Philosophy

Michael Cremo: "My writing is inspired by the literature of the ancient Vedic scriptures of India."

raja-vidya raja-guhyam
pavitram idam uttamam
pratyaksavagamam dharmyam
su-sukham kartum avyayam

This knowledge is the king of education, the most secret of all secrets. It is the purest knowledge, and because it gives direct perception of the self by realization, it is the perfection of religion. It is everlasting, and it is joyfully performed.

Bhagavad-gita As It Is Text 2, Chapter 9.
A Few Words from Albert Einstein About the Bhagavad-gita

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF BRAHMA A VEDIC CONCEPTION OF TIME

Recommended Reading List:

Bhagavad-gita As It Is
Srimad Bhagavatam
Krsna: The Supreme Personality of Godhead
The Nectar of Devotion: The Complete Science of Bhakti-Yoga
Sri Caitanya Caritamrta
Science of Self Realization
Life Comes from Life
Brahma Samhita
Sri Isopanisad
These books and others are available from The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.

His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Founder Acarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, established the Bhaktivedanta Institute to promote scientific inquiry into the cause and meaning of life by utilizing the teachings of the ancient Vedic texts. This approach to knowledge is called the Descending Method, whereas empirical analysis is known as the Ascending Method. In this way modern science tries to prove its theories by empirical observation using limited sensory faculties and scanty physical evidence rather than information given by higher forms of intelligence. This fundamental polarity between scientists' and religionists' definitions of acceptable evidence inhibits effective communication, since each is using a different set of criteria to establish conclusions. What follows is a brief overview of Srila Prabhupada's perspective on modern science and philosophy.

Excerpt from: Dialectic Spiritualism: A Vedic View of Western Philosophy by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1985 Prabhupada Books, p. 276)

His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada founded both the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and its Science Studies Branch called the Bhaktivedanta Institute. He produced more than 80 books on Eastern Philosophy and founded the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust to publish and distribute this literature.

Syamasundara dasa: Hegel attempted to establish the relationship between concrete realities. Isolated facts, or moments, as he calls them, can never constitute the truth because the truth is the whole, an integrated unity that is organic and dynamic.

Srila Prabhupada: Just by analyzing ourselves, we can understand that I, the soul, am existing and that my bodily features are changing. When things change, we call them material. The spirit soul exists in all conditions, and that is the difference between spirit and matter.

Syamasundara dasa: Moments, factors in the organic whole, progress in an evolutionary way according to the course set by reason, which Hegel calls the Welt Geist, the World Spirit.

Srila Prabhupada: That World Spirit is a person. Unless you accept a personal God, there is no question of reason. The reason guiding everything in the universe is explained in Bhagavad-gita: mayadhyaksena prakrtih. "This material nature is working under My direction." (Bg. 9.10) Direction means reason; therefore as soon as you speak of reason, you must accept the Supreme Person who is directing everything according to His supreme reason.

Beyond Illusion and Doubt: A Vedic Perspective on Western Philosophy
Abridged version of Dialectic Spiritualism
ORDER

Disciple: Darwin tried to show how the origin of living species could be fully explained by the purely mechanical, unplanned action of natural forces. By the process he called "natural selection," all the higher, complex forms of life gradually evolved from more primitive and rudimentary ones.....They try to trace the origin by means of excavation. And they have found that gradually through the years the animal forms are evolving toward increasingly more complex and specialized forms.....In that process many species, like the dinosaurs appeared, flourished, and then disappeared forever, became extinct. Eventually primitive apelike creatures appeared, and from them man gradually developed.

Srila Prabhupada: Is the theory that the human body comes from the monkeys?

Disciple: Humans and monkeys are related.

Srila Prabhupada: Related? Everything is related……both are now existing. Similarly, we say that at the time the evolutionists say life began, there were human beings existing.

Disciple: They find no evidence for that.

Srila Prabhupada: Why no evidence?

Disciple: In the ground. By excavation. They find no evidence in the ground.

Srila Prabhupada: Is the ground the only evidence? Is there no other evidence?...

Disciple: It appears that in certain layers of earth there are remains of apelike men --

Srila Prabhupada: We say that we all come from God, the same ancestor, the same father.

Disciple: But surely if men were living millions of years ago, they would have left evidence, tangible evidence, behind them. I could see their remains.

Srila Prabhupada: So I say that in advanced human societies bodies are burned after death, cremated. So where does your excavator get his bones?

Disciple: But Darwin says there are many species, like dinosaurs, that are seen to be extinct.

Srila Prabhupada: What has he seen? He is not so powerful that he can see everywhere or everything. His power to see is limited, and by that limited power he cannot conclude that one species is extinct. That is not possible. No real scientist will accept that. After, all the senses by which you gather knowledge are limited, so how can you say this is finished or that is extinct? You cannot see. You cannot search out. The earth's circumference is twenty-five thousand miles; have you searched through all the layers of rock and soil over the whole earth? Have you excavated all those places?

Disciple: No.

Srila Prabhupada: There our first charge against Darwin is this: He says there were no human beings millions of years ago. That is not a fact. We now see human beings existing along with all other species, and it should be concluded that this situation always existed. Human life has always been there. Darwin cannot prove that there was no human life millions of years ago.

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