Dear Esteemed Guru Maharaj,

Please accept my most humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada and NIOS.

I was very enlivened and enlightened to talk with you today about philosophy. I was very glad to hear of your book club on Carl Jung's the Red Book. I am really fascinated and interested in this from the scientific perspective on the topic of consciousness.

HpS - AgtSP. Paoho. Sorry this has taken so long to answer. We don't really have a book club, but are putting out the reading materials we have taken up and looking to record comments and inspiration on The Monk's Podcast, with Chaitanya carana Das.

That is actually my deepest interest - the intersection of philosophy and science. I actually have taken philosophy courses while doing my D.Phil. (Ph.D.) at Oxford because it was a passion of mine (I have taken some online courses from Harvard back then also when I was a grad student and some philosophy course when I was an undergrad at BSU).

I was even an instructor at Bhaktivedanta College Finland and was teaching philosophy courses (but there are some details about Greek philosophers I certainly still need to learn :) But I got now more interested in material that cannot be obtained just from philosophy textbooks.

I got more interested now in something more practical and meaningful - bringing together concepts of philosophy and science. The majority of the world views the world through the eyes of modern scientific thought, which includes theories such as - string theory, parallel universes, the God particle, the God equation, extraterrestrial life, directed panspermia, but what are these all anyway - they are mathematical representations of concepts discussed in the Indian philosophies of Vedanta or Bhagavata.

That is what I am striving to work on - creating a local community of academicians to discuss these concepts in a book club and lecture series - the concepts of Vedanta and Bhagavata to modern science.

String theory (every subatomic particle being a wave / vibrations), parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, Fred Hoyle's panspermia (implanting of DNA of different species on earth - in Bhagavata, Daksha Prajapati) are mentioned in the Bhagavata.

I have had speakers from Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) in my Vedanta distinguished lecture series at my university Texas A&M University - Kingsville. I am now going to be creating more distinguished lecture series and webinars. Also, I am interested in getting some of these distinguished professors, especially from renowned world-class universities to join together for a refereed peer-reviewed special issue of papers in a journal, maybe Solaris.

This I hope would eventually branch off from the Vedanta lecture series. I strive for this effort because I feel that philosophers and scientists need to connect more. They were one and the same discipline in the past, only now has modern education divided them into different fields.

I believe that I as a scientist (having studied science at Oxford and also some philosophy), I can contribute to the interdisciplinary field of philosophy and science.

I am inspired by your holiness and hope I can learn from great and distinguished thinkers such as your holiness. Whenever I listened to your lectures, it always inspired me.

Sharing some of my personal thoughts,

YHS,

Aja Govinda dasa

HpS - AgtSP!!!!! Paoho. Your efforts sound very nice. If we can participate in some little way please let us know. We are trying to communicate our abilities and areas of expertise in the Kapi Dhvaja and then from there we are giving YouTube links and Monk's Podcast links and then links to representative programs we are presenting elsewise.

Science and the Vedas is one area listed on the YouTube Channel.

Thank you.