Does presenting scripture as meant for moral instruction lead to the rejection of scripture’s transcendental teachings?

Answer Podcast

See there are certain neo vedantins or some others who may look at scripture primarily or only as tools for moral instruction and they neglect or even reject the aspect that Krishna is God yeah see there are strategies in preaching and we could say there are purposes of preaching so just because a strategy has been used by people with particular agendas, particular purposes that does not make that strategy bad so the strategy of using scripture for teaching moral instruction that is a strategy now those with a purpose of wanting to get people to Vaishnavism they may use that strategy, those who are impersonalists they may also use that strategy so we have to see we cannot label a strategy itself as bad because it has been used by particular people, if you see that way this whole strategy of presenting scripture as a kind of science that was used first by Dayanand Saraswati Dayanand Saraswati he quoted that Daksha getting a goat’s head, he said that is the first first head transplant now Prabhupada actually I don’t know whether Prabhupada literally took it from Dayanand Saraswati but in the, if you look at Indian history he was the first person who used that now Bhaktisansh Thakur as far as I have seen he has not used that his attitude is more of you know Bhakti is transcendental through material science you can never understand Bhakti, you cannot understand Shastra through material science now Prabhupada also he talks about this also at some particular time about how material empirical methods cannot be used to understand this so Prabhupada if you look at his purpose he has used different strategies sometimes even with the moon landing the man has not gone to the moon other places when you say, Prabhupada says that this is beyond proof or disproof, this can neither be proven there is a for example there is a spiritual sky this can neither be proven nor disproven by scientists so what do you mean by neither proven nor disproven that means it is beyond the scope so there is one approach where we present scripture as scientific another approach where we present scripture as beyond science beyond science means beyond material science and requiring another method for approach so Prabhupada has used both approaches so now which approach is most suitable at a particular point that we may have to see according to who is our audience what is their level what is our purpose if you go to very scientific people and tell them that this is an example of head transplant or Mahabharata, Kauravas is an example of cloning they actually ridicule this people who are little bit scientific they are impressed people who are seriously scientific this is just you are trying to they say you are taking the you are trying to ride piggy bank on the prestige of science trying to take the prestige of science for yourself and their main there is one prominent scientist who said that the speciality of science is not its results the speciality of science is its process so he says that it is not that science can do a heart transplant the point is that science has a process of study and enquiry by which the same thing can be repeated by others whereas mystics may claim to be doing the same thing but they don’t have a process, you can’t repeat it so we may say that we did a transplant at that time but what can you do right now so we can’t, then we have to say oh no in the past people had powers so basically that is your way of saying that you can’t do it right now so I feel that in today’s skeptical atmosphere that attitude of trying to present scripture as a as a superior competitor to science now whatever science it is scripture has already taught this in the past I feel that approach doesn’t work so actually by presenting scripture as a competitor of science we devalue scripture scripture is presenting us knowledge which is far greater than scientific knowledge now how to fly a plane maybe there is some iman shastra which tells us that but that is not the purpose of scripture now Ramana was flying a plane but he was doing it for demoniac purposes the purpose of scripture is to actually elevate our consciousness so if we keep that in mind and then emphasize on that part of scripture which helps people to elevate their consciousness then that way we can move forward towards Krishna so what happens with new advaitins is that that they see scripture only as a tool for moral instruction nothing more now that is definitely something which our acharyas won’t accept but that doesn’t mean that we can’t see scripture as a tool for moral instruction so our our idea is simply that that this is the area of interest of people this is our actual area of interest so now we find this is the area of intersection and from that we get them towards Krishna so in general most people are not interested in transcendence but they are interested in living more harmoniously more sustainably, more happily in this world and we could say not just happily in terms of sensuality happily in terms of more harmoniously living, so we could say its goodness so scripture also talks about goodness goodness is not the primary message of scripture or ultimate message of scripture it is also a message of scripture so we can present the message of goodness within scripture to get people to appreciate the message of transcendence and there are others who present the message of goodness in scripture and they will say that is all that is there there is no transcendence or they may have an alternative vision of transcendence now just because they have an alternative vision of transcendence doesn’t mean that their strategy cannot be that sharing the message of goodness within scripture there is nothing wrong in it now what is wrong with their idea then the point is that that Krishna’s divinity or the Krishna’s supremacy these are not peripheral teachings in scripture they are central teachings so what they are doing is they are taking moral instruction and in the name of taking moral instruction they are doing away with the central teaching also so we are saying that that the central teaching cannot be given but the simple point is the peripheral need not be emphasized so for example we say that the Kurukshetra battle field should not be taken metaphorically but then there are lectures of Prabhupada where he says one lecture Prabhupada says that that now you have handed the reins of your chariot to Krishna now you should never lament Krishna will guide you so the chariot body metaphor is not wrong the metaphorical understanding of the Kurukshetra war is not wrong the problem is when that is made the only understanding so I have an essay on my website called metaphorical readings within rationalism so I talk about how Madhvacharya in his Brahmasutra Bhashya he talks about how the itihasas can be understood at three levels at the literal, ethical and spiritual or metaphorical literal means just repeat it just recite it, hear it it will be purified, ethical means learn values from it and spiritual and metaphorical what it means is that we can see it as manifestations of Krishna and there will be some deeper lessons apart from ethical lessons in it so the metaphorical reading is something which should be not a replacement to the literal, it is a supplement to the literal so as a supplement to the literal if it is a metaphorical that is perfectly fine so many aspects in our tradition also like this whole idea of the two fingers space between that ropes and that is metaphorical reading isn’t it now if I say that is all actually Krishna did not bring down a tree, actually did not come from that nobody says that so we can accept the literal and the metaphorical both and the metaphorical and literal don’t have to go contradictory, similarly we can have the moral and the transcendental both going in parallel, there may be others who use the moral and reject the transcendental but not everybody has to do like that