In a dream we see so many things that have nothing to do with us. This is our nighttime dream, and we recognize it when we wake up. Unfortunately generally we go back into our daytime dream. “I am this.” “I am that.” “I am white.” “I am black.” “I am American.” And so forth.
William James’s “Soul Theory” seemed imposing at first—as imposing as William James Hall must have looked to my grandmother. As it turned out, James was pretty close to home. by Mathuresa Dasa Gammy, my grandmother, had a passing acquaintance of sorts with William James, the great American psychologist and philosopher. She owned a two-century-old white […]
Satyaraja dasa addresses a gathering at the Whole Life Expo in New York City. Thank you for allowing me to speak at the 1985 Whole Life Expo. I would like to ask you all to reflect for a moment on the implications of the word whole. What does it mean to be truly whole? That […]
There are many philosophers. Some of them think the Absolute Truth is impersonal, and others say it is personal. In India the impersonalists are known as Mayavadis and the personalists are known as Vaisnavas. So, here Lord Krsna resolves the controversy about whether the Absolute Truth is impersonal or personal.
Do we have free will? Are we all on the same path? Are we going in the same direction? Will we all reach the same destination?
Our modern society, with its emphasis on science and technology, would certainly seek to view itself as being rooted in reason rather than in faith. Faith, after all, connotes unquestioning belief and seems at variance with the “scientific method.”
In brief, a believer in Theosophy accepts as a fact that, “in and through all things, a Directing Will is at work, with a plan of Action from moment to moment towards a predominated end.” That is the version of the Theosophist in a different way as the Vaisnavite works. The predominated end is to serve the purpose of the Predominator Absolute.
Plato believed society can enjoy prosperity and harmony only if it places people in working categories or classes according to their natural abilities. He thought people should find out their natural abilities and use those abilities to their fullest capacity—as administrators, as military men, or as craftsmen.
Even in the so-called normal condition, the pleasure derived from sexual intercourse is simply frustrating and insignificant. For ordinary men attached to the materialistic way of life, their only pleasure is sexual intercourse.
German pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) thought that nirvana, (freedom from suffering) means becoming desireless—putting an end to our will. But His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada disagrees.
Atheist-existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre writes that because man wants to be God but cannot, he is a “useless passion” in a universe that has no purpose—and thus, he is always in anxiety.
Soren Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, said we have to make the leap of faith and he saw the goal as God. He wrote, “There is a God—His will is made known to me in holy scripture and in my conscience.”
Soren Kierkegaard was a mid-nineteenth-century Danish philosopher who is generally regarded as the father of existentialism. A devout Christian, he believed that religious truth is not innate within man, and that man must therefore receive this truth from God.
Friedrich Nietzsche thought of the “superman” as someone totally self-controlled, unafraid, simple, aware, self-reliant… and nonexistent. But here His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada tells us about real supermen—who they are and how they get that way.
Thomas Aquinas compiled the entire Church doctrine in Summa Theologica, which constitutes the official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church. He also systematized a good deal of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy.
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates uses the allegory of the cave to illustrate the nature of man’s attachment to the illusory things of this material universe. He tells of men living in the depths of an underground cave, the entrance of which is open to the light.
Logic and reason are useful in the search for the Absolute Truth. But they’re not enough to obtain perfect knowledge, we must overcome four basic human defects.
Surrendering all unto the Supreme Lord is a difficult if not impossible task for must people. This is because they are not aware of the peace such surrender brings.
The soul can never be cut into pieces by any weapon, nor can he be moistened by the water, nor withered by the wind. This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and can neither be burned nor dried.
Realization is not something we learn in a book or hear in a lecture. Realization is living the life for which man is intended. Realization does not imply withdrawal; realization is leading life and meeting destiny with opened eyes.