Review of The Gods Have Gone Silent
by Shanti Arya
Introduction
The Gods Have Gone Silent by Rajiv Mudgal is an ambitious philosophical and literary work that bridges the ancient traditions of Vedanta with the rich, textured anxieties of the contemporary world. Through narrative vignettes, poetic exegesis, reflective prose, and Socratic dialogue, Mudgal interrogates the spiritual, intellectual, and existential crises of modernity, always returning to the perennial questions of self, meaning, and liberation. The book, translated faithfully by Shaily Mudgal, attempts to render the complex and nuanced Hindi original—Devtaon ka Maun—into accessible yet philosophically resonant English.
The book is structured in discrete chapters, each a standalone meditation yet woven into a broader philosophical tapestry. The text traverses personal reminiscences and encounters (with monks, travelers, villagers); revisits classical sources such as the Rigveda, Upanishads, Kalidasa, and Tulsidas; inquires into Indian epistemology (Vedanta, Sankhya, Mayavada, Shabda‑Brahman); critiques modern science, materialism, and spiritual superficiality; and reflects on democracy, literature, and the transformative capacity of language.
The translation’s introduction highlights the difficulty of rendering bhavna—the layered emotional/mystical nuance—into English, and the translator acknowledges omitting chapters on classical authors to focus the English edition on the book’s core narrative.
Mudgal’s approach is neither dryly academic nor simplistically devotional. He introduces ancient concepts such as Prana, Soma, Vak, Brahman, and Avidya, and reframes them in contemporary, lived contexts. The dialogues on the unity of body, speech, and Atman, as well as the critique of the ascetic (sannyasi) ideal, are particularly refreshing. The text pushes readers to rethink received spiritual binaries—householder versus ascetic, ritual versus knowledge, tradition versus modernity.t
Each chapter is structured around lived experience—a conversation on a train, a philosophical debate in an ashram, an argument with a scientist or a farmer. This narrative grounding makes the philosophical ideas visceral rather than abstract. The motifs of travel, debate, and encounter create both momentum and accessibility.
Mudgal is scathing but fair in his critique of both Western materialism and superficial “New Age” spiritualities. The extended dialogues on quantum mechanics and consciousness, the limitations of scientific reductionism, and the seductions of pseudo‑enlightenment are especially compelling. His insistence that “truth is not in quantum mechanics; everydayness is the closest to ‘Sat’” underscores a vital skepticism towards trendy spiritual scientism.
Chapters such as “Democracy and the Powers of Supernatural Worlds,” and the engagement with Indian farmers, foreground the limits of ideology, the dangers of dogmatic belief, and the persistent need to re‑evaluate knowledge in relation to lived realities.
Although at times opaque and demanding, the book rewards patient and reflective reading. For readers genuinely interested in the intersections of Indian tradition, modernity, philosophy, and literature, it stands as a significant contemporary contribution—a reminder that the real gods are silent only when we stop listening to the living, fertile unity of life and speech within ourselves.
Critique of Divine Silence
The book offers a multi-layered critique of what Rajiv Mudgal calls “divine silence”—the sense of spiritual loss, crisis, or distance from transcendent meaning in the contemporary world. Through narrative, dialogue, and philosophical inquiry, Mudgal systematically explores and challenges the roots and consequences of this silence. The following themes capture the book’s core explorations:
The Condition of Modernity: Silence as Spiritual Crisis
Mudgal argues that the so-called silence of the gods is less about the actual absence of the divine than about humanity’s failure to listen, to dwell meaningfully, and to live reflectively in the world. Modern materialism, scientific reductionism, and consumer culture have drowned out the resonances of spiritual wisdom, rendering existence seemingly mute.
The transition from a world saturated with poetic and sacred imagination to one dominated by science and technology is framed as a primary driver of disconnection. Instead of experiencing wonder, reverence, or Soma, humanity reduces reality to data, measurement, and utility.
Critique of Empty Spiritual Forms
Mudgal persistently critiques reliance on mere ritual, quotation, or inherited dogma. Divine silence, he suggests, arises when spiritual life devolves into repetition and mimicry—what he calls the Brahmarakshas phenomenon—where people parrot the words of tradition without genuine insight or lived realization.
He is sharply critical of New Age spiritual posturing, motivational gurus, and the commodification of tradition, all of which he sees as symptoms of deeper silence rather than its solution.
Enwombment and the Ever-Present Sacred
The book repeatedly returns to the Vedic insight that human beings are “enwombed,” both physically and spiritually, within the openness of Being. The silence of the gods is an illusion; in reality, the sacred is always present in and through existence, the body, and the everyday world for those who are attuned.
Speech and Being
Mudgal foregrounds the unity of Vak (speech) and Brahman (the ground of being), arguing that silence is broken only when one genuinely embodies and lives out the truths spoken by tradition, rather than merely reciting them.
Language, Imagination, and the Recovery of Meaning
Emphasizing the role of poetic and narrative imagination, Mudgal suggests that stories, metaphors, and reflective dialogue can recover the spiritual vitality lost to reductionist literalism. The gods speak through stories, art, and lived encounters—when these are not experienced as living realities, the gods “go silent.”
The text insists that language is not just a tool but the medium through which truth, self, and world are revealed. When one’s speech, thought, and action are no longer aligned with the living truth, silence prevails.
Against Withdrawal: The Householder’s Path
The book challenges the idealization of sannyasa and disengaged spirituality. Mudgal foregrounds the householder’s life and active engagement with the world as the authentic site for spiritual realization, arguing that true transformation does not emerge from withdrawal but from courageous living and questioning.
He addresses the plurality of spiritual, social, and ideological worlds, cautioning against dogmatic belief—spiritual or secular—that stifles dialogue, self-critique, and collective renewal.
The Call Beyond Complacency
The most profound critique is reserved for complacency—whether religious, scientific, or cultural. For Mudgal, the transition beyond silence requires existential inquiry, the courage to question received wisdom, and a willingness to forge meaning in direct, experiential living.
A Rekindled Attunement
Ultimately, the divine is neither entirely silent nor absent but is found in the ordinariness of everyday life, relationship, and speech when approached with integrity, attention, and openness.
Mudgal’s answer to divine silence is not to mourn the absence of the gods but to rekindle attunement to the world, the self, and the community. The gods, he implies, are silent only when we cease to participate in the ever-unfolding creative dialogue of existence..
Challenging Traditional Notions of Divine Intervention and Presence
The book systematically challenges the expectation that the divine—or gods—exists as an external, interventionist power that operates on behalf of humanity. Instead, it posits that divinity is not an external force that intervenes in worldly affairs. The narrative insists that “the gods have gone silent” precisely because the real avenue to truth and transformation is not found in miraculous interventions but in the existential, immediate reality experienced by every individual.
The silence of the gods is interpreted not as their absence but as a call to encounter the sacred within the everyday, ordinary world: “truth is not in quantum mechanics; everydayness is the closest to ‘Sat’ (truth).”
The chapter on “Kalki Avatar” subverts the traditional myth that a final avatar will descend to save humanity. The book argues that no external savior or divine figure is coming to resolve humanity’s crises; instead, the Kalki motif is read as an allegory for the inner transformation and awakening each person must undergo. The expectation that divine figures intervene in history is called into question—“no one is coming. No one is coming to save you”—emphasizing the futility of waiting for miraculous rescue and redirecting attention to individual responsibility and realization.
The text further challenges both ritual and scriptural claims to mediate divine power or presence. Stories, rituals, and even sacred texts are acknowledged as valuable, but the book asserts their limitations—they can veil the truth as much as reveal it, especially when we are merely “echoing what we’ve read or heard,” thus becoming what the book calls Brahmarakshas—voices reciting borrowed knowledge rather than expressing direct knowing. It elevates direct experience and existential inquiry—“You are not rendering or revealing the world; rather, you are being revealed… this openness of Brahman”—and is sharply critical of those who assume religious ritual or textual quotation can capture or coerce the divine.
The silence of the gods is described as a positive reality—a presence beyond speech and doctrine—rather than an absence to be remedied by more dogma or performance. As the author says: “The preconditions for your existence—the very thing that makes life possible—is God. It’s speaking to you all the time. But you’re not listening. You’re too occupied with your own acquired knowledge.”
Divinity, for Mudgal, is the “ground of being,” not a character in history. The gods have “gone silent” only when humanity stops listening to the unity of life and speech within itself. The “Word of Brahman” chapter reframes presence as fundamentally internal and self-revelatory: “You are the word of Brahman. You are not an illusion; you are the expression.” The divine is no longer “out there,” delivering boons or punishments, but in the very structure of consciousness and existence itself.
Divine intervention is reimagined as self-knowledge and attunement to the web of care, relationships, and existence—what the book calls “enwombment and enworldment”—rather than as miraculous intercession. The book often satirizes both popular New Age appropriations (e.g., claims that quantum mechanics and the Tao are the same) and traditional mythologies that treat divine powers as supernatural problem-solvers. Divine intervention is exposed as “technology seeking an audience,” empty without lived engagement or authentic inquiry. Supernatural and occult narratives are presented as mechanisms of social and psychic escapism—distractions from genuine existential and ethical questioning.
Ultimately, The Gods Have Gone Silent is a sustained critique of all escapisms—religious, scientific, or ideological—that externalize the source of transformation and meaning. The book insists: salvation, liberation, and meaning arise only through direct, courageous engagement with being—through the recognition that the world experiences itself through us. The presence of the divine is uncovered not in interventions from above but in the intimate, wordless unity of life and consciousness—“the world experiencing itself.”
The book decisively shifts from a theistic, interventionist model of the divine to an experiential and existential understanding, urging readers to find the sacred in the immediate, the silent, and the everyday openness of Being.
Challenge to Traditional Understanding of Faith
The book offers a profound rethinking of both divine silence and the nature of faith, challenging conventional assumptions and pointing toward new, more existentially grounded understandings. In Rajiv Mudgal’s account, divine silence transforms our concept of faith by reframing how the sacred is encountered and how belief is lived.
Traditional faith often centers on belief in a responsive, interventionist divine presence—praying for miracles, guidance, signs, or cosmic justice. By contrast, divine silence in Mudgal’s account is not absence or abandonment, but the cessation of external, extraordinary interventions. It is a call to recognize that the sacred is already present in the rhythms, relationships, and realities of everyday life. Faith thereby shifts from waiting on the divine to act to cultivating the capacity to listen, perceive, and dwell meaningfully within the world; it becomes a matter of attunement rather than anticipation.
The book critiques faith rooted in ritual for its own sake, inherited doctrine, or unreflective citation of scriptures or gurus. Ritual divorced from living experience and personal realization leads to the very silence and sense of distance that believers lament. Instead, Mudgal calls for a faith grounded in direct experience, existential inquiry, and self-questioning. The gods are “silent” not to punish, but to provoke individuals to move beyond hand-me-down beliefs and seek true encounter.
Rather than defining faith as passive belief or the confession of doctrines, divine silence suggests faith as participation in reality’s openness and depth. This understanding aligns with the book’s insistence that “truth is not in quantum mechanics; everydayness is the closest to ‘Sat’ (truth),” and that spiritual presence is found in the fullness of immediate life, not in otherworldly spectacle. Faith becomes the courage and humility to meet existence as it is, rather than as we wish it to be.
Mudgal emphasizes that faith is enacted—and the divine becomes present—when language, thought, and action align with the “living word,” rather than merely repeating borrowed traditions. Empty speech and mimicry sustain silence; authentic, embodied articulation brings meaning and vitality. In this view, faith is not only trust but also creative engagement and honest self-expression. The “gods” speak when we speak truly.
The book satirizes both supernatural claims and “New Age” syncretism, revealing how faith can become escapist fantasy or a way to avoid existential challenge. The silence of the divine is therefore a test: are we willing to confront reality as it is, without false hopes for miraculous deliverance? Faith is not resignation to absence, but the willingness to remain present, vulnerable, and ethically engaged with life. This transformation calls believers to accept responsibility for meaning, morality, and change—finding the divine “within the world experiencing itself.”
True faith, in Mudgal’s framework, is characterized by openness rather than certainty, by the courage to question, and by trust not in received answers but in the ongoing search for truth. Divine silence is not a void but a horizon: it invites the renewal of imaginative, dialogical, and critical approaches to the sacred, to the self, and to community. Thus, the book’s vision of divine silence shifts faith away from dependence on external authority or intervention and toward an existential, creative, and courageous mode of being—one rooted in attentive presence, authentic speech, and continual inquiry. Faith is no longer waiting for the transcendent to act; it is the act of participating with integrity and openness in the mystery and fullness of existence itself.
Divine Silence and the Implications for Believing Without Tangible Proof
The book offers a sustained and critical meditation on the theme of divine silence—particularly its challenge to traditional forms of faith that rely on external signs, supernatural intervention, or tangible proof. His exploration calls into question the expectations and assumptions underpinning belief, reshaping what it means to hold faith in an age bereft of overt divine acts or evidence.
In the framework of divine silence, belief in the sacred can no longer be confidently based on miraculous events, external signs, or empirical demonstrations of divine agency. The absence of tangible proof is not a deficiency but the very condition in which authentic faith must arise.
Attunement, not evidence
Mudgal insists that faith must shift from a transaction (“I will believe if shown evidence”) to a mode of existential openness, attention, and attunement to the world. The sacred and the real are encountered not through empirical confirmation but in the lived depth and meaning of everyday existence.
The notion of divine silence invites believers to accept the ultimate mystery and ambiguity at the heart of existence. This stance requires a faith unanchored from definitive answers or guaranteed signs.
Openness over certainty
Mudgal stresses that authentic faith is not about accumulating certainty or proof but about cultivating a humble openness to the possibility of meaning and truth that exceeds what can be captured or demonstrated.
The book explicitly critiques both religious doctrines that demand blind, dogmatic acceptance and rationalist approaches that require tangible proof. Both are viewed as ultimately superficial: one replaces living inquiry with rote assent; the other dismisses what cannot be measured.
In the world of divine silence, faith is recast as a courageous commitment to engage life, even—especially—when ultimate meaning remains veiled or elusive. This is not resignation but an ethical response to the complexity and mystery of being.
For Mudgal, silence is not a void but a generative field where new understandings of self, world, and sacredness are cultivated. It is in the absence of overt signs that faith matures, evolving from dependence on proofs to a living relationship with uncertainty and potentiality. The book repeatedly urges readers to listen rather than to demand proof: the divine communicates not through spectacles but through the subtle, often silent resonance of everyday life, relationships, speech, and care.
Grounding ethics in integrity, ethical responsiveness, and action without assurance
Mudgal proposes faith as acting ethically, creatively, and responsibly—even without any promise of reward or confirmation. Divine silence shifts the locus of agency: rather than waiting for external proof or rescue, believers are called to participate actively in the unfolding of meaning and care in the world.
Thus, divine silence in The Gods Have Gone Silent points toward a mature, existentially grounded, and humble faith. This is a faith that renounces the need for tangible proof, recognizing that living meaningfully and attentively—in dialogue with both self and world—constitutes the truest testament to the sacred. Belief endures not in spite of the absence of proof but because this absence invites a deeper encounter with mystery, responsibility, and the ever-unfolding nature of existence.
The book offers a profound meditation on the challenge—and transformation—of faith in the absence of tangible proof, and on how silence reshapes the nature of trust in spiritual truths without outward signs or evidence.
Absence as fertile ground
By shifting faith from evidence to attunement, the book insists that the divine silence is not a failure of the sacred to communicate but the primary context in which faith must grow and mature. Without outward miracles or intervention, trust moves inward, fostering a personal attunement to the subtle, meaning-rich rhythms of ordinary life.
Where traditional religion often rests on signs, wonders, or authoritative pronouncements, the lack of such evidence becomes an invitation to deepen awareness, attention, and existential openness.
The book further posits that a mature spiritual trust does not demand certainty or empirical demonstration but learns to rest in the ambiguity innate to human existence. Divine silence asks the dweller to accept mystery as the very field where truth is sought, not as a barrier to faith.
Openness over assertion
By privileging openness rather than the demand for proof, Mudgal encourages humility, patience, and vigilance against spiritual arrogance or dogma.
The superficiality of signs
Mudgal sharply critiques traditions that hinge faith on miracles or the spectacular, suggesting that such dependence can lead either to disappointment or to the pursuit of spectacle over substance.
Trusting in spiritual truths despite silence becomes an ethical and existential act: choosing to live and act with meaning, responsibility, and care even if the universe never “answers back” with concrete validation. Rather than being a void, silence is a space for inquiry, reflection, and transformation. The lack of evidence compels a deeper listening—to oneself, to others, and to the patterns of care and connection that compose real life.
In this vision, spiritual trust is less about correct belief than about ethical, creative engagement with the world—risking love, honesty, and responsibility even when no reward or confirmation is guaranteed. By laying this ethical foundation, Mudgal reframes trust in spiritual truths: faith does not rely on external evidence but finds its ground in openness, inward resonance, and ethical living. The absence of proof is not a deficit; it is the condition that allows faith to become mature, responsible, and genuinely transformative—shifting the locus of trust from the need for signs to the lived experience of sacred presence within the openness of existence.
Enwombed and Enworlded
Enwombed: The Condition of Being Held Within a Greater Whole
In The Gods Have Gone Silent, Mudgal introduces “enwombed” as a metaphor for humanity’s existential state of being deeply embedded and nurtured within a larger reality. The term draws from the image of the golden womb: a space of protection, nourishment, and profound belonging. It extends this imagery into a metaphor for the human condition—where to be enwombed means living as though the world itself is holding you.
Like a child in the womb, you are carried by something vaster—the ground beneath your feet, the sky above, the vast web of existence that pulses through tree roots, oceans, animals, and people.You’re not separate from this; you’re it and as ‘it’ you are in it and of it. Enwombment is the quiet, bodily knowing that you belong here—that life itself protects and feeds you, along with trees, oceans, animals, and people. It comes before ideas or arguments: a steadiness in the breath, a loosened jaw, the ease that arrives when you feel yourself inside the whole rather than alone against it.
You are held by life, not standing apart from it—and that felt belonging comes before any philosophy.
Enworlded: Dynamic Participation in the World
To be enworlded is to be fully immersed in, and dynamically engaged with, the unfolding “worldliness” of experience. Enworldment refers to the individual’s ongoing interaction with the physical, cultural, social, and symbolic dimensions of existence; it is to occupy and participate in the dynamic flow of the world. This encompasses not only literal physical environments but also the cultural, linguistic, spiritual, and communal worlds that shape perception and meaning. One is “enworlded” not by mere presence but by being attuned—by responding, dialoguing, and finding meaning in the world’s complexity and care.
Intertwined States: A Non-Dual Vision of Existence
In Mudgal’s framework, enwombed and enworlded are not opposites but interconnected and overlapping states defining the human condition: a condition in which being sustained, held, and nurtured by a greater metaphysical, ecological, or spiritual whole provides protective, relational unity and rootedness in the cosmos or spirit; and in which actively engaging with, shaping, and being shaped by the world’s many dimensions—immersion, participation, and dynamic attunement with the unfolding world—remains essential.
Together, they represent a vision of existence in which humans are simultaneously nurtured by the whole and responsive to its multiplicity—not as separate, detached agents but as beings always already within a web of mutual influence and care.
These “intertwined states” challenge the modern tendency to view the self as fundamentally separate or autonomous. Instead, they highlight interdependence, ecological unity, and the spectral embeddedness of Nondual Attunement. Attunement—being “enwombed and enworlded”—echoes Vedantic, phenomenological, and existential conditions that stress the unity of self, body, world, and spirit, where spiritual practices such as meditation, storytelling, and communal ritual are seen as ways to animate and realize these states, nourishing both inner unity and outward openness.
In short, to be enwombed is to be fundamentally intertwined with and sustained by the cosmic or spiritual whole; to be enworlded is to be actively, consciously engaged with the world in all its breadth. Both dimensions are essential for understanding the depth and richness of human existence in spiritual and philosophical thought.
In spiritual and philosophical contexts, the poetic metaphors of enwombed and enworlded provide a nuanced vocabulary for understanding how consciousness relates to the world. Rather than seeing self and reality as separate, these terms frame consciousness as fundamentally immersed within and engaged with all that exists. Consciousness, in this metaphor, does not stand apart from reality; instead, it is nurtured and shaped by the very ground that sustains existence. This expresses a relational unity between self and world, implying there is no absolute separation. By contrast, to be enworlded means that consciousness is always situated in the world, linguistically and expressively participating in its unfolding. Awareness is not locked away but constantly engages with its surroundings—physical, cultural, social, and symbolic. Rather than being a detached witness, enworlded consciousness actively engages with and is shaped by the complexities and multiplicities of lived reality. This highlights attunement—a state in which the self resonates with and responds to the world’s many layers and meanings.
The two states are not opposites but intertwined—the self is always both sustained and engaged. Consciousness shapes and is shaped by the world; reality is always something lived, not merely observed from a distance. These states encourage recognition of the deep interdependence between inner awareness and the outer world, emphasizing that meaning, value, and truth emerge from this relationship. This approach challenges modern individualism, which tends to view consciousness as isolated or fundamentally independent. It echoes both Vedantic non-duality and phenomenological oneness, where self and world are mutually constitutive. The ultimate insight is that the world is experiencing itself through us—our consciousness is not a spectator but the very site where reality awakens to itself.
Enwombed and enworlded are powerful metaphors that together describe an intimate, non-dual relationship between consciousness and reality. They offer a vision of existence in which we are always both held within the whole of the cosmos and actively attuned to its countless dimensions—inextricably part of an unfolding, living unity.
Relational Unity of Self and World
The terms “enwombed” and “enworlded” articulate a philosophical vision that rejects any absolute separation between consciousness and reality. Instead, they emphasize that human awareness is always already enwombed—that is, deeply embedded in and nurtured within a larger, sustaining whole, whether the cosmos, nature, society, or the ground of being itself (often conceptualized as Brahman in Vedantic thought). Consciousness is not self-created or floating above existence; it is held, shaped, and made possible by the world it inhabits.
To be enworlded is not passive or static. It means actively participating in, responding to, and being shaped by the linguistically unfolding reality around us. It is to engage—and be engaged—physically, culturally, socially, and spiritually with the world, not as an outsider but as a participant whose meaning, experience, and selfhood arise through this engagement.
These non-conceptual metaphors suggest a nondual relationship between consciousness and reality. Rather than positing dualities such as subject/object, self/other, or mind/world, they propose a view in which the self, for Mudgal, is always both contained within (enwombed) and emerging through (enworlded) reality. Consciousness and the world co-arise; meaning and reality are neither solely projected by consciousness nor merely imposed from outside, but are mutually constitutive. In The Gods Have Gone Silent, consciousness is realized as being in harmony with, responsive to, and shaped by the world’s many layers—natural, social, linguistic, and spiritual. The capacity for meaning, truth, and wisdom depends on being attuned to the world’s rhythms, stories, patterns, and needs, not on dominating or abstracting from them.
These perspectives critique the reduction of reality to static objects, abstract data, or detached concepts. Instead, they affirm that reality is fundamentally relational and participatory—the field in which life, consciousness, value, and creativity arise, each shaping and revealing the other in an ongoing process.
Embodiment and Ecological Belonging
Describing human existence as enwombed affirms that physical being is integral to spiritual and mental life; the body is not a vessel for a detached soul but the very expression of being’s rootedness in earth, cosmos, and relationship. To be alive is always to be formed within, sustained by, and responsive to larger wholes—ecological, social, and spiritual interdependence.
These perspectives challenge modern individualism and materialism, advocating an orientation to meaning, value, and truth that begins not in separation but in recognition—specifically, a recognition of interdependence that invites a revaluation of spiritual practice. Meditation, storytelling, ritual, and community are not escapist; they are ways to enact and realize enwombed and enworlded consciousness, a consciousness fundamentally immersed in, responsive to, and creative within reality.
Reality, in turn, is experienced not as a set of detached objects but as a living field of relationships in which meaning, value, and selfhood are continually emergent. This view affirms that the deepest truths are grasped not by withdrawal but by recognizing and living the unity and mutual shaping of consciousness and world.
Thus, “enwombed” and “enworlded” are profound metaphors that describe different yet intertwined aspects of human existence, especially the interplay between the “inner” and “outer” worlds. To be enwombed is to reside within, to be held by, and to be nurtured inside a greater whole—such as the cosmos, nature, or a spiritual source (Brahman). It emphasizes the fundamental embeddedness of the individual. The “inner world” arises from being sustained, protected, and organically connected within a broader reality. It signifies deep belonging, security, and the prereflective unity between self and the larger ground—suggesting that one’s inner life, emotions, and consciousness are nourished by this all-encompassing beingness that grounds being, held in the golden womb of existence and forming the basis for awareness and experience.
To be enworlded is to be actively situated, engaged, and participating in the manifestations of the surrounding world—social, cultural, natural, and symbolic. This language-shaped and language-shaping world highlights the outward-facing aspect of selfhood, where consciousness and action unfold in response to the world’s multiplicity. The “outer world” is not something separate but a field with which the self interacts, dialogues, and finds meaning; enworlded existence is marked by responsiveness and attunement to the world’s complexity. The movement is outward: the self as actor and interpreter within the unfolding world, shaping and being shaped by lived reality.
In summary, Enwombed describes how our inner world—awareness, emotion, spiritual sense—is fundamentally shaped by our being held within a larger context; there is no isolated self, only self-in-relation. Enworlded illustrates the complementary current: our outer engagement, meaning-making, and identity always unfold through continual contact with, and creative response to, the world around us. In short, human life is simultaneously nurtured within (enwombed) and expressed toward (enworlded) something greater. The relationship between inner and outer worlds is not dualistic but dynamically intertwined—each state metaphorically distinct for language’s sake yet without intrinsic separateness.
Critique of Quantum Mechanics
In The Gods Have Gone Silent, quantum mechanics is addressed not from the standpoint of technical physics but as a cultural phenomenon—and, more critically, as an emblem of modernity’s attempt to engage with the mysteries of existence and consciousness. Mudgal situates the discourse on quantum mechanics within a deeper debate about the limitations of scientific knowledge and the pitfalls of reducing spiritual inquiry to scientific metaphors or analogies.
Mudgal argues that quantum mechanics, despite its success in describing subatomic phenomena, exemplifies a worldview that fragments and dissects reality, seeking truth through relentless analysis and technological intervention. He likens the scientific urge “to tear nature apart”—whether with the tools of physics or the language of measurement—to a violence against the unity and wholeness of existence.
From this vantage, quantum mechanics is less a revelation of ultimate truth and more a sophisticated form of measurement and manipulation, which cannot address deeper questions of meaning, consciousness, or spiritual fulfillment despite all its seductions.
The book is especially critical of popular attempts to conflate quantum mechanics and spiritual traditions—such as saying “quantum mechanics is the new Veda” or equating wave–particle duality with mystical concepts like Tao or Vedanta.
Mudgal suggests that the tendency to see scientific discoveries as “spiritual” is a form of escapism and misplaced authority. He exposes the pitfalls of borrowing scientific concepts to validate spiritual experience, arguing that this results in superficial and misleading syncretism rather than genuine insight.
In Mudgal’s view, ultimate reality—what he refers to as Sat (truth or being)—cannot be “measured” or “tied to any concept.” Science, including quantum mechanics, is valuable insofar as it protects us from superstition, but it cannot access the experiential, poetic, and existential dimensions at the heart of spiritual inquiry.
As a technology, quantum mechanics is acknowledged as impressive, but its epistemic reach is limited. Mudgal contends that the search for meaning or being (Sat) must move beyond technology and scientific knowing to a more existential, lived realization of truth.
The book consistently affirms that “truth is not in quantum mechanics; everydayness is the closest to ‘Sat’ (truth).” This reflects skepticism toward attempts to locate spiritual or ultimate reality within scientific abstractions or spectacular discoveries. The ordinary world, lived experience, and direct awareness are presented as more reliable avenues for encountering the sacred.
Mudgal’s approach to quantum mechanics is neither skeptical nor dismissive of science’s value. He respects the protective role of rational inquiry against superstition but insists that scientific methods and metaphors—however advanced—cannot fulfill the human need for wholeness, meaning, and direct experiential truth. The book is a call to resist the seductions of technological and scientific mystique and to root oneself instead in the unity of life, language, and the living world.
In both Vedantic philosophy (as explored in The Gods Have Gone Silent) and phenomenology, the “isness” of Being (the simple fact that we exist) is not a property, object, or event to be measured—it is the prior condition that makes any measurement or scientific investigation possible at all.
For Mudgal, we are not objects among objects. Measurement requires that something have definite physical attributes (length, mass, charge, etc.). “Isness” is not another attribute in the world—it is the ground of all attributes.
Physical science, including quantum mechanics, works by isolating, quantifying, and relating partial aspects of phenomena through experiments and models. This analytic process always presupposes—without explaining—a prior wholeness or context in which things appear and can be related or separated.
The very ability to distinguish, measure, and quantify any entity arises because there is an openness—an undivided background of being or reality—within which such measurements make sense. This holistic context cannot itself be a measurable “thing,” since all measurement presupposes it.
For Mudgal, quantum theory is a powerful system for predicting experimental outcomes at the atomic and subatomic scale. However, even this is a system of relational predictions—it tells you the probabilities of various outcomes if certain measurements are made. It does not, and cannot, address the “that-ness” of existence itself—why anything is, or what it is “to be.”
There remains, even in the foundations of quantum theory, the “measurement problem”: the transition from quantum possibilities to classical certainty depends on the act of measurement itself, which is not explained by the equations. The existence of the world as such is simply given, not derivable from quantum laws.
Science, at best, captures and models regularities and structures within experience. But experience itself is immediate and real before we abstract or measure it. The sense of “I am,” the fact that “there is something rather than nothing,” is the starting point, not a scientific deduction.
As Mudgal writes, this isness of “is” is non-conceptual: ultimate reality—Sat—cannot be “measured” or “tied to any concept.” It is not an emergent property but the foundation of all emergence and measurement.
For Mudgal, existence (“isness”) is more fundamental than any scientific explanation or measurement. No experimental result, theorem, or “collapse of the wavefunction” explains why there is anything at all, or why reality is present rather than absent.
Philosophers and mystics have long observed that the “that-ness” of being is irreducible and cannot be circumscribed by the methods of physical science. Science works within existence; it cannot “stand outside” existence to measure it as one measures a physical property.
Thus physical science—including quantum mechanics—can explore and model the patterns within existence, but it cannot measure, explain, or capture existence itself. The “isness” of reality remains the precondition and mystery that makes all science possible, but can never be encompassed by it.
Poetic Existence (“Isness”) as the Ground of All
The idea of existence or “isness” (Sat) is foundational in both Vedantic and poetic traditions. It points to the simple fact that something is—a brute presence or “thereness”—which cannot itself be made an object or measured phenomenon.
Before science can measure, categorize, or examine anything, existence itself must already be presumed. Science relies on observable things having being; existence is the backdrop to all investigations, not just another property to be quantified.
While the physical sciences analyze properties (mass, charge, length, etc.), “isness” is not another property among others. It is that by virtue of which all properties, all things, all measurements—even the scientist’s awareness—are possible.
Physical science—whether classical or quantum—operates by distinguishing, isolating, and quantifying aspects of already existing phenomena.
For Mudgal, science fragments. That is, scientific inquiry isolates and measures specific attributes, always taking for granted the overall unity within which those attributes appear. The whole—the oneness of being—cannot itself be measured because all measurement presupposes it.
Regarding “quantum mechanics” and the “observer,” Mudgal asserts that even the most advanced physical theories, like quantum mechanics, describe how systems behave under observation. But the very act of observation, and the existence of the world in its entirety, is simply assumed—never explained or measured by the theory.
Existence, as described in spiritual and philosophical traditions, is encountered directly—before we abstract, model, or measure it.
Science translates the world into data, but the experience of “being,” the sense of being and belongingness, cannot be reduced to a set of measurements. It is immediate, self-evident, and prior to scientific representation.
It is fundamentally not reducible to concepts or equations: all measurements, calculations, and scientific findings emerge within the field of being, but cannot account for why there is being or what it means to “be” at all.
For Mudgal, science cannot “stand outside being,” as all scientific explanation happens within existence, never outside it. Being is not an entity; it is the entire enabling context.
Sat is neither empirical nor theoretical: “isness” is neither a data point nor a hypothesis. It is a primal, holistic enwombedness and enworldedness that supports all inquiry but is not itself available to inquiry as a measurable thing.
Traditions like Vedanta teach that ultimate reality (Sat, or Brahman) is not subject to measurement or empirical analysis. It can only be realized or intuited, never quantified:
“Existence cannot be measured and Reality cannot be tied to any concept. The moment you think you’ve grasped it, it slips away. Science has a spiritual value insofar as it protects us from spiritual garbage. But the ordinary and everydayness is the closest you can get to ‘Sat’ (truth).”
To summarise, existence or isness remains forever outside the sight of physical science and what it can measure because it is the precondition and ground for all measurement, observation, and inquiry. The sheer fact that something exists serves as the underlying basis for all scientific activity. Scientific methods presuppose that objects or phenomena already exist before they can be measured, analyzed, or modeled. Isness is not a measurable attribute but the prior reality that enables any measurement to happen at all.
Science quantifies physical properties—mass, length, energy, charge, etc.—through defined units and methods. Isness, by contrast, is not another property like color or charge. It is not a quality that an object possesses but the fundamental reality that things “are” in the first place. As such, there is no scale for “how much existence” something has—it either is, or it is not.
Scientific inquiry operates by breaking down phenomena into components, isolating variables, and seeking repeatable, quantifiable results. Isness, or being, refers to the holistic presence of something. Once divided into parts for analysis, the unquantifiable wholeness of “being” slips away, and what remains are the measurable aspects—never the totality of its presence.
The experience of isness is immediate and non-conceptual. We encounter the world as present and real before any abstraction or measurement takes place. Scientific descriptions abstract from this lived immediacy to provide models and data, but the actuality of “being”—the fact that anything shows up to us—is not itself subject to empirical quantification.
Scientific instruments register interactions—forces, emissions, responses—not “isness” itself. Existence is what allows empirical detection but cannot be isolated as a variable or detected independently. Attempting to measure isness is like trying to weigh the fact that something is, rather than what or how it is.
Physical science, including quantum mechanics, describes what things are (identity) and how they behave (laws)—not that they simply are (existence). Scientific laws do not explain enwombedness and enworldedness—the Dweller and the Dwelling; instead, they often put a false spin—a counterfeit meme that is ecologically fatal and humanly destructive, blind to their own existence.
Conclusion
The Gods Have Gone Silent argues that the sacred does not vanish; it becomes inaudible when speech detaches from life. Mudgal calls readers away from the theatrics of proof and the comforts of borrowed eloquence toward a humbler, sterner practice: be present, listen, speak truthfully, and let your words bind you to your acts. The householder’s world—work, care, civic speech—becomes a school for this discipline. Shorn of spectacle, this is a demanding ethic; it is also liberating.
As a contemporary contribution, the book stands out for its clarity of demand and its refusal to flatter. It tests ideas in encounters, grants science its due without surrendering the field of meaning to it, and restores classical terms by giving them work to do in ordinary scenes. If the gods seem silent, Mudgal suggests, our first task is to make our speech mean again—so that, in time, life and language might converge. In that convergence, the silence will not be empty; it will be full.
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Note on terms used in this review: Vak / Shabda-Brahman (speech as medium of revelation), Brahmarakshas (borrowed speech, recited not realized), Enwombed / Enworlded (held by and engaged with the whole), Sat (isness/being), Mayavada, Sankhya, Prana, Soma, Avidya—all appear as Mudgal employs them: not as museum pieces, but as instruments for living.
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