perect knowledge v 12 feb09

Perfect KnowledgeSecrets of Success


Dedicated to His Divine GraceA.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

(Founder Acharya- ISKCON)


• Various modes of acquiring knowledge

• The quest for ultimate knowledge: absolute vs. relative

• Aiming towards acquiring absolute knowledge

Agenda


Various modes of acquiring

knowledge


Pratyaksha pramanaDirect experience


Anumana pramanaTheorizing based on

observation


Hearing from authorityShabda pramana


Pratyaksha pramanaInvolves acquiring knowledge directly

through our senses/ experience

1


Generally, we consider “Seeing is believing”

But is this way of acquiring knowledge perfect all the time?

Let’s see this!


Do you see the two faces?


Or a Cup?


Are thesides of the

square bent?


Do you see a white triangle?


Our senses are imperfect!


Eating orange after sugar

Eating orange after lemon

SOUR TASTE

SWEET TASTE


OUR EYES ARE BLIND outside the range of

4000Å to 7000Å


OUR EARS ARE DEAF outside the range of

20 Hz to 20 kHz


Activity 2


What is written

?


Is this way of acquiring knowledge perfect all the time?


What we see is not always true!


Railway line converging


Many things which we believe in but we don’t see


Air


AM-FM waves


X-rays


Anumana pramanHypothesizing on knowledge acquired

by direct sense perception

2


Six blind men and the elephant


Tree RopeSnake WallSpear Hand fan


Anumana praman involves theorizing based on

• Information directly perceived by the senses

• Knowledge already acquired by us through experience

• Applying reason and logic to the above two


Cut the

hands

first


Anumana pramana

• Speculative

• Imaginative and hence • Incomplete The conclusions may or may not be true


Shabda pramanHearing from a bona fide authority

3


Who is your father?


Six blind men and the elephant


Can you cite more examples?


News


System of education


Shabda praman is therefore

• Passed on by aural reception in toto

• Is not speculative or deductive

• Is complete if received from an authoritative source

Therefore, it can be rendered as perfect


The quest for perfection: Absolute Vs Relative Knowledge


So we said

• Direct perception can cheat you

• Deduction can lead you to incorrect or incomplete solutions

• Authoritative hearing can help you learn the truth


Where is our present understanding of the world coming from?


MODERN SCIENCE


Oxford dictionary defines science as

the structure and behavior of the world

through observation and experiment.

The intellectual and systematic study of


Scientific knowledge is therefore based on

• Perception or pratyaksa

• Deduction or anumana


Evolving evolution:

DARWINS THEORY OF EVOLUTION


“To suppose that the eye with all

its inimitable contrivances for

adjusting the focus to

different distances,


for admitting different amounts of light…

could have been formed by natural selection,

seems, I freely confess, absurd in the

highest degree.”

Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species


Alternative theories


Belittling the Big Bang


“May be it is not possible to formulate the theory of universe in a finite number

of statements.

Stephen Hawking, Nobel Prize winner physicist

We and our models, are both part of the universe we are

describing.


Stephen Hawking, Nobel Prize winner physicist

Thus a physical theory, is self-referencing. One might therefore

expect it to be either inconsistent or incomplete.

The theories we have so far formulated, are both inconsistent and incomplete.”


Eugene Wigner, Nobel Prize winner physicist

“Even if we photograph stars eventually we have to take in by

our senses what the photo shows.

Even if the knowledge is amplified or refined by instruments, the knowledge

is no more perfect than our imperfect senses.”


Dr. R.L. Gregory, director of the Brain and Perception Laboratory at the University of

Bristol, England

"Science, with all its dramatic successes, has from its beginnings also generated

wildly incorrect accounts: electricity and heat as fluids, the brain as

an organ to cool the blood. . . . These are dramatic deviations

from what we now see as truth.


Dalton Atomic theory


Why science can’t give us perfect knowledge?


We inhabit aHUGE UNIVERSE

We inhabit aHUGE UNIVERSE


India with population of over

one billion is...


... one of the many countries on the planet Earth.


Earth planet is one of the many planets in our solar

system.


Sun is 14,00,000 times bigger than planet earth.


Astrophysicists point out

There are 2000 billion stars like

sun each of them having

their own family of planets


...all these billions of galaxies and trillions of stars comprise

our UNIVERSE

We are a small speck in this gigantic creation!


How can an ant living in one corner of this room know

about...


What are the latest developments in Iraq?


The wars happening in the world


The Mumbai terror attacks


Its too small !

Ground reality...


Then how do we get perfect knowledge about

this universe?


From the creator Himself!


The Vedas were directly imparted by the all perfect Lord

to Brahma….tene brahma

hrdayadi kavaye Srimad Bhagavatam 1.1.1


And it was passed down by aural reception

through the ages by perfect

personalities


Vyasadevaput into writing

5,000 years back


The Vedas give us absolute and perfect

knowledge about this universe


Modern man is now realizing the importance of using

all perfect Vedic knowledge

Any examples?


Ayurveda


Yoga


Astronomy


AstrologyAstrology


Metallurgy


What wise men have said about the VEDAS


Alfred North Whitehead, British Mathematician

“The vastest knowledge of today cannot transcend the buddhi of the Rishis in ancient India; and

science, in its most advanced stage now, is closer to Vedanta

than ever before.”


"In the history of the world, the Vedas fill a gap which no literary work in any other language could fill. I maintain that to everybody

who cares for himself, for his ancestors, for his intellectual development, a study of Vedic

literatures is indeed indispensable."Professor F. Max Muller , German philosopher and philologist


"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad

Gita in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems

puny."Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American Philosopher


But don’t the Vedas also have discrepancies?


Cow dung and cow urine


Earth’s diameter 7,840 miles

7,926.7 miles


Vedas give perfect answers to fundamental questions like…


Who am I?


Where have I come from?


What is the purpose

of my life?


Where will I go after death?


Who is God?


Since, these questions deal

with very fundamental

aspects of our existence,


we can immensely benefit by daily

studying these vedic literatures &

sharpening our Spiritual Intelligence

‘SQ’.


Questions?


Thank you

perect knowledge v 12 feb09

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