By Acyuta Dasa
Srila Prabhupada often referred to bhakti-yoga as “the science of Krishna consciousness.” This was not his attempt to falsely confer a sense of empirical cachet upon a spiritual process, an area of knowledge that is, in the West anyway, largely considered to be too nebulous to warrant such distinction. Prabhupada was well aware of the antagonism that scientific circles sometimes have for their spiritual counterparts, as well as the condescension with which western societies frequently treat religious pursuits. However, he appropriated the epithet not to make reference to these tensions, but rather to indicate those similarities that the practice of bhakti-yoga legitimately shares with the process of scientific inquiry. It could be said that Srila Prabhupada presents in his books, and throughout his recorded lectures, a hypothesis of sorts: God exists, He is a person, and His name is Krishna. Prabhupada also provides a system of experimentation centered primarily on chanting Krishna’s holy names that, if followed diligently, allows the spiritual scientist the ability to personally confirm or deny that hypothesis based on observable evidence.