1579: Is Spiritual Truth Beyond Words? | Q&A Volume 271
Wisdom of the Sages
David Ramella
5 • 970 Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is trying to understand spiritual truth a futile task? Is it all beyond words and beyond the logical understanding of the human mind?
In this Q&A episode of Wisdom of the Sages, Kaustubha Das, with guest host Kishori Gopi, takes on one of the deepest questions of spiritual life—whether the ultimate reality can be known, described, or even spoken of. Drawing from the ancient dialectic between Advaita Vedanta and Bhakti Vedanta, they explore how the Absolute is perceived across different schools of Indian philosophy, and whether Krishna’s teachings are meant to be understood—or simply surrendered to.
Then, things get bold and existential: If we’re not the body or the mind… why not just commit suicide? This intense question opens the door to a profound discussion on karma, the soul’s journey, and why trying to “opt out” is ill advised.
Morgan Freeman shows up. So does Groundhog Day. Somehow it all makes sense.
Key Highlights
* The Bhakti perspective: Krishna can be understood—and described—in rich detail
* How Shankara’s “neti neti” approach led to the idea of the indescribable Absolute
* Karma as a cosmic reformatory system
* Why suicide doesn’t break the cycle—just moves it like a whack-a-mole
* What Newton might say about karma (and why we’re not totally convinced)
* “They muddy the waters to make them seem deep.” — Nietzsche, and also Kaustubha 🔥
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#VedantaQandA #BhaktiYoga #KarmaExplained #BeyondWords #SpiritualPhilosophy #WisdomOfTheSages #SrimadBhagavatam #NetiNeti #MorganFreemanOnVedanta
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So Anirvacenia means you can't describe this, right? |
| 0:04.4 | Words fail to capture it. |
| 0:06.7 | Right. |
| 0:07.5 | So they'll say that rather than if we want to understand the absolute, |
| 0:14.1 | there's nothing we can say about the absolute because it has no attributes. |
| 0:18.1 | It has no features. |
| 0:19.3 | All you can say is what it's not, right? |
| 0:22.2 | If we want to try to understand it, |
| 0:23.4 | we just have to try to peel away everything that it's not. |
| 0:26.8 | It's not form, right? |
| 0:28.8 | It's not, it's, it, it, it, it, it just the, in the, in the, in the Upanishads, |
| 0:36.3 | there's a practice or way of seeing, uh could say like a, it's kind of like an exercise in trying to find the absolute truth, which is called naiti, which literally means not this, not that, right? |
| 0:53.3 | You know, it is not this body. |
| 0:55.4 | It is not this mind. |
| 0:56.4 | It is not this world. |
| 0:58.0 | All of these are temporary and transitory, and the absolute is neither temporary nor |
| 1:03.0 | transitory. |
| 1:04.2 | So you just basically anything that you can point out, anything that you can identify, |
| 1:07.9 | anything you can describe with words must not be spiritual, |
| 1:12.4 | must not be the absolute truth. So it really separates the two. That's the idea. Now, now, |
| 1:18.3 | separation. Yeah, yes. And here's a thing that when you read books that, that, or hear speakers that are speaking, they're speaking as |
| 1:32.0 | influenced by that school of thought, then they speak a lot about, they're very quick |
... |
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