In2-MeC

Groningen, The Netherlands
24 October 2003

pratibhatasreni bhisana vara-gunasthoma bhusana
janibhyastana tarana jagad-avasthana karana
nikhila-duskarma karsana nigama-saddharma darsana
jaya jaya sri sudarsana jaya jaya jaya sri sudarsana

O Sudarsana! All the enemies of your Lord's devotees run away fearing your prowess. All auspicious attributes find their home in you. Those who worship you cross the shoreless ocean of samsara and free themselves from their cycles of births and deaths. The entire universe is stabilized by your mighty power. You cut asunder all the sins of those who approach you as their refuge. You bless all of your devotees with the knowledge about the righteous conduct prescribed by the Vedas. O Lord Sudarsana of these auspicious attributes! All glories unto you, all glories unto you!

karunamrta pathodhi
sudhamne namo namah
dinoddharaika guhyaya
krpa pathodaye namah

O Lord Jagannatha, You are an ocean of nectarean compassion. Your abode is most attractive. I offer my obeisances unto You again and again! You are the sole uplifter and deliverer of the fallen souls, but how You do this no one can understand. O ocean of mercy, I offer You my respectful obeisances.

On Wednesday Srimati Mukti-dhatri dd visited here from Amsterdam, bringing with her Bhaktin Hjordis who flew all the way from Los Angeles just to see me. Bhakta Michael drove them here, and another nice boy who lives in Amsterdam and who is just starting devotional service rode with them. At the same time Bhakta August, who lives here in Groningen, stopped by to see me. Hjordis presented me with a big box of Sri-Sri Rukmini-Dvarakadisa maha-prasadam.

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Once we accept that the Western world was in the hands of alcoholics, it becomes easier to explain much of the behavior of our most famous leaders. It cannot be denied that our history is littered with selfish, violent, arrogant, stubborn, libinious, unsteady, unpredictable and over-confident rulers. It is surely no coincidence that these character failings are the same ones manifested by people when drunk. The historians of Western civilization can no longer gloss over the simple fact that alcohol controlled all the decision-makers. Its grip on the current world is often considered dangerous, but this pales into insignificance when we look at the control it exerted over our ancestors. (Paul Gilham, quoted from his The Hangover of History, published in FORUM, Fortean Times, August 2003, p. 57)

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US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was quoted in the Irish Times of 8 March 2003 as saying:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know.

Categorical thinking is often the most unclear thinking of all...

Even before considering the transcendental reality that devotees at once know they know, know they don't know, and don't know they don't know, there are at least two kinds of mundane reality admitted even by modern gross materialists: objective reality and consensus reality. The overlapping relationship of these simultaneous realities make it very hard to draw the line in the mundane sphere betwen known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

The objective reality of a thing is decided by how well it can be measured. A cup and a plate, the things we use every day to eat off of, have a very high objective reality. Still, to say that a thing is not measured is not to say it has no reality. At best it is to say that the unmeasured thing cannot be proved to be real.

Not proved to be real? Wait a minute. Consider this: every human culture has social mechanisms for justice and for mercy. Can we imagine a society with no trace at all of justice and mercy? Impossible to conceive. That certainly demonstrates the reality of these "things." But grind the universe down to the finest powder, then sift it through the finest sieve. Will you find one molecule of justice, one molecule of mercy?

This brings us to consensus reality.

The consensus reality of a thing is how real a thing is believed to be. This reality is rooted in human opinion--the opinion of the majority, for one example, or the opinion of the scientific elite, for another example. The "hard-headed realist" may argue that a thing that is merely agreed upon by people but which has not been measured has no reality at all; however, even if we don't argue "justice and mercy" against that point of view, one question remains--what decides an acceptable measurement? It is consensus reality that decides it!

Think of the theory of evolution. All the hard, measurable data that scientists point to in arguing that man evolved from ape-like subhuman creatures can be gathered into a single large suitcase. Who says that one suitcaseful of fossil bones is enough to validate the theory of evolution? The consensus of most scientists today says it is enough. In their eyes it is enough to demonstrate the superiority of evolutionary theory over any other explanation of mankind's origins.

If someone wishes to argue another scenario of the origin of the species, the scientists will raise the bar of acceptable proof. They will want much, much more than a suitcaseful of measurable evidence. Is that fair? "Yes it is," the scientists reply, "for extraordindary claims require extraordinary proof." But what decides what an extraordinary claim is? The consensus of scientists, that is what. The thing is, though, that just two hundred years ago, the claim that man was not purposefully designed and created by God would have been considered by leading scientists of the time to be an extraordinary claim.

Getting back to things with a high objective reality, like our cup and plate: if microcosmic scales of measurement are applied--i.e. if the comparitively vast spaces between the atoms of the cup and plate are considered--then cup and plate no longer seem so real. If the macrocosmic measurement of vast aeons of time is similarly applied, then cup and plate likewise no longer seem so real. Yet because we use cup and plate every day, our human consensus is that they are very real objects.

So when examined closely, the difference between objective reality and consensus reality wavers dizzily.

Think on these things. Then think again about "known knowns," "unknown knowns" and "unknown unknowns."

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In the village of Antoli, Gujarat, a wild leopard and a farmer's cow meet peacefully every evening between 9:30 and 10:00 PM. The cow will often lick the big cat's head and neck. The local dogs bark while the leopard is around, but the villagers are happy because the leopard's friendly visits to the cow frighten off other wild creatures. Normally leopards are more dangerous to man and domestic livestock than tigers and lions. Tigers and lions, as the largest and strongest of the big cats, prefer to hunt large wild animals. Usually, only when they are old or injured, do lions and tigers pose a threat to man and his animals. But leopards, being smaller, very intelligent and extremely vicious, present an everpresent danger to villages that lie in the vicinity of their hunting grounds.

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Humans wilder than leopards...

In Midnapore district, Bengal, a tantrika named Sisir Das sucked the blood from the necks of 207 goats that were beheaded at a sacrificial ceremony in a Kali temple. Thousands of woshippers of the goddess watched Das drink up the goat blood. "I don't know what happens to me," he explained to reporters. "I feel the goddess taking possession of my body."

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...and lower than scorpions:

Back in Gujarat, fast young rich folks looking for exotic ways to get high are flocking to the tribal areas around the coastal town of Bharuch, where big scorpions are abundant. The local adivasis (tribal people) keep scorpions captive; for a fee of up to 200 rupees, an adivasi will put a scorpion on the body of a city thrill-seeker and induce it to sting the customer. After the initial pain of the sting, the poison induces a dreamy floating feeling. Aaahhh! Well, if these intoxo-freaks would stop their smoking, drinking and drug abuse and simply stick to scorpion stings, it might not be so bad. I can see it now on an Amsterdam streetcorner: "Psst! Hey! Yeah, you! Wanna buy a live scorpion? Get you high, man..."

In parts of America and Australia, where they have cane toads (a type of very big, ugly, warty, hopping amphibian), kids eager to get "naturally high" lick the hallucinogenic mucous off the backs of these toads, or throw a bunch of 'em into a pot of boiling water and drink the water after it cools.

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All right, this next one is not so heavy. It's quite like the story of the Finn and his cell phone that I reported here a couple of weeks ago...but funnier! Last summer in the Black Sea resort town of Mamaia, a Romanian couple, Lucia and Victor Dragomirescu, were talking to one another on their cell phones. Lucia was telling Victor that she was home ill and couldn't get out of bed; Victor was telling Lucia that he was at his parents' house and they were loading him up with housework. Suddenly they bumped into one another. Each had been strolling along the same beach in the sun, phoning lies to the other, thinking the other was somewhere else but on the beach. Now they are getting a divorce.

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Obviously, Suhotra Swami does not like cell phones.

In Mombasa, Kenya, a woman was answering the call of nature, using an open pit latrine. Her cell phone slipped out of her pocket and fell down into the stooly sewer waste. She offered 1000 shillings, a little more than 10 Euros, to anyone who would retrive the phone. Two men went down a ladder--the first a 30-year-old radio technician, the second his friend--and were overcome by the fumes. They drowned in the sewage. A third man went down to rescue them. He lost his consciousness but was hauled up by neighbors. Too late--he died on the way to the hospital. The police prevented a fourth man from climbing down. The lady never got her phone back. I regret the useless waste of three human lives, but that is the best way to dispose of a cell phone that I have ever heard of.

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