Psychology (Lectures, Philosophy Discussions)

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Philosophy Discussions

Why you forget this psychology, that "I do not wish to die"?

Philosophy Discussion on Martin Heidegger:

Prabhupāda: That my concern should be how I can live without death. That is real intelligent concern. There is death. I know I will die, but I do not wish to die. That is also fact. Suppose you are... If I take a sword and want to kill you, you know that you will die, why don't you accept, "All right, kill me. I'll have to die, so kill me"? Why you protest? Why you protest? Why you fly away? Why you (indistinct) defend? You know you shall die. So die now. (indistinct)

Śyāmasundara: Because he wants to enjoy...

Prabhupāda: Therefore I do not want to die. That is the philosophy. Death is there. (air raid siren in background) Just like here is the siren, and you are (indistinct) die, but why he's defending? Why this siren is there, "Now death is coming, be careful"? That means, in other words, "I do not wish to die." That is my real concern, that I do not wish to die, but death is forced upon me. Therefore my concern should be how to avoid it. That is real concern. That is real philosophy. Why you forget this psychology, that "I do not wish to die"? Somebody will... Even animals. I have seen one pig, a small pig, what is called, pig, small. So the master took (indistinct). Psychologically he understands that he is taken, now he will be killed. Just crying, "peh, peh, peh." So why? This is a pig. He doesn't want to die. So everyone does not want to die, but still he knows that he will die. Therefore the real concern should be that I do not wish to die, that death is forced upon me, and that is my real concern. That is real philosophy, whether there is possibility of. Know that. That is intelligence.

Philosophy Discussion on Edmund Husserl:

Śyāmasundara: In a way three dimensions. The first one is the phenomenological ego. He says first of all that there are two egos—there is the phenomenological ego and the transcendental ego—what we would call the jīvātmā and the Supersoul. The phenomenological ego is the psychological or empirical ego, which is found in the passing stream of consciousness, or the false ego: the ego that identifies with the events and the stream of events of day-to-day life in this world—what I think I am. And the transcendental ego is the observer behind that stream of consciousness. But his idea is that, still down on this phenomenological level, the phenomenological ego deals with appearances as an activity—that is, cogitates upon appearances which we've passed through by perception. These objects pass through my perception. My phenomenological ego cogitates on those objects and gives what I call the world a structure.

Prabhupāda: That means he knows that he has got another vision.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Śyāmasundara: Today we are discussing the philosopher and psychologist Sigmund Freud. His thesis was that certain unconscious states must be repressed by a special mental mechanism which serves as a defense for the ego against painful or fragmental memories, emotions and desires.

Prabhupāda: That is our brahmācārya system. The psychology is that everyone has a sex appetite, everyone has a tendency for intoxication, and everyone had a tendency for meat-eating. Vyavāya āmiṣa madya sevā. These tendencies are already there. There is injunction in the śāstras that one can have sexual intercourse by marriage, legal sex. We are prohibiting illicit sex, but we are not prohibiting legal sex. Just like in the Bhagavad-gītā Kṛṣṇa says, dharmāviruddho' bhūteṣu kāmo 'smi bharatarṣabha, sex indulgence which is not against religious principles.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Prabhupāda: These ordinary men who are attached to the materialistic way of life, their only happiness is this sexual intercourse. So śāstra says this happiness derived from sexual intercourse is very, very insignificant. Yan maithunādi-gṛhamedhi-sukhaṁ hi tuccham. This is not happiness. It is very (indistinct) third class or even lower than happiness. But because we have no idea of other happiness, Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the materialistic way of life, that is the happiness. Yan maithunādi-gṛhamedhi-sukhaṁ hi tuccham. That is a very insignificant happiness. Then how is this happiness experienced? Kaṇḍūyanena karayor iva duḥkha-duḥkham. You have got itching, and if you scratch like this, so you get some happiness, but aftereffects of that happiness is very abominable. So even if you have legal sex, the mother has to undergo the labor pains and the father has to take responsibility for raising the children nicely, give them education. Of course, one who is irresponsible like cats and dogs, that is another thing. But those who are actually gentlemen, for them it is not painful. Therefore they are avoiding children by contraceptive methods, because they know to raise children is a very difficult job. So śāstra's injunction is simply to try to tolerate this itching sensation and you save so much pain. This is real psychology. That itching sensation can be tolerated if one practices this Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Then you will not be very much attracted by this sex life.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Prabhupāda: You are seeking after unlimited pleasure. (indistinct) You are seeking that pleasure. What this will pacify you? Therefore nobody is satisfied. He is having sex in different ways, placing the woman in different ways. Now these young girls are almost naked. They are attractive. But this is not (indistinct) how society is degrading. Now the woman population is greater everywhere. So how to solve? As soon as there is woman population, they say, "Where is a man?" The (indistinct) desire (is) that every woman, every girl is trying to attract a man. But where is the man? And the man will take advantage, that "Milk is available on the market. What is the use of keeping a cow?" So they will decline to keep a cow, because milk is so cheap. So this is social desertion. And the more the man will become attached to woman, the woman population will increase. It is psychological. The whole world is increasing woman population. So therefore there is desire, especially in (indistinct).

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Prabhupāda: When you have more sex, then you have no power to beget a male child. When the man is less powerful, a girl is born. When the man is powerful, a boy is born. That is Vedic system. In our country, in (indistinct), there are fewer woman because there the men are very stout and strong. When there is discharge, if the man's discharge is larger, then there is a male child; if the woman's discharge is larger, then there is a female child. So when women will be very easily available, the men will be weak. So what will he beget? He will beget female child, because he has lost his power. Sometimes he becomes impotent. So many desertions. If you don't restrict sex life, there will be so many desertions. And that is happening-impotency, no marriage, woman population more. But they did not know how things are happening, how human psychology can be controlled. The perfect system is the Vedic system.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Devotee: But there are aspects of Freud's philosophy and psychology which they feel have proven beneficial for mankind. So many cases of, say, someone is paralyzed and they can't find any direct physical reason why a person can't walk, and through analysis they are able to trace down that it is due to some repressed trauma, what they call trauma.

Prabhupāda: What is?

Śyāmasundara: Shock.

Devotee: And therefore the person reacts on a physical level and they can't (indistinct) psychoanalyzing him and having him recall that event, then he is free...

Prabhupāda: Therefore our prescription is that in the beginning of life, teach him brahmācārya restraint, and when he is grown up, he is above twenty, get him married. In the beginning he will learn how to restrain. If you teach your child to become saintly, he retains his semina, his brain becomes strong, he can understand things, because wasting your semina means less intelligence. So from the beginning, if he is brahmacārī, if he stops misuse of semina, then he becomes intelligent and strong and fully grown. For want of education, everything is being stunted-brain, bodily growth, and everything. So after he is trained as a brahmacārī, if he thinks that still he will have sex enjoyment, all right, he can be married. But because he will have strength of body and brain, he will beget a child, immediately there will be male child. This is practical remedy. And because he has been trained from boyhood to renounce this material way of enjoyment, when he is fifty years old, naturally his first-born child must be twenty-five years old, so he can retire from sex life. (indistinct), because household life means a license for sex life. That is all. It is not required. But one who cannot restrain, he is given a license, "All right, you have sex life by marriage," as I explained in the beginning. So that is real program. That will save the society. Not by (indistinct) or some (indistinct) and this and that. They cannot find out the root disease.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Devotee: Freud's case is interesting, that he formed all of his conclusions by his observations of what he calls neurotic and psychotic patients. He observed mentally ill people, neurosis and psychosis, and he drew his conclusions about both sick and normal psychology from his observation of abnormal. He observed the normal behavior of neurotic people, psychotic people, crazy people, and from their behavior he tried to infer all about human psychology. So not only was he on bodily platform, but his only subject matter was the insane. So how can he draw valid conclusions about behavior?

Prabhupāda: So what is your answer?

Devotee: Yes, his observation is correct, but at the same time it doesn't invalidate Freud's use of psychology for supposedly normal people.

Prabhupāda: (indistinct) psychology.

Śyāmasundara: He didn't analyze only crazy people; he also analyzed his friends, his mother, his wife, other people also, healthy people.

Devotee: The point is in Revatīnandana Mahārāja's argument is that we have to define, then, what is crazy and what is sane.

Prabhupāda: He is saying that he had studied only some crazy people.

Śyāmasundara: No.

Prabhupāda: But that is not the fact. He analyzed some sane people also. But one psychiatrist's opinion is that (indistinct) was a civil servant, he was called to give evidence in a case where the criminal was pleading (indistinct) became insane while he committed the murder. So the civil servant was called to test him, whether actually he was insane or (indistinct) insanity. So he gave evidence that "I have tested so many persons, so I have seen that more or less everyone is insane. More or less. They are bewildered. So in that case, if insanity is the only plea that he should be excused, he can be excused. But so far as I know, everyone is more or less insane." And that is our conclusion. We say (indistinct), anyone who is infected with this material nature is more or less insane, crazy. He is crazy, not more or less. Anyone who has got this material body must be crazy. And therefore everyone is speaking in a different way.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Devotee: As a result of Freud's philosophy he prescribed, and many of his students prescribed, certain activities. This is one thing we forget to mention—that they prescribed certain activities to help relieve the patient of the trauma, and that is called therapy. Actually there is a higher therapy. Actually one of Freud's students would say that we are all involved in therapy in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, which we are, and that therapy is chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. Therapy is a certain kind of activity which will relieve the anxieties and stresses of the mind.

Prabhupāda: That is recommended by Freud?

Śyāmasundara: No. He wasn't a therapeutical psychologist.

Devotee: No, but as a result of his...

Śyāmasundara: Later on they devised that theory of therapy.

Prabhupāda: (indistinct) in support of our movement.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Śyāmasundara: So he says that this desire to accuse someone else of being the same is sometimes repressed and replaced by the opposite expression. In other words, someone may dislike someone, but they will inhibit that dislike and show overt symptoms of friendliness, where in fact there is no friendliness there but it is only a mock friendliness. This is one of the psychological attitudes he was studying. Sometimes someone who may have dislike for someone, instead of expressing dislike, may express just the opposite, extreme fondness, where in fact he dislikes the person.

Prabhupāda: That is called (indistinct), silliness. What is the meaning of silly?

Śyāmasundara: Silly means frivolous or superficial.

Prabhupāda: (indistinct) If the other party is silly, then you also become silly. That is human nature.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Prabhupāda: You have seen that play?

Śyāmasundara: Tarzan?

Prabhupāda: Tarzan. Yes. He was brought up by monkeys. He was brought on... He has got the monkey habits. Children, if you keep them in good association, then they will come out very good. They will have psychological development in good way. And if you keep them in bad association, they will come out bad. Just like in Boston the priest regretted that these our American boys, they were so much after God, but they could not lead(?) them. Actually you American boys, before coming to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, there was no God consciousness; there was hippie consciousness. And now this has changed, due to association. So you are all grown-up, but even small children, if you keep them in good association, they come out nice. Demigods they come out. And if you put them in the demon association, they come out demons. So they are blank slate. As you write, it is written. That is real psychology. You can mold children as you like. They have got the capacity to... Therefore children are sent to a school for taking education, not old men.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Śyāmasundara: So actually Freud was speaking only of a certain set of children in a certain society, Western society, where they were all brought up a certain way.

Prabhupāda: That's all right. He has a got a one-sided experience.

Devotee: Yes. He has been criticized like that.

Śyāmasundara: You don't find these neuroses in Indian families.

Prabhupāda: No.

Devotee (2): They have studied subsequently primitive tribes and they have found that these neuroses were not there. They only existed in the social structure of Victorian Europe.

Prabhupāda: Therefore this is the conclusion—that if you put children in right association, they will go rightly, and if you put them in wrong association, they will go wrongly. They have no independent psychology.

Philosophy Discussion on Sigmund Freud:

Śyāmasundara: So Freud, actually his psychology depended upon a rather pessimistic view of human nature—that we are all beset with these uncontrollable impulses...

Prabhupāda: This in not only pessimism, but due to poor fund of knowledge. He has no perfect knowledge, neither is he trained up by any perfect man. So he is talking all nonsense.

Śyāmasundara: His conclusion was that it was impossible to be happy in this material world, but we can alleviate some of the conflicts through this psychoanalysis. You can try and make the path as smooth as possible, but it is always...

Prabhupāda: That is one (indistinct) that you cannot be happy in this material world, but if you are spiritually elevated, spiritually trained up, then you will be happy. The same example. Just like iron is not fire, but you put it in the fire, it will act like fire. Similarly, although there is no possibility of happiness in this material world, if you are spiritually trained up, if your consciousness is changed into Kṛṣṇa consciousness, then you will be happy.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: These psychologists say that quite often the unconscious is acting through the conscious, only we don't know.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That I say. The subconsciousness is there, but they are not manifest. But sometimes they are manifest. All of a sudden coming. There is no connection. Just like a bubble in the pond. All of a sudden a bubble comes up. You see. So the coming out of the bubble, the energy was there within, all of a sudden it comes out, "Pup!" Yes. And even you trace out why it came, but the, it is to be supposed that it was in the subconscious state; all of a sudden it has manifested.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: So Jung says that there are two types of unconscious process. The first...

Prabhupāda: Why does he say unconscious?

Śyāmasundara: Two types of unconscious process.

Revatīnandana: No. Subconscious.

Prabhupāda: Subconscious, that is the right term. Why does he say? Even in psychology they call "subconscious," why he's speaking "unconscious"?

Śyāmasundara: The German word is unbewust, which means "unbeknown," so we have translated "unconscious," but it means more like "subconscious."

Prabhupāda: Unconsciousness, of course there is, that is not (indistinct) the same thing. That is not manifest. Unconsciousness, but it will manifest.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: So he says that not only individual analysis and dream interpretation are there, but also we must examine folklore, myth, religions, symbolisms and all these, to get a better psychological insight into the unconscious process.

Prabhupāda: So better psychology is that first of all human being or lower than human being. Lower than human being, they have got four principles—eating, sleeping, mating, and fearing—and human being extra, religion. Now which religion is higher, that you have to study. So that answer is given in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam: the religious system which develops towards loving God, that is first class.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: This Jung, Carl Jung, I studied with his disciples in Zurich for six months one winter, and he came..., toward the end of his life he became very religious. At the beginning he was an atheist, but after this study he began to understand that the perfect end of psychology is to integrate and become balanced as a personality. And the best way, the only way, the time-tested way, is to be a religious person.

Prabhupāda: Means to become a religious person means to become a lover of God. Did he love God or something else?

Śyāmasundara: Yes. He became very much religious, and all his disciples are very religious, but in sort of a mystic way, not, not so much an organized religion. A little bit of hodge-podge.

Prabhupāda: That is no (indistinct). Without clear conception of God, must be hodge-podge.

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: Not really... But because there are so many unconscious factors that govern our personality, our behavior, that unless a person becomes aware of these unconscious factors, then he is more or less a slave to them, to his unconscious life. So the whole point of psychology is to point out to a person all his unconscious contents, that he becomes aware of them and faces them face to face.

Prabhupāda: That we are teaching. That we have shown. But he remains unconscious state. That is (indistinct). That we are teaching. We are simply, loudly stating, "Please wake up. Please wake up. We are not this body. We are not this body."

Philosophy Discussion on Carl Gustav Jung:

Śyāmasundara: He says that the purpose of psychology is to come to grips with our unconscious or our shadow personality, and we must know who I am completely.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is real knowledge. That is real (indistinct). Just like Sanātana Gosvāmī presented himself to Lord Caitanya, "Please let me know what I am." This is the business. It requires the assistance of guru to understand our real identity.