Over the years as I have written many books, and new readers often want to know where to begin, how to proceed systematically, so that understanding them would become easier. Implicit in this request is the problem that the books are not easy reading, especially if you don’t read them in order. While I try to summarize the relevant ideas at the beginning of each book, that summary might sometimes be breezy, and if you are not used to the novelty, then the rest of the reading can seem harder. With that problem at hand, this post describes a progression from one book to another. These books were not necessarily written in that order; sometimes I leapt forward, and then came back to plug a gap. Due to that back and forth, there is some repetition in different books, which I think is good because the only way to familiarize oneself to a new way of thinking is to go over it multiple times. I might also note that the books have more than what I outline below, but this is a summary of the progression.

Gödel’s Mistake – The Role of Meaning in Mathematics

Overtly, this book deals with some fundamental paradoxes in number theory and computing theory, and discusses their significance. But covertly this book is about the three modes of nature of Sāńkhya which manifest as manas (concept), prāna (activity), and vāk (objects). The book deliberately never discusses Sāńkhya directly because the goal is to derive the above said distinction from problems within mathematics. The book shows how numbers are sometimes concepts (ordinals), sometimes activities (programs), and sometimes objects (cardinals). The inability to distinguish between these three types of numbers leads to numerous paradoxes with mathematics, which the book discusses.

The lesson of these paradoxes is that we must describe numbers—and hence everything that uses mathematics—in terms of the three categories (concepts, activities, and objects). If we use only one category—e.g. objects, or cardinal numbers, as science does at the present when it describes the world as quantities—then it can be consistent but incomplete (because the other two categories are missing). But if we try to reduce any category to any other category, we end up in a contradiction. Thus, the three categories are necessary and sufficient in order to make mathematics consistent and complete.

How the three categories of numbers co-exist and combine forms the biggest outstanding problem of modern mathematics, and the book illustrates that the solution to this problem is to describe a theory in which concepts are converted by a process into an object. In mathematical parlance, concepts are sets, processes are functions, and objects are quantities. There is a long tradition in mathematics that treats sets and functions also as objects, which constitutes a category mistake and creates paradoxes.

This reduction arises due to a materialistic view in which the world is only objects, and ideas and processes must therefore be reduced to objects. The book shows that unless this category mistake and the resulting reduction is corrected, mathematics will be either inconsistent or incomplete.

Quantum Meaning – A Sematic Interpretation of Quantum Theory

If you have followed the thesis of the previous book, it should be evident that if processes are used to convert ideas into objects, then these objects must be treated as symbols of the ideas. Objects are not therefore meaningless entities; to every object we must attach a meaning. In the everyday world, we identify these objects as tables, chairs, cars, houses, etc. which are things, but they are also symbols of ideas denoted by the same word. Philosophers—owing to the use of the same word—have tried to reduce ideas and processes to things, which, as we saw above, is a category mistake.

Just as mathematics is inconsistent when this reduction is carried out, and incomplete if the other categories are disregarded, a similar problem must appear in a physical theory too. The theory must be incomplete if we don’t induct ideas and processes, and inconsistent if we reduce one to the other. This book shows how the problems of current atomic theory mimic those of mathematics above.

The most prominent example of quantum incompleteness is probabilities and it arises when we treat objects as things instead of symbols. You can measure symbol probability in a text but you won’t be able to predict the word order because the order is semantic but probabilities are physical. We might say that the effect of word order is empirical, but the cause of that symbol order is not empirical.

Quantum theorists have shown that if we try to predict symbol order using additional ‘hidden variables’ we end up in a logical contradiction. In one sense, there is nothing hidden because the symbol order is empirical. And yet, that symbol order is not a physical object. Thus, the quantum problem is identical to the problem in mathematics—if we ignore ideas then we get incompleteness but if we reduce ideas to objects then we get inconsistency. Therefore we need three categories (idea, process, and objects) two of which exist in physics already: the ‘process’ is bosons, and ‘objects’ are fermions. But without the ideas to which a process is applied to make things, processes and things remain probabilistic.

All standard interpretations of atomic theory try to explain away the probabilities as a feature of reality, or hope that these will one day be replaced by determinism. This interpretation instead shows that neither is probability a feature of reality, nor will it ever be replaced by determinism. However, it can be replaced by the three modes of nature in which things are symbols of ideas, produced by a process.

Sāńkhya and Science – Applications of Vedic Philosophy to Modern Science

If you followed the thesis of the previous book, you would have noticed that there are effects that can be perceived by the senses but they cannot be explained by what the senses perceive. We noted one such effect, namely, the meaning that creates the order of words, but it is not the only effect.

Sāńkhya describes multiple levels of deeper realities beyond the mind: these are called intellect (which judges the truth), ego (which judges the goodness), and mahattattva (which judges the rightness). If the mind’s existence creates the problem of word order, then others must have effects too.

The effect of intellect is that only logically consistent meanings can exist together because they affirm each other’s truth. Inconsistent meanings cannot coexist; they will be pushed apart. Therefore the truth of the meaning causes aggregation and disaggregation, and having seen the effects caused by meaning, there must now be effects caused by truth. This effect can be explained by treating the intellect as a cause which seeks consistency among propositions. The modern explanation of ‘attractive’ and ‘repulsive’ forces as the cause of molecules and chemical reactions must now be replaced by the idea that these molecules are produced in the process of creating semantic consistency.

This theory of aggregation will explain some chemical reactions but prove inadequate because other reactions are caused by incompleteness. This is because after a consistency is created, we need to preserve what we have and provide what we lack. That which lacks is the incompleteness and manifests as desire. And that which is considered irrelevant is the fullness which manifests as revulsion. Both hinge upon a purpose which causes a change. In order to explain this change, we need a new property called the ego in Sāńkhya; it creates purpose that looks like attraction and repulsion but it is neither a physical force, nor semantic consistency. Why does an already consistent system expand, at the risk of destablizing itself? This needs a new explanation caused by incompleteness.

Then we will find situations in which reactions don’t occur even when both desire and its object are present. This is the counterpart of the fact that just because you desire things you see, doesn’t mean you get them. Similarly, sometimes reactions will occur fortuitously without incompleteness, which is the counterpart of the fact that often we get things without desiring them. We are still talking about motion, but now the explanation needs morality and the consequences of previous actions which sometimes prevent the fulfillment of desires, and at other times deliver results without such desires.

The existence of mind, intellect, ego, and morality can thus be made relevant to the discussion of the behavior of atoms and molecules, successively bringing insights from within the observer to explain what lies outside. This is the new philosophy of science in which introspection, rather than sense perception, is the method for the advancement of science, even for physics and chemistry.

Moral Materialism – A Semantic Theory of Ethical Naturalism

We have talked a lot about the nature of matter so far. Now we will talk about the interaction between matter and the soul. The central problem here is free will. It conflicts with the idea of determinism in science, which is needed in order to predict the future state of the universe. If this state is determined by my free will then I could (based on morality) predict my future, but not the universe’s future.

This book discusses a reconciliation of free will and determinism in which the world is like a drama whose script is fixed in advance, but the actors in the drama are yet to be decided. The script defines the events but it doesn’t determine the actors. Since the script is predefined, you can deterministically predict all that will happen in the universe—past, present, and future—and yet you cannot predict who will do what. The universe is what (will happen) deterministic, but who (will do it) indeterministic.

As we established the properties of the individual experience semantically, we now talk about the universal space and time semantically. Both are hierarchical and closed. Hierarchical space means that the boundary of your house constitutes a space, which is embedded in the boundary of the space demarcated by a city, and so forth. Space is not flat and open; there are imperceptible boundaries which create effects, which cannot be explained without the hierarchical view. Hierarchical time means that a faster clock exists inside a slower clock, like seconds are within hours, hours are within days. Thus, the entire universe is closed, and it evolves cyclically. This structure can be described as a tree.

There are thus two kinds of laws in this space and time. The first is the cyclic creation of events of the drama. The second is that which connects the events into trajectories—individual life stories. Both laws are predictive; the former says what will happen, and the latter defines who will do it.

Trajectories are drawn after the events are defined, which means that individual action cannot change the course of the universe. Rather, individuals will grab the roles from the available ones, and if you vacate a role then someone else will take it. Thus the universe has a fixed destiny but individuals can choose their own destiny. The interaction of these two laws constitutes the crux of this book.

Signs of Life – A Semantic Critique of the Theory of Evolution

It was important to establish the idea that the universal evolution is independent of individual evolution, because it leads us to a different understanding of the evolution of species which is caused by changes in cosmic events rather than the random mutation and natural selection of individual bodies.

The evolution of species is caused by the changes to the roles being created in the cosmic drama and the individual living entity is simply an actor in that drama, not the cause of the drama itself. Thus, some species will automatically appear and disappear at different times, quite like the king and queen in a drama go backstage to allow other scenes to be enacted before they return to the stage. Given that the drama is cyclic, just because you don’t see the king and queen on the stage doesn’t mean they have ceased to exist. The roles of king and queen—the different species—exist permanently. And yet they become visible or invisible at different places and times, due to script of the drama.

Thus all species are eternal, and yet they appear and disappear. Indeed, there are patterns of this evolution shared with the evolution of ideas, cultural evolution, the rise and fall of civilizations, boom and bust in the economy, the changing of seasons and weather patterns, and many others.

A crucial factor in each of these cases is that the system is closed and each closed system oscillates in certain predefined normal modes like a drum which can produce many sounds depending on where it is hit. The cause of such cycles is outside the system—like a hand that hits the drum to trigger a new vibration—and individuals in the system cannot create a new cycle, but they can participate in a cycle. The book presents flaws in the idea of individual change causing macroscopic change, through theories and examples drawn from physics, mathematics, computing theory, game theory, etc.

Uncommon Wisdom – Fault Lines in the Foundations of Atheism

We started by discussing the problems in mathematics; we then took it to a discussion of issues in modern physics; we then discussed how this paradigm will be extended into chemistry; we then talked about the separation between individual experience and cosmic events, describing the nature of space and time; we used this foundation to discuss the flaws in evolutionary theory. Every foundational idea in modern thinking—reductionism, materialism, relativism, determinism, and evolutionism—was critiqued in the process, showing how science needs to think differently than it has so far.

We can now use this foundation to critique atheism, as this book does. Materialism is false because even to explain physics and chemistry we need to invoke mind, intellect, ego, and morality. Reduction is false because ideas and processes are required in addition to material objects. Determinism is true, but not in the sense that we conceive it—i.e. as the contradiction of free will. Evolutionism is false because the individual actions (mutations and selection) don’t influence the macroscopic change; rather macroscopic change creates the avenues in which individual actors can participate. Relativism is wrong because an absolute space and time creates macroscopic change independent of individual changes. Atheism therefore is an ideological dogma that has no foundation in real science.

As we saw above, even to explain sense experience we have to delve deeper into the recesses of the observer. But if a person is not introspective themselves, then the insights of an introspective person can be used to formulate new theories although the non-introspective person will not perceive the new reality sensually (because it can only be observed introspectively). Thus we can talk about an epistemology in which faith in the words of perceptually advanced individuals are used as springboards of intuition but reason and experiment are used to verify these intuitions in science. This process is akin to accepting a password from one who knows it, and then verifying if the password works correctly.

Reason and experience are useful in verifying the password, but faith is useful in discovering the password if we don’t know it. In that sense, revealed knowledge is valuable source of passwords, in lieu of our own perceptual advancement because we haven’t yet looked inward.

Emotion – A Soul-Based Theory of Its Origins and Mechanisms

Once we have rejected evolution, set aside the challenges of reductionism and determinism, and demonstrated the use of introspection in the progress of material science, we can now begin looking at the question of meaning and purpose in life by understanding the nature of the soul.

The soul in Vedic philosophy has three aspects—chit or cognition, sat or relation, and ananda or emotion. These three are also the judgments of truth, right, and good, respectively. In the material world, the judgment of right appears in the moral sense, the judgment of good in the ego, and the judgment of truth in the intellect. The judgment of truth operates on meaning in the mind, those meanings are derived from sensations, and the sensations are produced from the material objects.

Individually, relation, cognition, and emotion are incomplete; we can experience them in a first-person manner, but we cannot see their effects in the third-person manner. Therefore, the three must combine, although when they combine, one of three dominates while the others become subordinate. This dominant-subordinate relation changes with time, as a result of which sometimes we prioritize our duties, at other times our desires, and then at yet other times the nature of reality.

The three aspects of the soul are often internally inconsistent, and in the material world this inconsistency drives the soul to prioritize different things at different times. This model of the soul can be used as the paradigm for change in the material world; that change includes the shifts in our personality, and the transmigration of the soul through bodies. The model is also useful in formulating a theory of the body in which three aspects must be balanced in order to maintain health.

It means sometimes emotion dominates cognition, and at other times cognition overpowers emotion. Sometimes we do things as the situation demands, and other times we bend the situation to our demands. Attaining this balance by allowing different aspects to dominate at different times is the essence of choice. But we are also expected to use this choice correctly, which means different things can dominate at different times, places, and situations. If choice is used as expected, then we can be happy; if this choice is misused or its effects are not understood then we become unhappy.

Six Causes – The Vedic Theory of Creation

If the nature of the soul within this world is understood, then we can also ask how the soul enters this world, why the world is created, and how it is created. These questions require us to go beyond the soul into the nature of God, the relation between the soul and God, and between God and matter.

Every living entity has a need to know itself and express itself. Like an artist who creates a work of art in order to express his personality and then admires this work as a reflection of his persona, similarly, both the soul and God create to express their personality and by that expression know themselves. The power of action is used to externalize the personality, and the power of knowing is used to internalize it.

But these powers are inert in themselves unless there is a motivation to express and know. That motivation can further be divided into three parts—the idea to be expressed and known, the desire to express and know that idea, and the judgment if that expression and knowledge is appropriate.

The activity of expressing and knowing, together with the three aspects of internal motivation are collectively called thinking, feeling, willing, knowing, and acting. These are the five primordial stages of creation, which require an explicit understanding of the creator as a person. The product of God’s thinking is pradhāna, the product of His feeling is prakriti, the product of His willing is mahattattva, the product of His knowing is ahamkāra, and the product of His acting is prāna. Once ahamkāra and prāna are created, the rest of the process of universal creation follows as described in Sāńkhya.

This book discusses six kinds of causes; God who stands prior to the process of creation is the personal cause; the five steps through which He creates a primordial reality are the efficient cause; the senses, mind, intellect, ego, and morality are the instrumental cause; the material elements that these senses perceive, understand, judge, desire, and value are the material cause; the result of the contact between the instruments and the objects is forms which constitute the formal cause; and the combination of these into living, breathing, and working systems through prāna is the systemic cause.

This constitutes the philosophy of creation in Vedic texts. Greek philosophers had conceived of four causes—formal, material, efficient, and final; to this, we add instrumental and systemic causes, and both God and soul are the final cause or the purpose for which the universe exists. This is a convenient method to understand Vedic creationism for those who have prior familiarity with similar attempts in Greek philosophy where matter was only one of the four causes. Taking a broader approach to causality makes for a more comprehensive view of the universe.

Mystic Universe – An Introduction to Vedic Cosmology

Now that we have the philosophy of creation, we can talk about the actual universe. This is a complex book because it deals with many complex problems, namely flat vs. round earth, linear vs. cyclic time, clock time vs. conscious time, geocentric vs. heliocentric models, higher vs. lower planetary systems, heaven and hell, the invisible mountains, rivers, oceans, and islands, the motion of the planets and their effects on human lives, and finally the role of understanding cosmology in astrology.

If this wasn’t enough, there are also conflicts with modern cosmology regarding distances to different planets, the existence of multiple galaxies (which are rejected in Vedic cosmology) and multiple universes (accepted in Vedic cosmology, but not understood in modern cosmology). Problems of a Big Bang stemming from cosmic microwave radiation, the problem of dark energy (which causes a faster expansion) and dark matter (which must slow the expansion), exotic objects such as black holes and supernovae, and why everything we know from modern science is only 4% of the universe.

Tackling all these questions becomes possible only when we have a profound understanding of Sāńkhya, how it changes the structure of space and time into a tree, how causality in this tree-like space and time is different, and why atomic problems entails that light never travels in space although there is remote and non-local causation which indeed takes a finite amount of time that we currently attribute to travel rather than change. The book covers these at some length because if these are not grasped then everything else in cosmology would appear to be meaningless. All these constitute the theory of matter (space, time, matter, causality) before we understand the model of the universe.

Cosmic Theogony – The Personalization of Nature

Whereas the previous book delved into the structure of the universe, but did not discuss the personalities which rule over these places, this one delves into the personalities. It discusses why there are 12 signs of the zodiac, 28 star signs, 15 phases of the moon, and how each of these are individually personalized as different types in nature. With this understanding we can also talk about the origin of the solar, lunar, and sidereal calendars.

Based on this we discuss Vedic Theogony—the 36 demigods that control the entire universe. These demigods are representations of a trinity—Viṣṇu, Shiva, and Brahma—due to which sometimes the trinity is taken out of the 36 demigods and only 33 demigods are considered in the Theogony.

The purpose of this book is to describe how nature is personalized through the control of higher living beings, which means the laws of nature are normative. They are like laws of society; they can be broken, but they are followed due to moral imperatives. The planets move in their orbits not due to gravity but because demigods perform their duties under the direction of Viṣṇu, Shiva, and Brahma. Our contact with material objects is also mediated by the influence of demigods, which is a new type of causal model in which a demigod delivers our karma or destiny based on our material desires.

Once this model is known, then we can understand how the worship of the trinity of Viṣṇu, Shiva, and Brahma led to the worship of sun, moon, and stars, which then morphed into three religious ideologies—polytheism, monotheism, and monism—which dominate all over the world today. These ideologies carry numerous shades of the sun, moon, and star worship from the past, as well as the ideas of the trinity noted above. These might appear to be conflicting ideologies but they are not; they stem from the three aspects of the soul, as the trinity represents the three features of the soul.

Based on the understanding of the soul, and its representation in the trinity, we can conceive of a religious universalism, in which polytheism, monism, and monotheism are progressive ideas about religion; they were part of a single system earlier, but were split into conflicting ideologies as the understanding of the soul, and its progressive journey of realization was forgotten.

The Yellow Pill – Conceptual Basis of the Varna System

The term “Yellow Pill” derives from the popular designation of socio-economic-political positions by names like the “Blue Pill” (surrender your individuality to the system), “Red Pill” (fight the system to get your individuality), “Green Pill” (replace the current system by a new one), etc. This book introduces the reader to the Vedic socio-economic-political ideas. The book has dedicated chapters that deal with economic, social, and political ideas.

In the cacophony of ideologies, the discussion about the moral purpose of life and how it is achieved through society is missing. This book hopes to fill that gap; it talks about how society cannot be organized without a transcending purpose, and when such a purpose exists, the conflicts between competition and cooperation, government and business, the individual and the system, are resolved.

It discusses a social model that is neither left-wing nor right-wing, and yet brings the benefits of both systems. This system is based on the ancient theory of Varna or four classes described in the Vedic texts. The book discusses the foundational ideas of this system in the context of modern social, economic, and political theories showing how stability is more important than growth, how localization is more important than globalization, and how a society organized hierarchically based on merit is better than one where everyone pretends to have equal rights.

The Balanced Organization – The Surprising Science of Non-Living Organisms

After critiquing the principles of modern sociology, economics, and politics in the last book, this book formulates a theory of society as an organism. In Vedic philosophy, society is compared to a “body”, with different classes in the society being identified with hands, legs, head, belly, etc. But what kind of “body” is it? It clearly is not a living person. By “body” we mean a functional structure comprised of many parts that perform different roles and duties. There are many such types of non-living “organisms”: cultures, organizations, businesses, etc. which exist in their environment, such nations, government, economy, etc. These “organisms” compete, survive, and evolve, but what are the mechanisms of this dynamics? This book identifies three dominant mechanisms: (1) the dynamics within the organization, (2) the dynamics or an organization in an environment, and (3) the dynamics of the environment itself.

Each of these mechanisms is then described as being based different kinds of conflicts such as that between the functional divisions and hierarchical levels within an organization, between organizations in a marketplace, and between markets within an economy. Conflicts don’t have a permanent resolutions; they are resolved by choices of compromises. Since a compromise is a choice, the choices are constantly reversed to change the dominant-subordinate patterns in conflict resolution. The structure of the conflicts, the types of compromises, and how they evolve over time, then become the basic mechanism of organizational, societal, and economic evolution.

This book extends the Vedic ideas about the nature of the body, specifically, that it is the competing forces of kapha, pitta, and vata, and ‘health’ involves their balance, while ‘sickness’ involves their imbalance. All bodies are known to change their patterns of kapha, pitta and vata dominance serveral times a day, and constantly through the lifetime of an organism. This model of biological evolution is illustrated through the evolution of organizations, which are clearly not ‘living’ in the sense that they don’t have a mind. The book therefore mutually illuminates the nature of the bodily evolution as well as how the principles of this evolution are independent of living beings.

Is the Apple Really Red? – Ten Essays on Science and Religion

This is a short book, relative to the others, and probably the best starting point for a reader who is unfamiliar with Vedic philosophy. It comprises ten short essays that cover the entire gamut of ideas ranging from the understanding of matter in Sāńkhya philosophy, to the conflict between free will and determinism, to the nature of life and why the modern evolutionary account of evolution is wrong.

There are discussions about how God creates the universe, and why He is both transcendent and immanent. Finally, there is a discussion about common misunderstings about Vedic philosophy, such as its apparent polytheism which is shown as subsidiary to monotheism, how we must understand deities and rituals, and how miracles are not spiritual but advanced material capabilities that do not contradict the laws of nature.

The book emphasizes how the personal nature of God is important to understand the origin of meanings, pleasures, and relationships in this world, rather than considering them as ‘illusions’. Notably, impersonalism and voidism decry the material world as an illusion–i.e. it simply doesn’t exist. The book shows how matter exists but is temporary, and the material world is rejected not as an illusion but because it is temporary.

Western Questions, Eastern Answers – A Collection of Short Essays

In between conceptualizing, writing, and publishing the books, I had occasion to post many blogs, which were sometimes driven by questions from readers, sometimes served as overview of the books, and at other times discussed topics that are not yet covered in any of the books. Over time, as I write more blogs, the growing content will facilitate a series of books that collect the essays in a chronological order.

Given the nature of blogs, the subject matter is not topically organized as in the case of other books. However, these blogs are generally complementary to the content in the above books. It is impossible to fit every type of question into the books, without elongating them significantly. The blogs serve as answers to point questions. They often revisit the background material covered in the books, and sometimes point to the books or other blogs, in case the reader is interested in delving deeper into the topics covered in the blogs.

Each volume of this series contains about 30 essays, and we plan to issue new volumes every year, or whenever there is adequate amount of content to form an additional volume.