Are the other 5 schools of Indian philosophy relevant for devotees – are they speculations?

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Thank you Hare Krishna Question from Subuddhi Madhav Prabhu What is the relevance of the other five schools of thought apart from Vedanta for a devotee practitioner Can we conclude that there are speculations by their respective founders Answer Not exactly speculations, they are partial understandings of the teachings which were given by Vyasadeva and then subsequently those understandings were distorted further so the six systems of philosophy they are progressive systems of understanding which gradually move towards the conclusive understanding in Vedanta just like in a university there may be different levels of classes there are different levels there is 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade 4th grade and like that there is primary, secondary, then there is college then there is post graduation so there are levels so in one sense these six systems of philosophy they were levels of understanding of the world so they were in one sense originally progressive one of the scholarly leaders Suhathra Maharaj, he has written a book about the six systems of philosophy where he analyzes them with a fair amount of depth and so for example here I will just give a rough sketch of their progressiveness, because the philosophy systems themselves are a little complex to understand, so we look at the world around us and we see practically so much variety, we could say almost a countless variety so from this we try to figure out what are the fundamental elements that make this up, so Sankhya tries to analyze the complexity of reality into its fundamental elements, Sankhya, counting and then after counting the material element then one tries to go to the spiritual elements also Vaisheshika also does something similar where it tries to analyze in terms of the focus on understanding not just the ingredients but the fundamental building blocks so it is something like, Vaisheshika is something like physics where it goes to the level of atoms and molecules they also use the word Anu and Parmanu although they use it in a different sense but so that is again an analysis of the material world and then there we have we have Vaisheshika then which is basic then we have Mimamsa, which basically we understand there is a higher level of reality and roughly parallel just as science has discovered some laws of nature there in Mimamsa one understands that there are certain laws and by following those laws understanding and harmonizing with those laws one can rise to better levels of existence so one goes from earthly reality to heavenly reality and that’s more or less the world view of Mimamsa then there is Nyaya which basically is system of logic and that system of logic is used to largely move onwards from the level of from the level of being from the level of logical incoherence or accepting and believing in logical things we move onwards towards understanding logical things understanding things logically so it’s a system of logic and that logic itself if it is taken to its conclusion if that itself is seen as the final way of knowledge then it can lead to skepticism and incorrect understanding but as a tool for acquiring knowledge Nyaya, the principles developed by Nyaya as well as by Mimamsa, they have been used by other schools of thought also and then there is we have Yoga which understands whereas Mimamsa focuses on a higher reality but Yoga focuses on not just a higher material reality but a higher spiritual reality and Yoga focuses more on detachment from the lower material reality so that one can eventually meditate on and become connected with the higher spiritual reality. Now Vedanta which is focused on Brahma, Brahman it stresses not so much the rejection of the material reality although that is also a part its stress is on connection its consistent stress is on connection with the higher spiritual reality and it reveals what the higher spiritual reality is fully.
So now when Vyasadev taught the Vedas and then the six systems of knowledge emerged and he entrusted different sages, so it was meant to be a cooperative progressive growth in learning so we have in the Bhagavatam it is described that because after doing all this Vyasadev wrote the books and he arranged for the system for disseminating knowledge through the Vedas he gave different sections of the Vedas to different sages and yet he felt dissatisfied because as Narada Muni told Vyasadev later that you have not glorified the Supreme Lord adequately. So the conclusion of uttama shloka guna nuvaranam that was not adequately stressed and when that focus was missed by people their partial understandings led to thinking that these six systems of thought were not progressive but they were independent and competitive and over time they developed as independent schools of thought which compete against each other so at our present level of bhakti practice we have not, most of us have not grown up in a culture where we studied the six systems of thought so we don’t need to study the six systems now because that study is not relevant for us we can focus primarily on studying the principles of bhakti and applying those principles and for our outreach we need to deal with the misconceptions that people have and we need to find ways in which those misconceptions can be addressed and as we keep doing that we keep moving onwards towards Krishna so the six systems of philosophy are not directly relevant for us as sadhakas Srila Prabhupada does say in a Bhagavatam purport that anyone who is going to speak on the Bhagavatam should be well versed in the six systems of philosophy and he draws this purport from a point in the Bhagavatam that how the Goswami was very learned and thus he was capable of speaking on the Bhagavatam the underlying principle is Srila Prabhupada never encouraged people to devotees that you should study the six systems of philosophy to become bhaktas so the point is that one who is speaking on the Bhagavatam should be capable of refuting misconceptions that the audience may be likely to have so in the context when Suta Goswami was speaking at that time the six systems of philosophy were prevalent and Suta Goswami was equipped to remove those misconceptions today people have a different set of misconceptions and whatever the misconceptions they have, we as devotees should be trained if we are especially focusing on outreach, we should study and train ourselves so that we can adequately respond to and counter those misconceptions and present the conclusion of bhakti in a appealing and persuasive way Thank you