namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

by Tom Rooney, SPG Solar
Published: August 31, 2010

Conservatives, let’s talk about energy. And why so many conservatives are so wrong — so liberal, even — on wind and solar energy.

Let’s start with a recent editorial from the home of “free markets and free people,” the Wall Street Journal. Photovoltaic solar energy, quoth the mavens, is a “speculative and immature technology that costs far more than ordinary power.”

So few words, so many misconceptions. It pains me to say that because, like many business leaders, I grew up on the Wall Street Journal and still depend on it.

But I cannot figure out why people who call themselves “conservatives” would say solar or wind power is “speculative.” Conservatives know that word is usually reserved to criticize free-market activity that is not approved by well, you know who.

Today, around the world, more than a million people work in the wind and solar business. Many more receive their power from solar. Solar is not a cause, it is a business with real benefits for its customers.

Just ask anyone who installed their solar systems five years ago. Today, many of their systems are paid off and they are getting free energy. Better still, ask the owners of one of the oldest and most respected companies in America who recently announced plans to build one of the largest solar facilities in the country. That would be Dow Jones, owners of the Wall Street Journal.

Now we come to “immature.” Again, the meaning is fuzzy. But in Germany, a country 1/3 our size in area and population, they have more solar than the United States. This year, Germans will build enough solar to equal the output of three nuclear power plants. What they call immaturity our clients call profit-making leadership.

But let’s get to the real boogie man: The one that “costs far more than ordinary power.”

I’ve been working in energy infrastructure for 25 years and I have no idea what the WSJ means by the words “ordinary power.” But, after spending some time with Milton Friedman whom I met on many occasions while studying for an MBA at the University of Chicago, I did learn about costs.

And here is what every freshman at the University of Chicago knows: There is a difference between cost and price.

Solar relies on price supports from the government. Fair enough — though its price is falling even faster than fossil fuels are rising.

But if Friedman were going to compare the costs of competing forms of energy, he also would have wanted to know the cost of “ordinary energy.” Figured on the same basis. This is something the self-proclaimed conservative opponents of solar refuse to do.

But huge companies including Wall Mart, IBM, Target and Los Gatos Tomatoes figured it out. And last year so did the National Academy of Sciences. It produced a report on the Hidden Costs of Energy that documented how coal was making people sick to the tune of $63 billion a year.

And that oil and natural gas had so many tax breaks and subsidies that were so interwoven for so long, it was hard to say exactly how many tens of billions these energy producers received courtesy of the U.S. Taxpayer.

Just a few weeks ago, the International Energy Agency said worldwide, fossil fuels receive $550 billion in subsidies a year — 12 times what alternatives such as wind and solar get.

Neither report factored in Global Warming or the cost of sending our best and bravest into harm’s way to protect our energy supply lines.

Whatever that costs, you know it starts with a T. All this without hockey stick graphs, purloined emails or junk science.

When you compare the real costs of solar with the fully loaded real costs of coal and oil and natural gas and nuclear power, apples to apples, solar is cheaper.

That’s not conservative. Or liberal. That comes from an ideology older and more reliable than both of those put together: Arithmetic.

Filed under: Cows and Environment

http://xkcd.com/774/

Filed under: Jokes

I conducted a griha-pravesh ceremony yesterday, the ritual of entering a new home, and the householders very kindly presented me with a good quantity of fresh, sweet smelling jasmine flowers and a large pink lotus bud, just about to bloom. I was happy to have some exotic flowers to use in my daily puja, and I combined the ivory-coloured jasmine this morning with some bright orange calendula.

Srila Prabhupada was right when he quoted an old Indian maxim that: “You can buy anything in London – even tiger’s blood.” The idea behind the expression was that tiger’s blood was a commodity obviously difficult to acquire – yet even the most difficult things could be acquired in the British capital city. With many temples here in London, and thousands of worshipers who frequent them, the market for traditional flowers for offerings to the Deities has increased in the last few years.

Another increase for the worship of our Lord Krishna here in London just a couple of weeks ago was the offering of a new altar in our central London temple in the West End. After thirty years of one altar, and a slightly cramped configuration for the priests, the new double altar looks very attractive and is easier with a more traditional layout. You can see it here.

Pakoras (Traditional Indian Vegetable Fritters)

I first learnt how to make pakoras for the Sunday Feast at the Hare Krishna Temple in Cape Town. This little experience in pakora making got me recruited to make pakoras at the Grahamstown Festival in 1998. My experience was consolidated in Cape Town in December 1999 at the ‘Govinda’s Restaurant’during the World Parliament of Religions. The organizers asked the Hare Krishna’s to run the main restaurant since our food is compatible with the religious specifications of most religions. I was frying pakoras for 14 hours a day. By the second or third day I started to dream about the oil slowly starting to bubble in the wok! The following recipe is my version of Kurma’s pakora recipe from ‘Great Vegetarian Dishes’.

Batter (for about 40 pakoras)

3 cups chickpea flour
1 tbsp turmeric
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp kalonji seeds
1 tsp hing
1 tbsp chilli powder

Mix dry ingredients. Then add 2 cups of water to the mix. Stir with an egg-beater.

Take brinjal slices, butternut slices, potato slices, cauliflower flowerets, spinach leaves, jalapenos etc., dip in batter, and add to boiling oil. Remove from oil when reddish-golden colour. Test to see if the pakoras are soft enough with a knife. If the batter is cooking, but the pakoras are too hard, reduce the heat of the oil. If the batter is too runny, add chickpea flour. If the batter is too thick, add water. If the pakoras aren’t crispy enough, add a pinch of baking powder.

Serve with chatni.

Black Forest Cake (Eggless)

This recipe is from Srimati Dasi’s ‘Srimati’s Vegetarian Delights’. I was based at ISKCON Cape Town for ten years. I have heard a lot of the glories of her cooking and appreciate her devotional nature.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups (625ml) flour
3 tsp (15ml) baking powder
1/2 cup (125ml) butter
1 1/2 cups (375ml) sugar
1 tbsp (15ml) lemon juice
1 tsp (5ml) vanilla essence
1 cup (250ml) carob powder
1/4 cup (60ml) hot water
1 1/4 cup (310ml) milk

Method:

Sift the flour and baking powder together.

Cream the butter, sugar, lemon juice and vanilla in a separate bowl.

Make a paste with the carob powder and hot water. Add to the creamed mixture, along with the milk.

Fold all the ingredients together to form a thick batter. Divide the batter into 2 lightly greased 20cm cake tins. Bake in a preheated moderate oven at 180C for about 30mins or until firm.

Allow the cakes to cook before removing them from the tins.

Decoration:

2 tbsp (30 ml) strawberry jam)
1 cup (250 ml) fresh cream
1 tbsp (30 ml) sugar
1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla essence
Red cherries or strawberries
Grated carob

Sandwich the cake with strawberry jam.
Whip the cream, sugar and vanilla essence together to a soft peak stage.

Ice the cake with the cream. Decorate with red cherries or strawberries and carob as desired.

Panir

Panir is made when lemon juice or a similar ‘curdling agent’ (eg. tartaric acid) is added to boiling milk. The curdling agent curdles the milk, forming curds (solid, cheezy bits) and whey (a light green juice). Panir can be prepared in many ways – on kebabs, with spinach (palak panir) or a creamy tomato sauce (panir matar masala). Panir is considered a delicacy in India.

For every 2 litres of milk, use approximately 4 tbsp (60ml) lemon juice.
If you are using citric acid, use 1 tsp (5ml) in 1/3 cup (80ml) hot water.
1 cup yoghurt or 2 cup (500ml) sour whey.
Curd yield will be about 230g.

Method:

Bring the milk to a rolling boil. Slowly add the lemon juice. After a few moments the milk solids will start to separate. When the solids coagulate into a white cheeze and the whey can be clearly seen as a pale green liquid turn off the heat.

Line a colander with a cheeze cloth or a thin cotton cloth, and place over a large saucepan. Pour the curd and whey into the lined colander, and allow the whey to drain into the saucepan.

Gather up and twist the sides of the cloth containing the curd and place underneath a heavy weight. Press the curd for about 20mins.

Remove the cloth. Cut the panir/curd into small cubes.

“Krishna by His practical example taught us to give all protection to the cows and that should be the main business of New Vrindaban. Vrindaban is also known as Gokula. Go means cows, and kula means congregation. Therefore the special feature of New Vrindaban will be cow protection, and by doing so, we shall not be loser.”

Letter to Hayagriva 14 June 1968 (Montreal)

“Yes! Go on acquiring the surrounding lands and in this way we will establish a local self governing village and show all the world a practical example of spiritual life as Krsna Himself exhibited in Vrindavana. Agriculture and protecting cows, this is the main business of the residents of Vrindavan, and above all simply loving Krsna. The cows, the trees, the cowherd men and gopis, their chief engagement was loving Krsna, and in New Vrindavan we want to create this atmosphere and thereby show the whole world how practical and sublime our movement is.”

Letter from Srila Prabhupada to Kirtanananda Swami…27th July 1973

“You say we must have a gosala trust, that is our real purpose. krsi-goraksya-vanijyam vaisya karma svabhava-jam, [Bg 18.44]. Where there is agriculture there must be cows. That is our mission: Cow protection and agriculture and if there is excess, trade. This is a no-profit scheme. For the agriculture we want to produce our own food and we want to keep cows for our own milk. The whole idea is that we are ISKCON, a community to be independent from outside help. This farm project is especially for the devotees to grow their own food. Cotton also, to make their own clothes. And keeping cows for milk and fatty products.”

Letter to: Yasomatinandana — Vrindaban 28 November, 1976

“Prabhupada: Yes. Anyway, just inquire. These are our garden flowers.
Jayatirtha: Oh, very nice.
Prabhupada: This is also?
Bhagavan: Yes.
Prabhupada: Yes. Anything grown in the garden, that is hundred times valuable than it is purchased from the market.”

Room Conversation With French Commander — August 3, 1976, New Mayapur (French farm)

“Without protection of cows, brahminical culture cannot be maintained; and without brahminical culture, the aim of life cannot be fulfilled.”

Srimad-Bhagavatam Canto 8: Chapter Twenty-four, Text 5: PURPORT

“One cannot become spiritually advanced without acquiring the brahminical qualifications and giving protection to cows. “

Srimad-Bhagavatam Canto 6: Chapter Eighteen, Text 52:PURPORT

“The basic principle of economic development is centered on land and cows.”

SB 1.10.4

“Prabhupada: …They are interested with these bricks and stones, not green vegetables. Such a rascal government. Give them facility. We know how to do it. Annad bhavanti bhutani parjanyad anna-sambhavah, yajnad bhavati parjanyah [Bg. 3.14]. Let them engage in kirtana. There will be more water for gardening, and it will be moist, and then produce fodder for the animals and food for you. And animal gives you milk. That is Vrndavana life. And they are absorbed in this so-called opulence. Krsna has taken birth.

“They are bringing so many nice, pleasant foodstuff, very well-dressed and ornamented. These are description. In the morning we were reading. How they were happy, the inhabitants of Vrndavana with Krsna and living and cows. That I want to introduce. At any cost do it and… Don’t bother about big, big buildings. It is not required. Useless waste of time. Produce. Make the whole field green. See that. Then whole economic question solved. Then you eat sumptuous. Eat sumptuously. The animal is happy. The animal even does not give milk; let them eat and pass stool and urine. That is welcome. After all, eating, they will pass stool. So that is beneficial, not that simple milk is beneficial. Even the stool is beneficial.

“Therefore I am asking so much here and…, “Farm, farm, farm, farm…” That is not my program — Krsna’s program. Annad bhavanti bhutani [Bg. 3.14]. Produce greenness everywhere, everywhere. Vrndavana. It is not this motorcar civilization. If it has taken in his brain, then it is to be understood that he can do this plan. He’ll be able. “

Conversation Pieces — May 27, 1977, Vrndavana

Letter from Tamal Krsna Goswami, Secretary to Srila Prabhupada, to Hari Sauri Das, ISKCON Melbourne, August 10th, 1977 (sent from Krsna Balarama Mandir, Vrndavana):

“Srila Prabhupada always enjoys hearing from you as you have gained an eternal position at His Divine Grace’s lotus feet. Srila Prabhupada appreciated your opening prayers.

“Srila Prabhupada was most enlivened to hear the report of New Govardhana Farm. His Divine Grace in the last month or so has been stressing the importance of these farm projects, and said, “This is the next aspect of Krsna consciousness which I wish to push forward. If I am able to travel again, then I shall visit the farms and make them perfect. On these farms we can demonstrate the full varnasrama system. If these farms become successful then the whole world will be enveloped by Krsna consciousness.

“From your letter I can understand how nice this farm is. I am very happy to see fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, grains, the devotees taking sumptuous prasadam and chanting Hare Krsna. This is the actual meaning of human life. It is a very good farm, from your letter I can understand. Whatever you build, get the building materials locally. If you can manufacture tiles locally, then your house problem is solved. Build up bamboo frame, and on it place tiles. In any event get everything locally. I wish to make a farm tour and then I shall surely visit your farm.”

“I suggested to Srila Prabhupada that he was the Farm Acarya, but Srila Prabhupada said, “Krsna is the Farm Acarya. Baladeva is holding a plow, and Krsna is holding the calf. Krsna advised Nanda Maharaja not to perform Indra puja but to worship the land, Govardhana because it was supplying all foodstuffs for the residents of Vrndavana and the cows as well.” So Srila Prabhupada wants you to develop this farm very nicely as it will be the future program to present to the world as the ideal of Krsna consciousness. In the cities, we are interested for preaching but we cannot present the ideal varnasrama system, this is only possible at the farms, so they are very important.”

(end letter)

“TRANSLATION

“In My last birth I was born in the family of cowherd men, and I gave protection to the calves and cows. because of such pious activities, I have now become the son of a brahmana.

” PURPORT

“The words of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the greatest authority, herein clearly indicate that one becomes pious simply by keeping cows and protecting them. Unfortunately, people have become such rascals that they do not even care about the words of an authority. “

Adi-lila: Chapter Seventeen, Text 111

Filed under: Cows and Environment

Go here to see it on Youtube.

Having presented points of agreement with Professor Richard Dawkins, I am now going to present points of difference.

These are not in the area of evolutionary biology, which is Professor Dawkin's area of authority, and not mine, but rather in the area of metaphysical conclusions that Professor Dawkins presents, extending his research into other areas of human concern. In this area and these conclusions he is joined by other notable contemporary philosophers and rhetoricians such as Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens.

I will not quote their arguments verbatim, as I do not have access to all the literature to do so "chapter and verse". I will present the broad structure of their arguments, basing it mainly on the "Atheist Pocket Debater" app for iPhone - a preaching resource for secular humanists that is inspired by the thinking and argument of these modern exponents of scientific atheism.

The first argument that I will examine is the Argument of First Cause.

This argument states that the universe must have a cause, because something does not come from nothing, and therefore God must exist to have created it.

Dawkins rightly points out that arguing that something must have a cause, because nothing comes from nothing, actually argues against the existence of God.

If the universe must have come from somewhere, because nothing can come from nothing, then where does God come from? Nowhere?

Dawkins would say that positing the existence of God is simply removing the problem of origin of existence to the next level.

The response to this is to say that God is eternally existing, and has no beginning or end.

The extension of Dawkins' argument would be to say: "If you say that something cannot come from nothing, and you're going to say that something exists eternally, why not just say that the universe, which we can see does exist, is eternally existing, and has no need of a transcendent creator, who is a speculation from the empirical point of view?"

This is the application of Occam's razor, the scientific principle of choosing the simplest explanation when in doubt, to the First Cause Argument. This argument for the existence of God has the fatal weakness that Dawkins has pointed out and that I have expanded by applying Occam's razor. Dawkins and company like to use this refutation of the argument from First Cause as an argument against the existence of God, but it is a refutation of the First Cause argument, not a refutation of God's existence.

You cannot establish reality on the basis of argumentation, but you can influence what people think, and as a result what they do with their lives.

Now for where the Vedic school differs from this.

The First Cause Argument is not Vedic, and you will never hear me use it. According to the Vedic worldview, the manifested universe is eternal and beginningless (anadi). Whatever exists has always existed and will always exist. Whatever does not exist will never come into existence. Existence is eternal.

nasato vidyate bhavo
nabhavo vidyate satah
ubhayor api drishto 'ntas
tv anayos tattva-darsibhih

Those who are seers of the truth have concluded that of the nonexistent there is no endurance and of the eternal there is no change. This they have concluded by studying the nature of both.

- Bhagavad-gita 2/16

Sat means eternal. Bhavah means coming into being. That which is eternal does not come into being. That which comes into being does not exist.

So both the material universe and the Supreme Lord are eternally existing. There is no argument from First Cause for the existence of God in the Vedic worldview, because the Vedic worldview does not agree with the scientific perspective that this world came into existence from a previous state of non-existence. It's that point of agreement between Christian philosophy and modern science that gives rise to both the First Cause argument and its fatal flaw.

Just to elaborate on this Vedic idea of eternal existence and coming into being.

Just remaining within our immediate experience here - we can see that the material elements have persistence but manifestations of categories do not.

As an example, the elements of the material body have persistence - from dirt to plants, to bodies, to reproduction, to death, to dirt - the cycle of life uses and reuses the same elements, recycling them over and over again. Apparently at this point we all have some atoms in us that were in Shakespeare's body.

However, the material body itself is not persistent. The elements of your body do not have a beginning, but your body does. In the Vedic worldview this means that your body does not exist. It is like a shadow or the flicker of a candle. Does the "flicker of a candle" really exist, or is it merely the transient side effect of some other more substantial underlying manifestation - the flame?

The Vedic idea is that the body and the life we are now experiencing is like the "flicker of the candle", and that underlying it is a more substantial reality. Each of the material bodies is transient, however the underlying elements are persistent, and the "archetype", if you like, of the human body is also persistent, though not always manifested.

Just like I may have a cookie cutter and some cookie dough. With the cookie cutter I stamp out a gingerbread man. The gingerbread man is then eaten. He's gone. Temporary. However, with an unlimited supply of cookie dough (the persistent material elements), and the cookie cutter (the archetype of the form), the substance and the form are both be persistent while each manifestation is only the temporary coming together of the two.

In the same way, eternal elements combine together to give rise to a temporary manifestation - our body and our life in it. According to the Vedic world view this is as substantial as the temporary transient effect of the flickering of a candle.

If we focus on the temporary combination of the form and substance into the human body, and engross our consciousness in that, we find the sands of time slipping through our fingers, and the illusion is dispelled - the fog lifts, the clouds disperse, the candle flickers again, and it is all over.

The real use of this human form of life - the temporary coming together of the material elements, the archetypical form of the human body and mind, and our consciousness of that wave on the eternal ocean of becoming and unbecoming (bhava-sindhu), is to understand this and strive to understand our real nature:

What is it that is conscious of and experiencing this eternal ocean of becoming and unbecoming, of eternally temporary transformations of eternal matter?

Having attained this very rare form of human birth, we should make sure to realise its true worth by seeking after our eternal nature. Even if it turns out that there is nothing beyond an eternally existing universe and a temporary life as some chemicals thinking they are a person, as a materialist would argue, we have nothing to lose....

And the atheist's take on that argument, Pascal's wager, I will look at next.

In the meantime, you can read more about the First Cause Argument here.

Several months ago one of my youngest clients dropped a small metal object into the power point in the car fusing it completely; so this meant that I could no longer listen to my music on the iPhone nor charge it up whilst driving. Further highlighted when I was giving HH Mahavishnu Swami a lift [...]

Well I just finished my first week of graduate school, it was awesome, I am taking three classes, a philosophy of science class, a symbolic logic class and an introductory graduate philosophy seminar. As well as teaching three discussion sections of an introductory philosophy class.

I really like all my class and also really enjoyed teaching but unfortunately it means I have pretty serious amounts of reading and writing due every week, which I love but it means that I will definitely be posting here less frequently. I'll still try to post something regularly, hopefully at least once a week but I can't promise anything.

It is only the first week and things are already starting to get crazy. I'm not quite sure just how crazy things will get, but I think they will get pretty crazy as readings and papers start to pile up, on top of papers and tests to grade, and classes to teach, and somewhere in the middle of the semester our daughter will be born!!! Although things will be pretty crazy, especially this semester I love what I am doing.

I love reading philosophy, doing research and writing papers. It is like writing for my blog but I actually get paid for it. :)

Just started.

Listen to it live here: Kirtan Australia Internet Radio

I have been weeding, harvesting, planting fall crops, dehydrating, freezing, cooking tomatoes into freezable sauce, numerous non food producing projects, recuperating on the couch.

Repeat. I swing from very busy to very tired and not having enough energy to deal with everything.

The blog is suffering.

Filed under: Cows and Environment

Vicitravirya Das (front) leads a kirtan down a street in London

I wanted to write something about an old friend who passed away  just recently after a long illness. He was one of those friends whose life was inextricably intertwined with mine, such that many of the good decisions he made had repercussions upon my own, and lasting and beneficial effects on ISKCON here in Britain.

Vicitravirya Das heard Srila Prabhupada’s call way back in 1971, making him one of the earliest to join our fledgling movement here in the British Isles. He came from Cardiff , Wales, and worked as an industrial chemist, yet also had a successful and colourful alternative life as a singer in a soul band. He had a wide circle of friends who, by all accounts, looked up to him as a charismatic leader and a bit of a mystic. The young Ian Cheverton, as he was known then, used his musical abilities to publically sing mantras that he’d read in a book by another Indian guru. This was long before he met the first Krishna devotee, and heralded a long life of singing the Hare Krishna maha-mantra.

It wasn’t long after that Kulasekhara Das, the first English disciple of Srila Prabhupada, made the first Hare Krishna street procession in Cardiff. The long-haired (very long!) Ian was captivated and within days his long locks were gone and he joined the temple in London. Receiving the name Vicitravirya Das from his spiritual master, he began to take on responsibilities within the temple community and went out into the streets regularly to meet with the public and to sing the by now famous mantra.

However, quite early on, ‘Vitchy’ as he was always known by his friends, showed his intelligence in thoughtfully planning out new strategies to help the British public understand and appreciate our movement. At first glance the devotees could be easily mistaken for work-shy hippies with unusual haircuts and a penchant for cheesecloth shirts. They could also be misunderstood as a whimsical and slightly bizarre sect and consequently a danger to impressionable young people. Newspapers and magazines of the early 70′s had a field day with the Hare Krishnas as soon as the novelty of the devotees being friends with one of the Beatles had worn off. As the Beatles collectively faded from the attention of the media and the Top of the Pops fame was a dim memory, the devotees were on their own in the light of public scrutiny. Always confused with the Transcendental Meditation group, or any one of a number of new ‘eastern guru groups,’ we were routinely arrested while out on sankirtan or while distributing books. We needed some new thinking.

Vicitravirya was wonderfully inspirational in a temple kirtan, and could have the whole room wildly dancing. He was colourful and creative when acting in dramas, which he loved. But he was soft spoken, charming, persuasive and a thoroughly well-mannered gentleman when it came to dealing with the media and government institutions. He saw the need for a group so misunderstood as ours to cultivate good relationships with journalists. In a world where most people believed what they read in the newspapers he knew the value of explaining the facts to an influential national columnist or a story-hungry local hack. And so he created lines of communication which helped reporters to write about what we were really doing, and to not be tempted to craft a lurid story for cheap titillation. By thinking in this way, Vitchy set down a pattern that helped us greatly over the years, and one that has survived to the present day.

The British Government’s Charity Commission is the body which supervises the activities of all altruistic organisations in the country. These organisations are what is known in the USA as ‘not for profit’ and the Government monitors charities to ensure that they are performing the charitable activites for which they were initially registered. Religions are understood by the government to be doing valuable work because, in general, they encourage their followers to carry out good deeds for others and this welfare work is valuable in alleviating suffering, which is naturally a concern of the Government. In return, the registered charities are given tax benefits. Yet when some groups, founded upon eastern texts, seemed to be neither helping British society nor their own followers very much, and when the notion of  ‘dangerous mind-snapping cults’ came to this country via America, it was important to reassure the British Government that ISKCON – although ostensibly similar in shape – was quite different in its modus operandi. Unfortunately we did have our own ‘cultic’ and at times foolish behaviour, not uncommon in groups of zealous new converts, and Vitchy would often have to have long phone calls or write detailed explanatory letters in order to extract our young movement from some tangle or other.

That is not to say that he would compromise with either the teachings or our basic values in order to gain the approbation of the establishment. He was very firm in communicating both of them to whoever needed to hear. Its just that he was an expert in sounding like a member of the establishment while he was doing it, someone people could trust – and consequently they did.

Vicitravirya performed another service to ISKCON in this country for which he deserves to be remembered. He successfully organised teams of book distributors and provided for their needs by creating a fleet of vehicles that became their travelling homes as they criss-crossed the country. In 1976 he organised the most successful ‘Christmas Marathon’ event that resulted in the UK distributing more books than any country in the world – a coveted prize in the Hare Krishna world! His calm and reassuring presence back at the headquarters enabled many devotees to feel they were part of a caring and developing organisation.

Vitchy’s long-lasting and equally valuable contribution to our movement’s sustainability was his outreach to London’s Indian community. He knew that Srila Prabhupada had already indicated that the 100,000 Hindus in the British Isles might, if they were approached respectfully, wish to contribute to the aims of a struggling young mission dedicated to Lord Krishna. Vicitravirya gave shape to that suggestion of his spiritual master and requested devotees to set up the very first Indian community preaching office. He saw to its development and had the vision which saw the first Janmashtami festival at the Manor attract a grand total of 250 people of Indian background. Both the festival and the community have never looked back since that day. He said that he thought it was a good idea that Srila Prabhupada’s movement was running on ‘two tracks’ in the UK – the book distribution and outreach to those who knew nothing of Krishna, and the outreach to those who had been brought up to respect Krishna and the Vaishnava tradition. Looked at now from 2010 it is an obvious idea – but someone had to do it.

During Srila Prabhupada’s last visit to Bhaktivedanta Manor in 1977 – the final visit to any of his western temples – the idea was that he would continue his journey to the USA where thousands of disciples were waiting to meet him. It was not to be. During his time at the Manor he asked Vicitravirya to arrange for his return to Vrindavan.

I pray that my godbrother’s service in this life has already resulted in Srila Prabhupada’s arranging for his own return to the eternal Vrindavan where Vicitravirya can now sing forever. Hare Krishna.

Here are some really interesting quotes from Simone Weil's The Need for Roots, which is spiritual commentary on the political and economic systems of socialism and capitalism. Some of these quotations are really astounding because this is in many ways the essence of the teachings of the Bhagavad-gita, and the foundation of the whole Vedic social system.

Simone Weil talks about rebuilding a civilization founded on the spirituality of work. I recently had a an insight that was really simple but I think also somewhat profound, the reason this is so important is because every one works! How do we spend the vast majority of our life? Working! In some form or another we are all constantly acting. As Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita, one cannot even maintain their physical body without work.

The idea of the spirituality of work was so deeply ingrained in the traditional Vedic society. The most important hymn in the Vedas is the Purusa Sukta, the prayer to the Supreme Person. In the Purusa Sukta it is described how the different occupation orders, varnas, constitute the body of the supreme person or the the different varnas emanate from the body of the supreme person. For someone steeped in Vedic culture and thought executing their occupational duty, or their moral duty, was literally a participation in the divine, it was their connection to God.

I think Simone Weil in her mature analysis of the social and political issues facing Western culture hit the nail on the head with her diagnosis and I think the Vedic culture, and especially the Vaisnava traditions, can provide the theology and culture that could truly support a new form of civilization founded upon the "spirituality of work."

Here are the quotes from Simone Weil:

"A happy young woman expecting her first child, and busy sewing a layette, thinks about sewing it properly. But she never forgets for an instant the child she is carrying inside her. At precisely the same moment, somewhere in a prison workshop, a female convict is also sewing, thinking, too, about sewing properly, for she is afraid of being punished. One might imagine both women to be doing the same work at the same time, and having their attention absorbed by the same technical difficulties. And yet a whole gulf of difference lied between one occupation and the other. The whole social problem consists in making the workers pass from one to the other of the these two occupational extremes."

"Our age has its own particular mission, or vocation-the creation of a civilization founded upon the spiritual nature of work."

"The contemporary form of greatness lies in a civilization founded upon the spirituality of work."

"A civilization based upon the spirituality of work would give to the Man the very strongest possible roots in the wide universe and would consequently be the opposite of that state in which we find ourselves now, characterized by an almost total uprootedness. Such a civilization is, therefore, by its very nature the object to which we should aspire as the antidote to our sufferings."

Several years ago I helped a struggling devotee out, he had no were to live, no means to support himself and was under pressure to store things from his recently failed marriage. A van was hired and we traveled down and picked his belongings up that was nearly four years ago. When I first looked [...]

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest - whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories - comes afterwards. These are games."


Those are the opening words of Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus and could be taken as a good summary of existentialism with its focus on the experience of the individual rather than abstract philosophical systems, and an atheist existentialist the prime question to answer is "What is the purpose of life if there is no God?" and "If there is no God why shouldn't I commit suicide?"

Any philosophy that looks at human life without reference to God or anything transcendent runs into the obvious risk of degenerating suicidal nihilism. Certainly the burden of proof is on the atheist to prove that atheism is not nihilistic. And nihilism taken to its logical conclusion is suicide. Camus address the question this way "Does logic command me to commit suicide?"

Suicide is then the obvious challenge that the atheist must answer to.

But I find Camus' answer to the question less than compelling.

His answer is rebellion or revolt, which is acknowledging "the certainty of a crushing fate, with the resignation that ought to accompany it."

Somehow rebelling against our crushing fate (death) makes life meaningful. It really escapes me if life doesn't really have any meaning and if death is the end of everything and ultimately there is no meaning or purpose to anyhow how rebellion makes an otherwise meaningless life meaningful, maybe he wouldn't say meaningful but he would say that rebellion is better than suicide.

Camus exalts pride. "The sight of human pride is unequalled," he tells us. As if pride and defiance have some meaning, but how could they in a world devoid of meaning and purpose.

The words that he chooses, rebellion and revolt, are interesting and to me they only make sense in the context of a theistic worldview. Who is there to rebel against? If there is no God there is there no one to rebel against.

The book is titled after the greek legend of Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to roll a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down for the rest of eternity. Camus imagines, and wants us to imagine, that Sisyphus can rebel against his fate, and he can be happy despite the divine retribution upon him.

In the case of Sisyphus rebellion makes some sense because he is rebelling against the gods who have condemned him to his eternal punishment. In our case, supposing there is no God and that we are just here for a short span of time and will soon be dead forever, what meaning is there to a rebellion. One might suggest rebellion as a way of dealing with the despair that might accompany knowledge of our immanent destruction, but that is different from proposing rebelling a way out of the logical conclusion that if there is no God there is no reason not to kill myself.

So to answer the original question, "Does logic command us to commit suicide?"

I think in the end Camus fails to show that we are not commanded by logic to commit suicide.

And I don't think any atheist has ever or will ever be ever to show this, for without God there is no logical reason not to commit suicide.

Of course as biological organisms we have self-preservation instincts and as with all other animals and we can find non-logical reasons, ie. reproduction, to not commit suicide but when looking at atheism as a philosophical system we want to know if it provides a logical reason not to commit suicide. Maybe we don't need a logical reason but that is different discussion. I've heard some atheists make the argument that we have instincts to be good, to be moral, to treat other people with kindness, compassion, respect, etc and we don't need a reason to be "good." And in a similar way maybe we don't need a reason to lead a meaningful life. Maybe that is true, maybe it isn't, but either way that is a different discussion.

In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus attempts to show that logic doesn't command us to commit suicide, but I think he fails to do so.

Fate of Universe revealed by galactic lens
By Howard Falcon-Lang
Science reporter

The huge galactic cluster known as Abell 1689 acted as a cosmic magnifying glass. A “galactic lens” has revealed that the Universe will probably expand forever.

Astronomers used the way that light from distant stars was distorted by a huge galactic cluster known as Abell 1689 to work out the amount of dark energy in the cosmos.

Understanding the distribution of this force revealed that the likely fate of the Universe was to keep on expanding.

It will eventually become a cold, dead wasteland, researchers say.

The study, conducted by an international team led by Professor Eric Jullo of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, is published in the journal Science.

Dark energy makes up three-quarters of our Universe but is totally invisible. We only know it exists because of its effect on the expansion of the Universe.

To work out how dark energy is spread through space, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the way that light from distant stars was distorted around Abell 1689, a nearby cluster of galaxies.

Abell 1689, found in the constellation of Virgo, is one of the biggest galactic clusters known to science.

Light bends around massive galaxy clusters, allowing distant objects to be seen

Because of its huge mass, the cluster acts as a cosmic magnifying glass, causing light to bend around it.

The way in which light is distorted by this cosmic lens depends on three factors: how far away the distant object is; the mass of Abell 1689; and the distribution of dark energy.

The astronomers were able to measure the first two variables using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, enabling them to calculate this crucial third factor.

Cold comfort

Knowing the distribution of dark energy tells astronomers that the Universe will continue to get bigger indefinitely.

Eventually it will become a cold, dead wasteland with a temperature approaching what scientists term “absolute zero”.

My take on the above:

I am shivering already! (not)

> Professor Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale University, a leading cosmologist and
> co-author of this study, said that the findings finally proved “exactly what
> the fate of the Universe will be”.

LOL, At least the fate of the Universe until Vishnu stops exhaling and starts inhaling. :-)

Jagad-anda-nathah means… Jagad-anda means universe. In each universe there is a natha, or the supervisor, or the manager, or the supreme person. Just like for management we are. Similarly, in each universe there is Lord Brahma. He is the supreme creature, manager. So these managers live only to that period when Maha-Visnu exhales. When the nisvasita-kalam. Just like we exhale and inhale, so… But exhaling the all these universes are created, and at His inhale they go into the Maha-Visnu, in the… The coming and going.

Srimad-Bhagavatam 3.25.37 — Bombay, December 6, 1974

> Dark energy is a mysterious force that speeds up the expansion of the
> Universe.

Oooh! So mysterious!  Although Europeans often misinterpreted the Lakota word “Wakan Tanka” as “Great Spirit” it is more properly translated as “Great Mystery”.

“O supreme great one! O Supreme Personality of Godhead! O Supersoul, master of all mystic power! Your pastimes are taking place continuously in these three worlds, but who can estimate where, how and when You are employing Your spiritual energy and performing these innumerable pastimes? No one can understand the mystery of how Your spiritual energy acts.”

SB 10.14.21

Filed under: Science

We need a "no mercy" harinam program. ;-)

I thought this was a funny carton, just a note for all my friends out there, beware unemployment is going up and things are going to get much much worse for the economy, stocks are going to be losing their value, cash savings are going to be losing their value, if you do have money in either of these things I would suggest getting it out and putting it into precious metals. Now is not a time to spend money on any unnecessary luxuries. Save whatever money you can, because things are going to be rough for quite a while here in the US. Ultimately these things are not important but if you live in the material world you have to be aware of these types of things and take the necessary precautions.

The other day I was talking to a college of mine and they were noting the amount of divorces recently, as I left my phone went and it was a friend of mine saying that they felt the marriage was ending after a long time. Then during a visit to another friend they were also [...]

Note: My "Devotional Dawkins" series of posts is not designed to prove or even assert the factual correctness of either Dawkins' Darwinian narrative or the Vedic worldview narrative. Its purpose is to demonstrate that there are significant points of congruence between the two. Caveat Lector. And on with today's post...

It is often thought clever to say that science is no more than our modern origin myth. The Jews had their Adam and Eve, the Sumerians their Marduk and Gilgamesh, the Greeks Zeus and the Olympians, the Norsemen their Valhalla. What is evolution, some smart people say, but our modern equivalent of gods and epic heroes, neither better nor worse, neither truer nor falser? There is a fashionable salon philosophy called cultural relativism which holds, in its extreme form, that science has no more claim to truth than tribal myth: science is just the mythology favored by our modern Western tribe. I once was provoked by an anthropologist colleague into putting the point starkly, as follows: Suppose there is a tribe, I said, who believe that the moon is an old calabash tossed into the sky, hanging only just out of reach above the treetops. Do you really claim that our scientific truth — that the moon is about a quarter of a million miles away and a quarter the diameter of the Earth — is no more true than the tribe's calabash? “Yes,” the anthropologist said. “We are just brought up in a culture that sees the world in a scientific way. They are brought up to see the world in another way. Neither way is more true than the other.”

Show me a cultural relativist at thirty thousand feet and I'll show you a hypocrite. Airplanes built according to scientific principles work. They stay aloft, and they get you to a chosen destination. Airplanes built to tribal or mythological specifications, such as the dummy planes of the cargo cults in jungle clearings or the beeswaxed wings of Icarus, don't. If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there — the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field — is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sums right.

- River out of Eden, Richard Dawkins, p. 31-32

A nice example of Richard Dawkins doing what he does best - arguing in a cogent, entertaining, memorable and widely-accessible way.

In my copy of the audio book, which Richard Dawkins personally narrates, he goes on to say:

This is not the first time I have used this knock-down argument, and I must stress that it is aimed strictly at people who think like my colleague of the calabash. There are others who, confusingly, also call themselves cultural relativists, although their views are completely different, and perfectly sensible. To them, cultural relativism just means that you cannot understand a culture if you try to interpret its beliefs in terms of your own culture. You have to see each of the culture's beliefs in the context of the culture's other beliefs. I suspect this sensible form of cultural relativism is the original one, and that the one I've criticised is an extremist, though alarmingly common perversion of it. Sensible relativists should work harder to distance themselves from the fatuous kind.

I don't agree with all of Richard Dawkins' conclusions, but I do admire his intellectual rigour, his clarity, and his intellectual honesty.

Dawkins will lay the "cultural relativist smack" down hard when he feels he needs to - for example in the video below. This use of the argument is public debate, so it's more populist than the carefully measured argument he makes above.

What he is doing here, pre-emptively I must add, is defusing what he perceives as an attempt to inject another cultural context into the conversation he is having within the cultural context of modern science. You hear the murmuring of the crowd when the question is asked? That's Dawkin's signal to go on the offensive to keep the crowd (and note the rock star applause he gets at the end - classic). However, we can see from the above statement that he is not opposed in principle, and in fact thinks it a good idea, to analyse cultural belief systems as a gestalt - a complete whole.

This sensible approach to understanding an unfamiliar system of thought is echoed in A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada's introduction to his commentary on Bhagavad-gita, called Bhagavad-gita As It Is:

So according to the statements of Bhagavad-gita or the statements of Arjuna, the person who is trying to understand the Bhagavad-gita, we should at least theoretically accept Sri Krishna as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and with that submissive spirit we can understand the Bhagavad-gita. Unless one reads the Bhagavad-gita in a submissive spirit, it is very difficult to understand Bhagavad-gita, because it is a great mystery.

- Bhagavad-gita As It Is, Bhagavad-gita As It Is

"Submissive" in this sense means suspending critical analysis of the work until all the pieces of the work and their relationship have been grasped, and the work can be considered and critiqued as an integral whole. Readers of Bhagavad-gita who attempt to analyse it piecemeal, without comprehending the gestalt, will be defeated in their attempt to understand it.

I know this, because that is what happened to me. I read through the first three chapters of the book without any problem, but when I hit the fourth chapter, and read a statement that the Bhagavad-gita had been extant in human society for 120 million years, I put the book down, saying: "This is ridiculous". That statement, admittedly, is not in the original text, but is in Prabhupada's comment on a text.

Some time later, by associating with persons who had grokked the metaphysical system expounded in Bhagavad-gita, I was able to again study the work and gain some comprehension of the overall system that it presented.

There is some debate today among students of Bhagavad-gita As It Is as to the effectiveness of Prabhupada's commentary in the contemporary context. Personally I think it is a double-edged sword. Some people find it very beneficial in helping them to understand the Bhagavad-gita, as do I now. In my case, however, the commentary initially ejected me from the book. I find a commentary such as that provided by Swami B.V. Tripurari, Bhagavad-gita, Its Feeling and Philosophy to be more initially accessible, and the one that I would probably recommend for a first read to friends who are intimately familiar with the ins and outs of Dawkins' world view, written as it is with them in mind.

Swami BV Tripurari is a student of Srila Prabhupada, one who has studied Bhagavad-gita As It Is in depth, and produced a commentary in which he wanted to (and I feel he succeeded) preserve the intent of Prabhupada's commentary, while making it more digestible for an audience coming from a modern scientific background, and perhaps lacking the close personal association that made Bhagavad-gita As It Is accessible to me.

My own teacher, Devamrita Swami, frames his presentation of the Bhagavad-gita's metaphysical system, Perfect Escape, in a similar way. I am paraphrasing here from memory, as I do not have the book to hand:

[Update: I located my copy, and it is now verbatim. One thing to note is that the target audience for this argument, and the book itself, are not those influenced by Dawkins, but rather those influenced by 'new age' concepts]

Often contemporary seekers of spirituality look askance at spiritual texts from another era. "Why trouble yourself with the dry bones of previous millennia?" they say. "Those books had value for people then, but not now! All you need for your enlightenment is right there within yourself - here and now. The book is a dead artifact from someone else's distant past, but you are the living truth, at this ever-present moment."

I would like to point out that you can only be aware of something through consciousness - your consciousness. Whether that object seems to be of the past, present, or future, it is, in effect, of your consciousness at the present moment. So there is no need to try to isolate yourself from spiritual classics by artificially exporting them to a lifeless Siberia, a barren terrain "outside of consciousness: commonly known as "the past". Just as you are here, now, so is this transcendental text... why not see if there is some advantage to acknowledging the book's presence - in a reality, of course, that can only be known as you and of you?

- Devamrita Swami, Perfect Escape, p.2

The structure and intent of the argument is the same - the idea is to suspend judgement until the whole picture has been assembled, then treat it as a complete whole.

So in terms of how this information should be approached, as a gestalt - Dawkins and our Vedic spokesman, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada are in agreement.

I don't think that fundamentalist Creationists would be so intellectually liberal as to allow for that. My experience of critiques of both Dawkins and Bhagavad-gita by persons who subscribe to Creationism as a doctrine is that in a majority of cases they have not understood either as a complete whole, but rather try to poke holes in pieces of them, taken out of context. Ted Haggard's statement about the "eye or ear forming accidentally" in Dawkin's video "Root of all Evil" is a classic example of this.

So on this point, I call 100% congruence.

The Royal Opera House in London with the arched glass frame of the Paul Hamlyn Hall to the left

I conducted a wedding yesterday in the glass-domed Paul Hamlyn Hall of the Royal Opera House in London. Superb location with, as one might expect in such a venue, excellent acoustics. Around 300 in attendance. At the height of the ceremonies, at the purna-huti of the fire sacrifice, to have hundreds enthusiastically singing the Hare Krishna mantra was an unexpected pleasure.

Earlier, while waiting for the groom to arrive on a white horse, surrounded by dancers and drummers, I was standing barefoot on the pavement outside. I looked across Bow Street to the police station and law courts on the other side. This is the very street where London’s first professional police force began back in 1749, in response to the area having become a red-light district with theives and vagabonds of all sorts.

Back in 1975, at the tender age of 19, I was regularly being escorted by the long arms of the law into the narrow confines of the holding cells of the Bow Street police station. Selling my spiritual master’s books or singing through the streets with clay drums and cymbals was still considered quite a problem by the police. Many Monday mornings were spent lining up with ladies of the night and hawkers to receive a short hearing and a £5 fine from the magistrates.

Less than 40 years later and the police would not think of arresting us for singing and dancing in the streets of London. Indeed, so acclimatised has London become to the sight and sound of the devotees that now they even make jigsaw puzzles for tourists featuring all the ‘traditional sights’ of London: the red buses, the black cabs – and the orange Hare Krishnas. And here I am singing the same songs inside the Royal Opera House.

After two hours of explanatory talks, rituals, and the chanting of Sanskrit mantras, I rested for a while high up on the terrace of the Opera House. There is a commanding view of London from up here, including the old Covent Garden Market. From the 1600s up until 1974 it was a thriving fruit and vegetable market where, in the early morning hours, traders would sell their fresh wares brought in overnight from the English countryside.

It was here, when as a 16 year-old spiritual seeker, I slept on the back of a flat-bed lorry, on a truckload of newly-dug potatoes, having hitched a ride the night before all the way from my home in Newark, Nottinghamshire. For me, London was the place where I could explore all the many ways of being that I had read about in books, and meet spiritual practitioners who could advise me. If only that 16 year-old boy could have looked up from the vegetables, up to the roof of the Royal Opera House, and seen his much older self looking down. I would have told him a thing or two, and helped him along his spiritual path.

Note: My "Devotional Dawkins" series of posts is not designed to prove or even assert the factual correctness of either Dawkins' Darwinian narrative or the Vedic worldview narrative. Its purpose is to demonstrate that there are significant points of congruence between the two. Caveat Lector. And on with today's post...

One popular strategy of (so-called) "Intelligent Design" advocates is to produce examples that they say prove that biological life forms must be top-down designed, rather than emergent from simple principles.

These examples show the unmistakable intervention of some supernatural power they claim.

Dawkins and other evolutionary biologists do not accept that these examples disprove the evolution of life forms over time in response to environmental pressures and opportunities. Dawkins says that when our ingenuity is unable to divine the evolutionary path taken by a particular adaptation, "so much the worse for our ingenuity" [1].

I put "so-called" in parentheses before the identifier "Intelligent Design" advocates because the Vedic worldview would see occurrences of anomalies in biological design, that which cannot be explained by the normal operation of the universe according to simple fundamental principles (dharma), as evidence of bad (unintelligent) design.

According to the Vedic version:

And yet everything that is created does not rest in Me. Behold My mystic opulence! Although I am the maintainer of all living entities and although I am everywhere, I am not a part of this cosmic manifestation, for My Self is the very source of creation.

- Bhagavad-gita 9.5

In his purport to this verse, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada explains further (my emphasis added in bold):

The Lord says that everything is resting on Him (mat-sthani sarva-bhutani). This should not be misunderstood. The Lord is not directly concerned with the maintenance and sustenance of this material manifestation. Sometimes we see a picture of Atlas holding the globe on his shoulders; he seems to be very tired, holding this great earthly planet. Such an image should not be entertained in connection with Krishna's upholding this created universe. He says that although everything is resting on Him, He is aloof. The planetary systems are floating in space, and this space is the energy of the Supreme Lord. But He is different from space. He is differently situated. Therefore the Lord says, "Although they are situated on My inconceivable energy, as the Supreme Personality of Godhead I am aloof from them." This is the inconceivable opulence of the Lord.

In the Nirukti Vedic dictionary it is said, yujyate 'nena durghateshu karyeshu: "The Supreme Lord is performing inconceivably wonderful pastimes, displaying His energy." His person is full of different potent energies, and His determination is itself actual fact. In this way the Personality of Godhead is to be understood. We may think of doing something, but there are so many impediments, and sometimes it is not possible to do as we like. But when Krishna wants to do something, simply by His willing, everything is performed so perfectly that one cannot imagine how it is being done. The Lord explains this fact: although He is the maintainer and sustainer of the entire material manifestation, He does not touch this material manifestation. Simply by His supreme will, everything is created, everything is sustained, everything is maintained, and everything is annihilated. There is no difference between His mind and Himself (as there is a difference between ourselves and our present material mind) because He is absolute spirit. Simultaneously the Lord is present in everything; yet the common man cannot understand how He is also present personally. He is different from this material manifestation, yet everything is resting on Him. This is explained here as yogam aisvaram, the mystic power of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

So the universe is not a poorly designed, high maintenance creation, requiring supernatural intervention to keep it running, according to both Dawkins and the Vedic worldview. It is a perfectly integrated autonomous system. You will not find a telling lick of touch-up paint somewhere, no lick-and-stick patchwork, no smoking gun indicating a last minute divine intervention to get a particularly tricky piece of biology to work. In fact, Vedic worldview-subscribers would probably become atheists out of disappointment if such a thing did turn up - what kind of imperfect design would that be?

No, according to the Vedic worldview, and to Dawkins, it's all working perfectly and automatically- and that's real Intelligent Design. Krishna can hit a hole in one from a trillion years away using nothing but a space-time continuum and a handful of cosmic constants.

Congruence on this point with Dawkins: 100%
Congruence on this point with "Intelligent Design" advocates: 0

[1] River out of Eden, Richard Dawkins

Note: My "Devotional Dawkins" series of posts is not designed to prove or even assert the factual correctness of either Dawkins' Darwinian narrative or the Vedic worldview narrative. Its purpose is to demonstrate that there are significant points of congruence between the two. Caveat Lector. And on with today's post...

(W)aged against Dennett, Dawkins and Wilson, are an alliance of creationists, religious fundamentalists, church-goers and rightwing politicians, as well as a rump of scientists who include the US biologist Richard Lewontin, the UK academic Steve Rose, of the Open University, and Stephen Jay Gould, the late palaeontologist and science populariser... Hostilities can be traced to the publication of Wilson's theory of sociobiology 30 years ago. In it, Wilson argues that the make-up of society has a strong genetic component, a controversial notion to say the least.

- "Great minds united in an ungodly trio", Guardian UK

Come on, how can anyone in ISKCON seriously join a crusade against this? This stuff is old school HK smackdown - pure gold!

Hippie: "Surfing is so spiritual, man"
Dawkins: "No it's not - it's an extended phenotype, in other words: sex life."
Classic music appreciator: "Well Bach's music is definitely spiritual"
Dawkins: "Nope, sex life."

According to Dawkins (and Vedic fundamentalists) human society is based on sex life - all material human activities (and most so-called spiritual ones) are genetically (ie: "sex life" in the contemporary Vedic lexicon) based.

The extended phenotype is Dawkins principle contribution to evolutionary science. It is the idea that genes, in their "struggle" for survival, not only influence the biological tissue of the organism, but also its behaviour. It's kind of obvious when you think about it, but the implications are profound.

Non-Vedic-worldview subscribers are very disturbed when the material world, including human society, are reduced to mere genetic ("material" in the Vedic lexicon) status. However, this meshes perfectly with the Vedic worldview's relative assessment of this world. We have a desire to be more than that, because ultimately we are. But I'm sorry, according to both Dawkins and the Vedas, this world is a deterministic one, and we are largely spectators of the interplay of genes as they move through different survival machines.

Once in the body (collection of genes) of a dog, you are forced to live and act as a dog. Humans are another case of this among millions, nay billions of species - not an exception.

The Vedic worldview does offer that humans have the potential to aspire to more than this however, as Dawkins confirms in The Selfish Gene:

So far, I have not talked much about man in particular, though I have not deliberately excluded him either. Part of the reason I have used the term 'survival machine' is that 'animal' would have left out plants and, in some people's minds, humans. The arguments I have put forward should, prima facie, apply to any evolved being. If a species is to be excepted, it must be for good particular reasons. Are there any good reasons for supposing our own species to be unique? I believe the answer is yes.

- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

This brings Richard in short shrift to a discussion of the "God meme":

Consider the idea of God. We do not know how it arose in the meme pool.

- Richard Dawkins, ibid

Richard Dawkins' views on God and religion are another huge motivation for the crusade against him. I would like to point out at this point the very first point that A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, our spokesman for the Vedic worldview, makes in his Srimad Bhagavatam commentary:

The conception of God and the conception of Absolute Truth are not on the same level.

- A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Srimad Bhagavatam Introduction

Richard Dawkins has not commented extensively, or even at all to my knowledge, on the Vedic worldview, especially its metaphysic. I know how Richard responds to generic religious tradition, or religions with which he is not familiar. He would say something along the lines of: "Well, I could say that you have to believe in the Jabberwocky of the mountain." I know this from studying his public debates, and from debating students of his books.

Dawkins has dealt a significant (some would say fatal) blow to much of Western religion (most of which actually has its roots in the Middle East) and its philosophy. While discussing with students of his thinking I found that they would often cast my presentations of the Vedic world view as another religion in the same vein, and then tilt away with great vigour using the same arguments and lines of reasoning that Dawkins has so effectively used to demolish the rational and empirical underpinnings of Western faith.

However, in doing that they missed the opportunity to discover something unique and valuable in the Vedic worldview. You see, I myself found the Western religious traditions to be lacking in empirical and intellectual rigour, well before Professor Dawkins was on my radar screen. That is not to say that I find them without value, and I know that Professor Dawkins recognises great value within them as well, although we might differ on exactly which aspects of them we find valuable.

In the Vedic world view, however, we find a metaphysic without comparison - one which easily accommodates Dawkins' empirical analysis, agrees with it, and encapsulates it within a wider metaphysical perspective.

Don't get me wrong - the Vedic tradition and its religious aspect are full of "Jabberwockies", and not just one God, but 33 million of them for Dawkins to tilt at if he wishes. But behind that, carried within that cultural covering, is an incredible metaphysical system. It is impossible to know with certainty the precise historical path that lead to its arrival to us today, wonderfully encapsulated in a rich, colourful cultural package - and I totally appreciate the cultural aspects of it, replete as they are with Dungeons and Dragon-type imagery, complete with magic-thread-wearing spell-casters summoning demons from fire. For someone who has a soft spot for the odd Amon Amarth video, and who once considered the Dungeon Masters Guide as essential reading, the Srimad Bhagavatam was really a no-brainer (the web version doesn't hold a candle in this respect to the printed version, with its Devanagari script and amazing pictures).

However, the cultural context and background of the Bhagavatam should not distract us from or blind us to the metaphysical system that it presents. The trappings of Vedic culture, a human culture subject to the same analysis as any human culture, should not eclipse or obscure the unique value that is to be found in the Vedic metaphysical philosophy, laid out in the Upanishads, and summarised in the Vedanta-sutra (and its "natural" - read then-culturally relevant - commentary the Srimad Bhagavatam), and the Bhagavad-gita (also known as the Gitopanisad for its Upanishadic synthesis).

There are plenty of Jabberwockies for Dawkins and his students to invoke and tilt at in the Vedic tradition, but this misses the point.

At its core, empirically the Vedic metaphysical system agrees with Dawkins' observations and conclusions, and provides additional information.

Again, my point is not to prove or even assert the factual nature of either Dawkins' or the Vedic worldview, merely to point out points of congruence.

So to return to the original point: on Wilson's initial barrage that started the war with the religious right - the idea that human society is majorly a product of the deterministic laws of material nature, I call 100% congruence.

Firstly can I apologize for the lack of class postings from my visits to The Manor, there has been a software problem with my iPhone syncing with the nFinity QuickVoice recorder I have been using and the patch sadly does not work. In my senior IT head I forgot a simple rule, the software on [...]