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Pranaam Prabhu
I was rereading the chapter, ‘Vedic theory of matter’ in the book Sankhya and Science. I need to know whether I am in sync with the intended meaning. I will phrase my query with the help of a scenario.
Lets say I am in a dark room. Now, my sense of sight is just aware of darkness ( aware of black color?). I turn on white light, now this 3d screen of mine takes a variety of forms, size and color. My focus shifts on a object of a particular shape(relatively spherical), size(5-6cms) and color(red) which the mind recognizes it to be apple. I move towards the apple, grab it(sensation of touch) and later bite into(sensation of taste), hear(sensation of sound) the gnashing of apple, smell(sensation of smell) the fragrance of apple.
I will now pose a series of questions on the above scenario and also my own answers based on my current progress in Sankhya philosophy.
1. Was there an apple before I turned on the light?
Yes, but not as sensation but as objective information which could possibly become a sensation when a sensory instrument accesses it.
2. What is the role of light in this scenario ? What is light according to Sankhya?
Adds more information to the information already existing thereby giving access to more sensation to an observer.
Not clear on what light is with respect to sankhya philosophy.
3. What happens when the light instead of white is changed to blue?
Apple looks purple because the context has changed. (seeking more clarity on this topic)
4. What happens if a different organism like a bee with different sensory apparatus accesses the apple?
Decoding scheme of information varies among sensory apparatus of different organisms. They derive a different experience.
5. How is the sense data of apple encoded?
Atoms and Molecules according to western science which has no sense data but primary properties like mass, momentum and charge.
But Bhumi, apah, anala, vayu and kham according to Sankhya?? These get their meaning in relation to smell, taste, sight, hearing and touch.
6. Is an apple like a digital file of a photo in computer represented by bits and encoded in some scheme and later processed and outputted on screen?
Yes apple exists as sense data later on accessed by sensory instruments, translated(not processed) and assimilated by the mind and projected on our screen(Sat aspect of the soul?)
7. What is the relation between three modes of nature and the five elements in Sankhya?
Don’t know. Looking for further clarity.
8. What if a color blinded person sees the apple?
He will not get the intended meaning. (Is he color blind because of karma??)
9. What is your role in all of this?
I am not the doer. Literally, everything seems pretty fast and automated.
10. You moved towards the apple. What caused the movement?
The consciousness moved not the body i.e it moved over a series of bodily states one of which is grabbing the apple. Behind this jumping there was an intention(to eat the apple?)
11. What caused the intention?
Moral sense, eating the apple is good. (??)
12. What caused the moral sense to change?
The soul chose the ananda aspect.
13. Are we seeing the apple in its entirety?
No. As humans we access a range of possiblities but not the entirety. But there are demigods who can see the apple in its entirety.(???)
(I would like to mention the post where you mention how the senses seek what the mind seeks. May be if I change my meanings I will see what I want to see and nothing else)
Please forgive if I am asking for too much assistance. This is the best I could do. I am not the most scientifically adept but my enthusiasm for Sankhya and Vedas is making me to seek the necessary clarity. Please point out wherever I am wrong and seeking clarity, I will correct my understanding.
Thank you for your valuable time Prabhu.
Try to understand one by one. It takes time and acclimatization.
When the Sun “rises”, it associates with some part of the world, and by that association with the Sun, some properties that were unmanifest in that part of the world earlier, become manifest. This is just like you associate with an angry person, and anger manifests in you. Like that, the Sun associates with something, and the unmanifest properties of sight (color, form, size) become manifest.
We can contrast this idea to that in quantum mechanics, where an electron exists in a quantum state X and it is not visible at this point in time. Then, it “absorbs” a photon of light from the Sun, and jumps to a higher energy state Y. Then it emits that same energy, and falls back to state X. That emitted energy enters our eyes, and we see the apple. The absorption is from the Sun, the emission is by the apple, and the second absorption is by our eyes. In this way, the energy of the Sun enters our eyes mediated through the apple. That’s why we see when the Sun has risen, but we see the apple.
The alternative description is that when the Sun rises, it manifests the unmanifest property in the apple. When that unmanifest property is manifest, and we associate with the apple, then the apple manifests the same properties (color, shape, size) in our senses. Thereby, light is not transferred from the Sun to the apple to our eyes. It is the association of the Sun with the apple and that of the apple with our eyes. By that association, the properties of the apple are manifest in our eyes like the personal emotional states of a person are manifest in us when we associate with that person.
Since the same property is manifest by association, therefore, the color we see is the color of the apple. It is not an electromagnetic wave, traveling at some speed of light, causing an electron excitement, which triggers an electrical current, which modifies some molecules, etc. to ultimately become a color, shape, and size in our brain (which factually no one can explain today).
The Sun doesn’t manifest all the properties in an apple, which is why you cannot taste the apple just by shining light on it. Likewise, if we are color blind, then the apple cannot manifest color in our eyes. This is just like a person who is unable to feel emotions: Even if they associate with an emotional person, emotions are not triggered in them. They are “emotionally cold”.
So, there is a role of the observer, namely, that they must be capable of perceiving. That “capability” exists if and only if there is an unmanifest reality that can be manifest by association. In a color-blind person, that unmanifest reality (A) may not exist, (B) the association may be hindered due to bodily flaws, (C) association of properties may be hindered due to adverse karma, etc.
Then, there is the question of why two things associate. There are many possible reasons for it. It can be due to our will: We want to see, and our senses associate with the sense objects, that association then manifests the apple’s properties in us. But it is not always our will. Someone can stare at you, and their senses associate with your body and manifest something in it. You don’t understand, but you feel that someone is entering your body, that your privacy has been invaded. So, you look in their direction, and you realize that they were staring at you. Then, there is forced association due to karma. Although we don’t want to suffer, something is forcibly associated due to karma, when that karma manifests. By force, an association is created between our body and another body.
Something I wrote earlier apparently got deleted while editing, so I will rewrite it.
Yes, even chanting the holy name is about associating with the holy name. If we hear attentively, then we are associating. If not, then we are associating with something else. Whatever we associate with, will manifest a property in us, quite similar to itself. If we associate with materialistic people, materialism is bound to manifest in us. And if we associate with pure devotees, pure devotion will manifest in us. If we associate with the holy name, God’s qualities will naturally manifest in us.
The basic principle of causality remains unchanged across science and religion. The difference is in the type of thing we are associating with. Science is talking about associating with instruments, and gross perceivable objects, and observing their results. And religion talks about associating with God, His devotees, and His words. Both involve the same principle of causality, hence both are “science”.
However, in modern science, causality is based on push and pull. And the properties of an object are fixed. So, according to this science, Sun is emitting radiation, and after some million years, the Sun will die, as all the energy has been emitted. That is called the “death of a star”. And the Earth will then emit the radiation into space, and become so cold that life will cease to exist on Earth.
But according to Vedic philosophy, the Sun will never die, and life on Earth will never finish, because the Sun is not emitting energy, and the Earth is not absorbing energy. Rather, Sun has the property of heat, and when we associate with the Sun, the same quality of heat manifests in us. So, heat is already within us, but it is unmanifest. By associating with the Sun, it is manifest as if we got it from outside. But it is not received from the outside. It was already within us, and it has manifested.
In the same way, the love of God is already within us, but it is unmanifest. Nobody is going to “give you” the love of God, just like the Sun is not giving out heat. It has to be manifest by association. Therefore, no force can be applied to manifest the love of God. It is based on our eagerness to associate. The more eager we are, the faster we progress because the guru is not going to push us. He is like the Sun: He is available for an association, but we have to associate intently to manifest divinity in us.
Therefore, the observation of the apple is as complicated as the theology of love, and vice versa. There is a role for desire, opportunities, capabilities, movement of consciousness, past impressions and deeds, and the modification of the observer and observed through mutual association. Most people assume that seeing the apple is a simple thing, and the love of God is more complicated. Or that seeing the apple is science but seeing God is religion. All these ideas are wrong. They are the same process, involving the same science. But it is quite different than modern science.
So, if we practice religion correctly, then automatically we know science because we know that things are not happening due to force, between objects with a fixed set of properties, with no room for choice, with no role for past actions, with no place for future goals, in a deterministic manner. Then it is easy to critique science because its causal models are based on false premises. Likewise, if we do science properly, then we automatically accept the conclusions of religion. We don’t have to know science and religion separately. We just have to know one thing and we will know both.
And confirming this science is based on a new kind of experience, under which we chant names of God, and divine qualities manifest in us. Chanting will transform us as a person, irreversibly. So, how can mumbo-jumbo change a person? And if it changes a person, then, in the same way, it can change the whole world. The process of that change is the same. So, by this alternative kind of experience, we get the experiential foundation for a theory and we can both understand it better and accept its conclusions. It will not be: How could this happen? How is that possible? Because we are seeing that right in our lives. We don’t need any external “evidence” to prove it to ourselves.
Thank you Prabhu. Actually I did read the deleted part of your reply.
We are really fortunate to come across your works, before I was really lost in atheism, void-ism and impersonalism thereby my life was one of meaninglessness and purposelessness. Just now I am beginning to see new rays of love blossoming in my heart. I am really amazed by the depth of knowledge you know across different subjects. Having studied all these and going back to Vedas is no small feat. I am just filled with awe and respect.
Ever since we were kids, we were taught how stars are born, live and die off and our sun is one such star. That sun never dies is a very big shift in our thinking. I now no longer see sun as one random star but as a demi-god representing Vishnu himself distributing the six qualities to all the living entities.
Just one clarity though, in modern science there are models explaining how some stars would become neutron stars, red giants and sometimes collapse on themselves and become black holes. What is the meaning of these black holes and other fate of stars? Our sun is predicted to become one such red giant in 7 or 8 billion years. Are these claims backed by observational evidence or just speculations?
There are observations of different kinds of celestial bodies, and modern cosmology has been trying to explain these observations using the theory of gravitation. Those explanations are really weak and have numerous gaps in them. However, they tilt toward confirmation bias of current theories rather than objectively evaluating other explanations of the same data. They also tend to ignore all the exceptions to those explanations. These are discussed at some length in Mystic Universe.
For example, if you see a star redshifted there are at least two possible explanations: (a) the star is emitting redshifted light, and (b) the star is moving away from us, creating a redshift. Those are equally good explanations and should be evaluated on par. But they are not. What you see in cosmology is a bias toward the second explanation, stating that if we see redshift then it entails that the universe is expanding. You almost never see the first option being discussed seriously.
Likewise, if you see a dim star, there are at least two possible explanations: (a) the star is emitting less light toward us, and (b) the star is farther compared to other stars. Those are equally good explanations and should be evaluated on par. But they are not. What you see in cosmology is a bias toward the second explanation, stating that if we see a dim star then it entails that the star must be farther from us. You almost never see the first explanation being discussed seriously.
The confirmation bias in science is that science is based on assumptions such as (a) things interact with other things identically, and (b) all places, directions, and times behave the same. These assumptions naturally bias science toward one explanation over another. In fact, the counterexamples to these assumptions such as dark matter (which shows that outer parts of galaxies don’t behave like the inner parts, implying a difference in the nature of space) or dark energy (which shows that the behavior of galaxies is not uniform in time) are shelved to a future theory.
There is too much public propaganda about science being a rational and empirical activity, and too little understanding of how science is a human activity, such that vested interests (accolades, awards, publicity, promotions, tenure, grants, etc.) play an immense role in its endeavors. Preserving the status quo, claiming that it is being advanced continuously, and hiding the failures, are all part of this public propaganda that eulogizes a selected explanation and overlooks its problems.
There is a better understanding at present of how corporate media is hand-in-gloves with the corporations and the government in advancing selected narratives and suppressing others. There is not enough understanding at present about how the same media is hand-in-gloves with the academia and the scientific community in peddling selected narratives and suppressing others. The problems of science are often well-known only to experts, and they don’t voice their opinions (or cannot) due to fear of retaliation. Going against the crowd hurts their popularity and status.
There is a technique used for confirmation bias at present: It is called citations. For example, if I write a paper with new ideas in it, I cannot get it published without citations to the work of others. Since others don’t have the same views, therefore, I cannot cite them. Hence, my paper would be rejected by low-level administrative clerks in a journal publication who exist to filter papers based on trivial criteria like not enough citations, not enough words, too many words, the citations not being recent enough, my affiliation not being to a reputed department, etc.
Most novel ideas never cross the clerical and bureaucratic gatekeepers, and hence there is no reward for proposing them. There is only a reward for reiterating the same ideas until it is too late and you are already vested into a certain way of thinking and overturning it is going to hurt you more. There are also issues with citation loops, in which I cite my friend and he/she cites me creating a mutually reinforcing ripple effect of apparent popularity of citations which is often misused.
Therefore, the problem is more complex than observation vs. speculation. Yes, there are observations, and there are ways to interpret them. Then there are biases toward one way over another. These biases are not just in the thinking but also in the system that evaluates publications and selects those that fit the current narratives by using citations as a filtering mechanism. And there is a need to solicit funding by projecting advances, which creates a nexus between media and academia. People who try to break out of these problems tend to write books rather than papers, and sell them to trade publishers, who use outrage as a publicity tool to incite people’s attention, in order to get more eyeballs for the author, publisher, and the book.
The situation is quite bleak for people like us outside this system of citation, funding, and publicity. It is impossible to rise even to the levels of noise that other mainstream authors are able to generate. The devotee community for whom this should matter the most has spectacularly failed to promote such content. In most cases, people stand by and watch the drama. In the best case, they give me an appreciation not backed by a long-term commitment to the subject. In the worst case, they attack, ridicule, or challenge without studying the work seriously. Those people who give it a try want Rome built in a day. Basically, all the traits of success, such as enthusiasm, determination, patience, continuously endeavoring, avoiding bad associations, and taking good associations (mentioned in the Nectar of Instruction) are absent. That naturally ensures the absence of success.
Therefore, while I gratefully accept your appreciation, I want commitment in return. Life is finite, and I may not be around for long. Who knows what goes after that.
Thank you Prabhu. Actually I am aware of the biases and corporate media meddling in the scientific community, getting the narrative they want. Actually I am quite happy after knowing there is an alternative explanation to these celestial observations. I am now correcting my views.
Honestly I was a non devotee who became a devotee through the association of your works. I am able to see the change within myself and that’s sufficient enough for me to be fully committed to the study of your works. Yes, the devotee community should promote it more than anyone else but these ideas are a big change to most people. Unless there is a deeper calling they won’t put the necessary dedication and energy the change requires. Some of us have to make the effort to understand your works and take it forward in our own ways. I definitely have the willing, ability to some extent, deserving is left to the grace of Lord.
Please forgive me if I am persistent Prabhu but if you could just answer the series of questions I posed in the beginning of the discussion, it would serve as a personal framework to base my study. I am not looking for a detailed explanation(which you have already expanded in your books) as such, even a single sentence would suffice. Yes, I know you don’t like people who instead of putting the necessary work want their questions answered by others. My intention here is to know why you would see it that way and not me. Once I know the way you are looking (through your answers of questions), I will make every effort to correct my views through thorough studying and lift myself from there. I might not understand everything outright but overtime I will. It might serve as a guide to other interested readers who are on par with my current level of understanding. Enthusiasm, dedication and commitment is all that I can offer.
Please ignore this request if you don’t feel that’s the right way. You have answered earlier, how through association of the holy name everything can be understood. I am already seeing most of my questions being answered by seeing how through association properties are manifested and unmanifested.
Okay, here are short answers.
1. Was there an apple before I turned on the light?
Yes, there was. But it was unmanifest.
2. What is the role of light in this scenario? What is light according to Sankhya?
Light is not a thing, object, or physical force. Rather, there is association and dissociation, by which some unmanifest property manifests. When we see it, we say there was “light”. That association or dissociation is caused by the movement of prana outward, inward, upward, downward, and around. But that is not unique to light; it exists in every kind of sense perception. This prana is the force, but it causes the movement of consciousness. Physical force moves objects, prana moves consciousness.
3. What happens when the light instead of white is changed to blue?
Then it means that the cause is going to manifest a different property or a subset of properties. White generally manifests the superset of properties, and blue manifests a subset.
4. What happens if a different organism like a bee with different sensory apparatus accesses the apple?
The apple doesn’t manifest the same properties in the bee as in a human. Dogs for example are color-blind because even though there is color in apple, it is unmanifestable in dogs.
5. How is the sense data of apple encoded?
It is encoded in an inverted-tree structure, such that the meaning of each location in the tree depends on the previous locations, and other locations emanating out of the previous location. The branches of the tree have both location, distance, and direction simultaneously. Therefore, all sense data is encoded in terms of position, direction, and distance. So, space itself is semantic.
6. Is an apple like a digital file of a photo on a computer represented by bits and encoded in some scheme and later processed and outputted on screen?
Yes, it is like an information file, but that file is organized from abstract to detailed rather than from top-left to bottom-right. The top-level “byte” indicates it is an apple. Then lower level “bytes” indicate that the apple is red, round, and sweet. Then the further lower-level bytes elaborate on the structure of roundness, a particular shade of color, and the specific flavor of sweetness. Thereby, if you want to “compress” this information file, just cut off the leaves, and you get a smaller file. That smaller file will draw a hazy apple, but it will always be an apple, that is red, round, and sweet.
7. What is the relation between the three modes of nature and the five elements in Sankhya?
All nature is constructed from three modes, including the five elements of Sankhya, simply by changing the dominant and subordinate structure of the three modes. This includes five elements. All three modes are present in all the five elements, but some are more dominant than others. Due to this dominance, fire is called more rajas followed by sattva followed by tamas. In contrast, water is more tamas followed by sattva followed by rajas. Since rajas is at the top in fire and at the bottom in water, hence they are contrasted as rajas vs. tamas, but it is more nuanced than that.
8. What if a color blinded person sees the apple?
They will not see the color of the apple. The apple cannot manifest color in their senses. The world doesn’t create information in senses. Our senses must already have that information in them, as innate ideas and the world simply excites them into manifestation by a “resonance”. A color-blind person is like an untuned guitar. A properly tuned guitar cannot create resonance in it.
9. What is your role in all of this?
You can withdraw and associate your consciousness with different things. That is your choice. These withdrawals and associations are memorized by matter creating new habits. Those habits slowly transform into a new kind of body. Over time that body becomes spiritual instead of material.
10. You moved towards the apple. What caused the movement?
Some or all of five things–time, karma, guna, ability, and choice. These can also be dominant or subordinate causes. For example, time can be the primary cause at one moment, but you can fight it to a large extent by your choice. Then, your choice can be the primary cause at some moments, but time, opportunity, habits, and karma are going to fight against your choice. This is the “struggle” of existence. There is constant inner conflict. We cannot be happy due to it. Happiness means time, opportunity, ability, habits, and choices are all perfectly aligned, eliminating the “struggle”. Do you want to try a pie? Right now is a perfect time for it. Your stomach is capable of digesting it. The apple pie is right in front of you. And you will enjoy it. So, no conflict between desire, time, ability, opportunity, and habits.
11. What caused the intention?
Same as above. These are just different levels of manifestation.
The moral sense, eating the apple is good.
Same as above. These are just different levels of manifestation.
12. What caused the moral sense to change?
Same as above. The soul doesn’t choose ananda. Ananda goes dominant and that is choice.
13. Are we seeing the apple in its entirety?
No. We are not seeing the deeper realities. We never see what it is like to be an apple.
Thank you very much Prabhu. This was exactly what I was looking for. You have put it neatly and succinctly. Just a few follow up question. If I do not seek this clarity, I will be lost in my deluded understanding. I now understand the value of having a guru/teacher in spiritual life.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d4VkgnpART0-IQQBHukNFAYx1E4ALEnR/view?usp=sharing
In the above link, you can find a doodle I drew it for my own understanding. Please refer it once.
In the diagram,
space (a) means world before my senses associate with it.
space (b) means my 3d first person experience view.
Now my questions,
1. How and where does the apple, bulb in space(a) exist?
2. Where does the 3d first person experience view exist? If I am correct it’s not the brain, since brain only creates a representation of the external world and the senses interact with this representation. Where can one find the senses? Is it material? Can it be found in the brain? Or is it more abstract and lies in a different space altogether?
3. How does the real apple and the image of the apple in my senses corelate? By this I mean how the apple and the sense of apple is perfectly mapped or the two spaces overlap each other?
I might not have framed the questions perfectly, but if you do understand can you put me out of my quandary? Thank you.
Your doodles are so far from everything I have explained that I don’t have the courage to even attempt fixing them. If you like, you can accept that your doodles are caricatures of reality like the drawings of a child. Quite like parents don’t try to fill in the details in such pictures to explain physiology, biology, and chemistry, I cannot enhance your pictures. After drawing caricatures of reality in childhood, the child goes to school for 20 years, to get a better idea of reality.
Try to get this simple idea that right now you are a beginner in this journey. You will see things, and you will draw doodles. But you have to avail of the opportunity to spend the next few decades improving, correcting, and reformulating these doodles, by studying. There is no alternative.
As I explained earlier, people come to me trying to build Rome in a day. They have spent at least 25 years undergoing mundane education from kindergarten to college. But they want to grasp our philosophy in the next 25 minutes. Well, try to teach any subject of your choice to a child, and you will realize the problem. Every child thinks that they are mature. Adults know better.
This is why it is said: Enthusiasm, determination, patience, continuously endeavoring, associating with the good people, and avoiding the bad associations, are the six requirements for success.
Right now, you have some enthusiasm. But will it last? I asked you for commitment, and you evaded that question. I was checking if you have the determination to do this for the next few decades. Instead, you substituted long-term commitment with a request for one-line answers to a dozen questions. Do you ask your maths or physics teacher to simplify those subjects to a dozen questions of your choosing? But you are asking me that. Why? Because you can spend 25 years in mundane education, but only 25 minutes on real education. That is a sign that patience is missing.
In this way, your enthusiasm for learning isn’t determination and patience. Determination means a long-term commitment, and patience means the capacity to delay your gratification. Those require devotional practice. You cannot build Rome in a day. People spend 10 hours every day doing mundane things, and continue doing it every day, year after year. But they pick up a book, read for 10 minutes, and say: “This is too hard! I can’t do it. Let me go to the forum and ask my doubt.”
Nothing in life comes free. To buy an airplane ticket, you have to work a lot. So, to buy a ticket outside this world, you can imagine how much you have to work. Only some can do it.
Please accept my apologies Prabhu. You have spent years in understanding science and philosophy. Studying all these subjects individually itself takes lifetimes for many of us. After going through all that you have gone back to Vedas and you are trying to show us the alternative. Yes, you are right we should show patience, dedication and commitment from our side for what you have gone through. Regarding my commitment issues, you might be right. These days I seem to be a little hurry-burry. Generally I am a type of person who doesn’t reach out for anybody’s help. I don’t know this time I made an exception to reach out to you. After years of going through without a mentor or guru may be I got a little overexcited. Yes, I kind of pushed my luck here. Sorry.
Regarding asking questions, until now it was my belief that asking questions and getting answers from a qualified teacher was a good way of arriving at truth. I certainly don’t expect you to answer all our questions all the time. Not a viable option nor worth your time in this age.
This philosophy definitely deserves determination and commitment. Thank you for pointing it out that I should work on these. It’s very a valuable lesson. Honestly I wasn’t expecting to understand all of these at once, I made a promise to myself that I will be studying this for the forseeable future. My intention was not to bother you with any more questions outside this post. I was studying your works for the last 1 year, definitely changed a lot of my long held beliefs but I couldn’t see the bigger perspective you were pointing out. This is definitely a miniscule amount of time and I might have reached out to you prematurely. I was just hoping that through asking questions I would know my afflictions and would serve as an approach to study your works.
Extremely sorry for the doodle, it was kind of childish. I couldn’t even express what I had in my mind with that. I definitely need to work on patience and dedication but enthusiasm is going to be there for the rest of my life. Self purification and the quest for knowing the truth is the most noblest path for me and I have no other distractions.
Yes, to buy a ticket outside this world definitely takes a lot of work. I am willing to put the work because I see the truth in it. Well, I am definitely not discouraged and while others give up I have always pursued things to the end.
Thank you Prabhu for your works and this extended help. You are really valuable to lot of us. Next time when I reach out to you I will be a little more matured.
These are good attitudes. When we read something, we should not expect to understand it fully. But we will understand something. That is a good start. Then with that understanding, we move forward and continue reading. Again, we will understand something new, but not fully. In this way, we keep reading it again and again, and we understand more and more. People read Bhagavad-Gita again and again, and every time they get new insights from it. This is because there is purification, some false idea is destroyed, and on reading it again, the same thing is seen in a new way.
In the beginning, you see a person, and you model him or her like an inert object. Then you interact with them some more, and you realize that they are seeing you. Then you interact some more, and you realize that they understand you. Then you interact some more, and you realize that they are liking you. Then you interact some more and you realize that they have a choice like you. In this way, you get incremental, progressive, and deeper understanding of the person over time.
Modern science and materialism have conditioned people to thinking that we get the full knowledge of something by a single measurement. And repeated measurements must reproduce the same result. It cannot be a new result, a different result, or additional result. If such a thing were to happen, they would discard the previous measurement or the instrument or both. This is a false caricature of knowledge, but this is how the West has created a caricature of knowledge. Under this idea, you read something once, and you fully understand it, as if it does not have layers.
Thereby, the materialistic civilization starts producing things that just have to be seen and read once, and thrown away. Basically, produce new shallow content every day that is worth looking into only once. After that it becomes garbage. It is like newspapers, television serials, and movies. Every day something new, and after that it is garbage, like you throw the newspaper in the dustbin.
But our idea of knowledge is that you read the same thing over and over, and it is ever fresh. People have been reading Vedic scriptures for thousands of years, and they do not become old. Every time you read it, it is new and fresh. It is not like a movie or newspaper that you read once. This is because these books have many layers. Reading them is like peeling the onion. You peel the onion layer after layer, and you get to know deeper and deeper things. Of course, this is an example, and an imperfect example at that. But hopefully you will get what I’m trying to say. Under this idea of knowledge, we associate with the same thing again and again, and every time, we see something new and deeper in it. It is not complete knowledge after a single reading, such that you can throw it away.
So, if people get frustrated with reading repeatedly, then it means that they are used to watching short videos and newspaper articles. They don’t have patience, cannot wait to uncover many layers, and want instant gratification. That is a disqualification for spiritual life. When someone is disqualified like that, we ask them to chant. The same mantra over and over and over. Until they understand that there is newness in the same mantra every time it is chanted, they cannot understand that there is newness in the same book every time it is read.
Hence, I encourage people to have patience. You will not understand everything overnight. That doesn’t mean the book is wrong. It is because you cannot see what is in the book. You have to read it again and again, and like a onion is peeled layer by layer, likewise, the meaning is uncovered slowly. But people cannot accept this, because they are accustomed to the idea of knowledge as a single measurement giving them complete understanding of reality. It is a false idea, but it is pervasive.
Enthusiasm means that there are many layers and I will begin at the outermost layer. Determination means that I should not become satisfied by just one layer. Patience means that if the new layer is not seen immediately, we should not give up. Persistently trying means that keep trying to uncover the new layer. Associating with good people means read the questions and answers of other people trying to peel the same onion in a different way. And dissociating from bad people means don’t read the nonsense of those who say that there is no onion to be peeled, and either you get everything by one measurement or it doesn’t exist.
This is the process. If one measurement was going to reveal the full properties, then there would be no need for six different aspects. So, understand that materialism conditions people to not just false ideas, but it also causes the absence of these six ways by which we can get to the truth. Thereby, a person becomes not only ignorant and foolish but also incapable of future corrections.
Thank you for your compassionate advice. I will go through the process over and over until I arrive at truth. I will try to embody the six traits of success as given in the nectar of instruction. Hopefully one day we can have a meaningful discussion.
Thanks for all your explanations and advices. I will go through them again.
PS: I now realize how rare it is that I have come across this knowledge, not all people are given such a gift. I would be a fool if I let go of this opportunity. I also realized that you just don’t read our words, you see right through us. I first came across your works after observing one of the Ekadashi days, it was such a blessed day. In light of this new realization I don’t feel my earlier apologies was authentic enough. So please forgive me Prabhu. A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step. Right now, I am just taking baby steps. It’s our culture to bow down before a learned being, I bow down and restart my journey.
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