Whether or Not There Is a Soul

[ancient_paztriot]

So if there are no serious objections, I'll post some transcript essays from Hridyananda's lectures (around the world).

 

I'm not promoting Hridyananda in any other way than giving him credit for his material. I personally think it is some of the best around.

 

But I will not be discussing him unless asked. Hope you guys enjoy them. Hare Krsna.

 

Whether Or Not There Is A Soul

 

3 June 1984, Atlanta, Georgia: Sunday Feast lecture

 

So here we are confronting death and we have to make a decision about what position we are going to take. It's called in modern terms an existential decision. We have to decide what position we are going to take in the face of impending nonexistence, at least nonexistence of our present state of affairs. Now since material things all end, it is doubtful some material thing is going to save us, although modern science promises us that we'll invent some medicine or some pill and you won't die. But all that glitters in not gold. Uh that hasn't happened yet. That's not really an option in 1984. So as I said, the real issue is whether or not there's an eternal soul. We may say Well there are other ideas also. But if we study the history of human thought it really boils down to that. Just like in the baseball season or the football season there are so many different teams and so many different leagues, it all boils down to the world series or the superbowl. That's really what it comes down to – or not. Do we really cease to exists or is there some type of perpetual existence, some soul?

 

Even Aristotle… Aristotle is known as the father of modern science. Those of you who know a little bit of the history of philosophy know that Plato insisted that there is an eternal soul, although of coarse his definition was a little muddled. But he said that there is an eternal soul which is different from the body. Then Aristotle came along and said well no, actually the soul is somehow inseparable from the body. Then again he said But well actually there is some kind of soul that survives the body. So he chickened out so to speak. Anyway if you study Greek philosophy or Decarte or anyone, that's really what it's all about. Is there or is there not an eternal soul?

 

Now since we are talking about something which is not physical, physical experiments are not going to solve the problem and neither is speculative philosophy. All the big philosophers have taken their best shot and all they can really tell us is their opinion. So philosophy, speculative philosophy is not really going to answer the question authoritatively and much less dull material science which can't… which according to their own ground rules and boundaries which they themselves have defined, they're not even relevant to the discussion.

 

So obviously what is involved is a decision on our part based on experience and based on faith and faith is also really inseparable from experience, unless we're talking about blind faith, but that also… anyway, I won't go into the psychology of faith as a separate discussion. But what it does come down to is we as free souls and as free citizens, uh we have the opportunity to experience and ultimately we have to make a decision. Now you can leap… you can make a leap of faith to believe or you can make a leap of faith and not believe. They are both leaps. So why leap to something which has no possibility of helping you? It's not to deny the existence of the soul is a scientific position or a logical position or a hardheaded pragmatic position. It's actually rather stupid position because it involves exactly the same type of faith as believing in the soul and has absolutely no possibility of doing anything for you. So it's actually not at all pragmatic or rational or empirical. It's stupid actually. If we have to make a leap of faith somewhere, why not try to get over the chasm instead of just deciding Well I won't make it anyway, I'll just dive headfirst into the pit. So somehow or other our modern society in the uh… with a type of pseudo rationality and pseudo logic has actually become spiritually suicidal. As I've already explained, if you say only things which we can see with our senses can be verified. If you make that statement, that statement is in itself cannot be empirically verified because if you try to bring in empirical evidence, that's circular reasoning. In other words, you cannot demonstrate the validity of empiricism within an empirical proof, that's begging the question. To demonstrate the validity of empiricism as a system, you have to bring in evidence from outside, but empiricism itself states that evidence is invalid. So empiricism is a system which by definition cannot be validated. It's pretty stupid, isn't it? Whereas if within your system you admit the existence of God, then at least within your epistemology or within your concept of life there are elements or entities which – as you define them – are capable of validating experience.

 

So this whole empirical tendency of the modern world is a complete collapse of common sense and what to speak of rationality. It is actually gross ignorance and irrationality. And therefore being in a grossly irrational, nonsensical position, it has produced a society which is basically irrational, repressive, both in the leaders and the followers and we achieving record-breaking levels of anxiety. Stress has become so prominent that it is practically killing off the entire population, heart-attack, cancer, all these things increase exponentially due to anxiety. This perhaps is the most neurotic society in history and hence the most miserable society because as Lord Krsna says ??? How can a person who is not peaceful be happy? So this neurotic, bordering on psychotic civilization is the result of accepting a totally irrational world-view which is that only things that we can experience with the gross body are real. As I said an assertion… according to what I just said is not true itself because it can't be verified. So our society has chosen to make this leap of faith into a spiritually suicidal, dead-end world view. And it is the purpose of the Krsna Consciousness movement to extricate human civilization from this hopeless, ridiculous position. It is just like a child who jumps into a hole thinking he sees something shinning down into the hole and jumps in and can't get out. So our society has simply jumped into a pit of blind irrationality based on the premise that there is no soul, there is no God, therefore let us simply dedicate ourselves to the pleasures of the body.

 

So if you want to… When people sometimes say Well prove there's a soul, prove there's a God… But of course sometimes they use the word prove in a very immature way. Sometimes people think the word prove indicates some type of material demonstration. So requesting a material demonstration of spiritual entitites is not a very intelligent request. It doesn't indicate a very reasonable person. Now we do have however, the capability of perceiving spiritual reality. But we have to purify ourselves. We can see spiritual things, we can hear them. But they are not strictly speaking empirical because they are not physical. It requires that we purify our consciousness. Now if someone was born without the ability to see colors… Apparently some animals cannot see colors. And if somehow animals could speak as they appear to do in our society. If somehow animals could speak and they requested proof of color, what would you show them? If a blind man demands to see, if a blind man denies that there is any such thing as a physical world, how would you demonstrated it to him? What if a blind man demands that visible things be demonstrated to him? That the proof that visible things are in fact visible is that they can be demonstrated to someone who is blind and therefore cannot visualize? Somehow visible things, their quality of being visible should be demonstrated in a way that has nothing to do with seeing. And this is the proof of their existence as visible objects. Now that request would be uh meaningless.

 

Similarly, the burden of proof is not on God. Our society has become so arrogant in our humanistic delirium… we think that we are so important as human beings that we have become so outrageous that we think that we can place the burden of proof on the Supreme Lord. The result is that we are simply creating a situation in which was are gonna get a bunch or A burdens on our head. A burdens and H burdens, all kinds of nuclear burdens. We are just about to annihilate ourselves, we have created a gross, frustrating, irrational society in which people are about to kill each other on an unprecedented scale and in our blind neurotic ignorance we dare to place the burden of proof on God. So this is another act of irrationality.

 

Even if we accept God's existence as a hypothetical proposition that we are investigating Does God exists or not, even in order to adequately examine the issue, we would have to devise a proof or a demonstration which if the phenomenon existed it would be appropriate. Isn't it? You're a scientist (…spiritual scientist) For example if they are making an experiment to try to demonstrate the existence of an atom, obviously you design an experiment which if the atom exists, the experiment will be appropriate. You don't try to fake out the atom. Similarly if you are trying to conduct research to find out if God exists and if you have half a brain in your head, then you try to do something so that if God exists you can detect him. Now if God does exists, He's obviously not your… He's obviously not gonna come and kiss your boots. If God does exists, he's in charge – not you. Therefore, if you want to search for God, do something so that if He does exists you're experiment is appropriate. That means try to surrender to God, try to be devoted to God and then see what happens. Otherwise if conduct so-called experiments to see if God exists, experiments designed in such a way that if the object of our search exists, the experiments immediately become inappropriate and irrelevant, then that means that our whole methodology is idiotic. And this is exactly the type of idiotic thinking and methodology which is implicit if not explicit in those people who have the gall to say prove that there's God. So rather than being a rational approach toward the subject, these people are demonstrating their ignorance and their total lack of intellectual ability. So if anyone actually wants to understand what God is, then he should chant Hare Krsna… as these are names of God and by chanting Hare Krsna we are calling to God in a devotional submissive frame of mind which is appropriate to the reality that God is infinitely great and we are infinitesimally or infinitely infinitesimal. So this is an appropriate process. Those who know that God exists of course are in a good position and even those who are trying to figure it out, it is a very appropriate way to find out if you understand anything about scientific research.

 

So anyway, getting back to my main point that those who have discovered the soul and those who have discovered God and who have molded their existence around these things, they become infallible in the sense that they are developing, evolving an existence based on eternal things and therefore their existence becomes eternal and in that sense they are infallible. And their infallible in the sense that their very existence and the quality of their existence will not perish. Certainly if we speak about fallibility, the worst kind of fallibility is dying because that's a loss of your existence itself – at least as you know it. So preserving your existence certainly is the first step in achieving infallibility because it is achieving the infallibility of existence as existence. Of course, everyone is an eternal soul, but the particular nature or particular quality or type of existence that we create in bodily identification is temporary. For example if you think that I am an American or I'm Russian or I'm a fireman or I'm the world champion bottle washer or whatever you think you are, these activities are all based on the material body and they will perish with the body. And if you mold an existence based on the soul that I'm an eternal servant of God, that will be an eternal existence. Anyway, these are some of the points I wanted to make. So I hope I've stimulated some of you to further thinking. Now are there any questions?