Bleak Philosophies

In Sartre's best known novel, Nausea, the main character suffers from fear, queasiness and nausea due to a heightened sense of the mutability of phenomena. He sees objects and people changing before his very eyes and experiences existence itself as sticky, syrupy, fluid. Psychedelic drugs can give similar hallucinatory experiences through which the flux of the creation, or the unreality or instability of maya, can be intensely perceived. Sartre's character takes refuge in the stability of an old American jazz record which he listens to over and over. The improvisations of the saxophone give him a feeling of freedom, yet the repetitiveness of the recording makes him feel that there is some stability and security in the universe. Unfortunately, he does not take refuge in the chanting of Hare Krsna, which would give him freedom by liberating him from the bonds of material consciousness and would stabilize him in the divine service of Krsna. Sartre, however, would consider that listening to the phonograph record and chanting Hare Krsna are both in "bad faith" because he would never acknowledge the absolutism of Krsna. There is a similar passage in Camus in which the main character, while observing a common citizen talking in a telephone booth, suddenly realizes that he is watching an absurd pantomime. This is not faulty perception because Lord Krsna says that men function as though "mounted on a machine made of the material energy." "The Supreme Lord is situated in everyone's heart, O Arjuna, and is directing the wandering of all living entities, who are seated as on a machine, made of the material energy." (Gita 18.61) But l'absurde philosophers could never accept Krsna because once Krsna is accepted, life ceases to be absurd.

Whereas the existentialist refuses to accept the philosophy of the Gita on philosophical grounds, Hippyism would reject it because it is anti-sensual and advocates a life dedicated to tapasya (penance) in order to attain the Supreme. In either case, the absolutism of Krsna is rejected due to conceit. On the one hand the existentialists would not compromise the idol of man's personal freedom, and on the other hand the hippies would not compromise the idol of the almighty psychedelic Priapus. Today the philosophy of Hippyism has superceded existentialism because no one wants to take time away from sex and drugs to read long philosophical treatises by sullen Frenchmen. Nonetheless, atheistic existentialism is the precursor of contemporary hedonism, and the Sartrean derelicts who float from cafe table to cafe table in a drunken haze are the ancestor of today's hippies.

One is bound to be thus entangled by materialistic life as long as Krsna is veiled to one's sight. Man cannot continue to live by thinking that life has no meaning. He will give it the meaning of sense enjoyment if no other is available. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." This means that death is inevitable and life has no meaning, so let's squeeze out as much sense gratification as possible in our brief sixty of seventy years. But according to Bhagavad-gita, the man who lives only for the senses lives in vain. "An intelligent person does not take part in the sources of misery, which are due to contact with the material senses. O son of Kunti, such pleasures have a beginning and an end, and so the wise man does not delight in them." (Gita 5.22) It is said that the wise dwell in the world like the lotus leaf on water. The leaf of the lotus, although on the water, remains dry, and in the same way the wise man, though in the world of the senses, is unattached to them. He witnesses the flux of existence but is not carried away by it, for he is established in the divine consciousness. Consequently he does not experience nausea or fear even in the midst of the most terrifying calamities, for his consciousness is nonmaterial. Those who delight only in the senses are constantly in a state of anxiety. "Their belief is that to gratify the senses unto the end of life is the prime necessity of human civilization. Thus there is no measurement of their anxiety." (Gita 16.11) And those who say that life is absurd and meaningless, that there is no Absolute in control, and that the universe results simply from a chance combination of material elements are declared in the Gita to be demonic in nature. "Those who are of demoniac quality … say that this world is unreal, that there is neither any foundation, nor any God in control. They say that it is produced of sex desire and has no other cause than lust." (Gita 16.8) Thus being under delusion, men are unaware of the purpose of life, which is to extricate oneself from the material desires causing conditioned existence and to enter into a relationship with the Divine who bestows total spiritual freedom upon the individual.

Although atheistic existential philosophers maintain that man has personal freedom, they cannot account for the fact that man is bound by the rigid laws of nature, that he is forced to take birth, forced to eat, forced to work in order to acquire food, forced to breathe, forced to sleep, forced into the bondage of sex, forced to defend himself, forced to grow old, catch some disease and die. Yet, they claim that he is free. This is the grossest type of delusion. Man is a prisoner in this world and is constantly being kicked by the modes of material nature. His only freedom lies in his willingness to surrender unto Krsna, who reveals Himself to such a surrendered soul. In this way he can enter into the unlimited freedom of spiritual life which is beyond all material qualification and which is deathless and ever blissful.

The obscuration of God by maya is a problem for contemporary civilization. One may question why God reveals Himself to some and yet remains an explicable myth to others. It is the Divine's prerogative to reveal Himself and to hide Himself. Therefore it is stated in scriptures that God neither hates anyone nor likes anyone but that He seems to. In the Gita Arjuna says, "I see all people entering with full speed into Your mouths, as the moth hurries into the blazing fire." (Gita 11.29) From the point of view of the father, all of his sons are the same because they are his sons, yet the ungrateful son who leaves home expressing no concern for his father is not as beloved as a son who carefully obeys his father's wishes. The goodness of the father may be revealed to one son and not to another. For the son who has left home his father might as well be dead for all he knows or cares, but although the son may forget the father, the father never forgets the son. He will always welcome the son home. Similarly, all the conditioned souls on earth have left their home, which is Krsna's spiritual abode, and have wandered into a dream world where they become entangled in enjoying things of the dream. Some may even recognize it as a dream. Yet instead of acquiring knowledge to awake, they become more implicated. But Krsna always gives the living entity the opportunity to awake and return to Him. It is said that at least in every millennium every conditioned being gets an opportunity to revive his latent Krsna consciousness. It is important to understand that Krsna does not want the individual soul deluded, yet He gives him the minute independence to choose between a life of awareness and a life of forgetfulness.

God is always veiled to eyes that are smeared with desire and hate and is always revealed to eyes smeared with surrender and love. The quickest and most sublime process whereby civilization can awake to the fact of God's existence is the process of invoking His names. When one has lost a friend he immediately tries to find him by calling his name and asking where he is. This is also the quickest way to find Krsna. Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the great propagator of this process, always had the names of Krsna on his lips, and He would journey from town to town crying, "O Krsna, why have You hid Yourself from me? Have mercy on me, O Lord, for in Your absence, a moment seems to last for years. When shall my eyes be decorated with tears of love flowing constantly while chanting Your holy name? I do not know anyone but Krsna as my Lord. He shall always remain as such, even if He makes me brokenhearted by not being present before me."

The quickest way, then, to find a hidden God is to desire sincerely to find Him.