Conversion for Money --- Is it ok ???

I was discussing with a friend of mine over the conversion issue. I am posting some posts here where I wrote my views.

XYZ wrote: Whats wrong if a person becomes christ and gets the shelter and a place to live. I don't think his religion or great hindu people like you is going to give him that. Why the hell he cannot change his religion for the sake of food ?

I suggest you to goto pakistan and tell those people that you are a hindu. Then probably they will tell you to convert to muslim. Now which one you prefer dying in the hands of muslim or saving your life?

For every person in this world what matters is food and life. If food is not there who the hell will think about the religion, caste , society and improving culture etc etc.

My Reply:

> I suggest you to goto pakistan and tell those
> people that you are a> hindu. Then probably they will tell you to convert
> to muslim. Now
> which one you prefer dying in the hands of muslim or
> saving your life?

Its intresting. Have you now started to believe that the very nature of Pakistanis is to force one to convert. You find it amusing that I may be forced to change my religion on gun point; but find nothing wrong in the ppl who put the sword on my neck to convert.

This is what I am trying to convey. You are mixing up the mistake of a exploiter from the exploited. While I am saying that a *Muslim* is wrong in forcing me to convert by Sword, you are justifying the whole episode by saying that: but *I* had no choice to do. It is not my acceptance we are talking abt, it is the Muslim's forcing it that we are talking.

I am talking abt the Missionary who is exploiting the poor, and saying he is dangerous, and you are showing me the poverty of the exploited(hindu) to tell that the exploiter(missionary) was correct!!!"(read it again with due emphasis on the exploited and exploiter)

This tendency to say that conversion by money are not bad is a very dangerous trend. Let us take the case of Africa. Everybody knows that last century whole of Africa was converted by Missionaries by fraud and Money. But inspite of all that, Africa is one of the poorest continents and also has very high crime rates.

Why was there such an increase in the crime rates and fall in the quality of living of these ppl who used to have their culture and live peacfully with their surroundings? It is coz of this attitude only. Guys like you saying it is ok to take money and to convert, so as he can do anything for getting money even to the extent of selling his conscience. What is the next eventual outcome? THere wont be any code of ethics or morals left in him. Why will there be? You have only told him accha baba, you are getting money, so convert. He will tommorow come and say I wanted money, so I have robbed, why am I wrong.

While a society in which money is more important than morals may be called stagnant; a society in which it is not just there, but even justified and seen as 'natural' is sure to get doomed.

To Quote Swami Vivekananda: "Our great defect in life is that we are so much drawn to the ideal, the goal is so much more enchanting, so much more alluring, so much bigger in our mental horizon, that we lose sight of the details altogether.

But whenever failure comes, if we analyse it critically, in ninety-nine per cent of cases we shall find that it was because we did not pay attention to the means. Proper attention to the finishing, strengthening, of the means is what we need. With the means all right, the end must come. We forget that it is the cause that produces the effect; the effect cannot come by itself; and unless the causes are exact, proper, and powerful, the effect will not be produced. Once the ideal is chosen and the means determined, we may almost let go the ideal, because we are sure it will be there, when the means are perfected. When the cause is there, there is no more difficulty about the effect, the effect is bound to come. If we take care of the cause, the effect will take care of itself. The realization of the ideal is the effect. The means are the cause: attention to the means, therefore, is the great secret of life."

The aim here of us may be a ideal society, where there is no poverty, no crime, and based on morals and where material requirements are met.

For this to happen, what must be done? We Indians, we Hindus should ourselves know and reaslize our strenght, along with it we should also try to help others realize their strength, whichever manner possible for us: monetarily, culturally, politically, spiritually. This is a must, the sooner the Hindus realize it, the better it is.

But never for a moment begin to think that the aim can SOMEHOW be archived, even by talking money and converting.

If a child is thot to tell lies by the parent for his own purose, why wont the child tell a lie to the father himeself to get his own work done. He did not learn anyting new, he just applied what you told him: Money is more imp than morals.

Once ppl start believing that ppl who are exploiting the hunger of somebody is correct, what we will be left with in the society is not citizens, but oppurunists who can do anything to get the money. Today he will convert for money, tommorow he will kill for money.

This is exactly the reason for the failure of communist countries. They thot that thru violence, one can create equality. But that did not happen, and the landed up having more ppl who can go to any amount of violence to archieve their goal. Why? result of their own lesson: "realise your goals even thru violence or wrong means"

I do not want India to go thru that path which has been repeatedly proved wrong. I have noting against the ppl who convert. They are my own brothers, and I try my best to help them in any way possible. But I surely reserve the right to the question the missionaries who are just EXPLOITING his weakness. Povert HAS to be removed, discrimination HAS to be removed, and lets find ways to do it. But it surely cannot be removed by supporting the Missionaries, who will only make the situation worse.

Freewill vs Destiny

A friend of mine asked this intresting question.

Question: Surya, there is a saying that everything happens in ones life according to what Brahma has written on his forehead, or everything happens as it is destined. But on the ther hand, we see that every moment we feel we are doing this and soing that. Also, Swami Vivekananda says that man is the creator of his own destiny. Which of these two contradictary ideas is correct?

Answer: Both the ideas- that we act according to what God wants us to, and the other idea that man is the creator of his own destiny are true.

Let us take one example: You throw a projectile into air. As you know the initial velocity, angle, gravity etc, you can calculate exactly where it will go and fall. Or to say in other words, you have formulated beforehand exactly which path it will go; the ball will simply obey it.

But see it from the point of ball. At each point in the path, the ball will calculate what is the ratio of horizontal and vertical velocities, and then decide the angle at which it has to go. The poor ball does not know that you have already determined its projectile. It feels that it is determing its path, velocity at each point, and proceed thus. It goes as if it is doing everything.

In the same manner, at each point of our life, we decide which way to go, depending on the condition we are in. At the same time, the entire sketch of our life is made, and we just enact that play. The law that governs the projectile motion is KARMA, or law of cause and effect. Purva Samskaras or past impressions of the previous births are the initial velocity, angle etc.
In reality, nobody sees the future. 'seeing the future' is a contradiction in itself. You cannot combine present with future. They are always different. What is really meant by that statement is that we 'forecast' the future. Even some yogis who foretell future do not 'see' future, but they see the present, and they are aware of the laws governing this world, thus they forecast the future.

But the question is do you know what the future holds for you? Are you aware of you future? Obviously NO. Then it better to proceed as if you are the boss, and the final authority to decide. This is what is meant by the Swmaiji's statement "man the creator of his own destiny". And I beleive this attitude is the best, as it puts onus of being Dharmic on the individual, and he thus brings out his best. This is what the future may have store for him. Why think of things that are not in your control, first make the best use of chances you already have.

Karma -neither freewill nor destiny

Swami Vivekananda gave great confidence to the ppl with his utterances like "You are the maker of your own destiny" etc. True we do have power to make our future. But the real catche is that we do not have the power to make it at that very instant. If I want to be a Buddha, I can surely be. But I cannot be a Buddha immediately, it will take some time, this time being dependent on my previous karmas. And I beleive it this TIME CONSTRAINT that we call Destiny.

Let me explain by one more analogy: Two persons X and Y are there. Both start working, and used to get 10k per month. X used to spend away this money, while Y used to carefully spend it, and also work harder and earn more money. After the end of one year, X has nothing as saving, but Y has more than one lac. Our X now starts crying foul that by destiny he has no money, but Y has so much money. He conviently forgets the past, but only remembers the present. But in reality, it is their own makings that left them there. The destiny of today is the cumulative of yesterdays freewills. Sister Nivedita in her Aggressive Hinduism book says "Karma is no longer a destiny but an opputunity". This idea sums it all.

But again, if X wants to earn big money, it IS possible for him by FREEWILL. But he cannot do it immediately, and some time is required for it. I guess this limitation of time is what we can term as destiny.

There is also one more way of looking at the whole thing: As the inner world and outer world.
In the inner world, I am the master, I have full power over my destiny. If I want to be good, I can be I can be, if I want to be bad, I can be.

But with respect to the outer world, we do not have that power. If want want to be a female, it is not possible. Here my free will does not work. Nor does my free will have power to change the external circumstances. We have only power over how we react to it.

More elaboration:

Having said "And I beleive it this TIME CONSTRAINT that we call Destiny." previously, let me substantiate it a little.

Destiny means our limitation to make choices -->limitation to make choices -->lack of freedom -->bondage -->world -->duality

SO, we can say that destiny and duality are inter-related, and can be used one for other. If one is there, the other should be there.

Freewill means freedom to do what we want to do -->freedom-->No limitations -->limitless -->infinite -->Brahman or Oneness

So, on the other hand freewill and Absolute are interchangable terms.

The Absolute seen through Time, space and causation becomes the universe. That is to say, the ONE seen through Time, space and causation looks many. Time came first, then came space and then came causation as the product of time and space. So, all these ideas are related to time and one cannot exist without the other two.

The moment time has come, the Absolute has become dual. Or, the moment Time came, the Freewill has become destiny (from the above interchangebility). So, it is this time constraint that tries to put the limits on Freewill, making it appear as destiny. But mind you, the Abolute 'appears' to be bound, but in reality it is always free. In our case also we feel we are bound, but actually we are all the time free.

The Swamiji's words "You are the creator of your own destiny" can be better understood in this way. The 'you' here is not surya, but the Atman. So I am absolutely correct when I say 'I am completely free' with the 'I' here referring to Atman- it is perfectly true. But if you say 'I am completely free' with the 'I' here referring to Surya, then it is not true. You have already bound yourself in duality with name and form.

Hence, to conclude, WE ARE FREE. But to enjoy this freedom, you should come out your little self, and ASSERT YOUR DIVINITY/INFINITE NATURE.

Basis of Hindu Universalism

I have seen a lot of ppl confusing the Hindu idea of universalism as a sort of justification for each and everything: from the selfishness of a person to the dogmatism of some other religious person. This is a dangerous attitude, and clarity is required over what exactly the Vedic seers mean by “ekam sat, viprah bahudha vadanti” (truth is one, sages call it by different names). I will give two examples to drive this point:

Incident of Sri Ramakrishna and a sceptic:

Sri Ramakrishna was one day taunted by a sceptic that the Kali he worshipped at Dakshineshwar was only a slab of black stone carved into a bizarre female figure and decked with glittering trinkets. The saint was taken aback. So far he had not cared to see the sacred icon in its supreme spiritual splendour. He had been content to witness the Divine Mother in all Her majesty in the cave of his heart whenever he was in a state of samãdhi. Now he had been challenged to find out if what he worshipped was a figment of his fevered imagination.

He entered the sanctum sanctorum and stood before the sacred icon. He fixed his gaze on the holy figure, and prayed with all his concentrated psychic power: Mã ! dyãkhã dê (Mother ! Reveal Thyself). And lo and behold! The Divine Mother dazzled his physical eyes with the same indescribable infinities as he had witnessed with his inner eye while meditating on Her form. He looked back at the sceptic who had accompanied him, and smiled with compassion. The sceptic had seen nothing which he had not seen before. To his physical eyes, the Goddess was still a slab of black stone. And it had not been given to him to train the inner eye.

The point which was made that day at Dakshineshwar was that to the physical consciousness(of the sceptic in this case) a slab of stone in any shape or form will always remain a slab of stone, while to another consciousness which has awakened to some sublime dimension the same slab will reveal its innermost mysteries. To a consciousness such as that of Sri Ramakrishna who had already scaled the highest spiritual heights, the slab of stone became an incarnation of Sat (Truth), Cit (Consciousness), and Ãnanda (Bliss). It was not the icon which was inert and inconscient; it was the witness within the sceptic which had not yet awakened to its own spiritual power. It is not the Gods who are unwilling to reveal themselves; it is the worship which has not yet known how to woo them. (incident pasted from here ) So, what matters is not what a Hindu understands from Bible or Quran, but what a Christian or Muslim understands them as.

Similarity of Practices :

Let us look at an anecdote: A man is drowning in a river, and desperately throwing his hands for help. Now another person who sits on the bank, instead of saving the person, says: “Yes, even in swimming we move our hands, so he is just swimming, and not drowning, and will essentially reach the bank”. In our case, this misguided person on the bank is the ‘secularist Hindu’. Even though at a glance there may be some similarities between the two, they need not give the same result.

So, we have to remember that similarity does not mean equality, and even small differences may matter a lot

The One God

It may be the result of constant propaganda by Christian scholars depicting polytheism as primitive, many Hindus now a days jump up to prove to the Semitic religions that they too are monotheistic. If the Hindu really believes in one God, it’s a different story; otherwise this eagerness to prove to others that we are not polytheistic and worship only one God is in no way justifiable. What is wrong even if some one believes in many gods? Why should he feel shy about it?

Worst still is equating the concept of Advaitic Oneness with the One god concept of Semitic creeds, and trying to present a similar monotheistic model of Hinduism. There is a world of difference between the two. While one does not include any other form or History (by History I mean...God creating Adam then eve; this is part of the God’s History) of God, the other does not exclude anything, even including the man, living, non-living beings everything under its concept of God. While the former ‘One’ is like fixing only one way of writing a word; the latter is to tell that what ever language you write that word, it meaning is one and the same.

Faith matters?

The Bhakti literature is full of episodes where a saint will not care anything abt logic or reason or any books or scholarship; but will have a simple and total faith in a god of his liking. Compared to them, we are little babies in religion, and so do not dare question their experiences.

But this is in turn compared with the blind faith a Christian may have to his bible, and said that he too may improve spiritually if he has total faith abt one form of God.

Firstly we do not have any concept of faith in one god. What we have is faith in one Istha. Istha does not mean one and true god, but means my favourite form. This one simple difference, yet significant guards the Hindu sadhaka from becoming a fundamentalist in the name of his favourite god.

Another difference is that the Bhakti literature makes it clear that real Bhakti is that in which you do not expect anything back, and love just for the sake of love. Pure love, like a mother loves her child, so a sadhaka loves his Istha, without any want for result. Neither does he care for the pleasure of heaven nor the condemning of hell. All that matters to him is whether his Istha is near him or not. If he is near, it becomes heaven for him, and if he is not there, it becomes hell for him.

It will be a big mistake on our part if we do not understand these subtleties and to say that a person worshipping God with pure love, and one worshipping a god with selfish motives will reach the same goal.

Fundamental Difference between Hinduism and Semantic Religions

Its a beautiful article by Sri Sita Ram Goel on the differences in the fundamentals between Hinduism and other religion, copy-pasted from here :http://voi.org/books/hindusoc/ch2.htm

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The fundamental difference between the Sanãtana Dharma family of faiths on the one hand, and the “only true”creeds like Christianity and Islam on the other, can be drawn out in the form of a dialogue between a Soviet citizen and a citizen from a free society. The story may not be literally true. But it is illustrative of what can happen to human mind when it is deprived of freedom, and is regimented by blind beliefs imposed from outside.

A FREE SOCIETY VERSUS A CLOSED FRATERNITYA
Soviet diplomat arrived in the capital of a democratic country on a commercial mission on behalf of his government. The mission was to continue for several months, and the hotel in which the diplomat had to stay immediately on his arrival was rather expensive by Soviet standards. Next day, the diplomat approached the enquiry counter of the hotel and asked the lady in attendance, “Where can I find your HousingCommittee?”

The lady could not understand his question and asked him to elaborate. The diplomat explained, “You see, I cannot stay for long in this expensive place. I want to apply to the appropriate authority for allotment of adequate but cheaper accommodation.”

The lady picked up the telephone directory, opened it at a particular page, and told the diplomat, “Sorry,we have no such committee in this city or anywhere else in this country. You have to go to an estate agent who will show you all kinds of accommodation and negotiate for the one you approve of finally. The leading estate agents are listed on this page. You may phone to any one of them for an appointment.”

The diplomat was visibly annoyed. He shoved aside thetelephone directory and shot his next question, “Andwhere can I find your Food Committee?”

The lady informed him that there was no such committee either. The diplomat was now furious. He shouted, “How and where, then, do I buy the food which I will need everyday? I must have the necessary permit.”

The lady assured him patiently that he needed no permit, and that he could go into any of the hundreds of stores to buy whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.

By now the diplomat was in tantrums. He taunted, “I suppose you have no Transport Committee either?”

The lady kept her cool and said with a smile, “Why, there are all those taxies standing and cruising all over this city. You can hire any one of them at any time of the day or night and go wherever you please.”

The diplomat gave up in utter disgust. There was sadness writ large on his face. He shook his head several times and said to himself, “Very bad! Very bad indeed! There is no system in this country. It is achaos all around. I feel lost.”

SPIRITUAL FREFDOM VERSUS RELIGIOUS REGIMENTATION
A follower of closed creeds like Christianity andIslam finds himself in a similar situation when faced with the spiritual freedom that is Sanãtana Dharma. He discovers very soon that Sanãtana Dharma does not fit into any of the mental moulds to which he is wedded,and which he seeks in other systems of thought. He is most likely to shake his head in utter disgust and feel lost like our diplomat from a closed social system stationed in the metropolis of a free society. An encounter between a monotheist and an informed follower of Sanãtana Dharma is, therefore, sure to develop along similar lines.

The first point in which the followers of closed creeds take great pride is the historicity of the only saviour or the last prophet who was sent by or who received the “full and final revelation” from the “one and only true god.” The first question which such a faithful will put to a student of Sanãtana Dharma, therefore, is bound to be as follows: “Who is your only saviour or your last prophet? Where was he born and brought up? Where and when and before which apostles or companions did he teach, preach, and reveal?”

A student of Sanãtana Dharma cannot but reply as follows: “The very concept of a historical saviour or prophet is foreign to Sanãtana Dharma. We do not concede the monopoly of spiritual truth or moral virtue to any historical person, howsoever great or highly honoured. Every one has to be one’s own saviour, one’s own prophet. One has to discover the spiritual truths for one’s own self, if that truth has to have any meaning for one or any validity in one’slife. A truth discovered by someone else cannot become my truth unless I rediscover it for myself. Scriptures and spiritual teachers can be my aids and guides, and may help me in my search for truth. But the truth of which the scriptures speak or which the teachers expound cannot become a truth for me unless it comes alive in my own consciousness, and starts transforming my own life. Moreover, the very historicity in which you take pride is for us the hallmark of the ephemeral and the false. We reject a historical religion aspauru Seya prasthãna, idiosyncrasies of a particular person, no matter how you hail him. That which was born in history has also died in history. You are showing devotion to what is dead and gone.”

Next, the followers of closed creeds are mighty proud of being as Ahl-i-Kitãb or the People of the Book. They are sure that the “only true revelation” from the“one and only true god” is contained in the book(al-kitãb) which was compiled by the apostles of the only saviour or the companions of the last prophet, after the saviour or the prophet had passed away and could speak no more. They believe that nothing can be taken out from or added to this “book” which is supposed to contain the final truth for all time to come. Therefore, the second question which such a faithful will put to a follower of Sanãtana Dharma is as follows: “Which is the book in which you believe, or your al-kitãb?”

A student of Sanãtana Dharma is sure to reply as follows: “What for do we need a book? The whole spiritual truth, every shastra, is secret in the human heart. Any one, anywhere, at any time can have access to the spiritual realm provided one seeks for it sincerely, and prepares oneself for entering it. Manyseers and saints have seen it in as many ways, spoken of it and in as many languages and by means of as many metaphors. The Vedas provide one version of it, the Jainãgama another, the TripiTaka yet another, and soon down to the latest Hindu saint such as Sri Ramakrishna, or the latest Hindu sage such as Raman Maharshi. Different sects of Sanãtana Dharma have collected the sayings and songs of different sages and saints in as many books which these sects cherish as their shastras. But these shastras are not at all what you describe as the book or al-kitãb, even by distant definition. Your creed will get lost for good if your the book or al-kitãb gets lost. The book or al-kitãb cannot be recovered because the person who preached it or to whom it was revealed is dead and gone. But Sanãtana Dharma will lose nothing if all its shastras are lost. All old shastras and many more can be recovered from inside the human heart, where all of them are ultimately enshrined.”

By now the follower of a closed creed is most likely to feel flabbergasted by what he has been brainwashed to regard as blasphemy. The third question which such a faithful will put to a student of Sanãtana Dharma is as follows: “You have no only saviour, no last prophet. You have no al-kitãb. How, then, do you knowwho is your one and only true god? How do you distinguish this one and only true god from the many false gods which abound all around you?”

At this stage the student of Sanãtana Dharma will have to smile and say, “According to our spiritual tradition, testified by a long line of spiritual seekers, the way to God-discovery is through Self-discovery. As one proceeds on that inner voyage one sees spiritual truths in many forms. None of these forms is false. It is only one’s seeking which can falter and lead to one’s fall from the path of spiritual progress by insisting that this or that form alone is true. Sanãtana Dharma stands squarely for a human becoming God in the process ofSelf-discovery-Ãtman becoming Parmãtman, PuruSa becoming PuruSottama. This is the path ofworld-discovery as well. The deeper one dives into oneself, the faster one’s world gets divinised. One starts seeing God in every human being, in every animal, in every plant, in every stone. One feels free to worship God in any from or in all forms at the same time. One also feel’s free not to worship God at all, and to dwell within oneself in spiritual self-delight. Sanãtana Dharma, therefore, has no use for a God who makes himself known to mankind throughthe medium of a saviour or a prophet, or through the pages of al-kitãb or the book. Such a God must always remain external to us, and external to the world in which we live. Such a God does not permit humanhood to grow into Godhood, nor allows this world to get divinised. He has reserved all divinity for himself, and has nothing to spare for his creatures except an abject servitude to his arbitrary commandments conveyed through a saviour or a prophet chosen equally arbitrarily.”

The follower of a closed creed now shoots the last arrow in his armoury with what he believes to be deadly effect. He is sure to shout, “You have failed to win the favour of the only saviour or the last prophet by not living a life according to the final commandments of the one and only true God as revealed to his only son or his last prophet in al-kitab or the book. How will the only saviour or the last prophet intercede for you on the Day of Judgement, and save you from God’s wrath and eternal hell-fire? You cannot say in all seriousness that you are not interested ingoing to an eternal heaven full of fair maidens, flowing with milk and honey, and fanned by ever-fragrant breezes.”

A student of Sanãtana Dharma will keep his cool and reply as follows: “Sanãtana Dharma is not so mean and miserly in deciding human destiny. It gives many lives to every creature. One can start anew from the point where one stopped in one’s previous life. And the process does not cease till a creature has attained perfection and achieved Godhood. Every one is a bodhisattva destined to become the Buddha in the course of spiritual seeking. The journey is from darkness and bondage to light and freedom, and not from the sensual pleasures of this world to the sensual orgies of a high heaven. On the other hand,the only hell we know is neither situated outside ourselves, nor at the end of time. The hell is within us - in our greed and gluttony, in our hatreds and infatuations, in our self-righteousness and self-seeking, in our dark drives for power and domination, in our self-love and pursuit of pleasure.The only way out of this hell is through an awakening to the divinity within us, and through dispelling the darkness of ignorance in which we live our mundane lives. The favour or disfavour of a saviour or a prophet can neither catapult us into heaven nor drag us down into hell. A saviour or prophet is absolutely irrelevant to the realm of spiritual progress or retrogression.”

At this point the follower of a closed creed is bound to give up in utter disgust. He is bound to exclaim,“Very bad! Very bad indeed! There is no system inyour bewildered beliefs. It is a free for all. What is worse, it is blasphemy against the one and only true God, against the only saviour or the last prophet sent by Him, and against the only true revelation conveyed by Him through a mighty messenger.”

Science and Vedanta

some random musings :

The classical comment of Einstein about the Quantum mechanics is well known “God does not play dice”

But even more classical is the reply of Bohr to this “Stop telling God what he should do”

I have always wondered about the very word random. Is there really anything called “randomness”. Well statistics tells me so. If I toss a coin, the chance of a head or a tail falling is random is what it tells. But again is it really random?

I mean, if I can calculate my finger position, the initial velocity, coin shape, gravity etc etc, I can determine whether a head will come or a tail. But the situation soooo complex, that it is very difficult, almost practically impossible for me to predict it. So I call it “random”. But what I really mean by saying so is that the system is theoretically possible to predict, but practically impossible to predict.

Then we have our Heisenberg uncertainty theorem, which states that uncertainty is must in measuring the exact position and velocity. So this means that it is not just practically impossible, but also theoretically impossible for me to predict the result.

So does this imply that randomness exists? Not in my view, it only means randomness exists in measuring, not in the system itself. That is the system, the coin is following a law, an order, it is being deterministic. Only when we try to measure it, the system behaves differently, which is quite natural, as the observer is also now effecting the system (like an anthropologist is studying a primitive culture in the field, she assumes that her presence in the tribe is having a negligible effect on the behavior of the members. Sometimes we later discover that all she was measuring was the behavior of the tribe when it was being observed by the anthropologist.)

Hence can I say that every system is following an inherent order, which we are not able to measure, without affecting it. Now is this what the Vedanta call as rta ?

Before going lets us see what is the view of Vedanta (just my understanding, may be wrong) in this regard to the nature of the Absolute (or call it Reality or Brahman or God or Universe or whatever you want)

***text in this colour is quoting Swami Vivekananda from this talk on “Absolute and its manifestation”***

The Absolute has become the universe. By this is not only meant the material world, but the mental world, the spiritual world — heavens and earths, and in fact, everything that exists. Mind is the name of a change, and body the name of another change, and so on, and all these changes compose our universe. This Absolute has become the universe by coming through time, space, and causation. This is the central idea of Advaita. Time, space, and causation are like the glass through which the Absolute is seen, and when It is seen on the lower side, It appears as the universe. Now we at once gather from this that in the Absolute there is neither time, space, nor causation. The idea of time cannot be there, seeing that there is no mind, no thought. The idea of space cannot be there, seeing that there is no external change. What you call motion and causation cannot exist where there is only One.

ie., the ONE reality, appears as one many when seen through the prism of “time, space, causation” So if only ‘one’ exists, how did many come. Shankara tells us that this is many is just an illusion. He gives the example of snake and rope. If you go into a dark room and there is a rope in that room. But due to darkness that rope appears to you as snake, and you start fearing. But there is no snake there, it just appears to be there.

But then does it mean that the snake is not there. That is also not true. While we feared, the snake was a reality to us. So it correct to say that the illusion of the snake is a conditional truth and a “subjective reality”

Hence the Reality, when conditioned by “time, space & causation” appears many, but this is a just a subjective reality, and fully real. Now what is this Reality? The Vedantist gives no other attributes to God except these three — that He is Infinite Existence, Infinite Knowledge, and Infinite Bliss, and he regards these three as One. Existence without knowledge and love cannot be; knowledge without love and love without knowledge cannot be. What we want is the harmony of Existence, Knowledge, and Bliss Infinite.

The essential conclusions we can draw are that there is only one reality. All the many we see are just apparently there on the surface. But beneath all of them, there is a substratum which connects all this ‘many’.

It was in this context that I was trying to correlate things in Vedanta and Science. According to Vedanta, there are no two independent things. All are inter-connected. There is an inner realty which permeates each corner of this universe. But this is not what the science we know tells. Two independent events ARE possible according to it. A change in something in one corner of universe need not affect some other thing in the other corner of the universe. Even if does, the effect cannot be instantaneous, but will have to travel at a speed less that velocity of light.

But the Bell’s theorem had some revolutionary ideas in this regard, and its parallels with Vedanta have been simply too many. (you may read this page on Bell’s theorem; even if you are not interested in Vedanta, this is a great read)

In short what it is that if the statistical predictions of quantum theory are true, an objective universe is incompatible with the law of local causes. David Bohm has done interesting research on this subject. Bohm called our everyday world of space, time and causality the explicate order. He proposed that underlying this everyday world is an interconnected one which he calls the implicate order. He used a number of analogies and images to discuss these two orders.

One such analogy is a hologram. To make a hologram we split a laser beam into two pieces with a half-silvered mirror. One piece goes straight to a photographic plate, the other bounces off the object and then goes to the plate. In order to reconstruct the image of the object we shine a laser beam through the developed plate: the three-dimensional image appears. Note that in some sense the hologram on the plate is an interference pattern between the beam that has experienced the thing and the beam that experienced no-thing.

One characteristic of a hologram is that down to at least a few grains of the silver in the plate, each piece of the plate contains the entire image. If we cut the plate in half we do not lose half the image; instead we lose resolution and the image becomes more fuzzy. Thus each piece of the plate contains the entire space of the object in an enfolded way; this is an analogy to the implicate order. When we reconstruct the image, we have unfolded the implicate order into an explicate one.

As the Chandogya Upanishad goes:
What is in the macrocosm is in this microcosm…
As large as the universe outside, even so large is the universe within the lotus of the heart.
Within it are heaven and earth, the sun, the moon, the lightning, and all the stars.
What is in the macrocosm is in this microcosm. (see this link for more parallels)

You may recall that for a chaotic system, very small changes in initial conditions leads to radically different trajectories. It turns out that for the double slit experiment for electrons, the motion of the electron after it has passed the slits is chaotic in just this sense. Thus, even small thermal fluctuations in the electron's interaction with the slits cause the electron's future motion to be unknowable to us, even though it is strictly deterministic. Thus it seems to us that the path of the electron is random, although in reality it is not.

This is how Bohm compares the explicate and implicate order:

Explicate ~ Implicate
parts make up the whole ~ whole makes up the parts
spatial separation ~ holographic
describable ~ "finger pointing to the moon”
things exist ~ 'thing' and 'no-thing' interfere
"ten thousand things" ~ illusion
spacetime ~ spectra

This is what precisely Vedanta says. We all have roots in the universe. Conscious mental activity exerts measurable effects on the physical world - a world that includes human bodies, organs, tissues, and cells. Mind becomes a legitimate factor in the unfolding of health and disease. The inter-penetration of all matter is the rule. The dividing line between life and non-life is illusory and arbitrary. For Bohm, order and unity are spread throughout the universe in a way which escapes our senses. In the same way that order and organization are spread throughout the hologram. Each part of the universe contains enough information to reconstitute the whole, so we search for something by knowing which we know everything- our own SELF. This is what the Upanishads tell us “that by knowing we know everything”. Here is one of the profoundest passages in Vedanta: "He that is the Essence of your soul, He is the Truth, He is the Self, thou art That, O Shvetaketu." This is what is meant by "Thou art God."

Another interesting theory is the “String Theory” It makes a lot of interesting and bold assertions. The most strange(?) is when it talks about 11 dimensions and the existence of parallel universes, which reminds me of the following verse from Devi Mahatyam (Chandi) "With a single glance of her, thousands and thousands of universes roll forwards, and thousands and thousands are destroyed" For me initially the plurality of the word "universe" in this verse appeared absurd, as even if something new props up, it will just become part of the universe. Not anymore.

Another interesting thing about string theory is that it proposes the existence of 11 dimensions, of which 4 happened to form this universe. Some different set might have formed some different universe.

Now what are the implications of it? The first point is that string theory thus in my view will always remain a theory, and never be proved experimentally as the very word experiment assumes it to be done in this world of 4 dimensions. We cannot generate some other dimensions in this world of which has these set of dimensions.

Man can never understand something about which he has never experienced. An analogy either given or, either formed in the brain is essential for a man to understand something. All the mathematics may be there, but we are never going to understand either meaning or the implications. So can I dare to say that modern physics has gone to ends where it is almost impossible for you to go, without properly trying to focus of the very basic tool of understanding - "our own mind". So the fine tuning of the mind becomes an essential element to further understand something which we have never experienced in our daily life. This is what the Vedanta always emphasizes- that controlling the mind, removing the ego is the key to the understanding of the Reality.

Now coming back to where exactly we started- the discussion between Einstein and Bohr about whether God plays dice or not.

My take is God does play dice, but his is dice are more like the one's used by Shakuni in Mahabharata.

He does throw dice, but he gets the outcome ‘he wants’ (obviously he has to if he has to be God). But all the time making us feel that everything Random/coincidence

There is inherent order in this Universe, rta. To follow the Dharma is to fine tune ourselves to this cosmic order, and be in harmony with it.