Are Jordan Peterson’s ideas relevant for Bhakti theology? QA with Chaitanya Charan

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Hello and welcome to Theology Unleashed. I'm Arjuna and this is the channel where Eastern Theology meets Western Skepticism. Today I've got Chachanya Charan Prabhu on again.

He was on recently. We did a discussion on Psychological Insights from the Vedas, a Jordan Peterson style approach to Bhagavad Gita. And we're going to do a follow-up because there were some interesting questions in the comment section.

So Chachanya Charan, thanks for coming on. Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate how vibrantly and vigorously your community is engaged.

There's quite a few animated comments in response to the video. I was happy to see that there is a significant level of engagement and even a thoughtful engagement at that. So I thought we could respond and have some further discussions.

Yeah, cool. So do you want to get us started with the comment? It'd be good if we had screenshots, but we haven't seen that. So let me do a quick recap of what we had done last time.

So I said that in terms of his Jordan Peterson's approach, analysis and application, three things. The way he approaches things, the way he analyzes and what he applies, there are similarities in what he does and what the Bhagavad Gita does. So that was the crux of what I was speaking.

In terms of approach, he's starting with the human condition, the existential dilemmas and how Arjuna is faced with a choice of right and wrong and he is confused about and what is at stake is very high. And Jordan Peterson also in his previous book, in his maps of meaning, he writes how he began his search. When he read about the evil committed by the Nazis, he started thinking what makes ordinary people do some evil like that.

So that existential human condition with the choices that we have to make and encountering the consequentiality of those choices makes us aware of the grave responsibility of being a human being, of being human basically. That was the approach. Then in terms of analysis, Jordan Peterson has this approach that, okay, we accept that life is tough, that there is distress and we cannot wish away the distress.

We cannot even get rid of the distress through all our technology. But what we can do is find responsibility that will make the distress worthwhile. And that is what the Bhagavad Gita is also saying.

Now the Bhagavad Gita says this world is a place of distress. But by living according to Dharma, by living virtuously, one can find meaning, one can do something constructive in the world, that is lokasangarha, help establish order in the world. And one can also purify oneself and attain a spiritual level of consciousness, which can raise one about the world's dualities and distresses.

So that is the frame of analysis is that when we face dilemmas, when we face distresses, the way is to find responsibility that will make it meaningful. And in terms of application, the Gita is a very world engaging book. And Pitna, Peterson's approach also is that, start with cleaning your own bed, cleaning your own room, start with your corner of the world and move forward from there.

Now, of course, there are many things which Peterson says and which are different from what the Gita says. So I was broadly focusing on the approach. Now, two comments I'll start with, and then we can have your responses as well as the audience responses if there are any questions from them, that John Peterson doesn't commit to anything, any particular thought system.

And has he come to the conclusion that the Gita has come to? Well, that both are valid points. Firstly, he is, from what we can see, he's on a search and he's sharing what he has learned while in his search and he's continuing his search. So we could say that in the Bhagavad Gita, there are four kinds of people who approach transcendence.

And one of them is a seeker of knowledge. So the seeker of knowledge is not the same as the possessor of knowledge. The Bhagavad Gita differentiates between two terms, Jnani and Jnanavan.

Jnani is one who is in the earnest pursuit of knowledge. Now, of course, in the Vedic context, the word Jnani is sometimes used in a more specific sense to refer to one who is arrived at a particular depersonalized conception of the divine. But at the same time, the idea is one of the seeker of knowledge and Jnanavan is one who is a possessor of knowledge.

So as a seeker of knowledge is also one of the persons who is approaching transcendence. And Krishna says, among the four categories who approach him, he is the best. The motives for such a person, for those kind of people, they are motivated by something higher than just worldly gain.

So to some extent, Jordan Peterson is seeking wisdom and he's sharing wisdom. So we are not endorsing his conclusions, just recognizing that there were striking similarities in his approach, analysis and application between him and the Bhagavad Gita. Now, has he come to the conclusion of the Gita? There is not much evidence that he has even engaged much with Eastern wisdom traditions.

He has studied to some extent the Abrahamic traditions and there also his focus, he candidly says that he's focused on the psychological implications of the biblical stories. He doesn't consider himself an expert in theology as such. And he has been on a dialogue with some Islamic leaders, for example, trying to understand what Islam's teachings are.

Has he been in a dialogue with some Eastern leaders, some Hindu, Buddhist, Bhakti Yoga leaders? Not to my knowledge. At least there's nothing in the public domain that's available. And there are a few quotes of his from some of the Puranic stories, but they are quite scattered.

And it's clear that he does not study this seriously, nor does he comment on it extensively. So now there is, he's not committed to one path, that's true, because he's still a seeker. Now, he does say that he has, he's no longer an atheist and he doesn't come out and publicly say that he's a Christian.

So Shrila Prabhupada, who wrote the Bhagavad Gita as it is, who pioneered the modern Krishna consciousness movement, who presented Bhakti Yoga quite extensively in the West. Now, he was an essence seeker. He appreciated the good that was present everywhere.

So appreciating the good that is present in Jordan Peterson is not the same as saying that everything that he's saying is good. The two are different things. So both in his approach and in his analysis and application, there is a lot that is good, just similar to the Gita, and which we as Gita speakers can also learn from in presenting the Gita's message.

So the parallels were not to endorse Jordan Peterson, but to recognize that the Gita's approach also has resonance in today's world. That was one main purpose of having this podcast. And if we, do you have any reflections or comments at this point? I'm just amused at how these days when you quote somebody or say you agree with the point somebody made somewhere, you have to give a qualifier and say, but I don't agree with them on everything.

I don't think you used to have to do that. I think you used to be able to agree with somebody on something or say they made a good point somewhere without needing to clarify that you don't agree with them on all of their other points. Yeah, that's true.

Unfortunately, I think society has also become increasingly politicalized now. I have friends in America who say that if their friend is voting for the other party, if one is voting for Republican, the other is voting for Democrat, earlier that was just whom you vote for was just your personal business and you will continue to be friends. But now it's become that you can't be friends, you cannot talk, can't even have a civil conversation.

In India, from where I am based, things are not that politically polarized. But what has happened is that because of this increasing polarization, as soon as we appreciate a statement by someone who is associated with a particular political orientation, then it's assumed that we may well be endorsing everything that he stands for or everything that the side which he is associated with stands for. I think that's an unfortunate result of polarization.

Yeah, the polarization goes hand in hand with being what is often termed an ideologue, which Jordan Peterson describes as somebody who as if they have a crank on the side of the head and when you turn the crank, words come out and the words are indistinguishable from words that could have come out of anybody else's mouth who is possessed by the same ideology. That's true. In other words, they're not independently thoughtful.

Yeah, that's true. What I said, people have ideas, but ideologies have people. So that's the difference.

And these sorts of people, they'll often change when, if one of these people of this sort changes their political leanings, so they go from left to right or from voting for this party to voting for that party, they'll change their views on absolutely everything at the same time. It's not that, oh, actually, this party is actually looking after the poor better. So I'm going to vote for them this election.

It's like, no, I'm going to change all of my opinions on every single thing, which makes you, well, it shows they're not well thought out, but it makes you wonder how much they'd actually put any thought into any of their other positions in the first place, which is an unfortunate situation, which brings up an interesting question though. So I add to that point. See, one of the things is that there's a difference between, say, philosophical education and ideological indoctrination.

And the Gita's approach is that in the Gita, although Krishna is considered to be the divinity, the divine who is speaking, he doesn't impose his views on others. So philosophical education teaches how to think. Ideological indoctrination teaches what to think.

What to think, how to think and what to think, that's the difference. And if it's a Gita's approach is actually about how to think, how to analyze issues. Krishna doesn't give ready-made solutions and doesn't insist on blind adherence to his guidelines.

He gives a reasoned analysis, that is the approach of the Gita in addressing existential problems. So now whether Jordan Peterson is actually able to inculcate any similar values in his followers, but he does say his professed aim in his writings is to protect, to immunize people to ideological indoctrination. Because once a person becomes ideologically indoctrinated, then it's almost like everything that disagrees with their particular view, they just deride it, disdain it, dismiss it, demonize it and they even dehumanize anybody who holds the opposing view.

So that kind of attitude is dangerous because we are reducing human beings to just one aspect of who they are. That is, one aspect is their particular political leaning or their particular position on a particular issue. Humans are multifaceted, we are complex conscious beings and the Gita talks about knowledge in the mode of ignorance.

That is that we have knowledge but it is restricted to a particular window itself. And that's why the result is that our knowledge does not remove our ignorance, it reinforces our ignorance. That everything that we learn, it reinforces our present conceptions which are a limited and limiting take on reality.

And that is harmful for discussion, that is harmful for relationships and that's what increases polarization to toxic degrees. That's actually the topic I was bringing up too. Because there's this question there like as Hare Krishna devotees when we take up this bhakti yoga path, are we not expected to believe a whole lot of sets of dogma like Krishna is the supreme personality of Godhead, his holy name is all pure and so many other things we're supposed to sign up to.

And actually on that point with ideology and dogma, often a high quality Christian, at least in some circles of Christianity, is measured by how fervently they believe in the truth of certain sets of propositions. So in Krishna consciousness we'll measure the quality of a devotee based on the quality of their consciousness, how they behave in certain situations, how they treat other people, what they're attracted to, what they're averse to, what their attachment and so on. So there's this difference.

Do you want to comment on that? Yeah, it's a good. Again, I don't want to stereotype Christianity, because Christianity is such a vast religion with so many different expressions. Yeah, but still, if we want to, if we want to look at certain core tenets, it is centered a lot of beliefs.

Okay, this is what we believe. I believe that Jesus dying has saved us. So beliefs are given a lot of importance.

In the Vedic, in the Gita tradition, if I could more specifically, there is a role for faith. But the faith is more of, is more a part of a process by which that faith becomes more and more experientially confirmed. So there are three, if you consider the three stages in the faith, there is Shraddha, which is almost like positive curiosity.

Hey, give me the spiritual stuff, there might be something substantial over there, let me explore it. And then when one starts exploring the process, one starts practicing, say, for example, one starts doing mantra meditation, one starts doing some kind of prayer, one starts practicing processes that connects one with the spiritual. Then, as we gain spiritual experiences, as we experience personal transformation, as the unwanted behavioral traits, unhealthy cravings, all these prejudices and biases and narrow mindedness, all these start going out of us, then as we start experiencing the change, then there is a higher level of faith, which is called as Nishtha.

So it's not that we just, I can't say I believe, rather, I start with the initial stage of Shraddha is merely open-mindedness. And from open-mindedness, when there is experience of transformation, then there is a graduation towards the stage of conviction. So it's not so much a outward imposition and adherence from inside, rather, it's an inner conviction that I have got because I have experienced this transformation.

And it's not just an occasional set of spiritual, occasional sporadic spiritual experiences, but tangible transformations in behavior, tangible transformations in the nature of one's cravings, in the quality of one's consciousness. So that in that sense, it's a, if we go to a doctor and the doctors initially, maybe this doctor is good, let me try him or her out. And then we go and take that treatment and that cures us.

Then that increases our conviction and that's not blind faith, that's experienced, realized faith. So that's what is being talked about in the Gita. When Krishna urges Arjuna to have faith, it means be open-minded enough to follow the process and see for yourself whether the results come up.

So I'm imagining what the skeptic might say here, which would be a few different things, but one of them would be, it sounds like you're saying that the practice is beneficial, therefore it's true. So if I go to the doctor and they say, take these pills and you get better and also unicorns exist. And if I take those pills and get better, it doesn't mean unicorns exist.

So similarly, if we're given Bhagavad Gita and there's a practice in Bhagavad Gita, and we practice that and we get some benefit and the Bhagavad Gita is also telling us God's a blue boy who plays the flute. Does one follow from the other? Yeah, that's a good question. So there are certain things which are verifiable from our experience and there are certain things which are not verifiable.

And at the same time, does that mean that they're never verifiable? Knowledge is not one zero, nor is faith one zero. Say, if we start with, students start with math, initially the idea is we can't subtract larger numbers from smaller numbers. But at the basic level, we add numbers and we see that that works, that helps.

And then we try to do something more. When we try to do something more, does that mean that immediately we accept everything that say advanced calculus is going to talk about? Not necessarily. When we come to that, when we work with that, and it works for us, that's when we will have a stronger level of faith in it.

So when the Gita also talks about faith, yes, there is a lot about spiritual reality that is talked about in the Gita, which is difficult for the rational mind to immediately comprehend or accept. And it is not necessary that every single aspect of bhakti practice has to be seen as a proof for every single other aspect of bhakti practice. Yes, they are all integrated together as a worldview.

But the Bhagavad Gita encourages a pragmatic approach. Okay, this works for you. Okay, then at least this works, continue with this level.

And maybe this is something which might be more open to explore. So it's not necessary that, as I said, aid, one aspect of a tradition's teachings are not, don't prove the entirety of the tradition's teachings. But that's fine, because the Gita's approach is reciprocal.

It doesn't have to, it doesn't recommend a one, it doesn't insist or demand a one zero approach. Either you accept the whole thing, or you get lost. No, depending on how much our experience is, we can approach accordingly.

And we will get, we will practice accordingly, and we'll get some realizations and insights, epiphanies, and we'll move forward accordingly. Does it address your question? Sorry, I lost your voice. Are you muted? Yeah, yeah, I was muted.

So one way I answer that kind of question is to say that, like, there's this common sceptical maxim, I forget what it's called, it might be the razor that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Yes, I reject the premise. And instead, the idea is claims which expect a lot of me require extraordinary evidence.

So you could tell me some fantastic story about what happened to you this morning. But if there's no benefit to you and telling the story, and you're not asking expecting anything from me as a result of that story being true or false, then I don't it doesn't take a lot of convincing for me to believe your story. There's no reason for you to lie, and there's nothing at stake for me.

But if you're you want me to invest in your business, and you have some idea, and you want me to put a whole lot of my money into your business idea, you better have some good evidence that your business is going to be successful before I'm going to put my money on the line. So similarly, with with theology, if, if, if religion wants to make lots of fantastic claims about what the spiritual reality is like, they don't need a lot of evidence for that provided that the truth or falsity of those claims don't have an impact on how I live my life right this minute. So if you want to say, fly this plane into a building, and you're going to have all these benefits in your next life, that's something that you better be, you better have good evidence for that.

And the evidence for that is not good. So we don't harm ourselves and other people in this life for benefit in a future life. But if what we're asked to do is chant this Hare Krishna Maha Mantra, live a clean, pure lifestyle, you'll get benefit now and you'll get benefit later.

All you really need to prove is that there's benefit later. And the idea of benefit later is nice and promising. And the benefit that comes now is proof that there'll be more benefit later, because generally things that are only offer benefit, they continue to do so at increasing rates, especially on the spiritual path.

That's a good point. Another point we could consider is that the what is an extraordinary claim will also vary from person to person, from culture to culture, and based on one's background. So Thomas Kuhn talks about structure of scientific revolutions about how there are paradigms.

And when the word paradigm has been overused quite a bit, and it is almost become somewhat hackneyed now. But he uses the word paradigm in a very encompassing sense to refer to a particular way of looking at the world. And if we have adopted a worldview, sometimes that adoption may not be a conscious act.

And we might even not be aware that we are speaking from a particular worldview. So within a particular paradigm, anything that doesn't fit in that paradigm will be considered extraordinary. And within another paradigm, that particular claim, that particular claim might be considered not so extraordinary, maybe ordinary.

So that's why even the idea that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, they begin with a certain set of assumptions. And it's very difficult to objectively categorize what is an ordinary claim and what is an extraordinary claim. So often the claims that what is that I think Robert Frost or somebody said that the theories we like, we call them facts, the facts we don't like, we call them theories.

Right. Yeah, that's a really good point. That's another way I deal with it.

Because it's like this idea is we can pose the question back on then who's really making the fantastic claims. And Dave and Rita Swami makes this nice point that for the materialist scientists, they want to push the inconceivability into matter. So basically, with science, everywhere you turn, there's something inconceivable.

These atoms have inconceivable potency. And there's billions of them. We can't even count.

We don't even have a word for the number of atoms there are. And they're all inconceivable. And the Big Bang is as inconceivable, too.

Whereas we in the Hare Krishna ontology, or in any theist, really, we only have one inconceivable thing in our ontology, and that's God. But after you accept the existence of a supreme being, everything else is fully explained as a result of that. Yes, it's interesting way of looking at it.

Yeah. It's see when we talk about Krishna, it's in some ways, there are two ways of trying to make sense of the world. Now, one is that we start with the world, and then try to see what all among the invisible is, what all propositions that are invisible, are rational or acceptable for us.

We could call this as a backward causation. This is the world that exists. And now, for explaining the visible world, what all propositions can I make, and what all propositions are acceptable.

So, Newton saw an apple falling. And based on that, he proposed that there is something which he called as gravity. So, that's one approach that in the Vedic tradition is called the ascending approach.

Now, the descending approach is that we look at a tradition's core propositions. And rather than evaluating those core propositions based on our current conceptions of what is rational or current conceptions of what is ordinary, extraordinary, far out, we see how those propositions explain the world as we experience it, help us make sense of reality. So, if we just evaluate the propositions themselves, and that can apply to science also, that suppose somebody starts telling us that a primary science education started by telling kids that, actually, this wall that you see behind this table that you see, there's no such thing as a table at all.

It's all quantum mechanical vacuum. Now, it's just when you look at it, all the wave collapses, and you think that there's a table, you think Einstein famously said that, and he expressed his approval of the quantum theory that he said, I would like to believe that the moon continues to exist, even if I'm not looking at it. So, the point I'm making over here is.

Oh, we've lost him for a sec. Hopefully, he'll be back. Oh, all right.

If you've got any questions, you can post them in the comments. Hopefully, he'll be back in a second. Lately, I've been recording these because there haven't been so many people tuning in live, and it lets me edit.

So, perhaps you can let me know in the comments if you prefer me doing these live rather than pre-recorded. Hopefully, he'll be back in a second. So, we were doing this as a follow-up because there were some interesting questions in the video we did on Jordan Peterson and examining how it would look if we used his approach to examine Bhagavad Gita.

And one person in the comments was writing that, and that one thing, I think they were saying, yeah, Jordan Peterson gets this wrong as he looks, he's got this idea of evil, that there's depravity. So, there's an ontological category as evil, whereas in Eastern traditions, we don't have this idea of evil. Instead, what we've got is ignorance.

So, for what many Christians believe is the original source of all our problems is sin, and it's a kind of evil. You start starting with Adam and Eve, and when we do the wrong thing, it's something evil in us. We're consciously choosing the wrong thing.

There's many Christians who disagree with this, but in the Eastern traditions, you really don't find this idea of evil, that there's bad qualities in the soul. Instead, there's ignorance where we, through a lack of knowledge or through coming in contact with material energy, we become covered over, and therefore we make bad choices. There's some good Christian thinkers that comment on this.

David Bentley Hart, he articulates nicely this idea of free will, which he uses to make a case for universalism, the idea that all will be saved, which is that the soul naturally desires the good. However, we can be mistaken about what the good is and how to achieve it. So, any person who we might perceive as committing evil activities, they're not consciously choosing to be bad.

They're not deliberately evil. They can be covered over with bad qualities through association with material energy, but the soul inside is still good. I can't remember exactly where you cut off.

I just did a little ramble about the idea of evil and how in the East we don't have this idea of evil. We have this idea that the soul is good and it's just ignorance which causes it to do bad things. But you can finish your point where you cut off.

So, I was just talking about this backward reasoning and forward reasoning. Forward reasoning means that we start with a set of propositions and instead of simply evaluating those propositions, we focus on the implications of those propositions and how they help people in, help us to make sense of the world around us. So, that's the Bhagavad Gita's overall approach.

It's called as a descending approach or a forward reasoning approach. Coming to the point about evil, I think two things are there in it. See, sometimes there is an attempt to make a radical differentiation between the East and the Now there are definitely some differences which are irreducible and we have to acknowledge those differences.

So, the categories of good and evil, are they present in the Vedic tradition? Well, there are similarities and there are differences. In the 16th chapter of the Gita, Krishna talks about divine and demoniac natures and he talks about that which is, it can also be called as godly and ungodly. But when he describes the demoniac natures and how some people delight in causing pain to others, that is actually similar to the conception of evil.

Evil, it's difficult to define it, but one way we could define it is we can say that evil is to cause suffering for the purpose of causing suffering. When suffering is inflicted for some higher purpose, like surgery is done or some disciplinary action is taken, that's different. That's not evil.

But when one causes evil because one gets joy in causing evil, that we could say is the nearest we can come in terms of definition to evil and to get joy in causing evil. So, there is a demoniac nature which can be very similar to evil. Now, having said that, pointed out that similarity, there is a fundamental difference that there are no living beings who are eternally evil.

The soul is never eternally evil. The soul is never eternally condemned for being evil. And although there is an agency that tempts us to do wrong, that is in the Vedic tradition called as Maya, Maya herself is not considered evil.

There is Satan within the Christian tradition and there are variants, Shaitan in the Arabic Islamic tradition. They are considered to be evil. But in the Vedic tradition, Maya, it is the agency that creates illusion, but she is not considered evil herself.

She is more of an agency who tests us by providing us options. So, her intention is benevolent, but sometimes if we don't pass our tests, the actions we may end up doing may resemble the actions done by some evil person. So, in that sense, evil as a category of existence, evil as a set of beings who are irredeemably evil, that is not there within the Vedic tradition.

But evil in the sense that people having the inner impressions to do things which can be called downright evil, which involve sadism, that is definitely a human possibility and the Gita talks about that. So, yes, now we could say, as you rightly pointed out, that evil is caused by ignorance and illusion that I sometimes differentiate between ignorance and illusion. Ignorance is to not know what to do and illusion is to mistake what is out there.

So, if I'm driving and suddenly it's all dark in front of me, I don't know where to go, I can't see anything, that's ignorance. But if I'm driving and say I have a cataract, then there might be a bump a little further away, but I see the two bumps, I see one closer, one further. So, that is something like illusion.

So, if it's completely dark in a desert, I can't see anything, that's ignorance. But if I see a head and I see a mirage and I think of it as a water body, that's an illusion. So, ignorance is to not know, illusion is to know falsely.

So, the cause of evil in the Vedic tradition, so evil itself is not a cause of people doing bad things, rather evil actions are the result of a deadly combination of ignorance and illusion. I think one of the key differences is that idea of whether the soul, whether the bad qualities go all the way down to the bottom or whether underneath all of that, there's a pure soul inside. Oh yes, definitely there's a pure soul underneath.

That is a categorical declaration that no matter how disintegrated or degraded a person's present behavior might be, no one is considered irredeemable. And that's because at the core, the soul is always pure. And in many ways, this is the difference between, we could say the spiritual and the ritual.

The ritual way of looking in any religious tradition, including what we can call the broad Vedic tradition, if this one is only ritualistic, oh, this person's behavior is so terrible, this person is so terrible, this person's actions are so terrible, and they are condemned because of that. That's the ritual way of looking at it. The spiritual way of looking at it is, whatever be their present actions now, below those actions, below the inner impressions that lead to those actions, beneath it all is a pure soul.

There's a well-known verse in the Gita 5.18, which talks about how the wise person has an equal vision towards everyone. So it's equal vision towards all human beings and indeed all living beings, including all animals also, because we see the spiritual potential that is always there in everyone, no matter how deep that potential may be buried right now. I think another thing, back on Jordan Peterson and this point of, I think some people misunderstand him too, or maybe I'm misunderstanding him and passing him in a more positive light, but to me, it seems like when he talks about this idea of evil, he's using language that makes it sound like he's talking about irredeemable depravity and an ontological category of evil that's existing, rather than it just being ignorance.

But I think you can just substitute out a few of those ideas and all of the points he's making make just as much sense if you assume he's talking about ignorance. For example, when he ponders about what caused the horrors of the Holocaust, he talks about we shouldn't underestimate our ability to do evil, which I think is a nice meditation. It's good to be humble and think that we're capable of bad things if we're in the wrong situation, hang out with the wrong people and make the wrong decisions and so on.

But I think you can just interpret him as talking about ignorance rather than evil. That's true. Now, in one sense, if we very strongly believe in evil, we end up believing that people cannot be reformed, or at least some people cannot be reformed.

And if we talk about Peterson's talks, when he becomes sometimes quite emotional and candid, that is when he talks about how he's moved when people come and approach him and tell him how their lives have been transformed by hearing his talks. So, in general, it will require a very sceptical person to believe that people cannot be transformed, that people cannot change themselves for the better. Now, of course, it's naive to think that everyone who makes an intention or a proclamation that they will transform will get transformed.

And so, is there something that is, I don't think in any way he's saying that there is, that everyone who does something evil will go down on the path to irredeemable evil, but the danger is there, the danger is there and that has to be acknowledged. That in the Gita tradition, there is this concept of samskaras. Samskaras are inner impressions and these inner impressions grow.

So, the example I like to give is of a snowball. When the snowball is on top of a hill, it's barely a snow pebble at that time. You could just flip it with our finger or our toe and it'll break apart.

But then as the snowball starts coming down, down, down, it gains mass and it gains momentum. It becomes a snowball, maybe by half the way down the, a big snowball by the way is half down the hill. And by the time it comes down to the bottom of the hill, it might have become a snow boulder.

And that same person who would have flipped them with it over with the toe might be completely bowled over by it, would be crushed by it. So, what has happened is that this snowball is very easily stoppable at one point, but almost unstoppable at another point. So, the Gita says that our actions also are something similar.

Initially, when we choose a particular action, somebody can decide, I'll do drugs, I won't do drugs. That may seem like, okay, my friend called me, so I went, my friend called me, I didn't go. This is a casual choice.

So, that's like just cracking a snow pebble with a flick of one's finger or toe. But if one keeps making a particular choice, then that inner impression becomes from a snow pebble to a snowball and a snow boulder. And then at a particular point, a person may end up addicted.

And this applies not just to addictions, this can also apply to actions that go against our present cherished values and purposes. So, there might be something which right now we may reject as unconscionable. I'll never do something like that.

But we go on that path, we do one small thing, another thing, another thing, another thing. And then we might maybe six months or six years or 20 years down the line, do the very thing which we never thought we would ever do. So, in that sense, there is a potential for evil, the word potential generally we use with a positive sense, but there's a potential for good within us, and there is a potential for evil within us.

And we need to be alert that this potential for evil is also very much real. And there is a continuous struggle in the 14th chapter, Krishna talks about how the forces that want to bring the good out of us are pulling us in one direction. And that this is called the mode of goodness, sattva guna.

And the forces that are bringing out the worst within us, that is tamo guna, they are also pulling us out from another direction. And these are constantly active. So, if we are not connecting with the forces that will bring out the best within us, in some ways, we won't stay neutral.

Because the forces that are bringing out the worst, that will bring out the worst within us are anyway acting on us, and they are likely to drag us down. So, in that sense, we have to be alert about how dangerous not only our future can be to ourselves, but our future can be to those around us, if we let the dark side within us come out. So, yes, there is a potential for us to do terrible things.

But that doesn't mean that anybody is, that everybody is irredeemably evil, or for that matter, anybody is irredeemably evil. On that point you made about how not everyone who sets out to redeem themselves is going to be successful. I think that's just a question of timeframe.

So, if you look at a large enough time window, then you will see everyone is eventually successful, at least according to universalist understandings of salvation. And I think that's the only view you could have, which is consistent with God being all loving, and with the soul having some degree of divinity into it. If given enough time, all souls aren't going to eventually choose the good, then the souls don't have a good nature.

Someone with a good nature can, for a short duration, be in a bad environment and be overcome with ignorance. But given enough time, they will sooner or later figure out that this is suffering, I'm not happy here, I want a better life, and they'll seek out better association and make the right choices. All the while, an all loving God is giving them the varieties of experiences they need to learn and grow, and putting them in association and giving them opportunities to pick up on bhakti, but to pick up on good association of other people who are elevated in spiritual consciousness.

Agreed. Now, it all depends on the timeframe. See, as I rightly said, that eventually, the soul's potential for goodness will manifest and will win out.

That is both the soul's potential and divine grace that will work that way. But how long that will take can make a huge difference for that particular individual and for the world around that individual. So, there are times or there are situations when considering the ultimate frame or the big frame is helpful.

And there are times when considering the big frame may not be the most helpful. That's something which each of us as individuals has to consider. So, that means, if I'm walking along the road and I see a small, like a small child crying, maybe with a bloated belly, and clearly sound signs of malnutrition.

And if I am in a position to help maybe offer some food to that child, and if I think, you know, after 100 years, this child will be dead. So, what difference is going to make? Well, that is not the frame of reference in which we should be thinking right now. Can I do something to help right now? If I can, let me do it.

So, just because we cannot, our help may not turn out to be helpful in the big picture, or in the bigger picture, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't help. So, in terms of understanding God's grace, knowing that everybody will be eventually redeemed, that is valuable. But in terms of taking individual responsibility, it's important to remember that, that eventually may be such a long time away, better let me get my act together as quickly as possible.

Otherwise, I am in for a lot of avoidable suffering myself, and I may end up causing a lot of avoidable suffering to others. So, I agree with what you're saying, but these are two perspectives. One is when we are trying to define the principle of a good God, and the other when we are trying to emphasize the role of individual responsibility.

All right, we have a question. Ritesh is asking, what is your opinion of him having a complete carnivore diet? Yeah, that's a question which I get often when I talk about Jordan Peterson. There are two things over here.

From the Vedic perspective, we strongly recommend a meat-free, violence-free diet, because all living beings have life, and why inflict pain when we can avoid it? So, I won't go into the ethics of a vegetarian diet right now, but that's what we broadly recommend. Now, having said that, when Jordan Peterson is taking a completely carnivorous diet, it is not for taste. From what I have read, he doesn't even put much any spice or other kind of stuff.

It's just raw meat almost which he's taking, and he has found that that improves his health, or at least protects his health from whatever health challenges he's facing. So, I am open to the idea that this world is complex enough for me to recognize that there can be exceptions to general principles. So, even in the Indian school of thought called Ayurveda, while broadly the Indian knowledge systems move towards vegetarian ethos, there is an acknowledgement of non-vegetarian ingredients for medicines, or even medicines that are entirely involving non-vegetarian ingredients itself.

So, is he actively propagating that diet to others? If thousands of people were adopting that diet because he was aggressively endorsing it as the way for everyone to lead a healthy life, then I would definitely consider that to be a toxic influence. But that is what the diet which he has found helpful for him, and I haven't seen many or even a small number of his followers adopting that diet per se. So, his primary teachings are not to turn to a complete carnivorous diet.

His primary teachings are, take responsibility for your life. For example, whether you consider his first book of 12 rules, or his book of maps of meaning, or his later books, none of those books say that you have to eat a carnivorous diet. So, excessively obsessing on that, and dismissing whatever insights or whatever wisdom he's sharing because of that, would be what I talked about earlier as knowledge in the mode of ignorance.

We take one thing, we take one thing and we can do everything. So, I don't think that needs to be, that's definitely not something which is recommended in the Vedic tradition. If he could maintain his health through some alternative diet, and the Vedic understanding is that his consciousness would be even more elevated.

Because food that is obtained by killing of animals, even if one is not doing it oneself, does decrease our own consciousness, lower the level of our own consciousness. Because to some extent, we have to close our consciousness to the pain that we are causing other living beings, if we are to objectify them enough to see them as eatable food. So, if he could have avoided that, that would be much better.

But I don't think his taking that is the sole basis on which we should evaluate his overall contributions, because that's not what he's advocating for everyone. I guess that's related to a similar question that a lot of Hare Krishnas have. Because we look at Christian saints sometimes and think these people seem quite God conscious, or sometimes we meet Christians and we think these people seem to have some real bhakti.

But then we also think, but they're eating meat, how is that possible that someone who is paying for other people to slaughter these animals in very cruel ways, could have anything approaching spiritual consciousness? Yeah, this is one of the principles that we may tend to forget that even in our own tradition, bhakti or the divine grace that leads to divine love, that is considered to be independent of all worldly circumstances. So, there is a process by which we can attract divine grace and divine love, but we can't restrict divine grace and divine love. So, sometimes by that divine independence, that love, that grace may manifest in some people who may not be conforming to the exact behavioral norms that are recommended in the tradition for spiritual growth.

So, that's why there is a recommended process for us to attract divine grace. But that does not mean divine grace is limited to only those who are following that recommended process. That would go against the principle of divine independence.

Perhaps there's an element there of a sort of childish, why does he get to have that? And I only get this, like I think in spiritual shelter, you join a particular spiritual movement or a particular church and you're getting some nourishment from God through that sangha. And based on the group, the family that you're in, there's certain expectations of you in your spiritual discipline. And as Gaudiya Vaishnavas, we have quite a high amount expected of us and Christians have less expected of us.

And we could think, how could a Christian who's got less expectations than I'm having to honor, be getting more bhakti than me? That's not fair. Why can't I have some? Why can't I work less? Yeah, this is where the comparative mentality can be a problem because we don't know what is their past. If we accept our own tradition's principle of reincarnation, then everybody's in a multi-life journey of spiritual evolution.

And that means that, yes, maybe in particular kinds of behavior, they might be off in some ways. But does that mean that they may not have, maybe some of them have done more spiritual practices than what we in their previous lives and what we had done in our previous life. And very circumstantially, they're put in a situation, they're born in a condition or a country or a culture where certain behaviors were the norm and they adopted that.

So there are our spiritual practices can either lead us to humility, where we acknowledge the complexity of the world and the complexity of God's actions in the world. Or our spiritual practices can lead us to certainty, where instead of humility, and we equate that certainty with faithfulness or non-compromisingness, anything that doesn't fit in the picture of the world that we have acquired, that is either wrong or misinformed or we just try to reject that. So I feel the second comes up, then it is a problem.

One of the defining characters of a person on the spiritual path is humility. Humility means that the world may not conform to my expectations. Even if those expectations are formed based on my current understanding of my spiritual tradition, the world is much more complex than that.

There's a follow up question, but won't he suffer in health and millions of lives once he leaves this body for all the karma? That's a good question. In general, my understanding is the principle of karma is meant to make us more responsible in our present choices. It is not meant for us to make grand pronouncements about others' future destinies.

Because who are we? Yes, a person's actions may be wrong, but it is not that the future is determined only by that set of actions. People are beings and people do various kinds of actions. Is it that this one action alone is going to determine a person's future destiny? Or is it that the sum total of all the actions that a person has done that is going to determine their destiny? So my understanding is the second, we can't just reduce a person to one set of actions.

And then the question comes up, is it that simple? Because if somebody is taking a diet primarily for health purposes, then is it food or is it medicine? If it is considered medicine, then in our tradition, based on the adoption of the Indian system of medicine is called Ayurveda. As I said in Ayurveda, non-vegetarian medicines are sometimes told, recommended. And although spiritualists try to avoid that, but sometimes no alternatives may be accessible.

And sometimes non-vegetarian medicines are taken. So does that mean that the doctor who prescribes such a medicine or the patient who takes such a medicine, all of them are going to go to hell for that? I think that we also have to consider the intent. It's not just the content of the action, what is being done, but the intent also.

So I fear that there is a certain amount of lack of humility when we pronounce what is the destination of any person in the future. Do we know the totality of the actions they have done even in this life? What to speak of their previous lives? And sometimes there might be even, I'm not saying the questioner has this attitude at all, there might be a possibility that we get some kind of egoistic pleasure in pronouncing the dire destinations of those who don't conform to our expectations of how they should be behaving. So I would hesitate to make any such pronouncements like that.

We have to consider the totality of action that a person is doing and even a particular objectionable action. Why are they doing that? Not just the content, but the intent is also important. Yeah, I think for the most part, people who ask this question are just thinking the philosophy says this, doesn't that mean that this will happen here to this person? But you made some good points about the intent.

There's one atheist YouTuber turned vegan YouTuber who makes some really good arguments against meat eating and in favor of veganism. And one of his good arguments says, imagine if I paid people to kill pigs in a really horrible way, just because I really enjoyed the sound that they make as they're dying. The screams that come out of their vocal cords as they're dying are just really satisfying to my ears.

That's why I pay these people to torture and kill these pigs. Unquestionably, everybody would say that's totally evil. That's completely heinous.

How could somebody do such a thing? However, when we do the same thing, you know, pigs are a classic example, because I mean, sometimes Christians will do it. It's a meme. They just post a picture of bacon and say his proof God exists.

It's like they're paying for these animals to be slaughtered in a horrible way for the pleasure of their tongue. That's a completely different thing. Like I've listened to Mikaela Peterson tell her story.

She had horrible health. She's had joint replacements. She was crippled due to, I think, rheumatoid arthritis for most of her life.

Then the only thing that gave her any respite was going on an all meat diet. Then her health transformed overnight. Now, if I was in her situation, I imagine I would probably eat the meat if it meant I wasn't living in excruciating hell every day.

I don't know how many people would be, we can say, saintly enough to live in excruciating pain with terrible debilitating health if it meant they didn't have to make any animals suffer. It's a completely different situation from what most people do when they eat meat. Now, I don't know Jordan Peterson's, the details of his health.

He doesn't like to talk about it, which goes back to the point you're making. Jordan Peterson doesn't use his platform to push his diet. When people ask about his diet, he's like, oh, God, you're going to ask me about that, are you? I was hoping not to talk about it.

That's his mood. He will explain it, but he's not preaching his diet. He's preaching other things.

The things that he does speak on, I think he speaks thoughtfully and well. I think the bait is when they do use meat medicinally, I don't think it's beef, right? It might be goat, but the cow is sacred. If we were to eat meat for medicinal reasons, we would avoid the cow and prefer other kinds of meat.

Yeah, that is true. It's true. So overall, when we look at the teachings from a particular tradition, there is a tendency to take one statement from that particular tradition's body of knowledge and apply that statement to one particular situation.

But context is critical. Is that the only teaching of the tradition? Are there other relevant principles or teachings from the tradition that will apply to this particular context? So when we just take one teaching and apply it, that can give us some understanding. But if we claim that to be the holistic understanding or the complete understanding, then we may set ourselves a path to serious errors.

Because people are not just reducible to one behavior and people's destiny cannot be reduced to their one particular choice alone, especially if they themselves are multifaceted and they're doing multiple things. So that reductionistic tendency, it's not just present in say science, which tries to reduce reality to the physical or the material level. But that tendency may be there even within spiritualists.

It's ironic that one of the key principles of bhakti is sarvopadhi vinirmuktam, that become free from all designations. But unfortunately, when we become spiritualists, we try to put designations on everything. In fact, we try to reduce everything to designation.

Oh, this person is a meat eater. This person is this, this person is this. Oh, yeah, meat eating is one habit that they have.

But that doesn't define the whole of who the person is. Just like somebody who doesn't eat meat. Are all the people who are vegetarian of the same equal spiritual caliber? Well, there are people in goodness, passion, ignorance, and there are people who are spiritualists among those who are not eating meat.

So there is variety over here. There is variety over there also. So yes, meat eating is that I like the example which you gave out, equating taste with sound, very provocative and pointed example.

And in principle, it's, it's not difficult to emphasize the point that meat eating is something which we would be far better off avoiding. But life sometimes requires us to make the least intolerable trade-offs, not just trade-offs, but the least intolerable trade-off. So like you talk about, Mikhail Petrosyan, if eating meat is the only way to a diet of meat is the only way to come out of excruciating pain, then maybe that's the trade-off one has to do for, for living there in that situation.

This, that, that segues nicely into another question, which I'll mention, but then I quickly want to bring up another comment on that's on the other topic. So the question is, well, other religious practitioners go back to the question of why and how, because they don't know about God in totality. But just quickly, I wanted to bring up this other point.

Can you imagine Peterson living the life of cows in an industrial slaughterhouse, a holocaust every day? It's just true. I mean, we think the holocaust is bad and it is, but industrial slaughterhouses are just as bad in many ways. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so back on this question about practitioners of other religions. Yeah.

I think about vegan, he has said, he was asked a question once and he just says to everyone, their choice. He seemed to be non-committal about that, but I'm not sure whether he's actually encountered the gravity and the brutality that goes in the, as you said, the industrial slaughterhouse, industrial slaughterhouses. Yeah.

That's a good thought exercise to contemplate for us and possibly for him also to experience. I mean, there is some amount of like in New Zealand, there's wild deer and goats. And if you let the population gets out of hand, it's actually bad for the, for everyone.

It's bad for the environment and it's even bad for the deer. Someone was telling me a story that he's this hunter. He knows he goes and hangs out with some time he goes hunting and he's worked his way through this area of bush in New Zealand, cutting down, cutting back the deer population and the deer and that area of the bush are healthy.

You look at them and they're, they're, they're plump. And that, that on the other side of the valley, the area that he hasn't culled, that there's not enough food for them. There's too many deer.

So all the deer are unhealthy. So perhaps Jordan Peterson should source his meat from, from those deer. And it would be a lot less sinful.

Yeah. You know, Prabhupada would also say that if somebody has to eat meat, let them wait for the animals to die naturally. It will just require some amount of delay, some amount of preservation of food and let them take food after that.

Let them eat meat after that. That's also a possibility. And coming to this point about nature, the natural, natural involving some balances, the Bhagavatam also talks this principle that one living being is food for another.

So in that sense, even humans have been given some canine teeth. If you want to eat meat, but our canine teeth are nowhere like the teeth of lions and tigers, where we can rip flesh apart with our teeth. So meat as a small part of one's diet, considering that out of 32 teeth, how many of our teeth are canine? So in that proportion, meat is a part of the diet for some people.

It is something which has always been a part of history, you and human society. But what is the big difference now is, it's not that to restore the balance of population of certain species that those animals are being killed. Rather, animals are being specifically grown, grown like crops are grown like industrial products, where they're crammed together, where they're given artificial fertility and growth drugs.

And they are being completely objectified. So that is very, very different from any form of traditional meat eating that existed in human society in pre industrial revolution times. Just quickly on that point, someone saying once they were asked by a friend, where is it said that you can't offer meat? Yeah, so now, there are two different things over here.

The Bhagavad Gita is not primarily a book that is giving guidance, like complete guidance about food and everything about life. The Bhagavad Gita is spoken on a battlefield to address a particular existential dilemma, a particular ethical dilemma. And while addressing the dilemma, it talks about various philosophical points that are relevant immediately to that particular context.

So for example, the Gita doesn't directly talk anything about proving the existence of God. Why? Because that is that is an important philosophical question. But that was not an important philosophical question for Arjuna, the student of the Gita, that was not the question for him in his condition or even in his state of spiritual evolution.

Similarly, in his particular context, the question of diet was not the primary question for Arjuna. And that's why that is not what is explicitly addressed in the Gita. So when he gives, whenever Krishna talks about diet, for example, he says you can offer me a fruit, a flower, a glass of water, a little leaf also, a leaf also or a little water.

There, he's not giving a complete dietary prescription. He's simply emphasizing the principle of simplicity in bhakti, in devotional offerings, that even the simplest of things can be offered to the Lord. Now, in the 17th chapter, he talks about food in sattva rajas tamas, in goodness, passion, ignorance.

And broadly speaking, the description of food in goodness conforms with vegetarian food. Now, if you want to go specifically to dietary recommendations, there are other books. The Manusmriti talks about while it says that most people will eat meat, but those who avoid eating meat, they are far better situated.

So the Gita is talking about philosophical principles and practical guidelines that address a specific existential ethical dilemma. It's not giving a complete guidelines for living because that's not relevant to Arjuna's context. Yes, there are other texts which do talk about meat eating and how it is harmful for consciousness.

So Mahabharata, for example, there are many sections on Ahimsa, there are many sections on how everybody who cooperates in the business of meat eating, right from the person who sells the animal to be killed to the person who cooks the meat, how they are, they are all in one sense considered to be co-conspirators. So yes, in the Gita, there's no explicit mention, but in the broader tradition, there are many mentions like that. Let's go back to that question on, I think it's this.

Yeah. So will other religious practitioners go back to Krishna? Why and how? Because they don't know about God and totality. So first of all, again, I feel that we need some amount of humility that we can't predict or we can't make categorical statements about who is going to go where.

Even somebody who is say practicing Krishna Bhakti, can we say categorically that all of them are going to go back to Krishna at the end of this life itself? We don't know how much they have evolved spiritually, how much more they need to evolve. So two things that if we consider, this is the bottom of the mountain and then the top of the mountain. Now, there are multiple paths up the mountain.

Now, all paths from the bottom of the mountain don't take us to the top. Some may just take us around the mountain. Some may take us away from the mountain.

Some may take us deep down into valley also. But if you start from the bottom of the mountain, we can get to the top of the mountain from multiple paths. So that is the broad understanding of the Vedic tradition that there can be multiple paths from material consciousness to spiritual consciousness.

Now, there is an objective peak of the mountain. So there is a peak P-E-A-K and there is P-E-E-K peak. So different people will get different peaks of the peak.

So if I'm looking from this side and this is all covered with forests, then maybe I get a very small peak of the peak. And if I'm looking from some other side where there's a clear skyline and not much vegetation, then I can get a much, much clearer view, a far clearer peak of the peak. So what happens is that while starting from the bottom, different traditions may have conceptions of the divine, which may be of different degrees of clarity.

And depending on how much clarity is present or absent, even the conceptions of the divine may or may not seem to be that similar. But it is the same peak that is being glimpsed. So if somebody is earnestly pursuing divinity, pursuing higher spiritual consciousness, pursuing God, if you want to use that word, then they will progress on the top of the mountain.

Now, how far will they get? How exactly will they get to Krishna? We understand that the spiritual world is vast and there could be various destinations in the spiritual world that we may not be aware of. There is one conversation where Swami Prabhupada, the prominent Bhakti Yoga teacher whom I have been talking about repeatedly, he says that there could be a higher destination. In our understanding, the universe is not just earth, the heaven and hell.

There are multiple destinations beyond the earth. So in one such intermediate destination, Jesus could groom and train his followers till they attain love of God and they attain divinity in a form that is, till they become, till their love for divinity in the form of Krishna or some of the other forms revealed in the Vedic tradition, Bhakti tradition could, could manifest. It could happen during the transitional journey.

It could also happen that there is an abode where they attain and from there, therefore, whatever is, whatever is lacking in their vision of divinity, that is provided for and then they move forward. So, Shri Prabhupada was asked this question once in the Les Cranes show, that was a popular show in the 1960s, that Swamiji, if there was a Christian pastor and there is Swami, Bhaktiwan Swami Prabhupada, they asked Swami that if somebody follows that book, the Bible, will they go back to God? Prabhupada said yes. So Prabhupada in that sense was quite clear in terms of the potential for other spiritual paths to take one to God.

Now exactly which conception of divinity, which level of reality where they are connecting with the divinity and how their onward spiritual trajectory will be, that may, that may be something which may be beyond our present conception to know. And given the complexity of the world, given the various levels at which different spiritual practitioners may be in their conception of divinity, those trajectories may vary. Sorry, you're on mute Prabhu.

I was just saying I've forgotten what I was going to say next. Maybe we'll move on to another one of these questions then. Which was it? Which major sect of Christianity doesn't think pagan Hindus would go to Christian heaven or their souls won't be destroyed? Which sect has rejected verses from the Bible abusing idol worship? So I've been, someone in the comment was saying I'm too, I'm passing Christianity in too good of a light.

And then I said, I have to acknowledge the mature sects of Christianity because some of my viewers are in those camps. Okay. So then I think they're asking, well, which Christians, this is another person, I think they're asking, well, which Christians is it? So I don't know if you have much to say on that.

I can comment a little. Yeah. Okay.

I mean, which Christians, well, Richard Rohr is one person who has written a book called the Universal Christ. And he does talk about how Christianity has, has, he talks about Jesus as a specific and important instantiation of the universal reality, which is Christ. So he's one prominent teacher who talks about, he's a Christian monk, Catholic monk, who talks about the, the point that God can manifest in different forms.

Now, specifically, idolatry is something which is strongly critiqued in the Christian tradition. But the idea that, that people can go to God through different paths, yes, many mainstream versions of Christians may not accept it. But there are a small, but significant number of individual teachers within Christianity who have accepted the idea that things may not be as black and white as, as has been taught.

David Bentley Hart is also another person who has talked about universal redemption, even if somebody doesn't accept Jesus as a savior. So there are a few thinkers within that. But I won't say that just because they have negative views about us, that means we have to have negative views about them.

My experience with Christianity, because initially when I started doing this kind of philosophy, religion work, I wanted to suss out, well, what is it, what are the philosophical differences between the different Christian denominations? But I've come to realize that largely the philosophical disagreements transcend denominations. So you'll find Catholics or any kind of Protestant who fall anywhere on a number of philosophical questions, the things they differ over are, a lot of them are, are ritualistic or, or practice-based, like whether, when you're, whether you dunk him or how many times you dunk him, or whether you can just sprinkle some water on their head and they're baptized and, and things of that nature. That, that explains a lot of the differences that you get some differences between Protestants and Catholicism.

But some of them are just quick differences over which church authorities accept. So there's not going to be an answer of the, this denomination of Christianity has this kind of universalist view. Instead, what you have is a collection of Christians who could be in any, any number of denominations who will accept David Bentley Hart's view or the view of some of the Christians you named.

John Heck is another one who's got some universalist views. As for whether they reject the Bible versus abusing idol worshipers, uh, we have to interpret the word idol. Well, we, it's open to us.

There's, there's a case to be made that you can interpret the rejection of idol worship that the Bible puts forward as rejecting, uh, something different from what we do when we worship deities and Christian consciousness. So I've heard some Christian thinkers commenting on idol worship nicely as it's when you give undue importance to something. So what we're speaking at the beginning of the stream about, uh, when people are possessed by an ideology, what they're doing is giving too much importance to one idea or a collection of ideas, and that's eclipsing other things.

Uh, and anything other than God being the thing in the center that you give most importance to is going to create problems. God is a broad enough of a thing or an idea that when you put place God in the center, you don't run into these problems. If you place a very small understanding of what God is in the center, then you can get religious fanaticism and religious violence and so on.

Um, but that's because the thing you've placed at the uppermost is the wrong thing. It's too limited. Um, and that's what creates the problem.

So that the rejection of idol worship, I think makes sense to, to put it that way when you're worshiping something that's not God in a way that is only fit for God. Also, we need to point out that the Sanskrit word puja is not the same as the way Christians use the word worship. Uh, it's the same word that you might use for a statement like thou shall honor.

They might know in the father who just means to give honor and to pay homage and respect. Whereas worship Christians use it for something that's just for God. And we have a concept of things that are just for God, but it's more of a philosophical and then that has to do with how much importance you give something.

Yeah. I have written the entire book on this topic called idol worship or ideal worship. All right.

We'll put a link in the description. Yeah. So one of the things, which a key difference I talk about is that it's that in what, why is the, like you just elaborating on the time more specifically that why is the, why the Abrahamic religions in general so strongly against worship of idols? Because there is a particular historical and philosophical context to it.

You know, when Moses was taking the chosen people, uh, from Egypt out to the promised land. So he went on the top of the Mount to get the 10 commandments. And the meanwhile, his followers, they took whatever gold and other stuff they had, they melted it and made it into golden goat.

And they started worshipping golden calf and started worshipping it. And he said, stop this worship. And he smashed that object of worship.

And he said, thou shall not. That's one of the, that's the time. Then he also pronounced the 10 commandments that he had got from God on top of the Mount.

And one of them was thou shall not worship any, any stone idols or basically the idea is over there that uh, God is somewhere up. He's transcendent. He's not accessible to us.

And if we talk about some representation of God, you say, okay, we can't see. So let's have some representation. So their fear is that the people will only focus on the representation and forget the reality who's represented by it.

And in that way, the representation will become a competitor to the one who is being represented. And eventually the representation will take away the worship that is meant for the one who is to be represented. And that is why many times when right from the Old Testament to down to Islam, whenever any religiously motivated Kings would conquer a kingdom, they would go out and bash all the idols in the temples.

And they would do that because they thought that they are actually destroying all false gods who are competitors to the true gods, so that the glory of the one true God is proclaimed. But all this starts from the idea that God is ineffable. God is completely transcendental.

And therefore, anything that depicts God is merely a representation of God. However, in the Vedic tradition, it's understood that yes, God is transcendental. But by his omnipotence, he can manifest himself in the world.

So an idol is a representation of the divine. Whereas in the Bhakti tradition, we use the word deity. And deity is not considered to be a representation of the divine.

The deity is a manifestation of the divine. So in that sense, the deity is non different from the divine. That's why the deity will never become a competitor to the divine for worship.

Whatever worship is offered to the deity is offered to the divine. So and how can we know that the deity is a representation of the divine is not a representation but a manifestation of the divine. Because in the Bhakti tradition, there are descriptions of the divine given.

So whereas in the Abrahamic tradition, there are no descriptions of the divine that are given. And because there are no descriptions, so therefore, what happens is that they have to just have something which is considered a representation. So famously in the Sistine Chapel when Michelangelo was asked to depict God handing out his grace, to reaching out with grace to human beings.

So he depicted the human being to be like Adam, a quintessential handsome young man. And he depicted God to be like an old man with a beard. And now that is idolatry.

That is representing God according to human conceptions of God. Now actually, if you just tilt the image around a little bit in that image in Sistine Chapel, actually man looks more attractive than God. And projecting human conceptions on God and representing him according to our own conceptions, that is something which will divert people away from God.

So yes, seeing God to be not so attractive old looking man, that could take people away from the worship of God, the one true God. But when in a tradition, there are positive descriptions of God's form, and when there are images made according to those descriptions and sanctified according to proper ceremonies, then what results is not considered to be a representation, but a manifestation of the divine. And that's why that in the Bhakti tradition, there is no antipathy toward deity worship at all.

And it's completely different in terms of conception of what is actually being done. Now, I have read about, there are quite a few Christians who have seriously engaged with the Bhakti tradition also. And so I think Francis Clooney is one of them, quite a serious Christian scholar.

And he has written that he spent a lot of time with a particular Bhakti tradition called the Sri Vaishnava tradition. And he said, this was deeply challenging for me, because when I would go to the temples, from my education, my training, these are just idols, which are actually the tricks by which Satan is taking people away from God. But when I talk with the people who are worshipping these deities, I could not deny the devotion that they had.

So, he says that maybe there has humility, he doesn't reject the Christian prohibitions against idolatry. But he says, maybe those prohibitions may not apply here. It doesn't go to that extent, but something like that he says.

So, my point is that yes, idolatry in terms of worshipping some representations that replace or displace God, that is definitely to be avoided. But deity worship in terms of giving for our senses, a tangible object that can connect our consciousness with the divine, that is a different category of activity indeed. And that is what has enabled millions for millennia to experience proximity to God through the worship of the deity.

Again, we are muted. Sorry. Yeah, I think this brings us on to discussing impersonalism.

So, we've got some comments here, Mr. Kreinen, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong. You could even take the rejecting idol worship as rejecting an anthropomorphization of God, I think is what he means. Yes, that's true.

Or an archetype the divine takes in our perception. I'm sure you're familiar with this idea that the deity or the form is just something beneficial for us to meditate on, because we can't fix our mind on the actual ethereal nature of God. So, this is given to us for our own benefit and we become more advanced and we can meditate on what God actually is, which is something impersonal on these conceptions.

Yeah, even in the broad Vedic or Vedantic traditions, there are two conceptions of the deity. One is that you could call this as, if I want to use some terminology for this, there is ascending symbolism and descending symbolism. Ascending symbolism is something like the flag of a country.

Now, India has a tricolour flag. So, three colour strips are there with a chakra, the circle in between and a few other details. But the point is that to Indians and to people who are familiar with India, that flag signifies India.

However, there is nothing intrinsically connected between the flag and the country. Tomorrow, if the Indian government passes a majority resolution that we don't want a tricolour flag, we want a two colour flag or a four colour flag. The Indian flag could be changed.

So, this is ascending symbolism. What it means is that there is an abstract concept, the concept of nationhood and love for nationhood, love for one's country. Patriotism, we can say.

Now, that ultimate reality is abstract. The concept of nationhood is abstract. Now, just thinking about nationhood, it's difficult to experience emotions, to experience love.

And therefore, we have a concrete symbol that is of a flag. But the connection between the flag and the country is actually only in our own imagination. That's why it's called as ascending symbolism.

That from the concrete symbol to the abstract concept, it is our ascending imagination that connects the symbol with the symbolized. But in contrast to that, let's consider something which you would call as descending symbolism. That means, say, if a person loves their spouse and they have to go somewhere away from their family because their job requires them to do, and they keep a photo of their spouse with them.

Now, the spouse is a real tangible person with a particular appearance and the photo depicts that appearance. So, the connection between the photo and the person is not just in the imagination of the person. It is actually, we could call it as descending symbolism.

That means there is a real person who looks in a particular way and the photo of that person is like a symbol which is based on how that person looks. Now, say, if a husband comes back from home and his wife and husband greet each other and then takes out his wallet and then the wife sees that, hey, there is some other woman's picture in the wallet. She says, who is this? He says, no, no, no.

Actually, I was thinking of you only, but I just changed the page. Now, if you're going to change the photo, I'll change my husband. So, the point is, this descending symbolism, you cannot change the symbol with the symbolized because there's an intrinsic connection between the two.

So, within the impersonal, within the Indian tradition, there is the impersonalist and the personal school of thought. So, for the impersonalist school of thought, the idea of deity is like ascending symbolism that, okay, the ultimate reality is abstract and impersonal. So, just take some form and worship it as a transitional tool for meditation.

And just as the flag can be changed, similarly, what we are worshiping can be changed. But that is not the conception in the bhakti tradition, which is impersonalist. We understand that there is an actual person and that actual person has a form.

He's described in the Bhagavad Purana, he's described in the Brahma Samhita, he's described. So, yes, he plays a flute. He has lotus like eyes.

He has a bluish black complexion. He wears a peacock feather. He stands in a threefold bending form.

He's described in core bhakti texts. So, based on those forms, a depiction is made. So, then it is not just a transitional tool for meditation.

Rather, as I said, it's a manifestation of the divine. So, it's not just an archetype and it's not anthropomorphism. Rather, it's not that we, because we are human beings, we are actually projecting our imagination on God and thinking that he should also be human.

Rather, it is rather than saying that God is being anthropomorphized, we can say that we humans are theomorphized. That means we are made in the image of God. So, God has a particular form and our human form is based on that form.

Among all the species in the universe, the human form is the most suited or the most endowed for knowing God. Because we have the developed consciousness for spiritual inquiry. And that's why the human form, which is the closest to God in terms of having the potential to know him, has been, human beings have been gifted a form that is similar to God's form.

So, it's not that God is being anthropomorphized. Rather, it is that humans are theomorphized based on the human potential to know theology and to know the ultimate theological reality, God. That relates to another question which has come in.

Do the scriptures describe the actual face of Krishna? Because different deities of Krishna look differently. I can't connect or attract to some deities. Not at all.

This reminds me of something someone described to me. Watch that. If you go around parts of India where they carve deities and you look at the children of the deity carvers, often the deities look like the carver's children.

There are two things over here. There is always going to be a certain level of individual creative expression in devotional depictions. So, just like in India, does it have one monolithic culture all over? No, India has more than a dozen major languages and more than a hundred minor languages.

So, when there will be songs, before we come to deities, let's consider something else. When there will be songs in praise of the divine, not everybody is going to speak the same song in the same language. So, there will be linguistic variation and not just linguistic variation.

Within the same language, there are dialects. With the same dialect, different people may pronounce the words of the songs, some words in the songs differently. So, Krishna is pronounced in some places as Krishna.

Some places pronounce it as Krishna. And these are all acceptable variants within the broad tradition. So, just as there can be linguistic variations, similarly, there can be visual variations.

So, when Krishna is being depicted, there are broad features of his depiction which will be maintained, but specifics can and will vary. So, there are, again, different parts of India, different art forms have developed. And because different art forms have developed, the artists become expert in the particular art forms that they have been trained in, they have the opportunity to get trained in.

And those of them who have some devotional inclinations will depict Krishna in those particular forms. Now, if some artists from other parts of the world, they become also devotional inclined, they depict Krishna, there could be some elements of their ethnicity in their depiction on Krishna, in their depiction of Krishna. So, does the human, does the individuality or the individual background of the human beings come out to some extent in the depiction of God? Yes, that does.

But does that mean that entire depiction is simply a projection of their imagination? No. They are two very different things. That the individual depiction, that the depictions are individualized according to culture and other things, doesn't mean that the entire depiction itself is a result of a cultural projection.

If that were true, then there wouldn't be a consistent vision of Krishna as a character across the Indian subcontinent. And yes, there are some stories about Krishna which are distinctive to particular places. But overall, the lore about Krishna, the stories about Krishna that are there across the Indian subcontinent are remarkably similar.

So, it's not entirely, definitely not entirely a human depiction. But individual artistic experience and expertise will shape how Krishna is depicted. I guess an interesting point related to that is when they archaeologically find the remains of some of these deities, the archaeologists with great confidence can say, oh, this is the deity of Krishna, this is the deity of Shiva.

So, like you were saying, that there's some commonality among all of these depictions, even if there's also artistic variation. We're also skirting around the debate of impersonalism versus personalism, Vaishnavism versus Advaita Vada, and so on. And maybe we can do something on that.

I'm hoping to find an Advaita Vada scholar who can come on and I can have someone like you or people suggesting Amarindya Prabhu to have a discussion where we can actually have two people who know what they're talking about discuss this, because often these things come up in and neither party knows the arguments on either side well enough to actually have a fruitful discussion. You know, one challenge would be that if you make the debate very scriptural, I don't know how much the audience will also be able to connect with it, because you have a particular audience. And if you make the debate logical, then that is one way of having the debate where we focus primary logic and we also talk about scripture to some extent.

You can do it logically, but then you get people who say these ideas come from Adi Shankaracharya and then they present a whole lot of a view which is not susceptible to the arguments leveled by Madhvacharya and Ramanujacharya. And nobody ever accused Madhvacharya or Ramanujacharya of strawmanning Adi Shankaracharya. Rather, Madhvacharya, in particular, his treatise Advaitavadis to this day are still discussing how to work around his arguments and he caused them to revamp their doctrine.

So anyone who's saying they're presenting something taught by Adi Shankaracharya, whose views are not susceptible to those arguments, is not actually representing Adi Shankaracharya. So, I mean, that's the question. If somebody says, oh, I'm following this set of traditions who historically Vaishnavas have had vehement philosophical disagreements with, but then when you push them on certain points, they actually don't hold those views which we've objected to historically.

Do you have any comments on that? Yeah, it's a very important observation that you made that Madhvacharya. See, there are historical, like Shankaracharya has had a phenomenal influence on the Indian tradition and most other subsequent teachers, even if their philosophical conclusions are opposed to Shankaracharya, they have always treated him with great reverence. In our tradition, Shankaracharya is considered to be a manifestation of the divine deity Shiva.

So, we may not agree with his conclusions, but we still revere him as a person. So, what has happened because of this shades with respect to whether you respect the person and accept his teachings or you respect the person and, but don't accept the teachings or there is within the Madhva Sampradaya, there's some group which doesn't regard Shankaracharya at all as divine or as a major spiritual teacher. They consider him completely misled.

There are a few like that, but because of this wide spectrum, how Shankaracharya has impacted people today, whether it's today's individual spiritual teachers or individual spiritual seekers, that can vary a lot. That's why when we may say that, okay, this is what you, this is what a impersonalist argument is, and this is the reputation for it. Or, but then we say that that's not my argument at all.

So, even when we talk about impersonalism, there are, we can sometimes become very impersonalist about impersonalists. What do I mean by that? That we might just impersonalism is basically denying variety. Everything is just one, one object and then no subject, no conscious subject in it.

So, we may deny the fact that even among impersonalists, there are varieties and there are a lot of people who may have more of a religious veneration for Shankaracharya and some of the other impersonal teachers without necessarily even having intellectual conformity with them or even much intellectual awareness of the nature of their teachings. So, my understanding is that instead of trying to pinpoint this is impersonalism and this is what we need to refute, it's much better to recognize that or much better to analyze why impersonalism is such an attractive option, why impersonalism appeals to many people and why they have reservation towards personalism and address that. Because once we start having a debate on a particular philosophy, then what is that philosophy exactly? Determining that itself may take a long time and here a lot of emotions are invested when it comes to particular spiritual teachers and those emotions don't necessarily arise because of the teachings of those teachers.

They may arise from the charisma of the teacher, they may arise from the spiritual stature of the teacher, they may arise from the cultural aura that has been created around the teacher. Am I making sense of what I'm saying here? Yeah, I've got a question I wanted to press because it's something I've wondered about. Suppose, I'll give an analogy which might be a little crude, but let's say you meet people who say, we're followers of Aleister Crowley and you're like, well, he was a Satanist and all these bad things and then you press them on all the views they hold on different things and all the views they describe come out as perfect Christianity and you're like, but you're calling yourself a follower of Aleister Crowley and it's like, do we need to, I'm just keeping in the analogy for now, is there any value in disabusing this person of their reverence for Aleister Crowley or should we just say, well, as long as you're believing these things and those beliefs are fine, let's just agree and that's cool.

Because with Adi Shankaracharya, we think he gave a distorted interpretation of the Vedas. So if somebody comes along and they've got various philosophical views right, and we don't have major objections to their understanding or see it as an impediment to bhakti, but still they've got this reverence for someone who gave teachings which are, if followed properly, an impediment to bhakti. So how much should we be interested in sort of like, well, maybe you should shift your allegiances over to people who are actually giving an accurate understanding of the Vedas.

Or should we just be happy if the philosophical conclusions are all right? Well, okay. I mean, that's an important point. Helping others on their spiritual journey towards spiritual evolution and it's not necessarily one zero that you have to, that people's spiritual journey is not determined only by their philosophical affiliations.

It also depends on the service attitude. Sometimes their philosophical affiliation to a particular tradition may also make them open to service attitude towards the whole broad tradition. Many of the people, many of the Indians who helped Srila Prabhupada in establishing the Krishna Consciousness movement in India.

Prabhupada started the movement in America and then he came to India and he built several grand temples in India. So many of the Indians who helped him build those grand temples, most of them didn't become his committed followers or initiated disciples. Most of them were already initiated by some other gurus who were what we would call as impersonalists, but they had great cultural appreciation for the work that Swami Prabhupada was doing and they went out of their way to help him in many, many ways.

And that's what was the focus. So Prabhupada didn't, if the issue came up, Prabhupada addressed it, but Prabhupada didn't make it an issue that why are you following this particular teacher, what are his beliefs, Prabhupada didn't make it the central thrust of his relationship to disabuse them of their philosophical conceptions. He focused on engaging them in service because they already had service attitude and they did a great amount of service to Krishna and they would benefit from that.

So it all depends on time, place, circumstance. My understanding is that we need to ensure that we don't end up fighting battles that we don't need to fight. That for this person at this level, what is the step forward for them? And if that step forward involves confronting their philosophical present conceptions or affiliations, that's what may need to be done.

But maybe that is not the thing that is required. Maybe right now, let's maybe they can channel their service attitude, their humanitarian attitude, their empathic support for spiritual wisdom and spiritual culture and channel it and engage them. And this is what Krishna talks about in 326 in the Gita.

He said, don't disturb the minds of others, engage them for the elevation. So that is the instruction that can be very easily neglected. And if we have a if we have a very black and white kind understanding of spiritual outreach, which is centered only on philosophical conceptions and not on treating people as complete, complex persons with many facets to them.

There's a couple more questions, but we'll try and wrap it up soon. This one is just on the point we're discussing. Remember, guys, that without holding to dogmas over experience, there's less dividing the Sanskrit wisdom traditions and philosophies than they have in common.

Do you understand what's being said there? I would think I'm inclined to think it's saying that that the disagreements we have within the Sanskrit wisdom traditions, they're not so much and they have more in common. I would push back on that and say that the disagreements you get within Indian religious traditions is far greater than what you find outside of India, because it's just so diverse. OK, but it could also it could also be this point you get, which is common, that this is something Sadhguru teaches that if you just forget about dogma, forget all about that and just focus on what you actually firsthand have experience of as a result of your religious practice or just an everyday experience, then we will find we agree on a lot more.

It's the disagreements come from the things we're told to believe that we don't actually have firsthand experience of. And that's what everyone's fighting over. That is that is, I would say a good point.

See, there is that definitely a vibrant intellectual tradition of debate within Indian Indian philosophical history, no doubt about that. There are books like the Argumentative Indian, which depict this. Of course, I don't agree with everything that the book says about depicting Indian history.

But my point is that there is a vibrant tradition of intellectual confrontations and intellectual debates. However, that did not become acrimonious in terms of ad hominem attacks, that there's very there's a overall foundation of respect. So sometimes that gets lost when when the debates become not just philosophical, but they become personal.

And then what results is vithanda. Vithanda means somehow or other win the debate, even if it that means ad hominem attacks and assassinating the character of the opponent, that that was not what would happen in the Vedic tradition. So, and the because the differences between the at least the theological or philosophical differences wouldn't become acrimonious, that wouldn't that wouldn't lead to major conflicts among the followers.

So somebody might be a personalist and somebody might be impersonalist. And still, they might all be a part of a joint extended family. And they would still live amicably.

So the point is that are there differences at the philosophical level, they are there. Are they important? Well, they are important to understand the nature of ultimate reality. And intellectual scholars and scholars of particular traditions have debated on those issues, but they have not become major issues for conflicts among individuals.

So there is the capacity to differentiate between philosophy and culture, that at a cultural level, there's a lot common within the broad Indian tradition. So for example, there is the respect for the deities, respect for cows, respect for the Vedas, there is respect for renunciation and the renounced order. There is a high regard for sonic theology, divinity manifesting through sound in its various forms.

So there are, there is usually an agreement on karma and reincarnation. So there are many things which are common within the Vedic tradition, and at a cultural level, even at a philosophical level, and those shouldn't be overshadowed when we talk about differences. So yes, differences are there, but they don't have to, they haven't broken the masses apart.

There is nothing in Indian history like say, the conflict, the hundred year war between Catholics and Protestants. Although the debate between personalists and impersonalists has gone on for almost 1000 years, starting from the 10th century when Ramacharya wrote the first major refutation of Shankaracharya down to today, that debate is going on, but personalists and impersonalists have never had wars among themselves. So in that sense, the philosophical was never made the universal, and the philosophical did lead to sectarian conflicts among the masses.

Sounds like what I've seen goes on in modern academic philosophy circles, where people will disagree vehemently about something to do with philosophy of religion or another philosophical point, either epistemology or ontology, and they'll debate it. They'll go back and forth and submit papers, and they'll have a lot, and they're having fun, and it doesn't become acrimonious as you described it. It's an intellectual thing, they're putting effort into it.

I think one key feature of this is, in general, philosophers don't think that if you don't subscribe to my philosophy, you're going to suffer and howl eternally, and every time you open your mouth and attract people to your philosophy and away from my philosophy, you're bringing more people to an eternal fire of hell. Without that belief, I can relax and say, okay, these people are going to follow this other way. They'll have another lifetime.

As a Hare Krishna with universalism reincarnation, I can think maybe if they don't take to Krishna consciousness in this lifetime, they will get the ultimate benefit later, and they will suffer a lot more in the meantime, but the stakes are a lot lower. The pressure is taken away. I can relax and say, these people are on their journey, and they'll get there sooner or later, and I wish them well.

Yeah, that is true. That's a good point to make, that because what is at stake is not eternal damnation, and there is progression available for everyone gradually. So in that sense, there is, even if there is a moral dimension associated with philosophy, in academia, it's almost like, how can you say that it's seriously compartmentalized.

And often morality is separated from philosophy. That is not the case. In the philosophical debates in India, there's morality and ethics associated with one's philosophical commitments.

But because it's not that because somebody is wrong, that means they are going to go to hell, and they're going to take others to hell, because certainly there's no eternal hell. There are misconceptions, and misconceptions will lead to less than optimal spiritual destinations. And how less than optimal, maybe that may vary from person to person.

But still, there is that understanding that there are multiple lives are possible. So people will grow at their pace. And another thing is that the broad Vedic tradition itself is filled with intellectual confrontations that do not spill over to violence.

And in that sense, those conversations become the models for the rest of the tradition. The Upanishads have featured such debates. But at the end of the debates, there is no acrimony or antagonistic violence.

So in that sense, yes, it's true that the philosophical is important, but it is not, it does not spill over into the cultural. All right, just a couple more questions. Timothy is asking, is the Hare Krishna theology based on merit or grace? Most Hare Krishna say that God was going back home back to Godhead, which seems like grace.

However, most I've spoken with seem not to believe they will be going back home back to Godhead at the time of death, which makes me think Krishna's grace is arbitrary. Okay, that's a good question. Well, there's a combination of merit and grace, in the sense that while the grace itself is there's a difference between the word arbitrary and independent.

Arbitrary means there is no rhyme and reason to it. But independent means God is a person and God uses his individual discretion to decide whom to give grace. So the idea is we humans can endeavor and make our heart more open and more open to get the grace and more receptive to retain the grace.

So grace needs to enter and grace needs to stay there. Otherwise, it may not enter at all. It may enter and it may just go out of there.

So our endeavors are also important. I would like to give two examples to illustrate this point that rains can fall at any place. But that doesn't mean that all those places will get the same kind of vegetation.

Depending on how fertile the land is, how well the land has been ploughed, when the rain falls, accordingly, that much good harvest will occur over there. So the rain falling is like divine grace. But where it falls, that is up to us.

What is the condition of our heart when grace comes upon us? That's up to us. So we can prepare our heart by spiritual practices to make the land fertile, to make the land of our heart fertile and receptive. When the grace comes, then the harvest will grow smoothly and even luxuriantly.

And so there is grace is at the spiritual level, but there is a significant transformation that can happen even at the material level in the sense we have the three modes, ignorance, passion, goodness. So we can make endeavors and by our endeavors gain the merit to rise toward goodness. And that can also make a substantially more receptive.

So we could say that we can compare the mode of ignorance to like a complete insulator, which does not allow the current of grace to enter much or even the current of consciousness from within the soul to manifest much. I can say the mode of passion is like a semiconductor. The mode of goodness is like a conductor.

So now, of course, divine grace has the power to penetrate. If there's a huge electric surcharge or power surge, then even a conductor might be penetrated. So God's grace can deliver even those who are in ignorance.

If it is in exceptional circumstances, that is possible. But in general, if our heart is more receptive to the flow of to entry to entering the entry and the ongoing presence of divine grace, then definitely the process can work faster. So we can acquire merit.

Our merit doesn't itself produce grace and our merit alone doesn't lead us to spiritual perfection. But our merit can make us more receptive to attaining and retaining grace. That sounds a lot like what some Christians talk about, which is I'm not sure if it's in the Bible where it's from, but they talk about pots.

So each of us is like a vessel and some pots are upside down, some have holes in them. And then God is the mercy which fills up the pots and only the pots that are up the right way and not full of holes are going to be able to contain the mercy. But if the pot is upside down, no mercy goes in.

And the pot that's full of holes, the mercy goes in and drains straight out again. So, yeah, it's this idea that the mercy is how we're saved. We can't possibly save ourselves, but we need to position ourselves so that we can receive the mercy and practices which please God and position ourselves in this way.

It's like a drug addict. You might want to help this person, but unless the person wants to be helped, there's absolutely nothing you can do to help them. This is our relationship with God.

It's like that. Yes, that's a good point. There's just another point in the question that most devotees I have met, they say that they're not going back to Krishna.

They say they're not likely to go back to Krishna. Well, that is a matter of humility also that no devotee will claim the certainty about their destination. But certainly what devotee, any person in the bhakti path will say that by following bhakti, they are definitely closer to Krishna than they were before they're following bhakti.

And how close have they come to Krishna? When exactly will attain Krishna? That's something which can vary from person to person. And it's a part of bhakti culture to have the humility to not make definitive pronouncements about one's own spiritual future. So the path of mercy does take us to God, but because God is independent in mercy, we consider it presumptuous to make definitive predictions about once our particular spiritual destinations.

Yeah. Also, there's an understanding that salvation, it's not just a one time lifetime affair necessarily. And you practice bhakti well in this life and in your next lifetime, you could be born with, like you talk about the gunas, you could have like a psychophysical nature, which makes you very saintly.

And in this life, you live a perfect God conscious life. And then after that, you go back home, back to God. We've got a few other quick questions keep coming in and they're related.

So I'm taking them. I don't know how you're doing for time. I've gone up too far.

Yeah. It seems to be a tradition where only high level mystics attain salvation and go back home and not lay practitioners. Is this correct? And then the follow up comment from Mr. Crinine.

What is a lay practitioner of enlightenment? I guess he's suggesting there that anyone who's on a spiritual path is not lay. It's very special to have taken up the spiritual path. Okay.

Yeah. Well, my understanding would be that it's more a matter of the heart being devoted to God rather than getting some mystical visions that determines whether we will attain God. In even our contemporary bhakti movement, there are a number of quite inspiring stories of what most people consider as lay practitioners.

That means people who were not necessarily renounced the world and they were dedicated to spiritual practice, but they were having their families, they were having their careers and they were having their spirituality also as a serious committed practice. So when they neared their death, they had some very special visions. They were remarkably calm during their final moments and they were very devoted overall.

So, so, so yam labdha cha param labham manyate na adhikam tatha. Now we cannot know specifically what the content of somebody's consciousness is. Even if somebody has their spiritual visions, there is no way we can, we can verify those visions.

But what we can see is that how much is a person who is going to face the grim reality of death soon? How much, how are they facing it? How much are they lamenting about their life? How much are they hankering for something material? If they're free from this hankering and lamentation, that suggests that they've experienced something higher, which has freed them from hankering and lamentation. And that in that itself is indicative of some strong level of spiritual connection or experience or vision. And that to that extent, there are quite a few practitioners who have experienced this in the contemporary bhakti movement.

So the understanding is just every single person who practices bhakti can be elevated to the level where they can attain salvation, liberation, or a loving union with God in his kingdom. Exactly how it will unfold for any particular bhakti practitioner, that's something which will vary from person to person. That's something which we can't predict or control.

Okay, Prabhu, you are on mute again. So one more question from Reverend Taco's Entertainment Channel. Let's talk about grace and the guest view.

Is there an equivalent to an Adam and Eve story? Also, is the guest saying that karma can be mitigated through grace? Well, definitely karma can be mitigated through grace. So the point of karma is not so much retributive justice as reformative justice. It's not that you did this, so you have to suffer this.

That's not the point. The point is ultimately reformation. So if somebody is showing signs of reformation, if somebody is becoming firm in their devotion to God, then definitely whatever punishment is going to come by karma, that can be minimized, that can be reduced to some very small token symbol.

And in that way, grace can override or overcome karma. As far as the Adam and Eve story is concerned, well, there can be multiple levels of parallel that can be talked about. There are cosmic ages and divisions called Manvantaras, and there is Adam and Abhyavati, and they are two leaders in the cosmic administration.

And several of the characteristics of their lives that are described are similar to Adam and Eve. So this comes in the Puranas, which are one body of literature within the Vedic tradition. Now specifically about the fall, that idea that Adam and Eve, they fell from paradise because of eating a forbidden apple.

Now within the bhakti tradition, there are divided opinions about this. Some people support the idea that the souls were with God and they fell because of defiance. Now how that defiance came out about it also is a whole elaborate question.

But the broad principle is that focus less on postmortem and focus more on prognosis. That means rather than getting too caught in how exactly the soul got here. And so we focus on how the soul can get out of here.

So don't spend too much energy on figuring out, spend more energy on getting out. Right. And as for the Adam and Eve story, there's some people who look at it and compare it to the story we have in the Puranas of the two birds sitting in the tree, the super soul and the Jiva.

So they reckon the super soul bird is Adam and the other birds eating the fruits of the tree is Eve. And they reckon that these two metaphors crossover. I'm not so sure about that, but people make a case for it.

No, I don't think Adam is ever equated to the super soul. And there is God who is quite different from Adam. And super soul is considered equivalent to God in some ways, giving a manifestation of the divine.

Yeah, I think it's pushing it a little. Adam and Eve can be compared to soul and super soul. That would be a little stretch.

Maybe we can just race through the last couple of questions or at least read them out and just say one sentence or two in reply. Timothy was saying you get very clear answers. Thank you so much.

Do you have any talk on merit versus grace related to salvation within the Bhakti tradition? If you could comment after the video is live, then we can reply with a comment, with a link to a video or a talk or an article. I'm sure Tejanacharan has written on this before. Sure, I'll do that.

I'll share that link with you also. Okay, awesome. So that's that one.

I think there's just one other one I wanted to get through, two others actually. Where was it? A personalist and impersonalist could agree that they are talking about the same experience of God. Okay, yeah.

So there are two things over here, that in the Bhakti tradition, it is acknowledged that God has a personal aspect and an impersonal aspect, and both are part of the ultimate reality. So that's why impersonal liberation is also considered a valid and an exalted level of attainment. So yes, there is one ultimate reality, and that one ultimate reality may be experienced by some people by impersonalists in a particular way and personalists in another way.

So that is perfectly acceptable. Krishna talks about this also in 12.4 and 5 in the Bhagavad Gita. The challenge, however, comes when any one school of thought starts absolutizing its own experience and demeaning or dismissing the other experience.

So that's why within our tradition, impersonalism is seen in two ways. One we could say is that the technical words are used as Brahmavad and Mayavad, but we could talk it off as non-exclusive liberation and exclusive, sorry, non-exclusive impersonal liberation, exclusive impersonal liberation. So non-exclusive means, yes, I am attracted to the impersonal aspect of the divine, and that's what I want to attain.

And there may be a personal aspect, but that's not what attracts me. So that's non-exclusive. And that is what is accepted in the Bhagavad Gita.

But there are others who are exclusivists about the impersonal conception. So this exclusive conception of liberation holds that the divine has no personal aspect at all. And the idea of loving the divine as a person is an illusion which needs to be transcended because the divine as a person itself is an illusion.

And that is an idea which is considered antagonistic to the glory of the ultimate reality. And Krishna in 9, 11 and 12 in the Bhagavad Gita, he strongly reproaches those who hold such an idea. So when impersonalists start becoming exclusivists in claiming that the ultimate reality is only impersonal and the personal is an illusion, then that is where things start falling apart.

And that's where reconciliation becomes difficult. But the fact that both may be experiencing the same reality from different features, that's definitely accepted in the Bhagavad Gita. Oh, there was one more I missed actually.

Random is asking, is it necessary to gain moksha after death? What if I don't want moksha? What if I want rebirth to come again and again on this earth? Yes, nothing is in one sense necessary, because we can say that each of us at a physical level, we can say there are objectively certain necessities. We need food, air, water to live. But depending on the level of our spiritual evolution, we may or may not feel our spiritual growth to be a necessity.

So the idea is that as we awaken spiritually more and more, then we start realizing that it is in the spiritual domain that our longing for love and life and light eternal can actually be fulfilled. That these longings become more strong and how these longings are going to be, sorry, that the nature of these longings becomes not that longing becomes stronger, but the nature of these longings become clearer and the nature of the world in its inability to fulfill these longings also becomes clearer. And that is when the spiritual urge becomes stronger.

So if somebody doesn't have any aspiration for liberation right now, then at least one can try to expand one's consciousness. That okay, maybe I'm not interested in the ultimate spiritual, but let me try to think of something bigger than myself, contribute to something bigger, be kind, be courteous, be charitable, be a part of something bigger than oneself. Krishna talks about four levels, multiple levels in the 12th chapter.

And he says, if somebody is not in a position to be spiritually connected, devotionally connected, at least let them become selfless. That sarva karma phalat tyagam tah kuru yataatmavaan. That become connected to some cause bigger than oneself.

And that will also keep us on the spiritual path. Yes, if we think that I want to come back here again, then okay, let's try to live a more meaningful life. Let's prepare ourselves, let's live in such a way that when if we come again, we'll be living more meaningfully, that we'll be contributing more to the world constructively through our activities.

So then that is also that will also keep us on the progressive spiritual path. I guess one way we can say that is you won't reach the spiritual world until you've reached the state where you'll be happy there. Yes, it's not that liberation is going to be thrust upon us when we don't want it.

It's when we value it more than everything else. That's when we will be given it. Otherwise, it's not really liberation if we are not at the liberty to choose it ourselves as our foremost desire.

I'm not sure if you want to take this one now, but someone's asking what's your opinion on Sadhguru? It's difficult to have an opinion on any particular spiritual teacher. But I will separate into three parts. There is a social activist kind of message he has, there is a cultural message he has, and there is a philosophical message he has.

So as far as the social activist message is concerned, he talks about various activities for environmental consciousness, some of his humanitarian work that he inspires. All that is good. And he's inspiring others also to do good through that.

And in that sense, it's good. As far as some of his cultural activities are concerned, he is able to reach a significant number of young people. And if some of his inspired them to respect spiritual culture more, then that is also a healthy thing.

Of course, I would say he is, I have the biggest concerns about his philosophical answers, because he often openly professes that, openly says that he has not really read the Vedic texts and many of the Vedic texts. He comments on the Ramayana, but he doesn't really say that he has categorically read the Ramayana. In his philosophy, he seems to focus more on non-commitment than clarity or coherence.

That means don't commit yourself to any school of thought. But then, does he have a systematic worldview? He wrote a book on karma and he does, that book has contributed to say bringing karma more into mainstream consciousness. But he has removed the concept of divinity from karma.

Now, divinity is a central aspect of Indic spirituality. And if he removes divinity entirely from the corpus of his teachings, then is he actually teaching Indian philosophy or any school of Indian philosophy? Or he is just using the social stature of being seen as an Indian spiritual teacher to just teach what he believes. So from that perspective, I have reservations about what he's teaching.

At the same time, at a humanitarian activist level, he is doing work that is inspiring others toward higher consciousness. That's why I earlier said that we can't reduce people. People are complex and we can't just reduce them to one aspect.

And that's why it's difficult to give a comment based on a comment of a particular spiritual teacher. But still, I would say based on these three categories, that might help you get some sense of what my understanding of Sadhguru would be. Prabhu, again, you are muted.

I was discussing with someone on Facebook recently about Sadhguru and they were saying he goes beyond the Vedas. Because I was pointing out how his views, you kind of have to reject the Vedas if you want to accept what he teaches, because his views are inconsistent with what the Vedas teach. And they were saying, oh, no, he transcends the Vedas, he goes beyond them, which I think is a euphemism for rejecting the Vedas.

Well, if somebody says transcend the Vedas, okay, what do you do after transcending the Vedas? Now Krishna also says go beyond the Vedas. But when he's going beyond the Vedas, he's not dismissing or he's not deriding the Vedas. He's just talking about a vivid picture of spiritual reality that is not talked about in the four Vedas.

But still, that spiritual reality is also part of the Vedic body of knowledge. Whereas what he's talking about is something substantially different. So I would hesitate to, in that sense, take that part very seriously.

Prabhu, again, muted. We probably need to wrap it up now. There's still two more questions.

Maybe we can have a question and answer session soon again, sometime. Yeah, we'll do another one. So I'll promote it with a bit more warning.

And you can bring your questions. Maybe we can save these ones for next time. But I'm sure the questions will come along.

Thanks for staying on so long and answering the questions so nicely. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much for this forum.

All the best for your future podcasts with many other thinkers. Hare Krishna. And just quickly to the audience, if you like this sort of thing, be sure to subscribe.

And I'll see you in the next one. Hare Krishna.