How do you know?

Conversation on FaceBook:

ATHEIST 1 So let's go back to my questions. “How do you discern truth in that sense from falsehood? What criteria do you use?” If you have no way of discerning truth from falsehood, then one could argue that nothing can be determinately true or false. If you somehow can discern truth from falsehood, but you have no criteria for distinguishing what is true from what is false, then it's possible that you hold false beliefs.

DEVI "The Nectar of Devotion"...The process you are asking about by which one can scientifically measure their spiritual progress is given there.

 That way nothing is left to speculation. All the pitfalls are pointed out, too.

ATHEIST 1 But that's where the misunderstanding lies. I'm not asking how one can "scientifically measure one's spiritual progress." All I'm asking is how do you personally distinguish between what it true and what is false? When you personally hear something concerning spirituality, do you immediately accept it? do you question it? How do you personally determine whether it's true or not true?

DEVI If one's subjective experience is stated in there, then it is no longer only subjective right?

ATHEIST 1 This is not a philosophical question. This is a practical question. How do you distinguish between what is true and what is false? In your life, personally, when someone tells you something concerning spirituality, how do you know if it's true or not? Don't tell me what great thinkers or spiritual leaders say, or strip away subjectivity. How, in practice, do you distinguish between what is true and what is false?

DEVI I thought my experience was practical enough. What more do you want?  Let's say you've never been to Antarctica. How do you know it exists?

ATHEIST 1  It's a misleading question. "Antarctica exists" is determinately true or false. I can determine that Antarctica exists by flying there. When people tell me Antarctica exists, it’s not that I necessarily hold it or accept it as a belief. If it’s true...

DEVI I meant you could experience it for yourself by meeting someone who has been there and finding out by their directions how to get there also... With a bona fide map you would see signs along the way knowing you are on the right track. If something proved false, the intelligent person would then rate the "experienced" person as giving wrong info. Similar to a false prophet, etc.

ATHEIST 1 But that's why my analogy works and yours doesn't. If spirituality refers to a thing, it's an immaterial thing. How do you know the people leading you there are telling you the truth? If I didn't know where Antarctica is on the planet, and someone said "Go East, you'll find Antarctica," then I may very well heed their advice and travel east.

DEVI Similarly, "The Nectar of Devotion" gives the bona fide map....it helps if statistically there are many many people of that experience. Having reached the actual destination. Yes?

And the directions and results must be the same for everyone. Maybe tailored individually, but no major changes allowed so not to disrupt the process. What is it that is called scientifically? Controls?

ATHEIST 1 That's fallacious--it's an appeal to numbers. But even if numbers mattered, even if they could serve as evidence of legitimate "experience," you have to assume that some people are lying or deceiving or mistaken...

DEVI  The requirements are very rigid. That way pretenders are caught.

ATHEIST 1 I seriously want to know: what are the requirements? How are pretenders caught? How do you discern truth in that sense from falsehood? What criteria do you use? I think these are honest, reasonable questions.

DEVI   The requirements are: No illicit sex, no meat eating, no gambling and no intoxication.

This is real yoga, not the watered down stuff for sale. BTW, it costs nothing.

ATHEIST 2: Devi, Similar to Buddist monks, if we all pray all day then who provides and makes food. The same thing with yoga and meditation, we have children to look after, tummies to put food in if everyone could pray, do yoga and meditate, who takes care of t...

DEVI That is what is so nice about bhakti yoga. Using modern terms it is "hands on" yoga. You can practice any time, anywhere the principles. In the astanga eight fold system, bhakti is the topmost goal. So it is like an immersion process. Just like when you teach kids how to write by letting them write, and later when they have developed a taste for writing, they will want to learn the rules of grammar on for their own, naturally.

It is so practical, but it has been obscured a long time.

ATHEIST 2: Curiouser and curiouser, please if you know of a good web site I could go to with more info. I know I could just look it up but if you have a site that you would recommend I would appreciate it.....Guess what I'll be doing after I've had my meal, reading up.

DEVI The Perfection of Yoga


LATER NOTE: Atheist 1 also asked for more information, but in a private message.

I know why

Analyzing the poem "Sympathy" by Paul Lawrence Dunbar I wondered, "How did the main character follow his heart?" And "Was he successful in doing so?"

Generally speaking, most main characters appear successful in achieving their heart's desire. Only in this poem, from a material point of view, did the attempt appear futile, thus worthy of "sympathy" . The bird is beating its wings against the cage seemingly in vain. But a closer study reveals what I think is a greater kind of success. In its adversity and suffering, the bird lifts its voice in prayer to God, calling upon the Lord from the core of its heart.

This is in line with the most confidential sections of the Vedas. If the inevitable troubles of life can turn one towards God, gaining His ecstatic audience through fervent prayer (SB 1.8.26), then one's mission of human life is considered successful.
  

  

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!

    When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;   

When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,   

And the river flows like a stream of glass;

    When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,   

And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—

I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing

    Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;   

For he must fly back to his perch and cling   

When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;

    And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars   

And they pulse again with a keener sting—

I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

    When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—

When he beats his bars and he would be free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee,

    But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,   

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—

I know why the caged bird sings!

God the Father?

It makes no sense, something that was created has to suffer eternally? But this is the Judeo Christian and Islamic belief that the soul (if that is what they call a person that survives the bodily death) was created by God, but after death lives eternally either in heaven or hell.

So how does something that never existed before, suddenly exist forever afterward? And if that existence must continue perpetually in hell, wouldn't it be more merciful to just undo the dust-sculpting business done in the first place? 

This they cannot answer.

Krishna, on the other hand, says in His Bhagavad gita:
"Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you,...nor in the future shall any of us cease to be." 

That is what eternal means. There is no creation, there is no death. The soul may have been in some sort of dormant state, but individuality is always existent. It is only the body that is created from the eight material elements. 

In Gita the Lord describes them in comparison to the living entity: "Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego—all together these eight constitute My separated material energies. Besides these, O mighty-armed Arjuna, there is another, superior energy of Mine, which comprises the living entities who are exploiting the resources of this material, inferior nature." So there is a distinct difference. One is superior due to consciousness. The other is unconscious matter which by nature is temporary.

Thus how can something that had a beginning have no end? If we were not eternal to begin with, how can we exist eternally hereafter?

In Vaisnavism we understand the living beings are of the same superior spiritual nature of God, but being only a minute particle, one can become forgetful of this by misdentifying with the Lord's inferior nature, matter. That's where troubles begin.

No amount of suffering is permanent, however. Like a truly loving father, that is God's mercy; the nature of the material energy we try to enjoy separately from Him is flickering.  There is always some happiness or relief from the suffering. From a logical point of view, therefore it still makes no sense that some religions suggest that God is so cruel that after death a sinful person will suffer punishment forever, something even the most ordinary father would never do.

 

 In the Vedic scriptures are elaborate descriptions of both the material heavenly planets above the earthly plane and the hellish worlds below along with the punishments inflicted according to the sins committed. It is a subject matter too lengthy to print here. Just know that, there is not just one hell, but many many hells. The good thing is that you are not sent there eternally, it only feels that way since it's so awful. Trust me, you don't want to go there.

know that you have wings

Caught this critter on camera. He was very cooperative and seemed to be posing for his photo shoot.

Several robins have been hopping around along with other signs of the coming season- white buds on the apple trees, daffodils and other bulbs popping out of the soil along the walkways, new leaves on the trees, warmer days...

So I was thinking that just as we can understand the appearance of spring,  how we can understand also by symptoms the approach of death or impending destruction.

A couple verses from Srimad Bhagavatam come to mind. Saintly Vidura is speaking to his brother, the blind king Dhrtarastra, who had lost everything in the fratricidal battle detailed in the Mahabharata:

"Your father, brother, well-wishers and sons are all dead and passed away. You yourself have expended the major portion of your life, your body is now overtaken by invalidity, and you are living in the home of another. You have been blind from your very birth, and recently you have become hard of hearing. Your memory is shortened, and your intelligence is disturbed. Your teeth are loose, your liver is defective, and you are coughing up mucus. Alas, how powerful are the hopes of a living being to continue his life."
SB 1.13.21-33

Yes, how powerful is the urge to continue on. Vaisnava sastra explains that's because it's our original nature; the nature of the living entity is to live forever. It is the eternal nature of the soul (called sat) which makes death or a change of bodily situation disagreeable.

And transcendental knowledge of the resilence of the soul and one's relationship with the Supreme Loving Soul, Lord Krishna, contrasted with the fragility of our mortal frame makes all the difference between fearing the signs of old age and inevitable death or allowing them to appear without anxiety.  Something the poet Victor Hugo suggests we can learn from a bird. 

Be like the bird that,
Passing on her flight
Awhile on boughs too slight,
Feels them give way beneath her,
And yet sings,
Knowing that she has wings!

the soul survivor

Often on the web is the word "survivor" used, or "I'm a survivor."

Broken bones or a broken heart, fights, losses, sickness, or many other troubles beyond description...all these things can be survived by any person as long as there is a will to live. One can get through it all, no matter what the situation, no matter what it is one may have to deal with.

So from a logical viewpoint, if there is absolutely nothing one cannot endure throughout life, then certainly one must continue to go on after death.

Krishna confirms this in His Bhagavad- Gita, "As the embodied soul continuously passes in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change." (Bg 7.14)

It is a matter of proper identity as spirit soul rather than the temporary body. One survives even death.

"The materialistic man of the modern age will argue that life, or part of it, is never meant for discussion of theosophical or theological arguments. Life is meant for the maximum duration of existence for eating, drinking, sexual intercourse, making merry and enjoying life. The modern man wants to live forever by the advancement of material science, and there are many foolish theories for prolonging life to the maximum duration. But the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam affirms that life is not meant for so-called economic development or advancement of materialistic science for the hedonistic philosophy of eating, mating, drinking and merrymaking. Life is solely meant for tapasya, for purifying existence so that one may enter into eternal life just after the end of the human form of life." - SB 2.3.18p

divine nature

Most theists believe in an afterlife of some sort. But is it possible to live forever? We have no experience of that in this world. Everything comes to an end, including every body.

Yet, mundane science textbooks surprisingly declare a truth about matter. According to the law of conservation, it is neither created nor destroyed. This coincides with Krishna's description in Bhagavad gita of material nature as "My divine energy".

So in the sense that everything is ultimately Krishna, everything emanates from He who is fully spiritual, His material creation can be correctly understood as also divine. It appears to have been created, but it has always existed as does Krishna, as one of His multifarious energies.

Divine means eternal. It is not a linear creation with a beginning and end as in the the Judeo Christian conception because if God is actually eternal and spiritual, as most theists say they believe, and which is the proper understanding of God, then how can anything related to the Lord exist only once? Matter goes on perpetually in cycles either in a manifest or unmanifest state. A huge skyscraper worn away by time eventually returns to the earth. It can be broken down to its very atoms, but those atoms continue to exist and are shaped once again in another form. Thus everything is ultimately spiritual, the external material nature just behaves differently, by repeated appearance and disappearance.

 From a logical viewpoint, therefore, if matter ultimately has no beginning nor end, it's easier to comprehend the individual self or the spiritual nature, as clearly described by Lord Krishna in the second chapter of Bhagavad gita to be eternal. We must also continue to exist in some shape or form after the demise of the material body. And if we wish to get free from the cycle of birth and death due to identification of the temporary body, we must take shelter of the transcendental Lord, who is forever unaffected by the waves of time.

symptoms of the soul

One of our geckos may have gotten stepped on accidentally during the night. Sometimes they crawl across the floor. I found it's lifeless body next to the shoe rack by the front door.

It got me thinking about the difference between a live body and a dead body.When someone is sick, how can we tell? The person may look tired. His nose may be running. He may be sneezing and coughing or have a fever. These things are all symptoms that indicate the presence of sickness in the body.

 Similarly, since the tiny jiva soul is full of knowledge or consciousness, even if one cannot see the soul within the body, one can understand he is there because the current or energy of the spirit soul is felt all over the entire body as consciousness. Prabhupada commented in the Gita: "Even if one does not find the soul within the heart, where he is situated, one can still understand the presence of the soul simply by the presence of consciousness. Sometimes we do not find the sun in the sky owing to clouds, or for some other reason, but the light of the sun is always there, and we are convinced that it is therefore daytime. As soon as there is a little light in the sky early in the morning, we can understand that the sun is in the sky. Similarly, since there is some consciousness in all bodies--whether man or animal--we can understand the presence of the soul." (Bhagavad gita 2.20p)

Looking at the dead gecko, this difference between life and death is clearly seen. When it was alive it was quick and alert and kinda cute. It was gentle and soft to touch and had shiny black eyes. The kids sometimes like to play with them.

But now the gecko is not alive anymore. I mean, would you want to play with it? Is it still as cute and fun to look at? Would you want to pet it? Normally the answer is, "No". But why not? Because it is now a dead body. The spirit soul that brought energy and awareness to the gecko and made it alive is no longer present.

When a machine doesn’t work anymore, machine parts can be replaced with new machine parts so that the machine will work again. But if you disconnect the electricity or power that makes the machine run, it will no longer work no matter how many new parts are added. Well, the body is also like a machine. Lord Krishna confirms this in Bhagavad gita:

"The Supreme Lord is situated in everyone's heart, O Arjuna, and is directing the wanderings of all living entities, who are seated as on a machine, made of the material energy."(18.61)

Today many parts of the body can be fixed or replaced if something doesn’t work anymore. A person can get an artificial arm or leg or false teeth. They can get a heart transplant. But when the body dies, there is no way to fix it. That’s because the living spark that powers the body with energy to make it work is no longer there. It’s like a machine that got unplugged. No matter how many new parts are added, it just won’t work. The energy that made the body work has been disconnected. That energy is the soul.

One more example is that one could pick up a pillow and start beating it really hard with his fists. A lump of matter such as a pillow will never say, "Stop it!" It doesn’t cry. It doesn’t protest at all. But if someone comes to hit me or you, we feel it. That’s because the soul within is conscious. The pillow is not.

Srila Prabhupada says this the first lesson. Human life is special because now is the chance to learn to discriminate between matter and spirit, and first of all, as one can learn from Lord Krishna in Bhagavad gita, "I am not this body, I am a spirit soul".

When we know this very well we can begin to make great progress in spiritual life.