At the beginning of human creation, there were no teachers and so, there was no system of communicating knowledge. The first human beings were not capable of empirical knowledge, and innate instinct alone was insufficient for the acquisition of knowledge. Hence, they had only one recourse left for them and that was to receive instruction from a higher non-human authority. Even today, in modern times, we learn nothing without being instructed by someone – parents, siblings, friends, teachers, internet, television, etc. Children of even accomplished scholars have to go to school to learn the basics of any science or art.
Some people claim that man, since earliest times, has been observing nature and has been progressing in the discovery and application of the laws of science, but this claim has been contradicted by experiments. For example, if a child is brought up among animals and is never in contact with human beings, he would behave as the animals do, make noises like them, and never know human speech. How many savages are on record for becoming savants by merely observing nature? It is for this reason that this Vedanta Darshana declares that God is the first source of inerrant, infallible knowledge contained in the Vedas, that God intuitively bequeathed this knowledge to the first Rishis and they passed on this knowledge to later generations. Using irrefutable evidence of geological findings, archaeologists declare that ancient nations which we tend to categorize as primitive have had a glorious, enlightened past that was in no way inferior to the scientific glamor of today’s civilized countries. These geological discoveries testify not only to the fact that man existed as early as, and possibly even earlier than, tens of millions of years ago, but also that his ‘primitive’ life was, to a very high degree, cultured and refined so much so that he was proficient in some of the most modern civilized arts. The question is: Where did they get their knowledge from, if not from God?
DR SATISH PRAKASH