Bhaktivinoda Thakura’s contributions 3 – The sara-grahi redefinition of Panchopasana as progressive modes of comprehending the divine

5 levels outlined in Bhaktivinoda Thakura’s essay “On the Pure Religion of the Bhagavata”:

1. Shaktism – Worship of nature

2. Sauryaism – Worship of sun

3. Ganapatyaism – Worship of consciousness manifested in animals

4. Shaivism – Worship of consciousness manifested in humans

6. Vaishnavism – Worship of the Supreme Person

On the sacred occasion of the 100th anniversary of the disappearance of Bhaktivinoda Thakur, let us understand his contributions through the series of talks.
So, in the first two parts, we discussed about his harmonization of reason and faith, and then his harmonization of the various religions through understanding the unity of their purpose. Now, we will continue discussion of his harmonization of different forms of worship through the concept of saragrahi and bharagrahi, and the concept of panchopasana. So, in this world, we see there are so many conflicts among different religions.
And there are so many differences, which often become the cause of these conflicts. So, Bhaktivinoda Thakur in the Krishna Samhita explains, first of all, that there are two kinds of religious worshippers. There are bharagrahi and saragrahi.
Bharagrahi are those who are burden bearers, and saragrahi are essence acceptors. So, those who focus on externals often end up with conflicts. So, for example, the principle of offering respect to God is common in all the great religions of the world.
Now, that respect will be offered in different ways. The Muslims may offer namas, the Christians may offer mas, the Hindus may fold hand and offer namaskar. Now, if we just focus on the externals, we will say that, oh, you are doing something different, I am doing something different, that person is doing something different, and therefore, we are different.
And we may fight. But if we go beyond the externals to the essence, saragrahi, just like a swan, puts aside the water and goes to the milk. So, like that, if we go, then we will be able to see beyond the differences to the essence.
And then we will see the essential unifying thread in the various faith expressions of the world. So, of course, Bhaktivedanta Thakur does not reject the external rituals or the institutional dogmas, because he says by following this also, one will gradually become elevated and can become saragrahi. But if one is intelligent enough, deep enough, then one can avoid the state of conflict which is caused at the bharavahi stage and directly focus on the saragrahi.
And then, how can the saragrahi see the underlying thread of unity in the various religious forms of the world? So, he takes the, he gives an explanation of pancha upasana in a progressive way. Now, pancha upasana, upasana is worship, pancha is fire. So, pancha upasana emerged in the Indian history, especially in the post-Buddhist times.
It was developed by the smarthas for the purpose of uniting India. So, pancha upasana, the five deities are worshipped, that is Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti, Surya and Ganesh. And the various different kinds of people who were worshipping different things, when Shankaracharya brought them together after driving Buddhism out of India, then he brought them all together under the Vedic umbrella.
And these five forms of worship were going on. Now, often these pancha upasana is not a simplistic demigod worship. Actually, it is often a form of not polytheism, but what is called as cathenotheism.
A cathenotheism means, it is called henotheism in short, more specific. Henotheism means there is one absolute truth who manifests in many different forms. That is called henotheism.
So, that means the idea is you can, one can choose whichever form one wants to worship and one can worship that form, but ultimately one will go to that same absolute truth. So, the idea was that, so ultimately it is a form of impersonalism, pancha upasana. But Bhaktivinoda Thakur, based on his great realizations and his understanding of the essential singular import of the Vedic scriptures, Bhagavad Gita says, Vedaistha Sarvair Ahameva Vedyo, 15.15. So, based on that, he explains how these five forms of worship are not five separate paths.
They are not like five ways of climbing up to the peak of a mountain, which is what was often conventionally thought. But he said, they are like five rungs on a ladder which will take us to the peak of the mountain. So, they are not, they don’t refer to five distinct duties, although that is also the way people worship, but there are five levels of comprehending the divine.
So, this begins with Shaktism. So, Shaktism is not just the worship of the goddess Shakti, Durga Parvati, but what does that actually represent when a person is in an existential quest, trying to understand the absolute truth, at that time, one begins by focusing on the world around oneself. And one says, okay, there is nature, and it is in nature that I am living, it is through the grace of nature that I am living, and the natural resources are what are essential for my life.
So, therefore, one starts worshipping nature itself. And so, various forms of animism, animism means those which ascribe a life to nature itself, and then worship nature as supreme. They were present a long time ago in Europe, and often they are associated with some forms of African religions.
And it’s, of course, very common in China and Japan. It was historically much more common also. So, this is to worship nature as if it is God.
This is Shaktism. Now, if one keeps worshipping like this, gradually one understands, yes, nature is sustaining me, but nature is deriving energy from somewhere. And where is that nature deriving that energy from? That is actually from the sun, which is the reservoir of all energy.
So, therefore, it is the sun which is giving energy to all of us. And it is the sun that is the object of worship. So, at this level, the Shaktas become the Sauryas.
Sauryas means the worshippers of the sun god. So, now, of course, in the Vedic tradition, there are the Brahmanas who chant the Gayatri Mantra. Now, chanting of the Gayatri Mantra can be a form of Vaishnav Bhakti if we understand that the object whom one is worshipping is Surya Narayana.
It is Lord Narayana who is present as the Lord of Surya in his heart and in his abode. But if one considers the sun as the independent supreme, then one is at the level of Saurya worship. So, if Brahmanas chant Gayatri, thinking of the sun as the source of all illumination and existence, they are Sauryas.
And similarly, if we see the primary Egyptian deity in ancient times is Ra, that is actually a form of worship of the sun. And the Bible also tells us that the residents of Canaan who used to worship Debal, that was also a form of solar worship. The worship of sun has been quite common in the ancient religions because people did understand that the sun is the source of energy.
Now, after this, gradually, one’s consciousness as it evolves, one starts thinking of that, yes, there is nature, there is energy, but energy stems from consciousness. And therefore, the consciousness is manifested in forms. So, one rises from matter and energy to conscious beings.
At this level, one worships the consciousness that is manifested through subhuman beings or animals. So, this is the level of Ganapati worship. Now, at the level of Ganapati worship, one focuses on worshiping the absolute in the form of animals like cats and horses.
Today, people keep some cats as pets, but in ancient Egypt, in some phase in Egypt, cats were kept not as family pets, but as family deities. And there is some form of Totem worship, which also were there in the Americas, among Native Americans, they also involved some sort of worship of animals. So, this is the Ganapati level of worship.
As one moves forward from here, then one comes to recognize the higher in the consciousness in animals is the consciousness in humans. So, there one starts worshiping a particular person whom one sees as perfect. And this sort of worship that focuses on a person is, Bhaktivinoda Thakura explains as Shaivism.
Now, of course, Shiva is a person who is an extraordinary person, a powerful deity, no doubt. And like that, it applies for the previous deities also. But here Bhaktivinoda Thakura is explaining the consciousness of people who are at this level of worship.
This is the level of worship where there are spiritual personality cults that often happen, and where one focuses on perfecting one’s own human consciousness by taking the model of some human being that one imagines to be perfect. And interestingly, Bhaktivinoda Thakura classifies Jainism and Buddhism as forms of Shaivism. Why? Because in these religions, there is an enlightened being, Tirthankara, Mahavira, Buddha, Lama.
And that enlightened being becomes the focus of worship. Although these religions themselves are non-theistic, but they focus on perfecting the human consciousness. And that way, they move forward.
And that way, they also help the person to evolve. Now, as one moves forward, one then recognizes that actually beyond the worship of such human beings, who may be very elevated, there is the worship of the Supreme Being, who alone is complete and perfect. And at this level of worship, when one worships God as the Supreme Person, that is Vaishnavism.
So now, Bhaktivinoda Thakura classifies Christianity and Islam also as forms of Vaishnavism. Why? Because they have a conception of God as a person. Of course, Islam has the conception of God as personal but formless.
So, in that sense, it is between personalism and impersonalism. Because the impersonalists consider God to be having no personality and having no form. The personalists understand that God has personality and form.
Islam conceives of God as a person but without form. But anyway, Bhaktivinoda Thakura explains that because they have a personal conception of the absolute truth, so they are also Vaishnavism. They are also included with Vaishnavism.
And of course, within the Vedic tradition, there are those who worship, there are Vaishnavas who worship Vishnu. Now, interestingly, Bhaktivinoda Thakura again classifies Vaishnavism in two ways. This is analogous to his initial classification of religions as Bhairavahi and Saragrahi.
He says that Vaishnavism can be Sampradayik and Sattvatah. Sampradayik, the word Sampraday, we often use it to refer to a religious tradition in which we get spiritual knowledge. But essentially, Sampraday means a group or a party.
So, he says the Sampradayik Vaishnavism is sectarian Vaishnavism. And Sattvatah Vaishnavism is non-sectarian universal Vaishnavism. That means that in sectarian Vaishnavism, in Sampradayik Vaishnavism, one imagines that one’s religion, one’s Vaishnavism is the only way.
So, just as we have Christians who claim that Jesus says that I am the way and none shall go to the father except through me. And so people take this to not only assume that they alone will go back to God, but they also assume that everyone else has to follow their way to go back to God. So, Bhaktivinoda Thakura explains elsewhere that Saragrahi Vaishnavas or Sattvatah Vaishnavas understand such statements as intended to create a focus on one’s path.
They are not meant to be exclusivist in the sense of rejecting all other paths, but they are meant to be creating a focus so that one doesn’t get distracted. Just like a doctor may accept that there are other doctors who can also give valid prescriptions by which a patient can be cured, but once a patient comes to a doctor, the doctor says forget all other treatment that you have got, just take this now and you will get cured. So, these statements are like that.
Now, Bhaktivinoda Thakura explains that those who worship a personal God, but if they consider their way to be the only way, then they are Vaishnavas, but they are Sampradayik Vaishnavas. And then Sattvatah Vaishnavas are those who are focused purely on transcendence and they focus on the essence and by practicing that essence, they attain the perfection of life. So, herein he describes that the Bhagavatam actually talks of Sattvatah Vaishnavism and that’s why the Bhagavatam does not even use any name for it.
So, it’s beyond any nomenclature like Christianity, Islam, Hinduism. Bhagavatam in 1.2.6 says, How is the soul gets satisfied? By performing pure, unmotivated, uninterrupted devotional service to the Supreme Lord. And in this way, one attains the supreme perfection of life.
So, in this way, by moving from the worship of, first moving from externals to its essence, from Bharavahi to Saragrahi, and in the essence, recognizing the progression from worship of nature to worship of energy, to worship of consciousness manifested as animal form, consciousness manifested as humans, and then consciousness manifested as a supreme person, and then recognizing that that supreme person is not just my monopoly. Bhaktivinoda Thakura says also that the truth and God, who is the giver of the truth, are not the monopoly of any religion. No, religion is meant for God.
God is not meant for religion. God is far greater than any of the great religions that we offer to Him in His service. And that’s why he says that there is, there can be worship of personal God, but it can be sampradayik, but beyond that is sattvata.
And it is this that Bhaktivinoda Bhagavatam offers, endorses, glorifies, and it is that which he has explained and revealed to us. That is what we have got through the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition. By following that, we can develop pure love for God and attain life’s supreme perfection.
Thank you.

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Hare Krishna. So on the occasion of Bhaktanath Thakur's disappearance day, let's look at his contributions to Gaudiya Vaishnavism. In the first part we discussed about how he envisioned a harmonization of faith and reason.

Now let's look at how he envisioned harmonization of different religions, not through assuming identity among all the religions, but through envisioning or comprehending their unity of purpose. So when prior to Bhaktanath Thakur, Gaudiya Vaishnavism had not had much interaction with faiths, with religions outside the Vedic tradition. Although Islam was there, but there was very little intellectual dialogue between Islam and Hinduism.

And therefore, the Islam was never really considered to be an intellectual competitor, because people who used to slaughter cows and eat meat, they were not considered to be high level at all. They're not considered to be intellectually equals in any way. When the Europeans came, although they had similar habits in terms of lifestyle, but they had science and technology and rationality, and they seemed not only intellectually equal, but intellectually superior.

And many Christian missionaries also came, and they were a part of the same Western culture. So when there were so many different ways of looking and thinking, so Christianity was one religion within the Vedic path itself, there are many different religions, Vaishnavism, Shaivism, like that. So what is the right way of understanding these different religions? So Bhaktanath Thakur's classic statement is how actually there are different ways of comprehending the divine.

And in Chaitanya Shiksha Amrit and in other books, he explains how there are peaks, if there is one huge mountain peak, and there are different people who are looking at that mountain peak from different directions, and they see the same peak, but because of their position, their different positions, they will see that same mountain peak differently. And because they see this mountain peak differently, therefore, accordingly, they come to different understandings. So he explains how there can be different levels of faith, or different kinds of conceptions, different kinds of faith people may have, because of various reasons.

So for example, one may have different kinds of understanding because one has faith in different prophets. So all of the prophets are themselves enlightened souls, but they speak according to time, place, and circumstance. So the way they speak, according to their cultural context, and the kind of prophet in whom one has faith, accordingly, one's religious conception will be shaped.

So because Mohammed's teachings were spoken in a different context from Jesus' teachings, and similarly, they are in a different context from what Vyasa has spoken, therefore, there will be difference in the understanding of the followers. Similarly, then there is also the issue of the kind of practice one is doing. So depending on the mode of worship that one has, one's faith will also be affected.

So a person who is worshipping Kali, and a person who is worshipping Krishna, who is worshipping Kali by killing animals, a person who is worshipping Krishna by offering Patram, Pushpam, Phalam, Toyam, that person's understanding will be different. It also depends on culture, the kind of environment a person grows in, accordingly, one's faith gets shaped. And similarly, one's own disposition.

So he gives the example that a hunter in a forest will, if he is told about the pure Bhagavata Dharma, he will not be able to relate with that easily. And he will have the idea that God must be the greatest hunter. And he thinks even if I attain heaven, in heaven I will do hunting, and there I will do expert hunting.

So one will not be able to get out of one's framework of cultural conceptions. And to get out of that framework, one needs a higher understanding. And that higher understanding comes by practice of the deeper core of one's spiritual practice or spiritual path.

So when one accesses that core and then practices accordingly, then one gets elevated progressively higher, higher, higher, upwards towards the supreme perfection. So at that time, there were other spiritual teachers, especially impersonalists who say that all paths lead to the same goal. Or actually, not just all paths lead to the same goal.

They say all paths are essentially the same. That was the idea. So Bhaktanath Thakur said, yes, ultimately, all paths are expressions of the same existential quest.

Wherever people are, they will get the question, who am I? What is the purpose of my life? But depending on their prophets, depending on their culture, depending on their psychology, depending on the practices that they adopt, like this, depending on the external variants, their conception will vary. And so, therefore, to simplistically say that all paths lead to the same goal is not exactly correct. Ultimately, all paths are meant for the progression of the individual on the spiritual express way.

And for that purpose, all paths need to be respected. So there is this famous quote of Bhaktanath Thakur. He says that if we go to a place where someone else, to a place where God is being worshipped in a way different from ours, and there we are, there we see people worshipping God accordingly, say we go to a church or a mosque, then what should one do? What should one do? He says one should stand there in a reverential mode.

And one should understand that here is my own beloved, my own worshipable Lord, who has manifested in a form different from mine, from the one which I am familiar with. And he is attracting people over here. So how merciful is my Lord that is manifesting in so many different ways to attract so many different people? So by thinking thus, we can, three things, we can respect the manifestation of God that is there.

Second is we can gain greater appreciation for the merciful nature of the Lord. And based on the greater appreciation, we can further be inspired to become more devoted to the Lord in the way in which we are familiar with Him. That means, rather than thinking that, okay, I have to adopt that path because God has manifested over there, or I have to destroy that path because that path is different from me, I understand that it is the same one Lord who has extended himself in various ways, and I become devoted to the path which I have been given.

I become more devoted by seeing the mercifulness of the Lord. So we see the unity of purpose underlying the diversity of religious forms. So by that, we can appreciate whichever religious form is there.

And he says, one should not have to, one doesn't have to create unnecessary conflicts. You know, people at different levels can practice and they will get gradually elevated from whatever level they are practicing. If they are open, surely, we can give them the highest understanding.

But the point is to recognize that all people, mama vartamanu vartante, anushya partha sarvasya. Krishna says that all people are on my path. So we encourage people to move forward on the spiritual expressway wherever they are.

And within the Gaurav Vishnu tradition, Bhaktunath Thakur is the first person who actually recognizes Jesus and Muhammad also to be Shaktyavish avatars. So Chaitanya Mahaprabhu does not use that word specifically. In the Chaitanya Charita Amrit, where there are two situations where there are dialogues between Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Muslims.

So at that time, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu focuses on the essential principle and he basically converts both of them to Vaishnavism. But here, Bhaktunath Thakur doesn't focus on converting anyone. His focus is on encouraging people along the same existential path, same existential quest for the purpose and meaning of life.

And he, of course, he does not simplistically say that everything is same. He recognizes that the contemporary expressions of Islam that were there at his time were quite, or that had been there before the Britishers came in, they were quite destructive for the Prashtika Vedic tradition. But he differentiated the prevalent expressions of Islam from the original revelation of the Prophet Muhammad.

Similarly, by his own studies of Christianity, before he was introduced to Vaishnavism, Bhaktunath Thakur saw the harmony, saw the principle of devotion that was there even within the teachings of Jesus. And he appreciated that profusely. And in that way, he encouraged, he saw the commonality of purpose within various religious traditions and similarly within the Vedic tradition also.

So, Bhaktunath Thakur, at one time, there was a radical Hindu reformer who strongly criticized the worship of the Shaktas, where they use the five Ns, Mamsa, Madera, Maithuna, Mura, like that. And he said, this is such a terrible, reprehensible form of worship. That's what was the criticism that was done by this radical Hindu leader.

And Bhaktunath Thakur, what does he do? He doesn't think, oh, Shaktism is a competitor to Vaishnavism, good that Shaktism is criticized. No, he says that he actually, this particular Swami, actually that was Swami Dayan Saraswati of the Arya Samaj. So, he said that he seems to be a learned person, but he has not studied Shaktism very deeply.

And I had expected that my Shakta brothers will respond to this, but since they have not done so, so I feel duty bound to respond because we all belong to the same Vedic family. And then he explains how the Shakta, the form, the form of Shaktism or Shaivism, they are also meant for gradual elevation of people. So, we can see the broadness of outlook that is there in Bhaktunath Thakur that he is recognizing the validity and even the necessity of different levels of religious practices for people to become progressively elevated.

Of course, he himself champions Gaudiya Vaishnavism and explains, especially through the concept of Rasa, how that gives the highest understanding of God and the sweetest relationship with God. But that does not make him dismissive or derogatory towards other religious traditions. No, he appreciates them based on the underlying unity of purpose of elevating everyone.

And this is the broad compassion of a Vaishnava that elevate people from wherever they are in whatever way is best possible for them. Thank you. Hare Krishna.