Report on

Fifth International Conference

‘Science and Scientist - 2017’

Prepared by: Sumangala Devi Dasi (Shilpi Saxena, Ph.D.)

Women Scientist (DST), Delhi University, Delhi

 

 

Nepal Academy for Science and Technology (NAST), Nepal Academy, Central Department of Biotechnology, Tribhuvan University, and Kathmandu University served as coorganizers for Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Institute’s ‘Fifth International Conference Science and Scientist - 2017’ during August 18 – 19, 2017 at Nepal Pragya Pratisthan, Kamaladi, Kathmandu, Nepal. This conference was organized under the chairmanship of Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D., Serving Director, Bhakti Vedanta Institute of Spiritual Culture and Science, Princeton, NJ, USA.

 

Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D. is the main visionary of the “Science and Scientist” annual Conference series and he has envisioned “Working Together toward a Spiritual Science of the Conscious Self” as the main theme of the Science and Scientist 2017. He blessed the conference with his insightful message “Beyond the Modern Monolith of Consciousness.” In this special article Sripad Puri Maharaja explained that, “… in order to rise above that perspective presumption to the absolute platform requires a completely revolutionary shift. As it is sometimes said of Plato, "Philosophy is learning to die." One has to transcend their present first person conception of thefinite self as a starting point, and understand it is something to be arrived at or derived from the absolute perspective. This means that philosophy acknowledges that there is a First Person or absolute thinking that is not oneself. In the Vedic tradition this iscalled Adi Purusha.” Sripad Puri Maharaja also explained that “we misunderstand reason as being experienced within consciousness when it is reason [theory] that produces the idea of consciousness. Most of us generally accept that the Earth is rotating around its axis producing the phenomenon that we experience as day and night. The phenomenon of day and night is an experience within consciousness, but the spinning of the Earth is not. What consciousness experiences is the movement of the Sun across the sky from East to West. The rotation of the Earth is a product of reason, not consciousness. When the Sun disappears below the Western horizon in the evening and appears rising from the Eastern horizon in the morning, for consciousness it is just the disappearance and appearance of the Sun. For the ancients who experienced this, they thought the Sun dies and is born each day because that is what consciousness experiences. However, modern reason with its Copernican theory posits the Sun as a star that seems relatively stationary with respect to the rotating Earth. But that whole conception is for reason, not for consciousness.”

 

Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaja, also blessed the Scientific community with his auspicious message. He explained that Gaudiya Vaisnavas accept three fundamental pramanas (categories of evidences), that is, means by which such knowledge can be acquired; Pratyaksa- sense perception, Anuman - inference, or conclusions drawn from given premises and Sabda - verbal testimony (or revealed truth) and Sabda is regarded as the foremost of the accepted pramanas. Srila Acharya Maharaja also explained that, because the instruments of pratyaksa and anuman—the body, senses, mind, and intellect—are all made up of gross and subtle forms of matter, they can provide knowledge only of matter. To acquire knowledge of the absolute reality which pervades and encompasses material existence, an additional pramana (Sabda Pramana) is necessary.

 

The Inaugural session began with the lightening of lamp before our Guruvarga Srila Bhaktisvarupa Damodar Goswami Maharaja, Ph.D., and Sripad Bhakti Madhava Puri Maharaja, Ph.D., Srila Bhakti Rakshak Sridhar Dev-Goswami Maharaja and Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaja Prabhupada. Welcome Address was delivered by the Sripad Bhakti Vijnana Muni Maharaja, Ph.D., President, Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Institute, Bangaluru India. In the auspicious presence of His Excellency Dr. Ram Baran Yadav, Honorable First and former President of Nepal, Inaugural Address were delivered by the Professor S.R. Bhatt, Chairman, Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR), New Delhi, India, Sripad Bhakti Niskama Shanta Maharaja, Ph.D., Gen. Secretary, Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Institute, Bengaluru, India, Joan Walton, Ph.D., Primary Ph.D. Supervisor, Department of Education Studies, Faculty of Education, Liverpool Hope University, United Kingdom., Paul Werbos, Ph.D., Co-director of Center of Large-Scale Integrated Optimization Networks CLION at FedEx Institute of Technology, IntControl, Harvard University, Washington D.C., USA, Mohan Kharel, Ph.D., Retd. Prof., Central Dept. of Biotechnology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal, A.K. Mukhopadhyay, M.D., Professor & Head, Laboratory Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India, Sri Ganga Prasad Uprety, Chancellor, Nepal academy, Kamaladi, Kathmandu, Nepal, Jiba Raj Pokharel, Ph.D., Vice Chancellor, Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), Kathmandu, Nepal and Rajani Malla, Ph.D., Prof. Central Department of Biotechnology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal.

 

In this ‘Fifth International Conference Science and Scientist-2017’, a number of renowned scholars from USA, Israel, UK, along with many Indian scholars from more than twelve states of India presented their research findings. There were one plenary session, three special session and four parellel sessions and a Valedictory session was also organized. All the papers presented in the event were also published online at conference website.

 

Plenary session of the conferece introduced the main theme of the ‘Science and Scientist - 2017’ Conference. The session was chaired by M.V. Jagannadham, Ph.D., Sr. Principal Scientist, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad India and Co-chaired by the A.K. Mukhopadhyay, M.D., Professor & Head, laboratory Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, India.

 

 

 

First plenary talk “Dissecting the Central Dogma of Subject-Object Dichotomy in the Modern Science” was delivered by Sripad Bhakti Niskama Shanta Maharaja, Ph.D., Gen. Secretary, Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Institute, Bengaluru, India, who enlightened the delegates with the vision that he has received from his Gurus. He explained that the modern science is nothing but the interpretation of scientist’s experience of the data and such a data is accessible to all. However science cannot make the data of scientist’s experience as the starting point because scientist’s experience is always evolving right from his/her birth and it is also completely dependent on the beliefs that accompany the scientist. He said that the mechanistic approach to understand life will always fail because in such an approach scientists obliterate the life phenomenon itself by taking apart the integrated organic whole. Following this illusory path of mechanistic approach scientists could not understand the distinction between correlation and causation.Therefore scientist should examine how the data of their experience, their beliefs about themselves and objective reality arose in the first instance, and how they contribute to them by the actual cognitive process which are always going on in their minds. Sripad Shanta Maharaja emphasized that modern science is based on the assumption that scientists can understand things without understanding themselves and thus science does not have the knowledge of scientist. On the other hand, according to Bhagavat Vedānta the science of self-realization is most essential aspect of any real understanding of things, which requires proper spiritual training rather than the simplistic methodology that we practice in modern science. Scientists may think that the search for the ultimate grounds of self that Bhagavat Vedānta advocates is nothing but one’s blind decision to jump into an unknown deep well but in this journey inside an unknown well only one can find the ground of how things appear and is approached and studied.

 

Sripad Bhakti Vijnana Muni Maharaja, Ph.D., President, Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Institute, Bengaluru, India,delivered the second plenary talk on “Harmony of Vedanta and Science” where he explained with his insightful, in-depth knowledge that Organisms acquire knowledge about their environment and respond to them. He explained the concept of Organic Whole in a very beautiful manner, as Hegel writes, “Life is essentially organism. In the organism the form is this unity, and at the same time these parts of the form are not parts but members”. We cannot call the chemical parts of a chemical unity as members. But in the case of life the limbs are the members of the unity of the living form. The form of the living organism is always instantiated strictly within the species process of nature or organic life as an individual strictly within the boundaries of the species. Sripad Muni Maharaja, said that the parts (members) are mutually related as co-dependent and co-producing moments of the whole. The cause of the integration of the members is to be located in the unity of their common purpose which is coming from the life principle wholistically and it is not a mechanism or mere chemistry. This proves the Vedantic Axiom for the Origin of Life (Life comes from Life) the organic whole thinking of Hegel finds a parallel in the Vedantic thought as well. The whole comes from a whole. Or the complete comes from the complete. This is also the foundation of the Vedantic thinking about life, Universe and Reality.

 

Professor S.R. Bhatt, Chairman, Indian Council of Philosophical Research, (ICPR), New Delhi, a most respected profound philosopher explained in his plenary talk “Cartesian Mind-Body Dualism and Vedantic Response” that the history of humankind reveals a constant recurrence of some fundamental problems which have agitated human mind right from the dawn of human civilization. One such perennial problem is the nature of Reality. There is a demand for some universally acceptable conception of Reality among human minds. But no two human minds have ever agreed in their pronouncements. Professor Bhatt emphasized in the light of his knowledge that any approach to Reality has to be holistic and should not be partite to understand it fully in its entirety. For this purpose, an inner experience which is immediately and intimately realized should be relied upon. It is free from conditioning and limiting influences of senses, mind, language and external surroundings. This is the realm of spirituality which is available in the yogic state of equipoise. Different from this is the outer experience which is mediated by several factors like object,circumstances, subjective limitations, etc.

 

Dr. Joan Walton, Primary Ph.D. Supervisor, Department of Education studies, Faculty of Education, Liverpool Hope University, United Kingdom, explained in her plenary talk “Action Research: A Methodology for Inquiring into Subjective Experience” that one way of doing this is to develop methodologies that recognise and honour the inner experiences of individuals, and aim to understand the nature of the relationship between what goes on in person’s inner world (for example, their feelings, emotions, thoughts, intuitions, desires) and their external world (the physical environment to which we all have access through our five senses). Dr. Walton said that there were philosophers, psychologists and other major thinkers who were promoting different perspectives. William James (1842-1910), an American philosopher and psychologist, considered that whatever a person experienced was worthy of investigation, and internal processes were valid sources of knowledge. He created the concept of ‘radical empiricism’ (James 1912), by which he meant that in research, nothing should be included which was not directly experienced; nor anything excluded which was directly experienced. Sense perception on its own was not sufficient. In his view, consciousness was not dependent on matter for its existence.

 

The theme of the second session was  ‘Scientific Critique of Life Science,’ which was chaired by Professor S.R. Bhatt, Ph.D., Chairman, Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR), New Delhi, India & Bhakti Niskama Shanta, Ph.D., Gen. Secretary, Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Institute of Spiritual Culture and Science, Bengaluru, India.

 

 

First talk (Origin of life on Earth: Comparison of Opinions form Modern Science and Vedantic Views) of this session was delivered by M.V. Jagannadham, Ph.D., Sr. Principal Scientist, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India. He said that the quest for knowledge began right from the beginning of the human civilization. While harnessing science to solve the problems of his everyday life, man started observing the nature with curiosity and also sought to understand the relation between nature and living beings. Human curiosity to find out the origin of living beings led to the queries on the first appearance of life on this planet. However, starting from the Vedic period to the present age, the question remains unsolved despite the astonishing progress in the state of knowledge in various branches of science witnessed during the past few decades. In his presentation Dr. Jagannadham summarized the various postulations made on the origin of life starting from Vedic period to the modern science.

 

In the second talk (Restoration of Brain Functions by Rewiring and Remodelling of Neural Circuits) of this session Professor B. S. Shankaranarayana Rao, Ph.D., Department of Neurophysiology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, India, talked about restoration of brain functions by rewiring and remodelling of neural circuits, he explained that neuronal plasticity is an extraordinary property of the brain and refers to the morphological, biochemical, behavioural and electrophysiological alterations in both the adult and developing nervous system. Thus, it is becoming increasingly clear that a regenerative and continuing mechanism for adaptive reorganization of the brain occurs because of the property of neuronal plasticity. Professor Rao said that  this unique property of the nervous system may be responsible for the recovery of functions in several brain disorders including stress, anxiety, depression, aging, epilepsy and mental retardation. He emphasized that stress is a condition that seriously perturbs physiological and psychological homeostasis, resulting in disorders ranging from anxiety to post traumatic stress disorder. Severe traumatic or repeated stress can result in long-term deleterious effects leading to depression and cognitive deficits.

 

Oded Maimon, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Israel,  while delivering his talk on “Soft Logic for Consciousness Science” stated that he developed a new mathematical language and logic that can serve as the scientific basis for Consciousness Science. He said that it rigorously considers subjectivity in its foundation. By the development of a new coordinate system, we make a distinction onbetween -0 and +0. This distinction enables us to present new kind of numbers, which we call soft numbers.They are a combination of inner experience, which we call the zero line, and the outside experience, which we call the one line. Dr. Oded Maimon explained that consciousness appears when the scientist is able to observe both the reality and his observation on the reality. Soft logic develops the mathematical foundation and tools for this ability of investigation. The acceleration of including consciousness as a relevant part of the scientific investigation will enlarge the possibility that the investigation in science will be not about the objective phenomena but also of the awareness of the scientist to the universe.

 

Dr A. K. Mukhopadhyay, M.D., Professor & Head, Laboratory Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India, started his talk “Joining the Dots: The Ladder of Cognition” in a very profound way with his in-depth knowledge and experience, he explained that the biology is rooted in the operation of consciousness. ‘Life’ cannot manifest and life-operations cannot be sustained for long without consciousness, which works as an active participating ground with its own specific operations within the systems. Dr. Mukhopadhyay said that the processes of ‘life’ within the systems are run by‘self’, which represents consciousness customized as the CEO for the systems. Information flow in the signal networking is executed through informational bio-molecules of cell and is regulated by different logic modules handled by operations of mind, self and life within the systems.

                                                                                              

The theme of the third session was ‘Science of Spiritual Biology’ and was chaired by Professor Jiba Raj Pokharel, Ph.D., Vice Chancellor, Nepal Academy of Science andTechnology (NAST), Kathmandu, Nepal & Bhakti Vijnana Muni, Ph.D., President, Sri Chaitanya Saraswat Institute of Spiritual Culture and Science, Bengaluru, India.

 

This session began with the talk “The Karmic role for the dynamism in Nature or So - called Evolution II” by Professor Mohan Kharel, Ph.D., Retd. Prof. ,Central Dept. of Biotechnology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal, explaining that despite several attempts to explain the pattern of evolution or dynamism of Nature, say by Lamarck, Darwin,Wiseman, Fisher and Wright, molecular geneticists etc., the theory on the dynamic pattern of Nature remained incomplete. It must be because of failing to incorporate consciousness variable in all of those jumbles. Professor Kharel said that the conscious variable which has come as Karma (physical, mental, visible or invisible) must be an extraordinarily powerful force as some of the physicists are arguing on the basis of acoustic anisotropy resulted from the slaughter house during killing of animals results into earthquake.  If this kind of Karmic forces are possible for the earthquake, the forces of dark matter and dark energy too may have been controlled by Karmic forces. Then why not consider that the Karmic forces co-regulate the dynamism of nature?

 

The next talk of the session “Bacterial Intelligence and Sentience” was delivered by Professor Rajani Malla, Ph.D., Central Department of Biotechnology, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal. She said that the bacteria also have a remarkable capacity to combine their bodies with other organisms, forming alliances that may become permanent. A species of ‘glow in the dark’ squid is also an example of symbiosis and it has an organ which accommodates light-emitting bacteria. Professor Malla said that in consciousness studies the mind is assumed to correlate with the integrated activity of large populations of neurons distributed across multiple cortical and subcortical brain regions. Plant and bacteria offers a direct challenge to this simplistic view of consciousness. Without neurons (without brain organ) both plants and bacteria can also display several amazing sentient behaviour. Not only unicellular organisms can display cognitive behaviour, but also the individual cells in the multicellular organisms also display individual cognitive behaviour.

 

The next talk “Concept of Body and Mind in Vedic Philosophies” was delivered by the Prof. Govinda S. Upadhyaya, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy and Psychology, TU Trichandra Multiple Campus, Nepal. He talked about the concept of body and mind in the Vedic Philosophy. He said that the mind–body problem is a question of how the human mind and body can causally interact. This question arises when the mind and body are considered as distinct, based on the premise that the mind and the body are essentially dissimilar in nature. One of the earliest known formulations of mind–body dualism was expressed in the eastern Samkhya and Yoga of Vedic philosophy, which understood the world as relation between Purusha and Prakriti. Specifically, the YogaSutra presents an exploratory technique about the nature of the mind.

 

The last talk of this session “Near Death Experience – what we know, what we don’t know” was delivered by the Garga Chatterjee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India. He explained some important issues about the phenomenon of Near Death Experience. He said that as it is generally referred to, it is a cognitive phenomenon that is often spiritual or transcendental in nature and which occurs in association with some degree of acute physiologicalor psychological trauma. As the name suggests, NDEs in this general definition refer only to experiences where a person is either close to being dead, such as when suffering from a cardiac arrest, or believes he is close to being dead, such as during an accident.

After this session there were some cultural events performed by a few college students.

 

The next day, on 19th of August 2017, the theme of the first session was ‘Exploring the Mysteries of Life’. It was chaired by Joan Walton, Ph.D., Primary Ph.D. Supervisor, Department of EducationStudies, Faculty of Education, Liverpool Hope University, UK & Dr. B. S. Shankaranarayana Rao, Ph.D., Professor, Department of National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, India.

 

The session started with the talk “Unification of Objective Realism and Spiritual Development” of Paul J. Werbos, Ph.D., Co-director of Center of Large-Scale Integrated Optimization Networks CLION at FedEx Institute of Technology, IntControl, Harvard University,Washington D.C., USA. He said that we humans are a symbiotic life-form, a symbiosis between our mundane brain/body and our own local interface/component of ‘the noosphere,” a great mind with its own great body, made up in great part of some form of dark matter, basically including all of the earth. Dr. Paul also explained that the psychologist B.F. Skinner once argued that the brains and learning rules of humans are exactly the same as those of rats (except for speed and volume). To show this, his followers would at times train rats to push words around, as they would push other objects around, in a solipsistic kind of way, consistent with the“word games” theory of language. Some humans do at times seem to think like rats, but modern research on mirror neurons has led to a totally different picture of where we stand, as a kind of half-way house in evolution of the brain. Dr Paul said that some of us build on our inborn, mundane capabilities for empathy and communication so much that we maintain a well-structured system of symbolic reasoning, complete with axioms, logic and probability assessment. Those of us who make more use of words in making decisions also become more dependent on them – more precisely, more dependent on our choice of axioms. With the wrong axioms, humans have unique ways of having nervous breakdowns and acting on ideas so crazy or so misleading that no self-respecting mouse would ever be so stupid. He also referred to Einsteinian Materialism as well as the idea of Cosmic Consciousness.

 

The next talk (Life Comes from Life and Matter Comes from Life – Consistency with Modern Science) of this session was presented through Skype by Dr. Syamala Murthy Hari, Retired Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Lucent,Technologies, USA. She explained that consciousness, body,mind, and their relations to one another were thoroughly analysed by Vedanta, the Indian philosophy of ancient times. Having already solved ‘mind-body problem’ Vedanta has answers to many difficult philosophical questions posed by today’s scientific researchers of consciousness.

 

The next talk (Thermodynamics Challenges to the Materialistic View of Origin of the Biological System-a Review) of this session was delivered by Dr. Shilpi Saxena (Sumnagala Devi Dasi), Ph.D., Scientist, Center for Advanced Studies, Department of Geology, University of Delhi, India. Classical thermodynamics predicts that macromolecules of biological systems are more energy rich than their precursors and hence they can never form spontaneously in the early earth prebiotic conditions. Scientists do not know the exact process that led to the formation of the first biological system on earth. Dr Saxena said that scientists from National Academy of Sciences stated, that "for those who are studying the origin of life, the question is no longer whether life could have originated by chemical processes involving nonbiological components. The question instead has become which of many pathways might have been followed to produce the first cells.” She explained that when modern scientific theories failed to tell the truth about the origin of biological systems, we should have faith on some flawless alternative to know about the Absolute truth, the origin of biological system and the origin of everything. Ancient Eastern philosophy, based on the Vedantic or Bhagavat paradigm, provides us a flawless alternative for this most difficult situation, “the origin of biological system”, which is the concept of “Organic Wholism,” which is confirmed in the invocation of Sri Isopanishad “ompurnamadah purnamidam purnat purnamudacyate purnasyapurnamadaya purnamevavasishyate – The “Organic Whole” produces “organic wholes.” She strongly rejected all the materialistic origin of biological system and strongly recommended the concept of Organic wholism.

 

The next talk was delivered by Dr. Sundeep Mishra, M.D., Prof. of Cardiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. His talk was entitled ‘The Origin of Heart Beat a Microcosm of Origin of Universe-Syncretism between Vedic and Kabbalah, Christian, Islamic Philosophies and Quantum Physics’. The last talk of the session was delivered by Prof. L. S. Ganesh, Ph.D., Prof.  at the Dept. Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, India. He talked about The Game of Life - Purpose and Principles.

 

The first parallel session was entitled Reflections on Vedānta and Science’. It was chaired by Prof. Mohan Kharel, Ph.D., Retd. Prof., Central Dept. of Biotechnology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal & Mrigendra Bahadur Karki, Ph.D., Executive Director CNAS, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. The other parallel session was on the same theme was chaired by Prof. Rajani Malla, Ph.D., Central Dept. of Biotechnology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal & Prof. Rameshwar Adhikari, Ph.D., Executive Director, Research Centre forApplied Science and Technology (RECAST), Tribhuvan University, Nepal. In these sessions, Alphy Greever, Research Scholar, Department of Philosophy, Delhi University, New Delhi, India, presented her findings on ‘the Objects of Perception In Illusory Experiences.’ Shri Lokesh Pant, Research Scholar, Dept. Philosophy, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India, explained about The Modern “Self.” Prof. RadheyShyam Kaushal, Formerly UGC Research Professor, Department of Physics & Astrophysics, University of Delhi, India, talked about the Theory of Procreation in Vedic Literature: A Quantum Field Theoretic Model. Dr. Lokhnath Sharma Pathak, Assistant Professor in the Central Department ofLinguistics, Tribhuvan University, Nepal, explained about the Understanding the Dynamics of Human Cognitive Processing System by Studying Hand Movement: A new possibility in kinematics. Nandini Bondale, Ph.D., STCS, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai India, and Anup Deo, M.D., Founder and CEO, Institute for Biofield Evaluation and Research Center, Thane, India delivered a talk on the ‘Unseen’ Body-Biofield Scanning for Detection and Prediction of Health Issues. Dr. Khaga Raj Sharma, Ph.D., Research Scholar, Central Department of Chemistry, TU, Nepal, discussed some Spiritual Properties of Plants for Activating Higher Consciousness.

 

The next parallel session was entitled ‘Views of Vedānta and Science on Consciousness’. In Hall 1, Prof. Mohan Kharel, Ph.D., Ret. Professor, Central Dept. Biotechnology, Tribhuban University, Nepal & Prof. Garga Chatterjee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India and in Hall-2 Prof. Krishna Das Manandhar, Ph.D., Head, Central Dept. Of Biotechnology, Tribhuvan University, Nepal & Dr. Deba Prasad Dash, M.D.(Ay.), Head, Dept. Panchakarma, Gopabandhu, Ayurveda Mahavidyalaya, Puri, India, chaired the sessions. In these sessions, Prof. Guru Prasad Suvedi, Ph.D., Saha Pradhyapak, Nepal Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya Pracharya – Mahesh Sanskrit Gurukul Vidyapith, Nepal, presented his views on Life and World in the eyes of Advaita Vedanta. Dr. Ram DeoPandit, Central Dept. Sanskrit, Tribhuvan University, Nepal, discussed on the topic, ‘Conscious as the Centre of Well Being!’. Prof. Damodar Jnawali, Ph.D., Department of Geography Education, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal, delivered his talk on Srimad Bhagavat Purana as a Source of Research Questions and Model Building. Prof. Bhagawan Das Manandhar, Ph.D., Professor, Rampur Campus, Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science, TU, Nepal, discussed about Spirit and Science. Dr. Deba Prasad Dash, M.D.(Ay.), Head, Dept. Panchakarma, Gopabandhu, Ayurveda Mahavidyalaya, Puri, India, delivered his talk on Control Of Mind – An  Ayurvedic Approach. Prof. Varanasi Ramabrahmam, Ph.D., Associate Prof. Department of Physics, K.M Centerfor P.G. Studies Pondicherry (Retired), India, gave a talk on Consciousness Studies And Quantum Mechanics. Dr. Siddhartha Sahu, M.D., Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, KIIT University & PBM Hospital, Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneshwar, Odisha, India, talked about the Spiritual Essence of Evolution. Sahana V. Rajan, Research Scholar at Delhi University, Delhi,India, explained about the Complex Systems Approach to the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Dr. S.C. Vetrivel, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Management Studies, Kongu Engineering college Country India, delivered his talk on understanding Modern Science Through Vedantic Philosophy, H.H. Jayant Balaji Athavale, Ph.D., Founder – Maharshi Adhyatma Vishwavidyalay, Goa, India, explained about the Plant Sentience in Relation to Spiritually Positive Stimuli. Tahasin Mondal, Research Scholar, Department of Sanskrit, Aligarh Muslim University, India, explained about the plant science in Atharvaveda. Prof. Anuja Chouhan, Ph.D., Professor & Dean, Arni School of Basic Sciences, Arni University, Kangra, H.P., India explained about the mind, body consciousness, and the way beyond scientific methodology. Dr. Jyotiranjan Meher, Dept. Panchakarma, Gopabandhu, Ayurveda Mahavidyalaya, Puri, India,talked about the Rasayana: An Ayurveda Approach For Longevity. Susrut Ghimire, DAV College, Lalitpur, Nepal, explained aboutUncertainty: Physiological Approach Towards The Issue of Existence of Creator. Dr. S. Rammohan, I.R.A.S,(retd.), Formerly Spl. Secy to Govt. of India, explained about the Quantum Science, Evolution, Biofield and Consciousness. Prof. Ram Chandra Basnyat, Ph.D., Professor, Central Department of Chemistry, TU, Nepal, delivered his talk about the Health Benefits of Vegetarian and Vegan Diet including Spirituality. Dr. Ananda Raj Poudel, Teaching Assistant, Dept. Swastha Vritta (yoga and lifestyle management), Institute of Medicine, Ayurrveda Campus, Tribhuvan University, Nepal, explained about the study of consciousness in the light of Vedanta. Shri Nandanandan Das, Ph.D., Former E.I.C cum Secretary, Works, Govt. of Odisha,Odisha, India, talked about Science, Mankind, Religion and Global Peace. Padam Prasad Pande, M. Phil., Retired Teacher, Kathmandu, Nepal, explained about Hinduism: science and spirituality. Prof. Govinda S. Upadhyaya, Ph.D.,  Professor, Department of Philosophy and Psychology, TU Trichandra Multiple Campus, Nepal, talked about the Concept of Body and Mind in Vedic Philosophies.V.K. Hampiholi, Ph.D., Emeritus Fellow (UGC) Retired Principal, Dr. A.V. Baliga College of Arts and Science. KUMTA: 581343 (NK) Karnatak, India, talked about psychology Behind the Origin of Man and Woman in Indian Thought. Bharat Giri, Independent Research Scholar, Spiritual Artist, Nepal, discussed the Psycho-spiritual Cognizance in the Sacred Vedic Art, Architecture and Iconographic symbols.

 

The Fifth International Conference Science and Scientist-2017 was concluded with the Valedictory session. His Excellency Manjit Singh Puri, Ambassador of India to Nepal was the honourable Chief Guest in Valedictory session. This session was  also co-chaired by Professor S.R. Bhatt, Chairman, Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR), New Delhi, India. His excellency Manjit Singh Puri, Ambassador of India to Nepal distributed memento to important guests, speakers and Volunteers. Professor S.R. Bhatt honoured every participants with the ‘Certificate of presentation/participation’. Finally this International Conference was concluded with a few group photographs. After the conference there was a three day post conference tour to many important cultural, religious and tourist cites of the Kathmandu Valley.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More photos of the event can be found here.