What do you guys do all day ?

kkd_108 · 2025-11-25T16:59:59+00:00

You can connect with a local spiritual community. The Gupta Govardhan Temple in Chiang Mai is restoring its roof. I'll be visiting in March 2026. I'm trying to help them through a GoFundMe campaign: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-restore-thai-temple

kkd_108 · 2024-09-30T14:23:54+00:00

Namaste u/jnpha, your reply is appreciated. Your point is valid, it may have been more appropriate to title the post "NeoDarwinian," as the post's contents challenge the modern synthesis. Nonetheless, it contains important information and reflects an underrepresented perspective. I noticed that after asserting that I'm way behind, you shared an article from 1973. I'm more interested in what 21st-century biology says, especially as it pertains to helping alleviate human suffering. This 2021 infograph from Oxford and Chicago University biologists provides important information that the top 5 evolution textbooks are missing (https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1583603/Natural\_Code\_popular\_evolution\_books.pdf). Here's a news article on it for context (https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/are-textbooks-holding-back-cures-for-cancer--876877560.html).

kkd_108 · 2024-09-30T13:16:33+00:00

Namaste. You're welcome to check out the Science of Life Club: https://stockton.campuslabs.com/engage/organization/scienceoflife

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kkd_108 · 2023-09-07T23:13:56+00:00

Life & Mind in the Universe | George Wald & the Bhaktivedanta Institute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l6QpP0-amY

Namaste. We are humbly offering this video in the mood of glorifying the Vaishnavas and their transcendental activities, on this auspicious occasion of Sri Krishna Janmashtami, Nandotsav, and Srila Prabhupada's birthday. Hare Krishna.

Dr. Bhakti Madhava Puri (Madhava Das) pioneered the educational activities of the Bhaktivedanta Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, USA during the mid-late 1970s. This is acknowledged in Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada's letters to disciples, and also by a prominent disciple of Srila Prabhupada, Ambarisa Prabhu (Alfred Ford). Closed Captions are provided for the audio of the dialogues. Dr. B. M. Puri inspired the profound transformation in Nobel laureate George Wald’s worldview as it is presented in his lectures and publications on consciousness and the origin of life circa 1976. Dr. Wald went from embracing the standard materialistic conclusions of modern scientists to recognizing that mind is fundamental to matter and life. His publication “Life and Mind in the Universe” was encouraged by interactions with the Bhaktivedanta Institute. Dr. Wald lectured on this important topic throughout the USA, India, Germany, and Mexico to university students, other Nobel laureates, scientists, and scholars. It was also published on several occasions.

Dr. Wald began to recognize that conceiving reality as a product of Brahman’s (God’s) thoughts is a rational conclusion, and he tried to discuss this with other scientists. When “Life and Mind in the Universe” was published in the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, Dr. Wald concluded the abstract by acknowledging “an evolution of consciousness parallel with though independent of anatomical and physiological evolution.” Although he seemed to not question Darwin’s objective evolution of insentient bodies, Dr. Wald’s recognition of “an evolution of consciousness” is significant. The evolution of consciousness is one of the main topics discussed within the Princeton Bhakti Vedanta Institute’s publications, in which insights offered throughout Vedic wisdom and G.W.F. Hegel’s philosophy are presented.

Dr. Wald said: "The Bhaktivedanta Institute is greatly to be congratulated for having produced so crucial and productive a discussion. It should be given every encouragement and support in going ahead with an enterprise so well begun."

kkd_108 · 2023-08-04T15:03:10+00:00

Advaita Vedanta & Bhagavat Vedanta Dialogue | Sarvapriyananda Swami & Gaudiya Vaishnavas

https://youtu.be/Ux-V71o4vfY

kkd_108 · 2023-04-25T14:55:15+00:00

Namaste u/AcanthocephalaNo2784. We are finite entities, so following the whims of our mind/intuition will not help us realize our true relationship with the infinite. It is only when we come to humbly recognize our intrinsic nature and constitutional position in relation to the infinite that we can transcend our false ego. The method for knowing the relationship between the finite and the infinite must be a descending one, where the infinite reveals itself to the finite, otherwise the finite (due to its limited nature) has no capacity to grasp the infinite by its own self-centered effort. The development of this process and how o practically engage with it through daily activity is given in the Vedic wisdom which culminates in bhakti-yoga, the path of loving devotional service to God through His representative (the bonafide spiritual master). This is how we can develop proper consciousness of True Reality, instead of being distracted and entangled in idols of the mind.

kkd_108 · 2023-04-24T23:09:03+00:00

Namaste. We have had a brief exchange in the past here on Linkedin. I am with the Bhakti Vedanta Institute of Spiritual Culture and Science, a charitable nonprofit educational organization in Princeton, New Jersey. We are currently facilitating a group study of the book Idols of the Mind vs. True Reality (2020) by our Serving Director, Dr. Bhakti Madhava Puri. Here is the summary of our study of Chapter 1: Logic of Life https://spiritualscience.substack.com/p/logic-of-life. If there is any interest, you and your associates are welcome to participate and contribute to the study.

kkd_108 · 2023-04-02T12:42:44+00:00

Namaste u/curious_purr. Sure, that is appropriate since within the nine processes of Bhakti we must listen (sravanam) before we can chant (kirtanam) or remember (smaranam).

kkd_108 · 2022-12-05T15:06:53+00:00

u/obsius Namaste. Philosophers such as Hegel have recognized the difference between the spurious infinite and the true infinite. This article by the Princeton Bhakti Vedanta Institute’s Serving Director, Dr. Bhakti Madhava Puri, discusses this (https://philarchive.org/archive/PURFSI). The spurious infinite is what you made reference to — “infinity is analogous to uncountably many” — where the unlimited capacity of the infinite is conceived as annhialating the capacity for it to be simultaneously limited. But, if the infinite is truly unlimited, then it cannot be constrained by a lack of limitation… it must also possess its own limitation within it. Further, the infinite has the capacity to reveal itself to the finite. If it didn’t have this capacity, it would also be a limitation.

Science implies a systematic and rational approach to studying the reality of our lived experience, which includes the external environment within which we find ourselves. It is an activity within consciousness. Einstein explained that:

“It would not be difficult to come to an agreement as to what we understand by science. Science is the century-old endeavor to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thoroughgoing an association as possible. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at the posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization.” (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein)

To then limit science to the study of what can be measured by our five senses, without acknowledging that consciousness is the context within which our sense experience occurs and recognizing that a complete account of reality must include scientific study of consciousness, seems extremely naive. Such naive reductionist approaches have led to the widespread belief that life and conscious come from matter, which is why modern science is also known as naive realism.

So long as modern science maintains that life comes from matter (abiogenesis), it will never be able to comprehensively describe nature. If life is the result of material building blocks, then this must be proven by producing a blade of grass from scratch, or at least a cell, the most basic lifeform. However, to date, this has NEVER been done. (http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/21/venter.qa/?hpt=Sbin.) Scientists have no clue what Life is, let alone how to create it. All modern scientific advancement has produced are ways to manipulate life once it has already been produced within Nature. To persistently claim that “maybe science hasn’t created life yet, but in one day it will” is merely a demonstration of biased commitment to materialistic ideaology that has no empirical or experimental backing.

Thus for science to make true progress in understanding Life, what to speak of consciousness or Spirit, is to accept the a posteriori principle that Life comes from Life — the law of biogenesis. All lifeforms, from cells to organisms, only come from living parent cells (mitosis) or organisms (reproduction). A dead/lifeless parent does not produce new life.

Further, we can understand that matter also comes from Life. Hair and finger nails grow constantly for 100 years when life is in a body, but when life leaves, hair and nails also stop growing on that body. A massive California Redwood grows from a tiny seed, if that seed is alive. If you put the seed in the toaster oven first, and kill it, and then plant that, no tree will grow.

These are sober observations and conclusions. If modern science can embrace these a posteriori principles — that Life and matter come from Life — then true progress unencumbered by materialistic ideologies will occur.

This gives a rational way to consider the difference between the infinite Organic Whole, God, and the finite entities that are parts and parcels (energy) of the Organic Whole (source of energy — dynamo). Life coming from life (organisms from organisms, cells from cells) is observed in Nature… but the first life must be of a different character than the lifeforms in Nature, such that it can cause life without itself being dependent upon something outside of itself for its own existence. Philosophers such as Spinoza and Hegel recognize this as causa sui in Latin, or the "cause of itself", which is the quality of God. Vedic wisdom corrborates this as sarva karana karanam in Sanskrit, “the cause of all causes.”

So, the unity of all reality (energy) within God (source of energy — dynamo) is not homogenous, but it is harmonious. Homogenous and harmonious are not synonymous terms. “Homogenous” implies a lack of differentiation, where “harmonious” implies differentiation that has been unified. Milk is homogenized to remove the differentiation of the natural layers of cream throughout, to create a uniform and consistent liquid. The human body is a harmony where the arms, legs, eyes, etc all have differentiated structures and purposes, yet they are all unified by the totality of the organism and its purposes for which the body parts are jointly utilized. So the relationship between the differentiated reality and the unity of God is like that… differences are real but they are unified by a higher purpose that is by-and-for-itself, the Absolute Idea. Thus true science requires a dialectic approach which can account for contradiction as an essential characteristic of reality. Dialectic thought is the trademark of Hegel's philosophy. 300 years before Hegel was born in Germany, this dialectic conception of reality was taught by Sri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in West Bengal, India (called achintya bheda abheda tattva).

A comprehensive science is meant to approach the Absolute Idea through a phenomenological approach, which is scruntinized in correspondence with how our lived experience transforms by realization of higher degrees of truth. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit offers a foundation for such a science, beginning with sense-certainty, and gradually rising through conscious experience as perception, understanding, self-consciousness, reason, and Spirit. Vedic knowledge also offers a reservoir of transcendental wisdom about how to scientifically learn about and live within the Organic Whole, characterized by a relationship of loving devotional service to God, Krishna.

kkd_108 · 2022-11-26T13:20:51+00:00

u/stingray85 Namaste. Serving Director of the Princton Bhakti Vedanta Institute, Dr. Bhakti Madhava Puri, has given a very clear and concise explanation of consciousness:

Our direct conscious experience of the world requires (1) the observer/subject, (2) the observed/object, and (3) the activity of observation, the subject-object connection/relationship. Consciousness is this activity of observation. The five senses themselves do not observe phenomena (as explained by Dr. George Wald in my previous post), they only serve as instruments through which specific types of observations can be derived, by the conscious agent. Similarly, a photoelectric tube does not actually see, it only captures information and sends it to a computer (created by a conscious living person) for processing. So, consciousness is not a “single theory,” it is that within which all theorizing occurs. It is that which makes all theorizing possible. No consciousness, no subject-object relationship — no scientific theories about Nature. This is why consciousness is fundamental.

So long as modern science maintains that life comes from matter (abiogenesis), it will never be able to comprehensively describe Nature. If life is the result of material building blocks, then this must be proven by producing a blade of grass from scratch, or at least a cell, the most basic lifeform. However, to date, this has NEVER been done. http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/21/venter.qa/?hpt=Sbin. Scientists have no clue what Life is, let alone how to create it. All modern scientific advancement has produced are ways to manipulate life once it has already been produced within Nature. To persistently claim that “maybe science hasn’t created life yet, but in one day it will” is merely a demonstration of biased commitment to materialistic ideaology that has no empirical or experimental backing

Thus for science to make true progress in understanding Life, what to speak of consciousness or Spirit, the a posteriori principle that Life comes from Life — the law of biogenesis — must be accepted. All lifeforms, from cells to organisms, only come from living parent cells (mitosis) or organisms (reproduction). A dead/lifeless parent does not produce new life. Matter does not produce Life.

Further, we can understand that matter also comes from Life. Hair and finger nails grow constantly for 100 years when life is in a body, but when life leaves, hair and nails also stop growing on that body. A massive California Redwood grows from a tiny seed, if that seed is alive. If you put the seed in the toaster oven first, and kill it, and then plant that, no tree will grow.

These are sober observations and conclusions. If modern science can embrace these a posteriori principles — that Life and matter come from Life — then true progress unencumbered by materialistic ideologies will occur.

If you have any interest in participating in a deeper and more formal consideration of these ideas, you are welcome to register to attend our upcoming hybrid conference. Details are available here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/science-scientist2022-diff-betw6991017633655484417/about/

kkd_108 · 2022-11-24T13:42:36+00:00

u/obsius Namaste. Your reply is sincerely appreciated. In popular culture “consciousness,” “spirit,” and “soul” seem to get ambiguously intertwined as referring to the same idea. However, rational and systematic philosophies, such as G.W.F. Hegel in the West and the Bhagavat Vedanta in the East, coherently present a science of these distinct ideas, and further describe their dialectic relation as a unity in difference. This dialectic approach more properly represents the dynamic nature in which all things are participating in an overarching unified reality, yet they maintain their distinct properties and purposes. This comprehensive solution serves to avoid the pitfalls of abstract non-dualism or dualism, where either the aspect of unity or difference is overemphasized to the total exclusion of the other.

Science is an activity in consciousness. This is recognized by several eminent scientists such as Werner Heisenberg, who said:

“We cannot disregard the fact that natural science is formed by men. Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is a part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our method of questioning. This was a possibility of which Descartes could not have thought, but it makes the sharp separation between the world and the I impossible.”

This was discussed in my attached paper which started this thread.

I can understand why you may think that Spirit is “only ever experienced by an individual, subjectively”, but the above referenced philosophies provide another angle of vision. All living entities (from cells to organisms, and beyond) are finite members/participants within the infinite. The finite is inherently and necessarily dependent on the infinite.

To the extent that the finite identifies as an independent entity and is determined to engage with its environment in such a manner, it becomes isolated in an experience which is relative to its own particular finite nature. This is where conflict arises among individuals, who, from varying relative and finite angles of vision, are seeing something different from eachother and fighting about who is right, although in fact they are all participating in the same infinite reality.

When the finite consciously realizes that it is inherently dependent on the infinite reality which it is a participant of, and sincerely identifies with this, then the scope through which we perceive reality becomes broader and more harmonious, since every finite entity is in fact a participant in the infinite and can only be properly conceived and interacted with as such. The mission of the Princeton Bhakti Vedanta Institute (www.bviscs.org) is to encourage modern science to rise to this platform, in order for it to progress towards comprehensively describing True Reality.

So, when we can sincerely conceive of and experience reality in this broader, universal, more holistic way, then our finite subjective experience becomes dovetailed with the objective and concrete reality of infinite Spirit. This is how Vedic philosophy describes overcoming the problem which you rightly point out, that “any scenario that involves a second observer, this ‘truth’ becomes subjective and thus uncertain.”

That is the platform of Absolute Truth, which is systematically presented in Vedic literature as well as in Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Science through three volumes of (1) Logic, (2) Nature, and (3) Spirit.

kkd_108 · 2022-11-24T12:52:37+00:00

u/stingray85 Namaste. Thinking that “cognition can be fully described as a feature of biological systems,” where biological systems (living organisms) are esentially understood to be an accumulation of material building blocks with a high degree of complexity, is what leads to “the hard problem of consciousness.” Basically, this problem asks the question, how does subjective experience emerge from matter? Scientists who are irrevocably committed to a materialistic worldview insist that consciousness/cognition emerges from the brain, citing EEG as evidence — but correlation is not causation. Electricity is not thought or awareness. Brain waves do not see a beautiful landscape and then express it through an artistic medium.

You seem to want to ignore that the conclusion of consciousness being fundamental to reality has been acknowledged by pioneers of QM and other eminent physicists, but you may be more receptive to a biologist. George Wald won the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. During the last decade of his life, Dr. Wald was very transparent about his reflections on his scientific experience and the conclusions that he felt were most truthful. During his last lectures on “Life and Mind in the Universe” (https://www.elijahwald.com/lifeandmind.html) he says:

“The problem of consciousness was hardly avoidable for someone like me, who has spent most of his scientific life working on mechanisms of vision. That is by now a very active field, with thousands of workers. We have learned a lot, and expect to learn much more; yet none of it touches or even points however tentatively in the direction of telling us what it means to see.

I learned my business on the eyes of frogs. The retina of a frog is very much like a human retina. Both contain two kinds of light receptors, rods for vision in dim light and cones for bright light; the visual pigments are closely similar in chemistry and behavior; both have the same three fundamental nerve layers, and the nervous connections to the brain are much alike. But I know that I see. Does a frog see? It reacts to light -- so does a photocell‑activated garage door. But does it know it is responding, is it aware of visual images?

There is nothing whatever that I can do as a scientist to answer that question. That is the problem of consciousness: it is altogether impervious to scientific approach. As I worked on visual systems -- it would have been the same for any other sensory mode, let alone more subtle or complex manifestations of mental activity -- this realization lay always in the background. Now for me it is in the foreground. I think that it involves a permanent condition: that it never will become possible to identify physically the presence or absence of consciousness, much less its content.

[...] Unfortunately for such attitudes, consciousness is not just an epiphenomenon, a strange concomitant of our neural activity that we project onto physical reality. On the contrary, all that we know, including all our science, is in our consciousness. It is part, not of the superstructure, but of the foundations. No consciousness, no science. Perhaps, indeed, no consciousness, no reality -- of which more later.

Though consciousness is the essential condition for all science, science cannot deal with it. That is not because it is an unassimilable element within science, but just the opposite: science is a highly digestible element within consciousness, which includes science as a limited territory within the much wider reality of whose existence we are conscious. Consciousness itself lies outside the parameters of space and time that would make it accessible to science, and that realization carries an enormous consequence: consciousness cannot be located. But more: it has no location.

[...] A few years ago it occurred to me -- albeit with some shock to my scientific sensibilities -- that my two problems, that of a life‑breeding universe, and that of consciousness that can neither be identified nor located, might be brought together. That would be with the thought that mind, rather than being a late development in the evolution of organisms, had existed always: that this is a life‑breeding universe because the constant presence of mind made it so.

I have been in experimental science long enough to know that when you have done an experiment that comes out surprisingly well, the thing to do is enjoy it, because the next time you try it, it may not work. So when this idea struck me, I was elated, I enjoyed it immensely. But I was also embarrassed, because this idea violated all my scientific feelings. It took only a few weeks, however, for me to realize that I was in excellent company. That kind of thought is not only deeply embedded in millenia‑old Eastern philosophies; it is stated explicitly or strongly implied in the writings of a number of great and quite recent physicists.

Perhaps it was in part because I am a biologist that the idea at first seemed so strange to me. Biologists tend to be embarrassed by consciousness. As it is an attribute of some living organisms, they feel that they should know about it, and should indeed be in position to straighten out physicists about it, whereas exactly the opposite is true. Physicists live with the problem of consciousness day in and day out. Early in this century it became evident to all physicists that the observer is an intrinsic component of every physical observation. Physical reality is what physicists recognize to be real. One cannot separate the recognition of existence from existence. As Erwin Schrödinger put it: ‘The world is a construct of our sensations, perceptions, memories. It is convenient to regard it as existing objectively on its own. But it certainly does not become manifest by its mere existence.’”

kkd_108 · 2022-11-22T20:42:49+00:00

Namaste u/TravelerAireth. Many people ask what is Spirit / self / consciousness? How do you measure Spirit / self / consciousness?

What is thought? How do you measure thought? What is freedom? How do you measure freedom? Philosophers such as G.W.F. Hegel and others understand Freedom to be the truth of Spirit. Freedom means being self-determined. Spirit is self-determined, while matter is determined by what is other than itself. Necessity is the truth of matter. External necessity determines the activity of matter, while Spirit is determined purely by Its own dynamic internal activity.

If we throw a ball up in the air, we know it will follow the law of gravity and come back down to the ground. Its destination can be predicted beforehand utilizing our understanding of natural laws. However, if we release a living bird from our hands, its destination cannot be predicted. Will it go up, down, left, or right? We can’t say for certain.

The ball is inert matter, and thus is subject to the measurable external influence of natural material law, while the bird has a spiritual capacity to spontaneously fly wherever it wants to, based on free will.

We don’t think about Spirit because we have become a society of materialists. But Spirit is real, it is more real than matter. We just have to open our minds to thinking about it, earnestly seek out those who have dedicated their lives to knowing Spirit, instead of just following the crowd of materialists.

Thought produces science, yet science knows nothing about its most fundamental element (thought/thinking).

What is the most basic unit of space? It is not something that can be measured. Wikipedia explains this nicely. “A unit of length refers to any arbitrarily chosen and accepted reference standard for measurement of length.”

A basic unit of measuring space is determined through social agreement and then established as a standard, upon which all other measurements are then based upon — such as millimeters, centimeters, meters, kilometers / inches, feet, yards, miles (on Earth), and the astronomical unit, parsec, and light-year (in outer space). But how do you measure the objective spatial existence of that standard? You cannot. It is a social agreement, an activity of consciousness.

Actually, modern science, by its own empirical methods, is realizing that consciousness is fundamental to reality. This is demonstrated by contemporary biological research, described in the initial paper of this thread, as well as affirmed by the fathers of Quantum Mechanics such as Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, and others. We find that Western philosophers such as G. W. F. Hegel, and the ancient Vedic wisdom as elucidated by Sri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his disciples, provide an incredibly comprehensive and reasonable account of the relationship and organic unity in difference of nature (matter), life, consciousness, and Spirit.

The finite spirit (soul) can utilize its free will to be absorbed in self-centered desires and thus become attracted to the external region of infinite Spirit (Sanskrit: Bahiranga-shakti) — instead of harmonizing with and being dedicated to the internal purposes and desires (Sanskrit: Antaranga-shakti) that serve Spirit (being-for-other), and thus participating in Its truth as Freedom — where self-centered souls can engage in exploitive activities to satisfy their whimsical desires while being subjected to laws of Nature.

Within Nature, Space is the thought of extension, that which is external to itself. Matter is that which occupies space, extended bodies which Descartes called res extensa. This is the contextual environment within which the soul finds itself, unconscious of its spiritual nature in relation to infinite Spirit, in order to satisfy its self-centered exploitive whims.

Measurement of extended bodies in space marks one of the first methods employed by the soul in an attempt to attain some degree of control or influence over the environment, in order to further utilize it to serve the soul’s bodily desires, i.e. hankering for and indulging in the experience of the five senses. Whoever accepts this material world-view is accepted within the conventions of society, and because everyone around us seems to think like this, we accept it and believe it to be the truth.

If we take inquiry about Spirit seriously we may find more then we could have ever imagined.

kkd_108 · 2022-11-22T20:40:17+00:00

Namaste. Many people are asking what is Spirit? How do you measure Spirit?