September 20 2008

                           Sriman Sadaputa prabhu – A Personal Tribute

July 9 1976 : members of the Bhaktivedanta Institute seated with Srila Prabhupada in Washington DC (lt. to rt): Svarupa Damodar das, Sadaputa das, Rupanuga das, Madhava das

Vedic culture dictates from the very beginning of our lives that we understand one central point: that life in this material world is temporary and precarious and our real business lies elsewhere. We should understand from the moment we can walk and talk that our tenure in these bodies is like ‘a drop of water on a shaking lotus leaf’ that there is ‘danger at every step’ and that as soon as we are born we are already ‘one day towards death’.

It should come then as neither surprise nor shock when we hear of the departure of yet another soul from one body to the next. It is expected and can come during any movement of time.

Yet despite this knowledge we do expect that all of us average human beings will live the normal course–a full life of ‘three score and ten’. And beyond that there are some whom, because of their personal qualification and abilities, because of their contribution to our own lives and because of their importance to human society at large, we earnestly hope and pray will live to a ripe old age. Sadaputa prabhu falls very squarely into this latter category.

It is with great dismay, shock and lamentation then that we have face the loss of his association at the relatively young age of 61.

The work of a great man will touch the life of more people than he himself can know. It will edify, uplift and improve; it will set a foundation on which future generations can live a better quality of life; it will provide sustenance and positive direction to a multitude of souls. In Sanskrit such a person is called ‘mahatma’.

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September 11 2008

September 10 2008 — On a day that the media dubbed ‘Big Bang day’ scientists kicked off their experiments with the LHC, Large Hadron Collider, in Switzerland.

They are in pursuit of Higgs Boson, the so-called “God particle“, an assumed fundamental aspect of material nature present at the very beginning of the universe.

According to  an article written in December 2001 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1695390.stm] the most sought after object in particle physics, the Higgs boson, may not even exist:

“This is the astonishing conclusion of researchers at the Cern nuclear physics lab near Geneva who have just reviewed five years’ worth of data from experiments they thought would confirm the legendary particle’s role in the construction of the Universe. The Higgs, according to the Standard Model of particle physics, is the particle that explains why all others have mass. Its importance is so central to current thinking that some have even dubbed it the “God particle”. But the Cern researchers have told New Scientist magazine that studies in its giant accelerator which should have shown up the presence of the Higgs found absolutely nothing – and this could mean particle physics having to revisit some of its most cherished ideas.

Higgs ‘shadows’

If there is no Higgs, science will be left totally unable to explain mass.

Physicists at Cern used what was then the largest atom smasher in the world, the Large Electron Positron (Lep) collider, to search for the Higgs boson. The theory was that if atoms were hurtled into each other at high enough energies, the Higgs would eventually reveal itself in the sub-atomic rubble.Just before the Lep was due to be closed down and scrapped, one team declared last year that it was within a hair’s-breadth of identifying the Higgs – it had seen tantalizing “shadows” of something which could be the sought after particle.” 

It seems that despite this admittance the clever scientists managed to convince the governments of Europe to fork over the cash to build an even bigger collider than the LEP so that they could chase these shadows.

Thus, yesterday news reports featured leader of the project Dr. Lyn Evans launching the project with a click of his mouse button. Evan called the LHC “a discovery machine, the most sophisticated scientific instrument of our time,” that will “smash two beams of particles head-on at super-fast speeds, recreating the conditions in the Universe moments after the Big Bang.” 

According to the BBC:

“Scientists hope to see new particles in the debris of these collisions, revealing fundamental new insights into the nature of the cosmos.

Dr. Evans said while it was hoped it would give clues to the origins of the universe, they did not know exactly what results the £4.4bn experiment would provide.”

Note that: $10 billion and they don’t know what they will get.  Its not a bad job, chasing shadows…

Srila Prabhupada of course, was expert in exposing these masters of illusion.

In New Vrindaban in 1976 he told us a humorous story to illustrate the cheating of the scientists:

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Science was one of Srila Prabhupada’s favorite topics. I can hardly recall a single day without His Divine Grace making some comment about the cheating of material scientists and their headlong rush into ignorance.

From Chanakya Pandit das, Russia:

April 12 2008 Q1:Almost every day I see in Prabhupada’s books not simply a critics, but a machine gun burst directed at the so-called “scientists”.

Answer:

Yes, Srila Prabhupada held the material scientists responsible for misleading the whole world by propagating false theories of evolution etc. as ‘truth.’ He wasn’t against science per se, he was against the atheistic use of it to attack religion and spirituality.

Q2:

I would like to understand where from Shrila Prabhupada received this information about people engaged in science. I get an impression that this information came from his disciples, and they in their turn received it from mass media and had no direct contact with the sources of information. Is that a correct statement? Can you please confirm or disagree?

Ans:

He got a lot of his information from his scientist disciples like Svarupa Damodar, Sadaputa, Madhava etc. These men were all holding Ph.D degrees in biology, maths etc. so they knew very well from the inside what the theories were and how they were being used.

Q3:

Is the basis of critics of science the fact that they have sex, eat meat, drink wine and gamble? Why is there so little critics of businessmen, enterpreneurs and shudras – they are as well engaged in the same activities, if not more (drugs, prostitutes, casinos, murders of competitors etc.).

Ans:

The scientists especially mislead the world in education about matter being supreme. Sudras, vaisyas etc. are simply using the world but the so-called scientists are taking the position of brahmanas, setting themselves up as the most knowledgable persons, when their habits are of low class persons and do not reflect the culture of real thinkers and purified, realized men. Therefore Srila Prabhupada singled them out above others. Otherwise, Srila Prabhupada was also very critical of the fallen condition of society in general.

I can give many quotes, but here’s one I particularly like because it sums up the role the scientists play in arresting the natural evelvation of the soul:

[TD 3] July 3, 1976 – Washington, D.C. – conversation with BI scientists: 

Then he described how the soul qualifies itself for a particular type of body by its association with the modes of nature. If it comes to the human form it then has the chance, by association with goodness, to become a brahmana, and then a Vaisnava. “When you become Vaisnava, tad visnoh paramam padam sada pasyanti, you are hankering after Visnu. Then your life is success. And to keep them dull-brained, that is the greatest disservice. They have got the capacity to become a brahmana, and they are keeping him just like a dull-brained mountain and tree. That we want to stop this. It is suicidal, suicidal to the human society.
“The modern civilization, most harmful civilization. Denying the facility. One has got the capacity to become a brahmana, and they are denying the facility, to keep him to remain like hogs and dogs. Vedic civilization forbids: nayam deho deha-bhajam nrloke/ kastan kaman arhate vid-bhujam ye. If you have created a civilization like the hogs who are working day and night hard to find out some stool, and as soon as he eats some stool, his sex power is agitated, and he doesn’t care whether mother, sister or daughter. That is hog’s life, hog civilization, work day and night, and have sex. And next life become a dull-headed tree, a dull-headed stone, mountain, or dull-headed elephant. Who knows the laws of creation? How one becomes elephant? How one becomes hog? How one becomes a demigod? Do the scientists know it? Then? Where is the knowledge? The knowledge is, ‘Wait for million years, then you’ll see life.’ Just see.”
 

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