Lecture given at the Center for Self-Discovery at ISKCON Atlanta on March 9, 2009
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Imagine if you were walking somewhere and suddenly it became very difficult for you to lift your legs or move your arms and you felt a great weight pushing you down. You could easily panic and become disturbed and confused. Now imagine the same experience in another context which could make you feel good: You are in a gym and you are totally into “no pain no gain.” You feel a lot of resistance, but you feel great because you have got a good personal trainer and a good work out. You’ve chosen to have that experience and you know that it is benefiting you.
What is the difference? In both cases the same thing is happening to you. In the first scenario you don’t know why it is happening to you, there is no teleology. Teleology is the philosophical understanding of a purpose of something, from the Greek word “telos”, which means purpose or goal. Teleology in philosophy generally means the notion that there are objective purposes for us outside of our own opinions. So the question of why I was born is a serious question with an objective answer that exists outside my own feelings. So, as you all know we are going through hard times, as Dickens said, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” That is something like what we are going through now. So, if we live in a teleological universe, and there are objective purposes, which are beneficial… something is beneficial when it does good or brings about the good…
At this point, let me bring in a picture of the world that was “hot stuff” about 2000 years ago. Pagan Europe (The Roman Empire) was very “New Age” until it ended up being governed by an interesting Middle-Eastern religion which had very pejorative views about other religions, but before that time Pagan Europe was very eclectic. The general view of, especially, educated people and even, often, of the Emperor, was that there is one Divine Reality or Absolute Truth or Power in the universe, but various different channels to reach that Absolute Truth. So, the Roman Emperor would often send a donation to various religious and spiritual communities in the Empire to have worship done (this also included the Temple of Jerusalem) in the name of the Emperor. The Romans’ idea was that the ultimate collectable is power, and so if anyone had a viable divine channel to that power, then they were more than happy to, literally, buy into it. Of course, not everyone was looking for power. You had this somewhat eclectic, cosmopolitan view.
The word cosmopolitan comes from the Stoics. They had a fascinating picture of the universe as a “cosmopolis” or the sense of a cosmic village, “polis” or city, in which all creatures are bound together by a committed relationship, and now, getting back to the point of teleology and what to do in hard times…Underlying this notion of the cosmopolis, was the idea that there is a God, and He is rational (not in the sense of being a stuffy intellectual), reasonable, and is the Supreme artist, philosopher and our well-wisher. The idea that fired up Newton’s enthusiasm (as well as other philosophers, up until 200 years ago), is that when God creates the world, He creates it according to his own brilliant, artistic, divine pattern or sublime reason. So, if we study any of the sciences, we find this artistry and reason in the universe.
It is not a coincidence that we call all our sciences “ology” because we find supreme reason behind them. (Astronomers are bitterly disappointed to lose the “ology” title to astrology, which they consider unscientific). In any case, “ology” comes from the Greek word “logos”. That was the word the Stoics used to talk about for the divine Reason of God. That within the mind of God is this supreme artistic, divine logos. God creates the world by a process which Buddhists or Vedanta philosophers called sat-karya-vada, the notion that a cause is present in its effect, as when we say, “A, causes or is in the effect, B.” When God creates the world, this logos, this pattern, is invested in the world, that’s why one can study it. One finds the logos everywhere. It is in the mind of God and it is invested in the universe, and because the logos is also within us (as we are part of God), therefore our consciousness can connect to the mind of God by studying these divine patterns.
There was a book written in Western Turkey, in ancient times, by a gentleman who was promoting a (still somewhat new) religious movement. In his attempt to attract intellectuals of his time, in what was considered the civilized world, he wanted to connect to this logos concept, which was so popular and important back then. Therefore, in the opening line of his book he said, “In the beginning was the logos” which is translated as “the word”…in the Book of John.
If we accept this logos concept which also was the idea of the Vedanta tradition, then we understand that this is a very teleological view of the world. It means that the question, “Why was I born?” has an objective answer. The answer the Vedantists, the devotees of Krishna and also the Stoics would give is, that you are born for enlightenment. There is one very famous Buddhist work called the Buddha-carita (“The Life of Buddha”), which was written many centuries after Buddha and one of the opening lines is “bodhAya jAto ‘smi” – “I was born for enlightenment”.
If that makes sense to us, that we were born for enlightenment, and that it is the telos, or the purpose of our existence and if there is a conscious, reasoning, beneficent being on the other end, then, everything that happens to us is for our ultimate good. Going back to the example of the gym, if you have a good trainer, then you know that all the exercise and effort is helping you and is for your good. If we think of God as the Supreme Personal Trainer, and we think of the world as a big work-out institution, then everything that happens to us is, ultimately, to get us in shape so that we can get out of this clinic called the material world. I mean, we can certainly imagine a much better world that what we’ve got.
We can imagine a world where we fall in love and stay in love forever, a much greater world than the one we live in now, a world without pain and suffering. There are two possibilities: This is either fantasy, perpetually doomed to frustration and non-fulfilment, or that our ability to imagine is a divine gift which connects us to a higher reality and motivates us to seek that higher reality which is actually available to us. In that sense, consider the process of the suspension of disbelief.
Suspension of disbelief is a very common process: When you go to a movie, you know that this is not really happening, you know that these are only actors who are not present here, but this is the last thing you want to think about when you are in the movie. My argument here is that you cannot really suspend your disbelief in the case of something, which is totally unbelievable. If something strikes you as totally unbelievable, something which could and would never happen, the author has lost you. In the case of e.g. “Lord of the Rings” or “Star Wars”, a lot of people suspended their disbelief and got into Middle Earth. If nothing like this is true, could people really suspend their disbelief? Something about it, even if it is technically fiction, appeals to a good person because something about it is real and appeals to or connects with our deep psychology not only as human beings, but as living, conscious beings.
The picture which emerges from the Vedanta or the Vaishnava tradition is that the best possible world is the one that exists – not the world of today but in the sense of everything that exists. This is an extension to the philosophical argument given by the Medieval Philosopher, Anselm, called The Ontological Proof, (which 1000 years later, still annoys atheists). He made the argument that “God is that being than whom no greater being can be conceived.” In other words, because God is infinitely great, the highest conception of God is the truest. Let’s say we have the concept of an infinite amount, which we obviously cannot express finitely. So when you are trying to talk about that infinite amount, the highest number you give as comparison is the closest, because it’s the highest.
Anselm’s argument had one problem, because he was philosophising in a Europe where there was “religious freedom over our dead bodies”. There was an absolute coercive monopoly in the religious field back then, and since every other religion besides his was considered not only wrong but evil, so he thought he was only talking to people in Europe who were only wondering whether God exists or not. I don’t know if he forsaw this or not, but someone could say, “Ok, I believe in God, but if “God is that being than whom no greater being can be conceived”, what if I can conceive of a God who is not a serial torturer, who would not torture his children simply for doctrinal mistakes. Basically the view they had back then, was that God would torture you, forever, for theological mistakes.
It was not a bluff: In the middle of old Oxford, you can see a monument to three theology professors who were burnt alive because they were Protestants and there was a regime change in England. The Protestant monarch went out and a Catholic, Queen Mary, came in and she decided that anyone who did not agree with her, on even subtle points of doctrine, it was the will of God that they be killed in one of the most painful ways possible.
So if we accept this general argument (of this being the best possible world), then there is a social extension in the sense that the greatest possible world is the one that God created. This in Western philosophy is called theodicy, the problem of evil - why is there so much suffering and apparent injustice in the world if God made it and He is all-powerful? This is the perennial question. The answer gets back to the problem of our own suffering.
People have the hardest times when they are forced to experience things they may not want to experience or are unable to experience the things they desire. So the question becomes: How should we think about the imperfections of this world including the imperfections of our own happiness?
One more point: An acceptable moral agent, or anyone in a superior position who has power over other people, (such as a conscientious parent), would only cause pain and suffering to the minimum extent necessary to bring about an essential good to someone under their power. This would also have to be true of God. Is this a world in which the suffering that we know now, horrendous as it is, is the minimum suffering to bring about an essential good? Neither the Justice system nor modern psychology address this question since some people are not changeable by all of our science. If the answer is yes, then it is possible that there is a “Triple O” God: Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omni-benevolent.
If someone says it cannot be that a child’s suffering is a merciful act of God, the answer that is always given - at least in South Asia - is that the person is not the body. We don’t want to think of apparently innocent people who are suffering as responsible for their condition. This is not in any way a justification for abuse. Any act against an apparently innocent child is a crime and should be punished as such.
If we look at Eastern civilizations who firmly believed in karma, they also were very serious about justice and protecting the innocent. One of the great kings in Indian history who is looked upon by all Indians as one of the great heroes of their civilization is the Emperor Ashoka, who lived approximately 2300 years ago. He wasn’t technically a Buddhist but he patronized Buddhism. He sent royal agents all over the Empire to make sure that no human being or animal were being abused. He strongly accepted the doctrine of karma as did various communities back then, like Buddhists, Jains and the people of the Vedanta culture.
There was a Greek ambassador to India named Megasthenes who wrote a book named “Indica” (which means “About India”) which is one of the main sources we have about the life back then in India. He paints a very glowing picture, saying that there was no slavery – which was very shocking to Greeks, almost like saying that there is a country without cars. (That’s why they were such exemplary democrats because, with so many slaves, they had so much time to attend committee meetings.)
Megasthenes also noticed that there was no slavery and hardly any crime. You could go from coast to coast with no fear for your life and property. It was the kind of place we would like to live in today, in terms of the justice, protection and security and yet it was a civilization that believed in karma.
There are some who feel that if people are ultimately responsible for their destiny because of the law of karma, this would knock the wind out of political and social activism. Why help other people if their suffering is just their karma? And yet we can see from the example of Ashoka and many others, if you look at the history of the Buddhists, Jains, and the Hindu monarchy in India, that there was often a very serious concern for people, justice and protecting innocent people. It is only after you have made every possible effort to protect other people and secure a good life for yourself, that you accept whatever happens as destiny - not before you have done that.
It’s a hard curve for some people who can’t understanding God as doing everything for the good, just as children sometimes struggle in their relationship with their parents. Similarly, some people opt out of theism and the idea that there is a personal, Supreme Being who is doing everything possible to respect our free will and at the same time bring us to Enlightenment. Krsna talks a lot about this in the Bhagavad-gita and Patanjal also, in the Yoga Sutras. The Sutra literature gives coded, terse, little statements. One of the Yoga Sutras is “samadhi siddhir isvara pranidhanat.” The perfection of yoga is called Samadhi and the perfection of yoga comes from isvara-pranidhanat, or devotion to the Lord (Isvara). So, in our relationship the Supreme Lord, we accept that it is all for the good.
Two facts always trouble people. One is that so many bad people died peacefully in their sleep after exploiting the world and that so many innocent people suffer. So, what this Eastern doctrine of karma teaches is what happens if you connect these two troubling facts and it turns out that they are the same people. Which doesn’t mean that the people who are suffering are eternally evil or that we should despise them. They may even be good people.
In order to fully embrace a personal view of reality and we don’t loose at lot because if we meditate away our own personal existence it is a tragedy. Every one of us exists as a free conscious individual, capable of loving and being loved and capable of unlimited creativity. That conception should never be trashed and is the most precious thing that can be. There is no limit to how much we can advance and expand our consciousness, there is no limit to the happiness and wisdom we can achieve according to this view because we are part of God and God is infinite.
Ultimately we have to go back to our roots and think back to this logical principle which was accepted by many of the philosophers in Buddhism, Vedanta and other Indian schools, sat karya-vat - that the cause is present in the effect. Imagine a medical researcher. Someone has a disease. If you study it, you can find the cause in the effect. Virtually every type of research or investigation accepts this idea that causes are present in effects. That is what a historian does. In history you start with the effect and reason back. Events take place in a certain chronological direction and analysis reverses the chronological direction. Start from the effect and go back.
Therefore, if we are trying to find the source of our existence, where we came from, this is a very healthy project. Ultimately we have to start with ourselves. We are the effect, so what are we? If you really accept yourself as a person – maybe imperfect, maybe a work in progress, but with unlimited potential, this strongly suggests that the source of your existence is somehow personal. Therefore we can live in a universe that, ultimately, has a good purpose. The obstacles to get over is, can we be humble enough – not only for ourselves but on behalf of humanity. Can we be humble enough to accept that there may be contaminations of the soul so deep rooted that sometimes invasive procedures are the only way. I personally know people who died because of that doctrine, who felt that in every case you can cure every disease without anything invasive, when they could have been cured.
From this point of view, are we big enough and are we humble enough – and from this point of view big and humble are often the same thing, although sometimes we think proud and big are the same thing.
So it is emotionally, psychologically and spiritually very challenging to really embrace a personal view of reality and thereby to see everything that happens in our lives simply as an exercise. If I can respond spiritually to difficulties with a deep understanding of myself as a spirit soul and with an understanding of God, this is a great workout, and I am going to become very strong spiritually. So for those who want to get in shape spiritually these are great times because there are all kinds of financial and vocational exercise machines.
Q & A: What if we created God only because of our need for him?
It is a very interesting way of arguing that if you feel a strong need for something then you imagine the object that can fulfil your need and which doesn’t really exists. We have a need for water, so we simply imagine that there is such a thing, but it doesn’t exist. Or there is no food, there is no oxygen, there is no friendship in this world. There is nothing, because we have needs for these things.
That is one way to examine the validity of an argument: if you apply it to other cases and it leads to almost immediate absurdities it is probably not a great argument. So if there is no God it is not
The psychology argument cuts both ways: Every time an atheists says, for psychological reasons you believe in God, the theist can say, for psychological reasons you believe there is no God. This argument cancels itself out in the first five seconds of the first border.
Q: How do you talk to someone who is not ready for any argument?
A: How do you sell popsicles so someone that hates cold food? I don’t think we should begin with the assumption that there is a argument and a way to persuade everyone. It may be the case that some people at this point of their evolution are not really open to serious discussion.
I think that Blaise Pascal, the great French scientist and philosopher of the 1600’s. He was a great mathematician, inventor and a very devout catholic. At the end of his life he gave up all his philosophy and science and went to a monastery in Southern France. He is famous among other things for what is called “Pascal’s Wager”. He said that there are four possibilities:
1. You don’t believe in God and there is no God
2. You don’t believe in God and there is a God
3. You believe in God and there is no God
4. You believe in God and there is a God
These are just 4 logical possibilities. He says that if you don’t believe in God and you get it right, you will never know you re right because if there is no God, no one is omniscient and therefore no one knows everything and therefore no one knows if there is a God or not. If you don’t believe in God and there is a God, you are a big loser – and not just because you go to hell forever which unfortunately they believed back then but because you are cutting out of your life the most valuable thing. If you believe in God and there is no God, you may still benefit because there is a growing body of mainstream research, which shows that people with faith often recover more quickly from diseases and deal better with certain kind of stress. I think you could make a fairly cogent argument nowadays that if there is no God and you believe in God, that it’s still beneficial, and if there is a God and you do believe in God, then the benefits are unlimited. And apart from God, the Jain tradition believed in an eternal soul but no God although their jinas, their tirthan-karas, their great sacred leaders, started to look suspiciously like deities after a while.
It seems to me there is something existentially bizarre about someone being born on earth and saying, ‘ok, there is this massive testimony – frankly, from most of the people that ever lived on earth – that there is something like life after death, there is some kind of existence, even eternal life, and somehow this life after death in its various formulations, is connected to having an appropriate relationship with a divine power. So, we have this massive testimony, which we can say doesn’t prove anything. Yet, if because you’re trapped because of an avalanche or your boat sank and you’re in a life-preserver, if there is any chance to save myself, it seems to me it’s just part of the human spirit that a normal, healthy person would say, ‘If this is my only chance, and if I don’t do this, it’s curtains, let me try.” Not that a person has to join this or that religion or has to adopt this or that doctrine, but the general idea that under appropriate circumstances and with a proper effort on my part I may be able to perpetuate my existence. No. I prefer to argue and further, to fight for the belief that I cannot survive. Imagine you are trapped somewhere on a skiing trip and you have someone in your party saying, “We are going to die! We are going to die! Stop thinking we can get out of this. Just sit down and die.” Would you consider that to be the most balanced, healthy person in your skiing party? Also, it seems to me that being psychologically predisposed against God – We certainly don’t have to accept a particular version of God. We may find certain theologies unacceptable, even evil, like the idea that God does the most horrific things to people for apparently innocuous reasons. So we certainly have every right to discard conceptions of God that don’t match our sense what a divine being would be. So it is not a question of being committed to this or that dogma, but the general notion that in or beyond the universe, there may be an infinitely powerful, infinitely good being who is willing to accept friendship with me, who is willing to love me, who does love me, and is inviting me to love Him/Her/It or Them. That general idea is very beautiful. Plato (using Socrates as speaker) gives that idea long before there was anything like Christianity. So, to be adamantly, aggressively predisposed, psychologically, against the idea of an infinite loving being and to reject the idea of an infinite, loving being, a priori, despite all the inconceivable logic and art in the universe - in snowflakes, or a water crystal, - is not scientific because it is not neutral. It is not objective. In a scientific investigation, if you have a heavy emotional predisposition toward a certain result, you are probably not qualified to carry out that experiment. For example, that is even a legal principle in our country, that people who are emotionally predisposed cannot be objective. If someone is accused of a crime, that person’s mother cannot be on the jury.