By Jaganmohini devi dasi

On Nov. 28th, 2014, disciples, students, scholars and well-wishers of H.H. Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Swami Srila Sripada will be celebrating 77th Vyasa-puja of maharaj. They will be remembering Srila Sripada maharaj as a multifaceted saintly personality and thus glorify him for his unique contribution as a scientist, as a saint, as an educationist, as a writer, as a singer, as a poet, as an instrumentalist and a cultural & peace ambassador.

Amongst his diverse contributions, what stands apart is his single personality as a Scientist and Saint and his significant role of promoting dialogue on 'Science and Religion' with top scientists of the world who were called as 'Stars of Science' by Srila Sripada maharaj himself.

On this auspicious occasion, for the pleasure of his well-wishers, we are presenting below his lectures excerpts that give us a glimpse of Srila Sripada maharaj's outlook to initiate a dialogue about God within the circle of star scientists.

The following excerpts have been taken from the book 'Srila Sripada in Switzerland - Lectures, conversations and instructions of H. H. Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Swami in Switzerland', published by Bhaktivedanta Institute, Kolkata.

A Humble Approach in search for Reality:

In the fifth canto of Srimad Bhagavatam we are studying some details about Jambudvipa like it is 100,000 yojana etc. In the third canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, there is dialogue between Vidura and Maitreya Muni, Vidura asks Maitreya Muni, "My dear Maitreya Muni, now I heard from you so many things, now please explain to me the higher Knowledge". So in reply to that question, Maitreya Muni started description about cosmology; about the creation of world and different aspects of the universe. To have a glimpse of this cosmic creation is a fundamental part of the journey into the inquiry into nature of reality.

So here, description given by Srila Sukhadev Goswami in this text is that this universe is inconceivable and is very vast. With this understanding, if one feels oneself as very small, very humble, then the person is getting ready or prepared to enter the spiritual journey. Thus, in the spiritual journey one needs to be submissive and to orient one's thoughts towards the understanding that it is not possible to get the knowledge without the blessings and the mercy of the Lord.

Therefore one begins to mould one's life to have the culture of humility; the opposite nature is arrogance, pride and these are the qualities of the atheist type of people. In order to save one from atheist culture it is good to have spiritual conception of this cosmic creation.

On the Origins:

Even when Carl Sagan came to India in the cosmos television series, he took lots of ideas from India (laughs). He was supposed to be very atheistic, but finally he had something Vedic to say. Recently there was an article by Freeman Dyson, the well-known cosmologist from Princeton University, that we will be releasing in a book soon; he said, "Don't think the big-bang theory is right", and "don't think that by DNA or by the mapping of the human genome we have understood life." This is stated by very prominent scientists in the world today.

There are many questions about the big-bang and even about Vedic Conceptions. But generally the thoughtful people accept that the big-bang theory is not the answer to the question of origin. It could be a working model because you have to start somewhere, you have to develop some conceptions that it might be like this. From this model, they build their theory about life and the universe. This area about the nature of life and also about the nature of universe is becoming a very central theme for us especially in Krishna Consciousness. So in order to practice bhakti yoga you must understand what is life?, what are the qualities, symptoms and goal of life. Otherwise why do you have to practice bhakti yoga? First of all, the question comes, what is Life? I think this is important.

There could be many years of discussion on that topic(laughs), but I think it is better to agree that we do not have the complete knowledge to understand at this stage of our civilization development. So then what shall we do about it? Shall we fight with each other even though we don't know so much about that topic? Or shall we come to a reasonable agreement? I think that the dialogue between science and religion is very important. Our practical application in Krishna Consciousness actually focuses on that.

Srila Prabhupada's main worry about these modern scientists was that they are saying too much while having only little knowledge. They have little knowledge but they extrapolate too much.

But there are also scientists who admit that there is definitely something much superior to what they can grasp. Actually there are many brilliant scientists who admit this. Only the few who are not sure or not thorough in their judgement of knowledge are the ones who make the big noise. Actually through history it has been like that. Some scientists who are generally not big are trying to make big noise, but they are not the ones who actually have the knowledge. It is like that. People like Einstein, although not really trained as devotees, in their own way they at least have this acknowledgement that there is something much higher than what we can grasp. Einstein believed in what he called the cosmic religion. So all these well-known and very important scientists in the history of science have this conception of some kind of God; at least they admit that there is definitely something much superior to what we can conceive.

Scientific Arguments of Existence of God:

I was actually in the United States, I was at a conference in Philadelphia called as ‘Science and Religion in Context”. Participants came from all over the world. It is becoming very important to have this dialogue between science and spirituality among the scientists; mostly these are all science oriented people. There is a well known scientist called George Ellis. He is a cosmologist and mathematics Professor. He spoke quite nicely. It was mostly about how to make some good arguments about existence of God from the scientific point of view. Many scientists are becoming interested to prove the existence of God from the scientific point of view. They also say by the mathematical logic we can do some experiment.

There are now very interesting developments, like they say that, the universe is very special. The physical constants like the Planck’s constants, velocity of light and gravitational constants; these constants are very special because if there is a slight change in one of these figures then the world would not be there, therefore this indicates that there must be a supreme scientist (laughs); there must be God. This is one of the arguments that the scientists are working on.

There are also few other interesting concepts, like they say the universe is fine tuned. Say, for example, the water molecule H₂O the angle between hydrogen and oxygen is 104.5^o. Similarly the CO₂Carbondioxide is a straight line i.e. the angle between the oxygen and carbon is 180^o.^. So these are some of the examples of the chemists and are called as fine-tuning. The water molecule has to be arranged in such a manner only and due to this when it becomes ice it is lighter, otherwise life may not exist in universe. Therefore this fine tuning is another argument to show about the existence of God from a scientific process.

Third argument that they use is called 'Intelligent Design Theory', it is called as IDT and also ‘irreducible complexity’. You know in machine, when one little part is not there then the whole structure breaks down. IDT is mostly from Life Sciences, say for example the study of E.Coli; this is a small organism which stays in the stomach intestines and is a unicellular organism. When we study this one cell living entity, we find many complicated structures inside it. Why and how such intricate structure is present in the small cell living being? This complicated machinery inside the cell is very complex and they call it as irreducible complexity. Such things cannot evolve stage by stage. It has to grow together and therefore called as irreducible complexity. In the case of life-living machines, this is called Intelligent Design Theory. So these are some of the interesting arguments that people are using it to show about the existence of God.

I think it is very interesting development.

The other day I had a very interesting discussion with Roger Penrose in Oxford. He is very nice person. Penrose is regarded as the number one scientist of the world today. He is cosmologist, a quantum physicist. But his field is mathematics and we had a very interesting discussion. This will be released in the next issue of my journal ‘Savijnanam’. We touched on these points also. We discussed a little bit about God and how God could be taken seriously from the scientific point of view, so there was discussion along that line. I think he is moving in the right direction.

Another scientist whom I met in the United States is Professor Alan G MacDiarmid; he is also Nobel Laureate in the chemistry. The Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery that plastics can after certain modifications be made electrically conductive. In our discussions we also spoke about God. So now days you can discuss about God with scientists (all laugh). In Australia there is another scientists called Paul Davis, he is quite old now; Penrose and Stephen Hawking are well known scientists from Europe, and in the United states, scientists like Professor Charles Townes; and here in this country - Switzerland, Professor Werner Arber is quite well known - these are all kind of 'stars of science' in the world today.

So now we should begin to work.

Below photos of Srila Sripada maharaj with 'Stars of Science'