Transcendental Nectar of Sadhu-Sanga

by

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D.

Bhaktivedanta Institute

Dear Dr Sushen Krishna Das,

Thank you for your very respectful message and questions.

You wrote: I want to know some practical examples about how "The Organic Whole produces organic wholes." Why an organic whole cannot arise from parts that have to be assembled? Among matter, spirit and God which we shall consider as Organic Whole?

Reply: The most fundamental example we can give is found in the individual person, or personality. When we call a person an "individual" we mean that the person is in-divisible, i.e, that which cannot be divided and still remain what it is. A person is not made up of parts, but exists in and as a whole. Yet a person can give rise to another completely independent individual person in the act of sexual reproduction. We all have witnessed or experienced this, so there is definite empirical evidence that a whole person does produce from oneself another whole person. The same holds true for man, animal, or plant. A tree grows from a seed, which is produced by a tree, etc.

The wholeness of the person is not diminished by producing another whole person, the wholeness of the tree is not diminished by producing a seed, which produces another tree. So we can see that indeed Nature does manifest this foundational principle of wholes coming from wholes without diminishing their own wholeness.

And this principle is valid for material Nature, spirit and God, as we find confirmed in sastra. It is indeed a scientifically verifiable conception, even though it may be difficult to understand analytically. In other words, atomistic thinking does not apply to the holistic principles that underlie actual Nature, but only to the theoretically constructed nature that science has imagined for itself.

Not that atomic explanations are completely invalid, but they do have very limited application when it comes to actual Nature. Thus, for example, paramanu is mentioned in sastra, which corresponds to the modern idea of atom. Yet the paramanu is a true indivisible atom or individual that does not have sub-atomic constituents. 

Then you wrote: I have also one more question about space and time, about which I want a scientific explanation from you. I want to know 'What is time?' and 'What is space?' In modern science we are trying to study everything within space-time coordinate system. There is a theory called string theory (no definite explanations are available about how many dimensions to select) which is trying to include some more dimensions to explain some of the fundamental problems in science.

Reply: Modern science deals with space and time as immediately given to sensation. Scientists do not philosophically analyze what we actually mean by space and time, or why they arise at all. The German idealist, Immanuel Kant, claimed that space and time were abstractions that were necessary constituents of sensousness itself, and therefore everything that is detected by the senses automatically had to be apprehended in space and time.

More particularly, objects or objectivity refers to that which is external to subjective cognitive action. Thus externality as such, as immediately existing, is conceived as space. In other words, each point of space is characterized as being external to every other point.

The modern mind is so conditioned to think of space positively, as mere objectivity without any relation to its subjective concept as externality, that this type of relation may be very hard to understand. Nonetheless, a philosophical or metaphysical understanding of space is needed if we wish to develop a proper scientific comprehension of reality.

Geometry is the science of spatial relationships, but arithmetic deals with succession of numbers. A number, N, is that which has a successor, N+1. This idea of succession as a quantitative measure is what we call time.  It is also a dimension of externality of successive moments. This is how Kant distinguished the two.

G.W.F. Hegel, another German idealist, has delved much deeper into the philosophical significance of time as having a negative relation to objectivity and space. This negativity of time has a closer relation to the idea of time we find, for instance, in the Bhagavad-gita, where time is considered to be the destructive principle. Indeed, time wears away all finite objectivity. Hegel's idea of negativity, however, does not have a mere annihilative effect, but one that annuls objectivity while at the same time raising it to subjectivity, which is just the process we call cognition, or consciousness. Time is therefore the activity of comprehension that has not yet come to comprehension of itself or self-actualization. This is a much more advanced topic we might call absolute time.

You then wrote: According to Vedic science there are gross and subtle matter. Earth, water, fire, air and ether are the five gross elements of matter. The modern science is studying only these gross elements of matter. But it seems that present theories in modern science can't explain the subtle matter such as mind (mana), intelligence (buddhi) and false ego (ahamkara). The soul is much beyond all these elements. Thus the question is that can we explain subtle matter and soul within space- time coordinate system? Are some elements of subtle matter dependent on space or time? By the search for new dimensions can we explain subtle matter and soul? I need some explanation from you about these topics. Any help from the group members is also most welcome.

Reply: The French mathematician-philosopher, Rene Descartes, divided reality into two non-overlapping magesteria: "res cogitans" and "res extensus". "Res cogitans" refers to the mental world of cognition, emotion, and volition (thinking, feeling and willing), whereas "res extensus" refers to the world of the senses, the world of extended things. We may refer to the former as the subtle matter, and the later as gross. Because only the sensuous matter is extended, it alone can be measured in terms of space and time. The subtle matter is cognitive or subjective and being unextended it cannot be measured. As mentioned above, space and time are measures of externality or extension, so they only apply to the "res extensus" of the senses.