Subjective and Objective

Science and Knowledge

I’d like to make it clear that I’m not making an argument against science. We are communicating over the internet via satellite technology. I do not believe the Earth is flat or that cider vinegar is the cure for cancer. Nor do I hold with the “creationist” view that the Earth was created from nothing in 7 days. My objection is to what is called “scientism” or the belief that the so-called scientific method of reasoning is capable of solving all questions.

I'm interested in Vedic knowledge. In a sense there is a redundancy in the expression Vedic knowledge, since the word "Vedic" means "knowledge. I don't think there is a contradiction between "Vedic knowledge" and "scientific knowledge." Vedic knowledge includes esoteric, spiritual and metaphysical knowledge, but also reveals the wisdom by which we can interpret the phenomenon of this world. Wisdom involves meaning. Knowing the difference between right and wrong, between matter and spirit. does not preclude one from having the material or practical knowledge to live and work in modern society.

Science is not at all capable of solving all questions, since it is not interested in asking any questions about meaning. Questions about meaning are left to philosophers who defer to physicists. In academia, so-called “soft sciences” like psychology reduce meaning to behavior. Psychologists cannot explore what life means, they can only explore how people act. This is called “Behaviorism,” and was advanced by B.F. Skinner who tried to extend the idea of Pavlovian stimulus-response to every aspect of human behavior. Since psychologists want a piece of the science-research pie they do their best to be “objective” even when working in the most subjective of fields--the human mind.

To admit the existence of “subjectivity” in science is a heresy. Rupert Sheldrake, interested in how subjectivity impacts biology, has been driven from the halls of scientific academe and banished. Any questioning of the scientific paradigm is not tolerated by the high priests of science.

Dawkins and Sam Harris are no longer scientists doing research. They have contributed nothing of value to their field in recent years. They pass their time doing public debates with Christians, ridiculing the idea of faith or God. The debate has been cast in black and white: either you support the advance of science or the idea that Moses parted the Red Sea, Jonah lived in a whale’s belly for weeks at sea, and that God created the world in seven days five thousand years ago. It’s one or the other. This is the same mindset that insists that either you support the Red candidate or the Blue candidate with no room for subtlety.

I’m not interested in debating with atheists; it seems to me that their views are not well thought out or disciplined. 

I don’t believe that "either you accept science or faith." I don’t think they are mutually exclusive. I think that scientific inquiry is useful in revealing many secrets about “how” the world works. But I think it falls short in helping us understand “why” it exists. I think that since science defers the question of meaning to philosophers that it is the task of philosophers to investigate meaning.

Psychologists will tell us that life without meaning is unendurable. Therefore, we must at least “believe” that life has meaning, otherwise we fall into depression. Psychologists are struggling to treat the epidemic of depression that faces modern society. The pain of meaningless living has driven millions to drugs. Drugs are a multi-billion dollar industry driven by pain, frustration, and the depression of a meaningless life. Anti-depressive Drugs like Prozac are prescribed by doctors to treat depression; Narco-traffickers run an underground economy in Meth, Marijuana, Heroin and Opiods to treat the same problems. Hopelessness drives people not only to pills, medications, and illegal drugs. Alcoholism is widespread, driven by hopelessness. It is no wonder that so many people take shelter of drugs and alcohol when we are told that life and the universe have no meaning.

I am not against the observation of reality and the examination of facts. I have nothing against scientific achievement. I object when the scientific ideology promotes the exploitive tendency to the exclusion of any other worldview. I object to the exaltation of the positivist paradigm as the only way of knowing. Clearly science is inadequate in detecting “meaning”--either in the physical universe or in the human social milieu.

Atheists like Dawkins, Harris, and Hawking claim that they are being “objective,” but overlook the fact that their point of view is “subjective.” There is no such thing as “objectivity,” insofar as no one has the same experience as anyone else. “Objectivity” is a faulty paradigm, as quantum physics shows. Quantum physics demonstrates that objectivity at the subatomic level is impossible. This does not prove the existence of “soul” or “spirit,” merely that the physical universe, like the metaphysical one, is beyond knowing. In which field of sensual observation does the world truly exist? It is not possible to know. A decent philosopher or an honest quantum physicist will admit that the physical world is unknowable, whether we speak of the macro of black holes or the micro level of dark energy and sub-atomic particles. If “reality” includes the concept of time as a fourth dimension it becomes unknowable since all phenomenon is temporary and vanishes soon after it comes into being. The temporal nature of reality makes causality impossible to measure since all phenomenon disappears over time. Since the goal of science is to measure its goal can never be reached.

The limits to reason as set by Kant avoid metaphysical problems. The greatest metaphysical problem is that of consciousness. Consciousness has eluded study by rationalists; in scientific circles it is known as the “hard” problem. It is a problem that physics will not touch, for it is considered to belong to such “soft” sciences as biology. And yet, while neuroscience would reduce consciousness to an epiphenomenon of the brain, the modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain consciousness. This leaves other sticky problems difficulty to explain as well: for example, language, intentionality, meaning, value, and the moral sense in humans.

Mind and Cosmos: Impossible to erase subjectivity

The failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. In his book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False Thomas Nagel writes:

“Consciousness is the most conspicuous obstacle to a comprehensive naturalism that relies only on the resources of physical science. The existence of consciousness seems to imply that the physical description of the universe, in spite of its richness and explanatory power, is only part of the truth, and that the natural order is far less austere than it would be if physics and chemistry accounted for everything. If we take this problem seriously, and follow out its implications, it threatens to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture.“

Subjective Reality Exists

Nagel’s atheism doesn’t prevent him for advocating for consciousness, mental or subjective reality. He reasons that the ocean of perceptions, ideas, and emotions in the human mind are more than the sum total of synapses and electrical brain impulses. Nagel determines that consciousness exists and is just as real as any physical thing.

According to Nagel, even if we could map out neural firings in the brain that may be responsible for the panoply of thoughts in the network of awareness, our map could only show us where thoughts take place. But thought itself is a distinct reality; it is different from the locations of electrical impulses and the movements of neurons. We don’t feel electric patterns in our brains; our thoughts are a superior reality. This mental awareness, or consciousness is a special realm of being and must be understood and studied as such. Nagel argues that the study of consciousness should be considered primordial, just as biology takes into consideration elements that cannot be found in physics.

Sri Aurobindo, one of the brightest minds of the 20th century takes the idea of mind further. According to his views as expressed in his work Divine Life concept, subjectivity and objectivity are two sides of the coin we know as consciousness. In this view, evolution is not wholly an objective process, but subjective, what French philosopher Henri Bergson called “Creative Evolution.” Aurobindo holds that consciousness, which he calls “Jiva-shakti” knows itself and evolves subjectively through different aspects of matter and mind. Mind is the materialistic principle of this conscious illusion of separateness and division, but is not ultimately realized, since it is contaminated by ego. Mind is not only the cause of limiting and dividing knowledge in evolving minds, but the mediating principle for the descent of Spirit into substantial form. Sri Aurobindo writes:

"If we go back to the spiritual basis of things, substance in its utter purity resolves itself into pure conscious being, self-existent, inherently self-aware by identity, but not yet turning its consciousness upon itself as object.

Kant’s craft was in shifting God out of consideration on wholly epistemological grounds. What cannot be discovered through a proper epistemology has no ontology according to this reasoning. What we cannot know must not exist. Since we cannot “know” God in the technical sense of “reason” advocated by Kant, his existence is out of the question.

Kant’s metaphysics are not only tinged with agnostic but even filled with atheistic overtones. His so-called philosophy of religion is really an attack on the religions of his time. He seems intent on removing religion and theology from any serious academic discussion. His genius is shown in the fact that he was successful, especially in the West.

Eastern philosophy has a different take. For Eastern philosophy, especially the points of view that flow from the Vedanta and Upanishads, consciousness exists before and after reason and transcends the purely rational. The atma, the self, is a self-evident fact that must be taken into consideration before any attempt at ratiocination.

Vedantic version

In Western philosophy and theology, one of the most robust attempts at a refutation of Kant has come from another German thinker: Rudolf Otto. Otto was a Lutheran theologian and scholar of comparative religion. He felt that despite the fact that one may speak of the functions or levels of consciousness, consciousness itself is beyond classification, irrational, “plainly strange,” “wholly other,” non-deducible, irreductable, and unclassifiable. Otto was intrigued by the mysticism he found in India as a student of Sanskrit and the Vishnu-bhakti of the Śrī-Vaiṣṇava school. He studied the system of qualified dualism promoted by Ramanuja and translated works on Vishnu-Narayana into German.

Otto's book The Idea of the Holy, is an important theological work, read by Catholics and Protestants alike. Since its publication in 1917 it has remained popular as a powerfully felt answer to Kant’s Critique.

Idea of the Holy promotes the idea of the “holy” as what he calls, “numinous.” In his attempt at explaining a self-evident mystical experience, he employs a special philosophical vocabulary. Otto’s numinous is a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self".

His term derives from the Latin numen which means “divine power”. Oddly, he picks a term with echoes of Kant's noumenon, a Greek term referring to unknowable reality.

For Otto, the numinous or “intuitive divine mystic experience” is characterized by awe and reverence. Based on his insight into South Indian bhakti, this strange German philosophy teacher finds that an experience of God is characterized by a sense of mystery which he calls mysterium, awe and reverence or tremendum and fascination fascinans all at once.

Otto points out that the conscious state of awe and reverence achieved through mystic communion with the divine is beyond classification and cannot be understand rationally. The numinous, therefore, cannot be cognized.

Rudolf Otto, (25 September 1869 – 6 March 1937) worked and wrote after Nietzsche and ushered in much of the twentieth century reaction to the agnosticism of Kant and the atheism of Nietzsche. Darwin and Marx had made their impact. The ideals of Marx were taken up passionately by Lenin who tried to found a Communist society in Russia based on his teachings. The atheism of “Religion is the Opium of the masses,” was made official state doctrine by Lenin and Stalin in Russia and an entire generation was denied freedom of worship. Yet somehow theism and mysticism survived.

While the teachings of Kant, Nietzsche, Darwin and Marx had left an indelible impression on science, culture and politics, Rudolf Otto’s quiet views on mysticism influenced 20th Century theism.

Theologican Karl Barth approved of Otto as did Freud’s rival Psycho-analist Karl Jung, who borrowed the idea of the “numinous.” Among theologians and philosophers influenced by Otto’s views were Paul Tillich, Martin Heidegger, and Joseph Needham.

Rudolf Otto mounted an effective defense against the materialistic rationalism of the 19th Century by forwarding the importance of “Religious mysticism.” His personal experience of mysticism was sparked by his contact with the Vaiṣṇavas of South India. He was fascinated with the model of worship he found there which stresses the awe and reverence of God. And yet his fascination with refuting Kant’s Critique by forwarding the “non-rational” element leads him to some insipid conclusions. Useful as his refutation may have been, his own mystic experience seems impoverished by comparison to true Vaiṣṇavism.

Otto’s idea of the Divine or Numinous resembles much more the Old Testament God of terror and awe than the beneficent sweetness of Reality the Beautiful as seen in the worship of Śrī Kṛṣṇa. His awe of God seems more akin to dread and ghost worship than to any loving relationship found in the bhakti tradition.

Otto stresses, mystery, terror, and fascination in the face of the Supreme Majesty of the Divine. And yet this is a superficial understanding of the Personality of Godhead. While he has found comfort in the mysticism of India, he has grounded his concept of divinity in the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition where the Old Testament version conceives of God as the “All-powerful Father in Heaven,” and humankind as absolutely tainted with primordial sin. Since the Christians insist on the need for atonement of man’s sins through the blood of Christ, the mediation of Christ is essential for redemption. The gap between the Absolute Power of Divinity in the Fatherhood of God and the helplessness of man, fallen into sin, is tremendous and fearful. Otto finds only the virata-rupa of Krishna as seen in Bhagavad-gita brings forth the kind of terror that might correspond to the Christian Deity.

Rudolf Otto’s version of mysticism was helpful to many theists living and writing in the 20th century from Karl Barth to C.S. Lewis. But we can go deeper. As a competent linguist, Otto not only knew Sanskrit but also Bengali. He not only translated the Bhagavad-gita, The original Gita: The song of the Supreme Exalted One, London 1939 and was interested in the relationship between Christianity and bhakti, he also served as interpretor to Rabindranath Tagore during the latter’s visit to Marburg, Germany. However his version of bhakti falls short.

Otto has much to recommend him, especially in his noble attempt to revive God after the attempted murder by Kant. Still, he leaves many essential truths unexplained. His conception of divinity as “beyond reason” is valuable. The moderns first supported the “clockwork God” of Newton and finally rejected that Deistic Lord of the laws of nature as no longer useful. Otto tries to support the Fatherhood of Godhead, and yet he falls sort in dealing with the higher aspects of reality. The Fatherhood of Godhead as conceived by Otto may affirm Christ’s vision of a loving God,the idea that God loves his children but his version does little to explain man’s love for God. An object of terror cannot rightly be considered an object of love.

There is no need to define divinity exclusively in terms of terror, mystery, and fascination or mysterium, trememdum fascinatum, as does Otto. Otto seems to have been unable to understand God as Love, settling instead for terror and mystery.

And yet, history has given us many examples of saints in the mystic tradition of Christianity who claimed communion with the Love of God. Saint John Chrysostom achieves divine love through the holy name of Christ. Saint Francis, immersed in love, expresses love for all beings, including the most helpless animals. The experience of God as Love is not limited to the Christian world.

Rudolf Otto, fascinated by rationalism concentrates on the knowable aspects of divinity and terminates in terror. But in bhakti-yoga, God is experienced through divine love and dedication.

Nevertheless the give and take between atheists and theists have seen many variations on the them of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Otto influenced the theologians of the 20th century, notably Karl Barth, and C.S. Lewis. While he finds “Fear” to be the basis of religious conviction, at least he feels that God is still alive enough to fear. His analysis of divinity may be useful as an answer to atheism, but is far from a healthy, developed view of enlightened consciousness, since it lacks joy. Fear and submission to God from awe and reverence may be superior to a complete lack of consciousness, but true communion with divinity should involve love, dedication, and voluntary self-abnegation.

In any case, atheistic opposition has resulted in the gradual and further elucidation of the theistic position. But although the opponents of theism have been silenced from time to time, they are not always really converted to the views of their rival. The rational materialist view sometimes appears to conquer all opposition until a mature and gifted protagonist of mystic realization reappears on the scene.

Otto was interested in bhakti, but true love of God is possible only in the absence of fear, of awe and reverence. And yet, while his definition of divinity lacks higher perspectives, Otto was useful in influencing 20th Century theologists like C.S. Lewis in preserving and defending theism from the darkness of atheism.

In his seminal work, Subjective Evolution of Consciousness, Shridhar Maharaja comments,

“Everything comes from above. What we experience at present is like the outcome of hypnosis. In the process of hypnosis, the hypnotist can make us withdraw our consciousness from anything at any moment and show us another way to view reality.

 In the same way God it is free, and whatever he wills becomes reality. Whatever he imagines becomes reality. He can force us to see something, and when he does so we cannot see it in any other way. 

If you can understand this principle you can understand how everything is possible in divinity. Then you can have some faith in what is Godhead. In a sense Godhead means this: the origin of creation. And yet this creation is only an insignificant part of his divine nature. He has infinite qualities and activities.

This world in which we live is only a negligible part of the cosmic manifestation. The whole basis of everything is there in hand. It comes from up to down and not from downed up. To the idea that everything is developing from downward up we must say no matter does not create spirit to say that from a fossil intelligence is coming is a fool's conception.

Consciousness, spirit, is all pervading. It is present even in the trees, stones, Earth, ether, air – everywhere. And to know the truth, we must connect to the conscious principle of the infinite.
What is the infinite? He is Almighty, omniscient, omnipotent, all sympathetic, all loving.

Our real aspiration must be to have a direct connection with him, leaving aside the charm of his created substance. We should want to negotiate how we can have a connection with the Creator himself.

And his position is not simply that of creator. This world is a creation of a lower order. But a higher creation also exists in the plane of reality which is infinitely higher than this world of experience.

We should inquire whether it is possible for us to have a life and that soil. We should try to understand what are the layers of reality in that realm of consciousness, and how we can go higher and higher in that plane.

We should inquire about that and find out how we can enter there. We must try to understand what is the key to the entrance into that transcendental abode. This should be the basis for search for truth. We should inquire into how to become free from both the plane of renunciation and the plane of exploitation.”

Bhaktivedanta Swami comments on the above cited verse:

This is an explanation of the world: everything that takes place is due to the combination of kṣetra and kṣetrajṇa, the body and the spirit soul. This combination of material nature and the living entity is made possible by the Supreme God Himself. The mahat-tattva is the total cause of the total cosmic manifestation, and because in the total substance of the material cause there are three modes of nature, it is sometimes called Brahman.  The Supreme Personality impregnates that total substance, and thus innumerable universes become possible. This total material sub­ stance, the mahat-tattva, is described as Brahman in the Vedic literature: tasmād etad brahma nāma-rūpam annaṃ ca jayate.  Into that Brahman the seeds of the living entities are impregnated by the Supreme Person.  The scorpion lays its eggs in piles of rice, and sometimes it is said that the scorpion is born out of rice. But the rice is not the cause of the scorpion. Actually, the eggs were laid by the mother. Similarly, material nature is not the cause of the birth of the living entities. The seed is given by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and they only seem to come out as products of material nature. Thus every living entity, according to his past activities, has a different body, created by this material nature, and the entity can enjoy or suffer according to his past deeds. The Lord is the cause of all the manifestations of living entities in this material world.