CC daily 186 – 6.274 – The domination of impersonalism leads to default impersonal interpretation

Thank you 6.274 Sarvabhauma is saying that although by your explanation the import is clear still in this case ambiguity there is a fault of ambiguity here it is best that such a word not be used 6.274 so although the concept of Mukti there are five different meanings of the word Mukti usually people associate it with only one kind of Mukti and that is the challenge so here Sarvabhauma is explaining to us the problem of ambiguity that is there in scripture and how that can be dealt with so we discussed this earlier about how there are connotations of words and if you look at the history of India a large part of Indian history especially medieval history was characterized by the prevalence of impersonalist thought in India after Shakaracharya appeared and he refuted impersonalism thereafter thereafter he refuted Buddhism and established impersonalism thereafter impersonalism was present widely the Vishnu Acharyas tried and worked strived to give the correct understanding of Siddhanta and they were significantly successful but still through much of Indian history medieval history especially the kind of hold say that science has on the modern mind of course now there is post modernism increasingly spreading in the world and science no longer enjoys the kind of unlimited unlimited admiration that it had enjoyed earlier now people see science with skepticism to some extent especially because of many of the harmful effects of technology being becoming evident and also because of the uncertainty within the core concepts that science has discovered just quantum uncertainty and things like that that's a different subject but the point is that no system of thought holds prevalence on the human mind for an infinite time now impersonalism just as science has held held sway on human thought for a good amount of time for the recent 3-4 centuries so similarly for much longer time impersonalism held sway in India and due to such impersonalist conceptions many people actually assumed that scripture that the Vedic scriptures teach impersonalism and that's why the default assumption was of impersonalism now now western scholars when they came to India they often had their own biases their own agendas but still they were not always captivated by the spell of impersonalism as were many Indian thinkers so for example some Christian thinkers when they studied Indian literature first they were little appalled by the idea of merging into God but as they went deeper they found that there is a vibrant tradition of bhakti also and that vibrant tradition of bhakti was had many features that were very similar to the devotion that had that was present in Christian traditions and along with that or beyond that there were some features which were deeper also so the mood of selfless devotion that many of the bhakti saints had exhibited through their actions and through their words was so extraordinary as to be as to be captivating as to be spellbinding as to be thrilling so this striking similarity is also there but unfortunately the devotional side of Vedic tradition has been downplayed for a long time both in the traditional or mainstream perceptions of Hinduism what is today called Hinduism and here Sarvabhauma is making the point that because of such mainstream notions he says that there have been ambiguity so it is the responsibility of the living teachers of every tradition to ensure that whatever current misconceptions are there or whatever current misconceptions are likely to be there that living tradition deals with those misconceptions in the appropriate way otherwise we will all end up messing up and confusing ourselves we will end up putting ourselves in illusion and thereby depriving ourselves and depriving the world of the proper understanding of Shastra because each generation lives at the junction of the tradition and the contemporary culture of course the contemporary culture that we live in is very far very remotely distanced from the traditional culture in which bhakti has been practiced but then this is a challenge that almost all traditions in the world have faced because the pace at which change has happened over the last few centuries is staggering and no tradition has the power to turn the clock back what the tradition can offer is to turn the compass on that means it's not that we can create ancient conditions here that's not possible what we can do is we can actually stress and present the time independent principles that are given in scripture and by sharing those principles we can inspire people to also become spiritual so whatever ambiguity is there Chaitanya Mahaprabhu has been seen in the future section that it is as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu gave the right understanding in the prevalence of ambiguity which comes because of the prevalence of impersonalism at that time in society so that kind of ambiguity can be avoided and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu explains that how it can be avoided here in this section by giving a proper explanation and similarly it is our responsibility to ourselves get explanations that prevent potential ambiguities and by consulting responsible learned devotees who understand both the tradition and the contemporary culture and then sharing that kind of understanding so that potential ambiguities can be avoided and people can be guided with the correct understanding.