Prabhuji Podcast

Lost in the concept, blind to the Truth

Prabhuji - a writer and avadhūta mystic Season 2 Episode 12

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Prabhuji answers the question: "I am not a person of faith. I would like you to give me a definition or a logic concept of what is God."

- I am not a person of faith.


I would like you to give me a definition


or a logic concept of what is God.


Is it possible to have a


concept in order to know Him?


If we want to know who is Gopal,


Krishna Devi,


Swami Omkarananda,


Swami Ramananda,


Michael, Peter,


and we say a concept like


a rational and political animal.


Even it is right,


you will say nothing


about Gopal in particular.


A concept has no history,


no texture, no perfume,


no narrative.


If you say,


Argentine, India,


United States of America,


Volkswagen,


Mercedes Benz,


et cetera, et cetera.


All these words has no history.


So they don't say,


they don't allow you to


know really nothing about


a country or a people.


If you say Israel,


a country, a nation,


you need a history.


So through the concept,


it is impossible to know


not only God, but nobody and nothing.


When human being talk about God,


they talk about a history.


In the same way that when


you talk about somebody,


you talk about the history.


The human being is an


historical being first of all.


You, what are you without your story?


Who are you without the


narration of your life?


You are a story.


Who is your father, your mother?


for you, a story.


When human beings talk about God,


they talk about a story.


If you see the Hebrew revelation,


We don't say God is a


self-sufficient entity.


We talk about "Elokei Abraham", "Elokei Yitzhak"


"Elokei Yaakov",


the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,


the God of Jacob


(Hebrew) "...that took you from the land of Egypt"


the God who took you from Egypt.


When we talk about God,


we talk about a history.


And it's not only the history of God,


but it's the history


of God with the human.


To talk about God is to


talk about a history.


If we go to India,


we talk about Lillas, pastimes.


To talk about, to associate with Krishna


is to associate with


his Lillas, his pastimes.


In the Shreemad Bhagavatam,


one, first Canto, first chapter, 19 verse,


it is said that we never become tired.


To hear, to talk about the


pastimes of Lord Krishna.


In the Bhagavad Gita, chapter 9, 14,


chapter 9 verse 14, it is said,


(Sanskrit) "satataṁ kīrtayanto māṁ

yatantaś ca dṛḍha-vratāḥ


namasyantaś ca māṁ bhaktyā

nitya-yuktā upāsate"


"satatam" - always, "kirtayanto" - glorifying 


"mam" - me, always glorifying me.


That is the constant


activity of the Mahatmas.


That is that glorification and how


glorificating Krishna,


Shravanam, kirtanam


hearing, glorifying, talking, narrate.


So to talk about Krishna is


to talk about his history,


his pastimes.


That is the way the


devotee relate to God.


It is impossible to know


somebody or God through a concept.


The only way to know God is the symbol.


We can know God only through the symbol.


That has two parts.


What is showing and what is hidden.


Jesus say in John 14, 9,


who saw me,


who saw me, saw the Father.


And that showed Jesus as a symbolic Ente 


Because Jesus is


the visible.


And the Father, the invisible.


The symbol has these two parts.


Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu is the servant,


the perfect servant, but he is


simultaneously Krishna.


And in the Caitanya Charitamrita,


we read in Bengali his


history, his pastimes.


That is the only way to know God.


Then appear the malignant devil,


the malignant demon of Descartes


The malignant demon of the card.


The malignant demon of Descartes


That is the enemy of the phenomenology.


It is a wound in the


individual consciousness


that break


the sensory


perception with the unmanifest.


Because arise the doubt in


the individual consciousness


about what he perceive.


And when that doubt arise,


you can only trust in


what the mind creates.


Only then you can


trust only in the concept.


Try to understand.


The malignant demon of Descartes


Bring the doubt about your perception.


And then your only alternative


is to trust in your own conceptualization


about the thing or what the thing is.


And then the only medicine


can be for this division,


for this break,


can be the symbol of that reintegrate. 


And lead us to know the unmanifest


through the manifest.


The invisible through the visible.


The father through Jesus.


Krishna through Lord Caitanya.


And this is the critic of the Husserl


This is the critic of Husserl.


That we create such a


magnitude of concepts,


we conceptualize reality


until the point that instead of


describe things through concepts,


we cover the thing with the concepts.


It's a conceptualization that cover


instead of describe.


The concepts don't say


anymore something about the things.


But we look how to adapt


the thing with the concepts.


We go in life and we


don't conceptualize people.


We try to introduce them in the box of


our previously made concepts.


No.


You want to know God through concepts.


But not God, nothing, nothing can be


known through concepts.


The only way to know


is with meditation,


the disappearing of


yourself as a concept.


And only then,


in that disappearing,


to really know by


dissolving yourself as a concept


in reality,


in God,