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Dr. Frog
From
the ISKCON youth forum
Submitted by
Krpa Moya Gouranga Das
Hare Krishna!
One day a young frog entered in a well and asked to see his friend, Dr. Frog, the most learned frog in the well community.
"Where have you been?" asked Dr. Frog.
"I come from a vast body of water - the Pacific Ocean", replied the young frog.
"How vast? Was it twice the size of the well?" and Dr. Frog puffed himself up a little in appreciation of such a huge body of water.
"No, no sir. It's much larger."
"Five times larger.. Ten times... A hundred times larger?", asked the astonished Dr. Frog.
"No, no, you don't understand! Since you have been in this tiny well all your life, you can never comprehend the size of the Pacific Ocean." explained the young frog.
"Impossible!", retorted Dr. Frog "How can there be such a huge body of water? You are kidding. The Pacific ocean doesn't exists."
"Come with me and see for yourself," suggested the young frog.
"No!", Dr. Frog replied solemnly "That's unscientific!".
His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder acarya and spiritual guide of the Hare Krishna movement would sometimes tell this story to illustrate the limitations of the scientific methods when applied to the ultimate questions such as the origin of the universe, the existence and nature of God, and the real goal of human life. The essential fault of the so-called
scientists, he pointed out was that they adopted the inductive process of acquiring knowledge - trying to find out truth by their own endeavor or speculation, without accepting a spiritual authority. Everyone in this world is handicapped by four defects:
a. Imperfect senses,
b. Tendency to be illusioned,
c. Tendency to commit mistakes &
d. Tendency to cheat.
So when a person uses his senses to understand world around him the knowledge thus acquired is inevitably limited because of the above defects. And as the scientists asserts that sense perception is the only "scientific" way of acquiring knowledge, their understanding of reality always remains limited.
Dr. Frog living in the tiny well could not even conceive the size of the Pacific ocean. He could have got some understanding of the ocean by going there, but he stubbornly refused, instead he declared that the ocean didn't exist.
Similarly modern scientists living in the tiny world of sense perception, can not even conceive the higher dimensions of reality such as soul, God and the goal of life (which are inherently beyond sense perception). It is entirely possible for such scientists to gain some understanding of these higher truths by adopting suitable anti material methods of knowledge acquisition. But they flatly reject such methods as 'unscientific' without due consideration.
The ocean does not cease to exist just because Dr. Frog doesn't believe in it. Similarly God, soul and other higher dimensional truths don't cease to exist just because the scientists don't believe in them. They do exist and they can be understood by suitable methods.
According to Vedic tradition, the way to receive perfect knowledge about the ultimate questions is called the avaroha-pantha, the descending path of knowledge, which is absolute. This Vedic knowledge is called 'apaurusheya' meaning 'of divine origin'. Hence the Vedic scriptures are free from the four defects mentioned above and thus can provide perfect knowledge. One should receive perfect knowledge coming down in disciplic succession and never speculate or try to estimate the absolute truth with one's own limited brain, like Dr. Frog in the above story.
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