When the American war machine built a bomb that exploded at Hiroshima in 1945, splitting atoms of plutonium inside the bomb and releasing atomic energy, they produced a blast that was equivalent to 16 kilotons of TNT, obliterating the centre of that Japanese city. This explosion showed that atoms are not indivisible. It proved atoms can be destroyed, releasing the energy that comprises them.
Srimad Bhagavat Purana says atoms are indivisible objects. And according to Bhagavatam atoms are far, far bigger things than the atoms that were annihilated at Hiroshima. How do we reconcile the fact that these statements in Bhagavatam about atoms are wrong?
Srimad Bhagavatam (3.11.1-5):
“The material manifestation’s ultimate particle, which is indivisible and not formed into a body, is called the atom. It exists always as an invisible identity, even after the dissolution of all forms. The material body is but a combination of such atoms, but it is misunderstood by the common man.
“Atoms are the ultimate state of the manifest universe. When they stay in their own forms without forming different bodies, they are called the unlimited oneness. There are certainly different bodies in physical forms, but the atoms themselves form the complete manifestation.”
“Two atoms make one double atom, and three double atoms make one hexatom. This hexatom is visible in the sunshine which enters through the holes of a window screen. One can clearly see that the hexatom goes up towards the sky.”
Microscopes can see exceedingly small things, and anybody can get a microscope and then see that the dust that goes out a window is not a hexatom. Actual atoms are much, much smaller than these hexatoms we read about in Bhagavatam. The truth is, evidence clearly shows that this hypothesis about hexatoms of a particular size is factually untrue.
The explosion at Hiroshima proved once and for all that Einstein and Oppenheimer’s ideas about atoms are true. Contrary to what the Bhagavatam verses quoted above say, atoms can be split. Atoms are not indivisible things.
There is a class of people in a the Gaudiya school of thought who think Srimad Bhagavatam and the Veda contain occult knowledge about material matters such as the motions of planets like Mars and Jupiter, or the magical powers of particular herbs. Esoteric knowledge that supersedes the knowledge deduced through modern science. What is the basis for this belief? I suggest that this way of thinking derives from a naive world-view influenced by movies like Indiana Jones and myths spread by cults such as the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, Theosophy, etc. Many leading Nazis believed there was once a place called Atlantis, and propagated the “knowledge” that civilization reached its greatest height approximately 25,000 years ago at Atlantis, the birthplace of the Nordic race. But what value has this so-called knowledge got?
May I suggest it is wrong and ridiculous to think that “devotee scientists” with a fanatic world-view that the Earth is flat are clever wizards who know more about “material nature” than Einstein and Oppenheimer. Those fanatics who insist that various statements about the natural world mentioned in Srimad Bhagavatam should all be taken as literal, scientific facts.
Devotees of Sri Krishna should never subscribe to the view that in the future a new Vedic Science and Vedic Civilisation will eventually arise and reveal shocking material knowledge to the world. Revealing how to use new kinds of weapons such as the brahmastra, indra-astra and agneyastra, or knowledge about how to build magical vehicles that can travel in space.
Indeed, devotees should never hope that a Vedic Civilisation will arise that reveals knowledge about how to make a perfect “human society” organised in an hierarchical structure with intellectual “brahmins” in charge. Big Brothers who will control all the new Kings who will arise and rule God’s world in a new “golden age within the age of Kali”. Some people want to see new Kings who will fiercely implement the laws of the Manu Samhita, just like the Mullahs are doing now with their implementations of Islamic law in Saudi and Iran. But I pray that devotees might never look to the Bhagavatam and Veda for material knowledge, but instead for spiritual guidance.
Sri Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami wrote:
“There is a class of persons who insist on the texts being taken in their literal worldly sense. Much ingenuity has been expended for extracting meanings that may be satisfactory to the empiric judgment of the interpreters working by this literal method. Their argument is not unintelligible. As the revealed literatures are to be regarded as containing the information of the Absolute the language should be regarded as part and parcel of the meaning of the text. From this conclusion the literal interpreters jump to the wrong inference that it should be possible for the conditioned soul to ascertain the real meaning of the scriptures by sticking to the lexicographical sense of their actual wordings. This latter part of the argument is inapplicable to the subject which is transcendental. The words possess a double meaning. The lexicographic meaning refers to the entities of this world and is, therefore, inapplicable to the case. The esoteric meaning is not accessible to the gross senses and mind of the conditioned soul.”
