Brahmatirtha Prabhu:
Sadaputa Prabhu was a genius. He had a photographic memory. He had idiosyncrasies like any genius. He understood things in a deeper way, and he wanted to share. He never stopped learning.
Mechanistic and Nonmechanistic Science was my favorite book. God & Science has brilliant essays.
About Jayadvaita Swami:
I got a mantra card from him at Greenwich Village in 1968.
It said chant this mantra, and your life will be sublime. I tried it and could not get it out of my mind.
He is the BBT’s most trusted editor. He has been a director of BBT and a director of the archives.
When he read Ecclesiastes at thirteen he liked it and decided to become a monk.
Jayadvaita Swami:
I was there when Sadaputa Prabhu came to Henry St. temple.
He was talking about Schrödinger’s equation, and that you had to have an observer outside the system, and therefore there would be infinite regress if you did not have a conscious observer outside the system.
He was brilliant. He loved prasadam.
I was keen ask him to write articles.
He had a gift to make complicated ideas understandable to ordinary people.
He had a clear picture that the program of the scientists of reducing life to numbers makes our life meaningless, which he found unacceptable at best and at worst abhorrent. He saw the materialistic reductionist view gives answers, but terrible answers, to life’s ultimate questions.
I think that publishing Sadaputa Prabhu in Back to Godhead was one of the best things we did.
One Christian magazine commenting on a work of Sadaputa Prabhu said, “Substantial.”
The Computerized Mr. Jones shows how there must be an observer beyond the mechanistics of perception.
His article on inspiration was impressive. So was the work he did on the size of the yojana and geocentric orbits of the planets corresponding to the features of Bhu-mandala.
I also liked his analogy of painting telling different parts of a story to the multiple meanings of Bhu-mandala.
As times goes on, we will find Sadaputa Prabhu more important, and his work something to be proud of.
He would look more deeply, and probe into what Prabhupada said or the scriptures said. He had deep faith in the reality of what was being presented, not dismissing some of the material as mythology.
A scientist is an investigator, and a scientific devotee is also an investigator.
I appreciated his genius, his faith in Prabhupada and the scriptures, and his clear understanding of the negative implications of reductionism. He could also see the opportunities for discourse.
It is a treasure to have his contributions so early in the movement. Present devotee scholars can benefit having his contribution to begin from.
His work will be increasingly appreciated over time.
Brahmatirtha Prabhu:
In “God and the Laws of Physics,” Sadaputa explains how chaos theory can show how God can influence the material world without being detected. He presented his idea at a college, and after his presentation, the head of the religion department, who is almost always an atheist, had so many questions, seeing his worldview shattered.
Mostly retired faculty have donated so many books to our Bhaktivedanta Institute for Higher Studies library.
Badrinarayana Swami:
Sadaputa Prabhu was a friend and hero. He was a gentleman with a refined sophisticated manner.
At a UCSD program he defeated a professor in attendence so badly that the professor claimed he had to leave for an appointment.
He loved prasadam and could eat vast quantities of prasadam. Later Dravida learned the brain is the organ that burns the most calories, and then we understood.
He was serious about his sadhana, and he had a sense of humor.
Kuladri told how Sadaputa Prabhu as Bhakta Richard joined in New Vrindaban, and not knowing his academic qualifications, they engaged him in digging post holes. Later Prabhupada sent a letter to all temple presidents asking for those with college degrees in science to come forward. When Kauladri read it to the devotees, Sadaputa Prabhu raised his hand.
I said to Sadaputa, “Why don’t you systematically go through the Origins magazine chapter by chapter, and we will record it?” So he did. He explained it so well. He was such a good teacher.
He was ahead of his time.
He made the point that if you accept more than three dimensions, so many things can be explained.
If it was in the Bhagavatam he felt it was true, and his mission was to understand how it was true and to explain how it was true.
Brahmatirtha Prabhu:
Our job at BIHS is to research and publish.
Christina is working on a book with Akhandadhi and Tamraparni Prabhus on consciousness.
On Hridayananda Dasa Goswami (HDG):
He got his Ph.D. in record time.
People think that Vishnu is a minor god in the original Vedas who later rose in importance, but HDG’s thesis was that Vishnu was always considered supreme.
He wrote Quest for Justice, on the Mahabharata.
Both scholars and acaryas said Mahabharata is corrupt, and HDG is trying to ascertain the real story.
HDG is the premier philosopher in the Hare Krishna movement, and he is the guiding philosopher of BI.
We have this mansion by HDG’s influence.
Hridayananda Dasa Goswami:
There are very few people in the Hare Krishna movement that I would call a genius. Of all the BI scientists, Sadaputa almost single-handedly produced the literature telling the response of the Hare Krishnas to modern science.
Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Maharaja was expert in public relations and conferences, but Sadaputa Prabhu produced literature.
The world has practically become indifferent to knowledge, almost medieval.
What is the role of the Bhaktivedanta Institute literature?
Most of the BI literature to date was written by Sadaputa.
The metaphor of society being like a body is one of the oldest Vedic analogies, and thus the brahmanas are the brain of society.
We may think we are better than brahmanas as Vaishnavas, but we need people actually doing the brahminical work of educating human society.
We tend to spend more on rituals than education.
A lot of the essential points that we want to make to the world Sadaputa Prabhu already has made. There are always new things, but he has done the bulk of it.
We have to present Sadaputa Prabhu’s work to the world in contemporary language.
Sadaputa Prabhu showed using probability theory that the chance that complicated biological forms could evolve is nil. Since then microbiology has made great advances, and so it is even more unlikely than before.
We have to able to present Sadaputa Prabhu in an intelligent way, being able to respond to challenges in a relevant and convincing way.
We can truly honor Sadaputa Prabhu by presenting his ideas to the world and showing how his arguments stand the test of time.
Brahmatirtha Prabhu:
We have to have some of the qualities of Sadaputa to do this work of sharing his knowledge with the world.
I was the only geologist in the Hare Krishna movement, and Svarupa Damodara invited me to join BI.
Sadaputa Prabhu helped me in writing a paper by doing the math for it.
He was snappy at answering the questions of fools. I dealt with this by feeding him so much prasadam before the program, that he was in a mellow mood, and he would not be so snappy.
Overview of Mechanistic and Nonmechanistic Science:
Sadaputa Prabhu begins by saying that John Maynard Smith’s declaration, “The individual is simply a device constructed by the genes to ensure the production of more genes like themselves” conveys concisely what modern science has to say about the meaning of human life.
“If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”– Richard Feynman, (Sadaputa Prabhu liked that one.)
Our strength in BI is that we are multidisciplinary.
The Vedic literature allows us to bridge the gap between science and religion.
Some scientists say all that can be known can be known empirically, but how can that be known empirically!
The mechanistic worldview has a lot of truth in, yet it leaves out consciousness.
Observations cannot always be numerically represented.
Absolute reality must have some personality.
To some extent there is some disharmony with mechanistic theories.
Every GPS satellite has to be recalibrated because of the reality of time dialation.
In eight chapters, Sadaputa Prabhu finds mechanistic science is limited in many ways.
In the ninth chapter, he presents bhakti-yoga as a possible replacement.
Comment by one devotee: Prabhupada was asked if there were instruments for measuring spiritual consciousness, and Srila Prabhupada said, “Yes, mrdanga and karatalas.”
Source: https://bit.ly/3IlosXO
We started by putting Sadaputa Prabhu’s books in print, and then we created a branch of the BI.
Read more: http://www.dandavats.com/?post_type=post&p=106420#
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