Wanted: People willing to die on Mars
CBC News – Mar 16, 2013
The man behind the private space project dubbed Mars One is looking for people to travel to Mars, but he’s not offering a return ticket.
“The technology to get humans to Mars and keep them alive there exists,” Bas Lansdorp told Day 6 host Brent Bambury in an interview that aired this week on CBC Radio.
“The technology to bring humans from Mars back to Earth simply does not exist yet.” Go to story
excerpt from purport, Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Adi-līla 5.14:
To a gross materialist this kingdom of God, Vaikuṇṭha, is certainly a mystery. But to an ignorant man everything is a mystery for want of sufficient knowledge. The kingdom of God is not a myth. Even the material planets, which float over our heads in the millions and billions, are still a mystery to the ignorant. Material scientists are now attempting to penetrate this mystery, and a day may come when the people of this earth will be able to travel in outer space and see the variegatedness of these millions of planets with their own eyes. In every planet there is as much material variegatedness as we find in our own planet.
This planet earth is but an insignificant spot in the cosmic structure. Yet foolish men, puffed up by a false sense of scientific advancement, have concentrated their energy in a pursuit of so-called economic development on this planet, not knowing of the variegated economic facilities available on other planets. According to modern astronomy, the gravity of the moon is different from that of earth. Therefore one who goes to the moon will be able to pick up large weights and jump vast distances. In the Rāmāyaṇa, Hanumān is described as being able to lift huge weights as heavy as hills and jump over the ocean. Modern astronomy has confirmed that this is indeed possible.
The disease of the modern civilized man is his disbelief of everything in the revealed scriptures. Faithless nonbelievers cannot make progress in spiritual realization, for they cannot understand the spiritual potency. The small fruit of a banyan contains hundreds of seeds, and in each seed is the potency to produce another banyan tree with the potency to produce millions more of such fruits. This law of nature is visible before us, although how it works is beyond our understanding. This is but an insignificant example of the potency of Godhead; there are many similar phenomena that no scientist can explain.
Everything, in fact, is inconceivable, for the truth is revealed only to the proper persons. Although there are varieties of personalities, from Brahmā down to the insignificant ant, all of whom are living beings, their development of knowledge is different. Therefore we have to gather knowledge from the right source. Indeed, in reality we can get knowledge only from the Vedic sources. The four Vedas, with their supplementary Purāṇas, the Mahābhārata, the Rāmāyaṇa and their corollaries, which are known as smṛtis, are all authorized sources of knowledge. If we are at all to gather knowledge, we must gather it from these sources without hesitation.
Revealed knowledge may in the beginning be unbelievable because of our paradoxical desire to verify everything with our tiny brains, but the speculative means of attaining knowledge is always imperfect. The perfect knowledge propounded in the revealed scriptures is confirmed by the great ācāryas, who have left ample commentations upon them; none of these ācāryas has disbelieved in the śāstras. One who disbelieves in the śāstras is an atheist, and we should not consult an atheist, however great he may be. A staunch believer in the śāstras, with all their diversities, is the right person from whom to gather real knowledge. Such knowledge may seem inconceivable in the beginning, but when put forward by the proper authority its meaning is revealed, and then one no longer has any doubts about it.
