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Sooner or later in life, you will encounter one of the Hard Questions. It’s only a matter of time before something you experience sets you wondering, “Where did the universe come from?” “Why was I born?” “What’s the purpose of life?” or even “What is going to happen to me after death?”

It’s fair to say that your response to these questions makes the difference between success and failure in life. The Big Questions are also the Hard Questions; if they were easy, everyone would have good answers to them. Of course, there are plenty of folks who claim to have answers to those questions; it’s just that few of their answers are any good.

I was just reading an article about how to be a great scientist. The author knew and worked with many great scientists over a long and distinguished research career. During that time he studied them to try and determine what made the difference between a merely good scientist and a really great one. His conclusion: the really great scientists had the courage to ask the really hard questions, and the determination to set aside less important work for long enough to answer them properly.

This advice translates well to life in general, and spiritual life in particular. To be fully successful in life, you have to have the courage to confront the really Hard Questions, and the determination to put aside less important things and just research those questions until you can answer them well. Otherwise your life will be just ordinary, mediocre, run of the mill.

This is what spiritual life is all about. You put aside the trivial things in life, and just focus on the Hard Questions until you get a practical realization of them. If you can do this, then you will transform your consciousness and your life from material to spiritual. You will accomplish the purpose of human life and earn promotion to higher realms of existence.

The Esoteric Teaching exists to ask, and to help us to answer, the Hard Questions, the Hard Questions of life. The most important questions in life automatically lead us to the edge of the abyss, to the inconceivable. As soon as you try to research the inconceivable, you require a source of knowledge that is beyond human research, human intelligence and human ability.

The Esoteric Teaching directs us to the ancient Vedic literature, which is spiritual literature of the highest order, of divine origin. This is necessary to answer the Hard Questions conclusively.

For example, we may ask, “What is the origin of the universe?” Scientists may speculate some theories, and argue endlessly which one is correct. But can anyone perform an experiment to prove their theory of the origin of the universe? Of course not; the whole thing happened so long ago, we can never subject it to scientific observation. So according to the scientists’ own standard, none of their theories about the origin of the universe can ever be proven.

Hypothesis, observation and experiment work well within the domain of phenomena subject to human control, but when we attempt to apply the same process to the inconceivable, it breaks down. Our scientific process of gaining knowledge by empirical investigation is useless when we cannot subject the phenomena to a controlled experiment. The scientific method does not work with phenomena that cannot be brought into the laboratory or subjected to objective, reproducible measurement. When it is applied inappropriately, it gives answers that anyone can recognize are absurd and irrelevant.

The question of the origin of the universe is not a scientific question, because it is outside the domain of phenomena subject to experimentation and observation. To answer this question, or any of the Hard Questions, we have to rely on a source of knowledge that is comparable in power and scope. Therefore the Esoteric Teaching is based on the ancient Vedic literatures, for only a source of knowledge of divine origin can address such big questions.

Now the interesting thing about Vedic knowledge is that it is all subject to individual verification through self-realization, in other words, subjectively. Remember, all phenomena based on consciousness are subjective, and cannot be otherwise due to the absolute, self-referential nature of consciousness. So while science can never prove any of their theories about the origin of the universe, the students of the Esoteric Teaching can verify the Vedic version of the origin of the universe, if they so desire, simply by meditation.

Next: The Hard Questions 2