When thinking is done by the soul, how can our thoughts be material?

From Hari Hara Iyer Prabhu: And what about thoughts about Krishna? Aren’t they spiritual?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
It is remarkable that he was able to accept it. Question, how can thoughts be material? You mentioned in your lecture on detivership that Bhaktivinoda Thakur said that we cannot avoid the material. That if we say that we will not worship a form of God, we will just think about God.
And he says even the thoughts are material. So, how exactly are thoughts material? Isn’t it that the brain is the field of activity of the soul? So, the thoughts are coming from the soul. So, aren’t they spiritual? And then further, if there are thoughts about Krishna, won’t they be spiritual? Yes, answer.
It’s an important question. And again, two important things here with respect to differentiation between material and spiritual. There is material in composition and there is material in application.
So, now at our level of consciousness, at present our consciousness is materially conditioned. And when it is materially conditioned, we can perceive only through the body-mind mechanism. And without that, we cannot perceive.
To understand this, consider a person who is watching a movie. And now that person gets so engrossed in watching a movie, that person becomes oblivious to whatever is happening elsewhere. Now take this example further and say that person is not watching a movie but is playing a video game in which nowadays many people have what they call their own avatar.
Avatar is a technical word where they create their own digital replica and then they identify with that digital replica and that digital replica does what they want to do. So, then that person is not only observing but a person is also acting over there in the video game. Now further, suppose that the person is in a completely dark room and say there is a pipe, pipe-like structure between the face of the person and the video game screen.
And similarly, all the senses, the hands, the legs, the ears, the nose, everything is trapped with sensors that connect that person with the virtual reality of the video game. So, that person has no access to any reality apart from the virtual reality of the video game. So, that person may be in a room and that room may have certain things happening, certain sounds happening, certain movement happening but that person is not aware of that at all because all the senses are not just absorbed in terms of individual concentration but are strapped in such a way that a person is not capable of perceiving anything apart from the video game.
So, that is our situation in the material world right now. So, there is the Atma. So, the Atma is like the person playing the video game and this material world, the structure of the screen of the video game and the arena of the video game.
So, that is the body-mind complex. The soul is here. The soul’s consciousness is rooted through the mind into the body and from the body into the material world.
So, now in such a situation the soul is not capable at present of spiritual perception. Just like the person playing the video game is not at that time capable of perceiving anything apart from the virtual world through the virtual sensors that are connected with the senses. The soul is being conscious is the original integral feature of the soul.
So, Chitta is the original consciousness of the soul and Chitta is the embodied consciousness of the soul. So, what we can experience right now is the embodied consciousness. So, Krishna talks about Chitta as a feature of the soul.
Consciousness is coming from the soul. In 2.17 he says that that consciousness is indestructible and he points to that as a symptom of the soul. But then in the 13th chapter in 13.5 he says that etat kshetram samasena savikaram udharitam etat kshetram samasena.
So, chetana is consciousness he says is kshetravikar is a transformation of the material field of activity. So, that means Krishna is talking here about Chitta. So, our Chitta is affected by our our particular kind of body mind apparatus that we have.
It’s like different people may play different video games and accordingly they may have different experiences with their strapped on sensory apparatus. So, like that the soul has different psychophysical nature has acquired bodies with different psychophysical natures and to that extent we have different experiences. But whatever we experience right now is material in the sense that it is that we are not capable of non-material perception right now because our consciousness is locked in the material body mind mechanism.
So, that’s why yes the consciousness comes from the soul and the capacity for thinking comes from the soul but presently our thoughts are also material they are not just about material subject matters which is the case in the most situations but they are also affected through a material physical brain and a subtle material mind and without that we cannot think. So, in that sense our thoughts at present are all material. Now when we come to think about Krishna so here we are not talking about the origin of when you say that my thoughts are material we are not talking about the origin of the thoughts we are talking about the medium and the content of the thoughts like when we say when Bhaktivinoda Thakur is saying that you know that we can have a form of Krishna to think about him so this thinking capacity is coming from the soul but the point is that the form that is manifested is made of matter but it is Krishna manifesting in that matter so the point is that at our present level of consciousness we can’t think of anything without the material body mind mechanism and that’s why because the medium and the object of our thoughts is usually material so we say that our thoughts are material now suppose we think of Krishna then at that time are our thoughts material or are they spiritual? Yes now here in the initial stage of our bhakti our thoughts are spiritual in application but the thoughts are still material in the medium through which they are thought and directed so yes we use our mind, we use our senses to behold Krishna’s form to understand his message, to chant his names and in that sense in application those thoughts are spiritual but in mechanism those thoughts are still being rooted through matter but as we become purified as our attraction to Krishna strengthens then the locking of our consciousness with the material body mind mechanism that loosens and as our consciousness becomes detached from the material body mind mechanism then with that detached consciousness we can start perceiving spiritual reality so that’s why if we look at the lives of great saints say like Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who is Krishna himself manifesting the mood of a great devotee so we see that they exhibit altered states of consciousness where they perceive things that are not perceivable by normal senses so for example they perceive mystical visions of Krishna whereas other people who are there with them, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu would see Krishna and others would not see Krishna over there so how is that? They are not perceiving with their physical senses they are using non-material senses of course sometimes it is possible that Krishna gives his darshan selectively to some people but there are situations where the devotee, their body is still here physically their body is still intact but their consciousness is transported to a higher spiritual level and they perceive spiritual truth with the original spiritual capacity of cognition of the soul so for them the chit is awakened and with the chit awakened they perceive spiritual reality through that chit so right now our thoughts are material because our consciousness is embodied and entrapped in the material body-mind mechanism.
Thank you.