Acyutānanda: Seems like more than serious too. Also a person must be intelligent. I may be very serious and I may say which is gold...
Prabhupāda: Therefore you have to go to an intelligent person. He is not intelligent. Anyway, seriousness does not mean... Seriousness is intelligence, but that is not perfect intelligence. Real intelligence means..., seriousness means that he takes knowledge from a man who is better intelligent than him. That is real intelligence.
Śyāmasundara: So here, Husserl reaches the point of understanding, of observing, of analyzing the transcendental observer, or transcendental ego. He comes to the understanding that there is a spiritual basis for everything. But still, we're talking about how he reaches that point. So he describes...
Prabhupāda: Transcendental observer, that is sometimes known as conscience—something dictating. I reject or may accept. Something dictating from within. That is transcendental.
Śyāmasundara: He says that there are the phenomenological and the transcendental. The phenomenological ego, which uses conscience with...
Prabhupāda: Phenomenological ego means "I." "I am this individual soul." And transcendental ego is Paramātmā, Bhagavān.
Śyāmasundara: Yes. That's his distinction. The "I" feeling is, that would be the conscience which is made up of the data, day to day, that I observe, which is my world, the stream of consciousness, that "I think I am." So I may be allowed to...
Prabhupāda: No. At every moment I speculate my mind-accept something, reject something—then I am, "What is to be done?" Then something dictation is there. That is transcendental ego.
Devotee: How did we get into the conception of transcendental ego?
Śyāmasundara: Well, that we haven't come to yet. That's later. We're still... I mean, if you want to jump to that we can, but we're missing a lot that goes between.
Prabhupāda: That's all right. That will come gradually. But we accept that transcendental ego.