Every individual person is trying to control, to become controller. Just like somebody tries to become president of your state. What is the idea behind? To become controller. They are spending millions of dollars to get that post. So I want to become very rich businessman like Rockefeller or Ford. What is the idea? To become controller. I want to rule over my family members, I want to be controller. If I have nobody to control, I get some dog to control. This is my, I mean to say, intuition. I want to control. So everyone is controller in different degrees. And the Brahma-saṁhitā says that God is supreme controller. That's all. He is also controller. But there is nobody else who can control Him. He controls everything. Īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ (Bs. 5.1). Īśvara means controller. Parama means the supreme. Very nice, very simple description of God.
Intuition (Lectures)
Expressions researched:
"intuited"
|"intuition"
|"intuitions"
|"intuitive"
|"intuitively"
|"intuitives"
|"intuity"
Lectures
Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures
Simply if you understand that "I have got also the, what is called, intuition to control, and God is the supreme controller," simply if you understand this, then immediately you become liberated, simply if you understand He is the supreme controller, He is the Supreme Person, simply this understanding. That is stated in the beginning of this transcendental knowledge.
Natural affection is there, father. As soon as the father, the parents, call, they go. So similarly, we have got this dormant relationship with Kṛṣṇa. Simply by the spell of illusion we are thinking that "We have no connection with God or Kṛṣṇa. Let us act independently and do all foolish things and be happy." So we are unhappy; so we are frustrated; so we are full of anxieties. This is our position. So here it is stated that when, by good association, when we associate with persons who are in the knowledge of Kṛṣṇa, in knowledge of God, in the science, if we associate, then this dormant intuition will be revived and we shall be engaged in Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
Knowledge given by Paramātmā from within the core of the heart is explained by the modern scientist as intuition. They do not know wherefrom the intuition is coming. And that is coming from God. Therefore it is stated mattaḥ, from Me. Smṛtir jñānam apohanaṁ ca. A small cub, dog, it has not opened the eyes, but still, immediately after birth, it is seeking the nipples of the mother. So wherefrom the knowledge comes? From his within. And that is from God.
Devotee: You said that Kṛṣṇa speaking through intuition. Is it therefore possible to follow Kṛṣṇa by following the intuition?
Prabhupāda: There are two kinds of following. You want to do something by your whims and you could not fulfill that whim in one life. So Kṛṣṇa is so kind, He gives you opportunity to fulfill that desire in this next life and gives you, "Now you wanted like this. Here is the opportunity, do it." But that is not good for you. You wanted it, so Kṛṣṇa gives you the opportunity. The best thing would be that what Kṛṣṇa says, you do that, then you'll be happy. Otherwise, you'll have to go life after life and fulfill your whims and desires. Kṛṣṇa will give you opportunity, but that will not solve your problems.
Devotee: When someone reads your books, we can see that someone will take a book and someone will not take a book. So does Kṛṣṇa give beneficial instruction to someone and not to someone else, intuition in the heart to take or not to take the book?
Prabhupāda: Yes. If one has to suffer more, Kṛṣṇa says, "No, no, now you enjoy. Why you read that?" (laughter) Better go to the restaurant and spend money for that.
Translator: If the artistic inspiration, like the intuition, is also coming from Paramātmā.
Prabhupāda: Yes. If you want to become something, Kṛṣṇa will give you all facilities. But that will not be good for you. But you go on manufacturing ideas, Kṛṣṇa will give you all facilities. Mattaḥ smṛtir jñānam, how to... Just like a scientist is trying to manufacture something. Kṛṣṇa is giving intelligence, "All right, do like that, do like that, do like that."
Devotee: Sometimes in our practical dealings we have to make a decision and there is no possibility to refer to our authority. Shall we then try to understand what Kṛṣṇa wants us to do?
Prabhupāda: No, Kṛṣṇa will give you, that is intuition. If you are actually sincere, the correct intuition will come. Buddhi-yogaṁ dadāmi taṁ yena mām upayānti, if it is for Kṛṣṇa's purpose, then He'll give you intelligence, "Do like this."
Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures
So Kṛṣṇa has given me a type of body so that I can enjoy, and He gives me reminder also: "Now you wanted to enjoy like this. You have got this opportunity. You do it." This is the proof. You'll find even a, what is called, the cub, born of an animal, the dog, cats and dogs, they find out where is the mother's breast. The human child also, they also try to find out where is the mother's breast. Because they, they explain it as intuition. But we don't say it is intuition. Or even if you call "intuition," wherefrom it is coming? It is coming from Paramātmā. He's giving that "You find out. Here you'll find your mother's breast, and here is your food. Here is your food." Therefore even just after birth, the kitty, or a small child, finds out where is the food. This is the explanation of intuition.
But the modern scientists, they say "intuition," but they cannot explain how the intuition is coming. It is explained in the Bhagavad-gītā: mattaḥ smṛtir jñānam apohanaṁ ca (BG 15.15). It is coming from Paramātmā, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Antaḥ-praviṣṭa ābhāti vijñānena vijṛmbhitaḥ. But Kṛṣṇa, sarvasya cāhaṁ hṛdi-sanniviṣṭaḥ, as Paramātmā, He has entered in everyone's heart. He is in His knowledge. He knows that "This individual soul wanted to enjoy this material world," so He gives him facility: "Now you enjoy."
So many restrictions. Something do and something do not. So this austerity means do not. That is meant for human society. The animals, they follow also do not, but by their natural intuition. But we have got developed consciousness. We have got also natural intuition, but because we have got developed consciousness, we sometimes misuse our opportunity and therefore we suffer.
Everything must be proved by evidence. So these are primarily three evidences. Pratyakṣa, direct perception, pratyakṣa; anumāna; and śruti. Anumāna means I cannot see directly, but by the symptoms I can imagine. That is anumāna. Just like I have seen that in the month of April, May, June, we can get mangoes. That is our direct experience. So similarly, we can say, in the month of January, we can say that "In the month of April, May, June, we shall have mangoes." In the January there is no mango. But because I know, I experienced in my last April, May, June, so similarly, this intuition is nothing but experience of my last life. That is called intuition. The rascals, they say that there is no experience. Whatever life we have got just now, here experience. No. The intuition... Just like a dog's cub born, it is also trying to find out milk from the body of the mother, and exactly in the same place putting his mouth. Or human child also. This is last experience. That proves that life is continual. Just like I came here about two, three years ago? So I immediately, while getting down, I immediately understood, "Oh, the same house." So this is called intuition, means past experience.
General Lectures
So it is natural. If we keep ourself in natural life, it is natural. But because we are developed consciousness, we do not keep in natural life. We accept so many unnatural things. Therefore our knowledge becomes covered by unnatural material nature. So that has to be cleared by superior instruction. Ceto-darpaṇa-mārjanam (CC Antya 20.12). Therefore we have to take; voluntarily we have to accept. Just like a man who lives naturally, he never gets disease. But one who lives... Just like you don't find any disease amongst the animals. But amongst the human beings, oh, there are so many medical science, so many things. Why? They live unnaturally. So if you live naturally there is natural evolution, but if you block the natural course, then how you can do it? If you lit fire and let it go, it will grow. But if you pour water in it, how it will grow? So in the human form of life we do not go according to natural intuition.
Philosophy Discussions
Śyāmasundara: Leibnitz states that there is nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the senses except the intellect itself. In other words, all of our knowledge comes through our senses except the fact...
Prabhupāda: And it is banked in the intellect. That is a fact. That is permanent. Therefore even if we change our body, still we can find out our means of living by that inherent intellect. That is advertised as intuition. But this intuition is previous experience only.
Hayagrīva: He says this can be intuited, but not known.
Prabhupāda: Not known? To foolish man everything is unknown, but to a man who is in knowledge, he knows everything. From the authority or my direct perception, somehow or other the knowledge is there. So "unknown" means that he doesn't care to know. Where to take knowledge he doesn't know, neither he personally knows; therefore it is unknown.
Śyāmasundara: Bergson says that this quality of the soul can only be perceived by man's intuition, not by his senses, but by his intuition.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is nice. Soul cannot be experienced by senses, but we can understand when there is a dead man, we can perceive that there was soul, which is now absent; therefore the body is dead. This is called perception.
Śyāmasundara: The dictionary defines intuition as "immediate apprehension by the mind without any reasoning."
Prabhupāda: That is experience. That is experience. Intuition means mature experience. Just like when as soon as there is mosquito, my hand immediately sees. You can say it is intuition, but it is experience, that when there is mosquito my hand must go there and try to kill him. But the experience is so mature that without consideration the hand goes.
Śyāmasundara: Like instinct?
Prabhupāda: That is instinct, or intuition, or whatever you call it.
Devotee: Just like in the Bhagavad-gītā it explains that a yogi in this life means that in his last life (sic), but in this life it may look like he has intuition towards yoga, but actually...
Prabhupāda: Because he has got experience.
Śyāmasundara: Just like in mathematics they use the concept of intuition a lot, that...
Prabhupāda: A big mathametician, suppose there is a big addition, sum, and one experienced mathematician, he can simply... Sometimes there is some difference. You know that? Generally we have some (indistinct). Is it not? But there are many experienced (indistinct) immediately (indistinct). That is experience.
Devotee: The concept of intuition...
Prabhupāda: (indistinct)
Devotee: (indistinct)
Prabhupāda: This is not intuition, this is experience.
Devotee: Tuition(?) means experience.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Devotee: Or they use another word, "insight." There is one (indistinct) to apprehend something immediately, see into it without any reasoning. They think of it in another sense.
Prabhupāda: That is also true. Just like a child does not know that by touching the fire, his hand will be burnt. His father says, "No, no, no. Don't touch this." He has got experience; the child hasn't got experience. That's all.
Śyāmasundara: He says that evolution through the past history has moved in three stages so far. He says that the first stage of evolution was instinct. The second stage of evolution was intelligence. And now man has moved into the realm of intuition, which is higher than both.
Prabhupāda: Then he agrees that from the lowest stage he has come to the higher?
Śyāmasundara: But you said instinct and intuition were the same thing.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: His description is that instinct is lower because it's almost blind.
Prabhupāda: Belonging to the same category, that's all. One is little superior than the other.
Atreya Ṛṣi: What is realization, Prabhupāda? Realization belongs to the same category?
Prabhupāda: No. Realization means when you come to the truth.
Atreya Ṛṣi: Bergson is using the word "insight" in the same way as "realization."
Prabhupāda: No. Insight is not realization. Insight may be the beginning of realization.
Śyāmasundara: Understanding something. He says that insight or understanding something by intuition is higher than understanding something by the intelligence.
Prabhupāda: (indistinct) (pause)
Devotee: (indistinct) the understanding, understand Bhagavad-gītā by our intelligence, (indistinct).
Devotee: (indistinct)
Śyāmasundara: With the creative process advancement in ever higher levels up into the level of immortality.
Prabhupāda: Yes. You are getting different types of body, and when you are properly or perfectly Kṛṣṇa conscious, then no more this material body; you get spiritual body.
Atreya Ṛṣi: So when we see a speculator having some knowledge, some real knowledge...
Prabhupāda: Not real knowledge.
Atreya Ṛṣi: But some. Maybe some speculator will say, "Yes. I am convinced there is God." He heard that from either, for example, he heard it in his own culture or somewhere indirectly he heard it from God. He didn't make that up. Is that the conclusion?
Śyāmasundara: You mean by intuition can we understand.
Prabhupāda: Yes. One can understand. It is very easy. That I explained in the meeting, that we see, that any way you take, I have got my father, my father has got father, his father, his father, his father—so there must be some original father. That is supreme father.
Hayagrīva: Close? Oh, all right. Bergson maintained that God's reality can only be intuited by mystical experience. The creative effort is of God, if it is not God Himself. Knowledge of God leads to activity not passivity.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Knowledge of God is activity. Just like bhakti, we are twenty-four hours active, not that we are meditating on. So it is service. God says that anyone who preaches this message of Bhagavad-gītā, that is activity.
Hayagrīva: The word..., the word "mystic" is not a very clear word. It can mean so many different things. When he says God's reality can only be intuited by mystical experience, one doesn't really know what this means.
Prabhupāda: No, mystical... One who does not know God, for him it is mystical, but one who knows God, he takes orders from God. This is defined, ānukūlyena kṛṣṇānuśīlanam (CC Madhya 19.167), means favorably working for satisfaction of God. But if one's idea of God is not clear, he thinks it is mystical, but one who has got clear idea of God, clear order from God, then it is not mystical but it is practical.
Śyāmasundara: I think that we have discussed this before under the categories of acquired knowledge and intuitive knowledge, that some knowledge is acquired, experienced; some knowledge is intuitive.
Prabhupāda: So the pigeons or the sparrows or the doves are doing the same thing in India as in America. It does not mean these pigeons have gone to America from India.
Śyāmasundara: So it's intuitive.
Prabhupāda: But because they are Kṛṣṇa's... As Paramātmā is there, within the heart of the pigeon in India and America, they are acting similarly. Therefore original experience comes from God. And He says that "I know everything past, present, and future." That is real experience.
Śyāmasundara: So his definition of reality is pure experience, or...
Prabhupāda: He cannot give any definition of reality because he has not experienced. He has not perfectly experienced, so how he can give the definition of reality? What definition he is giving, that is not reality. He has no experience. He is developing experience. So how he can give a definition of reality?
Śyāmasundara: He says that sense activity occurs on an immediate level of experience, without any conscious awareness of itself, but that true knowledge of reality comes through intuition, and that this reality is called being.
Prabhupāda: Intuity, also past experience. What you call intuition is past experience. Just like when a child is born, by intuition it seeks mother's breast. Because the child does not know where is food, but by intuition, as soon as the mother's breast is given, pushed in its mouth, he is satisfied immediately. So by..., this is called by intuition. But actually it is its past experience. The same child, as the soul, may have taken something else in a different body. So the fact is that the soul is wandering in different types of bodies, and when he comes to a particular type of body, he remembers everything from his past experience. Just like fifty years ago, when I was a businessman, so at that Gauḍīya Math, as soon as I go there, I remember all those things; I am again fifty years back. That is actual... So this, suppose if I say I am going, I do not require to be directed that "Here is this thing, here is that thing." Immediately I enter that town I will understand that if I have to go to the toilet, "Here it is." If I go to the kitchen, "Here it is." So you may call it intuition, but actually it is experience, past experience. There is no, nothing such thing as intuition. That is a vague expression. Actually it is past experience.
Śyāmasundara: Today we are discussing one German philosopher named Edmund Husserl, and he started a school of philosophy known as phenomenology. The definition of phenomenology is "a descriptive analysis of inner experience or subjective processes, or the intuitive study of essences." So the idea behind this philosophy is that to find out the essences of things, to describe the data of our consciousness without any bias or prejudice or..., ignoring all theories and scientific facts, everything, but simply looking at a thing or a phenomenon and trying to understand what it is by analyzing our inward or intuitive knowledge of things.
Prabhupāda: That is Kṛṣṇa consciousness-real consciousness. Just like at the present moment I am thinking "Indian"; you are thinking "American." But if you introspect, you are American or I am Indian, so if you go on researching, you'll come to conclusion that "I am Kṛṣṇa's." That is real platform, when one understands that "I am part and parcel of Kṛṣṇa."
Śyāmasundara: He outlines three techniques for finding the essences of things. The first step is called the phenomenon of phenomenal logical reduction, which begins by excluding consideration of everything transcendent, including all theories or scientific knowledge—everything—only presenting to our immediate senses the objects to be considered, without any preconceived idea of what is that object. So he calls this the suspension of judgment. Suspend all judgment about an object—just look at it, and the object itself will be intuitively understood. This is his idea.
Prabhupāda: Yes. If you study the object scrutinizingly, then you will come to the conclusion, the source of that objective idea.
Śyāmasundara: No this..., I've just outlined the process, and as you say, if we stop at that point it may seem childish. But the idea is that it is a process and that you do inquire next...
Prabhupāda: But he says that we are not concerned with the process. We are simply concerned with the leaf as we see it.
Śyāmasundara: Yes. And then he takes the next step. Now, why is there no leaf at a certain time? And then you go on inquiring in that way. But he...
Prabhupāda: You inquire from whom?
Śyāmasundara: You inquire from your intuition.
Prabhupāda: Just see. This is nonsense.
Prabhupāda: Starting with that, that's all right. But how he'll come to the perfect knowledge? Not by speculation. That is our point.
Śyāmasundara: But...
Prabhupāda: And intuition is also wrong way. You cannot come to the perfect knowledge by speculation or intuition. You must approach a person who knows (indistinct). The same example repeated: you cannot understand who is your father by speculation and intuition. You must approach your mother and ask her, "Who is my father?" That will be perfect knowledge. That is the process. But when..., if you insist on that "Without asking my mother I will understand my father by speculation or intuition," that is nonsense. That is stupidity. That stupid he is.
Śyāmasundara: His idea is first of all you have to understand what is leaf or what is father. Then you can understand where the leaf came from, where the father came from. He wants to start from the point of having no knowledge about anything and building up gradually. So they begin with only the bare phenomenon, understanding what is the bare phenomenon. Because there's no authority for them to ask, these Western philosophers. They don't know where is the authority. So the only authority you can rely on is that which is self-evident, those things, those intuitive...
Prabhupāda: So if there is no authority, then why he is anxious to become authority? Why he's philosophizing? Let everyone learn from intuition, self-study. Why he's writing such books?
Prabhupāda: Sound is a symptom of the sky. When there is sound, there is sky.
Śyāmasundara: So that would be the next logical understanding, intuitive understanding.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: Behind hearing one sound, the proof of that understanding of sound in general is the sky, like that. In an elective process, this is a process for understanding these things.
Prabhupāda: On the whole, his process is mental speculation.
Śyāmasundara: He says that the transcendental ego is better than the...
Prabhupāda: So why not ask the transcendental ego? Why you speculate?
Śyāmasundara: This is what he calls the intuition, transcendental ego, his understanding of things.
Prabhupāda: Anyway, there is a transcendental ego, it is better to consult it.
Śyāmasundara: That's what he's trying to do, but through inward consultation, not that he has an outside source or he does not access to that transcendental ego from...
Prabhupāda: Therefore our Vedic śāstra says the transcendental ego appears externally as spiritual master.
Devotee: Yes. You must be serious.
Prabhupāda: Yes. If you are seeing (indistinct). If you are serious, then that will do, send you to the right person. But that inquiry is there. That is intuition. "I want to know. I want to know."
Śyāmasundara: He wants to search out what is the pattern of evolution, how it will go in the future, and he says that because man has progressed from the instinctive stage to the intelligent stage, and then to the intuitive stage, that he will obtain eventually the immortal stage, that he will become...
Prabhupāda: That is nice. That immortal stage is described in the Bhāgavatam, or the Bhagavad-gītā. Yad gatvā na nivartante (BG 15.6). Progress means you go, go. Gamati iti gatiḥ, or progress.
Hayagrīva: Well they both emphasize intuition or conscience. The interior...
Prabhupāda: The conscience is prepared. If you go on drinking, then your conscience will say it is good, and if you go on chanting, your conscience will say this is good. The conscience is prepared according to association. There is no standard conscience.
Hayagrīva: No standard conscience or intuition.
Prabhupāda: So which one will you follow?
Hayagrīva: They seem to think there is a standard within everyone.
Prabhupāda: So what is that standard? We say the order of Kṛṣṇa is standard. That's all. What Kṛṣṇa says, that is standard, that we have got some standard.
Hayagrīva: He writes, "The knowledge of our own being we have by intuition. The existence of a God, reason dearly makes known to us. We have a more certain knowledge of the existence of a God than of anything our senses can discover." Now how is this? If this is the case, how is it that some men have no conception of God?
Prabhupāda: He has conception of God, practically, but because under the spell of māyā he has become foolish, he tries to cover that conception, that somebody is there. How any sane man can deny that some superior power is there who has created this vast ocean, vast land, vast sky?
| Page Title: | Intuition (Lectures) |
| Compiler: | Visnu Murti, Sureshwardas |
| Created: | 08 of Sep, 2008 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=33, Con=0, Let=0 |
| No. of Quotes: | 33 |