3. Evolution

§3.1 In April 1987, His Holiness asked me, in Sringeri, “What book did you read recently and like?” This was the first time He had asked me such a question and there was nothing that had happened earlier that constituted the backdrop for it. I was about to mention a scriptural text when He added, “Anything about how life, animals, and humans came about.” I had read just days earlier, Richard Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker¹ and enjoyed it; it dealt with exactly what His Holiness had specified. I mentioned this book to Him. “Summarize it for me,” He directed, and I did so over the course of the next ten minutes; I also used a sheet of paper that He gave me to facilitate my doing so.

William Paley wrote in Natural Theology or Evidences and Attributes of the Deity (of 1802) that just as the function and complexity of a watch presupposes a watchmaker, the far greater complexity of lifeforms on earth presupposes the existence of their maker (God); he took up, in some detail, the structure and function of the parts of the body beginning with the eye; after pointing out how wonderful the eye’s design is, he inferred that it being made for vision like a telescope for assisting it, it must have had, as does a telescope, a designer (God).² Dawkins refutes Paley’s ‘argument from design’ for the existence of God. Some quotes from his book: “All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way … Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind…”; “living things are too improbable and too beautifully ‘designed’ to have come into existence by chance. How, then, did they come into existence? The answer, Darwin’s answer, is by gradual, step-by-step transformations from simple beginnings…Each successive change in the… evolutionary process was simple enough relative to its predecessor, to have arisen by chance. But the whole sequence of steps is anything but a chance process …The cumulative process is directed by nonrandom survival”; “the form of each individual animal is produced by embryonic development. Evolution occurs because, in successive generations, there are slight differences in embryonic development. These differences come about because of changes (…the small random element…) in the genes controlling development”; “Organisms can never be totally unrelated to one another, since it is all but certain that life as we know it originated only once on earth”; “The last common ancestor of humans and chimps lived perhaps as recently as five million years ago, definitely more recently than the common ancestor of chimps and orangutans;” “Chimpanzees and we share more than 99 percent of our genes.”

His Holiness attentively heard my summary in silence. When I finished, He acknowledged that Dawkins is an atheist and then appreciatively told me, “He writes well. I think he will write more such books. Read them.” He asked me, “Have you read in full the works of Darwin?” When I answered that I had, He remarked, “I read an account of his life and work years ago in Kannada. He gathered much data by careful observation during his travels. DNA and genes were not known in his time. Had he known that DNA is present in and plays a key role in the cells of not only humans and gorillas but even bees and flowers,¹ perhaps he would have adduced this fact in support of his conclusion that lifeforms are related and have a common origin.” I was a bit surprised to hear His Holiness say this. Clearly amused, He said, “You would know this but, anyway, let me tell you. As a child forms in the womb, it develops three kidney systems; the first (‘pronephros’) is rudimentary and degenerates without even functioning; the second one (‘mesonephros’) forms as the first one fades and does not last long; the third one (metanephros) is what is our kidney; I asked and learnt this some years ago from a doctor who explained, using a book with many images, child-formation in the womb; in fishes, however, the first one functions for a time and the second one is the final kidney.” Laughing, he added, “Maybe someone will claim that the formation of three kinds of kidneys in humans is a case of bad design if done by God or suggestive of humans having, in the course of evolution, passed through fish-like forms long ago.” He then said, “Dawkins has written of the irrelevance of God; I shall now say something based on the Vedānta-śāstra.”

§3.2 His Holiness: The scripture makes it clear time and again that the universe and the laws governing it are the manifestation of God. The Chāndogya-upaniṣad, for instance, teaches: “sa evādhastāt sa upariṣṭāt sa paścāt sa purastāt sa dakṣiṇataḥ sa uttarataḥ sa evedaṁ sarvam — He alone is below; He is above; He is behind; He is in front; He is to the south; He is to the north; He alone is all this.”¹ The Śvetāśvatara-upaniṣad points out, “tvaṁ strī tvaṁ pumān asi tvaṁ kumara uta vā kumārī / tvaṁ jīrṇo daṇḍena vañcasi — You are the woman; You are the man; You are the boy; You are the girl; You are the old man tottering with a stick”² and, “nīlaḥ pataṅgo harito lohitākṣas taḍidgarbha r̥tavaḥ samudrāḥ — You are the black bee; You are the green parrot; You are the cloud; You indeed are the seasons and the oceans.”³ The Muṇḍaka-upaniṣad teaches, “brahmaivedaṁ viśvam idaṁ variṣṭham — This cosmos is nothing but Brahman, the greatest.”⁴ The Lord has said in the Bhagavad-gītā, “ahaṁ…raviḥ…śaśī…manaḥ… cetanā…sāgaraḥ… himālayaḥ…kālaḥ…mr̥gendraḥ…pavanaḥ…makaraḥ… jāhnavī…akāraḥ…kusumākaraḥ…dyūtaṁ…vyavasāyaḥ …maunaṁ…jñānaṁ — I am the sun…I am the moon… I am the mind…I am intelligence…I am the ocean…I am the Himalayas…I am time…I am the lion…I am the wind…I am the shark…I am the Ganges…I am the letter ‘a’…I am the spring season…I am gambling…I am effort…I am silence…I am knowledge.”¹ He has also said, “aham evājyaṁ aham agnir ahaṁ hutam — I Myself am ghee (the offering); I am fire; I am the act of offering into fire” and, “sad asac cāham — I am the effect; I am the cause.”² His Holiness (continuing): A person who came to see me had an objection to Lord Kr̥ṣṇa’s statement, “ahaṁ vaiśvānaro bhūtvā prāniṇāṁ deham āśritaḥ / prāṇāpāna-samāyuktaḥ pacāmy annaṁ caturvidham — Taking the form of the gastric fire and residing in bodies of all beings, I digest, in association with prāṇa and apāna, the four types of food (the foods that are ingested by masticating, by swallowing, by sucking and by licking).”³ He said, “There is no fire in the stomach; there is only acid.” I asked him, “How do you specify the energy of an item of food?” He said, “In calories.” I told him, “One method of determining the calories in an item of food involves putting the item in a container surrounded by water, burning it, and noting how much hotter than before the water becomes.” “I did not know this,” he said. I continued, “The stomach serves to digest food, the body receives energy from the food digested, and this energy can be associated with the burning of the item of food. Hence, is it wrong to speak, at least figuratively, of a fire in the stomach, the gastric fire?” “No,” he conceded. I then told Him, “When you say that the acid in the stomach digests the food and the Lord says that, being in the stomach, He digests the food in the form of fire, is it not understandable from the Lord’s words that He digests food by taking the form of gastric acid and the digestive processes? It is worth bearing in mind that our ancients were not such ignoramuses that they thought that some actual fire, like in the kitchen, burns in the stomach. They did know what the stomach contains.”

What is relevant now is that from the Lord’s words, we can discern that it is He who is even the acid in the stomach and the process of digestion.

His Holiness (continuing): In the Śrī-rudra, we have, “nama āyacchadbhyo visr̥jadbhyaś ca vo namaḥ / namo ’syadbhyo vidhyadbhyaś ca vo namaḥ — Salutations to You who stretch the bowstring; Salutations to You who release the arrow; Salutations to You who are the cause of the arrow moving towards the target; Salutations to You who are the cause of the arrow piercing the target.”¹ A bowman’s role ends with pulling the bowstring, taking aim, and then releasing the arrow. The movement of the arrow to its target is dependent on its velocity¹, the laws of motion,² the wind, the pull of the earth,³ etc.; all these are the Lord. To penetrate the target, the sharpness of the tip of the arrow, the density of the target and such other factors play a role; all these are the Lord. The crux of all that I have been saying is that as per the scripture, God is everything in the universe and is every law governing its functioning.

At this point, His Holiness took a sheet of paper and quickly sketched two pictures on it; this was the first time, I saw His Holiness drawing a picture.

Representation of the first picture drawn by H.H.

He pointed to the first and asked me, “What do you see?” I said, “Two faces close to and facing one another, or a wine glass.” “Can you see both together?” He asked. “No,” I replied.

Representation of the second picture drawn by H.H.

He then asked me to look at the second picture and tell Him what I could see. I said, “Either a duck with its beak to my left or a rabbit facing right, with its long ears pointing backwards.” “Do you see both together,” He asked. I answered in the negative.

His Holiness (continuing): Each of these images is apprehended non-simultaneously in two different ways by a person. If two persons were to see either of the images at the same time, one may apprehend the image in one way and the other in the second way. Likewise, what is apprehended by a person as just the material world may be apprehended by him later, after spiritual discipline, as a manifestation of God; simultaneously too, what a materialist perceives as the material world, is seen by a saint as a manifestation of God. He who holds that God is a creator distinct from nature and its laws may have a problem if it be said that the bodies of the animals we see and humans came to their present state through changes over millions of years by the operation of the laws of nature; a true Vedāntin would be fine with it. If someone were to say that gradual evolution of animals and humans is wrong, he would be fine with that too. To a Vedāntin, a small irregularly shaped stone rolling in the river bed and becoming a round pebble, the formation of the sun and the earth, the development of a human child from a sperm and egg are all equally attributable to God.

His Holiness (continuing): The scripture does not stop with presenting God as just being in the form of the universe and its laws. It goes further and says that the operation of every law of nature depends on God. The Śvetāśvatara-upaniṣad teaches, “yac ca svabhāvaṁ pacati viśvayoniḥ pācyāṁś ca sarvān pariṇāmayed yaḥ / sarvam etad viśvam aditiṣṭhaty ekaḥ — He, the basis of the cosmos, is the one who manifests the nature of things (such as the heat of fire) and transforms all that is mutable.”¹ Thus, He is the universe and its laws; He is the one who gives life to the laws; He is the one who transforms things according to the laws of nature. He is, importantly, not only immanent but also transcendent. The materialist may be unwilling to concede this and argue against it but a true Vedāntin is not put off by any of this, for, to him, the materialist is a manifestation of God and his temperament is also manifested by God. What is primary to the Vedāntin is the essential nature of the Supreme, pure consciousness. It is in this that the universe with its laws appears, like a mirage in a desert or as a snake so misapprehended in a rope. There is, thus, no real cause and effect relationship between the Supreme of the nature of consciousness and the world, unlike, say, that between a seed and a tree or between energy and the appearance of an electron. The Kaṭha-upaniṣad clearly states, “na jāyate mriyate vā vipaścin nāyaṁ kutaścin na babhūva kaścit — The Ātman of the nature of consciousness is not born; It does not perish; It did not originate from anything; nothing originated from It.”¹ Hence, there is no way any measurement made on the universe or any understanding of its laws can call into question the scriptural teaching about the true nature of the Supreme Brahman. The Supreme Brahman is decidedly beyond the scope of science. The aim of the Upaniṣads is to make one realize one’s true nature of being Brahman and become liberated. Therefore, all the descriptions of creation in them are only meant to establish that there is nothing whatsoever that is other than the Supreme; the confirmation or falsification of any such description is immaterial.²

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