did not know any English, and I told Guru Maharaj, "I do not know English, but I will try, and I shall preach." Guru Maharaj said, "When the time comes, English will come to you." I am surprised, and now I am thinking it is true. I can speak something in English now."

In the words from the introduction to Srila Govinda Maharaj found on the Math website, "the elixir of nectar which has been carried around the world from Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math is still flowing by the mercy Sri Guru and Gauranga represented in the person of Srila Govinda Maharaj, and through him it has become doubly sweet." Srila Guru Maharaj -- acclaimed by one and all as the "Maker of Gurus" -- has presented to us his most precious gem in the personage of Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaj."

Our Everything

"What is favorable for the practitioner's life," said Srila Govinda Maharaj, "we shall take that happily, and what is non-favorable, we must leave that. Most favorable is: suddha-bhakata-charana-renu, bhajana-anukula. We always try to take the dust of the lotus feet of the devotee who is a real devotee of Krishna. If we take shelter of him, and if we follow his guidance, we must be benefited. And it is said, that 'I am your servant, please give me instruction and service to Krishna under guidance of you.'"

This is Sri Guru's inconceivable gift to us-upadeksyanti te jnanam. The Lord is always engaged in a loving search for the lost servant, and Sri Guru, in that mood, is our guide, lovingly directing us back to our sweet, sweet home. Guiding us toward our essence, toward the sweetness we are hankering for-bhakti, pure service, love and affection. We do not know our way home, we have been wandering homeless for so long, but Sri Guru has come to guide us and protect us on our dangerous journey. He is our sustenance, our hope, our shelter, our everything. And what shall we give in return?

mat-tulyo nasti papatma naparadhi ca kascana
parihare 'pi lajja me kim bruve purusottama

"My Lord, I feel ashamed. How shall I offer you so many pure things like flowers? Generally, pure things are offered to you, but what about me? I have come with the most filthy thing to offer to you. I feel ashamed. I have come to you, with only my shame, to beg for your mercy. There is no parallel to my sinful, criminal life. Everything that can be conceived of as bad is found in me. It is very difficult even to speak about the characteristics of my heinous sins and crimes. Still, your nature, existence, fame, and benevolence cannot but attract me. You can save me. You can purify me. Hoping against hope, I have come to you. And I have only one solace, that I am the real object of your mercy. Your tendency is to purify the meanest. Those who are the most needy have some claim to your mercy. I am the worst of the needy and the meanest of the mean. This is my only qualification, my only hope to attract your attention and appeal to your magnanimity." ~Sri Rupa Goswami

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I feel ashamed that I do not know how to appreciate and glorify the pure devotee of the Lord. Daksa prayed to Lord Siva, "I did not know your full glories...I request that you be pleased by your own mercy, since I cannot satisfy you by my words." In a similar way, I must pray to His Divine Grace Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Maharaj, to our gracious Guru-varga, and to all the Vaisnavas, that you will be pleased by your own kind mercy. I do not have the words to adequately glorify you.

I offer my obeisances to His Divine Grace Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaj. He has said that he will create for us a grand palace of devotion. It is a promise and an image so startling and wondrous and lovely that it captures and pierces and enters deeply into the heart. "Just run," he said, "and don't look back-whether your eyes are open or closed it does not matter, you won't fall down. We cannot guess from here how much joy and ecstasy is there in our home, how much happiness and enjoyment."

He revealed that he will always be with us, and time after time, again and again, by spotless example he is reminding us: "ami guru-dasa-nahi anya. I am a servant of Sri Gurudev-and nothing else."

All glories, all glories to Sri Guru all the worldwide Vaisnavas.
Offering obeisances and praying for your gracious glance,
~jd

All glories to Sri Guru and Sri Gauranga

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Srimad Bhagavad-Gita

The Hidden Treasure

of the

Sweet Absolute

Srila Bhakti Raksak

Sridhar Dev-Goswami

Maharaj

Sankhya-yoga
The Constitution of the Soul

Chapter 2 ~ part 5

Prepared by: Jagamohini Devi Dasi (USA)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

~~~

parasarya-vachah sarojam-amalam gitartha-gandhotkatam

nanakhyanaka-kesaram hari-katha-sambodhanabodhitam

loke sajjana-sat-padair ahar-ahah pepiyamanam muda

bhuyad Bharata-pankajam kali-mala-pradhvamsi nah sreyase

~ Mangalacharanam: 7

These words of Sri Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasadeva, the son of Parasara Muni, are a perfect lotus flower. The meaning of the Gita is the beautiful fragrance of this lotus, the various episodes are its stamens, and the enlightening narrations about the Supreme Lord are its nectar. In this world, the pure devotees are the bees who day after day delight in drinking the nectar of the lotus flower. May this Mahabharata lotus, the vanquisher of all evils in this age of Kali, graciously bestow auspiciousness upon us.

~ Auspicious Invocation of Sri Gita: 7

~~~

In the introduction to Srimad Bhagavad-Gita: The Hidden Treasure of the Sweet Absolute, His Divine Grace Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj notes that Sri Gita has clearly shown the distinction between the various paths, such as the path of action, including worship of the gods for worldly fulfillment, and the path of knowledge, for the attainment of liberation. The thoughtful reader can note that Sri Gita, by its comparative study, refutes the misconception that the many paths and goals are ‘all one’. Rather it is stated, yo yach chhradhah sa eva sah, “A man is known by his faith.”

He reminds us that the following verses, found in chapter six of Sri Gita, warrant deep consideration in this respect:

“The yogi is superior to persons engaged in austerities, superior to the persons of knowledge, and superior to the person of action… Therefore, O Arjuna, be a yogi. And best of all yogis is My faithful devotee for whom I am the only goal, and who serves Me whole-heartedly. This is My opinion.” (6.46-47)

Srila BR Sridhar Maharaj explains that “in showing the inferiority and meaninglessness of dry renunciation, the gift of Sri Gita is most substantial and positive. Rather than merely renouncing action, one should selflessly offer one’s actions to the Supreme Lord (karma-yoga).Ultimately, based on one’s surrender; one will be inspired to act in devotion (bhakti) for the Lord alone. This is the conclusive and sublime teaching of Sri Gita. In the finest conception, the overall excellence of Sri Gita is found in its gift of devotion.”

As chapter two of Srimad Bhagavad-Gita continues, this rarest gift of devotion is illuminated and we are led closer to the divine hidden treasure.

~~~

traigunya-visaya veda, nistraigunyo bhavarjuna

nirdvandvo nitya-sattva-stho,niryoga-ksema atmavan  (Gita 2.45)

O Arjuna, the Vedas deal with the three modes of material nature (by accommodating fruitive action and liberation as an allowance and incentive for persons who are ignorant of the true objective of the Vedas). But you, Arjuna, give up duality and all pursuits for gain and preservation, stand ever in the plane of truth, and by the yoga of wisdom, transcend the modes of nature.

(The objective of the Vedas is transcendental. Without fruitive action or liberation, O Arjuna, follow the transcendental path of devotion to the Lord as taught by the Vedas.)  (Gita 2.45)

In his Sri Sri Prapanna-jivanamrtam, Srila BR Sridhar Maharaj has included the sloka from Sri Bilvamangal Thakur’s Krishna Karnamrta about the generous and captivating nature of devotion:

bhaktis tvayi sthiratara bhagavan yadi syad

daivena nah phalati divya-kisora-murttih

muktih svayam mukulitanjali sevate ‘sman

dharmartha-kama-gatayah samaya-pratiksah

"Oh, Devotion, you are of such a magnanimous nature, if there is any way that we can have your least favor, then mukti (salvation or liberation) will wait to serve us with open arms. What to speak of mukti, even dharma (ritualistic virtue), artha (affluence), and kama (material enjoyment) will be waiting far, far away for whenever their calling bell is sounding. Then, they will rush to our feet saying, `What do you want?" The bhakta is there. They are always eager to serve him but he does not want. He does not have any attention for such appeal. No attention, no time to spare for thinking about them: He is deeply engaged in the service of Krishna.

Visvanath Cakravarti Thakur has explained the more about the inner meaning of devotion in this verse from Srimad Bhagavatam: 1.2.6:

sai vai pumsam paro dharmo

yatho bhaktir adhoksaje

ahaituky apratihata

yayatma suprasidati

The supreme occupation (dharma) for all humanity is that by which man can attain to loving devotional service unto the transcendent Lord. Such devotional service must be causeless and uninterrupted, to completely satisfy the self.

He explains that here, krsna-bhakti is described as ahaituki, causeless, and also apratihata, continuous –so when it is awakened in our heart, we can feel that our heart is getting wonderfully satisfied, yayatma suprasidati. The satisfaction is produced in our heart, we can feel it. Ahaituky apratihata: it has no cause; and it cannot be checked, cannot be opposed, opposition cannot have any effect there – it is such. Bhakti comes from bhakti. In this way it is ahaituki. Just as when the light is there and another candle is lit from it. From light, light is coming. In this way we are to trace it out, to understand it: the original Light, that is eternal, self-existent, and is extending itself, so it has no cause, it is ‘causeless’. The cause is there eternally, and it is extending itself.    (Awakening to the Absolute)

~~~

yavan artha udapane, sarvatah samplutodake

tavan sarvesu vedesu, brahmanasya vijanatah  (Gita 2.46)

As all the purposes served by several ponds can be served better by a large lake, similarly, the fruits of worshipping the various gods by their respective Vedic prayers are surpassed by serving Me. The knower of Brahman who thus knows the purport of the Vedas fulfills all life’s objectives.  (Gita 2.46)

Srila BR Sridhar Maharaj gives another example: "If we supply water to the root the whole tree will be fed. Similarly, by faith we can realize that if we do everything for Him, The center of Beauty Personified, everything will be beautifully done! With all your might contribute your quota, however small, and from that point your efforts will be distributed beautifully. And this is the highest harmony."

ajnajaiva gunan dosan, mayadistan api svakan

dharmman samtyajya yah sarvvan

myam bhajet sa ca sattamah

"Even crossing the scriptures I exist, even though those directions are given by Me." So, directions are of different classes. And Krishna says, "Sometimes it will be necessary to show devotion to Me, even crossing My own laws." (Sermons of the Guardian of Devotion)

"In the scriptures of religion, I, the Supreme Lord, have instructed men of all statuses of life in their duties. Duly comprehending the purificatory virtue of executing those prescribed duties as well as the vice of neglecting them; one who abandons all allegiance to such dutifulness in order to engage in My devotional service is the best of honest men (sadhu)." (Sri Sri Prapanna-jivanamrtam)

~~~

karmany evadhikaras te, ma phalesu kadachana

ma karma-phala-hetur bhur, ma te sango ‘stv akarmani  (Gita 2.47)

Your right is to your work, never to the fruits. Be neither motivated by the fruit of action nor inclined to give up action.  (Gita 2.47)

I shall now describe niskama karma-yoga, the path of selfless action. You have a right to perform your natural prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to any fruits of that action. You should neither act with desire to enjoy the fruits of your work, nor, as a result, should you be attached to neglecting your duties.” (Gita 2.47).

“We are only agents, and we are working because He has ordered us, so we must remember what is bhakti, what is devotion proper. Whatever I do, the wage I earn must not come to me; I am only an agent. The benefit should go to the proprietor, to my master, Krishna. We should move with this idea, and that will be bhakti proper. Otherwise, we will be engaged in karma-kanda: fruit-hunting. I want to enjoy the result of karma for myself, but the result should go to my master. I am His servant; I am working under His order. I am His slave; I am not the proprietor. I am not the proper person to be the recipient of the fruits of energy. The master of energy is the Supreme Lord, and all the products of energy should go to Him. It must not be tampered with on the way. This should be the attitude of every worker. Then it will be bhakti proper. We are not the recipients; He is the recipient. We must always be conscious that the only beneficiary is He. Only then are we devotees. We are not the beneficiaries, but selfless workers.

It is said in the Bhagavad-gita (2.47): “You have a right to perform your duty, but you have no right to enjoy the fruits of your work.” This is a great warning. Krishna says, “Do not think that because you are not the beneficiary of the fruits of your action, you have no reason to take so much trouble to work – never.” That is the most heinous curse, to think that because I am not the beneficiary, I am not going to work. Even selfless activity is also of a lower order. Rather we must perform godly activity for the satisfaction of the Supreme Lord. That is bhakti, or devotion. And there is also a gradation in bhakti: there is a big division between vidhi-bhakti and raga-bhakti, calculative devotion and spontaneous devotion.” (The Search for Sri Krishna)

“There may be so many stalwarts, like Bhisma and Drona, who fall flat in the battlefield, but still we must go on. We are out to fight to the end.” (Sermons of the Guardian of Devotion)

“Give your full concentration to discharging your duty and not to the result of your work. The result is with Me; all responsibility is with Me.”

Higher calculation is like that. The generals say, “March! Go forward. Onward! You have to go. You are my soldiers; whatever I shall ask, you must do. You may die and the victory may come afterward; that is not your concern. You are soldiers; many of you may be finished, but the country as a whole will gain.”

In this way, so many important lives may be sacrificed. And as soldiers, we have no right to calculate whether we shall gain or lose in the long run. There are two things we must be very careful about. We shouldn’t think that if we can’t enjoy the fruits of our labor, then there is no reason to work. At the same time, we shouldn’t think that we must get some share of the fruits. Remembering this, we should go on discharging our duty to Krishna. That is devotion, and that is the meaning of Bhagavad-gita. Bhagavad-gita says, “You can’t change the environment. If you want peace, you must regulate yourself according to the environment.” The whole gist of Bhagavad-gita’s advice is found here: Try to adjust yourself with the environment, because you are not the master of the environment. All your energy should be devoted to regulate yourself and not the outside world. This is the key to success in spiritual life.” (Loving Search for the Lost Servant)

~~~

yoga-sthah kuru karmani, sangam tyaktva dhananjaya

siddhy-asiddhyoh samo bhutva, samatvam yoga uchyate  (Gita 2.48)

O Dhananjaya, give up the ego that you are the doer, and be equipoised in success and failure. Thus stand firm in the plane of yoga and do your prescribed duties. Such a state of balance is indeed known as yoga.  (Gita 2.48)

~~~

durena hy avaram karma, buddhi-yogad dhananjaya

buddhau saranam anvichcha, krpanah phala-hetavah  (Gita 2.49)

O Dhananjaya, (fruitive) action is far inferior to this yoga of wisdom; those motivated by the fruits of their actions are misers. Therefore, seek refuge in the selfless wisdom of equanimity.  (Gita 2.49)

~~~

buddhi-yukto jahatiha, ubhe sukrta-duskrte

tasmad yogaya yujyasva, yogah karmasu kausalam  (Gita 2.50)

The wise person abstains from both good and bad actions in this world. Engage thus in yoga, as yoga is the art of all works.  (Gita 2.50)

raso 'py asya, param drstva nivartate. By even slightly coming in contact with the dignified position of our own soul, all worldly charm will vanish; and even that will seem to be a negligible thing compared to the awakening of higher levels of realizations,  up to the Super-soul - Paramatma - then to Narayana and Krishna! There is so much ecstatic enjoyment on that side and it will be realized only when it will be revealed within us. Though to our present conception it is far away, still, that experiencer, that taster, is within us: it is the jivatma. And if we try to concentrate even for a second there, we will find what a dignified position the soul holds. We shall think, “Who are these thieves? The intellect, mind and senses are all thieves and plunderers. They are taking me into the land of misery as if through some intricate conspiracy.” It will seem like that to us.  (Sermons of the Guardian of Devotion)

“After getting a taste of divine sweetness, suspicion vanishes, rasa-varjam raso 'py asya, param drstva nivartate. When we have a taste of real ecstasy (rasa), then all doubts are cleared. By getting a taste of Krishna consciousness, the heart is captured, and when the heart is captured, the ecstasy of love of Godhead, prema, begins to flow.  Being satisfied, the heart will say, “This is what I was searching for!”  Then, the brain will follow, thinking, “Yes, there can be no doubt, this is the highest goal of our search. Dissolve everything else.”  (The Golden Volcano of Divine Love)

~~~

karma-jam buddhi-yukta hi, phalam tyaktva manisinah

janma-bandha-vinirmuktah, padam gachchhanty anamayam  (Gita 2.51)

The wise are enlightened by giving up the fruits of their actions, and thus obtaining liberation from the bondage of birth, they reach the plane beyond all suffering.  (Gita 2.51)

akincanasya dantasya santasya sama-cetasah

maya santusta-manasah sarvah sukha-maya disah

“One who does not desire anything within this world, who has achieved peace by controlling his senses, whose consciousness is equal in all conditions and whose mind is completely satisfied in Me finds only happiness wherever he goes. “ (Srimad Bhagavatam: 11.14.13).

“Krsna’s divine will is in the background of everything that exists. And when one comes in connection with that paramount power, that original plane of reality, he will not have any care; he will become fearless.” (Subjective Evolution of Consciousness)

Srila BR Sridhar Maharaj has said, “When I am in a normal state, I will be able to feel that so many sweet waves are coming from all around me. The Lord says, “For one who is satisfied in Me, then all the four directions will bring only good news to him.”

Srila BR Sridhar Maharaj reminds us, “We must be free…we are to be a free member of the infinite world where there is the noble flow of dedication. There is no aspiration of any limited type there, but a wholesale dedicating flow is going toward the center. That is our home; that is the soil where we can live eternally. There, they are all individuals, and there is no death, no birth, no infirmity and no disease. Our innermost self must come out and mix with the members of that soil.”

~~~

yada te moha-kalilam, buddhir vyatitarisyati

tada gantasi nirvedam, srotavyasya srutasya cha (Gita 2.52)

When your intelligence fully emerges from the dense forest of illusion, you will be indifferent to all that has been heard or is yet to be heard.  (Gita 2.52)

“According to the thread of their karma, the living beings are wandering throughout many species of life in the universe. Among all such wandering souls, one for whom the fortune of spiritual merit has arisen by which devotion is facilitated, gains the seed of the creeper of devotion by the grace of Guru and Krsna; that seed is good faith (sraddha).” (Sermons of the Guardian of Devotion)

“Wandering throughout the material universe, the very fortunate living entity who receives the grace of Guru and Krsna receives the seed of the creeper of devotional service.” (Chaitanya-charitamrta: Madhya 19.151) and (The Search for Sri Krishna)

In such a charming and meaningful way, Srila BR Sridhar Maharaj reminds us, “Srimad-Bhagavatam ( 1.1.2) says, vedyam vastavam atra vastu sivadam tapa-trayonmulanam: Reality is vastavam vastu, the real substance above all of the unreal, imaginary things of this world. All the accumulated knowledge in relation to this world is a wholesale concoction. It is the result of misreading the environment and is full of misinterpretation and misconception. The whole thing – the vocabulary, the history, the epics, the whole thing, whatever has been collected – is all a misrepresentation of the truth, and we are in the midst of that. We are captivated within that, but at the same time we have the capacity to enter the plane of real life because we are a particle of that higher world. So we must go back to God, back to home.”

Home is there. What charm can there be for us here where there is death, and then birth again, and where everything is stale and produces dissipation and suffering? Mortality, suffering, and death – and even then it is not finished, but we must continuously come here again and again and follow the same course of life!

So try to obtain real relief, and help others also to take up their proper life away from this undesirable atmosphere. We must go “back to Godhead”, where everything is wonderful. What is that Godhead? Our home is there! – Our home, sweet, sweet home. We are a child of that soil, and the scriptures urge us: “You have got this human life, this chance, so always try, by all means – by thinking, by meditation, by talking, by hearing – to cultivate your own true identity, your noble identity, in your homeland where the soul lives. Always, always, always engage

yourself in that. Try to avoid this plane of misconception by any means and enter into that land.”

Going back to Godhead means going back to our own soil, our real home. What is night to us now – that we will make our day! Where there is presently darkness to us – we are to find light there; and what is so apparently plain and expressively clear – that must be neglected. In our earnest calculation the entire world of exploitation and self-interest should be kicked into the darkness, and we should withdraw wholesale from that ‘knowledge’. And what is dark to us now we should try to make light by always giving our attention, thoughtful consideration, and adherence to achieving residence in the higher soil, the land of wonders where everything is wonderful.  (Golden Staircase)

~~~

sruti-vipratipanna te, yada sthasyati nischala

samadhav achala buddhis, tada yogam avapsyasi  (Gita 2.53)

You shall attain perfect yoga or pure devotion when your intelligence, undisturbed by the apparent contradictions of the Vedas, abides in the Lord.  (Gita 2.53)

"Only through love and devotion can I be understood as I am. Thereafter, fully understanding Me, you can merge into My entourage." This "merging" is explained by Krishna: "They enter into Me to become a person in My family. Among the circles of My friends, he enters: visate tad-anantaram. He becomes as if My own. That means that without losing your personality you can be fully My own." To enter into the Lord’s family is a living merging, not a physical or dead merging into Brahman, spirit. That is the result of prema. (Loving Search for the Lost Servant)

brahmanda brahmite kona bhagyavan jiva

guru-krsna-prasade paya bhakti-lata-bija

"We have to acquire this capacity during the course of our wanderings in different positions throughout the creation. We are wandering from this land to that, from this species to that species, and in the course of that, we gather some sukrti, pious credits. ajnata sukrti means that unknowingly and unconsciously our energy is spent in the service of the Lord, and the reaction comes in the form of some pious credits. And when sukrti is more developed, it becomes jnata sukrti, or pious activities knowingly performed. Then, sraddha, or faith, our inner attraction for the universal truth, comes to the surface. In this way it may develop from any stage. Even a beast may feel the tendency to serve Krishna. In Vrndavana, so many living beings: trees, beasts, and even the water have acquired their position by consciously desiring it. Although they have accepted an apparently material pose, they eternally hold that position in the service of Krishna." (The Search for Sri Krishna)

In Awakening to the Absolute, His Divine Grace Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaj has quoted a verse from Sri Brahma Samhita to further illuminate this sloka:

prabuddhe jnana-bhaktibhyam

atmany ananda-cinmayi

udety anuttama bhaktir

bhagavat-prema-laksana

“When transcendental experience awakens by means of Knowledge and Devotion, the highest Devotion symptomized by Love for the Supreme Lord, Sri Krishna, the Beloved of the soul, awakens in the devotee’s heart.” (Sri Brahma-samhita: 58)

~~~

by

Sripad Bhakti Prapanna Tirtha Maharaja

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Respected Dr Pokharna,

There are several problems with Eigen’s seminal theoretical paper, actually published in 1971, on the self organization of matter. The practical problems of the RNA world have already been mentioned several times on this forum. Freeman Dyson explains, "for the Eigen theory to work, four "catastrophes" need to be avoided. First is the "error catastrophe," where there are simply too many errors in replication of long RNA molecules. Second is the "selfish RNA catastrophe," where an RNA molecule mutates and dominates the scene, but the mutation takes away its critical role as a catalyst. Third is the "short-circuit catastrophe," where a mutated RNA molecule catalyzes the wrong reaction (a later one in a chain than the proper one). Fourth is the "population collapse catastrophe," where one simply runs out of a critical component."

Manfred Eigen himself noted that this mutation process places a limit on the number of digits a molecule may have. If a molecule exceeds this critical size, the effect of the mutations become overwhelming and a runaway mutation process will destroy the information in subsequent generations of the molecule. This critical mutation rate, or "error threshold" is crucial to understanding "Eigen's paradox."

Eigen's paradox is one of the most intractable puzzles in the study of the origins of life. It is thought that the error threshold concept described above limits the size of self replicating molecules to perhaps a few hundred digits, yet almost all life on earth requires much longer molecules to encode their genetic information. This problem is handled in living cells by the presence of enzymes which repair mutations, allowing the encoding molecules to reach sizes on the order of millions of base pairs. These large molecules must, of course, encode the very enzymes that repair them, and herein lies Eigen's paradox:

1. Without error correction enzymes, the maximum size of a replicating molecule is about 100 base pairs.
2. In order for a replicating molecule to encode error correction enzymes, it must be substantially larger than 100 bases.

There is the further problem that self-organization relates to organized matter, but not to information. As Paul Davies states: "Life is actually not an example of self-organization. Life is in fact specified--i.e., genetically directed--organization." In other words, the sequence specific order of large DNA molecules is not explained on the basis of physical and chemical laws, and yet this "information" is critical in determining the function of the DNA "code." Eigen, himself, realizes this in his 1992 paper where he states: "Our task is to find an algorithm, a natural law that leads to the origin of [this] information."

This is a reply to this message posted in the group.

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Ambiguity

What if ambiguity is an essential feature of reality?  In other words, what if everything is and is not what it seems to be. Would you be able to deal with that? How would you deal with that?

The principle of acintya bedhaabedha tattva requires that a certain ambiguity be accepted. Reality is not simple, and at the same time is simple. To navigate through such waters requires a guide/guardian with a wisdom beyond mere knowledge. This is one of the reasons why Guru is recommended to the seeker of truth. He has to both guide us in our progressive spiritual development and new ways of thinking, and guard us from confusion.

Attitude: Not only what you see but the way you see it.

Another important reason for Guru is the attitude adjustment that is all-important, because what we know is determined by our attitude toward the known and unknown. Basically, an attitude of superiority is tantamount to an exploitative mentality of lord-of-all-I-survey. This, in itself, is productive of the material conception of life. Whereas the submissive mentality of humility, tolerance and respect is conducive to the dedicative mentality that allows one entrance to the spiritual conception of life. The neutral mentality of renunciation is an attitude that keeps one in the indifferent borderline between the material and spiritual worlds proper. In conclusion, the consciousness of the seeker will determine the content of consciousness or truth for that seeker.

God, Soul, World

God, the soul, and world were already mentioned in a previous post as the three main concepts that philosophical truth is concerned with. If these can be comprehended properly the rest may be easier to understand. These concepts will become clear with further study and discussion of these topics, and checking to see that we are developing a proper respectful attitude toward these noble truths.

Systematic study of Bhagavad-gita

We wish to start a regular study of the Bhagavad-gita on this forum, and that will help to develop the proper concepts and angle of vision needed to enter into the hidden truths or secrets of that sacred scripture. In this way the necessary concepts will be unfolded and more readily understood in the necessary context in which they are presented.

This is a reply to this message posted in the group.

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Thank you for pointing this out. I usually leave out diacritic marks due to the nature of different email clients interpreting them in various unexpected ways. The original had a diacritic over the "a" in the first bedha, and so should have been bedhaa, But the way you have written it is also correct. It shows the difference between bedha (difference) and abedha (non difference).

The use of example/analogy never provides a perfect explanation. But in this case, the use of the analogy of space and its rooms is especially poor and even misleading. It leads to the wrong conclusion.

Analogy works best the closer it is to the original entity it is describing. Brahman, the Absolute, as we have mentioned in previous messages, is to be understood essentially as consciousness. An example of the identity and difference of Brahaman would thus be more precisely exemplified if we considered the case of an individual consciousness. An individual has his own identity, but he may be a father to his son, a husband to his wife, as son to his parents, a brother to his siblings, an employee to his boss, a friend to his neighbors, etc. Although he bears a single identity of his own, (his own being for himself), he also displays multiple identities with respect to others (in his being for others).

This is what we mean by the essential nature of the Absolute being identical and different simulataneously and inconceivably. It cannot be analytically determined where the identity distinguishes itself from its various manifestations, or where the diversity divides itself from the identity. Thus it is "acintya" or inconceivable to the analytic understanding, yet nonetheless quite reasonable in anyone's normal experience. This principle is actually quite universally experienced. Movement, for instance, requires that a moving object be in two different places at one and the same time. It is and it isn't at one and the same place, and thus it is said to be moving. Life is simultaneously a activity of living and a dying at one and the same moment. In biology this is called anabolism and catabolism, (building up and tearing down) or metabolism. The moment you are born is the moment you begin to die. You can either say you are living for 70 years, or you are dying for 70 years.

And cognition is the simultaneous becoming of subjectivity from objectivity, it is both. Just as willing is the objectification of subjectivity, through an indistinguishable process that proceeds without our understanding, although it is essential for it.

This mysterious principle of acintya bedha abedha tattva, contains the secret of dialectical spiritual reality. The differential calculus which tries to deal with kinematical movement is unable to deal with the philosophical applications that we are presenting here. A new science of spiritual dialectics is needed to comprehend these movements.

This is a reply to this message posted in the group.

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

This is all just common sense at this point. Eventually we want to be able to scientifically develop and show how all this is necessarily so. We can make the same three-fold logical division for seeing, knowing, thinking, etc. In all these, two elements are subjective and one is objective, viz. the experiencer (agent) and experience are subjective, and only the thing experienced is considered objective. For a certain set of objects, viz. sense objects this is problematical. How does an object in the world produce an effect in a subjective observer? We may call this the problem of thought and being, where thought represents the subjective and being the objective component in this interactive event.

This is a philosophical problem that can be solved only by rational thinking, and more particularly by dialectical reason. An equation implies mathematical thinking, or thinking in terms of identities. The whole concept of mathematics is based on identities (equalities or equations). But in the field of subjectivity and objectivity, we have an exchange going on. Here, what is objective becomes subjective, and what is subjective becomes objective. They do not preserve their distinct identities. This is called dialectics, and although an attempt has been made to mathematize dialectics, it has not been successful. Gödel has also shown the inherent limitations of mathematics to consistently describe a complete system. Dialectical reason does not suffer that limitation. You will have to read a book like Hegel's "Science of Logic" to get a grasp of this.

This is a reply to this message posted in the group.

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D. 

I appreciate the contributions to this discussion made by the various members of this forum. It is not unexpected but still disappointing that the philosophical basis behind the issue of religion and its universal manifestation was not touched in any of the responses. The two-part post on "What is Religion" was intended to presents the rational basis in regard to this issue. Somehow that post received no replies or comments. Only when a name was put on that description of universal religion did it become a matter of controversy.

Reason is the process of thinking from premise to conclusion via logical necessity. Simply presenting opinions, whether popularly held ones, or uniquely personal ones is quite the opposite of the rational process.  The latter may be called argumentative thinking because it poses uncritical presumptions as conclusive in mere opposition to other similarly held presuppositions. On the other hand, rational discourse requires collectively analyzing the logical necessity in thinking from a premise to a conclusion. This is generally called 'proving' the validity of a statement.

Reason is what brings intelligent men (and women) together. In the Bible we find, “Come now let us reason together” (Isaiah 1.18). In Rig Veda (10, 191) it is similarly stated, "Give us reason to be together, speak together,..."  But the key is to recognize the difference between argumentative thinking - the immediate assertion of a premise as a conclusion, and the rational process involving an essential logical mediation between premise and conclusion.

The central philosophical issue is whether the universal must necessarily be an individual, i.e., whether the universal must necessarily be manifest in the world. If this can be verified or falsified then the controversy has been resolved. So let us take a careful look at this issue and also explain why it is so important.

First of all let us consider the idea that the universal should not be identified with any of its individual manifestations. In this view, all religions, etc. are partial truths of the eternal truth or sanatan dharma.  The only attribute such proponents are willing to give this eternal truth is that it is One. All other attributes or variegated determinations belong to the various manifestations only. This is actually the viewpoint of the monists, or followers of Shankaracharya. So it is hardly to be considered an impartial viewpoint when compared to other schools of thought (sampradayas) in India.

In other words, while claiming to be a non sectarian view, it is actually quite sectarian. This is the general problem with the idea that universals are mere abstractions from all other determinate manifestations. An abstract universal or Platonic universal (which Plato’s philosophy has wrongly been identified with) is supposed to belong only to the ideal world of thought that is completely distinct from the real world of sense. Thus one never meets up with an animal in the jungle.  One only comes in contact with tigers, lions, monkeys, etc. The animal as such does not exist.  Yet ‘animal’ is something that cannot be taken away from tiger, lion, monkey, etc. and still have them remain what they are. In other words, ‘animal’ is an essential substance that defines those creatures. This is closer to what Plato actually taught about universals.

The conclusion is that instead of being mere abstractions, universal are rather the actual substance of individuals. This unity of universal and individual is not only something that exists in the material world but is an eternal principle that is a determination of sanatan dharma itself.  Thus sanatan dharma has its own individuality even though it is universal. This individuality of the eternal truth is called Visnu or Krishna in vaisnava dharma.

If we insist that the eternal truth is One, and has no other determination, then how is it that the determinate variety of various religions arose from that which lacks all such determinations? How does determinate variety arise from indeterminate oneness? There is no possibility for an impulse to arise in One that could impel it to become many. This viewpoint therefore suffers many logical challenges. Still Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu harmonized this viewpoint with the vaisnava conception of truth by His principle of acintya-bhedâbheda-tattva, inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference. This allows for the oneness of truth in its many determinations. In other words, a sugar cube, for example, retains one identity as a sugar cube despite the fact that it has many qualities such as sweetness, whiteness, hardness, etc. In this way one and many coexist in all things. It is therefore not an impossible proposition to understand.

The principle of the unity of universal and individual is the foundation of the whole concept of incarnation that is so fundamental to Vedic culture, in which the universal divine truth appears as an Individual in this world.  In the Bhagavad-gita 4.9  Krsihna says, janma karma ca me divyam, evam yo vetti tattvatah; one who knows My birth and activities as transcendental (divyam) achieves liberation from the material conception of life.  This divyam or divinity is universal in nature, yet appearing in individual form. In this verse we find why it is so important to understand the principle involved. One who can realize the dialectical unity of universal and individual gains liberation from the duality of material existence.

Another important place where this principle is found is in the concept of Guru. Here Krishna announces, acharya mam vijani yat, “know that I am the acharya.” The universal manifests Himself through the acharya who in turn surrenders to the universal Lord to act as His transparent medium. In this way we can see that this principle plays a central role in much of Vedic culture.

The conclusion of all this is that the universal not only does exist but must exist in individual form. If we accept that sanatan dharma is universal religion, then we must ask in what individual form does it manifests itself. Only a monist would refuse to answer this question, or ignore it with, “Can’t we all just be nice to one another.”  This is a hard question to confront, and it is only by rational inquiry and understanding that progress can be made beyond the comfortable and non committal position of monism, which fails to recognize itself as a sectarian viewpoint. In other words, it does not solve the problem.

If Vaisnavism is indeed universal then it cannot be in conflict with any other faith because it must see itself in all other faiths since this is what it means to be universal. Any faith that claims to be universal must also embrace that same principle. This means that once a standard of universality is established then every religion can be measured accordingly. A standard does not exclude, it merely measures. Whatever meets the standard becomes equal to the standard, even though it is different from it. Rather than excluding or diminishing differences, a standard inspires excellence and unity without suppressing individual  difference.

Vaisnavism in practice has to live up to its own standards. A rational discussion of those standards is required before flippantly dismissing them without consideration simply on a sectarian basis. Unless there is a willingness to rise above subjective sectarianism and argumentative thinking, to the rational process that distinguishes civilized and scientific culture, then the problems of a multicultural global world will not be solved.

There are sound philosophical and theological principles in vaisnavism that have to be studied and understood, and that will bring sanatan dharma to the attention of the world religions. Knowledge of these principles is an absolute necessity in any discussion of religion. We expect such discussions in our planned journal to be rationally conducted by those who are educated in the philosophy and practice of religion. For those who are not so educated, we hope that the journal will serve to rectify that deficiency and/or inspire greater study in religion and philosophy.

Dear Members:

Please click this link
http://mahaprabhu.net/satsanga/?download=Harmonizer_March_2010.pdf
to open the March 2010 issue of our Monthly Newsletter “The Harmonizer - Science, Philosophy, Religion and Art are all branches of the same tree of knowledge,” as a PDF file (3.28 MB).

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~*~*~*~*~*~*~
IN THIS ISSUE
~*~*~*~*~*~*~

1. "PEACE FORMULA" -- Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Deva-Goswami Maharaja.

2. "LIFE, FREE WILL AND THREE MODES OF MATERIAL NATURE" -- T. D. Singh, Ph.D. (Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja).

3. "AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF SUBJECTIVITY" -- Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

====================================

Please note that you can now find all the issues of this Monthly Newsletter on our website: www.mahaprabhu.net/harmonizer 

We hope you enjoy this newsletter and share it with your friends.

If you like to submit your articles for review and publication please send it via email at: editors@scienceandscientist.org

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Sincerely
Editors

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Universal Religion

Previously I submitted a post in two parts on "What is Religion," wherein the general principles of religion were presented. General means universal, i.e. the universal principles that must implicitly or explicitly exist at the base or foundation of religion. A name was not given to that set of universal principles, so it seems no one objected to them. Yet, if we call that set of principles universal religion, then the questions must arise: does it have a name; does such a universal religion exist?

The answer is yes. The universal religion that is completely non sectarian, is called sanatan dharma, jaiva dharma (jiva dharma), or vaisnavism. The universal principles of religion are all contained within it. Further, vaisnavism is the primordial religion - the first religion, because it was articulated at the beginning of the creation. It is not of human origin. And it is native or indigenous to India.

One may object. How can the Absolute Truth or God, the Infinite, exist in this world of finitude. First, the Truth is not so impotent that it cannot also exist. Secondly, the Infinite is not infinite if it cannot make itself known to the finite without limitation. Thus these objections cannot be maintained.

Constitutional nature of the jiva or soul

The constitutional nature of the jiva, jaiva dharma - what is her intrinsic characteristic - is determined by the infinitessimal quantity of consciousness or cognitive capacity that the jiva possesses in relation to the infinite consciousness of God. The jiva is therefore naturally subordinate and thus a servitor of God, but more importantly the qualitative relation is more one of dedication or devotion, than forced slavery, due to the free will of the living entity. It is this dedication, represented in the root Sanskrit word bhaj, that the dharma of the jiva or soul is described as bhakti, directed toward God.

Principle of Religion are enunciated by God

In the Bhagavat Purana 6.3.19 it is stated, dharmam tu sakshad bhagavat-pranitam. The principles of religion are enunciated by Bhagavan (God). Authentic religion is not the creation of a man, or of a people. To emphasize this point, the Bhagavatam goes to state, na vai vidur rishayo napi devah, that even the topmost purified rishis (sages) are not able to ascertain the real religious principles. Thus they must be revealed by God.

Different faiths arise due to finite perspectives of that revelation

In other words, the faith that arises from the hearts and minds of men, even though they be very pure souls, cannot give us authentic religious principles. This is due to the infinitesimal nature of the finite soul, which is subject to conditions, compared to the infinite Supreme God, who can not suffer from such limitations.

Although many faiths exist, and they also have their revealed scriptures or knowledge, they are conditioned perspectives of the original primordial religion, based upon desha, kala, patra - place, time, and circumstances. So certainly they differ, while yet being one in that they are various perspectives of the same universal religion.

The relation of universal to particular may be more easily understood if we consider the example of fruit. Cherries, grapes and apples are all instances of fruit. Fruit is a universal, it applies to all particular types of fruit, and each type shares in the universal exemplifying its instances. This is the relation of universal to particular to which we are referring in the case of universal religion to particular types of faith.

Turning point in 21st Century religion

A shift in consciousness, Zeitgeist or Weltgeist (spirit of the times or world spirit) has been occurring since the late 1960's to the present - what Thomas Khun would call a paradigm shift. This may have gone unnoticed by many, and appeared quite contrary to the growing secularism that many predicted. But it can be verified by a search in the explosive number of books, for example, that have been published on the topic of religion and spirituality beginning from that period. We find a worldwide movement toward a more spiritual viewpoint and an ecumenical direction that emphasizes interfaith dialog, where representatives of various faiths are coming together to discuss the universal principles that they all share.

Interfaith dialog confronts sectarianism

It was in 1993 that the first meeting of the Parliament of World Religions met in Chicago, and since the 9/11 incident became even more relevant and dedicated to their mission of bringing the various faiths into greater dialog on the similarities they all share. Yet what is to be expected from such a development?

Is it reasonable to expect that one universal world religion will be practiced by all?  That type of monistic thinking is not palatable to most, or even practical. Multiculturalism does not seek to reduce the vibrant diversity of cultures to one boring monoculture. Unity in diversity is the ideal goal. and we find this beautifully manifested in the Vedic culture.

Multiculturalism of the Vedic paradigm

The Vedas develop the varnashram system of sociology. Each segment of the society is given varying duties. The brahmanas (priests, teachers, judges,etc) are given certain freedoms and privileges and controlled by high moral principles and sastra. The kshatriyas (military, governing personnel, civil servants) are given certain codes of law and conduct they must follow. The vaishyas (agriculture, trade, business men) are under the free trade system, and governed by the kshatriya class. The sudra (laborers, skilled trades, employees) are given yet another set of values suitable to their temperament, and work for the vaishyas (employers). In modern society this is known as the division of labor. It exists naturally in every society, and is not an artificial imposition on it.

The classification is based on guna and karma, personal qualities and practical skills, and not on janma or birth, as confirmed in Bhagavad-gita 4.13, catur-varnyam maya srstam guna-karma-vibhagasah. The 18 Puranas are also divided into three main categories according the varying types of faith that exist in the human population. This is based on the modal analysis of the Samkhya philosophy in terms of the trigunas, or three qualities of material nature: sattva, rajas and tamas (goodness, passion, ignorance). The uncultured or barbarians fall outside the varnashram system of the Vedas. But each segment of the society is given its recognition in a multicultural yet systematically organized society. However, the emotional attachement to janma, birth, instead of quality and work, still dominates many, especially at the time of marriage.

Various Faiths inculcated by Incarnations and empowered representatives of God, recognizes their common source more than their differences

Muhammad preached among the nomadic tribes of the Arabic people. The faith he inculcated in them was relevant to their clime, traditions, and culture. Christ taught in a particular period of Western history, and again according to the prevailing mentality of the time. In the Bhagavad-gita (4.7), Krishna tells Arjuna, yada yada hi dharmasya, glanir bhavati bharata - whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious principles and a rise in irrelition, I descend Myself to re-establish the proper principles.

According to vaisnavism, Jesus Christ is a shaktyvesh avatar of Visnu, which indicates an empowered living being. Jesus may be related to the Sanskrit word Isa, God, and Christ, from the Greek Kristos, may be related to Krista, as Krishna is known in Orissa. Certainly Buddha is one of the Das Avatars accepted by vaisnavas. The denominations of Christianity and Buddhism developed later as a result of various interpretations from the original faiths established by their respective founders. Even in Islam we find Sunni and Shia and other divisions. So transformations of the original teachings do occur, and this is how the various Brahminic and abraminical (Abraham) faiths came about.

Vaisnava Journal

The Vaisnava Journal of Science and Religion will include this kind of discussion and analysis, that looks for the harmony between faiths and between religion and science. Harmony automatically includes difference that is not nullified but essential to the resulting unity. Harmony requires diversity in order to produce it. It is not a cacophony of various faiths, nor a polarity of opposing positions, but a coherent blend of multiple voices. The unity is thus better expressed as a harmony that possible only through the differences.

16th Century Renaissance in India

Across much of India during the 16th century, the Renaissance period in Europe, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was carrying on his own renaissance, bringing together the various denominations of religious faith that had developed throughout the subcontinent. Advaita, dvaita, suddhadvaita, etc. were united by Him under the banner of achintya bedha bedha tattva, the principle of inconceivable oneness and difference of the Absolute Truth Personality of Godhead. In the process he brought Ram bhaktas, Muslims and Buddhists to also embrace his teachings of Krishna prema, divine love of Godhead. His biography and teachings are most extensively and profoundly recorded by one of His protégés in Sri Chaitanya Charitamrita by Srila Krishna Das Kaviraja.

The Names of God are innumerable

While the word "vaisnava" refers to relation to Visnu, a name of God found in Vedic literature including Puranas Upanishads and Itihasas (Mahabharata, Ramayana), it is accepted by Vaisnavas that there are unlimited names of God, and all refer to the same Absolute Truth, of which there is only one. Thus Jehovah, Yaweh, Adonoi, Allah, etc. cannot be excluded from that list, as they represent various perspectives of the same Divine Godhead. Allah is related to the Hebrew El or Elah, which is translated in English as God. They both accept the same old testament of the Bible. Therefore, the differences between Muslim and Jew cannot be traced to religion, but more to politics.

21st Century Science and Religion

21st Century Religion embraces non-sectarian, interfaith dialog and mutual understanding. Focusing on the harmonious conception of science and religion from the perspective of various faiths cannot exclude the harmonious relation of those faiths, but build upon them. This is not only an abstract ideal but is imperative for the survival and growth of the post-modern multicultural world society. The sectarianism and scientific imperialism of modernity must be relinquished in the post-modern, post-Darwinian culture of the 21st Century. It is to this aim that the Vaisnava Journal of Science and Religion will be directed.

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Below is a brief list of some recent books and media on the Scientific Critique of Science, especially dealing with Darwinian evolution and the paradigm change in biology.

1. "Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design" by Stephen C. Meyer. Stephen Meyer forcefully outlined the positive case for design and refuted arguments that ID isn’t science in his seminal book, Signature in the Cell, published by HarperCollins in June of 2009. The book was named one of the top books of 2009 in the prestigious Times Literary Supplement (TLS) annual “Books of the Year” issue. The selection was made by prominent philosopher (and noted atheist) Thomas Nagel at New York University. A companion three minute animated video, Journey Inside the Cell was released providing a stunning visual illustration of Meyer’s points.

2. "Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record" (DVD). The final film in Illustra Media's long-planned Intelligent Design trilogy, Darwin's Dilemma, was released in September 2009 and quickly made headlines when it was barred from public viewing by the California Science Center. The documentary examines what many consider to be the most powerful refutation of Darwinian evolution—the Cambrian explosion. The Cambrian explosion is the sudden appearance of the majority of phyla over the history of life. Darwin's Dilemma is a high-quality documentary that includes interviews with world-class paleontologists Simon Conway Morris and James Valentine, as well as leading intelligent design theorists and scientists Paul Nelson, Jonathan Wells, Stephen C. Meyer, Paul Chien, Doug Axe, and Richard Sternberg. As with the first two Illustra Media ID documentaries, Unlocking the Mystery of Life and The Privileged Planet, Darwin's Dilemma is full of high quality animations to help the viewer visualize the amazing complexity and design of the Cambrian creatures.

3. "Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design" by Bradley Monton. In the breakthrough book of the year, an atheist professor of the philosophy of physics at a secular university has written a book to defend intelligent design. As Professor Monton would admit, it's a partial defense, as he does not find all ID arguments overwhelmingly convincing, but he also does not find them trivial, and he believes they should be allowed on the table and in the classroom for discussion. He even went so far as to defend intelligent design in a public debate in 2008, and his position as a true educator seeking truth has brought the wrath of Darwinists and fellow atheists down on his head. But that did not prevent him from publishing his position in Seeking God in Science. Monton’s work on a rigorous definition of intelligent design in chapter one is worth the price of the book alone. The good news is you don't have to be a philosopher to understand this book. Monton has done a great job of making his arguments accessible to the general reader.

4. "Nature’s IQ" by Balazs Hornyanszky and Istvan Tasi. Hungarian scientists Balazs Hornyanszky and Istvan Tasi offer a novel contribution to the intelligent design literature by extending Michael Behe's theory of irreducible complexity from biological form to biological behavior. Where did the mysterious instincts of animals originate? Nature's IQ. The authors document more than 100 astonishing, unexplained phenomena from the animal kingdom, with 200 amazing color pictures. The authors point out how Darwinian "just so" stories fail to explain these irreducibly complex instincts and behaviors. This book is a valuable addition to any library for its amazing photos of animal life and its catalog of fascinating animal behavior regardless of whether you believe they were a product of random mutations and natural selection or a product of artful, purposeful design.

5. "Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves" by James Le Fanu. The second international book to make the Top Ten list this year is Why Us? by James Le Fanu, a British medical doctor who publishes in peer-reviewed medical journals like the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and the British Medical Journal, a columnist for the London Telegraph, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for his book The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine (2001). In Why Us? we discover Dr. Le Fanu is also a Darwin doubter. Le Fanu’s main point is that the more science reveals about the most important question a human can ask—What is man and how did he come to be?—the more we have to admit that we don’t know. Le Fanu demonstrates this by masterfully recounting the epic demise of expectations that prevailed until recently for the prospects of three scientific enterprises. Darwinian evolution, genetics, and brain research were supposed to combine to give a compelling, coherent and united naturalistic account of man’s origin and nature. They did no such thing and the prospect of their doing so in the future appears hopeless. This is a great book to give your Darwin-devoted friends. Intelligent design is never mentioned, but the foundation for the materialist, reductionist worldview is systematically dismantled by a well-known authority on science and medicine.

6. "The Darwin Myth" by Benjamin Wiker. According to Wiker’s provocative new biography, The Darwin Myth: the Life and Lies of Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin was an honorable and likable man, a family man. He loved his siblings; he was devoted to his wife; he loved his children and grieved deeply over his daughter’s death. But Darwin was also someone who presented to the public an elaborate and even deceptive story about himself and his work to advance a philosophical agenda. While there are many biographies of Charles Darwin, Wiker’s deserves attention because of its fascinating account of the complex interaction between Charles Darwin, the man, and Darwinism, the theory he advocated and popularized. Wiker’s presentation of Darwin’s human contradictions is a valuable contribution to the 2009 Darwin anniversary literature (the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species). Anyone wishing to probe the broader implications of Darwin’s theory, as well as the contradictions of Darwin’s character, will want to read Wiker’s book.

7. "Alfred Russel Wallace’s Theory of Intelligent Evolution" by Michael A. Flannery. Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), co-discoverer of natural selection, was second only to Charles Darwin as the 19th century's most noted English naturalist. Yet his belief in spiritualism caused him to be ridiculed and dismissed by many, leaving him a comparatively obscure and misunderstood figure. In this volume Wallace is finally allowed to speak in his own defense through his grand evolutionary synthesis The World of Life published nearly a century ago in 1910. More than just a reprinting of a near-forgotten work, Michael A. Flannery places Wallace in historical context. Flannery exposes Charles Darwin's now-famous theory of evolution as little more than a naturalistic cover for an extreme philosophical materialism borrowed as a youth from Edinburgh radicals. This is juxtaposed by his sympathetic account of what he calls Wallace's intelligent evolution, a thoroughly teleological alternative to Darwin's stochastic processes. Though based upon very different formulations of natural selection, the Wallace/Darwin dispute as presented by Flannery shows a metaphysical clash of worldviews coextensive with modern evolutionary theory itself - design and purpose versus randomness and chance. This book will be of value to scholars and students alike seeking to understand the historical and philosophical roots of a controversy that still rages today.

8. "The Deniable Darwin & Other Essays" by David Berlinski. It only takes one dose of Berlinski to get hooked. His wit, his way with words, his sharp mind, and the ease at which he is able to poke holes in the Darwinian worldview catch you off guard. Those who watched Expelled were treated to a taste of Berlinski as Ben Stein interviewed him in his flat in Paris. Now you can get a "seven course meal" of Berlinski with this new compilation of 32 of his best essays written over the past fifteen years. The volume is named after his 1996 essay "The Deniable Darwin" that appeared in Commentary and launched Berlinski into the middle of the Darwin or Design debate, where he has happily remained ever since. What makes this volume so great is it includes not only Berlinski's essay but also reprints the dozens of letters received in protest and support from notable scientists and philosophers (Allen Orr, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Arthur Shapiro, Paul Gross, Tom Bethell, Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson, M.P. Shutzenberger, etc) along with a response to the letters by Berlinski. Berlinski's replies are witty and sharp. For the first time, The Deniable Darwin collects all of these essays and exchanges into a single volume.

9. "The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism" by Michael Behe. The top intelligent design book honors for 2007 goes to Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution. Biochemist Behe reviews the scientific data and lays out clearly what evolution can and cannot do which he identifies as the “Edge of Evolution.” The genomes of many organisms have been sequenced, and the machinery of the cell has been analyzed in great detail. The evolutionary responses of microorganisms to antibiotics and humans to parasitic infections have been traced over tens of thousands of generations. As a result, for the first time in history Darwin's theory can be rigorously evaluated. The results are shocking. Although it can explain marginal changes in evolutionary history, random mutation and natural selection explain very little of the basic machinery of life. The “edge” of evolution, a line that defines the border between random and non-random mutation, lies very far from where Darwin pointed. Behe argues convincingly that most of the mutations that have defined the history of life on earth have been non-random.

11. "The Design Matrix: A Consilience of Clues" by Mike Gene. Ask a group of scientists how life on earth arose, and you will get a multitude of answers. In the field of origin-of-life research there is little consensus and much speculation. Any good researcher knows this, and is careful to remember that what seemed clear today may be wrong tomorrow. It is with this in mind that that the author proposes the Design Matrix. The Design Matrix is a method for assessing a design inference and can help when using the hypothesis of design to guide research. This method is both tentative and open-ended, and can be used by both supporters and critics of intelligent design. The book is an attempt to make sense of a question where the evidence about origins is ambiguous. In The Design Matrix, the author considers a number of clues that, when merged together, point to new ways of thinking about evolution and intelligent design.

12. "Explore Evolution: The Arguments for and Against Neo-Darwinism." Finally, a biology textbook that presents the scientific evidence both for and against key aspects of Darwinian evolution. Co-authored by two state university biology professors, two philosophers of science, and a science curriculum writer, Explore Evolution was peer-reviewed by biology faculty at both state and private universities, teachers with experience in both AP and pre-AP life science courses, and doctoral scientists working for industry and government. The textbook has been pilot-tested in classes at both the secondary school and college levels. The textbook looks at five areas of biology that are typically viewed as confirming the modern theory of evolution: fossil succession, anatomical homology, embryology, natural selection, and natural selection and mutation. For each area of study, Explore Evolution explains the evidence and arguments used to support Darwin's theory and then examines the evidence and arguments that lead some scientists to question the adequacy of Darwinian explanations.

13. God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? by John Lennox. This captivating book written by John Lennox, M.A., Ph.D., D.Phil., D.Sc. (a professor of mathematics and the philosophy of science at Oxford University), is an excellent short primer providing basic coverage of key intelligent design issues and is written for a lay audience. Lennox addresses topics such as worldview and the impact it has upon our thinking and reasoning; the limitations and scope of science; information theory and other topics as they relate to faith, science and the interaction between the two. Throughout his book, he fastidiously presents his positions with remarkable clarity and insight. Lennox also takes on several arguments proposed by Richard Dawkins and others who dismiss intelligent design theories.

14. "There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind" by Anthony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese. In one of the biggest science and religion news stories of the new millennium, the Associated Press announced that Professor Antony Flew, the world's leading atheist, now believes in God. Flew is a pioneer for modern atheism. His famous paper, Theology and Falsification, was first presented at a meeting of the Oxford Socratic Club chaired by C. S. Lewis and went on to become the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last five decades. Flew earned his fame by arguing that one should presuppose atheism until evidence of a God surfaces. He now believes that such evidence exists, and There Is a God chronicles the logic, evidence, and journey that converted Flew from staunch atheism to belief in a designed universe.

15."Probability's Nature and Nature's Probability"  by Don Johnson. The author once believed anyone not accepting the “proven” evolutionary scenario that was ingrained during his science education was of the same mentality as someone believing in a flat earth. With continued scientific investigation, paying closer attention to actual data (rather than speculative conclusions), he began to doubt the natural explanations that had been so ingrained in a number of key areas including the origin and fine-tuning of mass and energy, the origin of life with its complex information content, and the increase in complexity in living organisms. It was science, and not religion, that caused his disbelief in the explanatory powers of undirected nature. The fantastic leaps of faith required to accept the undirected natural causes in these areas demand a scientific response to the scientific-sounding concepts that in fact have no known scientific basis. Scientific integrity needs to be restored so that ideas that have no methods to test or falsify are not considered part of science. Too often “possible” is used by scientists without considering that “possible” has a scientific definition within the nature of probability. For example, one should not be able to get away with stating “it is possible that life arose from non-life by ...” or “it’s possible that a different form of life exists elsewhere in the universe” without first demonstrating that it is indeed possible (non-zero probability) using known science. One could, of course, state “it may be speculated that ... ,” but such a statement wouldn’t have the believability that its author intends to convey by the pseudo-scientific pronouncement. This book reviews the many prevalent scenarios that are widely accepted, but need closer examination of their scientific validity. It will also examine the scientific validity of Intelligent Design (ID) as a model that can be empirically detected and examined. For example, the book uses known science (including Shannon and Functional information principles) to prove that it is impossible (zero probability) for life’s complex information system to have an undirected natural source. The usefulness of the ID model for furthering scientific inquiry is also analyzed. One chapter is devoted to exposing fallacies, presuppositions, and beliefs that attempt to prevent acceptance of ID as “science.”

16. "Evolution: A Theory In Crisis" by Michael Denton, Australian biologist, agnostic.

17. "Biocentrism" by Robert Lanza, M.D. is currently chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

How could a Big Bang create a universe that is exquisitely fine tuned to support life?

Rather than being a belated and minor outcome after billions of years of lifeless physical processes, life and consciousness are absolutely fundamental to our understanding of the universe. This new understanding is called biocentrism.

Life is not an accidental by product of the laws of physics that we have been taught since grade school.

The atomic materialist model of the universe has brought us many insights but with advances in science it has reached the end of its useful life and needs to be replaced with a radically different paradigm that reflects a deeper reality.

Consciousness is not just a issue for biology, it is a problem for physics.

18. "Biology Revisioned" by William Harman and Elisabet Sahtouris. Harman and Sahtouris base their logical groundwork on a concept of all being organized into holons (identity units) which are part of a larger holarchy (complex of identity units). Holons, say these two, take their purpose from the holarchy in which they are embedded, and take their ability from the holons which are embedded within them. Thus, your liver exists to serve your body, and draws its capacities from the health of its individual cells.

Take this concept outward to Gaia--nay, to the penultimate Cosmos--and you may find, as I do, profound spiritual implications. You will also understand why these two respected scientists had to present this book as a speculative conversation. Pushing the outer edges of thought, challenging academia's entrenched mindset, is professionally risky. But Sahtouris has no less a motive than the saving of the planet. She holds that only by understanding what we are, can we save Ourselves from physical destruction. Some online videos featuring Elisabet Sahtouris:

Confessions of a Creationist Evolution Biologist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7xPMfUlS1c&feature=related

After Darwin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_immL2m1tg  

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

There are a growing number of places where you can find the latest new programs on the Harmony of Science and Religion in the academic and scholarly communities and organizations. We have listed some of them below.

You may also visit or contact our office for advice or speakers who can present lectures on the Harmony of Science and Religion, and how you can begin programs at your own organization, institute, or college.  For inquiries in India you may contact:

Sushen Krishna Das, Ph.D., jaga.suresh@gmail.com

Purushottam Jagannath Das, Ph.D.,

pbanerjee2002@yahoo.com

 

Brief list of some current Science and Religion programs:

The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences

http://www.ctns.org/ 

 

Zygon center for Religion and Science

http://zygoncenter.org/

 

Metanexus Institute

http://www.metanexus.net/metanexus_online/index.asp

 

Institute on Religion in and Age of Science

http://www.iras.org/home.html

 

Interdisciplinary Documentation on Religion and Science

http://www.disf.org/en/home.asp

 

Faraday Institute for Science and Religion

http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/

 

The Center for the Study of Science and Religion - Columbia U.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cssr/

 

International Society for Science and Religion

http://www.issr.org.uk/

 

New Visions of Nature, Science and Religion (UC Santa Barbara)

http://www.newvisions.ucsb.edu/index.html

 

Science and Religion Today

http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/

 

Evolutionary Informatics (Effect of Information on Evolution)

http://evoinfo.org/

 

Design Inference (W. Dembski)

http://www.designinference.com/

 

International Society for Complexity, Information and Design

http://www.iscid.org/

 

Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Reilgion (University of Oxford)

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~theo0038/index.html

 

Boston Theological Institute - Science and Religion

http://www.bostontheological.org/programs/science_and_religion.htm

 

Holistic Science Program - Schumacher College

http://www.bostontheological.org/programs/science_and_religion.htm

 

Counterbalance Library

http://www.counterbalance.org/

 

Theology and Science Journal

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/14746700.html

 

Centre for Religion and the Bioscieces - (U Chester)

http://www.chester.ac.uk/centre-rb

 

The European Society for the Study of Science and Theology

http://www.esssat.org/

 

American Scientific Affiliation: Fellowship of Christians in Science

http://www.asa3.org/

 

Center for Islam and Science

http://www.cis-ca.org/

Link: http://bhaktiswarupadamodara.com/SriGaurachandra.pdf

by

Srila Bhakti Sundar Govinda Dev-Goswami Maharaja

Download

Gaurapurnima 2010 at Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Math, Navadwip Dham: Photos

 

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

REALITY IS PERSONAL FOR RELIGION–SUBJECT, NOT MERELY SUBSTANCE

This personal feature of reality must be clearly understood in religion. Consciousness implies thought or cognition, and where there is thought, there is personality. The Absolute Truth is therefore the Supreme Personality or Godhead, as the source of consciousness and thought in all its particularity and universality wherever it is found. This is intrinsic and intuitive to all consciousness, therefore, religion is found all over the world, in every civilization and culture, modified according to the mentality and nature of the different peoples, but always including a supreme personal being.

This must be the conclusion of a conscious reality - consciousness comes from consciousness only. Personality comes from personality only. The higher principle cannot come a lower one. The lower one is only the higher principle covered over. Evolution from a lower system to a higher one is impossible because there is no driving force or potency in purely random events to promote any systematic development. Aristotle's conclusion that there are two principle features of any developmental process, potentiality and actuality, remains as valid today as ever, but Darwinian evolutionary ideology denies any such potentiality. Therefore it fails and must continue to fail to explain actuality.

REVELATORY EPISTEMOLOGY

When the Absolute Truth or Ultimate Reality is considered personal, then the revelation of scripture becomes self-evident. vedanta krid veda vid eva caham – “I am the compiler and knower of Veda.”(Bhagavad-gita 15.15) Knowledge is received through a descending process, so that access to knowledge is granted only to those who have merit. This is a different process of knowledge than is ordinarily conceived, since it is manifested in one according to the degree they are purified or situated in goodness (sattva), and not merely by the amount of study or research they do.

Plato also conceived epistemology to be an uncovering or revelation of what was already present in the individual. In fact, the word “education” is from the Latin e-ducare which means “to draw out” apparently referring to what was already there to begin with. So this idea has very ancient roots, and yet is quite contrary to the modern idea of feeding information into the student.

THE SOUL, ATMA OR FINITE CONSCIOUSNESS

Vedanta-sutra begins with the aphorism, athatho brahma jijnasa -- "Know thyself as Brahman (consciousness)." A similar aphorism appears about 2500 years later over the forecourt of the Apollo temple at Delphi, gnothi seauton, "Know thyself." And about 2000 years after that Descartes, in 17th century France, announces, cogito ergo sum - "I think, therefore I am."

A hundred years earlier, in 16th century Bengal, India, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was asked by a learned scholar, "Ke ami?" - who am I?  And Mahaprabhup answered: jivera swarupa haya, krsnera nitya dasa, identifying the nature of the jiva (sou) as the eternal servant of Krishna.

This centrality of knowing the true nature of the self or soul, unfortunately became thrust aside by Francis Bacon who wrote, de nobis ipsis silemus - "of ourselves we must be silent" in his treatise circa 1620 on the scientific study of Nature. Out of humility or ignorance or both, modern science took this turn and for those who followed this path, knowledge became outwardly directed, while Man became a hollow filled only with darkness, and the truth of religion became the worship of the empty name of an unknown God.

It is important to study the history of ideas, to know where we came from, what our present position is, and where we are going. This is the purpose of philosophy, and, as we maintain, it is therefore the purpose of Religion. Great truths always appear first in religion before they are articulated by philosophy, but they are not divergent. Religion, philosophy, science and art are all branches of the same tree of knowledge that seek truth in various ways. Apparent diversions from this harmony are only half-seen truths that have yet to come to full fruition.

Religion contains the condensed form of the highest truth of philosophy, and it must teach its adherents the nature of our present condition, the goal of life and the means to achieve it.

THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH

God or the absolute truth is the comprehension of Reality as Personal. This means it is not only our comprehension, but the Truth itself, or Himself, knows Himself as Truth. This is Spirit, the truth that knows itself as truth. Consequently, that knowledge which targets the Absolute Truth is above the conception of God - the supreme controller and creator, and is more properly conceived as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, a far more inclusive conception than God.

I am sure there are those who can tell you far more details than have been outlined here, but the essential thing in religion is to actualize our life of devotion to Him in Whom we live and move and have our being.

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

THE WORLD IS PRODUCED

In his landmark paper of 1964, “Two Kinds of Reality,” physicist Eugene Wigner noted that the content of consciousness was the primary reality, and the physical world secondary. This is to be contrasted with the viewpoint of the primacy of the world held by empirical science.

Empirical science deals with knowledge of the world from evidence obtained through sense experience. Knowledge itself is not obtained from the senses, but is confirmed or certified through the experience of the senses. It is important to understand that the senses can not be an independent source of knowledge. They require an intelligence or cognitive apparatus to be present before knowledge can be obtained.

For example, a robot may be fitted with servo-mechanisms, photo-electric tubes, transducers, etc. When one of its sensors detects something an electrical signal is produced. The interpretation of the electrical signal has to be processed by a central computer and interpreted by its software before the robot can "respond" to it in an appropriate way. Thus the data detecting sensors are only a small part of a complex system that the computer and software utilize for the operation of the robot. The interpretive software that is written by an intelligent human being, plays an essential role in all of this.

The point is, without an intelligent cognitive system or consciousness mere sense data would be useless or meaningless to us. Thus, while science assumes that the world of sense perception is immediate or given to consciousness, Religion takes a different view. For Religion, the world is not given but posited, created, born or produced from consciousness (Brahman, in the case of Vedanta).

THE WORLD IS NOT PRIMARY

Conditioned by the scientific mentality to think that the world is first, immediate, and given it may be a little difficult to realize that what is conceived as "given" is only posited (or thought) by us to be given. In general, nothing can be that is not also thought to be.

Basically, it may be stated that consciousness opposes itself as object to itself, which it calls the world. Sometimes this is called the "myth of the given." What is posited or thought as given is actually posited by consciousness as not posited. So consciousness cannot avoid its role in the constitution of the "given."

With this attitude Religion has a concrete rational foundation, yet is quite different from the standpoint of science. The "world" is certainly the same for both science and religion, but foundation is different. In Religion something other than the world is considered its foundation. In science the world has no other foundation than itself.

THE WORLD IS REAL BUT IS FOUNDED ON CONSCIOUSNESS

Both science and religion consider the world to be real, but give it a different foundation. Science considers the world to be substantiated wi thin itself, whereas Religion considers the world to be substantiated upon consciousness.

Next, it is important to understand what consciousness is, and the important distinction between the soul/self and God.

Because Religion deals with the intuition of the deep rational reality that lies beyond the sensuous intuition that science is concerned with, it may seem they are unconnected, but the sensuous world is an essential part of both science and religion. It is 'merely' a matter of the conception or consciousness we have of the sensuous that will make all the difference.

EVERY RATIONAL ENTITY: UNIVERSAL PARTICULAR INDIVIDUAL (SINGULAR).

In order to understand the finite self or soul properly, we will have to make use of a little understood but essential principle of philosophy of every rational concept, thing or entity.  The failure to understand this fundamental principle has led to widespread misunderstanding in religion and science when trying to understand what an individual is. It may be an individual soul, an individual consciousness, an individual thing or an individual atom. It may be God as an individual. The question is: what do we mean by an individual.

[The application of this principle to atomic theory has not been well studied. A consideration of this problem is found in the essay “Consider a Flower” at http://gwfhegel.org/flower.html ]

WHAT IS AN INDIVIDUAL

When I refer to myself, I call myself "I" by which I mean my own individual, unique self distinct from everyone else. Yet everyone refers to themselves as "I." What is intended to imply something very unique and particular thus turns out to be something universal and general for all. I am I and everyone is an I.

When I put a particular grape in my mouth, I call it a grape. But every grape is a grape. Simply by calling it a grape I have named every grape in the world. Yet, how do I make a distinction between this grape that I eat, and every grape that goes by exactly the same name?

The problem is that language does not make a distinction between particular and universal. Rather language is itself purely universal. We can never "say" what we mean (the particular). We mean the particular but we say the universal. This implicit distinction must be invoked when we find in the scriptures the same word, atma, referring to both the finite soul and God.

This means that in real life, the particular and universal can never be separated. They go together like subject and object, or the head and tail of a coin. In Western philosophy, this type of rational object is called a triadic syllogism. Indic philosophy also deals with the syllogism, but in a more detailed form. It is triadic because it consists of the universal, particular and the unity of the two or the individual (singular).

"No man is an island entire of itself," wrote the English poet John Donne, every man is also part of the whole or totality. But the totality is not merely a sum of its parts and their relations. The whole is also an organic system, that has a form and life of its own.

TRIADICITY OR TRINITY

This triadic core at the root of all rational thought finds expression in the intuitive feeling of reality that is manifested in the great religious traditions of the world. Religion has as its content the same truth as philosophy, but expressed in feeling rather than explicit thought. The oneness or wholeness that is central to the religious view is also marked by its diversity, and in religions such as Christianity, its specific Trinitarian ontology.

This is also found in the Bhagavat philosophy of vaisnavism wherein it is stated (Srimad Bhagavatam 1.2.11): vadanti tat tattva-vidas, tattvam yaj jnanam advayam, brahmeti paramatmeti, bhagavan iti sabdyate. Here the non-dual knowledge (advaya jnana) dynamically exsits as Brahman (all accommodating universality), Paramatman (all pervading particularity) and Bhagavan (all attracting or uniting individuality).

What appear as the mysteries of religion to those uneducated in philosophy, whether they be scientists, other professionals or ordinary folks, represent profound philosophical truths. Thus religion may be properly understood as the concentrated conclusions of philosophy, adjusted according to time, place and circumstances for the distribution of truth to the masses. The main point being that authentic religion is never to be dismissed as mere superstition or common belief.

The rational core of religion exists, and must be sought out by those qualified to do so. This is not a dry speculative matter, but belongs in the hands of those who are devoted to expressing the truth of reality, not as impersonal, but as personal. Religion that is impersonal, can not be religion, or is nominally religion, or in name only, because it fails to comprehend the ultimate truth that is Subject as much as Substance. Any comprehension that fails to reach that truth must be abstractly one-sided or incomplete.

The trigunas or three modes of material existence, corresponding to the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, refer to the creative, preservative and destructive features that characterize the mundane plane of external immediacy in which the finite living entity misconceives himself to be the overlord. Other examples of triads may be found in the scriptures, but dyads, quadrads, pentads, etc. are also found.

Dear Members:

Please click this link
http://mahaprabhu.net/satsanga/?download=Harmonizer_February_2010.pdf
to open the February 2010 issue of our Monthly Newsletter “The Harmonizer - Science, Philosophy, Religion and Art are all branches of the same tree of knowledge,” as a PDF file (2.13MB).

[If you have a problem when clicking this link, then copy and paste http://mahaprabhu.net/satsanga/?download=Harmonizer_February_2010.pdf to your browser for downloading.]

~*~*~*~*~*~*~
IN THIS ISSUE
~*~*~*~*~*~*~

1. "SEARCH FOR THE WHOLE" -- Srila Bhakti Raksak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaja.

2. "BODY AND SOUL" -- T. D. Singh, Ph.D. (Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja).

3. "THE SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING OF MERCY" -- Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

====================================

Please note that you can now find all the issues of this Monthly Newsletter on our website:
www.mahaprabhu.net/satsanga/harmonizer 

We hope you enjoy this newsletter and share it with your friends.

If you like to submit your articles for review and publication please send it via email at
editors@scienceandscientist.org

Send your comments and questions to
editors@scienceandscientist.org

Sincerely
Editors

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Intelligent Critique of Science (ICS)

We have consistently pointed out that an honest and more modest self appraisal of science already exists. Theories like the Big Bang, Origin of Life, Evolution, etc. are failing under the influence of new evidence and concepts created by the advancement of science itseslf. It is not an atttack on science from without. It is a wholly internal critique of science by scientists according to strict scientific principles - what we are calling the Intelligent Critique of Science (ICS).

A gullible public, academic and scientific community has naively accepted the hegemony of 19th and 20th century science, which we may call Science-19, and Science-20, but they have not upgraded to the new operating system for the 21st Century, Science-21. Science-21 is a more self-critical version of science that:

1. Adopts an attitude of the Intelligent Critique of Science, aligning scientific pursuits with the more human, spiritual and moral dimensions of Man.

2. Utilizes access to a more expanded base of modern experimental evidence that challenge the boundaries of dogmatic 20th century science and supports a wider range of conceptual possibilities.

3. Opens up wider vistas for expanding scientific study and research that are now restricted by old-school thought.

This will create a more honest approach to science that will more readily expose those who are motivated by a personal subjective agenda that has nothing to do with objective empirical investigation of Nature. It is science, but with the added element of self-critique.

It will be nice to have more positive feedback on these ideas, and how they can be implemented, rather than rehashing the same arguments that completely ignore ICS in countless variations. 

 

This post is in reply to the recent message sent by JC Das including:

>  

The main problem you will face in your attempt to bring science & religion together is that science has a very definite atheistic bend to it. In all its main theories it seems to be trying to establish atheism more than the truth. With such a mindset being adopted also by those who learn science it will be difficult to establish the harmony between science & religion unless you teach people to question science from a scientific point itself . The people who listen to you now may be doing so despite the science in them.

Its may be that the religious side of their lives is attract to such discussions. But we need to question science form a scientific pov itself to show how shaky it is.

>

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Dear Mr Das and Friends,

 

We appreciate your messages to this list because they demonstrate a willingness to enter into a dialogue on a subject of mutual interest, and help to avoid turning this list into a monologue on my own views. We encourage other intelligent responses.

 
Intelligent Critique of Science is not a slothful criticism of it.

 
It is necessary to be always mindful that as we present a much needed intelligent critique of science, we want to scrupulously avoid descending into a slothful criticism of science. Our purpose is to upgrade science for the 21^st century, to bring it into harmony with religion, as much as bring an upgraded religion into harmony with science. It is the blossoming of 21^st Century Science and Religion that is the goal of the project we call the Harmony of Science and Religion.

 
Science and Religion are supported by a metaphysical background.

 
We have yet to deal with the question, "What is Religion." That will come in the next installment, if there are no further questions about "What is Science." Science gathers information about the World (or Nature) through sense experience. This experience is processed through the intellect and the type of knowledge we produce is fully dependent upon the kind of metaphysics we embrace, i.e. our concept of ultimate reality. Thus metaphysics is not only essential to the type of science we embrace, but is also fundamental to the religion of a people, their moral behavior, type of government, etc.

 
There is no need to be apologetic about introducing God and the soul into the modern discourse. They hold their rightful and noble place in the historical development of Mankind, without which the present would not be what it is today. We owe our present stand to what has gone on before us. Those who would discard the past so blithely are not as wise as Jesus the Christ, who said. "Do not think I have come to abolish the ancient laws and prophets, but to fulfill them."[Matt.  5:17] In the Mahabharata we find Yudhistira saying, mahanjano yena gatah sa panthah [Vana-parva (313.117)], we must not abandon, but follow the path given by the great souls. We will have more to say on this in future installments.

 
Properly understanding the difference between mechanics and reductionism.

 

Mechanics forms an essential part of physics. Its principles play an essential role in the daily activities of any civilized people. The failure to cultivate proper knowledge of mechanics can only have negative consequences for society. But to consider that such principles should apply in a field beyond physics, such as in chemistry or biology, amounts to what is called abstract reductionism. Mechanics depends on the maintenance of the rigid identity of bodies in interaction with one another. This is clearly inapplicable in the field of chemistry where identities are purely relational. For example, an acid is determined only in relation to a base (alkali), and their product is a neutral salt in which all quality of their original acidity or alkalinity is lost. Thus here we are dealing with principles that are totally different from those of mechanics.

 
Furthermore, chemistry cannot encompass biology whose principles again surpass simple chemical or mechanical ideas. In biology we have teleological unity at work, purposeful or functional principles that are not prominent at the chemical level. Thus a biological organism unifies its parts as integral members of itself and not as am aggregate of mere reactants.

 

To understand the why and how of Nature requires going behind the appearance of Nature.

 
To understand why and how material Nature exists are necessarily questions that require us to search for answers that lie beyond Nature (the World). "Why" questions delve into the purpose, and "how" questions delve into the means. The purpose and means by which the product or effect called material Nature results, cannot be answered at the level of material Nature itself.

 
The ancient sages and numerous modern philosophers have tried to answer these questions, yet modern "scientific" man remains woefully ignorant of such treasures. The purpose of the Harmony of Science and Religion project is to encourage proper education in these subjects in the student and academic communities so that this knowledge can be properly applied in fulfilling the life purpose of each individual, and correcting the imbalance in the impious lives of a misdirected civilization.

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Several of our subscribers requested further clarification on the concept of Maya .

 

PROCRUSTIAN MENTALITY

 

One subscriber to this list proposed that scientists are not obliged to respect the dictionary difference between reality and appearance, as if these words were of no consequence to anyone of scientific bent. And besides that, the words God and soul could also be eliminated from the dictionary by the scientific section, because they had no way to deal with them empirically.

 

In Greek Mythology, Procrustes used to invite travelers to stay overnight at his house and let them sleep on an iron bed. He would stretch his visitors or amputate them accordingly so that they would fit the bed. Unfortunately, it is this kind of Procrustean attitude toward science that is likewise as shallow as it is barbaric.

 

GOD CAN BE SEEN WITH THESE VERY EYES

 

We cannot expect an atheist, impersonalist, exploitive sense enjoyer (bhukti), or liberationist (mukti) to tell us much about God or whether He can be seen or not.  The only qualified source of information on God must come from a devotee (bhakti) who is imbued with prema.  In Sri Brahma Samhita we find premanjana churita bhakti vilocanena, santah sadaiva hrdayesu vilokayanti, yam syamasundaram achintya guna swarupam. Not only can a devotee who is imbued with prema see God, he can also tell us His name, color, qualities, figure, paraphernalia, associates, and pastimes. Only the unqualified can claim that God cannot be seen with these very eyes.  The proper process is to approach an authentic devotee and learn about what can and cannot be done in relation to God.

 

SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE IS CONSTANTLY CHANGING

 

Every educated man/woman should know that science does not work in the past, present and future. Thus Newton's laws were accepted as absolute in the past, but not after relativity. Space is not absolute as Newton assumed. Or is it? Dark energy and matter now pose a dilemma for relativistic astronomy. Einstein's relativity is being replaced by strings, membranes, etc.  Electrons are now replaced by probability clouds. And so on  ad infinitum.

 

TECHNOLOGY IS NOT SCIENCE

 

A mouse trap works, not because it makes use of the knowledge of modern physics - it was developed long before such physics was known. Thus it works despite the lack of such knowledge.  Technology is different from scientific knowledge. Technology is the knowledge and utilization of tools and crafts. A machine is manufactured to produce a certain effect. Certainly it is designed to work. But science is not a machine. It is supposed to tell us something fundamental about reality.  The simple fact remains that empirical science has never given us eternal verities. Whoever fails to understand this, has failed to understand what science is.

 

You may try to define gravity as the force of attraction between bodies, but Einstein would object and say, no, it is the curvature of Riemannian space. What you assume you know through science changes over time. This is a fact of empirical science, and any educated person should know this.

 

Future messages containing this type of misunderstanding will not be posted to this list. Please don't burden the moderators with deleting this kind of empty verbiage.

 

APPEARANCE AND REALITY

 

Appearance means what something is for another, or being-for-another. What something is in-itself may be different from what it is for another. Sugar is sweet to human taste, unless that human has jaundice. The sugar doesn't change in itself, what changes is its being for another. Science does not claim to be anthropomorphic, i.e. valid for humans only. It claims to be objective truth. Yet if appearance and reality are not distinguished, then it will be impossible to establish any objective universal truth.

 

NAIVE REALISM, SCIENTIFIC REALISM

 

The problems of naive realism, which takes direct sense perceptions as capable of grasping reality, are well known.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism

 

It is called naive because it fails to distinguish what any thoughtful person would differentiate. In order to understand science in a way that is rationally coherent, this problem must be faced. We have already defined science as the empirical study of the world. But this does not mean that science has to ignore what is also there in addition to such empirical study.

 

Chemistry is a science. Does it mean that chemists ignore physics or biology? It has a limited range of applicability, and works within that range. But there does not arise any justification for saying that the different sciences cannot work together harmoniously.

 

A book can be analyzed typographically, without denying the fact that it is also a piece of literature. There is no necessity of demanding that one field cannot exist harmoniously with the other, even though they may be non-overlapping magisteria, as Gould would have it.

 

Scientific realism has even more serious problems. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_realism

 

Here, reality is described in terms of atomic theory, so that all perceptions are conceived as stimuli in the brain, and no direct perception of reality is possible at all.

 

CONCLUSION

 

There are undoubtedly many scientists who hold irrational and dogmatic conceptions of reality. They have always been the main obstacle to progress in science, as Thomas Khun pointed out in his landmark book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." So we are appealing to those who have a more objective and thoughtful disposition, who are willing to critique modern science, find its weaknesses and come up with a more modest or honest appraisal of its capabilities and limitations. And to recognize that in a properly adjusted view, science and religion are completely compatible.

 

We will demonstrate this again and again in our presentation, as we have already pointed out a number of such scientific insights in our previous posts.

by

Purushottama Jagannath Das, Ph.D.

www.mahaprabhu.net/harmonizer

pbanerjee2002@yahoo.com

Mob: +91-9432205775

Science Magazine on the occasion of its 125^th anniversary in 2005, came up with a list of 125 questions, under an article entitled, ‘What don’t we know?’[1], some of which are listed below:

1) Can the laws of physics be unified?

2) What is the biological basis of consciousness?

3) How much can human life span be extended?

4) How and where did life arise on the earth?

5) How did cooperative behavior evolve?

6) What are the limits of learning by the brain?

7) How much of the personality is genetic?

8) What are the evolutionary roots of language and music?

9) What are the roots of human culture? ...

 

For the last 200 years in the history of modern science these questions were not considered very seriously. Scientists thought that these questions were merely metaphysical, religious or unanswerable and thus not important for their inclusion within their scientific research. However, contemporary science is being forced to confront these important questions in the scientific curriculum. Max Born had said, “the results of the scientific search in which, during several decades, I have taken part, … leads unavoidably back to those eternal questions which go under the title metaphysics.” Schrödinger asked in his book entitled ‘What is Life’, “What is the characteristic feature of life? When is a piece of matter said to be alive? When it goes on ‘doing something’, moving, exchanging material with its environment, and so forth, and that for a much longer period than we would expect of an inanimate piece of matter to ‘keep going’ under similar circumstances.”

 

Today scientists can only meagerly study life processes within the body of an organism by applying the principles of equilibrium and close equilibrium thermodynamics over a finite interval of time.[2] But Schrödinger was wondering, “How would we express in terms of the statistical theory the marvelous faculty of a living organism, by which it delays the decay into thermodynamic equilibrium (death)?” Today the advancements in the field of biology have revealed many interesting details. Thus some scientists are forced to think that in continuing the development of science, it is necessary to include some additional principles other than conventional concepts.

 

For example, Jacob et al. [2] proposed that “….meaning-based natural intelligence is a fundamental requirement of life, and that the roots of cognition can be traced back to bacteria. However, the fundamental semantic and pragmatic cognitive functions are likely to require as yet undefined mechanisms at the genomic level. Based on these predictions and the outline of such a cognitive mechanism, we face the following questions:

(1) Are we subject to a metaphorical fallacy, namely a convenient but distorting extrapolation from current linguistic theory?

(2) How can the ontological reality of such a formulation be tested?

(3) Is the linguistic construction consistent with the current gene-network picture of the neo-Darwinian paradigm?

(4) How might this formulation be constituted within the constraints of physical causal determinism and time causality?

 

 

Jacob et al. [2] further summarized, “Returning to biological systems where operations at regulated rates and flow of information are crucial, we suggest that additional accumulation of ever increasing wealth of details is not sufficient to explain how complex systems are organized and function by harnessing their internal functional complexity and stored information. What we propose instead is that we are missing a fundamental biotic principle based on some yet unknown physical principle. “Information” points us in the right direction, but a biological theory to account for its workings and effects remains a beguiling challenge.

 

Thus since last few decades, consciousness and cognitive science have become an important part of modern studies.[3] One common feature among the leading quantum physicists is that they all try to explain the collapse of wave function through some interaction of mind or consciousness. But there is practically very little evidence that such a collapse of the wave function really occurs.[4] Thus quantum mechanics has not been able to penetrate much into the domain of these very fine cognitive acts. Michael Polanyi stated, “…consciousness is a principle that fundamentally transcends not only physics and chemistry but also the mechanistic principles of living beings.” Thus there are many differing ideas among scientists and scholars about consciousness and that definitely indicates the need for a deeper conceptual study.

 

Thus it should be fruitful by necessity that we include more philosophical and thoughtful dimensions in our inquiry for the sake of satisfying our reason in scientific research. Even the experimental observations imply that there are many glaring gaps in our present ways of understanding. Aristotle had argued about the importance of a final cause. Today in science we are concerned with only the material cause and the formal cause. But we neglect the more important questions which arise from the necessity of a final cause. Kant had discussed the question of ‘cause’ in some detail and found some differences between an organism and a machine. In this regard Ginsborg stated, “In a watch, one part is the instrument [Werkzeug] of the movement of the others, but one wheel is not the efficient cause of the other; one part is there for the sake of the other, but not there through the other”. So a watch meets the first condition of being a purpose, but not the second. In contrast to the case of an organism, its parts do not produce one another; nor does it produce other watches or repair itself when damaged. Thus, Kant goes on to say, “an organized being is not merely a machine, for that has solely moving force, whereas an organized being possesses in itself formative force . . . a formative force which propagates itself, which cannot be explained through the capacity of movement (mechanism) alone.”[5] Thus the deeper questions regarding the ultimate goal of all scientific research or goal of human form of life are important.

 

A good point to begin this kind of inquiry as suggested by many philosophers like Descartes, Kant, Leibniz and Hegel is ‘thought’. For the last 200 years in modern science these most essential and deeper subjective studies have become more or less neglected due to its focus being limited to a domain of objective studies. It is about time that scientists are beginning to realize that subjectivity remains an essential part of reality. Thought is an essential aspect of rational human beings. All scientific theories have their origin in thought. There is no science without thinking. Yet we cannot say where is that thought located within the objects of our study even after so many advances in physics, chemistry and biological sciences. We have many branches in modern science to study planets, microbes, DNA, RNA etc., yet we have no department or discipline to study the ‘principle of thinking’ which is studying these objects.

Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja (Dr. T.D. Singh) said, “Spirituality begins when the subject becomes the object of his own study..” The first aphorism of Vedanta sutra, explains that human life is meant to begin this inquiry – athato brahma jijnasa. Who am I? What is the purpose of my existence? What is my constitutional position in relation to the ultimate reality? Yet it is often overlooked that a serious study of the self-conscious aspect of reality does exist that is scrutinized and presented by the Indic texts. Both subject (scientist) and object (science) have activities in relation to each other as a unified reality. There is an interdependence between consciousness and its content. Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D. said, “A recent book by American stem cell scientist Robert Lanza, entitled "Biocentrism" makes the point that consciousness is fundamental, and everything else rests upon that. This is the same paradigm that Vedanta has held since antiquity.” Western science has also some rich contributions from scientists as well as philosophers like Gödel and Hegel, on these topics. However in modern science, the primary focus on an analytical approach to understand reality is not going far, when faced with the more difficult challenges like the search for a unified theory or search for the origin of life. The Vedantic conception of reality is holistic unlike the analytical concept in modern science. Thakur Bhaktivinoda has explained that the Original Whole (akhanda vastu) is not an additive collection of a large number of finite entities. In Vedanta the origin is Wholesome. And from the whole comes uncountable number of wholes. And even though so many wholes originate from the original whole, it remains as the complete balance (there is no reduction in original whole). Thus the Vedantic paradigm, its ontology and epistemology can help us in furthering our progress in search for ultimate reality.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

References

 

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR THIS FORUM

In this forum we are interested in discussing the Harmony of Science and Religion. We have been welcoming everyone's input, just to see where everyone is at, and to encourage participation in the process of establishing a more wholesome understanding of reality for our time. The advances of science have made this necessary, and the state of the environment and human society and culture have made it imperative.

Messages that are related to, question or challenge the ideas presented here are welcome. We hope to refine or modify these concepts as needed. But messages that simply ignore, misrepresent or misunderstand the points presented here, will most likely not be posted. We are hoping to present a progressive and systematic development of ideas that will lead to a modern school of thought on the harmony of science and religion.

THREE OBJECTS OF STUDY

In general, we will present and explain the three traditional subjects of philosophy:

1. the Self/soul

2. the world

3. God

SCIENCE: THE STUDY OF THE WORLD

In this post we will first focus on the world, and the study of the world by the method of science. For that purpose, it will be necessary to have a general conception of what we mean by science.

Science is based upon sensuous observation of the world. This is called empirical science, which assumes that knowledge is derived from the experience of the senses.

MAYA

The Indic concept of Maya does not mean that the world is not real. It means that the world, which is observed by the senses, is phenomenal. Since phenomena refer to the appearance of some underlying noumenal reality, a distinction is drawn between what is real and its appearance. This distinction was masterfully explained in Kant's philosophy, and has all but been lost on today's philosophically unsophisticated scientists. Thus Maya refers to phenomenal reality of the senses, and is illusory in the sense that the underlying reality that gives rise to appearance is not known by the senses, and yet those appearances are naively identified with that underlying reality.

APPEARANCE AND REALITY

Therefore, while modern empirical science studies appearances, the study of the underlying reality cannot utilize the process of empirical science. Rather philosophical science, the study of concepts, is needed for comprehending underlying unobserved reality. Appearances, which are observed, logically imply that there must be something appearing. It is thus logical deduction that has prominence in studying the sphere of reality. It is the failure to make this distinction between appearance and reality that has caused so many of the problems that arise between science and religion.

Modern empirical science does not make this distinction between phenomena and noumena. This is philosophical naivette, and yet empirical science goes on developing such things as computers, rockets and atom bombs. Thus the fact that science works, can not be due to its rational grasp of reality. For instance, the Chinese beat a gong to make the Moon Dog stop eating the Sun god during a solar eclipse. Every time they do it, it works. In the same way, science works, but it can not solve the problems of philosophy simply by ignoring them.

It is a credit to ancient sages that they clearly understood the difference between Maya (phenomenal appearance) and noumenal reality, a difference which most modern scientists know nothing about. What Immanuel Kant had brought to light in his philosophy, was known 5000 years prior to him, yet Europe was just coming to knowledge about the Indic literature in his time. Yet even today scientists in general still don't know the fact of this distinction.

THE COLOR OF A ROSE

Of course, one may argue that appearances and what is appearing are not entirely different. But that is not always true. An actor may appear to be killed on the stage, but in reality he is just playing a role. A rope may appear to be a snake, but in reality it is a rope. A rose may appear to be red, but in itself the rose is only reflecting the long wavelengths of the white light spectrum into our eyes. What color, if any, is the rose itself? Does an insect or animal see the rose as red? In any absolute sense, do we or can we really know the color of a rose?

HARMONY OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Thus when we refer to the Harmony of Science and Religion, we refer to empirical science here, specifically empirical observation of the world. Psychology, sociology, etc. in so far as they are behaviorally studied, are also empirical sciences.

LIFE COMES FROM LIFE

We have pointed out that Life comes from Life is an observation of the world, and thus is confirmed empirically, and thus is a scientific statement in the way we are using that term.

MATTER COMES FROM LIFE

We also observe that Matter comes from Life. A tree grows up into a huge mass towering in the sky only because it contains a life principle within it. How much matter is produced by living entities in this world is staggering. And we should not be mistaken and think that life merely collects matter that is already lying around outside itself, and simply organizes it. One of the chief characteristics of a living organism is that it creates not only its form but also its matter that is integrally tied up with its form. This is what is observed in Nature. Take away life, and the whole process would stop.

POSITIVISM

Finally, we should note that science as here defined deals with the positive or appearing energy. Just as lightening appears in the dark sky, it is a visible or positive phenomenon. But the darkened sky is invisible, or the negative. Still, the sky provides the support or space for the lightening to appear. Sometimes science is therefore associated with a philosophical viewpoint called positivism.  In this sense, if the appearance is considered the positive, then the underlying noumenal ground of appearance is the negative.  The language for this distinction will be useful when we come to discuss the process of knowledge that belongs to Religion.

 by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Until his death, the mathematician and doctor of medicine Marcel-Paul Schützenberger (1920-1996) was Professor of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Paris and a member of the Academy of Sciences, and author of “The Miracles of Darwinism”. In 1966, Schützenberger participated in the Wistar Symposium on mathematical objections to neo-Darwinism. His arguments were subtle and often misunderstood by biologists. Darwin's theory, he observed, and the interpretation of biological systems as formal objects, were at odds insofar as randomness is known to degrade meaning in formal contexts. But Schützenberger also argued that Darwin's theory logically required some active principle of coordination between the typographic space of the informational macromolecules (DNA and RNA) and the organic space of living creatures themselves -- which Darwin's theory does not provide.

The following post is modified from a copyrighted transcript of an interview found at:

http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od172/schutz172.htm.
 
What is Darwinism?

The most current definition, of course, is a position generically embodied, for example, by Richard Dawkins. The essential idea is well-known. Evolution, Darwinists argue, is explained by the double action of chance mutations and natural selection. The general doctrine embodies two mutually contradictory schools -- gradualists, on the one hand, saltationists, on the other. Gradualists insist that evolution proceeds by means of small successive changes; saltationists that it proceeds by jumps. Richard Dawkins has come to champion radical gradualism; Stephen Jay Gould, a no less radical version of saltationism.

What is the role of mathematics in evolutionary biology?

The participation of mathematicians in the overall assessment of evolutionary thought has been encouraged by the biologists themselves, if only because they presented such an irresistible target. Richard Dawkins, for example, has been fatally attracted to arguments that would appear to hinge on concepts drawn from mathematics and from the computer sciences, the technical stuff imposed on innocent readers with all of his comic authority. Mathematicians are, in any case, epistemological zealots. It is normal for them to bring their critical scruples to the foundations of other disciplines. And finally, it is worth observing that the great turbid wave of cybernetics has carried mathematicians from their normal mid-ocean haunts to the far shores of evolutionary biology, endeavoring to apply the concepts of mathematics to the fundamental problems of evolution -- the interpretation of functional complexity, for example.

What is functional complexity?

It is impossible to grasp the phenomenon of life without the concept of functional complexity, the two words each expressing a crucial and essential idea. The laboratory biologists' normal and unforced vernacular is almost always couched in functional terms: the function of an eye, the function of an enzyme, or a ribosome, or the fruit fly's antennae -- their function; the concept by which such language is animated is one perfectly adapted to reality. Physiologists see this better than anyone else. Within their world, everything is a matter of function, the various systems that they study -- circulatory, digestive, excretory, and the like -- all characterized in simple, ineliminable functional terms. At the level of molecular biology, functionality may seem to pose certain conceptual problems, perhaps because the very notion of an organ has disappeared when biological relationships are specified in biochemical terms; but appearances are misleading, certain functions remaining even in the absence of an organ or organ systems. Complexity is also a crucial concept. Even among unicellular organisms, the mechanisms involved in the separation and fusion of chromosomes during mitosis and meiosis are processes of unbelieveable complexity and subtlety.. Organisms present themselves to us as a complex ensemble of functional interrelationships. If one is going to explain their evolution, one must at the same time explain their functionality and their complexity.

What makes functional complexity so difficult to comprehend?

The evolution of living creatures appears to require an essential ingredient, a specific form of organization. Whatever it is, it lies beyond anything that our present knowledge of physics or chemistry might suggest; it is a property upon which formal logic sheds absolutely no light. Whether gradualists or saltationists, Darwinians have too simple a conception of biology, rather like a locksmith improbably convinced that his handful of keys will open any lock. Darwinians, for example, tend to think of the gene rather as if it were the expression of a simple command: do this, get that done, drop that side chain. Walter Gehring's work on the regulatory genes controlling the development of the insect eye reflects this conception. The relevant genes may well function this way, but the story on this level is surely incomplete, and Darwinian theory is not apt to fill in the pieces.

Biologists think of a gene as a command.

Schematically, a gene is like a unit of information. It has simple binary properties. When active, it is an elementary information-theoretic unit, the cascade of gene instructions resembling the cascade involved in specifying a recipe. Now let us return to the example of the eye. Darwinists imagine that it requires what? A thousand or two thousand genes to assemble an eye, the specification of the organ thus requiring one or two thousand units of information? This is absurd! Suppose that a European firm proposes to manufacture an entirely new household appliance in a Southeast Asian factory. And suppose that for commercial reasons, the firm does not wish to communicate to the factory any details of the appliance's function -- how it works, what purposes it will serve.. With only a few thousand bits of information, the factory is not going to proceed very far or very fast. A few thousand bits of information, after all, yields only a single paragraph of text. The appliance in question is bound to be vastly simpler than the eye; charged with its manufacture, the factory will yet need to know the significance of the operations to which they have committed themselves in engaging their machinery. This can be achieved only if they already have some sense of the object's nature before they undertake to manufacture it. A considerable body of knowledge, held in common between the European firm and its Asian factory, is necessary before manufacturing instructions may be executed.

Does the genome contain the requisite information for explaining organisms?

Not according to the understanding of the genome we now possess. The biological properties invoked by biologists are in this respect quite insufficient; while biologists may understand that a gene triggers the production of a particular protein, that knowledge -- that kind of knowledge -- does not allow them to comprehend how one or two thousand genes suffice to direct the course of embryonic development.

Is this the argument of preformationism?

My position is strictly a rational one. I've formulated a problem that appears significant to me: how is it that with so few elementary instructions, the materials of life can fabricate objects that are so marvelously complicated and efficient? This property with which they are endowed -- just what is its nature? Nothing within our actual knowledge of physics and chemistry allows us intellectually to grasp it. If one starts from an evolutionary point of view, it must be acknowledged that in one manner or another, the earliest fish contained the capacity, and the appropriate neural wiring, to bring into existence organs which they did not possess or even need, but which would be the common property of their successors when they left the water for the firm ground, or for the air.

Darwinism doesn't explain much.

It seems to me that the union of chance mutation and selection has a certain descriptive value; in no case does the description count as an explanation. Darwinism relates ecological data to the relative abundance of species and environments. In any case, the descriptive value of Darwinian models is pretty limited. Besides, as saltationists have indicated, the gradualist thesis seems completely demented in light of the growth of paleontological knowledge. The miracles of saltationism, on the other hand, cannot discharge the mystery I have described.

Does the idea of natural selection have a certain explanatory value?

No one could possibly deny the general thesis that stability is a necessary condition for existence -- the real content of the doctrine of natural selection. The outstanding application of this general principle is Berthollet's laws in elementary chemistry. In a desert, the species that die rapidly are those that require water the most; yet that does not explain the appearance among the survivors of those structures whose particular features permits them to resist aridity. The thesis of natural selection is not very powerful. Except for certain artificial cases, we are yet unable to predict whether this or that species or this or that variety will be favored or not as the result of changes in the environment. What we can do is establish after the fact the effects of natural selection -- to show, for, example that certain birds are disposed to eat this species of snails less often than other species, perhaps because their shell is not as visible. That's ecology: very interesting. To put it another way, natural selection is a weak instrument of proof because the phenomena subsumed by natural selection are obvious and yet they establish nothing from the point of view of the theory.

Isn't the significant explanatory feature of Darwinian theory the connection established between chance mutations and natural selection?

With the discovery of coding, we have come to understand that a gene is like a word composed in the DNA alphabet; such words form the genomic text. It is that word that tells the cell to make this or that protein. Either a given protein is structural, or a protein itself works in combination with other signals given by the genome to fabricate yet another protein. All the experimental results we know fall within this scheme. The following scenario then becomes standard. A gene undergoes a mutation, one that may facilitate the reproduction of those individuals carrying it; over time, and with respect to a specific environment, mutants come to be statistically favored, replacing individuals lacking the requisite mutation. Evolution could not be an accumulation of such typographical errors. Population geneticists can study the speed with which a favorable mutation propagates itself under these circumstances. They do this with a lot of skill, but these are academic exercises if only because none of the parameters that they use can be empirically determined. In addition, there are the obstacles I have already mentioned. We know the number of genes in an organism. There are about one hundred thousand for a higher vertebrate. This we know fairly well. But this seems grossly insufficient to explain the incredible quantity of information needed to accomplish evolution within a given line of species.

A concrete example.

Darwinists say that horses, which were once mammals as large as rabbits, increased their size to escape more quickly from predators. Within the gradualist model, one might isolate a specific trait -- increase in body size -- and consider it to be the result of a series of typographic changes. The explanatory effect achieved is rhetorical, imposed entirely by trick of insisting that what counts for a herbivore is the speed of its flight when faced by a predator. Now this may even be partially true, but there are no biological grounds that permit us to determine that this is in fact the decisive consideration. After all, increase in body size may well have a negative effect. Darwinists seem to me to have preserved a mechanic vision of evolution, one that prompts them to observe merely a linear succession of causes and effects. The idea that causes may interact with one another is now standard in mathematical physics; it is a point that has had difficulty in penetrating the carapace of biological thought. In fact, within the quasi-totality of observable phenomena, local changes interact in a dramatic fashion; after all, there is hardly an issue of La Recherche that does not contain an allusion to the Butterfly Effect. Information theory is precisely the domain that sharpens our intuitions about these phenomena. A typographical change in a computer program does not change it just a little. It wipes the program out, purely and simply. It is the same with a telephone number. If I intend to call a correspondent by telephone, it doesn't much matter if I am fooled by one, two, three or eight figures in his number.

Do biological mutations genuinely have the character of typographical errors?

Yes, in the sense that one base is a template for another, one codon for another, but at the level of biochemical activity, one is no longer able properly to speak of typography. There is an entire grammar for the formation of proteins in three dimensions, one that we understand poorly. We do not have at our disposal physical or chemical rules permitting us to construct a mapping from typographical mutations or modifications to biologically effective structures. To return to the example of the eye: a few thousand genes are needed for its fabrication, but each in isolation signifies nothing. What is significant is the combination of their interactions.. These cascading interactions, with their feedback loops, express an organization whose complexity we do not know how to analyze (See Figure 1). It is possible we may be able to do so in the future, but there is no doubt that we are unable to do so now. Gehring has recently discovered a segment of DNA which is both involved in the development of the vertebrate eye and which can induce the development of an eye in the wing of a butterfly. His work comprises a demonstration of something utterly astonishing, but not an explanation.

But Dawkins, for example, believes in the possibility of a cumulative process.

Dawkins believes in an effect that he calls "the cumulative selection of beneficial mutations." To support his thesis, he resorts to a metaphor introduced by the mathematician Emile Borel -- that of a monkey typing by chance and in the end producing a work of literature. It is a metaphor, I regret to say, embraced by Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the double helix. Dawkins has his computer write a series of thirty letters, these corresponding to the number of letters in a verse by Shakespeare. He then proceeds to simulate the Darwinian mechanism of chance mutations and selection. His imaginary monkey types and retypes the same letters, the computer successively choosing the phrase that most resembles the target verse. By means of cumulative selection, the monkey reaches its target in forty or sixty generations.

Can a monkey typing on a typewriter, even aided by a computer, produce anything rational?

Dawkins demonstration is a trompe-l'oeil, and what is more, he doesn't describe precisely how it proceeds. At the beginning of the exercise, randomly generated phrases appear rapidly to approach the target; the closer the approach, the more the process begins to slow. It is the action of mutations in the wrong direction that pulls things backward. In fact, a simple argument shows that unless the numerical parameters are chosen deliberately, the progression begins to bog down completely.

The model of cumulative selection, imagined by Dawkins, is out of touch with palpable biological realities.

Dawkins's model lays entirely to the side the triple problems of complexity, functionality, and their interaction.

How to formalize the concept of functional complexity...

I would appeal to a notion banned by the scientific community, but one understood perfectly by everyone else -- that of a goal. As a computer scientist, I could express this in the following way. One constructs a space within which one of the coordinates serves in effect as the thread of Ariane, guiding the trajectory toward the goal. Once the space is constructed, the system evolves in a mechanical way toward its goal. But look, the construction of the relevant space cannot proceed until a preliminary analysis has been carried out, one in which the set of all possible trajectories is assessed, this together with an estimation of their average distance from the specified goal. The preliminary analysis is beyond the reach of empirical study. It presupposes -- the same word that seems to recur in theoretical biology -- that the biologist (or computer scientist) know the totality of the situation, the properties of the ensemble of trajectories. In terms of mathematical logic, the nature of this space is entirely enigmatic. Nonetheless, it is important to remember that the conceptual problems we face, life has entirely solved; the systems embodied in living creatures are entirely successful in reaching their goals. The trick involved in Dawkin's somewhat sheepish example proceeds via the surreptitious introduction of a relevant space. His computer program calculates from a random phrase to a target, a calculation corresponding to nothing in biological reality. The function that he employs flatters the imagination, however, because it has that property of apparent simplicity that elicits naïve approval. In biological reality, the space of even the simplest function has a complexity that defies understanding, and indeed, defies any and all calculations.

The saltationists are more moderate: they don't pretend to hold the key that would permit them to explain evolution.

Before discussing the saltationists,  I must say a word about the Japanese biologist Mooto Kimura. He has shown that the majority of mutations are neutral, without any selective effect. For Darwinians upholding the central Darwinian thesis, this is embarrassing... The saltationist view, revived by Stephen Jay Gould, in the end represents an idea due to Richard Goldschmidt. In 1940 or so, he postulated the existence of very intense mutations, no doubt involving hundreds of genes, and taking place rapidly, in less than one thousand generations, thus below the threshold of resolution of paleontology. Curiously enough, Gould does not seem concerned to preserve the union of chance mutations and selection. The saltationists run afoul of two types of criticism. On the one hand, the functionality of their supposed macromutations is inexplicable within the framework of molecular biology. On the other hand, Gould ignores in silence the great trends in biology, such as the increasing complexity of the nervous system. He imagines that the success of new, more sophisticated species, such as the mammals, is a contingent phenomenon. He is not in a position to offer an account of the essential movement of evolution, or at the least, an account of its main trajectories. The saltationists are thus reduced to invoking two types of miracles: macromutations, and the great trajectories of evolution.

In what sense is the word 'miracle' applicable to Darwinism?

A miracle is an event that should appear impossible to a Darwinian in view of its ultra-cosmological improbability within the framework of his own theory. Now speaking of macromutations, let me observe that to generate a proper elephant, it will not suffice suddenly to endow it with a full-grown trunk. As the trunk is being organized, a different but complementary system -- the cerebellum -- must be modified in order to establish a place for the ensemble of wiring that the elephant will require to use his trunk. These macromutations must be coordinated by a system of genes in embryogenesis. If one considers the history of evolution, we must postulate thousands of miracles; miracles, in fact, without end. No more than the gradualists, the saltationists are unable to provide an account of those miracles. The second category of miracles are directional, offering instruction to the great evolutionary progressions and trends -- the elaboration of the nervous system, of course, but the internalization of the reproductive process as well, and the appearance of bone, the emergence of ears, the enrichment of various functional relationships, and so on. Each is a series of miracles, whose accumulation has the effect of increasing the complexity and efficiency of various organisms. From this point of view, the notion of bricolage [tinkering], introduced by Francois Jacob, involves a fine turn of phrase, but one concealing an utter absence of explanation.

The appearance of human beings -- is that a miracle?

Naturally. And here it does seem that there are voices among contemporary biologists -- I mean voices other than mine -- who might cast doubt on the Darwinian paradigm that has dominated discussion for the past twenty years. Gradualists and saltationists alike are completely incapable of giving a convincing explanation of the quasi-simultaneous emergence of a number of biological systems that distinguish human beings from the higher primates: bipedalism, with the concomitant modification of the pelvis, and, without a doubt, the cerebellum, a much more dexterous hand, with fingerprints conferring an especially fine tactile sense; the modifications of the pharynx which permits phonation; the modification of the central nervous system, notably at the level of the temporal lobes, permitting the specific recognition of speech. From the point of view of embryogenesis, these anatomical systems are completely different from one another. Each modification constitutes a gift, a bequest from a primate family to its descendants. It is astonishing that these gifts should have developed simultaneously. Some biologists speak of a predisposition of the genome. Can anyone actually recover the predisposition, supposing that it actually existed? Was it present in the first of the fish? The reality is that we are confronted with total conceptual bankruptcy.

Appeals to such notions as chaos.

There is a succession of highly competent people who have discovered a number of poetic but essentially hollow forms of expression. I am referring here to the noisy crowd collected under the rubric of cybernetics; and beyond, there lie the dissipative structures of Prigogine, or the systems of Varela, or, moving to the present, Stuart Kauffman's edge of chaos -- an organized form of inanity that is certain soon to make its way to France. The Santa Fe school takes complexity to apply to absolutely everything. They draw their representative examples from certain chemical reactions, the pattern of the sea coast, atmosphere turbulence, or the structure of a chain of mountains. The complexity of these structures is certainly considerable, but in comparison with the living world, they exhibit in every case an impoverished form of organization, one that is strictly non-functional. No algorithm allows us to understand the complexity of living creatures, this despite these examples, which owe their initial plausibility to the assumption that the physico-chemical world exhibits functional properties that in reality it does not possess.

Final words.

All we can hear at the present time is the great anthropic hymnal, with even a number of mathematically sophisticated scholars keeping time as the great hymn is intoned by tapping their feet. The rest of us should, of course, practice a certain suspension of judgment.

Slightly modified from the article Copyright © 1996 Marcel-Paul Schützenberger. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.