CV: Religion or Celestial Science?

[meeno8]

Dr. OBL Kapoor's book on sadhana is titled Bhakti:  The Science Celestial

We could say within Hinduism there is Vaishnavism and within that there is Caitanyism.  But is that the whole picture?  At the time of Mahaprabhu there was a pan-Indian bhakti movement, so we could say it is not Caitanya Vaishnavism but a bhakti movement established by him and the sad-Gosain, the panca-tattva et al.  However, when it comes to actual science, something needs to meet the test of the empirical method, which requires theories and hypotheses that first need to be proven or disproven by actual experiments.  Now, in particle physics and quantum mechanics in particular, experiments such as the passing of a beam of light through a slit reveals that it is a wave and a particle simultaneously.  That defies all logic at its core.  Even Albert Einstein originally rejected the premises of quantum mechanics with his famous statement that god does not play dice with the universe.  It is interesting that he refers to a supreme deity as a man of science.   Then again the freemasons have a doctrine that there is a supreme being but do not espouse specific religious beliefs, which is one major factor in the Catholic Church seeing them as an opponent over the centuries.

As I have posted elsewhere on other threads here, with new technologies such as fMRI scans of the brain, there is now objective evidence for meditation lighting up areas of the brain.  With that type of research, I would have to say science is on the verge of cracking the mysteries of consciousness and the atman, which pushes into the territory of the brahma-sutra and its tikas.

[meeno8]

Essentially our sadhana is a process, which includes religious rituals like puja of Thakurs on our personal altars, unless we are serving as pujaris in a mandir in India. It is a process that involves intense mantra meditation, as well as sravanam, kirtanam et al. Our primary focus in bhajan is japa, and adding to that asta-kaliya lila smaranam with our guru-pranali and siddha-pranali. In that respect our meditation practices are really no different from those of the Buddhist monks that were studied in those fMRI scans while they meditated. Based on that, we could say that CV is a religion but also a science of transformation and elevation of consciousness without the use of mind-altering substances such as psilocybin or LSD.

[Nitaidas]

Oct 24, 2021 12:05:44 GMT -6 meeno8 said:

Essentially our sadhana is a process, which includes religious rituals like puja of Thakurs on our personal altars, unless we are serving as pujaris in a mandir in India. It is a process that involves intense mantra meditation, as well as sravanam, kirtanam et al. Our primary focus in bhajan is japa, and adding to that asta-kaliya lila smaranam with our guru-pranali and siddha-pranali. In that respect our meditation practices are really no different from those of the Buddhist monks that were studied in those fMRI scans while they meditated. Based on that, we could say that CV is a religion but also a science of transformation and elevation of consciousness without the use of mind-altering substances such as psilocybin or LSD.

Thanks for your reflections on our process, Mina. I wouldn't characterize it as a science, however, in any sense of the term, celestial or otherwise. I've argued in my introduction to Kapoor's book that that is not only misleading, but something of a cheap scam. It is a effort to cash in on the respect and authority of science to bolster up one's flaky religious or spiritual beliefs. There is nothing scientific about what we do. I tend to think of it more as an art. We are artists and the material we work with is our lives. We sculpt ourselves with guidance from our predecessors into lovers of Krsna and assistants of Sri Radhika. When we are successful we taste the aesthetic flavor of our art in bhakti-rasa. That is the real, rich experience that is present to us in our lives. The rest is all speculation or blind faith. Who really knows what will happen to us when we die. It may be the end. But if we live our lives as artists and sculpt ourselves into beautiful creations, tasting the rasa of prema-bhakti, who cares? Thus, CV in my view is neither religion nor science nor even a spiritual path. It engages the whole of our beings, both material and spiritual, and turns us into works of art.

Our direct guides in this are, of course, our beloved Mahaprabhu and our beloved Rupa and our beloved Sanatana and our beloved Sri Jiva. However, western savants of similar sensibilities help reinforce this artist view of life. Take for instance Nietzsche's lovely first work The Birth of Tragedy. I highly recommend reading this book for those who are unfamiliar with this way of looking at life.

[Nityānanda dāsa]

A quick thought...

"Science" is self-directed. It is about "I do x, and I get y result." I am the doer in science.

While there is some send of "I" or self-direction in Bhakti, we are more placing ourselves as "non-I". We are offering that "I-ness" to our preceptor(s) with the hopes of becoming a vessel to catch and continue the distribution of grace.

Bhakti is about submission in a sense (not in a masochistic sense), while science is about a self-centered 'figuring it out' on my own for myself. Like being ego driven vs. submitting the ego or surrendering the ego-identification like Sanatan Goswami displays in the Cc, "Who am I? I don't know. I pretend to be some great, learned person, but I don't know who I am..."

This is the aroha (ascending) --> science path
vs.
the avaroha (descending) --> bhakti path.

So much more has been said and can be said. This is my measly two cents, haha!

Jai Sri Radhe!

[service to Radha's feet]

Very interesting topic.

The Bhakti process of sadhana can be a hit to one and a miss to another. Therefore, it is subjective. What we perceive with our senses and make out with our minds and intellect is totally within ourselves. Why a person becomes a taster of bhakti and another not, can be explained as a matter of faith, and its retardation of growth the result of aparadha. But, who can really judge? Therefore, I agree that it cannot be science.

Upon thinking deeply on it, it would be wise to move away from the idea that bhakti is a 'science'. True, it is deceptive in labeling it such so that intellectual people, or more so, less intellectual people would buy into it because it is advertised as a science. Ironic that within some groups they would call bhakti a science but they themselves don't accept the principles of actual science. Scientifically minded people would catch the false advertisement of selling a product that is not what it says it is and therefore turn off potential seekers amongst its class.

[meeno8]

Although I have to agree on some points regarding science, I have to disagree about death being the end of existence for the jivas. That is essentially a Judaic doctrine, from what I know of that tradition, which is actually very little. Although the artist metaphor is very poetic, I have to say that is about as far as it goes, IMHO (although I do not consider myself humble in the least, yet I do not really think I am outright arrogant).

There is the subjective and there there is the objective, and perhaps 'never the twain shall meet'. Sattvika vikaras are objective manifestations of the inner subjective state of bhakti-rasa. Some say they can be faked, but that is just literally poppycock for some of them, because there are magic tricks that are the slight of hand of the illusionist, but we have to have confidence that the siddhas in our tradition that exhibit those rare manifestations are not about to go to the trouble of setting up elaborate parlor tricks in darkened rooms for paying rubes as their marks. No, confidence men/women they certainly are not. If that were the case, it puts the validity of our whole tradition in serious doubt.

My 2 paisa, as always.

If nobody knows for certain what is on the other side of death's 'door' until they actually pass through it, at least it can be accepted as a door and not just electrical impuses firing off in the brain as it is in the process of shutting down along with all the other internal organs, which in essence is really a materialistic viewpoint at its core. There was a series of articles in Discover Magazine in a recent issues about NDEs etc. I suggest reading that along with Nietzche. I read some of his Thus Spake Zarathustra in college decades ago, but that was about the extent of it. Would I agree with his weltenschauung? Perhaps yes, but likely not.

Enough said for the time being until other remarks get posted on this.

[meeno8]

The artist metaphor is very fitting, actually. Considering the practice of lila smarana and projecting oneself into those lilas in the siddha deha provided by the guru, it should be mainly the dramatic arts. We can paint with our mind's eye as the canvas. If we are able to paint well, then we can paint on canvas with paints depicting those scenes from the gutikas as a meditation, and then others may view them as well for their own meditations. If we have the capability to develop software with something like the unity games engine for VR glasses, there are so many possibilities. However, that is very time consuming, and requires mastering the tools and taking the conception to a final product.

[meeno8]

Re: What happens after death

Does this Gita sloka resonate with you?

dehino'smin yatha dehe
kaumaram yauvanam jara
tatha dehantara praptir
dhiras tatra na muhyati

Do we put any stock in those instructions from Krishna himself to Arjuna on that battlefield?

Why is that statement in there along with this sloka?

sarva-dharman parityaja
mam ekam saranam vraja
ekam tvam sarva papebho
moksayishami ma sucah

There is the reference to moksha, yet on our path we do not have that as an end goal, as it is sublimated into the goal of achieving prema and madhura rasa.

[Nitaidas]

Oct 28, 2021 17:53:44 GMT -6 meeno8 said:

Re: What happens after death

Does this Gita sloka resonate with you?

dehino'smin yatha dehe
kaumaram yauvanam jara
tatha dehantara praptir
dhiras tatra na muhyati

Do we put any stock in those instructions from Krishna himself to Arjuna on that battlefield?

Why is that statement in there along with this sloka?

sarva-dharman parityaja
mam ekam saranam vraja
ekam tvam sarva papebho
moksayishami ma sucah

There is the reference to moksha, yet on our path we do not have that as an end goal, as it is sublimated into the goal of achieving prema and madhura rasa.

Do you really think the Gita records the actual words of Krsna!? That is absurd. The Gita is a text from the 3rd century BCE. Whoever wrote it never saw Krsna, if indeed Krsna actually ever walked the earth in 1000 BCE. As modern Caitanya Vaisnavas we have to stop denying science, history, archaeology, linguistics, textual criticism, rationality (logic) and the rest of the disciplines that have enriched our understanding of the past. And we need to chuck out the pseudo-sciences like astrology, numerology, ayur-veda, and all the para-psychology bull crap. The verse you cited (dehino'smin ...) is beautiful poetry, but I don't think we need to take it automatically as the truth. We should exercise our critical faculties on every such claim and teaching. And whoever wrote the other verse you cite (sarva-dharman parityaja) was a wise man, but certainly not Krsna. Give up all religions! Religions are by their very nature fantasies and full of nonsensical beliefs and practices. Caitanya Vaisnavism as a religion is as false and deleterious as every other religion that ever existing. CV as a philosophy, however, seems patently true. I can think of no better description of reality than Sri Jiva's acintya-bhedAbheda-tattva. I believe he came up with it in a rare moment of honesty. Everything that we know about the world today through science, biology, astronomy, etc points to that statement as true. So, just like those mythical gooses (hamsa), we need to be able to sort out the milk (truth) from the milk-water that is fed to us by CV the religion. CV the religion is like a very old coin that has been passed down through the ages from hand to hand. It comes to us covered by all the filth and dross left by all those hands that have handled it through the ages. We need to clean away all those impurities to recover the coin in its pristine state. That is when we realize the true value of the gift we have been given. The true goal of life is, as the Bhagavata states, tattva-jijJAsA, inquiry into the truth, not wealth or sensual pleasure.

The Bhagavata tells us (1.2.9-10):

dharmasya hyāpavargyasya nārtho 'rthāyopakalpate|
nārthasya dharmaikāntasya kāmo lābhāya hi smṛtaḥ|| 9||


Indeed, wealth is not a fitting
result for liberating dharma.
Nor is desire considered
the result of an end
that is exclusively
devoted to dharma. (9)

kāmasya nendriyaprītirlābho jīveta yāvatā|
jīvasya tattvajijñāsā nārtho yaśceha karmabhiḥ|| 10||


Desire's pleasing of the senses
as long as one may live
is not the living being's goal.
Nor is that goal gained by rites
and actions either. Rather
it is inquiry into truth. (10)

So inquiry into the truth should be where we really direct our desires and we should not compromise in this or limit our sources in that search. You say you read Nietzsche in college. Perhaps, then, you nodded off when he says: "I could only worship a god who knows how to dance" in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. There are very few gods in the world who know how to dance and Krsna is perhaps the leading one. What N is getting at here is that one should desire a god who light-hearted and playful, an artist, aesthetically pleasing, not some morbid clown who dies on a cross with his martyr-happy followers.

In my previous post I didn't say that one should make art, but that one should make oneself into a work of art, one who dances and sings and radiates beauty and love and who draws by their presence others out of their sordid, sad lives and helps them feel joy and love and well, makes them glad to be alive.

Anyway, enough for today. I got some tattva-jijJAsA to get back to. রাধে শ্যাম গৌর!

[meeno8]

Agreed. I no longer personally view the Mahabharata and those 18 chapters within it as crucial, despite the great story telling, any more than I would the long epics of Homer. I should have been more specific: I started reading that work by N, but I do not remember getting very far into it. It was recommended by a friend who also recommended an English translation of Upanishads, which to me were quite enigmatic at the time. This was actually high school and not college, so a correction there. Those were the first translations of Sanskrit texts that I tried to read and comprehend.

Is not the siddha deha by nature a work of art? If we identify with that deha as the self rather than our corporeal flesh and blood deha, then I would have to say that is taking one quantum leap out of the kupa in which we find ourselves.

So, yes indeed, we should meditate on the siddha deha, which is making ourselves into a work of art, but not an actual painting or sculpture or drama or musical composition.

Can we make the tacit assumption that nobody knows what happens after death? What if a siddha tells us that he/she does know? Should we trust that knowledge or reject it?

[meeno8]

To quote the bard:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

- from Hamlet

My BA is in philosophy, and the philosophy of science in particular. There is the rational, but on the other side of that coin is the irrational. We are rational and irrational at the same time. There is no escaping that fact, no matter how hard we try to apply our critical faculties, which are actually limited by our little brains encased in our skulls. Yes, we like to flatter ourselves on how marvelous our brain power is, but it is not so easy to come to terms with just how limited that power is. Did our ancestors that made up supernatural explanations for forces of nature like storms, volcanoes and lightning really have any less brain capability than we do? Pinker in his book on rationality goes into depth on a tribe in the Sahara desert in Africa that has unexpectedly sophisticated knowledge of their environment and displays remarkable reasoning capabilities for survival in such an unforgiving terrain. We may like to think our civilization that can trace its roots to the advent of agriculture circa 12 thousand years ago is the prerequisite for our critical thinking. But think again, gentle reader!

Some of us may have had direct experience of certain phenomena that defy analysis by critical thinking. I personally experienced the simple law of gravity defied (and there were others present who also experienced that). That is a law of physics defined by Isaac Newton, which we all take for granted. I personally experienced the manifestation of a ghost in a completely darkened room, which appeared over my head, and the other two people in the room were terrified and flipped on the light switch. No, they were not tripping on LSD at the time, so no triggering of any hallucinations.

But those things hardly rate when compared with what we seek to attain in the form of prema and madhurya rasa. There is nothing rational about such otherworldy 'items'. So maybe what we should be taking away is that we should abandon all critical thinking at some point, because it is just an obstacle on our path, and is it really part of our sadhana anyways?

Blind faith is the bane of religion. But, why even point out the obvious?

[meeno8]

Scholars have cast doubt on the very existence of the historical Jesus, and the only hard evidence appears to be a couple stone sepulchers with a couple Aramaic names on them, which just amounts to a hill of beans.

The idea of the supposed 'resurrection' appears to be just the repurposing of a more ancient Egyptian myth with the same story line. The 4 gospels of the New Testament? Written a couple centuries after the supposed lifetime of Jesus by who knows whom. The 'prophecies' of the Book of Revelations were authored by someone called John of Patmos, and biblical scholars have deprecated the text as not really fitting with the rest of the New Testament.

Certainly there are mystical references buried in the texts of the New (and maybe Old) testament, but it is only the Freemasons and their offshoots that can explain those, because no church sermons in Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant sects are about to. Maybe within the priesthood and clergy, but such knowledge is held close to the vest. There is the ancient tradition coming from the mystery schools of ancient Egypt and Greece wherein esoteric knowledge was kept secret by initiates.

In the yogic tradition there is mysticism taught, that you will find in the degree lessons of organizations such as Astara, which was founded by a Mason.

[meeno8]

There is Santosh Das (Guy Beck), who was with us in the Sanskrit Dept. at BBT once upon a time. He is a close associate of Dr. Nitaidas (who we all know here), something like a 33rd degree Mason, a well established professor, and a very accomplished singer of classical Indian music. You can catch his youtube videos to hear his singing, which is quite impressive. Indian classical music is something that came out of Indian culture, and in some respects it is more sophisticated than all the Western musical genres.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLOjOl5AvAM

www.youtube.com/watch?v=su_7Pdgdpos

www.youtube.com/watch?v=r76hXnGWxoA

[meeno8]

Here is a resource:

www.amazon.com/Comparative-Religion-Dummies-William-Lazarus/dp/0470230657/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=world+religions+for+dummies&qid=1635609486&qsid=139-5804538-9726834&s=books&sr=1-4&sres=161564069X%2C0470230657%2C0764552643%2C1623156920%2C1465476466%2C1619303051%2C1648769144%2C0061660183%2C1608680142%2C0470446544%2C1939754070%2C1119643074%2C0470127651%2C1646113233%2CB00CC489WS%2C0756617723&srpt=ABIS_BOOK

Yes, it needs to be dumbed down for the general audience, as if it is not dumbed down enough in the churches, temples and mosques.

[meeno8]

There is no question about it: Critical thinking trumps magical thinking always.

When I took an independent study course in college on Aristotle, we read through his Physics, but not his Metaphysics (which just means the book that comes after Physics). In Metaphysics he lays out a very strange explanation of the nature of the soul.

The soul can have so many different connotations depending on the context. For us it refers to the atman. There is brahman as part of the Uttara Mimamsa (or Vedanta, the central text being the Brahma-sutras), which in turn is part of Mimamsa that is one of the 6 Darshans or philosophical systems in Sanskrit literature. Our understanding is that we are jiva, distinct from brahman, yet at the same time inconceivably of brahman (the acintya part of acintya-bheda-abheda-vada). Without the tikas that began with the first by Shankaracharya, the text would be virtually inpenentrable by ordinary jivas, and most of them (including us) are for lack of a better term not all that extraordinary.

What it boils down to is somewhat begging the question: Is the atman eternal or not?
And... are we the jivas essentially atman, or could it be that we are merely flesh and blood that we can perceive with our 5 senses.

If the answer is that the jiva is eternal, then it is difficult to argue for the possibility for death not being a door but a stone wall that ends our existence altogether, or sunya-vada of the Buddhists.

If we bring critical thinking into the picture, is there anything rational about any of the schools of Vedanta? Nyaya is something else altogether, since critical thinking is essential for logic. In fact, without schooling in logic, critical thinking lacks enhancement which it pretty much needs anyways. Yes, everyone has the capacity for critical thinking unless they are somehow mentally impaired to begin with. However, unless you are Socrates himself (and how many of those individuals have there been throughout recorded history?) you're likely to need a little (or a lot maybe) help with that.

There are some interesting texts by Immanuel Kant along these lines. He actually has one title: Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (or something like that). That appears to be the one book that was different from his others on philosophy that do not deal with anything like theology.

The God Delusion by Dawkins is an interesting counterbalance to the works of Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, both of whom set out to prove the existence of God by arguments. The former being the darling of the Catholics and the latter being the darling of the Protestants, or at least that was my understanding once upon a time when I read them both something like 4 decades ago.