Re: Does consciousness originate from the brain?

Dear Vaisnavas,

      Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna! Please accept my respectful obeisances!

      The scientific community may have taken a step forward from the theory that everything's solid matter and their present attempt to describe consciousness as something beyond the physical body is not bad......

      But unfortunately........ it is hopelessly falling short of any spiritual standard. From what I can follow, it seems that modern science exists with its ultimate aim to make people God. By discovering how the universe works, people want to gain control over it and become God themselves. But as they go more and more to the subtler levels of material nature, they are becoming more and more baffled and so they come up with many other theories to find out the truth.

      My humble suggestion is to read Bhaktivinode's Tattva Viveka to see what he has written about all this.

      The Srimad Bhagavatam has described the gradation of the material creation from the subtlest state all the way to gross matter. Before the modern scientists, there existed the sankhya philosophers who were much more skilled and capable than the scientists today and who were able to understand material creation all the way to the pradhana, the most subtle unmanifest form. The theories of the modern scientists are mathematically very very complex, more than all the sankhya philosophers, but their theory and conclusions are merely child language before the theories of the sankhya philosophers. So in retrospect it isn't a step forward. Our scriptures have already worked everything out.  So the modern scientists attempts to understand the truth aren't really progressive,  The modern scientists and philosophers are skeptical about our scriptures. If at all they are attracted, they are attracted by the material descriptions and scientific terminology and conveniently omit the Lord from the course of their discussions. The modern scientists are highly impersonalist and they are skeptic about the existence of the soul or the Lord. It is easy to explain that everything is done by the Lord, but such a theory would put them all out of business because it would smash modern science's aim of trying to make Man the Lord.

        Modern material science will never be able to realise the truth of the Lord, the summum bonum. If it did, it would not be modern science, but spiritual science! The scientists are simply try to invent something that already exists. The first step to make the modern science as spiritual science is to get all the scientists to chant the names of the Lord and read the scriptures. Otherwise by their material means, they will never find the Lord. This is clearly said in all the scriptures. The Lord cannot be understood by material means. At best they may come up with something like intelligent design theory, but that will have its own questions which none of their theories and intelligence can answer. Owing to their limitations, they have already gone into the realm of probability.

         Having said that, modern science isn't useless in its applications. Quantum mechanics was the key to inventing the modern day semiconductor hardware, by which all our devotional preaching, books, audios, videos and internet sangha, etc. etc... is going on. So the Lord is inspiring all these people to do something ultimately for the sake of aiding his divine preaching movement  ! That is the reason why the Lord allows modern science to exist. So in application it is meaningful, but their theories are not for devotees.

         Its ok to see that the scientists have taken a step forward. But at this rate their progress will be dreadfully slow and will take millions of lifetimes before they come back to the scriptures. They are involved in a seeking process, they seek the treasure which is right before them and always with them wherever they go.

We on the other hand have been fortunate to come far enough where we have the opportunity to get a direct path to the Lord which is free from mental speculation, impersonal liberation and material contamination by chanting Nityananda! Gauranga! Hare Krishna!  So I think : "Just now we have managed to come out of the mental plane after millions of lifetimes. Why should we go back and observe what's going on in a place we've left behind? In fact by doing so our bhakti becomes mixed with the influence of the mental or gross planes of existence which merely slows us down on our spiritual progress. Having come to our stage where we should stop seeking, it wouldn't be fair if we keep bothering about the seeking processes of the material scientists. That means we are still attracted by the mental plane and by devoting our energies to studying the theories of the modern scientists we encourage that attraction to grow and distract us from the spiritual plane."

          I was once doing this with Mayavadis and other theories, studying them in order to contest their point of view imagining that in the future I would be challenged by them. By doing so I was 'respecting the enemy', if I could use the phrase.  It was distracting me from focussing on the essentials, i.e. my chanting. I was studying to satisfy my false ego and my attraction to their theories. I woke up after reading a quote by Jiva Gosvami that it is unwise to keep studying the theories of opposing philosophies in the interests of our devotion (I don't have the quote, I will try to find it). Prabhupada never studied many of these modern sciences, but he knew very well how to show them the door. If we are strong in our realisations, then automatically all these speculations can be answered without having to take the risk of studying all these philosophies and thereby taking the risk of our minds being distracted from the devotional path.

            Therefore I hope that the assembled devotees will not take offence at my words, but would rather forgive my audacity and rather not involve themselves in the study of various material speculations on the Lord, but rather look forward instead of looking back and see how one can improve one's bhakti from one's present position.

In your service,

Srinath

Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna!

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