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Post by vkaul1 on Oct 7, 2011 23:03:17 GMT -6
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Post by Nitaidas on Oct 8, 2011 12:49:41 GMT -6
Do you have any sense about whether Deepak knows anything at all about what he talks about? |
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Post by vkaul1 on Oct 8, 2011 19:33:52 GMT -6
I don't think he knows too much about what he is speaking about. However, after reading so many books for some years, he has some ideas that he can speak for. Shermer and Ramachandran wrote a decent review for the book. Whether they did that so that people will find for themselves how shallow Deepak is or they really feel he has some good points remains to be seen. People have said he has become progressively better in 10 years after spending more and more time understanding scientific material. Still, obviously we can';t count on him. He has to away with the idea of any personal God to make it a bit easier for him. Any theology that has huge number of details and content it needs for belief is certainly more difficult to argue about (CV with one historical event with God coming down with multiple expansions is a bit too difficult to argue. At least with Krsna you can talk about him as a myth. With CM, such an option does not exist and the way traditional CVs speak about the spiritual world is extremely anthropocentric with cultural details of 15th century India projected into absolute truths of spiritual world.) . However, there needs to be a way to embrace form and content. Given that Buddhism (at least the Theravada) hardly speaks of content amd form and many versions of advaita consider content and form as ultimately problematic, I find CV very appealing because it embraces content rather then denies it. On the other hand, when there are fights about things like height of manjaris, age of manjaris, identity of Raghunath das goswami, existence of gaura lila in paravyoma then content becomes problematic. When I just want to embrace content and rasa as an aesthetic experience without obsessing about how the details of the spiritual world are exactly, it becomes so much more charming. And I really appreciate the discussions with you in this regard.
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Post by Nitaidas on Oct 12, 2011 8:31:05 GMT -6
I don't think he knows too much about what he is speaking about. However, after reading so many books for some years, he has some ideas that he can speak for. Shermer and Ramachandran wrote a decent review for the book. Whether they did that so that people will find for themselves how shallow Deepak is or they really feel he has some good points remains to be seen. People have said he has become progressively better in 10 years after spending more and more time understanding scientific material. Still, obviously we can';t count on him. Indeed not. I think he is just a crook out to make some bucks and there are plenty of desperate people out there for him to feed on. He's a classic charlatan. It is sad that this is for many people the face of India. It should not be that hard. Each one has his or her own god. All are Krsna but he responds to our needs and wants. It should fit right in with the American and perhaps Western quest for individuality. Of course, one of the responses to too much individuality is a strong desire for its opposite, impersonal unity, becoming that drop in that great ocean. Well, debates over whether Lalita's sari is red or blue or whether she is 15 or 14 and half kind of come with the territory if you want rich content. We are plugging into someone's shared fantasy here. It is like learning to dance. We have to follow the rules and learn the steps and rhythms in the beginning. But once we internalize the movements we can improvise and be creative. The fundamental principle of sadhana is really fake it til you make it. Once you make it the dance just flows from you naturally and with genuine emotional counterpart. One has to remember that beneath all that surface diversity and variation is a fundamental unity, a sharing of heart with Sri Radhika. When Krsna kisses her, our hair stands on end. |
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Post by cvsaragrahi on Oct 19, 2011 12:01:41 GMT -6
It would be nice to see a concise definition of science and spirituality as a common foundation for discussion.
From Wikipedia:
Science (from Latin: scientia meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the deepest values and meanings by which people live.
If these can be accepted as valid, then, spirituality is also a legitimate object of science. In this sense, the Science vs Religion/Spirituality conflict turns out to be nothing more than another linguistic misunderstanding leading to the production of more speculation, fantasy and fiction, after which, the hard questions of existence still remain unanswered.
As far as the "reality" of Krishna, Gopis and other denizens of the purported spiritual reality go, the only valid knowledge ultimately has to be direct perception. If there is no direct perception and experience, knowlege may well become fiction, fantasy, speculation or even hallucination. Any group of thinkers can sit around and create a shared fantasy, such as the millions of fans of so many speculative fiction writers who experience rasa, qualia or some form of internal mental sensation as they read about the cavorts of strange entities in strange worlds. Just because the authors, or, in this case, the seers, sages and gurus, have conspired and created something claimed to be factual, such as a 15 year old girl called Radha living in a spiritual town called Vraja, does not make it so. A proof and verification is required outside so-called authority, language, logic and material sense based knowledge. What makes it so is not authority, belief or faith but direct experience, and, that demands a scientific method, a science.
The Chaitanya Vaishnava religion states there is a spiritual place called Vraja wherein Radha and Krishna play. So many other religions and spiritual paths also claim the existence of inhabited worlds beyond material sense perception. For such claims to be science or scientific, as opposed to fiction, fantasy, speculation or hallucination, a process needs to be presented that arrives at direct perception and experience. Reading about Radha-Krishna pastimes is not good enough because, anyone can write anything they imagine, and a group of writers can conspire to create a shared fantasy, and call it a religion. Debating what the past writers have written is not good enough because, the conclusion of debate is not a direct experience. Setting up an external religous system of rules, regulations, positions, buildings, perfect gurus and faithfull followers is also not good enough. In this sense, it appears the full gamut of so-called spiritual and scientific authorities and systems are over bloated with speculative fiction and fantasy. The people are not getting a real spiritual experience but just more fiction and fantasy to speculate about.
If there is, in fact, a spiritual dimension that can be directly experienced, it would seem logical there would be a process of entering therein, with subjective and inter-subjective verification as tangible results. Such a process would be an "applied science," with verifiable results, rather than endless inconclusive speculation and debate about dead authorities, un-experienced dimensions and their inhabitants.
The alternative to direct experience of spiritual reality, derived from an applied science, would be to embrace "insanity and delusion" as the foundation upon which the grand fiction of religion is erected. In this fiction, the adherents spend the remainder of their lives immersed in "faith" and "belief" in something they have not had direct experience of, depending entirely upon the authority of the unapproachable dead who originally concocted the fantasy. Then, finally, at the moment of death, when they too are dead, the unexperienced suddenly becomes manifest.
Many of the theological and philosophical tenets of the Chaitanya Vaishnava Sampradaya appear to bear the mark of real and eternal universal archetypes leading to the development of authentic symbols, mythology, belief, faith and behavior. It appears, in comparison with other religions and philosophies, this body of knowledge presents the most comprehensive ideology in terms of the nature and purpose of existence. However, on the other hand, many of the statements appear purely fictional and fantastic, apparently designed to play upon the sentiments of those who are inclined to blindly accept the presentations of authority, and in doing so, joins other religions in the process of mundane exploitation and manipulation of the people, who end up with no direct spiritual experience.
What seems to me to be the most important objective is to clearly define that set of principles and practices leading to direct experience of and participaton in the dimension where Radha-Krishna play. Once this has been accomplished, a great change may take place in the internal and external lives of the practitioners. They would no longer be confined to speculation and debate about the language of the original creators of the religion. Instead, they would spend their time in discussion of their direct personal experience, derived from the application of an applied science. This would create a reality, evidence and experience based system of existence, devoid of inordinate reliance on tradition, dead authorities, speculation, debate, external structures and all such forms which appear to be fiction, fantasy and delusion.
My present status is one of extreme critical distance, in which I am looking for direct experience of a spiritual dimension and its inhabitants. Having spent many years in ISKCON, then in association with Gaudiya Math, and recently, a study of the Traditional Sampradaya, I am rapidly losing interest in discussion of any subject matter that cannot be verified by logical and philosophical tools which lead to an authentic and verifiable direct experience. At this point, the entire Sampradaya is subject to "vivisection" in order to experimentally test its claims.
Do the results of experimentation with the applied science yield experiential results that coincide with the statements of the dead authorities?
When hair stands on end while thinking of Radha kissing Krishna, is that sensation any different than hair standing on end while thinking of Juliet kissing Romeo?
Is thinking of Radha kissing Krishna tantamount to entering Vraja and standing by as She kisses Him?
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Post by vkaul1 on Oct 20, 2011 10:14:35 GMT -6
Thanks for your insight. Someone asked me if the appearance of Krsna is experienced recently in the psychological reality of people of Eastern Indian in a particular way, will it do justice to the complete universal reality if you fight over the details described above. Anyway, that is why I asked the question.
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Post by vkaul1 on Oct 20, 2011 11:23:04 GMT -6
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Post by vkaul1 on Oct 20, 2011 15:39:29 GMT -6
I don't know about others but Shermer is the skeptic version of religious dogma. He has already made his conclusions, so in some ways Deepak appears better than him sometimes in the video.
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