Freud's Father Complex and the Ultimate Father
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Chapters
Critique of Freud and the Fatherhood of God
And on Sigmund Freud, you discussed with Śyāmasundara Prabhu the sexual aspects, but not the theological aspects.
Freud wrote two basic books on religion, Future of an Illusion, and there was a great deal, and Leonardo da Vinci, a study in psychosexuality.
He writes: "Psychoanalysis, which has taught us the intimate connection between the father complex and belief in God, has shown us that the personal God is psychologically nothing but an exalted father."
Youthful persons, youth, youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down. So he sees God as basically a father complex arising out of the need of help of the little child.
The little child, how he can give up the idea of father? How Mr. Freud can give up the idea? Was he not born by a father? He feels that from the sky. Did he? He feels that this is childish. The childish, what is that childish?
He had no father? He had a father, but he believed in ultimate emancipation. No, ultimate Mr. Freud... First of all, he has to think whether he had his father or not. Or his father's father was not there.
And go on searching out: without father, how one can exist, one can come into being? So if we cannot understand this simple philosophy, what kind of philosophy he had? And he had his father, his father had his father.
So this is a fact. Even though he might not have seen his dead grandfather, but he was there. That is a fact. So if you go on researching fathers, father's father, where you come, there is no father?
Which is that point when you can say, "Now here there is no father"? And if you actually come to that point, that here is a person of whom there is no father, then there is God.
He says, "After all, is not the destiny of childishness to be overcome?" Man cannot remain a child forever. What is his definition of childishness? That he's childish, or he's condemning others?
Unless you can deny that you are born, you are born without father, then you are a child, you do not have conception how you are in existence without father. What is this argument?
Everything must be argued since... this is simple logic I am putting forward. Who can refute it?
That you have a father, your father had a father, his father had a father, father, father— the disciplic succession of fathers. How can you deny the father?
Therefore, the ultimate father, the supreme father, is also a father, but He is the Supreme Father. That is defined.
So the father conception of God is very practical, and it is explained in the Gītā: ahaṁ bīja-pradaḥ pitā. So how can we deny it if he's a sane man? Who can deny? Is there any person to deny?
Well, he says man's hopelessness remains, and with it his father-longing, and the God's hopelessness and no hopelessness. Hopelessness. But suppose he is philosophizing. How can we not avoid the conception of father?
That is insanity. This is a very simple thing. Father's father's, his father's father, and when you go to the Supreme Father, that is God.
Well, he felt that the idea of God arose out of man's hopelessness, and the gods... their hopelessness is already there. That's a fact.
The same logic that we are finding difficulty, since in this materialistic world we have threefold miseries: miserable condition of this body, this mind, miseries offered by other living entities, the natural disturbances.
So how can you say there is a very smooth life? That's not possible. And above this there is old age, birth, death. So hopelessness is always there.
But if one is a very big rascal, he is hoping against hope and planning that we shall overcome all these difficulties by this plan, that plan, that plan. That is not possible.
The nature is so strong, whatever plan you imagine, that will smash into pieces by simply kicking over your face.
So that you are hopeless, but you are so shameless that in spite of becoming hopeless in every step, you are hoping against hope to make adjustment to these material things. You are so rascal and foolish.
Hopelessness is always there in every step. And still, out of insanity, you're trying to adjust another hopeless plan. He felt that the Father God is an infantile wish.
He says the whole thing is so patently infantile, so incongruous with reality, that to one whose attitude—what is his reality?
Infantile conception of God, but what he is except the child? He is also planning something that is also childish. That's how he becomes more than a child.
He cannot give us any definite program by which, uh, everyone will be hopeful. Well, he felt psychoanalysis was the answer. So that is jugglery of what psychoanalysis—nobody will understand, a common man.
Psychoanalysis, if it is meaning that there is a supreme controller. That is psychoanalysis. We see everywhere a controller. So it is natural—this is psychoanalysis—that there is a supreme control. That is natural.
Why defy this fact?
He says: "If one attempts to assign religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition as a parallel to the neuroses which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity."
Defining Religion as Divine Law and Knowledge
The difficulty is he's passed, uh, without any knowledge of religion. He had no idea. He has seen so many sentimental religious systems and he has concluded like that. But first of all, let you understand what is religion.
Religion cannot come into existence without understanding the idea of God. Religion without God cannot be religion. According to the Vedic system, religion means the order given by God.
But if one has no conception of God, then there is no question of religion. So godless religion is certainly—it is a sentiment; that is not religion. So he has studied something which is not religion.
Therefore he has got so many doubts about religion. The real religion is that there is God, that is a fact, and whatever orders the God gives, that is religion. See, he does not know what is God.
How he knows what order He's giving? So for him, everything is not religion. It's often been said of Freud that he tried to repress within himself religious feelings that were definitely there.
He says, I cannot... In a letter, he wrote: "I cannot rid myself of certain skeptic materialistic prejudices, and I would carry them over into the research of the occult." He considered religion the occult.
Occult, what is it? Something obscure. It is not obscure. It is... everything is obscure to the foolish person. So he is a foolish person; he does not know what is God. How do you know what is religion?
Our definition of religion is the order given by God. But if I do not know what is God, then how can I take the order? That is a defeat.
The Soul and the Cycle of Material Existence
In the same letter he writes: "I am entirely incapable of considering the survival of the personality after death even as a mere scientific possibility.
I think, therefore, it is better if I continue confining myself to psychoanalysis."
But he said psych... he is... he is deficient in psychoanalysis also because he is practically seeing in day, in his daily life, that a child is growing to become a boy, boy is going to be a man.
But the body is changing and the soul is there. So if he has no sense to understand this, what kind of psychoanalysis is it? The body of the child is finished, then he accepts another body. So how can you deny it?
You say it has grown. I say that it is finished. What is the difference? Actually, the child's body is not there. So you can speak in a different language. But when the child's body is finished, there is the boy's body.
When the boy's body is finished, the young man's body. So body is changing. But still, my child, my son, John, I still call him John, although he has changed his body.
Because I know my son, the soul, John, whom I call John, he is there. So, the soul is there, the body is changing; we are experiencing every day. So what kind of psychoanalyst he is?
And he cannot understand the simple truth. And still he says, "I cannot believe in the eternity of..." So how poor in thoughts he is maintaining, and he is proclaiming himself a philosopher; what kind of philosophy?
He wrote a book called "Beyond the Pleasure Principle". And in it he wrote, "The goal of all life is death." For him, death is the cessation of suffering. That's all. That means you... then why are you afraid of death?
Why you go to the medical man? When you are diseased, you are afraid of dying; why go to the medical man? If death is ultimate happiness, then why are you trying to avoid death? What is this psychoanalysis?
This theory... Freud's principal disciple was the famous psychologist Carl Jung. They had an argument, and Freud once fainted. And when he came to, his words were, Freud's words were, "How sweet it must be to die."
And in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle", he writes: "The most universal endeavor of all living substance, namely to return to the quiescence of the inorganic world... We have all experienced how the greatest pleasure attainable by us, that of the sexual act, is associated with the momentary extinction of a highly intensified excitation."
Thus, the pleasure principle, the sex act itself, is preliminary to the most highly desired nirvana, the extinction of desires, and ultimately the extinction of the life functions themselves.
Thus the pleasure principle seems actually to support... So, when is it pleasure? When it's dead? What is that pleasure?
Well, there is pleasure, and then when pleasure is cultivated, culminated... That pleasure is in the stone.
So why you are... inorganic? He spoke of the return, the quiescence of the inorganic world, to become like... Why you are philosophizing? Just commit suicide and become a stone like that.
Why you are philosophizing, taking so much pain? Because you... commit suicide and immediately become silent, then that's happiness. Why you are bothering yourself and giving a headache to others?
The best thing is to commit suicide and become dead, and all happiness is there. As some rascals do that, that by committing suicide he'll solve all problems. So this is an easy process. Commit suicide.
Why you are writing so many books? If ultimate happiness is to become dead, do that immediately.
Overcoming Sense Gratification Through Spiritual Discipline
But isn't materialistic pleasure, he says, serves the death instinct? But doesn't materialistic pleasure just bring out more craving? For he is writing death as the ultimate pleasure, is it not?
Death as the ultimate goal of pleasure. That's all that is coming to immediately. Why are you writing so many books? And he thought that this was the—the hog has got a very good facility.
The monkey has got very good facility for sex life. And he is thinking this is the ultimate goal, and then sleep— that is going on. So if—if such life is, um, so big thing, uh, the hogs, they have got good facility.
The pigeons, they have got very good facility. Uh, uh, I think every hour they have four times, six times, these pigeons. Uh, so that is—you become a pigeon, you
pray to God, then, "Make me a pigeon, make me a hog." Uh, why you are becoming philosopher? Not to become a pig. Nāyaṁ deho deha-bhājāṁ nṛloke kaṣṭān kāmān arhate viḍ-bhujāṁ ye.
They are living simply for sense gratification. And for that purpose, working so hard. That is the business of the pig. That is not the business of a human being. Human being is tapasyā. Tapasyā means stop sexual life.
That is tapasyā. Tapasā brahmacaryeṇa. So our philosophy is different from his philosophy. And—and actually we are suffering. The pig has got good facilities for, um, sex.
Does it mean that's the idea of life—eating stool and having sex without discrimination? Uh, they have no discrimination whether mother, sister, daughter— that is hog life.
Uh, if sex life is final pleasure, then the hog is in the greatest pleasure. He has no social obligation. He has no discrimination. But our philosophy says, "Don't become a hog." Become a saintly man.
He says everything in our life is an accident from our very origin through the meeting of the spermatozoa and ovum— an accident which nevertheless participates in the lawfulness and fatalities of nature, lacking only the connection to our wishes.
He was so foolish that you cannot avoid an accident. You are subjected to so many accidents. So what you'll do with your philosophy if accident is such a problem? How you make adjustments with your philosophy?
Stop talking philosophy, accept accidents and suffer.
Concerning sex, Freud explored the realm of infantile sexuality and found a definite sexual nature in the earlier stages of childhood; he concluded that these sexual activities in childhood were normal phenomena, and finally concluded with his famous dictum: "In a normal sex life no neurosis is possible."
That is also his foolishness because a child can be trained to become a—he'll have no inclination for sex. It depends on the child's training.
The unscrupulous father and mother, they enjoy sex life before the child and they imitate it. I have seen it. I have seen it that in Agra, the two small children, and my one—they don't know.
The female child laid down as a male child, just like she has seen father, mother, sex. He does not do anything, but he is imitating. So imitating, imitating—this sex life is there, it becomes prominent.
And similarly you train the children not to have any sense of sex life. He'll become brahmacārī. So he has not studied; he has seen some abominable families' children, so they learn these things.
Whatever you teach, they imitate. So if you keep the children aloof from this sex life society, he remains a brahmacārī. There is many instances. That is Vedic civilization.
The children are immediately, as soon as four or five years old, is sent to the guru-kula and under the discipline. He forgets sex life practically. But still he has little—that is natural when he is a young man.
So the guru sees that still tendency for sex life. He's allowed to go and marry and become a gṛhastha.
Otherwise, if he is perfectly controlled over sex life, he becomes sannyāsī, vānaprastha the whole life, just like Bhīṣma Mahārāja. He was never married. So he could—that can be said. Why he is saying the child?
Child can be trained even without sex. They can live throughout their whole life without any disturbance. That can be trained. It is a question of education.
He felt that sexual repression would be harmful, but sexual sublimation can often be beneficial. Uh, sublimation, he says that sublimation. Blah sex in sex. Sublimation is... well, let me read.
The excessive excitations from individual sexual sources are discharged and utilized in other spheres so that no small enhancement of mental capacity results from a predisposition which is dangerous as such.
In other words, he didn't believe in total sexual freedom as it's conceived today, but that a man would be better, instead of trying to totally deny the sex drive, to try to redirect it perhaps in artistic activity or in study or in some other activity.
Not to deny, that means in one word to divert attention. That is brahmacārī.
That is recommended in the Vedic culture, that from the very beginning of his life, divert his attention for spiritual activities, he forget about sex life.
That is the experience: not only a trained-up child, even a grown-up person, if he takes to Kṛṣṇa consciousness seriously, he also forget sex life. So that is possible by training. One can forget sex life.
That is the experience of Yamunācārya. He expressing: yad-avadhi mama cetaḥ kṛṣṇa-pādāravinde. He says that since my... my mind and attention has been diverted to Kṛṣṇa consciousness activities,
as soon as I think of sex life, I spit on it. That is possible. It is simply a question of training. And if one indulgence in sex life without any restriction, the physical problem is that he will be impotent.
He'll not be able to, even though he has got sex organs, he will not be able to use it. That is nature's way of punishing. There are so many impotent persons. So it is a question of training.
So the basic training is to... train the... small child from the very beginning of his life how to avoid sex life. Uh, that cannot be artificially done. But there is a process of training.
By accepting the training, one can remain without sex life throughout the whole life. That is possible. Well, he felt it couldn't be stamped out.
If you try to stamp out the sex drive, it will manifest itself in neuroses and undesirable... He does not know perfectly anything, and he is philosophizing. That is a defect.
Not only in him, I find this in all mental speculators, that everything is possible, but our Krishna consciousness movement is different from his imagination. Our philosophy is that so long as one has the sex inclination, he'll have to accept a material body.
As soon as he accepts a material body, he becomes implicated with so many miserable conditions of material existence. But there is another life which is not material, that is spiritual.
If one is trained up to accept the spiritual life, there will be no more botheration of this material existence. That he does not know. Now, that he can understand.
But there is a thing that can be found in the Vedic civilization. Not this meat-eating civilization, it is not possible.
The Relationship Between Science and Absolute Truth
Concerning religion, he said of the reality value of most of them, of most religions we cannot judge; just as they cannot be proved, neither can they be refuted. But he does not know what is religion.
That is a defect in it. We say religion means the order given by God. Simple thing. But he has no conception of God, how he can get orders from God? Therefore, how he can understand what is religion?
He has got some ideas of pictures, which is, in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, kaitavaḥ, cheating. Cheating religion. That is not religion. Religion means just like a law. Law means the order given by the government.
You cannot manufacture law at your home. Similarly, if somebody manufactures law at home and says that 'I have manufactured one law, you take,' who sane man will accept that law? So you keep your law in your pocket.
Similarly, the so-called religious system which is not given by God, that is just like outlaws. They are not religion. He has simply studied which is not religion. That is his defect. Real religion is the law given by God.
So he has no conception of God, how he can understand what is religion? He has studied only pseudo-religion, cheating religion. Therefore he is dissatisfied.
He said the riddles of the universe only reveal themselves slowly to our inquiry. To many questions science can as yet give no answer, but scientific work is our only way to the knowledge of external reality.
Science is no illusion, but it would be an illusion to suppose that we could get anywhere else what it could not give us.
In other words, religion is an illusion, but the answer lies in science, that science will eventually answer all of these questions that religion attempts to answer through—
No, the scientists are, because of that, when they're imperfect in their knowledge, they... what I might say, that is unscientific and without any basic principle of level.
First of all, we have to learn what is the objective of knowledge. What we are searching for in knowledge, the knowledge that... uh, Vedānta. Vedānta: veda means knowledge, anta means ultimate.
Unless you come to the ultimate point of knowledge, your knowledge is imperfect, insufficient. So the ultimate knowledge is God.
So these people, they cannot define any God, they cannot believe in God; that means they have not reached to the ultimate point of knowledge. God is a fact, but we do not have any clear idea what is that God.
That means our knowledge has not reached up to the point of clear understanding of God. So unless one is able to reach that point, everything what he calls knowledge is imperfect. God is there, that's a fact.
And knowledge means to go to that point. If one has not reached to that point, his knowledge is imperfect. So how he can give us something conclusively if he has imperfect knowledge?
Let him be a philosopher or scientist; if he has got imperfect knowledge, what is the value of his scientific knowledge when his knowledge is imperfect? So our policy is we don't accept knowledge from an imperfect person.
We have received knowledge from the perfect person. Krishna is accepted; the Supreme Personality of Godhead is perfect. And anyone who follows Krishna's knowledge, he is also perfect.
Our policy is to accept knowledge from the perfect person, not from the speculators. The speculators have only imperfect knowledge. Therefore, whatever they say, they are all imperfect. Maybe to some extent it is perfect.
But it is not perfect knowledge.
He writes, "As it is a delicate task to decide what God has Himself ordained, and what derives rather from the authority of an all-powerful parliament or a supreme judicial decision, it would be an indubitable advantage to leave God out of the question altogether and to admit honestly the purely human origin of all cultural laws and institutions."
He has no clear conception of God because God has to take power from some parliament. God does not take power from anyone; He is God.
That is described in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam: janmādy asya yato 'nvayād itarataś cārtheṣv abhijñaḥ svarāṭ. And that the Supreme God, the Supreme Truth, Brahman, and He knows everything.
He knows everything in detail and was found in the abhijña, means completely in awareness. Then the question may be raised that how He got this complete knowledge, from whom He received; the answer is immediately: svarāṭ.
Svarāṭ means independent. That is God. If one has to take knowledge from Mr. Freud, then he is not God. Anyone, if you come to that person, that He is independent, is parāsya śaktir vividhaiva śrūyate svābhāvikī.
He hasn't got to become perfect by some process or from some authority. That is God. He is all-perfect, but automatically; that is God. So anyone who is trying to be perfect, he is not God.
One is that—that is in the history we find in the history of the life of Krishna. When He was a three-month-old child, He could kill a big giant like Pūtanā. That is automatic.
Either as a child or as a young man or as an old man, the godly power is there. Nowadays these so-called yogīs are there becoming God by meditation.
But the three-month-old child in the lap of His mother, how He became God? The God is God always. He hasn't got to learn it from anyone. That is svarāṭ, independent. These people have no conception of God.
Therefore they are simply speculating and misleading persons. God is not the subject matter of speculation.
If we want to know God, then we must know it from God Himself or a person who knows it. That is the direction in the
Bhagavad-gītā: tad viddhi praṇipātena paripraśnena sevayā, upadekṣyanti te jñānaṁ jñāninas tattva-darśinaḥ. Tattva-darśinaḥ: one who has learnt about God as fact, as you see eye to eye and you believe it.
Similarly, one who has seen God eye to eye, you have to take lessons of God from him. Let's say Arjuna. Arjuna is talking with God. So if you have to understand God, then understand how Arjuna has taken. So
Arjuna says: paraṁ brahma paraṁ dhāma pavitraṁ paramaṁ bhavān, puruṣaṁ śāśvataṁ divyam. So we have to take lessons from Arjuna, not from Mr. Freud, who has no knowledge of God. That is it.
Education and Inquiry Into the Supreme Controller
Concerning early religious training, he writes: "So long as a man's early years are influenced by the religious thought inhibition and by the lore one derived from it, as well as by the sexual one, we cannot really say what he—that is man—is actually like."
So he feels that early religious education actually warps a man's development, that you can't say what man can truly be like if you educate him to believe in a transcendental being.
And that's a fact: if a child is given a lesson that there is a supreme being controlling the whole cosmic situation, what is wrong there? You should learn it.
But Freud felt that this inhibited man's natural development, that you can't know what man is naturally like as long as you inculcate him with these religious ideas. Then why do you send your son to school for education?
Well, he felt that some education—there has to be education. So therefore, but they're following this line of thought now in the schools because they've cut out religious education. In human life, to learn
about God, that is the only business. Because in other lives, the animals like cats and dogs, they cannot understand. But in the human form of life there is possibility. That is the first education.
The animals, they cannot think of God, but in the human society, why there are religions? Not in the animal society. To understand God, that is the civilized form of human civilization.
He agrees with Marx in his belief that religion is a form of narcotic. He says the believer that is in God, but past these men, do not know what is the deity. That is the defect.
Either Marx or Freud and so many, uh, so-called philosophers, they do not know what is religion. They have to learn what is religion. Without knowing what is religion, why they are talking of religion and God?
They have no knowledge about it. He says the believer will not let his faith be taken from him, neither by argument nor by prohibitions. And even if it did succeed with some, it would be a cruel thing to do. No.
Anything artificial teaching, that is cruelty. So that is being done by Mr. Freud also. Artificially, he's testing on sex and death and so on and so on. But, uh, that is not life.
Uh, life is that: to understand the simple truth. That's like who was protesting against father conception? That Mr. Johnson. Right. Right. Father. So how you can avoid this father conception?
If you mislead people, "there is no father conception," that is not education, that is misleading. Father is there, everyone knows. That is not philosophy. That is cruelty. A man is naturally believing that there is father.
And there is father's father. And he is diverting his attention from this natural belief, so this is cruelty. He's committing cruelty to human understanding. Simple understanding.
He says, "I disagree with you when you go on to argue that man cannot in general do without the consolation of the religious illusion, that without it he would not endure the troubles of life, the cruelty of reality."
Man cannot do without education. Without education, a man remains an animal. Therefore in the human society, there is school, college, institution, teacher, not in the animal society.
So the principle is that man is meant for being learned or being educated. That you cannot deny. That man's life should not be like cats and dogs, simply eating, sleeping, mating, and dying. And that is not man's life.
Man's life is to become advanced in knowledge and education. And as I have already described, the ultimate knowledge is to understand God.
If he is so-called educated without any understanding of God, then his education is imperfect. You can deny the existence of God. But if God conception is there in the human society...
Some may accept it, some may not accept it, that's another thing. But the conception of God, the whole civilized world, they've got some type of religion. Either you become Christian or Buddhist or Hindu or Muslim.
Religion means there is some cultivation of knowledge to understand God. And to understand God is the ultimate knowledge. That is called Vedānta. Vedānta means knowledge. And the ultimate knowledge. Vedānta.
Ultimate knowledge is what is that? That is the beginning of Vedānta education. What is that ultimate knowledge? Athāto brahma jijñāsā.
The Vedānta begins with this word: now this human form of life is to acquire the ultimate knowledge. Athāto brahma, Brahman means the ultimate. So Absolute. Now it is the time to understand.
So far understanding our self, the dog also knows. You don't require to give him any education. So nobody is given education. Now of course they are a doctor. But there is a Bengali proverb.
How to cry and how to enjoy sex, it doesn't require any education. When you are aggrieved, you cry automatically. When there is sex impulse, you enjoy automatically. It doesn't require any Mr. Troy.
Without the help of any educator, everyone knows—cats, dogs, animals, human beings—everyone knows how to enjoy sex life. It doesn't require any education.
So the Vedānta said that this kind of education is there in the animal kingdom also. Sex philosophy. There is no question of philosophy. It is already there; anyone can enjoy it.
Now, at this time, now this human life is to inquire about the absolute truth, Brahman, because that is the ultimate knowledge. This ultimate knowledge can be acquired by the human being, not by the cats and dogs.
So a philosopher without any knowledge of God, doubtful knowledge of God, he is imperfect. He's not even a human being. He is cats and dogs. God means Supreme Controller. So everything we see is controlled.
The government is a controller. But the Supreme Controller there must be. That's a fact. Now, if you want to know it clearly, then be educated. That is being done. That is very reasonably said, that what is that Brahman?
Well, the immediate answer is: janmādy asya yataḥ. God means, the absolute truth means, Brahman means from whom everything has emanated. We see everything is emanating.
Just like we see the trees are emanating from the earth. And by eating the fruit, flowers, grains of the animals, human beings, they're also emanating. So the ultimate cause is this earth. We are emanating.
We can say that I am emanating from my mother. So if the mother does not eat, then how her body can continue and how she can give another body within the womb?
So ultimately we can see that the earth is the source of emanation of everything. Then we inquire: wherefrom the water comes, and wherefrom the earth comes, wherefrom the air comes, wherefrom the fire comes?
This is philosophy. Then ultimately when you come to the supreme point of emanation, janmādy asya yataḥ, here is the person, here is the source of everything. So that we must know.
Simply in the middle, struggling for understanding, without any perfect knowledge. What is the value of this philosophy and knowledge? There is no value.
You must come to the ultimate goal, the ultimate source of everything. By accident, perhaps, if that there is no knowledge. Definite knowledge. Definitely Bhagavad-gītā. Krishna said: "mattaḥ sarvaṁ pravartate".
Attaining Reality Through Devotion and Knowledge
Why one should become a devotee of Krishna? Well, he understands perfectly that He is the ultimate source. "ahaṁ sarvasya prabhavo" "mattaḥ sarvaṁ pravartate". So when we have got this knowledge, then this knowledge get...
Then how this knowledge comes? By researching for many, many lives. Then "bahūnāṁ janmanām ante", in this way researching, researching, researching.
After many, many births, he actually becomes in full awareness that he is the soul, then he says: "vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ", or yes, Vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti, sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ.
Then he begins his bhajan. "bhajanty ananya-manaso jñātvā bhūtādim avyayam". That is right. Simply speculation can be... To know definite knowledge, perhaps maybe and this and that. But that is childish. That is childish.
He is saying others who give him God, that is childish, but he is himself a child. He cannot give us any definite knowledge. By chance, by accident, perhaps... what is knowledge?
This is Freud's final conclusion on this point: "True, without religion, man will then find himself in a difficult situation.
He will have to confess his utter helplessness and his insignificant part in the working of the universe.
He will have to confess that he is no longer the center of creation, no longer the object of the tender care of a benevolent providence.
He will be in the same position as the child who has left the home where he was so warm and comfortable. But after all, is it not the destiny of childishness to be overcome? Man cannot remain a child forever.
He must venture at last into the hostile world. This may be called education to reality. Need I tell you that it is the sole aim of my book to draw attention to the necessity for this advance to reality.
But unfortunately, who is taking advantage of his advice? Because yes, we are presenting Bhagavad-gītā, the real point of view. Sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja.
But these philosophers have misled the world so much that now it is very difficult to convince them that here is God speaking and here is religion. That's the damage which he has done.
Well, the innocent used to accept the words of God. Now they have to come over interest. They think sex is God. And that is going on. So to counteract this mentality, it will take some time.
But anyone who takes, accepts the Bhagavad-gītā, the words of God and the ways and means of life as defined by God, is anyone there, then he'll be happy. That's a fact.
Christ said that unless you become as a little child, you shall not enter into the kingdom of God. Unless you become like a little child, you will not enter into the kingdom. And Freud says you must grow up.
He is a crazy thing. Okay. And all these western philosophers are more or less crazy. One who does not know what is God, what is the value of his knowledge? Because our criterion of knowledge is one who has known God.
As long as you do not come to that point, your knowledge is useless. It's certainly misleading. And that is not knowledge. It is a fact that there is some supreme controller.
Now, if one gives education how the supreme controller is working, how he is supreme, that is real education. And if you cannot understand how the supreme is working, you are simply denying the supreme.
That is not knowledge. Supreme is there because you are controlled. How come you are controlled? How you can say there is no supreme controller? You make a plan and it is frustrated. There is supreme control.
You are making arrangements to live here very happily. Next day you die. So you are under control. How can you deny it? There is Supreme Control. Now acknowledge me. Who is the Supreme Controller? How is He controlling?
Then you know: "Grapes are sour." Jackal jumping, jumping, jumping when he could not reach the grape. He said, "Oh, there is no need of grapes." Our position is like that. They cannot understand.
God is there, just there, Supreme Conscience. But they cannot explain. Neither they can understand. The jackal's time— jackal jumping, jumping. When he cannot get to reach the grape, he said, "It is sour."
Their conclusion is like that. They cannot understand what is God, how He is acting, what is religion, and they defy it. There is no need of religion, there is no need of that. Jackal's philosophy is like that.