Samuel Alexander

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Philosophy Discussions

Philosophy Discussion on The Evolutionists Thomas Huxley, Henri Bergson, and Samuel Alexander:

Śyāmasundara: So today we are discussing a philosopher named Samuel Alexander. He is the philosopher of emergent evolution. The last of the evolutionists we'll be discussing. His philosophy begins with the idea that objects, external objects, have an independent existence. They do not depend on consciousness for their existence. This is the opposite of many philosophers we have discussed who have said that nothing exists unless it is perceived. But this philosopher says something may exist even though it is not perceived. Even though there is no conscious life to observe, it still exists. Objects exist independently of perception.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Just like God exists, either you perceive or not perceive. Is that all right? God, creator. Just like everyone has got father, so all living entities coming originally from a father. So you perceive or not perceive, it doesn't matter. But a father was there or is there. Is that all right?

Śyāmasundara: Yes. Suppose if nobody perceives an object. Say, like...

Prabhupāda: Yes. Even nobody perceives, the fact is fact. Nobody has seen my father, but everyone knows that I had a father. It is not necessary that who accepts that I had a father, or I have a father, it is not necessary that he has to see my father by direct perception. But because I exist, therefore my father is essential. That is understood by everyone. Just like somebody asks, some friend asks some friend, "What is your father's name?" That means he assumes that he has got a father. Otherwise how does he say, ask, "What is your father's name?" First of all, you should have asked, "Have you got a father?" Then ask his name. But without asking this inquiry, whether he has got a father or not, he simply asks, "What is the name of your father?" Then it is assumed that he has a father. So he does not see his father, but immediately perceives that he has a father.

Philosophy Discussion on The Evolutionists Thomas Huxley, Henri Bergson, and Samuel Alexander:

Śyāmasundara: Many people ask, "Where do you come from?"

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Śyāmasundara: "Where is your origin?"

Prabhupāda: "What is your birthplace?"

Śyāmasundara: Yes. So this Samuel Alexander says that our consciousness of an object is a mere perspective on something, but it's a real portion of that object and not just a mental image. In other words, if I see a table, I am actually reacting with that table. It is a real perspective. It's not just a mental image, but I'm actually reacting to that table. My senses are reacting with the table. It's an objective reality.

Prabhupāda: Where is the table?

Śyāmasundara: Yes. Some philosophers think that if I see the table, it's merely a mental idea in my mind, that table. He says that no, there is a real objective relationship between my senses and the table, reality of the table. Is that...

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is right.

Philosophy Discussion on The Evolutionists Thomas Huxley, Henri Bergson, and Samuel Alexander:

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is called karma-phala. That we have explained. Karmaṇā daiva-netreṇa (SB 3.31.1). Unless superior superintendence he is working, and as a result of his work, he is getting a particular type of body for enjoyment or suffering.

Śyāmasundara: Even though he thinks he's free. He thinks he's free.

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is also explained in the Bhagavad-gītā.

prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni

guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ

ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā

kartāham iti manyate

(BG 3.27)

He is being forced by the laws of nature, but he is thinking, "I am doing this." That is ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā. He's a rascal.

Śyāmasundara: This man, Alexander, says that in the higher levels of evolution one can see that everything is determined in the lower levels.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Therefore... Everything is determined; therefore we should not try for improving our economic condition because already it is decided. This sort of... Otherwise why you see so many varieties of standard of life? One is born rich and one born, he is working so hard, he cannot get even two morsel of bread. So everything is determined. Therefore Bhāgavata says that "For this material happiness, you don't try. That will come automatically as distress comes automatically." You don't try for distress, but it comes upon you. Similarly, whatever happiness is due to you, it will also come to you. You try for developing your Kṛṣṇa consciousness. That is your business. Tasyaiva hetoḥ prayeteta kovidaḥ. That is intelligence.

Philosophy Discussion on Samuel Alexander:

Hayagrīva: Samuel Alexander basically wrote one major book, called Space, Time and Deity.

Prabhupāda: Space, Time and...?

Hayagrīva: Deity.

Prabhupāda: Deity.

Hayagrīva: And in this book he defines religion. He says, "Religion leans on metaphysics for the justification of its conviction of the reality of its object, God. Philosophy leans on religion to justify it, and calling the possessor of Deity by the religious name of 'God.' The two methods of approach, that is philosophy and religion, are therefore complementary."

Prabhupāda: Hmm. That's right. Religion, when it is combined with philosophy, that makes sense, and religion without philosophy is sentiment. It has no practical value.

Hayagrīva: For Alexander, religion is like what...

Prabhupāda: We should say in this connection that Bhagavad-gītā is religion and philosophy combined together.

Hayagrīva: For Ale...

Prabhupāda: The religion is God worship, and everything explained there, just like immortality of the soul, that is philosophy. So it is combination of religion and philosophy that makes sense.

Hayagrīva: For Alexander religion is like hunger, and God is the food for that hunger.

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Hayagrīva: He writes, "The religious which sets us in search of God is our groping out to the reality which is God. This religious appetite may either be stirred in us directly, by the impact of the world with its tendency to Deity, or it may first be felt by us as a need of our nature." So the desire or hunger for God may be motivated either externally or internally.

Prabhupāda: That I explained this morning partially, that actually we are seeking love of God beginning with the body. That I have explained in this morning, that we love this body because I live within this body. As soon as I give up this body, the body is neglected, it has no value, throw it. So, so long the living soul is there, the body has value. So why the living soul is valuable? Because he is the part and parcel of God. So God is there also within this body. This is explained is the Bhagavad-gītā. There are two living entities. One is..., they all..., both of them are known as kṣetra-jña. One kṣetra-jña only knows about his body, and the other kṣetra-jña knows all other bodies. That is God and the living entity. So the body is important because the living entities are there. The subordinate living entity is the part of the supreme living entity. So ultimately the conclusion is, because a supreme living entity is in the body or within the universe, therefore we have manufactured so many activities of love and society, friendship, nationality, community. Ultimately, when it culminates with love of God, then it is perfect. So the conclusion is that we are searching after the platform where God is love, but it is going on, I mean to say, by degrees, one after another, in different names.

Hayagrīva: Alexander despairs of the speculative method as a means for connecting with God, and he also feels that proofs of God's existence in nature are nonexistence, are nonexistent. If such a God is to be identified with the object of worship, that is to say we shouldn't worship God in nature. But how can God be known? For him God can be known by experience. Nor can we prove the existence of God, whether worshipable or not, except on the basis of experience.

Prabhupāda: This is natural. This is just like the other day I was saying that on the Hawaii Island we are standing, we know that the proprietor, the government, is there. So just after few yards there is the sea. Then we can conjecture: if the land has the proprietor, the sea has also proprietor. We have not seen who is the proprietor of the land, or the governor of the land. Similarly, there is a governor, proprietor, of the sea and the sky, but we have not seen. That does not mean there is no proprietor.

Philosophy Discussion on Samuel Alexander:

Hayagrīva: So God can be seen in nature.

Prabhupāda: Yes. Not only nature. This is the beginning of realizing. This is impersonal. But there is person at the background. Just like we do not see..., we know that there is one governor, proprietor of the Hawaii Island. We have not seen. But when we see him, he is person. This is the conclusion. Similarly, so long we are not competent to see God, we can understand, "This is God's hand, this is God's heart, this is His..., God's mind, this is God's eyes." But when we are competent we can see regularly, "Here, here is God, face to face." That requires qualification. Because I did not see the governor of Hawaii is that he is not a person, he is imperson—that is foolishness. When I become competent to see, qualified to see the governor, you see he is a person.

Hayagrīva: Alexander distinguishes between what he calls deity and God Himself. For him deity is how it feels to be divine. Now deity for him is a relative term. It is the next highest level of existence. For instance, for an ant, a dog may be a deity; for a dog, a man may be a deity; for a man, a demigod may be a deity. He says, "For any level of existence, deity is the next higher empirical quality."

Prabhupāda: Hmm.

Hayagrīva: "It is therefore a variable quality, and as the world grows in time, deity changes with it. On each level a new quality looms ahead, which plays to it the part of deity. However, God is the being which possesses Deity in full." That is to say God is always one step ahead of every creature.

Prabhupāda: They do not know the science of God, but as philosopher they are suggesting the method. That is nice. Just like for ant, a bird is deity; for a bird, a cat is deity; for a cat, a dog is deity. So in this way, according to the position one selects the deity. But if you go on searching out, when you find out somebody that he has no any, anyone to worship... The ant has to worship the bird, bird has to worship the cat, cat has to worship the so on, so on. In this way, when you come to a person who hasn't got to worship anybody, He is God. That is sense. In the lower stage there is another, higher living being than the lower living being, but in this way searching out, when you come to a point that there is this person who hasn't got to worship anybody ... That is explained in the Vedic literature:

īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇah

sac-cid-ānanda-vigrahaḥ

anādir ādir govindaḥ

sarva-kāraṇa-kāraṇam

(Bs. 5.1)

He is worshipable by everyone. Therefore Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā, mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat kiñcid asti dhanañjaya: (BG 7.7) "Everyone has got higher than him for worship, but I have nothing to worship. I am the Supreme, mattaḥ parataram. No..., there is no more superior authority than Me." Then He is God. So long one has superior authority, he is not God. He is subordinate. But when he comes to a person who has no more superior than Him, then He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. That is Kṛṣṇa.

Hayagrīva: Although Alexander himself tries to describe God in philosophical terms...

Prabhupāda: Then his philosophy is right, that an ant's god is a bird; bird's god..., like that. So when he finds, comes to a person who has no more god, then He is Supreme God.

Hayagrīva: But he feels that ultimately God is beyond description. He says...

Prabhupāda: No. Why? We have, this, this is description.

Philosophy Discussion on Samuel Alexander:

Prabhupāda: Yes. Finished. "All authorities accept, I realize, and You personally say." Then what evidence more? Hm? What is the possible evidence? No evidence, finished. "I personally experience, You personally say, and the authorities accept You. Finished." Things should be simplified. This is...

Hayagrīva: Meanwhile Alexander is saying, uh, he seems to conceive of God in a universal form. He says, "Now the body of God is the whole universe, and there is no body outside His."

Prabhupāda: That is experimented in the Bhagavad-gītā for men like Alexander and company. Arjuna requested that Kṛṣṇa to show His universal form, because he knew that "I am accepting Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme, but there are many persons with poor fund of knowledge, they may not accept." Therefore he requested Kṛṣṇa to show him the universal form. That He showed, so that there is another proof for person like Mr. Alexander and company. The, in the Eleventh Chapter, the universal form is very nicely explained. But the universal form was shown by Kṛṣṇa; therefore Kṛṣṇa is original. Universal form is not original; it was manifested by Kṛṣṇa. Therefore Kṛṣṇa's natural form is Kṛṣṇa. The universal form is a feature of Him. God... That, that is also confirmed in the Bhagavad-gītā, ahaṁ sarvasya prabhavaḥ.

Philosophy Discussion on Samuel Alexander:

Prabhupāda: So "everything emanates from Me" mean the universal form also emanate from. So iti matvā bhajante mām: "One who understand Me, he, he becomes a Kṛṣṇa devotee." Iti matvā bhajante māṁ budhā bhāva-saman(vitāḥ), that He is the origin of universal form also; then he becomes a Kṛṣṇa devotee.

Hayagrīva: He sees God's... (break) Alexander sees God's Deity as being different from others in that it is infinite... (break) This is the continuation of Alexander that was interrupted due to the defective tape. A God..., uh, Alexander considers God's Deity as differing from that of others in being infinite, and he says, "God's body..."

Prabhupāda: This, this, this sense should be explained. Because God is infinite, He has infinite Deities also. That is infiniteness. He is presented as Deity; that is infinitely of varieties. That is infiniteness. Why he is sticking to one Deity? That is his not understanding the meaning of what is infinite. That is explained in the Brahma-saṁhitā, advaitam acyutam anādim ananta-rūpam (Bs. 5.33). Ananta-rūpam: He has Deity infinitely. That is infinity. Because He is infinite, He has no Deity—that is not real conception. He is infinite and He has got infinite Deity forms.

Hayagrīva: He says, "God's body, being the whole universe of space/time, is the source of the categories but not itself subject to them."

Prabhupāda: Yes. So if God is Deity, He is also not subject to these created living being. That is condemned. When one thinks God's Deity as one of the deities within this material world, he is condemned as mūḍha. Avajānanti māṁ mūḍhā mānuṣīṁ tanum āśritam: (BG 9.11) "Because I appear just like a human being, the rascals, asses, they think of Me as ordinary human."

Hayagrīva: Now in this book Space, Time and Deity, on page 380, Alexander writes... Alexander takes the Aristotelian view of God in saying, "There is no reciprocal action from God, for though we speak as we inevitably must in human terms of God's response to us, there is no direct experience of that response except through our own feeling that devotion to God, or worship, carries with it its own satisfaction."

Prabhupāda: That is his imperfectness. God is omnipotent. He comes before Kṛṣṇa, er, Arjuna, and He speaks Bhagavad-gītā. So because he has no advanced knowledge, he cannot understand how God, omnipotent, all-powerful, can come and speak with His devotee. That is his poor fund of knowledge.

Philosophy Discussion on Samuel Alexander:

Prabhupāda: The very word is this kṛta-puṇya-puñjāḥ. One who has amassed the resultant action of pious activities for many millions of births, that he can have this position.

Hayagrīva: Six pages later, Alexander writes, "The community is one of cooperation. The individual is sustained by trusting God, but he wants and claims the help of God as the child his father's, and in turn God reciprocates the worship man pays Him and the confidence he reposes in Him."

Prabhupāda: Yes.

Hayagrīva: Yes. He says that six pages after he says God does not reciprocate. "There is no such reciprocation from God."

Prabhupāda: But here he says reciprocate.

Hayagrīva: He says there's reciprocation. That's what's confusing. But he goes on further to say, "There's always the double relationship of need. If man wants God and depends upon Him, God wants man and is so far dependent."

Prabhupāda: Yes. Everyone is dependent. There is no question about it.

Philosophy Discussion on Samuel Alexander:

Hayagrīva: He says, "If man wants God and depends upon Him, God wants man and is so far dependent."

Prabhupāda: Yes. That, that is acceptable in this sense, that God is independent thoroughly, but sometimes He wants to become dependent. That is His pleasure. And He accepts some of His devotee so that He can depend upon. Just like Mother Yaśodā, that God became dependent on Mother Yaśodā. Unless Mother Yaśodā allows God to suck her breast, God will die. God is thinking like that, and He is crying. That is God's pleasure, that everyone is dependent on Him, and He is not dependent on anyone, so in order to derive this pleasure how a dependent child enjoys the care of mother, He accept to become a son of a devotee. That is not very ordinary thing to understand, but He has In the Caitanya-caritāmṛta it is explained...

Hayagrīva: I'm not sure that Alexander understood it in that way.

Prabhupāda: No. How he can understand? (laughter) He cannot. He is a talkative philosopher, that's all.

Hayagrīva: He, he says, "God Himself is involved in our acts and their issues. Not only does He matter to us, but we matter to Him."

Prabhupāda: Yes. That is one sense correct. Because we are fallen condition and we are sons of God, so we are suffering. God is very much compassionate; therefore He comes personally to teach us: "You rascal, why you are rotting in this material world? You surrender to Me and go back to home, back to Godhead, you will be happy." Therefore He is consulting. Otherwise why He comes from Vaikuṇṭha? Everyone, just like a son is rotting in his own way, but the father comes: "My dear son, why you are rotting in this way? You come home. You have got state. You will live there comfortably." But he does not come. That is his misfortune.

Hayagrīva: Now, Alex...

Prabhupāda: God's, God's becoming concerned about a..., us is natural, because we are sons of God, but at the present moment we are disobedient; therefore you are conditioned by nature. So we are suffering, and God being the supreme father, He feels for. He is not suffering, but He feels, as a devotee feels for these conditioned soul. Because he is servant of God, he knows that God feels for these conditioned soul; they are suffering. That Kṛṣṇa also gives recognition to the devotee, na ca tasmān manuṣyeṣu kaścin me priya-kṛttamaḥ (BG 18.69). The devotees who are trying to preach the gospel, the instruction of Kṛṣṇa, Bhagavad-gītā, he is the most dear devotee to Kṛṣṇa, He says, because he is acting on behalf of God to deliver these rascals, conditioned soul.

Hayagrīva: He speaks of theism and pantheism. Now we might equate theism with personalism and pantheism with impersonal, the impersonal aspect.

Prabhupāda: There is nothing... Impersonal means when we cannot see that the background is person. We can of course take the lesson from nature that the sunshine is impersonal but the background is sun-god. But because we are in a very lower stage of life we can simply experience the sunshine but we cannot go and talk with the sun-god. That is not possible. So similarly, the background is person and the expansion of God's energy is imperson. So because we are in the energy, we are not directly in touch with God; therefore we say that God is an imperson. We have no such capacity now, but they, if we become devotee, we can attain that position when he can talk with God in person as the gopīs and the cowherds boy, Mother Yaśodā and other in Vṛndāvana inhabitants they are doing.