HH KKS: .......Sanskrit…..so that understanding is central in the eastern way of thinking , that there is a soul that never dies and that soul becomes attracted to matter and then at the time when there is conception , when a man and woman unite , and there is conception , and it says at that the time the soul enters … so when the biological union takes place the soul comes in and the soul is in the gross body …then the soul has become embodied ..like a passenger in a car, different colour cars, different models…etc..small ones, big ones and so on…different types of bodies …so this is the philosophy of Bhagavad Gita and that was certainly interesting because we in our own western tradition we find a similar belief, a belief of a soul continuing to exist separate from the body, the concept of an after life is not at all alien to western culture and western tradition, same thing. We look round the world and when we look in Africa..then there is worship of the forefathers and there is the idea that after death the forefathers are accompanying those who are living and some are helping and some of course in trouble, right, this is the idea and there are certain set of sacrifices are done to appease those that are causing trouble, to gain the favour of those who are helping and in this way there is a whole culture of worship of the ancestors…and this is a big thing in Africa. So again the ancestor worship implies the same thing life after death. So that remains a big question …in the western world with the renaissance we saw how rationalism set in and as rationalism set in ..that question of life after death became something that was difficult to prove and because something just based on belief …but what was the factual basis of such belief and all these kind of convictions and beliefs since have been put into question by so many people and the question whether is life after death or whether there is a soul remained for many philosophers a question that is unanswerable…therefore one can not truly ever prove such a question on such a phenomana and therefore it was felt by the pragmatists that such philosophy, such questions are irrelevant, ‘lets not bother with them’ and many people took that model in life ……………..Me too I also came from that background where the question whether life after death , whether there is a God or not and all these kind of questions will never figure it out and there is really no point in pondering on these things …so I left it at that .
But then in India I was confronted with another paradime , a paradime that also existed here ..some what earlier..a paradime that where everyone was totally fixed in a conviction that everything is controlled by a God who is the Supreme Intellience , that is the ultimate origin of everything that exists , who is behind everything and everything that is going on by some divine plan and some divine arrangement …that we find very strongly in the east still today . the scientific world will not easily accept such a thing because the whole approach is based on the principle that well unless you can’t present proof , unless you can’t present proof why would we accept it . …, if you can’t prove it in some way or other then your belief is simply sentimental and there is absolutely no certainty there is fact about it , it’s just a belief , and belief without reason :what is the value of it?..So this is more or less the opinion of the modern man…Fine Fine we are ready to roll with that ……………………………………but there is one complication
And that complication is that there is also absolutely no proof that there is no life after death and that there is no God ..one can also not prove that
When I meet an atheist then I am very pleased to meet a believer!…I congratulate such a such and say finally in this day and age when everyone is full of doubt when nobody knows anything for sure it is so nice to meet someone who really has a conviction who has a strong belief , it is so rare to find a believer ! how nice! To find an atheist a man who has firm faith . congratulations …They usually don’t like that ! ( crowd laughs)….and that of course I like itvery much!( crowd laughs again)…what can I say….so it is a favourite pastime! …this point though is there..that there is no evidence against nor evidenece in favour…This is actually the point …therefore if we are reading ancient scriptures from ancient traditions and so on these are testimonies of a particular time and culture that existed so many thousands of years ago and people who were equally as intelligent as now as we are today and we had their sources of information.
So sometimes there is the idea that man is gradually progressing , that it all started with cave men, right, who used to be half man half animal and go out there with a piece of wood in the hand , a club and hit dinosaurs over the head and etc…and then find some lady and grab her by the hair and drag in to the cave …raaaah!.. and so on , right,.and that gradually gradually slowly we have progressed, right , that we have progressed and we have come to modern man who is very civilised , who eats with a knife and fork, everything goes on and it’s high tech , and everything at the push of a button…and we laugh at the fears of that primitive man and…it’s night …ha ha…turn on the light! It’s nothing to us…Oh it’s bad weather out there…yes it is, turn on the thermostat…modern man can so easily deny all these natural forces and with that lose his own sense of insignificance..that when we live in a little hut and the roof is shaking due to thunderstorm and boy you start praying ..who ever is up there you know, save us …not our hut ..please not our hut tonight…..PowPowwww whoosh, Oh my God that was the big tree not far from here!………………And we are living well protected by our lightning conductors and even the highest points are well protected , we are saved from all these things ….Science will save us ! Science will save us ...............................................Well will science save us !?
Not so long ago there was a meteorite that hit Jupiter and it says that it left a crater that was much bigger than planet earth hmmmmmmm…..what if such meator would come for our planet? …what would be left of it ?....hmmmmm.no problem no problem the astronomers will know it way in advance and they will let us know and they will simply call George Bush and he will arrange for the thing to be shot out of the sky …’no problem’ the Americans will do it !
So they rang up the astronomers and they asked, it was a teaching programme, and these questions were asked , they rang up the astronomers and asked them well what if such a meteorite come down would you be able to see it …..they said ‘ Well you have to understand ‘ they said “ there are quite a number of observatories but if you look at the entire range of the sky…it is so vast we can not by far cover the whole thing , there is no way , we would have to cover the whole earth with observatories to have a good view and even then something might slip in between, with the observatories we have we really wouldn’t be sure if we would see that meteorite’ Oh ‘And if we would see it then maybe minutes before it would land “……Oh! … ……….. ‘But anyway the army, the army will shoot it out of the sky with laser beams , no problem, we’ll call all the army .’ ‘yes yes you are the general in the U.S army’ ‘Yes I am’ ‘Ok ‘ ‘great news right so we have this meteorite and just so you guys will just blow it out of the sky ,isn’t it, you know with your laser beams with your U.S laser beams , right?”
And the general said “ Well imagine you have a football field and you put near the goal ..you put one man with a gun and on the middle line on the side a man with a gun.. and the man at the goal shoots a bullet across the football field and the man in the middle with his gun has to shoot that bullet out from the sky.”………………………Not so easy….So hmmm ..not sure that science will save us from a meteorite that would come at our head ….”No it’s not” was the conclusion of the programme and they left it with that ……………..yes we feel so secure ‘Doctor doctor, there must be something you can do’ ………. ‘No sorry two months is all you have’………. ‘No no no I’m sure there is a cure’…… ‘Not here …you can go maybe to a vooodooo doctor in brazil’……It is like that sometimes in this world ….modern science is also not all powerful ……….(More to come in part4)
