By Jahnudvipa das, 2004
Vedanta means the end (anta) of all knowledge (veda). Real knowledge must necessarily describe all aspects of reality.
According to everyone's experience, there are three features of reality; the knower, the known and knowledge - or in modern terms; the observer, the observed and the process or method of observation. Vedanta provides a working model that enables a student to scientifically study all these three aspects of reality. Any science that does not scientifically describe total reality, i.e. all these three aspects of reality, is only a relative science, and thus ultimately only an ignorance. It is ignorance because as long as everything is relative there will be no foundation of one's standard of knowledge or conduct, and hence everything is just a matter of opinion. And opinion is not knowledge.
For example, in USA in the 50s DDT was used to spray on crops to protect them against bugs and diseases. So according to science at that time DDT was considered a good thing. Later, when birds began to drop dead from the sky and the worms in the ground absorbed the DDT and killed the birds they were eaten by, it was discovered that DDT was extremely poisonous, and its use was banned. That is just an example to show how relative knowledge is ignorance.
Real knowledge is always right. Not that it is right only for the time being until we know better and new information emerges that nullifies the old one. If new information can nullify the current information or knowledge it means that the current information was not knowledge to begin with. It was an assumption. This claim will not be popular with many. In the words of Oxford theologian Klaus Klostermaier: “’Post-modernism’ in a variety of ways has made in-roads into the thinking even of non-intellectuals. It is no longer politically correct to assert the unqualified reality of anything, or to assume that one can know truth.” (ISKCON Communication Journal, Vol 4, No 2, December 1996, http://www.iskcon.com/icj/4_2/4_2klostermaier2.html)
Vedanta operates on the premise that any knowledge that does not distinguish between the observer, the observed and the process of observation is not knowledge but ignorance. Knowledge and ignorance can also be translated into spirit and matter. Real knowledge must be eternal and only spirit or consciousness is eternal, so in that sense knowledge translates into spiritual energy; and ignorance, since it is temporary, translates into material energy. So the observer, or the particle of consciousness, is considered spiritual energy, and that which is observed belongs to the category of material energy. In modern science there is offered no method to distinguish between the knower and that which is known. In the empiric system of knowledge both the knower (the observer) and the known (the observed) are considered in the same category of material energy. In other words, empiricism recognizes only one category of reality: material energy.
The current Western system of empiricism and natural science based on it do not actually define reality in scientific terms because they only deal with one category of reality - material energy. They deal with the observed and the method of observation, but they completely neglect the most vital part - the observer, which actually belongs to the category of consciousness. According to modern science, all reality can be explained in terms of material energy. Or at least they refuse to deal with or consider any other method of measuring reality. They refuse to consider consciousness in any other category than material energy. But the most vital aspect of anyone's reality, i.e. their awareness, cannot be explained in terms of material energy. Thus modern science lives in a self-imposed restriction which doesn't allow it to say anything comprehensible about consciousness. The most important aspect of anyone's reality is without a discussion the fact that we are conscious and aware of our surroundings.
Vedanta describes two categories of existence: The knower, who is considered spirit or consciousness, and the known, which is considered material energy. However, the known can also be spirit. It is also possible to observe spirit or consciousness, but that has to be done by the appropriate Vedic science and that science will not work within the modern paradigm. Rather, the modern empirical paradigm is too narrow to accommodate a science that can adequately describe reality as it is. To understand spiritual matters by the aid of modern science is something like trying to solve a mathematical equation by studying archeology and looking for bones in the soil. Still, the adherents of the modern system of knowledge arrogantly demand that all of reality be described within the narrow parameters they themselves have defined.
These are severe self afflicted limitations the result of which is to merely block any real contact with reality. It is a self-imposed illusion, and nothing more. It is mind-boggling how this ascending system of knowledge has been able to take precedence in the world, to the extent as to be considered the only valid way of observing the reality we live in. Of course in cosmic history the 200 hundred years of ascending, so-called scientific knowledge is merely an insignificant passage of time, a short nightmarish flickering of the mind.
The soul, or the knower, has two objects of knowledge: spiritual and material energy. The soul can either know spirit (consciousness), or it can know material energy. The method of knowledge can be either spiritual or material depending on what it wants to observe. If we want to study material energy we adopt the empiric, material system of observation. If we want to study consciousness we have to adopt a spiritual system of observation like the one offered in Vedanta.
Time is another element of nature and the reality in which we exist, and it is scientifically described and dealt with in Vedanta. The speculations of modern science about time are not scientific, because they do not satisfy the criteria for knowledge established by science itself: hypothesis, experiment and conclusion. There have been no experiments in science to suggest that the world and the conscious awareness of it just popped out of a point (singularity). All logic, all observations, the very universe itself, constructed as it is like a clock-work, suggests conscious, intelligent direction by a superior entity.
Vedanta provides ways and means by which to study time scientifically. In terms of time, consciousness (or spirit, or the knower) translates into eternal, and material energy translates into temporary. So spirit (or consciousness) is considered knowledge, and material energy is considered ignorance. Spirit and matter can also be translated into good and evil in somewhat simplistic Judeo-Christian terms. This also shows that knowledge (read: knowledge about the truth) is eternal and ignorance is temporary. What in modern science is glorified as adaptable and changeable knowledge, is in Vedic terms considered nothing but flickering, unstable knowledge, and that is in reality only ignorance.
In Vedic terms the conceptions of good and evil also translates into knowledge and ignorance. Knowledge is good and ignorance is evil. Knowledge is eternal and ignorance is temporary. According to Vedanta it is considered ignorance to not distinguish between matter and spirit, or the body and the self. According to the system of Vedanta this whole world is therefore in ignorance. The beginning of real knowledge means to (at least theoretically) distinguish between the body and the self. The self is the observer, who is situated like on a machine made of material energy. That machine (in Sanskrit ‘yantra’) is the body.
The knowledge of Krishna consciousness has been brought to us in disciplic succession, in the descending fashion, and provides a systemized and scientific method by which all categories and levels of existence (physical, psychic and spiritual) can be studied. It is authoritative knowledge because it is backed up by an intact succession of disciples, or spiritual masters since 5000 years. One cannot be a professor or guru in the transcendental science unless one is first and foremost a disciple. This knowledge is also backed up by the ancient Vedic culture, the original culture on this planet, by the Vedic scriptures and by all sages, saints and great thinkers of the world... and last, and maybe also least, this system of knowledge is backed up by observable reality itself.
It has also been made very easy to practice in this present disturbed age. The sages of yore saw that the present day people would be ill equipped for spiritual practice, so they have declared that all it takes in this age to connect with our real selves and the Superself, Sri Krishna, the Absolute Truth, and thus taste real happiness is to chant His name as in the Hare Krishna mantra:
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rame Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare
JagadanandaPanditaDas