The Science of Presenting Religion

THE SCIENCE OF PRESENTING RELIGION Srila Prabhupada’s Profound and Novel Instructions Rasaraja Dasa (Prof. Ravi Gomatam, M.E., Ph. D) Srila Prabhupada advocated scientific presentations of Krishna Consciousness according to the scientific method, without mentioning Vedas and Puranas. Popular presentations to general public based on the former can follow. What did Srila Prabhupada say about the term in vogue, “scientific preaching”? His Divine Grace Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada “We have formed the Bhaktivedanta Institute for organizing scientific presentations of Krishna Consciousness. This party is our most important preaching arm.” [Letter to Dravida, April 2, 1977] Readers interested in the subject matter may correspond with The Institute of Semantic Information Sciences and Technology www.insist.ac.in [email protected] The Bhaktivedanta Institute www.bvinst.edu [email protected] © Ravi Gomatam. All rights reserved THE SCIENCE OF PRESENTING RELIGION n this paper, we describe two kinds of scientific presentations of Krishna Consciousness: one to scientists, and the other to the general public. The forum for presentations to scientists is technical papers published in peer‐reviewed journals, science conferences and the like. The forum for popular presentations is general articles, popular science books, multimedia presentations, etc. We will show that the second kind of scientific presentations must follow, i.e. be necessarily based on, and grow in proportion to how the first category of scientific presentations to scientists are done and have been accepted by scientists. We will propose that such scientific presentations are what Srila Prabhupada wanted, by supplying quotes. At the Institute of Semantic Information Sciences and Technology, and the Bhaktivedanta Institute at Mumbai and Berkeley, we have been carrying out these two kinds of scientific presentations diligently and with great success. We will also significantly learn that Srila Prabhupada himself never used the phrase ‘scientific preaching’, and instead only called for the two kinds of scientific presentations mentioned above. Nevertheless, we will point out, a third kind of presentations that has been so far conceived and carried out in our movement under the banner of ‘scientific preaching’. It is, for the most part, not work of the first kind, namely presentations to the scientists within science, about scientific issues. And, even as a preaching tool to non‐scientists, when carried out independent of scientific presentations of the first kind, it has the potential to be incorrect both siddhanta‐wise and science‐wise. Indeed, it could stymie the proper development of B.I. when it takes the place of scientific presentations to scientists as the Institute’s goal. Krishna Consciousness is a Science in the Modern Sense of the Term Srila Prabhupada called Krishna Consciousness as a science. In doing so, he did not expect the B.I. to show that Krishna Consciousness is a different kind of science, at least as far as scientific presentations of Krishna Consciousness are concerned. Indeed, in the following important conversation regarding BI, Srila Prabhupada says that we (i.e., B.I.) can prove that Krishna Consciousness is a science according to the modern scientific way: Dr. Sharma: And there is a lot of scientific data in our ancient scriptures which I told them that if they go through from their point of view they will find lot of things in Puranas, in Srimad‐ Bhagavatam, in many Vedic... Srila Prabhupada: No, apart from Puranas and Vedic literatures, scientifically it is the modern science, according to their way, we can convince. Puranas you may not believe the authority. I may not believe. But scientific truth has to be accepted. [Conv. March 31, 1977, Mumbai] It is to be emphasized that Srila Prabhupada made the above remarks specifically with respect to what Bhaktivedanta Institute will do. His Divine Grace also wrote in this regard: “We have formed the Bhaktivedanta Institute for organizing scientific presentations of Krishna Consciousness. This party is our most important preaching arm.” [Letter to Dravida, April 2, 1977] On the same day, His Divine Grace also wrote to Rameswara: Svarupa Damodara has received very good response here in India from the scientific community and there is good hope that many others will join him. He is returning to America for preparing some publications and when these are completed I have asked him to tour vigorously throughout the world lecturing with his other colleagues at all major institutions and universities. We can easily understand the following from the above: a) “scientific presentations” of Krishna Consciousness are to be made to the scientists, and b) based on Vedas and Puranas (i.e. scriptures) but without mentioning them. In other words, the target for scientific presentations are the scientists, and it is not possible to “lecture at major universities and colleges to scientists” unless one gets invited. Such invitations will not come unless one publishes in scientific journals, papers that offer solutions to outstanding problems within science, based on Krishna Consciousness but without mentioning the scriptures explicitly. Scientific Presentations to Scientific Community By the term ‘science’, we can only first mean the hard sciences. The most fundamental of all hard sciences is physics. All other sciences are scientific only to the extent they are based on physics. Such fields include chemistry, biology, medicine and all engineering fields. We are obliged to point out straightaway that thus far, “scientific presentations” in the above sense within hard sciences have been conceived and carried out only by me via the Bhaktivedanta Institute in Mumbai and Berkeley (www.bvinst.edu) and the Institute for Semantic Information Sciences and Technology (www.insist.ac.in). These are in the fields starting from physics, and going on to chemistry, biology, medicine, computer science. Some recent papers have been: “Is Physics Truly Empirical, Currently?”, will be presented at a conference organized by the German Physical Society “Toward Placing the Concept of ‘Chemical Element on a New Quantum Footing” which was presented at a chemistry conference at the London School of Economics “The Central Dogma, Quantum Theory and Objective Semantic Information” to be presented at a philosophy of biology conference in July in Brazil We have nearly fifty published papers in peer‐ reviewed scientific journals and scientific conferences on hard scientific topics in a variety of scientific fields. These papers are based on Krishna Consciousness, but never mention the connections explicitly, as instructed by Srila Prabhupada. They are meant for laying the basis for the acceptance and study of our scriptures by demonstrating positive contributions to science by identifying and solving problems within science. Indeed, a famous physicist said the following, one year after the above conversation of Srila Prabhupada with Dr. Sharma: Now the test, for a scientist, of whether these [Maharishi] people have something to contribute [to science] is to ask them not to interpret what we have done already but to tell us what is going to happen next. If they can tell us the mass of the Higgs Boson [a new theoretical particle], and if we find it there, we are all going to learn their philosophies. We will all go and sit at the feet of Maharishi if he tells us where the Higgs Boson is to be found. (John Bell, May, 1978, Omni interview) In his purport to SB 3.26.34, Srila Prabhupada pointed out how that verse could solve problems in science: This verse is the potential basis of great scientific research work, for it explains how subtle forms are generated from the ethereal element, what their characteristics and actions are, and how the tangible elements, namely air, fire, water and earth, are manifested from the subtle form. We have now published many scientific papers in peer reviewed journals and anthologies to present this point. We have more papers in preparation. Solving problems in science is what is to be accomplished in scientific presentations. Indeed, Srila Prabhupada wrote that “The Institute will be primarily for those who have not entered our temples.” [Letter to Svarupa Damodara: 30 September, 1975]. That is almost 99% of the human population. Thus, the Institute’s work, when properly carried out, can exponentially increase the reach of direct Krishna Conscious preaching. Indeed, our work in making scientific presentations of Krishna Consciousness apart from presenting Vedas and Puranas is already so successful that a Nobel Laureate in physics has said that “perhaps this is how we should be doing science”. Numerous other international scientists have also appreciated our work. The Place for Popular Scientific Presentations There is, however, a place for taking advantage of the high‐class scientific work done in the realm of scientific presentations to scientists (that does not mention Vedas and Puranas), to make presentations of Krishna Consciousness to the general public, school and college students, etc., which explicitly refer to Vedic knowledge. Such presentations can be called popular scientific presentations, and this will be accepted by scientists provided it is based on the genuine scientific work such as is being done in our two institutes that has received scientific acceptance. Such ‘popular presentations’ of new scientific work is done by scientists and science journalists all the time. However, two primary

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