Question: When we look at the sky at night do we see the moon or some other planet like Rahu? I have a lot of trouble explaining and understanding the whole lunar controversy. I am willing to accept that the lunar mission landed elsewhere other than the moon. I just feel like a stubborn idiot when trying to defend Srila Prabhupada’s comments on the matter by using the theory that the whole landing was filmed in some fake stage. The hard bit is to accept that the lunar mission traveled towards the moon that we see in the night sky, but didn’t get there.
Answer by Romapada Swami: Srila Prabhupada, based on his firm conviction in the Vedic truth, challenged the lunar-mission on two accounts: (1) it is not possible to reach the heavenly moon by mechanical means; (2) the moon is not a barren desert devoid of life.
According to Vedic evidence, the moon is counted among the heavenly planets and is inhabited by heavenly denizens who live for 10,000 years and is presided by the Deity Candra; only those with much pious credits can enter the moon, and that only after attaining a suitable body fit to live there. Even if humans made the effort for mechanical travel towards the moon, we are dependent on the authority of Candra to actually reach there. Therefore, Srila Prabhupada was convinced that man could not have landed on the moon.
One explanation offered by Prabhupada was perhaps they were deluded and diverted by higher authorities to the invisible planet Rahu (incidentally, Rahu is connected to the ascending node of the moon, astronomically.) He also offered other possible explanations, including one that the whole thing might have been faked (which, by the way, is a prominent proposal by several modern writers).
In any case, the basic principle that Prabhupada wanted us to understand is the unreliability of empirical methods which are always open to question. At present, we do not have sufficient empiric facts to prove either way, while based on Vedic assertions, to the contrary, he urged us to think and question rather than blindly accept the claim of man landing on the moon and finding it lifeless.
One of the scientist-disciples of Prabhupada, Sadaputa dasa, who has done much work in laying the scientific framework for understanding the cosmological materials from Bhagavatam, explores this subject from a higher-dimensional perspective: A higher dimensional realm may have a 3-dimensional location, just as a three-dimensional object has its location in two-dimensional space. For example, if one needs to reach a certain office in Manhattan, one could move up, down and across the grid of streets and arrive at the right address, and yet may not be able to perceive the office one is looking for; to reach the actual destination, they may have to further move 50 stories in the vertical dimension, and a being whose sense-perception is restricted to two-dimensions only cannot access this region. (Cf. Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy by Sadaputa Dasa, Ch 3) This is a crude example but by way of drawing a parallel, even supposing that astronauts might have reached the phenomenal moon –- which the event itself is not beyond question — even so, they still could not have made the higher-dimensional travel necessary to perceive the moon’s heavenly inhabitants and surroundings. Being restricted in the gross realm, they would have had to return with the impressions of a lifeless planet.
For those who are scientifically trained and keen on such details, there are works as mentioned above that analyze this subject with technical rigor. For our purposes or in preliminary discussions with others, however, it would suffice to stick to the basic principle of establishing faith in Vedic authority, which is our goal, rather than get into involved technical debates.
