The following is a somewhat extended version of a reply to some questions that I sent today to an interested reader. I thought this description would be relevant and useful even to others, and hence I decided to post it.
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Religion
Dreams, Misperceptions, Hallucinations, Illusions, and Ignorance
All students of epistemology cite many categories of experience that are not knowledge, in order to distinguish them from knowledge. These categories are different in Western and Vedic systems of philosophy. In particular, in the latter, dreams are not considered false, although there are other categories that are false. This post discusses the difference between …
I Am The Creator, From Me Comes Everything
In practically every religion of the world God is said to be the creator of the universe. And this leads atheistic people to say: “No, the universe came from the Big Bang; no God was involved”. But Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-Gita (10.8), that He is not just the creator; rather, He creates from Himself. …
Prabhupāda’s Three Big Ideas on Science
Much has been said about Prabhupāda’s visionary leadership and scholarship in bringing India’s authentic culture, civilization, philosophy, and practice to the Western world. But very little is said about his vision for the future of the world as seen through the lens of science. In this post, I will try to capture his three big …
The Supreme Personality of Godhead
Most religions speak about the Supreme Person simply as “God”. In Vedic texts, He is described as Īśvara. But in the Gaudīya Vaishnava literature, since the time of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvati Thakur, the term “Supreme Personality of Godhead” is often employed to describe what is otherwise simply referred to by the word “God”. Why use …
Secularism in Vedic Philosophy
Secularism arose during the era of Enlightenment in Europe with the aim to relegate religion to the private realm and determine the public sphere by reason and experience. Europe wasn’t arguing for the equality of all religions in the eyes of the government. It was arguing for the rejection of the only religion that existed …
Karma, Reincarnation, and Divine Justice
This is the transcript of the fifth episode of my podcast. In this episode we talk about the nature of karma and how it is created. We discuss how karma is created as a consequences of actions, different from cause and effect, and to the extent that science only deals with causes and effects, it is incomplete. The …
The Tortoise Model of Perception
We normally think that the world comes to us during perception. For example, light enters your eyes; the electrical impulses go into the brain, where an image is created. Owing to this model of perception, John Locke claimed that the mind is tabula rasa or a blank slate at birth. As a child acquires more …
The Arithmetic of Concepts
In all religious philosophies, God is the original person, Who creates all else. If we were to count things, then God would represent 1. In Vedic philosophy, additionally, all that is created is also a part of God, Who is then described as the complete truth. In effect, since God is the complete truth, everything …
The Epistemology of Happiness
How do we know something to be true? This question has preoccupied philosophy for as long as we can remember. Many answers are offered to solve the problem, but each one suffers from a different problem. For example, reason is a useful method of knowing, but reason only compares a claim with the axioms or …
Does Prayer Alleviate Suffering?
Nearly every religion employs the idea of prayer, and most people view prayers as a way to alleviate their suffering. If such a thing were possible, it would encourage the sinner to continue sinning and use prayer to be pardoned. Conversely, if such a thing were impossible, then the skeptic could ask: If God can …