Perfect knowledge of essences requires guru guidance, not speculation alone.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Śyāmasundara: Today we are discussing one German philosopher named Edmund Husserl, and he started a school of philosophy known as phenomenology. The definition of phenomenology is "a descriptive analysis of inner experience or subjective processes, or the intuitive study of essences." So the idea behind this philosophy is that to find out the essences of things, to describe the data of our consciousness without any bias or prejudice or..., ignoring all theories and scientific facts, everything, but simply looking at a thing or a phenomenon and trying to understand what it is by analyzing our inward or intuitive knowledge of things.
Prabhupāda: That is Ka consciousness--real consciousness. Just like at the present moment I am thinking "Indian"; you are thinking "American." But if you introspect whether you are American or I am Indian, so if you go on researching, you'll come to conclusion that "I am Ka's." That is real platform, when one understands that "I am part and parcel of Ka."
Śyāmasundara: Their method begins with the things themselves. They say "to the things themselves," or in other words, they begin from phenomenon.
Śyāmasundara: To reject all theories, scientific experiments, all these things.
Prabhupāda: When you study the phenomenon--the body, this is
phenomenon, that "I am this body or not?"--then you come to the conclusion that "I am not body. I am the soul. Then what for I am soul, I come?" Then you will get from Ka, "I am part and parcel of Ka."
Śyāmasundara: They say that the phenomenon...