Did dinosaurs exist? What is the Vedic perspective?
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Transcription:
What is the vedic”s perspective on the existence of dinosaurs ?
When Shrila Prabhupada was asked this question , he said what is dinosaur tinosore minosore what is the big fuss , we have aghasura. So aghasur, was a huge reptile and that is what the dinosaurs are supposed to be . So therefore in the 8.4 million species that the padma purana talks about, the large number of reptiles species that are talked about, include gigantic size reptile, which is what our modern nomenclature calls as dinosaurs, so in that sense the existence of the dinosaurs is not incompatible with the vedic understanding of the universe and it history. At the same time, the modern archeological notion that there was a time when the whole planet was rules by dinosaur, is not solidly grounded even by the archaeological evidence is not in agreement with the vedic understanding. Firstly , it is not that the archaeologists have found extensive fossils of dinosaurs in every of the world by which they can claim that the dinosaurs were everywhere. But that is speculative hypothesis, which involves taking some small pieces of evidence and extrapolating, far beyond what the evidence warrants. Often when see movies like Jurassic park, and other movies about dinosaurs , which are actually science fiction, not science. We get confused by thinking that the science fiction is backed by the science evidence. that is not the case. According to the vedic culture and philosophy, the 8.4 million species exists at all times in different places and different parts of the planets in the universe. and since the creation of the earth, the humans have been populating the earth. So there might have been areas on the earth where the dinosaurs were prominent or predominant, but at the same time on the other places on the earth, humans were also prominent and dominant. so both of them co existed. Now regarding the extinction of the dinosaurs, we understand it from both , the scientific and spiritual perspective. Scientific perspective was that , because of various environmental atmospheric changes, the dinosaurs found the habitat of the earth no longer hospitable or even survivable and that’s how gradually they become extinct, now that may have been caused because of some natural calamities or because of some asteroids falling on the earth, whatever. There is various speculation within science for that. Now from the vedic perspective, the 8.4 million species always exist . They may or may not exist on a particular planet , and that does not mean that they have extinct. They have just become invisible to our vision. Why do become invisible at times ? The Bhagavad Gita 2;22 explains that the body is like a dress for the soul, so the dresses are given to the soul according to its karma. At the same time, certain dresses are suitable for certain environment. and certain are unsuitable. Just like a soul in a polar bears body, which exists on the poles, and an ordinary bears which exists in the tropical and temperate areas are of similar nature, but the polar bear cannot survive in tropical areas very easily, nor the ordinary bear survive in the polar area very easily. So certain bodies are suited for certain environments. and when the environment change and the bodies become unsuitable at that time those bodies being like cloths, are retired temporarily from the service. If there is a global sweeter manufacturing company, and it is winter in northern hemisphere, so sweaters are sold extensively. But then the seasons change and it is summer now , in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern hemisphere, so the cloth manufacture has not shut down, although it may seem so to the uninformed observer, if he sees that there are certainly very little or no sweaters out for sale in shops in the northern hemisphere, It is just that the season makes the sweaters unsuitable and even unnecessary . so similarly the body of the dinosaur is the dress for the soul, so when the earth’s atmospheric environment and its conditions become unsuitable for the dress of the dinosaur, the material nature, which is like the sweeter producing company, temporarily retires that dress from display in that particular cosmic age. So that’s how in that sense they have not become extinct, they have just become unmanifest to our vision. They as the soul are always existing, and the dressing are also existing and in another places, which are beyond our current human vision, the dinosaurs may well be existing.
So to summarize the existence of dinosaurs is not incompatible with the vedic understanding, because vedic understanding also talks about giants reptiles. The ideas that the dinosaurs were existing always on our planet, is not grounded in strong scientific evidence and is also not compatible with the vedic understanding. And the extinction of the dinosaurs, as it is called in the modern science, is actually simple a temporary withdrawal of the dinosaurs dress for the souls, because of the unsuitability of that dress for the current atmospheric conditions on the planet.