Is it better to be overwhelmed by knowledge or by ignorance?
Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
what is a healthy situation to be overwhelmed by our ignorance or to be overwhelmed by our knowledge actually it is best to be overwhelmed by Krishna and depending on time, place, circumstance sometimes awareness of our ignorance is what takes us towards Krishna you know this world is so big this philosophy is so big I don’t know Krishna, I just surrender to you sometimes becoming aware of how little I know that can inspire us to surrender to Krishna sometimes understanding the profundity of the philosophy the more we understand oh this is like this, this is like that the more things fall in place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fall in place at that time, the more the knowledge inspires us to surrender to Krishna so we see both examples in Shastra in the Chaitanya Charitamruta it is said that that saying that this is philosophy, I won’t study this I am simply interested in Rasa no, understand the philosophy by understanding the philosophy what will happen we will understand that Krishna is the only ultimate reality all these attractive things, they are insubstantial so that way so sometimes the philosophy itself will inspire us to surrender to Krishna so deeper emergent philosophy will inspire us to surrender to Krishna and other times just awareness that Krishna is so great we see in the Brahma V Mohan Leela when Brahma becomes bewildered and then he is offering prayers to Krishna then he says Krishna it may be possible for someone to count the number of atoms in the whole universe but they cannot count your glories, the only thing they can do is surrender to you so in that case, awareness of how little we know that inspires us to surrender so basic principle of bhakti is so sometimes knowing how little we know can be favorable for us to surrender to Krishna but sometimes little knowledge can be unfavorable because if there is little knowledge we may feel that this is also attractive that is also attractive in that case, more knowledge philosophically understanding what is actually substantial that can help us in surrendering to Krishna so if we keep the purpose of going closer to Krishna the purpose of focusing on Krishna as central then how to appropriately approach knowledge or our lack of knowledge we will be able to do that properly sometimes people may feel, oh I know so little I will simply surrender to Krishna now if that inspires one to surrender to Krishna that is very good but that shouldn’t become an excuse for intellectual laziness thinking that I don’t want to study this philosophy no if somebody has an intellectual capacity somebody has intellectual energy then they can exercise that intellectual capacity and by that their conviction will improve so by keeping our purpose clear we can use either our knowledge or our lack of knowledge both for moving closer to Krishna does that answer your question?