Is Science Para Vidya or Apara Vidya?

By Rsiraja Das - 12.11 2015

The Definition of Para and Apara

In the Mundaka Upanishad, Sage Saunaka asks Sage Angiras:

Kasminn bhagavo vigyate sarvamidam vigyatam bhavatit?

What is that by the knowing of which all this (everything) becomes known?

And Sage Angiras responds (Mundaka Upanishad I.i.3-5):

Dvi vidye viditve iti hsyam yadbrahmavido vadanti para chaivapara cha

Tatrapara rigvedo yajurvedah samvedoatharvavedyah shiksha kalpo

vyakaranam niruktam chando jyothishmiti

Ath para yaya tadaksharmadhigamyate

There are two kinds of educational systems. One deals with transcendental knowledge [para vidya] and the other with material knowledge [apara vidya]. All the Vedas ― Rg Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, Atharva Veda and their corollaries known as siksa, kalpa, vyakarana, nirukta, chanda andjyotisa―belong to the inferior system of material knowledge [apara vidya]. By para vidya, one can understand the aksara, Brahman or the Absolute Truth.

Srila Prabhupada explains this verse further in CC Madhya Lila 19.17:

As far as Vedic literature is concerned, Vedanta-sutra is accepted as the para vidya. Srimad-Bhagavatam is an explanation of that para vidya. Those who aspire for liberation (mukti or moksa) and introduce themselves as vaidantika are also equal to those groups aspiring to improve religion (dharma), economic development (artha) and sense gratification (kama). Dharma, artha, kama andmoksa are called catur-varga. They are all within the system of inferior material knowledge. Any literature giving information about the spiritual world, spiritual life, spiritual identity and the spirit soul is called para vidya. Srimad-Bhagavatam does not have anything to do with the materialistic way of life; it gives transcendental information to educate people in the superior system of para vidya.

There are three somewhat surprising conclusions above:

The four Vedas are considered inferior knowledge, clubbed in the same category as grammar, pronunciation, astrology and time-keeping,

Even the pursuit of liberation (moksa) is considered inferior, and on par with economic development, ritualistic practices, and sense gratification,

Vedanta Sutra and Srimad Bhagavatam are not in the same category as the four Vedas; the former are superior knowledge while the latter are inferior.

If someone thought that all the Vedas are superior to material knowledge, they would be wrong. If anyone thought that the four Vedas are transcendental, they would be wrong again. And if someone thought that the pursuit of liberation was superior, they would be mistaken.

Do Para and Apara Pertain to Reality?

While these conclusions aren’t surprising in the Vaishnava community, devotees generally tend to apply the distinction between para and apara vidya to different kinds of realities―spirit and matter. The belief is that the present world is apara vidya, while another world is para vidya.In separating matter from spirit, we create numerous unanswered questions such as: How does God control matter? How does spirit interact with matter? How is our free will effected into actions in a lawfully controlled material world?

Even more profoundly, if matter and spirit are in two different worlds, then how is a deity made out of wood, stone, or metal actually spiritual? How can a scripture printed on paper be called spiritual, when there are other similar books (also made out of paper and ink) that are called material? How can we consider the body of a devotee non-material when we consider the bodies of others material? Thus, if we separate matter and spirit as two distinct kinds of realities, not only do we create a problem of their interaction, but also find difficulties when many things in this world―e.g., deities, scriptures, and devotees―are called spiritual.

Could it be that we have mistaken the nature of spirit and matter? In this post, I will argue that spirit and matter are not two realities, but two understandings of reality. The para vidya is the superior understanding of the reality and hence “truth” while apara vidya is the inferior understanding of the same reality and hence “false”. The apara vidya is false, even though it exists. This false understanding is called matter while the true understanding is called spirit. These two understandings don’t “interact”, although the soul interacts with true and false understanding, while choosing them. God, similarly, is independent of any understanding; He stands apart from both true and false impressions about Him. It is only through this kind of consideration that the above problems concerning the interaction between matter and spirit, besides viewing some “material” things as “spiritual,” can be addressed.

Krsna is Reality

The first thing to be recognized in Gaudiya-Vaishnava philosophy is that Krsna is Reality. Srimad Bhagavatam states that there is a reality which is also the Absolute Truth. That reality is, however, understood in many different ways. Indeed, Srila Prabhupada writes at the beginning of Srimad Bhagavatam that the concept of Absolute Truth and the concept of God are not on the same level. The concept of God is like the driver of a car who controls the car, but this concept does not explain how the car came into existence. The concept of Absolute Truth, on the other hand, is like the concept of car from which the car is created. The car is therefore “controlled” by the underlying abstract idea, and also produced from it. They key point is that it is not enough to know that God is the controller, but also to know how God created the world, and then to know the manner in which He exercises His control.

vadanti tat tatvavidas tattvam, yaj gyanam advayam

brahmeti, parmatameti, bhagavaniti uchyate

The knowers of truth know that the same non-dual (advayam) reality is understood as Brahman,Paramatma, and Bhagavan.

It is important to recognize that there is one reality (not two or three) and that same reality is understood as a person or Krsna. Krsna is therefore not one of the many things that exist―like a driver and a car are two things―and one controls the other. Rather, Krsna is the only reality. Whenever anything is known, that knowledge must pertain to Krsna, even when that knowledge is itself false. Underlying every phenomena is something that “exists”. Krsna is the reality that exists behind all phenomena. He existed before any phenomena (and their knowers existed), so He is both real and transcendent to phenomena at once.

The most preliminary understanding of reality is that something real exists beyond the phenomena; this is called Brahman―that which exists. The next better understanding of that reality is that the thing that exists is also conscious and has free will; this is called Paramatma. Finally, the best understanding is that the thing with free will also has a personality due to which a type of pleasure is enjoyed; this is called Krsna.

The Process of Creation

Krsna creates the world by creating knowledge about Himself. This knowledge has three parts, which are called the internal, external, and marginal energies of Krsna. The internal energy is the true understanding of God, the external energy is the false understanding, and the marginal energy is the knowers of that true or false understanding. These divisions represent what God is, is not, and may be, and as a whole encompass the complete definition of Reality. The process of creation is therefore Krsna defining His own nature. The definition of reality refers to reality, but it is not identical to that reality.

This expression of God’s personality is called “knowledge” not because it is always true, but because there is always someone―a living being―who knows it. The internal energy represents the knowledge which is both true and known, while the external energy represents the knowledge which is known although it is false. The sum-total of all truths is internal energy, the sum total of all falsities is the external energy, and the sum total of all knowers of these truths and falsities is the marginal energy. Since any knowledge can exist only when someone knows it, the living beings are always combined with internal or external energy. We might say that the soul is the substance, and information about God is the form; the two combine to create the experience of the soul. Behind this experience is thereality of the creator who produced this information, and the information pertains to Him.

We can think of the internal and external energies as the goggles we wear to see the reality. The goggles can depict the true picture or distort the picture; however, goggles must be worn to have any picture at all. If the goggle is removed, then the division between the knower and known is lost, and the living being is said to be “merged” in Brahman without experience. In going from external to internal energies, we change the goggles, not the reality; the same reality is understood differently, rather than being a different reality, and para vidya and apara vidya pertain to the two kinds of goggles used to see two kinds of visions.

The Erroneous Rejection of Science

The key point is that matter and spirit are not realities. They are rather our understanding of reality―Krsna. The transition from matter to spirit is therefore not going from one reality to another, but rather changing our understanding of the same reality. Accordingly, we do not reject the present world as apara vidya but its false interpretation. The true understanding of the present world (which we call apara right now) is itself para vidya.

Under the incorrect notion that apara and para pertain to reality rather than to the goggles of perception, we reject the study of the present world itself as involvement with illusion. Thereby, we cannot distinguish the illusory understanding of the present world from the true understanding of it. We suppose that since the world itself is an illusion (rather than our understanding of it being the illusion),any study of this illusion would also be illusion. This misconception underlies our rejection of science as a meaningful enterprise for devotees. We believe that the best outcome of this study is that we will recognize that the study is an illusion and thereby reject it. And, if one has already rejected this study even before starting it, he or she has already transcended the material illusion. Whether you reject the study before starting or after finishing, if the eventual conclusion is rejection, then you are better off rejecting it at the outset―you would have saved yourself from a painful process.

A misunderstanding of Gaudiya-Vaishnava philosophy underlies the current decrepitude of scientific endeavors. The goal of science―as the pursuit of truth―is the replacement of the illusory notions about the present world with para vidya. Unless we recognize that the truth revealed by science would be identical to para vidya, we would continue to marginalize scientific endeavors, and sustain our faulty notions about Gaudiya-Vaishnavism.

The Meaning of Vidya

The term vit means “to know”. As a personal state of the mind, it indicates our beliefs―when we are convinced that the world we know is such and such. The term vidya is derived from vit and is commonly translated as “knowledge,” but now we additionally attribute to this noun the conviction of “truth”; something cannot be called knowledge unless it is true.

The difference between beliefs and knowledge is that under a belief we possess some meanings, although they might not necessarily be true. However, when we call it knowledge, we also assume that what we believe in is also true. The transformation of beliefs into truth is not an easy task―this conversion is highly controversial and debated in epistemology.

Therefore, when the term vidya is translated as “knowledge,” para and apara vidya seem to indicate superior and inferior truths. It is supposed that the truths about the present material world are inferior, while the truths about the transcendental world are superior.

It is interesting, at this point, that in the verse quoted at the beginning of this article, Srila Prabhupada did not translate vidya as “knowledge”; he calls this vidya an “educational system”. He, furthermore, quotes these words as translations of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati’s commentary on the verse. This distinction is important because there is a huge difference between the ideas of “knowledge” and “educational systems”. Quite specifically, there are many philosophers of science who would not hesitate to accept that science is a “system of knowledge”, with its “methods” and “concepts”, although only a very few amongst these would claim that this system of knowledge, its methods, and concepts are actually true[1]. Srila Prabhupada’s translation is not only more contemporary, but also more accurate, relative to the idea that para and apara vidya are two kinds of truths.

The point is that the term vidya should be translated as our belief rather than as truth. Many things―such as astra-vidya―or the science of weaponry are considered apara vidya but when Arjuna uses the same vidya upon the order of Krsna that vidya is para vidya. The fact that the same thing can be para or apara depending on our understanding means that it is our understanding that is superior or inferior, not that thing itself.

The world itself is therefore never an illusion; our understanding of the world can be an illusion. The goal of science is the comprehension of reality, not the propagation of falsities. This knowledge is para vidya, and unless we see para vidya here and now, we cannot expect to see para vidya at the time of death. Whether we use science to pursue that para vidya, or some other prescribed or chosen scheme, we must acquire that para vidya.

The Typical Devotee’s Approach to Science

The divide between superior and inferior kinds of truths leads devotees to generally consider science as “inferior” truth, or apara vidya. We think: science may be true―the laws of nature work, and give us these machines, using which we are able to achieve many things―but this is all inferior truth, relative to our “superior” knowledge about soul, God, afterlife, etc. When we consider something inferior, we disincentivize it, and the people who wish to propagate a scientific understanding of Vedic philosophy are socially disenfranchised by our repeatedly calling science apara vidya. That in turn also insulates the devotee community from the rest of the world which is increasingly inclined to trust science more than religion.

Through this interpretation of para and apara vidya we have introduced a philosophical distinction between superior and inferior truths, although this distinction is never examined critically, and has very little fundamental grounding. If you have studied philosophy (ancient or modern), you would have frequently come across the distinction made between truth and falsity. You will come across the problem of illusion, the possibility of mistakes, and logical fallacies. But you will never come across the idea of superior and inferior truth.

And yet, this one distinction―that devotees make so frequently―has wreaked havoc on every attempt to formulate Vedic philosophy in scientific terms. Devotees “preach” to scientists, telling them about God, soul, transmigration, etc., and if that scientist happened to become a devotee, he is expected to forget about all his inferior knowledge, or at least capitulate to someone who possesses no such knowledge. If he or she were to reject a scientifically ignorant authority as being capable of professing meaningfully about spirituality, he would be considered “puffed-up” about his or her material knowledge.

One devotee recently asked if I was a true follower of Gaudiya-Vaishnava siddhanta since I hadclaimed in a post that by truly understanding material nature, we can understand the nature of God. The devotee argued that the understanding of God can only be obtained through love, and that love cannot be attained through science. I’m sure many of you will easily relate to the devotee’s line of argument. We have somehow assumed that science is about a different reality―matter―and it does not apply to the non-material reality. We are therefore mistaken, because there aren’t two realities; there is only one: Krsna. That reality has many different levels of understanding or interpretation, some of which are perfect, others partially true, and yet others completely false. We don’t put the onus of illusion on the reality; we put it on the knower of that reality. The illusion is in all of us, not in reality.

Improving Our Understanding of Matter

If there is a red apple in front of us, and one person thinks the apple is red while another thinks that the apple is green, both views exist, but only one is true. In the same way, Krsna is the reality (apple) which is interpreted in many ways (red and green), and there are two broad classifications of these interpretations―some are true, while others are false. To create an interpretation, there must be a knower, or the living being, and this interpretation is a property of that knower, not the property of the known. Therefore, our understanding is material or spiritual, and therefore we are in matter or spirit. Krsna is neither matter, nor spirit[2].

The goal of science is to transform that illusion into truth. The truth is that even in the present world, Krsna is the reality “behind” the phenomena. Since we are enamored by the phenomena, we don’t see the reality, quite like a child playing with a toy does not understand that it works according to some laws of mechanics. Before we can love God, we must understand theoretically that He is “standing behind” the veil of phenomena. That veil actually covers our vision, not Krsna, and we must therefore change it.

Love of God is a development of a true (theoretical) understanding of God. Loving without knowing is called blind faith. Loving after knowing is permanent. Science will not give us love, but it will give us a true understanding of God, after which we can choose to love.

In fact, understanding God and loving God must go hand-in-hand. The more you can understand, the more you will love, and vice-versa. In that sense, only the devotee can provide a true understanding of reality because he or she is prepared to love, not just to understand. The non-devotees, who are unprepared to love, will also be incapable of understanding the true nature of reality. Devotees not only are better suited to present the truth, they are also obligated to do so, because others cannot know the truth.

Srila Prabhupada’s Approach to Science

It is well-known that Srila Prabhupada thought that science was also kirtana and he laid great emphasis on presenting Srimad Bhagavatam in a scientific language; he called it the “next phase” of preaching. But despite this emphasis, the real reasons for this emphasis are ill-understood. Most devotees currently think that engaging with scientists is meant to counter scientific atheism and distribute scripture. Once these scientists have accepted the existence of God, then they can study the scriptures and science would be unimportant. A discussion with scientist is therefore a one-way affair: we expect to give spiritual knowledge to the scientist, but we don’t expect to receive any kind of knowledge from the scientist.

Since science is supposedly about apara vidya,engaging with scientists―when they talk about the material world―is not considered devotional service. Only activities such as eating prasadam, chanting the Holy Name, and delivering Srimad Bhagavatam classes are directly bhakti-yoga, whereas science (and any discussion of the material world) could at best be deemed karma-yoga: the result of this work is that some people become devotees (if they eventually reject their illusory pursuit of scientific knowledge and surrender to a guru), and we are therefore worshipping God by the results, not by the actions themselves. Certainly, unlike chanting the Holy Name which is good for the devotee himself, scientific work is not good for the devotee himself, although this work might benefit others.

Prabhupada: That is a fact. Without Vasudeva, without Krsna’s order…. Mayadhyaksena. Everything is being done under His superintendence. Mayadhyaksena. Even in the prakrti, apara and para… There are two prakrtis. So even in apara-prakrti there is superintendence of Krsna.

Dr. Patel: I am interrupting you, sir. Mayadhyaksena suyate prakrtih sa-caracaram.

Prabhupada: Yes.

Dr. Patel: Now then, mayadhyaksena, we want to learn how He adhyaksa, and that is our vidya, and that is our apara-vidya.

Prabhupada: That is para-vidya.

Dr. Patel: That is real scientist.

The notion that a true understanding of material nature―namely that it is working under Krsna’s supervision―is itself para vidya (superior to the four Vedas and superior to liberation from material conditioning) is not well-known. We reject the material world as a whole―including knowledge about its working―as being inferior. Thereby, we also reject all parts of Srimad-Bhagavatam that describe the nature of this working (e.g., the 3rd, 5th and 11th Cantos) as being somewhat inferior to those that describe devotee pastimes.

Truths, Half Truths, and Lies

One of the reasons that devotees believe that knowledge of matter is apara vidya is because the material world is supposed to be maya―or illusion. The idea that this illusion is under the supervision of Krsna leads to the classical problem of theodicy in which if there is evil in the world, and Krsna is supervising the evilness in the world, then Krsna must be evil.

Devotees often surmount that problem by saying that Krsna is actually not involved with the world; it is rather Lord Shiva who controls the material world. However, Lord Shiva is also a part of Lord Krsna. Therefore, by delegating the problem of evil to one part of His existence, we don’t truly address it. We rather create a doublethink that the world is under the control of another deity, not the all-benevolent Lord we worship as Supreme. The problem would return if the term mayadhyaksena was understood as Krsna’s personal control.

The problem can only be solved by understanding maya―that the material world is a false understanding of reality and that illusion exists in us, not in the world. The evil we see in the world is a consequence of that illusion. The root of the evil is therefore not in God, but in our illusion. Of course, God creates the illusion too, and but He does not ask us to choose the illusion, just as He doesn’t ask us to pick the truth. The free will of choosing the truth or the illusion exists in us. Therefore, while God is the origin of both truth and illusion, He is not responsible for either of them. He creates both, but He does not force either.

Even in the world of illusion, many things are true; their pervasiveness changes with time: sometimes they abound and other times they are invisible. For instance, deities are not illusions, scripture is not false, and pure devotees are not ignorant. Therefore, everything that we see around us is not false―and therefore not illusion. We must conclude that even in the present world of illusion, there are instances of truth―deities, pure devotees, and scriptures. These are not material―even though they are made up of wood, paper, stone, or metal. It is only when paper and metal represent falsities that they become material. The paper and ink that make up a scripture are not themselves material, although the same paper and ink that makes up a book on fiction is material. If you thought that understanding matter was trivial, you would have to rethink, because deities, scripture and devotees are not material.

How then do we distinguish between matter and spirit? We can understand the world around us in three distinct ways―it represents truths, partial truths, and falsities. The scriptures, pure devotees, and deities are truths, and they are not material. These must be called para vidya. Actions and things done according to the injunctions of the four Vedas are partial truths, and they are neither completely true (para vidya) nor completely false. Such partial truths can be called apara vidya. Finally, there is illusion or avidya, such as false notions about reality. The same world comprises all three categories―para vidya, apara vidya, and avidya.

Lord Shiva rules over the avidya or illusion. Lord Mahavishnu rules over apara vidya and although He creates the injunctions of the four Vedas and the world according to them, these are not the complete truth. Finally, there is complete truth in the form of Vedanta Sutra, Srimad Bhagavatam, deities of the Lord, and pure devotees who propagate the perfect and pure knowledge, and worship the deities. Lord Krsna rules over this perfect truth.

Three Tiers of Understanding

The knowledge called apara vidya is not false, but it is devoid of the ultimate conclusion. It is like the legs, trunk, tail, stomach and ears of an elephant; the five blind men can argue about it, but the knower of the whole truth alone knows them as part of the whole elephant, and sees no contradiction. The apara vidya therefore results in much argumentation.

The person under illusion goes even further: he or she oversimplifies the understanding of the parts, neglecting many properties that are essential to describing those parts. For instance, the oversimplification might say that the tail is a straight line, the stomach is a sphere, the ear is a flat and rectangular surface, the legs are cylinders, and the trunk is a hollow cylinder. Thusavidya―ignorance―is created. The mind of the person under avidya is incapable of even grasping the parts in their full resplendence, and relies on oversimplification.

The ignorant situation worsens when an oversimplified version of a partial truth is extended to the whole universe, and the entire universe is modeled according to such simplified concepts such as a straight line, sphere, cylinder, hollow cylinder, or rectangular flat surface. Modern science is an example of such extension of an oversimplified understanding of parts to the whole, under the idea that the universe is uniform―i.e. that the same laws of nature, and identical theoretical concepts apply to all parts of the universe at all times.

The avidya or illusion has no real existence outside our minds; therefore any theory that is false will eventually be falsified, and many such theories of science have been falsified in the past and will be falsified in the future. That falsification makes the present science avidya and not apara vidya. Calling modern science apara vidya would be an inappropriate upgrade.

The apara vidya too exists only in our minds, and it is attained when our minds have a far better comprehension of the parts, but no understanding of the whole. For instance, we can see that there is a trunk, tail, stomach, ears, and legs, but we don’t know the elephant. Without the whole, the parts appear contradictory and become puzzles to be solved, and the philosophers agonize over the puzzles, rather than discarding them. Such apara vidya is better than avidya where the philosophers simply discard the things they cannot comprehend, but it is still not the perfected knowledge gained in para vidya. Finally, para vidya is attained when we have a complete understanding of both the parts and the whole.

The progress from avidya, to apara vidya and eventually to para vidya is a gradual process, and it applies to the same world. The mistake many devotees often make is that this world is apara vidyaand the transcendental world is para vidya. This is a mistake because this world is itself transcendental when it is properly understood. The understanding of this world can therefore range from avidya toapara vidya to para vidya. The stark divide between material and spiritual as pertaining to this and another world or reality is simply not real.

It can therefore be said that modern science is an illusion or avidya. This illusion can be improved to become apara vidya―by incorporating an understanding of the different planetary systems, life in other places, laws of karma and transmigration, mantras and rituals of worship, etc. Furthermore, even theapara vidya can be improved to become para vidya when the true understanding of how the world is controlled by Lord Krsna is gained.

If you have taken the current avidya as apara vidya then you may think that going to another world represents para vidya. But if you have some comprehension of apara and para vidya and their respective differences, then you will see why this world itself can be para vidya.

The devotee who thinks that this world is apara vidya (or avidya) and therefore seeks another world, is pursuing liberation from the present world, and this pursuit is decried as apara vidya. Only a person who has rejected the differences between the worlds as the basis of the differences between para andapara has attained a true understanding of para vidya.

The “same” material world can represent avidya, apara vidya and para vidya. The difference in understanding lies in us, and not in the world. By changing our goggles of vision, the world seen via the goggles is itself perceived differently, and the present world is itself transformed. Unfortunately, this profound understanding of the difference between para and apara doesn’t exist, even amongst many devotees. We equate the present world to be inferior and another world to be superior, without seeing the difference between the two. If this idea was taken to its logical conclusion, then scripture, devotees, and deities would also be false. Of course, that is precisely the mayavadi position, where any form―including that of the Supreme Lord―is an illusion. Therefore, when we introduce the distinction between para and apara vidya as a distinction between the worlds, we succumb tomayavada.

Meanings and Physical Properties

How does science go from lies, to half-truths to truth? To answer this question, let’s ponder the following problem. Suppose that you were asked to describe the meaning in a book, and you responded by describing the height, weight, and speed of the book. Would you be telling the truth or a lie? The unambiguous answer to this question is that you would not be answering the right question, but responding to a question that was never asked. Science, similarly, tries to reduce the world with meanings (like a book) into physical properties. It’s answers―like the height, weight, and speed of the book―are orthogonal to the questions.

Science assumes that the world has no meanings, and tries to reduce it to physical properties, and it is thus not even asking the right questions, let alone answering them. However, if you did formulate a correct science of meanings, you would see that those meanings do map to a certain height, weight, and speed, in a particular case. In the general scenario, the same meaning could be encoded by an object with a different height, weight, and speed, and an object with the same height, weight, and speed, could represent a different meaning.

It is possible to map meanings to physical properties in individual cases, although these properties neither explain nor exhaust meanings. In trying to reduce meanings to physical properties, science becomes incomplete. This incompleteness is not an issue of science perfecting itself through repeated theory formation and experimentation. It is rather about fundamentally changing the questions themselves: in doing science we must be asking questions of meaning, rather than questions of height, weight and speed.

When we try to reduce meanings to physical properties, we get inaccurate answers, because we are trying to model the world incorrectly. In that sense, the answers given by modern science are far from even being partial truths, although from the physical standpoint, you can get approximations. For example, if the encoded information is very complex, then you can assume that the object will be bigger, and will therefore have a larger height and weight, although you can find an object in which the same meaning is encoded in a smaller size and weight. In assuming that the world is physical properties, science becomes avidya (its concepts are mistaken) but in giving approximate answers to the wrong questions, science is somewhere between avidya and apara vidya. This doesn’t have to be the final picture in science, if it were revised to start asking the right questions. Then, of course, we would have moved closer to apara vidya, which then opens up possibilities of para vidya.

What is Real Science?

Real science is para vidya, because it produces the true understanding of the real state of the world, not a partial understanding of the parts produced by asking the right questions, or an approximate understanding of the parts themselves by asking the wrong questions. Real science is no different than spirituality, because there is nothing called inferior truth. What is called apara vidya is inferior to para vidya because it is an incomplete understanding. Matter can be understood as avidya, apara vidya, orpara vidya. It all depends on the scientists.

Srila Prabhupada envisioned that the devotees will one day present the para vidya about the present world, which would then transform it into vaikuntha or the perfect world. He did not envision us propagating avidya or even apara vidya. However, if we begin by assuming that the present world―rather than our present understanding of the world―is itself apara vidya or worse avidya, then there is little hope in accomplishing that mission.

The present world may be metal, wood, paper, or stone, but that is not matter. When these objects represent the complete truth―e.g. as the deity of the Lord―then they are spiritual. Conversely, when metal, wood, paper, or stone, encode falsities, then they are avidya. When these objects are used for Vedic practices disconnected from the Ultimate Truth, then they are apara vidya. How the same world transforms from illusion, to partial truths (dharma) to complete truth (sanatana dharma) is the fundamental goal for a real science.

Illusions, Incompleteness, and Logical Contradictions

Ultimately, the world is not an illusion; the illusion is in our minds. Out of this illusion, we create products that represent our illusory mental state, and thereby externalize our illusions into the world. E.g., we can write a book about our false theory of nature. Now, we have a clash between what the book expresses, and the reality of how the book itself was created. In reality, both the illusory book and the truthful book work according to the truth. However, the false book denies the very truth that creates it. The book is, in effect, like the child which denies the existence of its own father. If we take the claims of the child literally, then the child itself could not exist. But if we deny the child’s claim, then we must ask ourselves: How can the truth of the father’s existence produce the falsity in the child?

The Vedic response to this problem is maya, which covers the truths, and inverts them. The Supreme Lord is the father (Absolute Truth), maya is the mother, and the illusioned living being is the child. The child denies the existence of the father, but the child could not have existed without the father. The denial therefore creates a logical contradiction, produced by a denial called maya (maya means “that which is not” and it causes the inversion of truth). When you invert any truth and create a falsity, you don’t change the nature of reality, but do create its denial. Such denials now result in logical contradictions when we begin to compare the claims of the created product with the nature of the reality that produces it.

In effect, material nature is like a computer that prints statements such as “I cannot compute”. If the computer was actually incapable of computing, the statement itself could not be produced. The production of a false statement, and its literal interpretation, thus, results in a contradiction. Essentially, maya is the deluding agency which produces false statements, which the living being interprets literally as the truth, and then assumes that there is no prowess behind nature. However, if you make those literal interpretations, you also can never explain how the statement was produced in the first place. The only way to explain the world―even if the world is comprised only of falsities―is to postulate that there is a reality (God) which is being denied (maya) in the very process of production.

Modern science takes the falsities produced by maya―which are like the statement “I cannot compute”―as the literal truth and then tries to formulate theories about how such a statement could have been produced without a computer existing in reality. A common example of such an explanation is the attempt to explain life and consciousness based on matter: maya indicates that the living being has a material body, science takes it literally as the truth, and tries to explain the body’s creation without postulating a real conscious entity. If material facts are interpreted literally, then the resulting theory has a logical contradiction―we would be unable to explain how the statement was produced in the first place.

Understanding Scientific Problems

Every form of knowing depends upon some assumptions about what we consider true or false, using which we judge the truth of what we perceive. If you believe that railway tracks are always parallel, then you will consider your perception of tracks converging at a distance a visual illusion. The truths are thus taken literally, while the falsities are interpreted. Scientists take the material facts as the literal truths, while they interpret the deities, scripture, and devotees. Devotees on the other hand take the deities, scripture, and devotees to be the literal truth and they must therefore interpret the material facts. The difference between the devotee and material science is that the former will explain the world as lies while the latter would explain the world as truths. The question is: Which one of them will succeed?

If there is in fact a computer that prints statements like “I cannot compute,” any literal treatment of this statement (as truth) will result in a logical contradiction. Therefore, science, when it tries to interpret lies as truths, and truths as lies, creates logical contradictions, which make it impossible to claim the truth of any theory. Devotees, on the other hand, when they explain the world as illusion, will create no such contradiction. Only the devotee explanation can therefore be eventually successful―i.e. consistent and complete―as science.

The preliminary symptom of whether your assumptions about reality are false is that you would have numerous contradictions. This is in fact confirmed by any casual survey of modern science: contradictions abound in the method of science, theories about the mind, the explanation of perception, our comprehension of concepts, in mathematics, computing, all physical and life sciences. These theories are illusions or avidya, and not apara vidya. The apara vidya is incomplete knowledge, whileavidya is self-contradictory knowledge.

A recurring pattern in modern academic endeavors is the oscillation between incompleteness and inconsistency: all theories are incomplete, but if you try to complete them, they become inconsistent. Theories are incomplete when they suppose that the statement “I cannot compute” was randomly produced by nature, rather than being computed by a computer. These theories become inconsistent when they postulate that there is indeed a computer that computes the statement “I cannot compute” because then the computer is computing self-contradictions. If you wish to avoid self-contradiction, you can say that the statement was randomly produced, but if you try to find an explanation, you find a contradiction.

False Facts

The answer to these paradoxes is that the world by and large is false―although it exists. When people claim to love you, the claims are false; when they sell you something based on supposed merits, they are lying; when they promise to do something, it is not meant. The problem of the material world islack of trust. What do we trust and what do we doubt? If we trust everything, then we are living in vain hope. If we doubt everything, we are living hopelessly. Science tries to solve this problem by suggesting that we will trust all the facts of the world, but verify the theories. That trust is like believing the words of an insurance salesman. The problem of the material world is that the factsthemselves are untrustworthy, and every fact cannot be trusted. This distrust stems not just from the possibility of errors, but also because the facts being measured could themselves be objectively false―e.g., the statement “I cannot compute.” To trust, we must find a trustworthy source of facts.

If you have put your trust in facts that are true, then you can explain everything else without any contradictions. If you have put your trust in facts that are false, then you will either not explain everything (incompleteness) or explain with contradictions (inconsistency).

Modern science is missing a key ontological category―false facts. The fact is that they exist, and yet they are false. Their existence does not indicate the truth, just like I can think that the sky is purple and the thought exists, even though it is not true. Modern science equates existence with truth, and when it encounters false facts, it considers them true. Devotees, however, must explain the false facts without considering them true.

This is then the key difference between material and devotee science: both rely on facts, but devotees don’t take all the facts that science considers true as being literally true. The key difference between material and devotee science is our stance towards the facts: i.e. do we consider them as truths or as illusions? If all facts in the material world are considered true then we cannot find an explanation of those facts. This inability itself means that to find the right explanation, we would have to discard some facts as illusions rather than truth.

The World is Magical

The material world is like magic: you can see the magic but you don’t consider it literally true. You rather try to explain how the illusion is created by the actions of a magician. The materialists are enamored by the magic and they think that is the reality. The devotees too can see the magic but they know that it is an illusion being created through tricks. The goal of material science is to explain the magic as if it were literally true―and that goal can never be fulfilled without creating contradictions between the magic and other non-magical facts. The goal of devotee science is to explain the magic as the creation of an illusion.

When you see magic, you must decide which of the magician’s action are true and which ones are illusion. When the magician is talking to the audience is he really saying something worthwhile, or just creating a diversion? There are many ways in which you can divide the actions into true and false. Regardless of how you divide, you innately know that some facts are illusions while others are truths by which the magician creates the illusion. The only way to truly know the difference is from the magician. Knowing the magic from the standpoint of the magician is the true knowledge of the magic, and that is also para vidya. Knowing that the material world is magic, but not knowing how it is being created through the actions of a magician is apara vidya. And believing that the magic is itself reality isavidya.

All the magician’s actions are objective, but we fail to see them. The tricks of the magician seem like deception only because we are not paying attention to what is really going on. In science, this lack of attention is called simplification. Science becomes a deception when it tries to simplify―because then it fails to see the actions of the magician. Is the magician truly deceiving? The answer depends on how much you know about magic. If you know how the magician does the tricks, then there is no deception. If you are ignorant, then there is deception. The world is therefore an illusion only if you are ignorant about how it works.

The illusory energy called maha-maya is the tendency to oversimplify. The layers of matter described in Sańkhya are different tiers of oversimplification. One example of such oversimplification is that scientists only acknowledge the existence of things that can be seen, touched, tasted, smelt, and heard, and all object concepts are derived by oversimplifying these sensations. If these object concepts fall short in explaining the observations, science either discards the discrepancies or considers them randomness. To emerge from this illusion, we must dive deeper into matter―e.g., see that beyond the sensations are the senses, beyond the senses is the mind, beyond the mind is the intellect, beyond the intellect is the ego, beyond the ego are our habits and their consequences, beyond that is the soul, etc.

As we climb up this ladder of understanding, the magician’s magic is demystified: we begin to see how the so-called “magic” is actually produced by something that we did not previously see. There, then, comes a point when the whole truth about this magical world is known, and it is then no longer magical―i.e. a deception. We can still enjoy the world, but because we marvel at the nature of the truth, rather than at its deception. A scientist’s sense of marvel about the world is the marvel at a magician’s tricks: How does it all happen? How can I understand any of this? The devotee’s sense of marvel is the appreciation of the truth: All this magical world is working by the will of Krsna. They can both marvel, but the reasons are different. The devotee’s marveling is not about illusion, but about truth.

Critics of religion claim that if the world is an illusion and God made the world then God must be evil. The short answer to that problem is that God did not make the world evil. God is like a magician whose tricks we don’t understand because we aren’t paying attention. The creator is not evil, rather our lack of understanding makes it seem like a deception. This lack of understanding is also created by God―and called maya―but chosen by us.

The Necessity of Meanings

The only way the idea of false facts can exist within science is if these facts represent meanings. For instance, if you don’t know English, then the statement “I cannot compute” cannot be true or false: it is just some squiggles which exist but cannot be judged.

The material world too exists, but it cannot be called an illusion unless it is seen as denoting meanings. Since current science does not incorporate meanings, it can only speak about existence and not about truth. When false things are encountered, only their existence can be measured, but that they are false cannot be known. In that respect, the fundamental idea in Gaudiya-Vaishnavism that the material world is false knowledge itself cannot be understood in science because if science doesn’t treat matter asknowledge then how can that knowledge be true or false? The only truth would be that the world exists, and science will try to derive the laws of nature from that existence, by interpreting the falsities as truths, and thereby remain in the cycle of logical contradictions. The first step in bringing the true understanding of reality to science is revising the idea of matter: from things to symbols. The material world has to be viewed as a book, before it can be seen as a book on fiction or reality.

The existence of the book itself doesn’t indicate the truth; the book has to be understood before it can be judged. In Sańkhya too, the mind understands the world as meanings before intelligence can judge it as true or false. Current science is trying to understand the world through the perception of the five senses, and it must rise to the understanding by the mind, before intellect can be applied to judge whether the material world is true or false.

Devotees need to understand that we perceive the world through multiple tiers of senses to first determine the color, taste, smell, touch, and sound (the five senses), then to derive the meanings from these sensations (the mind), then to judge the truth of these meanings (the intellect), then to determine the creator, owner, curator of these judgments (the ego), then to decide whether these creators, owners, or curators are acting morally (the mahattattva), before we can understand how the consciousness chooses some moral values.

The choices of consciousness pertain to values, and religion is the transformation of this value from ourhealth, wealth, success, fame, etc. to that of Krsna. This religion is a natural culmination of the realization that everything in creation is about Krsna, because that creation is produced as His knowledge. If all knowledge points towards its object, and we are that knowledge, how can we know anything other than Krsna? If Krsna is the only reality then even so-called material knowledge is only a false representation of Krsna.

Scientific Knowledge and Absolute Truth

The symptom of false knowledge is that it will be either inconsistent or incomplete. Conversely, the real truth is consistent and complete, and if we have a consistent and complete theory, that itself would represent the Absolute Truth. The criterion for deciding Absolute Truth is therefore entirely rational. There is no necessity for an authority to stamp a theory as being the ultimate truth; the consistency and completeness of that theory will itself suffice. However, there is a need for an authority to indicate what that truthful theory is, because that knowledge cannot be obtained by reason and experience.

This fact can be summarized as follows: we cannot discover the truth, but we can verify it (the equivalence of discovery and verification is called P=NP, which is a contentious hypothesis, and has never been proven). The inability to discover the truth through reason and experience follows some basic problems about the finiteness of the universe, which are out of scope of the present discussion, but have been described separately. Owing to these problems, the Absolute Truth must be revealed to us (since we cannot discover it through mind and senses) but that Absolute Truth is available in the present world (because we can verify it).

This is another area of confusion amongst devotees since they believe that Absolute Truth is always revealed while scientific truth is always discovered. If science is reason and experience, while religion is revelation and faith, then how can their knowledge be identical? The short answer is that reason and experience have two uses: discovery and verification. Even revealed knowledge is verified, although it is not discovered. Therefore, reason and experience are not the problem; the key problem is their use for discovery. Once we realize that discovery is impossible in any finite universe (see above), then revelation becomes essential. Reason and experience are now used to verify, not discover.

The essence of the work that devotees must do to advance the Vedic presentation of this Absolute Truth in a scientific world is to show the following:

That present scientific theories follow a recurring pattern of incompleteness and inconsistency, and cannot achieve both in any current scientific theory.

Describe how any method of rational and empirical “discovery” will never yield the truth because we can never decide when some observation represents truth or illusion; e.g., should we treat statements such as “I cannot compute” literally as indicating a truth, or as the outcome of a deluding process that distorts the truth?

Show that Vedic knowledge is consistent and complete. There are many inconsistent and incomplete theories, but there is only one consistent and complete understanding of nature. That understanding itself represents the Absolute Truth.

The knowledge of Absolute Truth cannot be discovered by human endeavor, but if it has been revealed, it can be verified to be consistent and complete. The advancement of truth lies in showing that no other theory is consistent and complete, and Vedic knowledge is consistent and complete. This verification is scientific, although its revelation is not. Therefore, the truth cannot be discovered empirically or rationally, and we must rely on revealed sources. However, it can be verified by experience and reason, and it is therefore scientific.

Conclusion

Vedic truth has thus far been expressed in esoteric terms, but it can also be expressed in ways that are amenable to modern scientific inquiry. That truth is para vidya. We do a great disservice to that truth when we decry the material world as apara vidya or avidya. We must recognize that that apara vidyaor avidya exists in our minds, not in the world itself.

If we begin by assuming that the present world is apara vidya or avidya, then by implication there is nothing in this world that can reveal or verify that truth. If we blindly accept what the mayavadiprofesses―namely that the world is an illusion―then we have also surreptitiously eliminated any possibility of gaining knowledge from the world. How can then we get out of the world, and even be freed from illusion, since there isn’t any truth that we can turn to? The opposite alternative―namely, that everything in the world is true―also leads to a problem: if everything is already true, then how can I ever be wrong? The only consistent position is that there is objective truth, although it is we who are often wrong. The illusion is in us, not in the world. Accordingly, the truth must also be in us, and only needs to be revealed.

We accept that truth gradually over time―as we incrementally understand and verify it. The perfection of life is a complete acceptance of that truth. However, to begin verifying, we must first have a theoretical knowledge of that truth. That theoretical knowledge will be identical to that in the scriptures, although it can be expressed in a scientific language.

NOTES

[1] The current understanding of the scientific method is that it produces theories which can be falsified but never verified. At best, a theory is tentatively true, until it has been falsified; this is based on the fact that numerous scientific theories were confirmed by evidence at one time or another although subsequent experiments proved the falsity of the previous conclusion. Science, therefore, as the combination of reason and experiment is accepted as a “method” with its “concepts” which can be falsified, and most scientists take pride in the fact that they are using a method in which incorrect theories can actually be disproven. This pride, however, also underscores the fact that the method can never claim to deliver the truth. One of the best confirmed theories of modern science is the quantum theory and even though it has been confirmed to one part in 10,000,000,000, the conceptual problems of probability in the theory entail that the theory is false and would be replaced by a better theory in future. That future theory, however, remains a subject of much speculation today.

[2] This point needs some elaboration since most devotees believe that Krsna is spirit. The term “spirit” indicates the internal energy, and it represents the true understanding of God. The reality is in one sense identical to the true understanding, and yet the true understanding is not identical to reality. For instance, if there is a red apple in front of us, and we know it perfectly as a red apple, then our knowledge has the same form as the reality but my understanding still exists separately from the apple. By knowing the apple, I don’t become the apple. Similarly, even the most perfect understanding of God is not identical to God, even though the two have the same form. The perfect understanding in Gaudiya-Vaishnavism is called Srimati Radharani, and both Radha and Krsna are identical as perfect knowledge and the reality to which that knowledge refers, but still separate. When Krsna tries to know that perfect knowledge about Himself, He becomes Sri Chaitanya.

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