Understanding the unborn’s understandings 2 – How can the embryo know God

[Bhagavatam class on 3.31.14 at ISKCON, Denver, USA]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, any questions or comments? On broadly, the theme of how can the soul know about God? And, I started by talking about how we all may learn many things, but that’s informational knowledge. Functional knowledge cannot just be learned.
The potentiality has to be there. So, for humans to learn language, the potentiality is already there, and then we learn it. So, Prabhupada also says, parents can teach child to walk, but the child has the capacity to walk.
Has the capacity in the sense of latent potential. So, similarly, in every soul, love for Krishna is potentially present. Knowledge of Krishna is potentially present.
And, it’s not exactly dormancy. Sometimes, some things are not accurately conveyed in translation. That is just the nature of idiomatic usage of different languages.
So, dormancy means everything is fully present, it just needs to be active. Whereas, potentiality means, it’s present in seed, but it needs to be developed. So, in the case of Krishna Prem, or in the case of knowledge of God, it is, the point is that, it’s like a seed which is given to us, and our heart is fertile, and then the seed has to grow.
So, it’s something which is potential, which has to be developed. So, then I discuss, if this potential is innate to the soul, then why is it not manifest in animals? So, the essential difference between humans and animals is not just that, say, the human brain is a much more sophisticated instrument, or in the human mind, the impressions are of a different nature than the body, than the animal mind. But that, the soul’s consciousness itself is more involved.
If we consider soul’s consciousness to be like an energy coming out of it, then it is light energy, which enables the Gyan Indriyas, the knowledge acquiring senses, to perceive. And then it is also like electrical energy, which enables the Karma Indriyas, the acting senses, to function. So, this, the soul, the energy that is coming out from the soul, the light and the electrical energy, that is much more developed, evolved in a human body than in an animal body.
It’s like you may have a better, much more sophisticated weapon to attack, but it’s heavier. You need the strength also to operate it. So, in the human body, as Prabhupada uses one of the verses, the human soul, the human soul says, the soul is always transcendental, but the soul, the human body has the capacity to say these things.
And then he talked about even if you say the potential for the soul is there, and that potential can be manifest because in the human body things are compatible. But when does it manifest? So, it could be circumstantial. Basically, we don’t think about God and higher realities as a question of why do we exist? All living beings ask how do I exist? How can I live? Why do I live? So, this transition from how to why happens when the way we are living becomes either unfulfilling or unbearable.
That means, I set some goals and I just can’t achieve them. And then, I feel life is unbearable. Or, whatever goals are presented before me, I just don’t find them appealing.
At that time, the soul starts inquiring. So, in this case, for the child, it is situations have become so unbearable that the soul is turning towards Goddesses. Circumstantial devotion.
Circumstantial devotion when it is focused and directed becomes intentional devotion. And then, eventually, it will become a transcendental devotion. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna.