Isn’t the skeptical antenna the same as the doubting faculty?
Transcript
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Is the doubting faculty same as the skeptical antenna that you mentioned in the Gita Delhi article about activating a skeptical antenna? Answer, not exactly same, because the doubting faculty can be used for various purposes. We can use it to doubt Maya, we can use it to doubt Krishna. These are the broad two divisions of the use for all our resources, including the doubting faculty.
When the Gita Delhi article talks about the skeptical antenna, it is primarily talking about the metaphor to help us develop a tool for using. That means when we contemplate on the point that we need to be skeptical and then draw from nature the example that there is a cautioning device in insects called an antenna, or alerting or warning device that we can similarly have for ourselves is a skeptical antenna. So now the question may come up is that animals or rather insects have the antenna as an appendage of their body naturally.
So is it possible for us to have a skeptical antenna? So for that I am drawing the point from the Bhagavatam that we do have a doubting faculty and the doubting faculty is a part of the intelligence. So we use the doubting faculty to create our own skeptical antenna. What does that mean to create or activate our own skeptical antenna? All of us may have our own individual temptations that trouble us and we may need our own mechanisms by which to alert us.
So for example, I may develop my skeptical antenna by making it a part of my reflex action that whenever I feel tempted, I will recite some words from the Srimad Bhagavatam. Someone else may take up some phrase from English and someone else may just decide to breathe deeply. Someone else may just decide to chant Hare Krishna or to sing Hare Krishna.
So all of us will develop our skeptical antenna in different ways. We may use certain verbal, mental, physical actions to activate the skeptical antenna. But underlying all of these and unifying all of them in the sense of there being an underlying commonality is that all of us have a doubting faculty.
It is only because of our doubting faculty that we are able to be skeptical. Without the doubting faculty, none of us can be skeptical and none of us can have a skeptical antenna. So when it is said use the doubting faculty to develop a skeptical antenna, that means that just like a warrior has a fighting ability, but every warrior may have his or her own weapons that are best suited, that that person is best at.
So then this fighting spirit is combined with a particular weapon and then the warrior fights. Similarly, the doubting faculty is in a sense our capacity to question the perceptions that we get from the world and then to that capacity we have internally. But the way we activate that capacity, because often it is lulled into silence and sleep by the effect of the contemporary culture around us.
So we can activate it and utilize it by a certain set of reflex actions. So they are the skeptical antenna. So in that sense, doubting faculty is the common denominator that all of us have and skeptical antenna is the specific mechanism that we will use to activate our own doubting faculty.