Go to Vanipedia | Go to Vanisource | Go to Vanimedia


Vaniquotes - the compiled essence of Vedic knowledge


Complex (Lectures)

Expressions researched:
"complex" |"complexes" |"complexities" |"complexity" |"complexness"

Lectures

Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures

Lecture on BG 2.13 -- Hyderabad, November 19, 1972:

Here Arjuna has accepted Kṛṣṇa as the spiritual master. Śiṣyas te aham. "I become Your disciple. Because we were talking till now as friends, but this will not decide the case. My case is very serious. My duty is to fight, but I do not like to fight. Some affection, some family relationship, is deterring me to fight, making me coward. So therefore it is a very complex position. And I find that You can make a solution of this complex position. I therefore accept You as my spiritual master. And I fall down under Your lotus feet as Your disciple." Śādhi māṁ prapannam. "I am surrendered. Now You kindly protect the surrendered soul."

Lecture on BG 9.15-18 -- New York, December 2, 1966:

Therefore somebody worships the Supreme Lord as mother, goddess Kālī, or... That is materialism. Because in the present conception of our life this body given by the mother is matter. Therefore worship mother means worship the matter. That's all. There are so many worshipers of mother. You worship your country. That is the same, material worship. This is called śakty-upāsanā. Śakti. Śakti means you are worshiping the energy of the Lord, not the Lord directly. You are worshiping the energy. All this nationalism or so many isms we have discovered, they are... Even the scientists. Scientists also, they worshiping the mother. He's finding out the complexities of the matter. So he's also worshiping mother. So materialism. This is called materialistic. One who is worshiping the mother, material energy, he's called śakta.

Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures

Lecture on SB 1.2.6 -- Hyderabad, April 18, 1974:

Practically you see. They have, if not fully forgotten, very large percentage, they do not think. Otherwise these Americans would not have come here to take the trouble of preaching Kṛṣṇa consciousness in India, after taking so much trouble. We cannot give them actually the real comforts which they enjoy in their country. Their standard of life, living, is higher than our standard of life. So why they have joined this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement? Because they have forgotten this bodily concept of life. They are no more proud that "I am American" or "I am European." Why...? You know in the British rule, the Britishers they were always maintaining the superior complex. They were thinking because they are European... Everyone thinks. If he is in position in the material world, he thinks like that. That is not fault. That is natural.

But here it is said, sa vai puṁsāṁ paro dharmo yato bhaktir adhokṣaje (SB 1.2.6). Adhokṣaja. God's another name is Adhokṣaja, "beyond," I mean to say, "material conception." Adhah-kṛta akṣaja-jñānaṁ yatra. Akṣaja means direct perception, that I see directly by my eyes, I can hear directly by my ears, or I can smell. Not by direct. Directly, because our senses are imperfect. (break) Then you can understand that we are not different.

Lecture on SB 1.2.9 -- Detroit, August 3, 1975, University Lecture:

The government makes the law, "Keep your car to the right." That has to be accepted by everyone. You cannot say, "Why not left? In India we keep our car on the left side. Why not here?" No. Then it will be unlawful. Similarly, Kṛṣṇa says, "This is dharma." Not that yata mat tata pat, whatever you manufacture, that is dharma. No. That is rascaldom. This is dharma: sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekam (BG 18.66), only one. That is dharma.

So here Sūta Gosvāmī is explaining that what is dharma. Dharma means dharmasya hy āpavargyasya. Dharma means to disentangle yourself from these material complexities. That is dharma. Now, the same thing... Anywhere you go, the Vedic literature, the same thing is there. Dharma means to mold your life in such a way that ultimately you become disentangled from this complication of material life. The complication of, essence of the complication, is janma-mṛtyu-jarā-vyādhi: (BG 13.9) "Birth, death, old age, and disease." This is material complication because we living entity, na jāyate na mriyate vā; we have no birth, no death. This is our position. We are... Simply we are changing body.

General Lectures

Northeastern University Lecture -- Boston, April 30, 1969:

Student: You said something about the energy of Kṛṣṇa. Er, is He the energy that divides the energy from everything, or is He all...? Everything comes down to just another form of energy, another form of complexity, so that everything is suited to one thing and yet it's different?

Prabhupāda: Yes. Just like by electric energy you have got heater, at the same time, cooler also. The energy is one, but in one place it is utilized for heating; in another place it is utilized as cooling. Similarly, this, er... Take the energy of sunlight. The sunlight is one, but by the sunlight some flowers are becoming red, some flowers are becoming blue, the leaves are becoming green. So everything is due to the same energy, sunlight, but the variety is there. Variety is there. So energy may be one. Just like in your country, by electric energy you are working in so many ways. So do not, I mean to say, make minus all these varieties, the energy in diverse varieties. Therefore the whole conception is, Brahman conception is, that unity in diversity. Everything is working by the energy of the Supreme Brahman, and in the energy we have got different diversities. So we cannot neglect the diversities, although the energy is one.

Philosophy Discussions

Philosophy Discussion on David Hume:

Śyāmasundara: No. He denies any substance. He says just like a cherry or a fruit, it has certain sensory qualities such as sweetness, color, like that. He says that we are just like that, humans. We have certain "sensory qualities." We are made up of a series of mental activities or a complex of ideas, but this is all we are.

Prabhupāda: No. We have got senses also. The color is only, what is called, sensory qualities. It is a quality, but to appreciate that quality, we have the senses. An inert object, it has got the quality, but living entity, it has the senses to appreciate the quality.

Śyāmasundara: But he says these senses are only a bundle of perceptions, of ideas.

Prabhupāda: Whatever it may be, the living entity is superior to the inert matter. In Sanskrit language they are called tan mātrā. They are created for the sense; they are sense objects. I have got senses, I must appreciate something. That something is that quality or sensory quality. I have eyes, I must see something. So therefore there is color, there is beauty...

Philosophy Discussion on Immanuel Kant:

Śyāmasundara: The first antimony describes the quantity of the world. The second antimony deals with the quality of the world. The thesis is, "Every composite substance in the world is made up of simple parts, and nothing whatever exists but the simple, or that which is composed out of the simple." And the antithesis is, "No composite thing in the world is made up of simple parts, nor does anything simple exist anywhere in the world." On the one hand, everything is simple, made up of simple parts. On the other hand, nothing is simple; everything is complex.

Prabhupāda: Yes. The simple is, we say, the whole world is made of material energy. This is simple. Now, the component parts of material energy, there are so many things—mahat-tattva, then pradhāna, then puruṣa, then twenty-four elements, the five gross elements, eight subtle elements, the five senses, the objects of the senses—and in this way there are so many analytical complications.

Śyāmasundara: So his third antimony is the causal, or relation (?) of the world. He says, first of all, thesis: "Causality in conformity with laws of nature is not the only causality from which all the phenomena of the world can be derived. To explain these phenomena it is necessary to suppose that there is also a free causality." And the antithesis is, "There is no freedom, but all that comes to be in the world takes place entirely in accordance with laws of nature." So on the one hand he is saying that sometimes we observe an exception to the laws of causality, that something happens which is completely uncaused or unexplainable, so that there must be no such thing as a strict law of cause and effect.

Prabhupāda: No. There is, strictly. He cannot explain—you do not know—but there must be some cause. Therefore ultimate cause is Kṛṣṇa, or God.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: Gradually, through the ages, they have become more and more complex to this age when...

Prabhupāda: What is the beginning?

Śyāmasundara: In the beginning they have found only the one-celled animals.

Prabhupāda: They found, but beyond that they do not know. They found it. It was already there. So wherefrom it came?

Svarūpa Dāmodara: Another definition that is raised by most so-called modern scientists, research scientists, they try to find out the meaning of what is research and what is invention. So many scientists have posed also the concept that invention, strictly speaking, is a paradox. When we say invention, "I invented something," somebody invented radio, or somebody invented such-and-such thing, it is not really an invention.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: They say it cannot come out of nothing. It is already there.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: But my point is they excavated down into the ground and they found that gradually, through the years, animals are evolving towards more and more complex forms, from very simple forms in the water to land animals, plants, and these big dinosaurs, then they died out.

Prabhupāda: If they died out, that means there is no more existence of that animal. But how can you say that the animal is existing somewhere else? Now, according to his statement that from a certain basic principle, by gradual evolution, the human body is coming. Now his theory is that the human body is coming from the monkey.

Śyāmasundara: They are related; they come from the same...

Prabhupāda: Related? Everything is related. That is another thing. But if the monkey's body is developing into human body...

Śyāmasundara: Yes. Apelike man.

Prabhupāda: Then after development of human body, why is the monkey species does not cease? Why not it does not cease?

Śyāmasundara: They are like branches of the same tree, he calls them.

Prabhupāda: Branches of the tree, just like we see now the monkey is existing and human being is also existing. Similarly, we say what he sees the beginning of life, at that time also there was human being.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: I'm just saying that it appears, because layer after layer is deposited in the earth's crust, that the animal forms are evolving toward more complex forms, from simple animals to bigger animals, and then more complex, then to the man, civilized man.

Prabhupāda: From where it began?

Śyāmasundara: It began with the simplest forms.

Prabhupāda: What is that simplest form?

Śyāmasundara: Small one-celled animals, then bivalves, then mollusks, then simple forms of aquatics.

Karandhara: So the one-celled animals must be God.

Śyāmasundara: That isn't what I'm talking about; I'm just saying that this evolution appears to exist, evolution of species, from simplest forms to more complex forms. That's Darwin's idea.

Prabhupāda: But the simplest form is still existing and the complex form is also existing at the present moment. Not that from the simplest form developed, developed, developed. Just like development means, just like I have developed my childhood body. The childhood body is no more there. But it is a fact I have developed from childhood body to this body. There are so many. So similarly, all the species are existing simultaneously, still.

Śyāmasundara: But they find no evidence in the earlier times that these complex forms existed.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: No. But I don't see evidence that all these complex forms...

Prabhupāda: I have said that one, this, by evolution, one after another, the human form is there. Now Darwin's theory is that some forty thousand years ago there was no human being.

Śyāmasundara: Several million years.

Prabhupāda: But we don't see that. Because at the present moment we see that all the species are there existing, including human beings.

Śyāmasundara: But he says they evolved. That's because they evolved.

Prabhupāda: Evolved, but they are still existing. Evolved, that is another thing. But all of them are existing still. So how you can say that millions of years they did not exist, all? His theory is that...

Śyāmasundara: Because there is not evidence that they exist.

Prabhupāda: Evidence, this is the evidence: if now all the species of life are existing, why not millions of years ago? What do you say?

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: That's all right. It doesn't matter if it was ocean; still we find gradually the forms become more and more complex toward the...

Prabhupāda: But you cannot say where is the beginning and where is the end.

Śyāmasundara: No. That we can't say.

Prabhupāda: Therefore his knowledge is imperfect.

Śyāmasundara: He said that if we say the origin of species is the simplest form, one-celled...

Prabhupāda: How the species living force came in? What is the cause? How it is coming? Wherefrom the life begins?

Karandhara: It still evades the principal question of who is the creator. I can build a big house or I can build a small box. The point is, who is the builder? So it's evading the question of who... Even if everything started with a one-celled animal, what started the one-celled animal?

Prabhupāda: Yes. Wherefrom the one cell came?

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: Darwin, he was not so much interested in those questions of origin and those things, but he was a botanist and a biologist, and he simply wanted to investigate how things evolved from one simple form to a more complex form...

Prabhupāda: That he cannot say, how the evolved. He captured something out of his imagination, but he cannot explain scientifically.

Śyāmasundara: From simple forms to more complex forms.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Śyāmasundara: Well, he says that this happens through mutation.

Prabhupāda: But you do it in the laboratory by mutation, by combination.

Śyāmasundara: They can do that.

Prabhupāda: No. But he said that that is not possible.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: Because you said that millions of years ago there were many complex forms of life existing on this planet.

Prabhupāda: No. Not on this planet; maybe anywhere. It is when you say nature, nature is not confined—what is called—limited within this planet. That you cannot say. When you say nature, this material nature, there are millions of universes and millions of planets in each and every universe. If you have studied... Suppose you have studied this planet; that is not sufficient knowledge.

Śyāmasundara: So, but you said before that millions of years ago there were complex forms of life on this planet: men, horses, animals, elephants...

Prabhupāda: Yes. Yes.

Śyāmasundara: But from hundreds of different sources of this...

Prabhupāda: But I say, I say that it is still existing. The man is existing, the horse is existing, the snake is existing, the insect is existing, the trees are existing; why not millions of years ago?

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: Well, if you make claims that millions of years ago there were complex forms of life on this planet...

Prabhupāda: Why you are... I never said on this planet. By nature's way everything is existing.

Śyāmasundara: So on this planet there were not complex forms of life millions of years ago...

Prabhupāda: So maybe; may not be. That is not of the point. The point is that everything is existing in the nature's way. The species, as we say from Vedic language, 8,400,000, fixed-up. So maybe in your neighborhood, in my neighborhood, it is, they have got..., they are fixed up. But you simply, if you study your neighborhood, that is not perfect knowledge.

Śyāmasundara: I accept that. But I want to understand that the theory of evolution is that...

Prabhupāda: Theory of evolution we accept.

Śyāmasundara: ...from simple forms of life, more complex forms evolve.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That's all right. But they are all existing still. They are not extinct. That is the point.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: ...from simple forms of life, more complex forms evolve.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That's all right. But they are all existing still. They are not extinct. That is the point.

Śyāmasundara: All right. But on this planet, now if we could examine this planet...

Prabhupāda: Again you come to this planet. Why you are sticking to this planet?

Karandhara: Lord Brahmā, the most complex... From the Vedic information we find that the most complex living entity was first, and from him, he created all the variations. So from the most complex the most simple was evolved. Then if you have the wrong information, you could look at it and say it was the opposite, that from the most simple the most complex evolved. The sequence is there, and if you observe it in the wrong way, you may conclude it's going in the opposite direction.

Śyāmasundara: But in the Vedic scriptures...

Prabhupāda: The first creature is Brahmā, the most intelligent, the most learned.

Śyāmasundara: ...and he said, and you say that on this planet there were pastimes, for instance, of Lord Rāmacandra millions of years ago, with His men, His animals, His horses, deers, so many things. But in all of our evidences we find only at that time the most simple forms of life...

Prabhupāda: Your evidence... You will be satisfied with your evidence, but I have got my own evidence. Why shall I accept your evidence? You cannot force your evidence, your so-called evidence upon me. What is evidence? First of all you have to select, what is that evidence.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: But it appears that the evolution is from simple to complex.

Prabhupāda: That we admit, simple. That we admit. There is no difference. But you cannot say what is the simple and what is the complex, and what are the... You say something missing. That is evasive. Why you should be missing if you are in knowledge? You must say this thing is missing, that you have no knowledge.

Karandhara: It's just an axiom, that if any part of the knowledge is perfect, then the whole knowledge is perfect. If you have any part of the truth, you have to have the whole truth in the highest sense. So if their theory is at all correct, and any of the premises are solid, then why it doesn't conclude itself by its own logical deduction? Why it would always have to allude to something missing, some missing factor?

Prabhupāda: Jīva jātiṣu. The Padma Purāṇa says jīva jātiṣu, so different species of life. And they give: from this, this; from this, this; from this, this. Then, just like it is said that from bird's life the beast's life comes. Now the beasts, this category is of three millions types of beasts.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: No. It does mean something if you accept that forms are evolving from simple to complex. That means that we can expect in the future that mankind will even be of a more superior nature than they are now.

Prabhupāda: Forms are... One form is superior than the other form. (indistinct) you said.

Karandhara: That possibility is also there. We know that by performances of certain types of sacrifices you can become, and go to the demigod planet...

Prabhupāda: That difference is that one apartment is better than the other apartment. Material.

Śyāmasundara: They would say that from the lowest apartments we are evolving to the better apartments.

Prabhupāda: Yes. So according to your position. Just like if you... There are different apartments: first-class apartments, second-class apartments, third-class apartment. But as you are fit to pay the rent or price, then you are allowed to enter in the apartment. The apartments are already there—first-class, second-class, third-class. They are not evolving.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: So I understand that, and I'll accept that, but the one thing I'm still puzzled on is that there's no geological evidence that in former times on this planet there were more complex forms...

Prabhupāda: Why you are taking geological evidence as final? Why you are taking that? That is final?

Śyāmasundara: But it's logical...

Prabhupāda: What logic? Science is progressing. You cannot say that this is final.

Karandhara: Scientists couldn't deny; they could just say that we haven't found any evidence.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Śyāmasundara: But until there's something that disproves it to me, then I must accept it, because it..., because it's logical.

Karandhara: But that's a false platform. I'll conclude on the basis of my limited knowledge because I don't have the perfect knowledge. That's an abortion of the whole scientific...

Śyāmasundara: Yes. All right. You can say that I've never seen a purple man, so there must be no such thing as a purple man. You can say that, but as far as I can operate within my practicality, there are no purple men. I've never seen one; no one has ever seen purple men. So isn't this logical?

Prabhupāda: Purple men?

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: Yes. Where it has become land. And you find that there are sea shells, sea animals, in the layer, in the next layer up more complex forms, in the next layer more complex forms...

Prabhupāda: I mean to say, but there is already sea. Has he gone down the sea and excavated the level of the sea, gone down?

Karandhara: Even if they discount...

Prabhupāda: That you do not know. That you do not know. Not that he knows. Because we cannot accept that. Nobody has said that they have excavated down the bottom of the sea. But you also said that bottom may be opened at one, some time. So unless it is opened, your experiment is insufficient.

Karandhara: Even if you were to grant that the first life forms on this planet were simple one-celled life, that does not mean that more complex life did not begin earlier on other planets. The theory is not aborted. It may be you can discount the possibility of...

Prabhupāda: The whole thing is that Dr. Frog, famous story. He comes to this country, Dr. Frog's understanding. He has studied the three-feet-wide well, and he says he is satisfied with that. He has nothing to do with the Atlantic Ocean. But Atlantic Ocean is also a reservoir of water, and that well is also a reservoir of water.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: But the point is that they have determined that there are rock structures in the earth very, very, very, very old and that these contain no evidence of any complex forms of life. So that if there is a statement that there were higher forms of life millions of years ago existing on this planet, there has been no evidence ever found of that.

Prabhupāda: So why they're trying to find out evidence from the rocks, not from any other source?

Śyāmasundara: Well as civilizations come and go, they leave remains, evidence behind of their...

Prabhupāda: "Civilization goes" means? Where goes?

Śyāmasundara: Well, if people come and they...

Prabhupāda: Do they come, and they are still living? They are still there? Just like my great-grand..., great-grandfather was living. So I am his descendant.

Śyāmasundara: But where is he?

Prabhupāda: Where is he? You want to see him?

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: That means there was some evidence that there were... If we look in coal beds we find remains of trees that were very simple, no complex forms of trees. Now trees are much more complex.

Prabhupāda: Complex or simple, it doesn't matter. There were trees.

Svarūpa Dāmodara: Actually, the coal doesn't say whether the tree was complex or not.

Śyāmasundara: No, but they find impressions from leaves and the carboniferous age, they find that the remains of trees, plants, twigs, all very simple forms like our (indistinct). Today they're more...

Prabhupāda: Our evidence is intelligence, not with tools and (indistinct). Our evidence is intelligence. We find, we get Vedic information by disciplic succession-highly intelligent. So that is our evidence. Not the tools.

Śyāmasundara: The Scripture. The evidence which is written and spoken in...

Prabhupāda: Yes. And that is coming by śruti, by hearing. Just like Vyāsadeva heard from Nārada, Nārada heard from Brahmā, millions and millions of years ago. If you take, according to our calculation, Brahmā's age, Brahmā's one day we cannot calculate. It is now some, so many millions of years past, and still it is not even Brahmā's one day. So many millions of years. Because in Brahmā's one day seventy-two..., fourteen, fourteen Manus come and go. And each Manu's age is seventy-two millennium. One millennium means 4,300,000's of years.

Philosophy Discussion on Charles Darwin:

Śyāmasundara: So to become increasingly complex—now we have computers and all—doesn't necessarily mean we are becoming more and more superior.

Prabhupāda: No. They are becoming more inferior. There is no necessity of computer machine.

Śyāmasundara: So even though there may be an evolution from simple to more complex, there's no evolution from inferior to superior.

Prabhupāda: That is not improvement. No. Now human society has become very complex. I don't trust you, you don't trust me. I keep my dog so that you may not come in my house—"Beware of Dogs"—and if you enter I can fire you, there is law. So what is this (indistinct)? Therefore we get from our śāstra that even you will receive your enemy at home, you will receive him so friendly way that he'll forget that you are his enemy. Gṛhaṁ satram api prāptaṁ visvastham akuto 'bhayam. He should feel himself so confidential that he's not near his enemy. His dealing and behavior are so nice. The morality is that "Whatever you may be, you have come to my house, you are my guest, so I must offer you all kinds of hospitality, never mind you are my enemy. Now you are my guest." So how much ethically improved the society was. "Yes. We are enemy, so when we fight we shall fight like enemies. But now we have come to my home, you are my guest, honorary guest, I must receive you with honor." That was being done Mahābhārata time.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Hayagrīva: ...and on Sigmund Freud, you discussed with Śyāmasundara Prabhu the sexual aspects, but not the theological aspects. Freud wrote two basic books on religion, Future of an Illusion, and there was a great deal in Leonardo da Vinci, A Study in Psycho-sexuality. He writes, "Psychoanalysis, which has taught us the intimate connection between the father complex and belief in God, has shown us that the personal God is psychologically nothing but an exalted father. Youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down." So he sees God as basically a father complex arising out of the need of help of the little child.

Prabhupāda: That little child, how he can give up the idea of father? And how Mr. Freud can give up the idea? Was he not born by a father?

Hayagrīva: He feels that...

Prabhupāda: He dropped from the sky? Huh? Did, did he?

Hayagrīva: He feels that this is childish.

Prabhupāda: That childish, what is that childish? He had no father?

Hayagrīva: He had a father, but he believed in ultimate emancipation.

Prabhupāda: No, no, ultimate we shall go later on. First of all, he has to think whether he had his father or not. Or his father's father was not there, and go on searching out. So without father, how can one exist or one can come into being? So that if he cannot understand this simple philosophy, what kind of philosopher he is? He had his father. His father had his father. So this is fact. Even though he might not have seen his dead grandfather, but he was there. That is a fact. So if you go on searching, father's father's father, where you will come there is no father? Which..., which is that point when you can say, "Now here there is no father"? And if you actually come to that point that "Here is a person of whom there is no father," that is God.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: Anyway, another one of his ideas is that the unconscious material on the person's personality sometimes emerges in the form of a complex, what's called a complex. This complex has the ability to initiate and organize behavior. Sometimes we say someone has a superiority complex or an inferiority complex or this complex or that complex. It means that they tend to act in a certain way. Inferiority complex means I consider myself inferior to others, and I react in a very inhibited fashion. Or if I have a superiority complex I act in a very arrogant fashion. Like that. These are his observations, that people who act in certain ways which are called complexes.

Prabhupāda: So we are..., what we are? Inferior or superior? Kṛṣṇa conscious, we think ourselves as servant of God. Is that inferior or superior?

Śyāmasundara: Well, our practice is not unconscious.

Prabhupāda: No. We are conscious.

Śyāmasundara: We are conscious, so we do not rely on the complex to guide us, or an unconscious impulse to guide us.

Prabhupāda: No. We are not guided by impulse. We are guided directly, instruction from the superior.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: We are conscious, so we do not rely on the complex to guide us, or an unconscious impulse to guide us.

Prabhupāda: No. We are not guided by impulse. We are guided directly, instruction from the superior.

Śyāmasundara: Yes.

Prabhupāda: Our process is to acquire knowledge from the superior. We are not guided by these complexes.

Śyāmasundara: He said that there are two basic attitudes: an extrovert attitude and an introvert attitude. An extrovert has an outgoing orientation; they are always friendly and sociable. An introvert has an inward withdrawal from his environment and is always very quiet and meditative. These two types of personalities, he sees existing everywhere. And all of us, we are these..., one or other of these personalities.

Prabhupāda: Muni. This is called muni.

Śyāmasundara: Introvert?

Prabhupāda: I think introvert, yes. Muni.

Revatīnandana: The introspective.

Devotee (3): There's a difference between an introspective person and an introvert. An introvert, somebody who is concerned with his false ego, turns in on himself, that he doesn't express himself outwardly to others, while an extrovert does. "Vert" means "to turn." So he's turned in upon himself, on his own personality.

Prabhupāda: Self-centered.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Hayagrīva: He did... He speaks of the soul in this way. He says, "If the human soul is anything, it must be of unimaginable complexity and diversity, so that it cannot possibly be approached through a mere psychology of instinct."

Prabhupāda: That he does not know. As soon as we train ourself, that just like Caitanya Mahāprabhu said, "I am not a brāhmaṇa, I am not a kṣatriya, I am not a śūdra, I am not a sannyāsī, I am not brahmacārī." By negation. "I am not, I am not, I am not." Then what is your actual? That gopī-bhartuḥ kamalayor dāsa-dāsānu: (CC Madhya 13.80) "I am the servant of the servant of the servant of the maintainer of gopīs." That means Kṛṣṇa. "That is my real identification." So I have, so long we do not identify as the eternal servant of Kṛṣṇa, there will be so many varieties of identification, and bhakti, devotional service, means to become purified from all this false identification.

Hayagrīva: He says, "I can only gaze with wonder and awe at the depths and heights of our psychic nature."

Prabhupāda: Psychic nature means so long you are not Kṛṣṇa conscious there will be varieties of psychic nature, because we are changing constantly to different bodies by transmigration. So we, we are accumulating varieties of experiences. But if we don't change, remain fixed up in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, then one identification we have got—that "I am servant of Kṛṣṇa. My duty is to serve Him." Kariṣye vacanaṁ tava (BG 18.73), as Arjuna realized after studying Bhagavad-gītā. "Yes," naṣṭo mohaḥ smṛtir labdhā. "Now I have revived my real consciousness and I will act as You dictate." That is final.

Philosophy Discussion on Thomas Henry Huxley:

Hayagrīva: Oh, I..., he said Huxley looks on civilization as something of an attempt to give order to nature. "Civilization might be defined as a complex ethical understanding between men enabling as many men as possible to survive."

Prabhupāda: No, that is not possible. Nature is so strong that either you become Huxley or Einstein or somebody else, you must die. That is nature's law. You cannot dictate nature. The nature will go on dictating to you; then you must die. That is the... There is no question of survival under the regulation of the material nature. There is no... When you go above the dictation of the material nature, then you survive. That is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā, sa guṇān samatītyaitān brahma-bhūyāya kalpate (BG 14.26). When one realizes Brahman understanding, then he survives; otherwise there is no survival.

Hayagrīva: Well, Huxley is typically British. He wrote in...

Prabhupāda: He is a British or Frenchman?

Page Title:Complex (Lectures)
Compiler:MadhuGopaldas, Visnu Murti, RupaManjari
Created:25 of Dec, 2010
Totals by Section:BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=28, Con=0, Let=0
No. of Quotes:28