What is the difference between consciousness, conscience and guilt?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so what is the conscience and is it the same as guilt and is it conscience is it not consciousness or is it something different answer there are first let’s understand the concept that whatever we experience it is through our consciousness so even the mind when we say mind says something ultimately it is the consciousness that is invested in it without that even the mind cannot speak anything say for example if the soul is here the mind is here the intelligence is here this is the mind is saying something the intelligence is saying something else when we say like that ultimately the mind and intelligence we could say they’re like they are like program devices and they are like they are the default programs of other software of our subtle body so when they say something so in a when google search gives us some proposition or some some folder comes as autocomplete on our computer so at that time it is a proposition the mind offers so like that the mind offers is a proposition the intelligence offers the proposition the soul and it’s conscious through its consciousness is the observer and the chooser now conscience is basically our innate sense of right and wrong it could be intelligence but in intelligence generally there is some rational analysis of what is right and wrong but in conscience there is just an innate sense that this is not to be done we don’t have to reason why i should not do it say for some of us if we had an opportunity to do some shoplifting now some of us may have been born and brought up this way this is not to be done now some of us may think no no no if i get caught i’ll be disgraced and i’ll be embarrassed and this and that that’s why i better not it’s not worth doing it so there there’s the use of intelligence where you think of the consequence and then you feel i’ll not do this but in conscience it’s not we don’t have to think of the consequences it’s just innately if you know this is not to be done i can’t do this so now where does this conscience come from it can come from our upbringing so somebody who has been born and brought up in a vegetarian family may have a strong sense of conscience that i cannot eat meat somebody who’s been born and brought up in a non-vegetarian family may not have that conscience at all so sometimes our conscience may be culturally culturally determined and that’s why it may not necessarily always be in harmony with what are the universal or eternal principles of right and wrong but in many ways it may be there are some principles that are right and wrong which are more or less universally understood and conscience can at times also be the by the voice of the parmatma speaking through us but conscience is is the sense of right or wrong now where is it stored i would say that the subtle body is made up of mind intelligence and false ego this is just one way of analyzing it’s like a software so another way of analyzing this is a software you could say that there are the operating system there are the pre-installed apps there are the user installed apps that’s that’s all software only but you could analyze the software in another way okay you know these are word processing apps these are these are environment assessing apps or whatever these are more of entertainment apps so now there can be a different way of classifying the apps so we could say the impressions in subtle body can alternatively be classified also as instincts and impulses you know the impulses instincts are like programmed intelligence it is intelligence is there but we don’t really think deeply about it it just comes this is what should be done like some people some say somebody is good at music yes they just they just hear some tune and they just get it this is how it should be this is how this tune i should play music this way so instincts we could say are impressions which are deep within which are positive whereas impulses are negative in the sense that we act unintelligently because of the impulses so similarly conscience our sense of conscience is like a impression stored within us so i would call conscience also something like an instinct although the word instinct has a biological connotation to it but yeah like a reflex but generally we talk about reflexes more in terms of physical dangers but because the conscience is like a moral reflex and when we talk about guilt i think conscience is the voice which can induce a sense of guilt within us so guilt is more like the effect and conscience is the source conscience can also make us feel good i did the right thing over here conscience can also make us aware that you did the wrong thing over there so it’s more of a choice of the guidance about right or wrong is what conscience gives us and the bad feeling that we get when we do wrong that is what we call us guilt so going back to that example that if the wrongdoing is here we are here the wrongdoing like the little finger we are like this little finger and krishna is like the thumb then the ring finger is conscience it stops us from doing the wrong thing but if something stops us from doing the going towards krishna that is not conscience that is more like you could call it pseudo conscience it is the mind masquerading as if as if it’s conscience so there’s a time when a devotee told prabhupada you came in my dream and you told me to take take marijuana and prabhupada says not me it’s maya came in my garb so that is the example sometimes some people may do something terribly wrong and they may say that my conscience told me that’s not your conscience it’s your mind masquerading as conscience that’s why we don’t rely on conscience as an independent or absolute arbiter of right and wrong we want to make sure that conscience is in harmony with scripture then it is the voice of god otherwise