Çréla Bhakti Rakñak Çrédhar Dev-Goswämé Mahäräj and a group of University students and Professors]
Reality is subjective. It is based on consciousness. Color is perceived
through the eye. It is not that the color is there and the eye can catch it. But the seer sees through the eye and perceives color. So color is a perception. Its posi- tion as actual substance should be traced to the subtle plane of existence. This is the nature of reality: the gross is coming from the subtle. According to Säìkhya philosophy, there are three branches of worldly reality: the sensation, the sensory instruments, and the sense objects. Sound is created by the ear, color is produced by the eye, and so on. So the gross world is coming from the subtle through the channel of consciousness. The feeler, the instrument of perception, is creating the object of his perception. You are being taught that you and other souls of your type are the subjects, the center of the universe, and everything, all else, is an object meant only for your exploitation. You are being taught that we are exploiters and that the entire environ- ment is for our exploitation. That is the foundation upon which the present system of education is based. Dr. Singh: Objective evolution is what modern science calls Darwinian evolution, but how does subjective evolution unfold in Krishna conscious science? Çréla Çrédhar Mahäräj: You have to take the example of hypnotism. The subject is the soul, and its object is all these worlds of experience. And the supersubject is the venerable area which is superior to the subject, the soul – that is the supersubjective area. If, like a hypnotist, the higher subject wants to make the lower subject see something, he cannot but see that thing. We are all in the subjective, imaginary world, but above imagination is the supersubjective plane of reality. The standard to measure truth or untruth mustn't come from a vitiated, vulnerable plane, but from a real plane. And to realize that is not an ordinary class of knowledge, which as a subject we can make our object; it is supersubjective. We may be the subjects in this mundane world, but we will have to become objects to be handled by the superknowledge of that plane. Through a form of mystic “hypnotism,’’ the supersubject controls the subject to see a particular thing, and he is bound to see that. One may think that as we see a stone, the stone compels us to see it as stone, but it is just the opposite: we are compelled to see it as stone being under the influence of the supersubject who displays everything as He likes. When He commands, “See stone,” then we shall see stone. Full control over whatever we see rests in His hands. No power to control what we see rests in the objective world. The objective world is fully controlled by the subjective. This is confirmed in Bhagavad-gétä, where Krishna says paçya me yogam aiçvaryam: “If I say, ‘Behold my mystic power,’ you are bound to see it. You have no other choice.” Just as if He were a magician, the Supersubject can show one thing to you and something entirely different to me. The Supersubject, the universal subject, has such power. Try to understand this principle of hypnotism. The whole thing is hypnotism – this whole creation – and it is completely in the hand of the Supreme Subject. All mate- rial laws have no meaning; the laws and the sublaws are all pertaining to the subjective world. Dr. Murphey: But how can one perceive this sort of hypnotism? Çréla Çrédhara Mahäräja: How can we know beforehand that in a laboratory, combining hydrogen and oxygen – two gases – will produce water? Only when one comes to a particular stage of scientific knowledge can he know that a more subtle thing like gas can produce a tangible material thing like water. In that way, when you have an idea of the higher substance, then you can understand how from the subtle, the gross has originated. The relative world is a perverted reflection of the absolute reality. It is not that a lower thing can produce a higher thing, but it is easy for a higher thing to produce something lower. This is not difficult to understand. The modern scientific position is saying basically that stone can produce soul; but why not consider that soul can produce stone? We have to inquire about that process – how the soul can produce stone. But we have done away with that and instead we say that stone is gradually producing soul – we are very fond of investigating in that line. Why? The subtle should be given more importance than the gross. In reality, we are not the subject, the center of the universe. The cause is in the higher world. To know this is real education – subjective learning.