Realization of the Supreme Lord as a person
Dr Thoudam Damodara Singh (TD Singh)'s dialogue with Prof William D Phillips, Nobel Laureate
- Part 2 -

Radhamohan Das *

Sripada Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja ( Dr Thoudam Damodara Singh (TD Singh) ) :: Pix - Roshni Thokchom

The above expressions of Dr. TD Singh are not parts of the dialogue. But the interactions found in their dialogue are more or less the same which he has already expressed in his article.

Dr. TD Singh - cited the Vedantic perspective and said, little is mentioned in our Vedantic literature that this world was created by the Lord in order to fulfill the desires of the living entities who wished to have material pleasure. However, there is a divine plan behind this whole manifestation - it is designed in such a manner that a living being can elevate his consciousness and revive his love of God while experiencing this world. Moreover, the importance of human life is emphasized because consciousness and free will are more fully developed in the human form of life than in any other form of life."

TDS further asked WDP to elaborately explain his conception that God is a person as against the conception of Einstein's who believes that God is impersonal. WDP said that when Einstein talked about God in a casual way, he talked about God in a very personal way, but when he was writing intellectually about the mysterious, he insisted that God is not personal. Einstein said he was surprised by the way in which nature worked, and sometimes he said something like, "I, wonder what the old man is thinking" referring to God. "This is not an impersonal way of talking about God. Certainly people like myself and Charles Townes will be firm in saying that God is very personaL" Maybe Einstein did not fully admit to himself the way he felt about God or he did keep thoughts a little hidden. But his is a monistic conception.

In Vedic tradition, three aspects of God viz. the impersonal or universal pervasiveness, called Brahman aspect of God (in Sanskrit), the Paramatma or localized and in-dwelling personal aspect of God who guides each living being from within and the third aspect is Bhagavan, meaning the Supreme Person, the personal aspect of the Lord - the Supreme Personality of God. DTS illustrates this with a metaphor. The President sitting in the White House, but his power or impersonal energy is spread throughout the country, and the Paramatma or the Supersoul is guiding the individual being in a personal way. Most scientists, said by DTS, are influenced by the impersonal concept of God due to misconceptions about the nature of the personal aspect of God being steeped in pantheism or anthropomorphism. From the Vedantic perspective, the Personal aspect of God is most important. This does not imply that the concept is anthropomorphic. It is not that a human shape or anything is given whimsically. Rather it is the revelation of God Himself to those self-realized transcendentalists. A divine maxim is found in the Srimad Bhagavatam that the cause exists certainly in its effect as well. Since we all experience very clearly that all developed living beings have individual personalities, it is certainly conceivable that the Supreme source of all must also possess personality. In this regard, the similarity between Vaishnavism and Christianity is very striking.

WDP's impression is that the idea of a personal God is a very conventional viewpoint, whether one is a Christian or a Hindu, or belonging to many of the world's great religions. People often think about the Divine presence as being very personal. But generally this question often arises: What about scientists? Do scientists take more to Einstein's point of view, or are scientists more traditional? There are scientists who claim that they are atheists and there are scientists who believe in Einstein's God, and there are scientists who will say they believe in a personal God.

But, he thinks that there is a misconception that scientists tend not to have the kind of beliefs that they have been talking about. In fact, there are plenty of scientists like himself (William D. Phillips) and Charles Townes who believe in a personal God. This is what WDP viewed in the dialogue.

WDP said it is a mistake to believe that in general scientists do not have these kinds of beliefs. His church has many scientists who have traditional religious faith. He told a story. When his daughter went to high school, she met many new friends, and one of her new friends told her, "My mother is a scientist, so of course she is an atheist," and his daughter told her friend, "Well if you went to my Church, you wouldn't be able to walk across the fellowship hall after the worship service without running into half a dozen physicists." So, he told that he knows many scientists who have very traditional, conventional religious views. There are Jewish scientists who are traditional in the religious faith. Through the science and spiritual quest research program, he also met Buddhists and Hindus and other scientists who are very traditional. He knows scientists of the many of the faiths of the world who are very traditional in their religious beliefs. He wishes that there is no contradiction between'being a serious scientist and being a person who is serious about religious faith.

Dr. Phillips said that, "... the popular notion that scientists are naturally going to be atheists is simply wrong, and is known to be wrong by almost anybody who has experience of knowing enough scientists..."

As mentioned already in the earlier article on the theme, most of the scientists who changed the course of humanity and made profound contributions to shape the world view had some conception of God. There is below a small sample.

Copernicus (1473-1543), Kepler (1571-1630), Robert Boyle (1627-1691), Newton (1642-1727), Faraday (1791-1867), Mendel (1822-1884), Pasteur (1822-1895), B Riemann (1826-1866), Maxwell (1831-1879), Mendeleev (1834-1907), Plank (1858-1941), Einstein (1879-1955), Max Born (1882­1970), Ramanujan (1887-1920), Heisenberg (1901-1976).

To continue their dialogue further TDS a little more about the Vedantic tradition by saying that there is a c!,ear distinction between the spiritual and the material. These are called para-vidya, meaning higher knowledge and apara-vidya, which means the lower form of knowledge. 'Scientific study of apara-vidya is to lead ultimately to para-vidya. Scientific study of matter is apara-vidya, whereas knowledge of the science of God is para-vidya. The lower form of knowledge should lead to the understanding of the existence of higher knowledge, para-vidya. It is just like what Max Born said, "I saw in it (the atom) the key to the deepest secret of nature, and it revealed to me the greatness of creation and the Creator." In the Vedantic tradition the domains are clear and we are not much concerned about conflict which is apparent.

WDP thinks the conflict is something that makes for good press-interesting stories - but in fact it is not in the mainstream of thought. Even among people of religious faiths or among scientists in the United States, the conflict model represents only a small fraction of either the scientists or people of religious faith. He thinks that majority of the people do not see this as being a problem. Certainly most of the people he encounters in the Church or in the scientific world do not see that as being a problem. The problem comes when the people of religious faith have a misconception that all scientists are atheists and materialists and they have no connection to spiritual thinking. Or, scientists who believe that all people of religious faith are fools because they believe in things that are manifestly not true. So, he thinks that only a few people on either side have this kind of belief.

TDS said in relation to the concept of God that many scientists today express that the universe is ' fine-tuned. But Prof. Townes said that the universe is very special: "If the mass of the electrons were slightly a different value, the universe would have been quite different than what we have today." This is also called the anthropic principle. TDS asked to comment on this view.

WDP said that this subject is very popular these days. He said, "When I look at that sort of situation, the one that Townes has described and a lot of other people have talked about, it certainly seems to me that when you see how fine-tuned the universe is, that it is a natural conclusion to conclude this was a universe that was designed so that life might develop, so that it would have the potential for all sorts of wonderful things to happen. In fact, I believe that is the case. I believe the universe was designed in terms of the fundamental constants, that things were put into the universe when it was created and the Creator gave us a universe that had the potential to produce creatures like us. Why? Why would our Creator have given the universe the potential for creatures like us to develop? I believe it's because God wanted to have personal relationships. This goes back to the idea of believing in a personal God. Not just God as a personality, but that God wants to have personal relationships with the creatures of the universe. This is my belief."

At the same time, he wants to be very careful to say that he don't believe that this understanding of the special nature of the universe is in any way a proof of the existence of God. It is easy to come up with other explanations why the universe is the way it is. You take the. modern theories of cosmology and the inflationary universe, and many of the theories provide for there being multiple copies of the universe, which mayor may not have different values of fundamental constants. He don't know if these theories are correct or not, but they are certainly reasonable. According to these theories, there may be a near-infinite number of other universes that have different values of fundamental constants in which there are no people, or in which there are not even any galaxies because the universe had to be fine-tuned simply, to produce stars and galaxies. The apparently special creation that produced a universe that is as fine-tuned as ours may simply be an illusion, because, of course, we must live in a universe that supports life. Sometimes people talk about the anthropic principle as simply expressing that the reason why the values of the fundamental constants are what they are is simply because if they weren't, we simply wouldn't have been here to ask the question. It says nothing about God. While for me, I certainly believe that that is the reason why things are the way they are,l have to recognize that it does not constitute a proof - I think that a belief in God is a matter of faith, not a matter of scientific proof. And that is why we call it religious faith. I don't believe there is a scientist who can come up with a way, on scientific grounds, of convincing somebody who does not want to be convinced.

To this view, TDS expressed that a thoughtful person especially a scientist can develop a genuine faith in God from the observation of the cosmic laboratory. Regarding that science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, people who have faith in God have faith in the teachings of scriptures and saintly scholars. Charles Townes often points out that faith is common for both science and religion.

See a Photo Gallery of "Remembering Sripada Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja" here

To be continued....