"Building Bridges" (SB 1.18.16)

Potomac – September 23, 1991 / (701)

The experience of the liberated state is commonly understood as the opposite of material experience, suggesting a lack of variegation. And yet Vedic literature describes a transcendent realm that features variety and pleasurable activity as well. Thompson considers these perspectives with reference to the apparent gap between a scientific world view and a world view featured in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, which describes a reflective correspondence between conditional experience and a transcendent realm. Thompson suggests that a bridge between these two seemingly disparate perspectives can be developed by exploring the implications of what we presently experience through ordinary sense perception and the direct experience of transcendental form described in Vedic literature.